Part I

Produced by Charles Aldarondo. HTML version by Al Haines.

THE ARAN ISLANDS

BY

JOHN M. SYNGE

Introduction

The geography of the Aran Islands is very simple, yet it may need a

word to itself. There are three islands: Aranmor, the north island,

about nine miles long; Inishmaan, the middle island, about three

miles and a half across, and nearly round in form; and the south

island, Inishere--in Irish, east island,--like the middle island but

slightly smaller. They lie about thirty miles from Galway, up the

centre of the bay, but they are not far from the cliffs of County

Clare, on the south, or the corner of Connemara on the north.

Kilronan, the principal village on Aranmor, has been so much changed

by the fishing industry, developed there by the Congested Districts

Board, that it has now very little to distinguish it from any

fishing village on the west coast of Ireland. The other islands are

more primitive, but even on them many changes are being made, that

it was not worth while to deal with in the text.

In the pages that follow I have given a direct account of my life on

the islands, and of what I met with among them, inventing nothing,

and changing nothing that is essential. As far as possible, however,

I have disguised the identity of the people I speak of, by making

changes in their names, and in the letters I quote, and by altering

some local and family relationships. I have had nothing to say about

them that was not wholly in their favour, but I have made this

disguise to keep them from ever feeling that a too direct use had

been made of their kindness, and friendship, for which I am more

grateful than it is easy to say.

Part I

I am in Aranmor, sitting over a turf fire, listening to a murmur of

Gaelic that is rising from a little public-house under my room.

The steamer which comes to Aran sails according to the tide, and it

was six o'clock this morning when we left the quay of Galway in a

dense shroud of mist.

A low line of shore was visible at first on the right between the

movement of the waves and fog, but when we came further it was lost

sight of, and nothing could be seen but the mist curling in the

rigging, and a small circle of foam.

There were few passengers; a couple of men going out with young pigs

tied loosely in sacking, three or four young girls who sat in the

cabin with their heads completely twisted in their shawls, and a

builder, on his way to repair the pier at Kilronan, who walked up

and down and talked with me.

In about three hours Aran came in sight. A dreary rock appeared at

first sloping up from the sea into the fog; then, as we drew nearer,

a coast-guard station and the village.

A little later I was wandering out along the one good roadway of the

island, looking over low walls on either side into small flat fields

of naked rock. I have seen nothing so desolate. Grey floods of water

were sweeping everywhere upon the limestone, making at limes a wild

torrent of the road, which twined continually over low hills and

cavities in the rock or passed between a few small fields of

potatoes or grass hidden away in corners that had shelter. Whenever

the cloud lifted I could see the edge of the sea below me on the

right, and the naked ridge of the island above me on the other side.

Occasionally I passed a lonely chapel or schoolhouse, or a line of

stone pillars with crosses above them and inscriptions asking a

prayer for the soul of the person they commemorated.

I met few people; but here and there a band of tall girls passed me

on their way to Kilronan, and called out to me with humorous wonder,

speaking English with a slight foreign intonation that differed a

good deal from the brogue of Galway. The rain and cold seemed to

have no influence on their vitality and as they hurried past me with

eager laughter and great talking in Gaelic, they left the wet masses

of rock more desolate than before.

A little after midday when I was coming back one old half-blind man

spoke to me in Gaelic, but, in general, I was surprised at the

abundance and fluency of the foreign tongue.

In the afternoon the rain continued, so I sat here in the inn

looking out through the mist at a few men who were unlading hookers

that had come in with turf from Connemara, and at the long-legged

pigs that were playing in the surf. As the fishermen came in and out

of the public-house underneath my room, I could hear through the

broken panes that a number of them still used the Gaelic, though it

seems to be falling out of use among the younger people of this

village.

The old woman of the house had promised to get me a teacher of the

language, and after a while I heard a shuffling on the stairs, and

the old dark man I had spoken to in the morning groped his way into

the room.

I brought him over to the fire, and we talked for many hours. He

told me that he had known Petrie and Sir William Wilde, and many

living antiquarians, and had taught Irish to Dr. Finck and Dr.

Pedersen, and given stories to Mr. Curtin of America. A little after

middle age he had fallen over a cliff, and since then he had had

little eyesight, and a trembling of his hands and head.

As we talked he sat huddled together over the fire, shaking and

blind, yet his face was indescribably pliant, lighting up with an

ecstasy of humour when he told me anything that had a point of wit

or malice, and growing sombre and desolate again when he spoke of

religion or the fairies.

He had great confidence in his own powers and talent, and in the

superiority of his stories over all other stories in the world. When

we were speaking of Mr. Curtin, he told me that this gentleman had

brought out a volume of his Aran stories in America, and made five

hundred pounds by the sale of them.

'And what do you think he did then?' he continued; 'he wrote a book

of his own stories after making that lot of money with mine. And he

brought them out, and the divil a half-penny did he get for them.

Would you believe that?'

Afterwards he told me how one of his children had been taken by the

fairies.

One day a neighbor was passing, and she said, when she saw it on the

road, 'That's a fine child.'

Its mother tried to say 'God bless it,' but something choked the

words in her throat.

A while later they found a wound on its neck, and for three nights

the house was filled with noises.

'I never wear a shirt at night,' he said, 'but I got up out of my

bed, all naked as I was, when I heard the noises in the house, and

lighted a light, but there was nothing in it.'

Then a dummy came and made signs of hammering nails in a coffin. The

next day the seed potatoes were full of blood, and the child told

his mother that he was going to America.

That night it died, and 'Believe me,' said the old man, 'the fairies

were in it.'

When he went away, a little bare-footed girl was sent up with turf

and the bellows to make a fire that would last for the evening.

She was shy, yet eager to talk, and told me that she had good spoken

Irish, and was learning to read it in the school, and that she had

been twice to Galway, though there are many grown women in the place

who have never set a foot upon the mainland.

The rain has cleared off, and I have had my first real introduction

to the island and its people.

I went out through Killeany--the poorest village in Aranmor--to a

long neck of sandhill that runs out into the sea towards the

south-west. As I lay there on the grass the clouds lifted from the

Connemara mountains and, for a moment, the green undulating

foreground, backed in the distance by a mass of hills, reminded me

of the country near Rome. Then the dun top-sail of a hooker swept

above the edge of the sandhill and revealed the presence of the sea.

As I moved on a boy and a man came down from the next village to

talk to me, and I found that here, at least, English was imperfectly

understood. When I asked them if there were any trees in the island

they held a hurried consultation in Gaelic, and then the man asked

if 'tree' meant the same thing as 'bush,' for if so there were a few

in sheltered hollows to the east.

They walked on with me to the sound which separates this island from

Inishmaan--the middle island of the group--and showed me the roll

from the Atlantic running up between two walls of cliff.

They told me that several men had stayed on Inishmaan to learn

Irish, and the boy pointed out a line of hovels where they had

lodged running like a belt of straw round the middle of the island.

The place looked hardly fit for habitation. There was no green to be

seen, and no sign of the people except these beehive-like roofs, and

the outline of a Dun that stood out above them against the edge of

the sky.

After a while my companions went away and two other boys came and

walked at my heels, till I turned and made them talk to me. They

spoke at first of their poverty, and then one of them said--'I dare

say you do have to pay ten shillings a week in the hotel?' 'More,'

I answered.

'Twelve?'

'More.'

'Fifteen?'

'More still.'

Then he drew back and did not question me any further, either

thinking that I had lied to check his curiosity, or too awed by my

riches to continue.

Repassing Killeany I was joined by a man who had spent twenty years

in America, where he had lost his health and then returned, so long

ago that he had forgotten English and could hardly make me

understand him. He seemed hopeless, dirty and asthmatic, and after

going with me for a few hundred yards he stopped and asked for

coppers. I had none left, so I gave him a fill of tobacco, and he

went back to his hovel.

When he was gone, two little girls took their place behind me and I

drew them in turn into conversation.

They spoke with a delicate exotic intonation that was full of charm,

and told me with a sort of chant how they guide 'ladies and

gintlemins' in the summer to all that is worth seeing in their

neighbourhood, and sell them pampooties and maidenhair ferns, which

are common among the rocks.

We were now in Kilronan, and as we parted they showed me holes in

their own pampooties, or cowskin sandals, and asked me the price of

new ones. I told them that my purse was empty, and then with a few

quaint words of blessing they turned away from me and went down to

the pier.

All this walk back had been extraordinarily fine. The intense

insular clearness one sees only in Ireland, and after rain, was

throwing out every ripple in the sea and sky, and every crevice in

the hills beyond the bay.

This evening an old man came to see me, and said he had known a

relative of mine who passed some time on this island forty-three

years ago.

'I was standing under the pier-wall mending nets,' he said, 'when

you came off the steamer, and I said to myself in that moment, if

there is a man of the name of Synge left walking the world, it is

that man yonder will be he.'

He went on to complain in curiously simple yet dignified language of

the changes that have taken place here since he left the island to

go to sea before the end of his childhood.

'I have come back,' he said, 'to live in a bit of a house with my

sister. The island is not the same at all to what it was. It is

little good I can get from the people who are in it now, and

anything I have to give them they don't care to have.'

From what I hear this man seems to have shut himself up in a world

of individual conceits and theories, and to live aloof at his trade

of net-mending, regarded by the other islanders with respect and

half-ironical sympathy.

A little later when I went down to the kitchen I found two men from

Inishmaan who had been benighted on the island. They seemed a

simpler and perhaps a more interesting type than the people here,

and talked with careful English about the history of the Duns, and

the Book of Ballymote, and the Book of Kells, and other ancient

MSS., with the names of which they seemed familiar.

In spite of the charm of my teacher, the old blind man I met the day

of my arrival, I have decided to move on to Inishmaan, where Gaelic

is more generally used, and the life is perhaps the most primitive

that is left in Europe.

I spent all this last day with my blind guide, looking at the

antiquities that abound in the west or north-west of the island.

As we set out I noticed among the groups of girls who smiled at our

fellowship--old Mourteen says we are like the cuckoo with its

pipit--a beautiful oval face with the singularly spiritual

expression that is so marked in one type of the West Ireland women.

Later in the day, as the old man talked continually of the fairies

and the women they have taken, it seemed that there was a possible

link between the wild mythology that is accepted on the islands and

the strange beauty of the women.

At midday we rested near the ruins of a house, and two beautiful

boys came up and sat near us. Old Mourteen asked them why the house

was in ruins, and who had lived in it.

'A rich farmer built it a while since,' they said, 'but after two

years he was driven away by the fairy host.'

The boys came on with us some distance to the north to visit one of

the ancient beehive dwellings that is still in perfect preservation.

When we crawled in on our hands and knees, and stood up in the gloom

of the interior, old Mourteen took a freak of earthly humour and

began telling what he would have done if he could have come in there

when he was a young man and a young girl along with him.

Then he sat down in the middle of the floor and began to recite old

Irish poetry, with an exquisite purity of intonation that brought

tears to my eyes though I understood but little of the meaning.

On our way home he gave me the Catholic theory of the fairies.

When Lucifer saw himself in the glass he thought himself equal with

God. Then the Lord threw him out of Heaven, and all the angels that

belonged to him. While He was 'chucking them out,' an archangel

asked Him to spare some of them, and those that were falling are in

the air still, and have power to wreck ships, and to work evil in

the world.

From this he wandered off into tedious matters of theology, and

repeated many long prayers and sermons in Irish that he had heard

from the priests.

A little further on we came to a slated house, and I asked him who

was living in it.

'A kind of a schoolmistress,' he said; then his old face puckered

with a gleam of pagan malice.

'Ah, master,' he said, 'wouldn't it be fine to be in there, and to

be kissing her?'

A couple of miles from this village we turned aside to look at an

old ruined church of the Ceathair Aluinn (The Four Beautiful

Persons), and a holy well near it that is famous for cures of

blindness and epilepsy.

As we sat near the well a very old man came up from a cottage near

the road, and told me how it had become famous.

'A woman of Sligo had a son who was born blind, and one night she

dreamed that she saw an island with a blessed well in it that could

cure her son. She told her dream in the morning, and an old man said

it was of Aran she was after dreaming.

'She brought her son down by the coast of Galway, and came out in a

curagh, and landed below where you see a bit of a cove.

'She walked up then to the house of my father--God rest his

soul--and she told them what she was looking for.

'My father said that there was a well like what she had dreamed of,

and that he would send a boy along with her to show her the way.

"There's no need, at all," said she; "haven't I seen it all in my

dream?"

'Then she went out with the child and walked up to this well, and

she kneeled down and began saying her prayers. Then she put her hand

out for the water, and put it on his eyes, and the moment it touched

him he called out: "O mother, look at the pretty flowers!"'

After that Mourteen described the feats of poteen drinking and

fighting that he did in his youth, and went on to talk of Diarmid,

who was the strongest man after Samson, and of one of the beds of

Diarmid and Grainne, which is on the east of the island. He says

that Diarmid was killed by the druids, who put a burning shirt on

him,--a fragment of mythology that may connect Diarmid with the

legend of Hercules, if it is not due to the 'learning' in some

hedge-school master's ballad.

Then we talked about Inishmaan.

'You'll have an old man to talk with you over there,' he said, 'and

tell you stories of the fairies, but he's walking about with two

sticks under him this ten year. Did ever you hear what it is goes on

four legs when it is young, and on two legs after that, and on three

legs when it does be old?'

I gave him the answer.

'Ah, master,' he said, 'you're a cute one, and the blessing of God

be on you. Well, I'm on three legs this minute, but the old man

beyond is back on four; I don't know if I'm better than the way he

is; he's got his sight and I'm only an old dark man.'

I am settled at last on Inishmaan in a small cottage with a

continual drone of Gaelic coming from the kitchen that opens into my

room.

Early this morning the man of the house came over for me with a

four-oared curagh--that is, a curagh with four rowers and four oars

on either side, as each man uses two--and we set off a little before

noon.

It gave me a moment of exquisite satisfaction to find myself moving

away from civilisation in this rude canvas canoe of a model that has

served primitive races since men first went to sea.

We had to stop for a moment at a hulk that is anchored in the bay,

to make some arrangement for the fish-curing of the middle island,

and my crew called out as soon as we were within earshot that they

had a man with them who had been in France a month from this day.

When we started again, a small sail was run up in the bow, and we

set off across the sound with a leaping oscillation that had no

resemblance to the heavy movement of a boat.

The sail is only used as an aid, so the men continued to row after

it had gone up, and as they occupied the four cross-seats I lay on

the canvas at the stern and the frame of slender laths, which bent

and quivered as the waves passed under them.

When we set off it was a brilliant morning of April, and the green,

glittering waves seemed to toss the canoe among themselves, yet as

we drew nearer this island a sudden thunderstorm broke out behind

the rocks we were approaching, and lent a momentary tumult to this

still vein of the Atlantic.

We landed at a small pier, from which a rude track leads up to the

village between small fields and bare sheets of rock like those in

Aranmor. The youngest son of my boatman, a boy of about seventeen,

who is to be my teacher and guide, was waiting for me at the pier

and guided me to his house, while the men settled the curagh and

followed slowly with my baggage.

My room is at one end of the cottage, with a boarded floor and

ceiling, and two windows opposite each other. Then there is the

kitchen with earth floor and open rafters, and two doors opposite

each other opening into the open air, but no windows. Beyond it

there are two small rooms of half the width of the kitchen with one

window apiece.

The kitchen itself, where I will spend most of my time, is full of

beauty and distinction. The red dresses of the women who cluster

round the fire on their stools give a glow of almost Eastern

richness, and the walls have been toned by the turf-smoke to a soft

brown that blends with the grey earth-colour of the floor. Many

sorts of fishing-tackle, and the nets and oil-skins of the men, are

hung upon the walls or among the open rafters; and right overhead,

under the thatch, there is a whole cowskin from which they make

pampooties.

Every article on these islands has an almost personal character,

which gives this simple life, where all art is unknown, something of

the artistic beauty of medieval life. The curaghs and spinning-wheels,

the tiny wooden barrels that are still much used in the place of

earthenware, the home-made cradles, churns, and baskets, are all

full of individuality, and being made from materials that are common

here, yet to some extent peculiar to the island, they seem to exist

as a natural link between the people and the world that is about them.

The simplicity and unity of the dress increases in another way the

local air of beauty. The women wear red petticoats and jackets of

the island wool stained with madder, to which they usually add a

plaid shawl twisted round their chests and tied at their back. When

it rains they throw another petticoat over their heads with the

waistband round their faces, or, if they are young, they use a heavy

shawl like those worn in Galway. Occasionally other wraps are worn,

and during the thunderstorm I arrived in I saw several girls with

men's waistcoats buttoned round their bodies. Their skirts do not

come much below the knee, and show their powerful legs in the heavy

indigo stockings with which they are all provided.

The men wear three colours: the natural wool, indigo, and a grey

flannel that is woven of alternate threads of indigo and the natural

wool. In Aranmor many of the younger men have adopted the usual

fisherman's jersey, but I have only seen one on this island.

As flannel is cheap--the women spin the yarn from the wool of their

own sheep, and it is then woven by a weaver in Kilronan for

fourpence a yard--the men seem to wear an indefinite number of

waistcoats and woollen drawers one over the other. They are usually

surprised at the lightness of my own dress, and one old man I spoke

to for a minute on the pier, when I came ashore, asked me if I was

not cold with 'my little clothes.'

As I sat in the kitchen to dry the spray from my coat, several men

who had seen me walking up came in to me to talk to me, usually

murmuring on the threshold, 'The blessing of God on this place,' or

some similar words.

The courtesy of the old woman of the house is singularly attractive,

and though I could not understand much of what she said--she has no

English--I could see with how much grace she motioned each visitor

to a chair, or stool, according to his age, and said a few words to

him till he drifted into our English conversation.

For the moment my own arrival is the chief subject of interest, and

the men who come in are eager to talk to me.

Some of them express themselves more correctly than the ordinary

peasant, others use the Gaelic idioms continually and substitute

'he' or 'she' for 'it,' as the neuter pronoun is not found in modern

Irish.

A few of the men have a curiously full vocabulary, others know only

the commonest words in English, and are driven to ingenious devices

to express their meaning. Of all the subjects we can talk of war

seems their favourite, and the conflict between America and Spain is

causing a great deal of excitement. Nearly all the families have

relations who have had to cross the Atlantic, and all eat of the

flour and bacon that is brought from the United States, so they have

a vague fear that 'if anything happened to America,' their own

island would cease to be habitable.

Foreign languages are another favourite topic, and as these men are

bilingual they have a fair notion of what it means to speak and

think in many different idioms. Most of the strangers they see on

the islands are philological students, and the people have been led

to conclude that linguistic studies, particularly Gaelic studies,

are the chief occupation of the outside world.

'I have seen Frenchmen, and Danes, and Germans,' said one man, 'and

there does be a power a Irish books along with them, and they

reading them better than ourselves. Believe me there are few rich

men now in the world who are not studying the Gaelic.'

They sometimes ask me the French for simple phrases, and when they

have listened to the intonation for a moment, most of them are able

to reproduce it with admirable precision.

When I was going out this morning to walk round the island with

Michael, the boy who is teaching me Irish, I met an old man making

his way down to the cottage. He was dressed in miserable black

clothes which seemed to have come from the mainland, and was so bent

with rheumatism that, at a little distance, he looked more like a

spider than a human being.

Michael told me it was Pat Dirane, the story-teller old Mourteen had

spoken of on the other island. I wished to turn back, as he appeared

to be on his way to visit me, but Michael would not hear of it.

'He will be sitting by the fire when we come in,' he said; 'let you

not be afraid, there will be time enough to be talking to him by and

by.'

He was right. As I came down into the kitchen some hours later old

Pat was still in the chimney-corner, blinking with the turf smoke.

He spoke English with remarkable aptness and fluency, due, I

believe, to the months he spent in the English provinces working at

the harvest when he was a young man.

After a few formal compliments he told me how he had been crippled

by an attack of the 'old hin' (i.e. the influenza), and had been

complaining ever since in addition to his rheumatism.

While the old woman was cooking my dinner he asked me if I liked

stories, and offered to tell one in English, though he added, it

would be much better if I could follow the Gaelic. Then he began:--

There were two farmers in County Clare. One had a son, and the

other, a fine rich man, had a daughter.

The young man was wishing to marry the girl, and his father told him

to try and get her if he thought well, though a power of gold would

be wanting to get the like of her.

'I will try,' said the young man.

He put all his gold into a bag. Then he went over to the other farm,

and threw in the gold in front of him.

'Is that all gold?' said the father of the girl.

'All gold,' said O'Conor (the young man's name was O'Conor).

'It will not weigh down my daughter,' said the father.

'We'll see that,' said O'Conor.

Then they put them in the scales, the daughter in one side and the

gold in the other. The girl went down against the ground, so O'Conor

took his bag and went out on the road.

As he was going along he came to where there was a little man, and

he standing with his back against the wall.

'Where are you going with the bag?' said the little man. 'Going

home,' said O'Conor.

'Is it gold you might be wanting?' said the man. 'It is, surely,'

said O'Conor.

'I'll give you what you are wanting,' said the man, 'and we can

bargain in this way--you'll pay me back in a year the gold I give

you, or you'll pay me with five pounds cut off your own flesh.'

That bargain was made between them. The man gave a bag of gold to

O'Conor, and he went back with it, and was married to the young

woman.

They were rich people, and he built her a grand castle on the cliffs

of Clare, with a window that looked out straight over the wild

ocean.

One day when he went up with his wife to look out over the wild

ocean, he saw a ship coming in on the rocks, and no sails on her at

all. She was wrecked on the rocks, and it was tea that was in her,

and fine silk.

O'Conor and his wife went down to look at the wreck, and when the

lady O'Conor saw the silk she said she wished a dress of it.

They got the silk from the sailors, and when the Captain came up to

get the money for it, O'Conor asked him to come again and take his

dinner with them. They had a grand dinner, and they drank after it,

and the Captain was tipsy. While they were still drinking, a letter

came to O'Conor, and it was in the letter that a friend of his was

dead, and that he would have to go away on a long journey. As he was

getting ready the Captain came to him.

'Are you fond of your wife?' said the Captain.

'I am fond of her,' said O'Conor.

'Will you make me a bet of twenty guineas no man comes near her

while you'll be away on the journey?' said the Captain.

'I will bet it,' said O'Conor; and he went away.

There was an old hag who sold small things on the road near the

castle, and the lady O'Conor allowed her to sleep up in her room in

a big box. The Captain went down on the road to the old hag.

'For how much will you let me sleep one night in your box?' said

the Captain.

'For no money at all would I do such a thing,' said the hag.

'For ten guineas?' said the Captain.

'Not for ten guineas,' said the hag.

'For twelve guineas?' said the Captain.

'Not for twelve guineas,' said the hag.

'For fifteen guineas?' said the Captain.

'For fifteen I will do it,' said the hag.

Then she took him up and hid him in the box. When night came the

lady O'Conor walked up into her room, and the Captain watched her

through a hole that was in the box. He saw her take off her two

rings and put them on a kind of a board that was over her head like

a chimney-piece, and take off her clothes, except her shift, and go

up into her bed.

As soon as she was asleep the Captain came out of his box, and he

had some means of making a light, for he lit the candle. He went

over to the bed where she was sleeping without disturbing her at

all, or doing any bad thing, and he took the two rings off the

board, and blew out the light, and went down again into the box.

He paused for a moment, and a deep sigh of relief rose from the men

and women who had crowded in while the story was going on, till the

kitchen was filled with people.

As the Captain was coming out of his box the girls, who had appeared

to know no English, stopped their spinning and held their breath

with expectation.

The old man went on--

When O'Conor came back the Captain met him, and told him that he had

been a night in his wife's room, and gave him the two rings. O'Conor

gave him the twenty guineas of the bet. Then he went up into the

castle, and he took his wife up to look out of the window over the

wild ocean. While she was looking he pushed her from behind, and she

fell down over the cliff into the sea.

An old woman was on the shore, and she saw her falling. She went

down then to the surf and pulled her out all wet and in great

disorder, and she took the wet clothes off her, and put on some old

rags belonging to herself.

When O'Conor had pushed his wife from the window he went away into

the land.

After a while the lady O'Conor went out searching for him, and when

she had gone here and there a long time in the country, she heard

that he was reaping in a field with sixty men.

She came to the field and she wanted to go in, but the gate-man

would not open the gate for her. Then the owner came by, and she

told him her story. He brought her in, and her husband was there,

reaping, but he never gave any sign of knowing her. She showed him

to the owner, and he made the man come out and go with his wife.

Then the lady O'Conor took him out on the road where there were

horses, and they rode away.

When they came to the place where O'Conor had met the little man, he

was there on the road before them.

'Have you my gold on you?' said the man.

'I have not,' said O'Conor.

'Then you'll pay me the flesh off your body,' said the man. They

went into a house, and a knife was brought, and a clean white cloth

was put on the table, and O'Conor was put upon the cloth.

Then the little man was going to strike the lancet into him, when

says lady O'Conor--

'Have you bargained for five pounds of flesh?'

'For five pounds of flesh,' said the man.

'Have you bargained for any drop of his blood?' said lady O'Conor.

'For no blood,' said the man.

'Cut out the flesh,' said lady O'Conor, 'but if you spill one drop

of his blood I'll put that through you.' And she put a pistol to his

head.

The little man went away and they saw no more of him.

When they got home to their castle they made a great supper, and

they invited the Captain and the old hag, and the old woman that had

pulled the lady O'Conor out of the sea.

After they had eaten well the lady O'Conor began, and she said they

would all tell their stories. Then she told how she had been saved

from the sea, and how she had found her husband.

Then the old woman told her story; the way she had found the lady

O'Conor wet, and in great disorder, and had brought her in and put

on her some old rags of her own.

The lady O'Conor asked the Captain for his story; but he said they

would get no story from him. Then she took her pistol out of her

pocket, and she put it on the edge of the table, and she said that

any one that would not tell his story would get a bullet into him.

Then the Captain told the way he had got into the box, and come over

to her bed without touching her at all, and had taken away the

rings.

Then the lady O'Conor took the pistol and shot the hag through the

body, and they threw her over the cliff into the sea.

That is my story.

It gave me a strange feeling of wonder to hear this illiterate

native of a wet rock in the Atlantic telling a story that is so full

of European associations.

The incident of the faithful wife takes us beyond Cymbeline to the

sunshine on the Arno, and the gay company who went out from Florence

to tell narratives of love. It takes us again to the low vineyards

of Wurzburg on the Main, where the same tale was told in the middle

ages, of the 'Two Merchants and the Faithful Wife of Ruprecht von

Wurzburg.'

The other portion, dealing with the pound of flesh, has a still

wider distribution, reaching from Persia and Egypt to the Gesta

Rornanorum, and the Pecorone of Ser Giovanni, a Florentine notary.

The present union of the two tales has already been found among the

Gaels, and there is a somewhat similar version in Campbell's Popular

Tales of the Western Highlands.

Michael walks so fast when I am out with him that I cannot pick my

steps, and the sharp-edged fossils which abound in the limestone

have cut my shoes to pieces.

The family held a consultation on them last night, and in the end it

was decided to make me a pair of pampooties, which I have been

wearing to-day among the rocks.

They consist simply of a piece of raw cowskin, with the hair

outside, laced over the toe and round the heel with two ends of

fishing-line that work round and are tied above the instep.

In the evening, when they are taken off, they are placed in a basin

of water, as the rough hide cuts the foot and stocking if it is

allowed to harden. For the same reason the people often step into

the surf during the day, so that their feet are continually moist.

At first I threw my weight upon my heels, as one does naturally in a

boot, and was a good deal bruised, but after a few hours I learned

the natural walk of man, and could follow my guide in any portion of

the island.

In one district below the cliffs, towards the north, one goes for

nearly a mile jumping from one rock to another without a single

ordinary step; and here I realized that toes have a natural use, for

I found myself jumping towards any tiny crevice in the rock before

me, and clinging with an eager grip in which all the muscles of my

feet ached from their exertion.

The absence of the heavy boot of Europe has preserved to these

people the agile walk of the wild animal, while the general

simplicity of their lives has given them many other points of

physical perfection. Their way of life has never been acted on by

anything much more artificial than the nests and burrows of the

creatures that live round them, and they seem, in a certain sense,

to approach more nearly to the finer types of our aristocracies--who

are bred artificially to a natural ideal--than to the labourer or

citizen, as the wild horse resembles the thoroughbred rather than

the hack or cart-horse. Tribes of the same natural development are,

perhaps, frequent in half-civilized countries, but here a touch of

the refinement of old societies is blended, with singular effect,

among the qualities of the wild animal.

While I am walking with Michael some one often comes to me to ask

the time of day. Few of the people, however, are sufficiently used

to modern time to understand in more than a vague way the convention

of the hours, and when I tell them what o'clock it is by my watch

they are not satisfied, and ask how long is left them before the

twilight.

The general knowledge of time on the island depends, curiously

enough, on the direction of the wind. Nearly all the cottages are

built, like this one, with two doors opposite each other, the more

sheltered of which lies open all day to give light to the interior.

If the wind is northerly the south door is opened, and the shadow of

the door-post moving across the kitchen floor indicates the hour; as

soon, however, as the wind changes to the south the other door is

opened, and the people, who never think of putting up a primitive

dial, are at a loss.

This system of doorways has another curious result. It usually

happens that all the doors on one side of the village pathway are

lying open with women sitting about on the thresholds, while on the

other side the doors are shut and there is no sign of life. The

moment the wind changes everything is reversed, and sometimes when I

come back to the village after an hour's walk there seems to have

been a general flight from one side of the way to the other.

In my own cottage the change of the doors alters the whole tone of

the kitchen, turning it from a brilliantly-lighted room looking out

on a yard and laneway to a sombre cell with a superb view of the

sea.

When the wind is from the north the old woman manages my meals with

fair regularity; but on the other days she often makes my tea at

three o'clock instead of six. If I refuse it she puts it down to

simmer for three hours in the turf, and then brings it in at six

o'clock full of anxiety to know if it is warm enough.

The old man is suggesting that I should send him a clock when I go

away. He'd like to have something from me in the house, he says, the

way they wouldn't forget me, and wouldn't a clock be as handy as

another thing, and they'd be thinking of me whenever they'd look on

its face.

The general ignorance of any precise hours in the day makes it

impossible for the people to have regular meals.

They seem to eat together in the evening, and sometimes in the

morning, a little after dawn, before they scatter for their work,

but during the day they simply drink a cup of tea and eat a piece of

bread, or some potatoes, whenever they are hungry.

For men who live in the open air they eat strangely little. Often

when Michael has been out weeding potatoes for eight or nine hours

without food, he comes in and eats a few slices of home-made bread,

and then he is ready to go out with me and wander for hours about

the island.

They use no animal food except a little bacon and salt fish. The old

woman says she would be very ill if she ate fresh meat.

Some years ago, before tea, sugar, and flour had come into general

use, salt fish was much more the staple article of diet than at

present, and, I am told, skin diseases were very common, though they

are now rare on the islands.

No one who has not lived for weeks among these grey clouds and seas

can realise the joy with which the eye rests on the red dresses of

the women, especially when a number of them are to be found

together, as happened early this morning.

I heard that the young cattle were to be shipped for a fair on the

mainland, which is to take place in a few days, and I went down on

the pier, a little after dawn, to watch them.

The bay was shrouded in the greys of coming rain, yet the thinness

of the cloud threw a silvery light on the sea, and an unusual depth

of blue to the mountains of Connemara.

As I was going across the sandhills one dun-sailed hooker glided

slowly out to begin her voyage, and another beat up to the pier.

Troops of red cattle, driven mostly by the women, were coming up

from several directions, forming, with the green of the long tract

of grass that separates the sea from the rocks, a new unity of

colour.

The pier itself was crowded with bullocks and a great number of the

people. I noticed one extraordinary girl in the throng who seemed to

exert an authority on all who came near her. Her curiously-formed

nostrils and narrow chin gave her a witch-like expression, yet the

beauty of her hair and skin made her singularly attractive.

When the empty hooker was made fast its deck was still many feet

below the level of the pier, so the animals were slung down by a

rope from the mast-head, with much struggling and confusion. Some of

them made wild efforts to escape, nearly carrying their owners with

them into the sea, but they were handled with wonderful dexterity,

and there was no mishap.

When the open hold was filled with young cattle, packed as tightly

as they could stand, the owners with their wives or sisters, who go

with them to prevent extravagance in Galway, jumped down on the

deck, and the voyage was begun. Immediately afterwards a rickety old

hooker beat up with turf from Connemara, and while she was unlading

all the men sat along the edge of the pier and made remarks upon the

rottenness of her timber till the owners grew wild with rage.

The tide was now too low for more boats to come to the pier, so a

move was made to a strip of sand towards the south-east, where the

rest of the cattle were shipped through the surf. Here the hooker

was anchored about eighty yards from the shore, and a curagh was

rowed round to tow out the animals. Each bullock was caught in its

turn and girded with a sling of rope by which it could be hoisted on

board. Another rope was fastened to the horns and passed out to a

man in the stem of the curagh. Then the animal was forced down

through the surf and out of its depth before it had much time to

struggle. Once fairly swimming, it was towed out to the hooker and

dragged on board in a half-drowned condition.

The freedom of the sand seemed to give a stronger spirit of revolt,

and some of the animals were only caught after a dangerous struggle.

The first attempt was not always successful, and I saw one

three-year-old lift two men with his horns, and drag another fifty

yards along the sand by his tail before he was subdued.

While this work was going on a crowd of girls and women collected on

the edge of the cliff and kept shouting down a confused babble of

satire and praise.

When I came back to the cottage I found that among the women who had

gone to the mainland was a daughter of the old woman's, and that her

baby of about nine months had been left in the care of its

grandmother.

As I came in she was busy getting ready my dinner, and old Pat

Dirane, who usually comes at this hour, was rocking the cradle. It

is made of clumsy wicker-work, with two pieces of rough wood

fastened underneath to serve as rockers, and all the time I am in my

room I can hear it bumping on the floor with extraordinary violence.

When the baby is awake it sprawls on the floor, and the old woman

sings it a variety of inarticulate lullabies that have much musical

charm.

Another daughter, who lives at home, has gone to the fair also, so

the old woman has both the baby and myself to take care of as well

as a crowd of chickens that live in a hole beside the fire, Often

when I want tea, or when the old woman goes for water, I have to

take my own turn at rocking the cradle.

One of the largest Duns, or pagan forts, on the islands, is within a

stone's throw of my cottage, and I often stroll up there after a

dinner of eggs or salt pork, to smoke drowsily on the stones. The

neighbours know my habit, and not infrequently some one wanders up

to ask what news there is in the last paper I have received, or to

make inquiries about the American war. If no one comes I prop my

book open with stones touched by the Fir-bolgs, and sleep for hours

in the delicious warmth of the sun. The last few days I have almost

lived on the round walls, for, by some miscalculation, our turf has

come to an end, and the fires are kept up with dried cow-dung--a

common fuel on the island--the smoke from which filters through into

my room and lies in blue layers above my table and bed.

Fortunately the weather is fine, and I can spend my days in the

sunshine. When I look round from the top of these walls I can see

the sea on nearly every side, stretching away to distant ranges of

mountains on the north and south. Underneath me to the east there is

the one inhabited district of the island, where I can see red

figures moving about the cottages, sending up an occasional fragment

of conversation or of old island melodies.

The baby is teething, and has been crying for several days. Since

his mother went to the fair they have been feeding him with cow's

milk, often slightly sour, and giving him, I think, more than he

requires.

This morning, however, he seemed so unwell they sent out to look for

a foster-mother in the village, and before long a young woman, who

lives a little way to the east, came in and restored him to his

natural food.

A few hours later, when I came into the kitchen to talk to old Pat,

another woman performed the same kindly office, this time a person

with a curiously whimsical expression.

Pat told me a story of an unfaithful wife, which I will give further

down, and then broke into a moral dispute with the visitor, which

caused immense delight to some young men who had come down to listen

to the story. Unfortunately it was carried on so rapidly in Gaelic

that I lost most of the points.

This old man talks usually in a mournful tone about his ill-health,

and his death, which he feels to be approaching, yet he has

occasional touches of humor that remind me of old Mourteen on the

north island. To-day a grotesque twopenny doll was lying on the

floor near the old woman. He picked it up and examined it as if

comparing it with her. Then he held it up: 'Is it you is after

bringing that thing into the world,' he said, 'woman of the house?'

Here is the story:--

One day I was travelling on foot from Galway to Dublin, and the

darkness came on me and I ten miles from the town I was wanting to

pass the night in. Then a hard rain began to fall and I was tired

walking, so when I saw a sort of a house with no roof on it up

against the road, I got in the way the walls would give me shelter.

As I was looking round I saw a light in some trees two perches off,

and thinking any sort of a house would be better than where I was, I

got over a wall and went up to the house to look in at the window.

I saw a dead man laid on a table, and candles lighted, and a woman

watching him. I was frightened when I saw him, but it was raining

hard, and I said to myself, if he was dead he couldn't hurt me. Then

I knocked on the door and the woman came and opened it.

'Good evening, ma'am,' says I.

'Good evening kindly, stranger,' says she, 'Come in out of the

rain.' Then she took me in and told me her husband was after dying

on her, and she was watching him that night.

'But it's thirsty you'll be, stranger,' says she, 'Come into the

parlour.' Then she took me into the parlour--and it was a fine clean

house--and she put a cup, with a saucer under it, on the table

before me with fine sugar and bread.

When I'd had a cup of tea I went back into the kitchen where the

dead man was lying, and she gave me a fine new pipe off the table

with a drop of spirits.

'Stranger,' says she, 'would you be afeard to be alone with himself?'

'Not a bit in the world, ma'am,' says I; 'he that's dead can do no

hurt,' Then she said she wanted to go over and tell the neighbours

the way her husband was after dying on her, and she went out and

locked the door behind her.

I smoked one pipe, and I leaned out and took another off the table.

I was smoking it with my hand on the back of my chair--the way you

are yourself this minute, God bless you--and I looking on the dead

man, when he opened his eyes as wide as myself and looked at me.

'Don't be afraid, stranger,' said the dead man; 'I'm not dead at all

in the world. Come here and help me up and I'll tell you all about

it.'

Well, I went up and took the sheet off of him, and I saw that he had

a fine clean shirt on his body, and fine flannel drawers.

He sat up then, and says he--

'I've got a bad wife, stranger, and I let on to be dead the way I'd

catch her goings on.'

Then he got two fine sticks he had to keep down his wife, and he put

them at each side of his body, and he laid himself out again as if

he was dead.

In half an hour his wife came back and a young man along with her.

Well, she gave him his tea, and she told him he was tired, and he

would do right to go and lie down in the bedroom.

The young man went in and the woman sat down to watch by the dead

man. A while after she got up and 'Stranger,' says she, 'I'm going

in to get the candle out of the room; I'm thinking the young man

will be asleep by this time.' She went into the bedroom, but the

divil a bit of her came back.

Then the dead man got up, and he took one stick, and he gave the

other to myself. We went in and saw them lying together with her

head on his arm.

The dead man hit him a blow with the stick so that the blood out of

him leapt up and hit the gallery.

That is my story.

In stories of this kind he always speaks in the first person, with

minute details to show that he was actually present at the scenes

that are described.

At the beginning of this story he gave me a long account of what had

made him be on his way to Dublin on that occasion, and told me about

all the rich people he was going to see in the finest streets of the

city.

A week of sweeping fogs has passed over and given me a strange sense

of exile and desolation. I walk round the island nearly every day,

yet I can see nothing anywhere but a mass of wet rock, a strip of

surf, and then a tumult of waves.

The slaty limestone has grown black with the water that is dripping

on it, and wherever I turn there is the same grey obsession twining

and wreathing itself among the narrow fields, and the same wail from

the wind that shrieks and whistles in the loose rubble of the walls.

At first the people do not give much attention to the wilderness

that is round them, but after a few days their voices sink in the

kitchen, and their endless talk of pigs and cattle falls to the

whisper of men who are telling stories in a haunted house.

The rain continues; but this evening a number of young men were in

the kitchen mending nets, and the bottle of poteen was drawn from

its hiding-place.

One cannot think of these people drinking wine on the summit of this

crumbling precipice, but their grey poteen, which brings a shock of

joy to the blood, seems predestined to keep sanity in men who live

forgotten in these worlds of mist.

I sat in the kitchen part of the evening to feel the gaiety that was

rising, and when I came into my own room after dark, one of the sons

came in every time the bottle made its round, to pour me out my

share.

It has cleared, and the sun is shining with a luminous warmth that

makes the whole island glisten with the splendor of a gem, and fills

the sea and sky with a radiance of blue light.

I have come out to lie on the rocks where I have the black edge of

the north island in front of me, Galway Bay, too blue almost to look

at, on my right, the Atlantic on my left, a perpendicular cliff

under my ankles, and over me innumerable gulls that chase each other

in a white cirrus of wings.

A nest of hooded crows is somewhere near me, and one of the old

birds is trying to drive me away by letting itself fall like a stone

every few moments, from about forty yards above me to within reach

of my hand.

Gannets are passing up and down above the sound, swooping at times

after a mackerel, and further off I can see the whole fleet of

hookers coming out from Kilronan for a night's fishing in the deep

water to the west.

As I lie here hour after hour, I seem to enter into the wild

pastimes of the cliff, and to become a companion of the cormorants

and crows.

Many of the birds display themselves before me with the vanity of

barbarians, performing in strange evolutions as long as I am in

sight, and returning to their ledge of rock when I am gone. Some are

wonderfully expert, and cut graceful figures for an inconceivable

time without a flap of their wings, growing so absorbed in their own

dexterity that they often collide with one another in their flight,

an incident always followed by a wild outburst of abuse. Their

language is easier than Gaelic, and I seem to understand the greater

part of their cries, though I am not able to answer. There is one

plaintive note which they take up in the middle of their usual

babble with extraordinary effect, and pass on from one to another

along the cliff with a sort of an inarticulate wail, as if they

remembered for an instant the horror of the mist.

On the low sheets of rock to the east I can see a number of red and

grey figures hurrying about their work. The continual passing in

this island between the misery of last night and the splendor of

to-day, seems to create an affinity between the moods of these

people and the moods of varying rapture and dismay that are frequent

in artists, and in certain forms of alienation. Yet it is only in

the intonation of a few sentences or some old fragment of melody

that I catch the real spirit of the island, for in general the men

sit together and talk with endless iteration of the tides and fish,

and of the price of kelp in Connemara.

After Mass this morning an old woman was buried. She lived in the

cottage next mine, and more than once before noon I heard a faint

echo of-the keen. I did not go to the wake for fear my presence

might jar upon the mourners, but all last evening I could hear the

strokes of a hammer in the yard, where, in the middle of a little

crowd of idlers, the next of kin laboured slowly at the coffin.

To-day, before the hour for the funeral, poteen was served to a

number of men who stood about upon the road, and a portion was

brought to me in my room. Then the coffin was carried out sewn

loosely in sailcloth, and held near the ground by three cross-poles

lashed upon the top. As we moved down to the low eastern portion of

the island, nearly all the men, and all the oldest women, wearing

petticoats over their heads, came out and joined in the procession.

While the grave was being opened the women sat down among the flat

tombstones, bordered with a pale fringe of early bracken, and began

the wild keen, or crying for the dead. Each old woman, as she took

her turn in the leading recitative, seemed possessed for the moment

with a profound ecstasy of grief, swaying to and fro, and bending

her forehead to the stone before her, while she called out to the

dead with a perpetually recurring chant of sobs.

All round the graveyard other wrinkled women, looking out from under

the deep red petticoats that cloaked them, rocked themselves with

the same rhythm, and intoned the inarticulate chant that is

sustained by all as an accompaniment.

The morning had been beautifully fine, but as they lowered the

coffin into the grave, thunder rumbled overhead and hailstones

hissed among the bracken.

In Inishmaan one is forced to believe in a sympathy between man and

nature, and at this moment when the thunder sounded a death-peal of

extraordinary grandeur above the voices of the women, I could see

the faces near me stiff and drawn with emotion.

When the coffin was in the grave, and the thunder had rolled away

across the hills of Clare, the keen broke out again more

passionately than before.

This grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one

woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate

rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. In this cry

of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself

bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their

isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and

seas. They are usually silent, but in the presence of death all

outward show of indifference or patience is forgotten, and they

shriek with pitiable despair before the horror of the fate to which

they are all doomed.

Before they covered the coffin an old man kneeled down by the grave

and repeated a simple prayer for the dead.

There was an irony in these words of atonement and Catholic belief

spoken by voices that were still hoarse with the cries of pagan

desperation.

A little beyond the grave I saw a line of old women who had recited

in the keen sitting in the shadow of a wall beside the roofless

shell of the church. They were still sobbing and shaken with grief,

yet they were beginning to talk again of the daily trifles that veil

from them the terror of the world.

When we had all come out of the graveyard, and two men had rebuilt

the hole in the wall through which the coffin had been carried in,

we walked back to the village, talking of anything, and joking of

anything, as if merely coming from the boat-slip, or the pier.

One man told me of the poteen drinking that takes place at some

funerals.

'A while since,' he said, 'there were two men fell down in the

graveyard while the drink was on them. The sea was rough that day,

the way no one could go to bring the doctor, and one of the men

never woke again, and found death that night.'

The other day the men of this house made a new field. There was a

slight bank of earth under the wall of the yard, and another in the

corner of the cabbage garden. The old man and his eldest son dug out

the clay, with the care of men working in a gold-mine, and Michael

packed it in panniers--there are no wheeled vehicles on this

island--for transport to a flat rock in a sheltered corner of their

holding, where it was mixed with sand and seaweed and spread out in

a layer upon the stone.

Most of the potato-growing of the island is carried on in fields of

this sort--for which the people pay a considerable rent--and if the

season is at all dry, their hope of a fair crop is nearly always

disappointed.

It is now nine days since rain has fallen, and the people are filled

with anxiety, although the sun has not yet been hot enough to do

harm.

The drought is also causing a scarcity of water. There are a few

springs on this side of the island, but they come only from a little

distance, and in hot weather are not to be relied on. The supply for

this house is carried up in a water-barrel by one of the women. If

it is drawn off at once it is not very nauseous, but if it has lain,

as it often does, for some hours in the barrel, the smell, colour,

and taste are unendurable. The water for washing is also coming

short, and as I walk round the edges of the sea, I often come on a

girl with her petticoats tucked up round her, standing in a pool

left by the tide and washing her flannels among the sea-anemones and

crabs. Their red bodices and white tapering legs make them as

beautiful as tropical sea-birds, as they stand in a frame of

seaweeds against the brink of the Atlantic. Michael, however, is a

little uneasy when they are in sight, and I cannot pause to watch

them. This habit of using the sea water for washing causes a good

deal of rheumatism on the island, for the salt lies in the clothes

and keeps them continually moist.

The people have taken advantage of this dry moment to begin the

burning of the kelp, and all the islands are lying in a volume of

grey smoke. There will not be a very large quantity this year, as

the people are discouraged by the uncertainty of the market, and do

not care to undertake the task of manufacture without a certainty of

profit.

The work needed to form a ton of kelp is considerable. The seaweed

is collected from the rocks after the storms of autumn and winter,

dried on fine days, and then made up into a rick, where it is left

till the beginning of June.

It is then burnt in low kilns on the shore, an affair that takes

from twelve to twenty-four hours of continuous hard work, though I

understand the people here do not manage well and spoil a portion of

what they produce by burning it more than is required.

The kiln holds about two tons of molten kelp, and when full it is

loosely covered with stones, and left to cool. In a few days the

substance is as hard as the limestone, and has to be broken with

crowbars before it can be placed in curaghs for transport to

Kilronan, where it is tested to determine the amount of iodine

contained, and paid for accordingly. In former years good kelp would

bring seven pounds a ton, now four pounds are not always reached.

In Aran even manufacture is of interest. The low flame-edged kiln,

sending out dense clouds of creamy smoke, with a band of red and

grey clothed workers moving in the haze, and usually some

petticoated boys and women who come down with drink, forms a scene

with as much variety and colour as any picture from the East.

The men feel in a certain sense the distinction of their island, and

show me their work with pride. One of them said to me yesterday,

'I'm thinking you never saw the like of this work before this day?'

'That is true,' I answered, 'I never did.'

'Bedad, then,' he said, 'isn't it a great wonder that you've seen

France and Germany, and the Holy Father, and never seen a man making

kelp till you come to Inishmaan.'

All the horses from this island are put out on grass among the hills

of Connemara from June to the end of September, as there is no

grazing here during the summer.

Their shipping and transport is even more difficult than that of the

homed cattle. Most of them are wild Connemara ponies, and their

great strength and timidity make them hard to handle on the narrow

pier, while in the hooker itself it is not easy to get them safely

on their feet in the small space that is available. They are dealt

with in the same way as for the bullocks I have spoken of already,

but the excitement becomes much more intense, and the storm of

Gaelic that rises the moment a horse is shoved from the pier, till

it is safely in its place, is indescribable. Twenty boys and men

howl and scream with agitation, cursing and exhorting, without

knowing, most of the time, what they are saying.

Apart, however, from this primitive babble, the dexterity and power

of the men are displayed to more advantage than in anything I have

seen hitherto. I noticed particularly the owner of a hooker from the

north island that was loaded this morning. He seemed able to hold up

a horse by his single weight when it was swinging from the masthead,

and preserved a humorous calm even in moments of the wildest

excitement. Sometimes a large mare would come down sideways on the

backs of the other horses, and kick there till the hold seemed to be

filled with a mass of struggling centaurs, for the men themselves

often leap down to try and save the foals from injury. The backs of

the horses put in first are often a good deal cut by the shoes of

the others that arrive on top of them, but otherwise they do not

seem to be much the worse, and as they are not on their way to a

fair, it is not of much consequence in what condition they come to

land.

There is only one bit and saddle in the island, which are used by

the priest, who rides from the chapel to the pier when he has held

the service on Sunday.

The islanders themselves ride with a simple halter and a stick, yet

sometimes travel, at least in the larger island, at a desperate

gallop. As the horses usually have panniers, the rider sits sideways

over the withers, and if the panniers are empty they go at full

speed in this position without anything to hold to.

More than once in Aranmor I met a party going out west with empty

panniers from Kilronan. Long before they came in sight I could hear

a clatter of hoofs, and then a whirl of horses would come round a

corner at full gallop with their heads out, utterly indifferent to

the slender halter that is their only check. They generally travel

in single file with a few yards between them, and as there is no

traffic there is little fear of an accident.

Sometimes a woman and a man ride together, but in this case the man

sits in the usual position, and the woman sits sideways behind him,

and holds him round the waist.

Old Pat Dirane continues to come up every day to talk to me, and at

times I turn the conversation to his experiences of the fairies.

He has seen a good many of them, he says, in different parts of the

island, especially in the sandy districts north of the slip. They

are about a yard high with caps like the 'peelers' pulled down over

their faces. On one occasion he saw them playing ball in the evening

just above the slip, and he says I must avoid that place in the

morning or after nightfall for fear they might do me mischief.

He has seen two women who were 'away' with them, one a young married

woman, the other a girl. The woman was standing by a wall, at a spot

he described to me with great care, looking out towards the north.

Another night he heard a voice crying out in Irish, 'mhathair ta me

marbh' ('O mother, I'm killed'), and in the morning there was blood

on the wall of his house, and a child in a house not far off was

dead.

Yesterday he took me aside, and said he would tell me a secret he

had never yet told to any person in the world.

'Take a sharp needle,' he said, 'and stick it in under the collar of

your coat, and not one of them will be able to have power on you.'

Iron is a common talisman with barbarians, but in this case the idea

of exquisite sharpness was probably present also, and, perhaps, some

feeling for the sanctity of the instrument of toil, a folk-belief

that is common in Brittany.

The fairies are more numerous in Mayo than in any other county,

though they are fond of certain districts in Galway, where the

following story is said to have taken place.

'A farmer was in great distress as his crops had failed, and his cow

had died on him. One night he told his wife to make him a fine new

sack for flour before the next morning; and when it was finished he

started off with it before the dawn.

'At that time there was a gentleman who had been taken by the

fairies, and made an officer among them, and it was often people

would see him and him riding on a white horse at dawn and in the

evening.

'The poor man went down to the place where they used to see the

officer, and when he came by on his horse, he asked the loan of two

hundred and a half of flour, for he was in great want.

'The officer called the fairies out of a hole in the rocks where

they stored their wheat, and told them to give the poor man what he

was asking. Then he told him to come back and pay him in a year, and

rode away.

'When the poor man got home he wrote down the day on a piece of

paper, and that day year he came back and paid the officer.'

When he had ended his story the old man told me that the fairies

have a tenth of all the produce of the country, and make stores of

it in the rocks.

It is a Holy Day, and I have come up to sit on the Dun while the

people are at Mass.

A strange tranquility has come over the island this morning, as

happens sometimes on Sunday, filling the two circles of sea and sky

with the quiet of a church.

The one landscape that is here lends itself with singular power to

this suggestion of grey luminous cloud. There is no wind, and no

definite light. Aranmor seems to sleep upon a mirror, and the hills

of Connemara look so near that I am troubled by the width of the bay

that lies before them, touched this morning with individual

expression one sees sometimes in a lake.

On these rocks, where there is no growth of vegetable or animal

life, all the seasons are the same, and this June day is so full of

autumn that I listen unconsciously for the rustle of dead leaves.

The first group of men are coming out of the chapel, followed by a

crowd of women, who divide at the gate and troop off in different

directions, while the men linger on the road to gossip.

The silence is broken; I can hear far off, as if over water, a faint

murmur of Gaelic.

In the afternoon the sun came out and I was rowed over for a visit

to Kilronan.

As my men were bringing round the curagh to take me off a headland

near the pier, they struck a sunken rock, and came ashore shipping a

quantity of water, They plugged the hole with a piece of sacking

torn from a bag of potatoes they were taking over for the priest,

and we set off with nothing but a piece of torn canvas between us

and the Atlantic.

Every few hundred yards one of the rowers had to stop and bail, but

the hole did not increase.

When we were about half way across the sound we met a curagh coming

towards us with its sails set. After some shouting in Gaelic, I

learned that they had a packet of letters and tobacco for myself. We

sidled up as near as was possible with the roll, and my goods were

thrown to me wet with spray.

After my weeks in Inishmaan, Kilronan seemed an imposing centre of

activity. The half-civilized fishermen of the larger island are

inclined to despise the simplicity of the life here, and some of

them who were standing about when I landed asked me how at all I

passed my time with no decent fishing to be looking at.

I turned in for a moment to talk to the old couple in the hotel, and

then moved on to pay some other visits in the village.

Later in the evening I walked out along the northern road, where I

met many of the natives of the outlying villages, who had come down

to Kilronan for the Holy Day, and were now wandering home in

scattered groups.

The women and girls, when they had no men with them, usually tried

to make fun with me.

'Is it tired you are, stranger?' said one girl. I was walking very

slowly, to pass the time before my return to the east.

'Bedad, it is not, little girl,' I answered in Gaelic, 'It is lonely

I am.'

'Here is my little sister, stranger, who will give you her arm.'

And so it went. Quiet as these women are on ordinary occasions, when

two or three of them are gathered together in their holiday

petti-coats and shawls, they are as wild and capricious as the women

who live in towns.

About seven o'clock I got back to Kilronan, and beat up my crew from

the public-houses near the bay. With their usual carelessness they

had not seen to the leak in the curagh, nor to an oar that was

losing the brace that holds it to the toll-pin, and we moved off

across the sound at an absurd pace with a deepening pool at our

feet.

A superb evening light was lying over the island, which made me

rejoice at our delay. Looking back there was a golden haze behind

the sharp edges of the rock, and a long wake from the sun, which was

making jewels of the bubbling left by the oars.

The men had had their share of porter and were unusually voluble,

pointing out things to me that I had already seen, and stopping now

and then to make me notice the oily smell of mackerel that was

rising from the waves.

They told me that an evicting party is coming to the island tomorrow

morning, and gave me a long account of what they make and spend in a

year and of their trouble with the rent.

'The rent is hard enough for a poor man,' said one of them, 'but

this time we didn't pay, and they're after serving processes on

every one of us. A man will have to pay his rent now, and a power of

money with it for the process, and I'm thinking the agent will have

money enough out of them processes to pay for his servant-girl and

his man all the year.'

I asked afterwards who the island belonged to.

'Bedad,' they said, 'we've always heard it belonged to Miss--and she

is dead.'

When the sun passed like a lozenge of gold flame into the sea the

cold became intense. Then the men began to talk among themselves,

and losing the thread, I lay half in a dream looking at the pale

oily sea about us, and the low cliffs of the island sloping up past

the village with its wreath of smoke to the outline of Dun Conor.

Old Pat was in the house when I arrived, and he told a long story

after supper:--

There was once a widow living among the woods, and her only son

living along with her. He went out every morning through the trees

to get sticks, and one day as he was lying on the ground he saw a

swarm of flies flying over what the cow leaves behind her. He took

up his sickle and hit one blow at them, and hit that hard he left no

single one of them living.

That evening he said to his mother that it was time he was going out

into the world to seek his fortune, for he was able to destroy a

whole swarm of flies at one blow, and he asked her to make him three

cakes the way he might take them with him in the morning.

He started the next day a while after the dawn, with his three cakes

in his wallet, and he ate one of them near ten o'clock.

He got hungry again by midday and ate the second, and when night was

coming on him he ate the third. After that he met a man on the road

who asked him where he was going.

'I'm looking for some place where I can work for my living,' said

the young man.

'Come with me,' said the other man, 'and sleep to-night in the barn,

and I'll give you work to-morrow to see what you're able for.'

The next morning the farmer brought him out and showed him his cows

and told him to take them out to graze on the hills, and to keep

good watch that no one should come near them to milk them. The young

man drove out the cows into the fields, and when the heat of the day

came on he lay down on his back and looked up into the sky. A while

after he saw a black spot in the north-west, and it grew larger and

nearer till he saw a great giant coming towards him.

He got up on his feet and he caught the giant round the legs with

his two arms, and he drove him down into the hard ground above his

ankles, the way he was not able to free himself. Then the giant told

him to do him no hurt, and gave him his magic rod, and told him to

strike on the rock, and he would find his beautiful black horse, and

his sword, and his fine suit.

The young man struck the rock and it opened before him, and he found

the beautiful black horse, and the giant's sword and the suit lying

before him. He took out the sword alone, and he struck one blow with

it and struck off the giant's head. Then he put back the sword into

the rock, and went out again to his cattle, till it was time to

drive them home to the farmer.

When they came to milk the cows they found a power of milk in them,

and the farmer asked the young man if he had seen nothing out on the

hills, for the other cow-boys had been bringing home the cows with

no drop of milk in them. And the young man said he had seen nothing.

The next day he went out again with the cows. He lay down on his

back in the heat of the day, and after a while he saw a black spot

in the north-west, and it grew larger and nearer, till he saw it was

a great giant coming to attack him.

'You killed my brother,' said the giant; 'come here, till I make a

garter of your body.'

The young man went to him and caught him by the legs and drove him

down into the hard ground up to his ankles.

Then he hit the rod against the rock, and took out the sword and

struck off the giant's head.

That evening the farmer found twice as much milk in the cows as the

evening before, and he asked the young man if he had seen anything.

The young man said that he had seen nothing.

The third day the third giant came to him and said, 'You have killed

my two brothers; come here, till I make a garter of your body.'

And he did with this giant as he had done with the other two, and

that evening there was so much milk in the cows it was dropping out

of their udders on the pathway.

The next day the farmer called him and told him he might leave the

cows in the stalls that day, for there was a great curiosity to be

seen, namely, a beautiful king's daughter that was to be eaten by a

great fish, if there was no one in it that could save her. But the

young man said such a sight was all one to him, and he went out with

the cows on to the hills. When he came to the rocks he hit them with

his rod and brought out the suit and put it on him, and brought out

the sword and strapped it on his side, like an officer, and he got

on the black horse and rode faster than the wind till he came to

where the beautiful king's daughter was sitting on the shore in a

golden chair, waiting for the great fish.

When the great fish came in on the sea, bigger than a whale, with

two wings on the back of it, the young man went down into the surf

and struck at it with his sword and cut off one of its wings. All

the sea turned red with the bleeding out of it, till it swam away

and left the young man on the shore.

Then he turned his horse and rode faster than the wind till he came

to the rocks, and he took the suit off him and put it back in the

rocks, with the giant's sword and the black horse, and drove the

cows down to the farm.

The man came out before him and said he had missed the greatest

wonder ever was, and that a noble person was after coming down with

a fine suit on him and cutting off one of the wings from the great

fish.

'And there'll be the same necessity on her for two mornings more,'

said the farmer, 'and you'd do right to come and look on it.'

But the young man said he would not come.

The next morning he went out with his cows, and he took the sword

and the suit and the black horse out of the rock, and he rode faster

than the wind till he came where the king's daughter was sitting on

the shore. When the people saw him coming there was great wonder on

them to know if it was the same man they had seen the day before.

The king's daughter called out to him to come and kneel before her,

and when he kneeled down she took her scissors and cut off a lock of

hair from the back of his head and hid it in her clothes.

Then the great worm came in from the sea, and he went down into the

surf and cut the other wing off from it. All the sea turned red with

the bleeding out of it, till it swam away and left them.

That evening the farmer came out before him and told him of the

great wonder he had missed, and asked him would he go the next day

and look on it. The young man said he would not go.

The third day he came again on the black horse to where the king's

daughter was sitting on a golden chair waiting for the great worm.

When it came in from the sea the young man went down before it, and

every time it opened its mouth to eat him, he struck into its mouth,

till his sword went out through its neck, and it rolled back and

died.

Then he rode off faster than the wind, and he put the suit and the

sword and the black horse into the rock, and drove home the cows.

The farmer was there before him and he told him that there was to be

a great marriage feast held for three days, and on the third day the

king's daughter would be married to the man that killed the great

worm, if they were able to find him.

A great feast was held, and men of great strength came and said it

was themselves were after killing the great worm.

But on the third day the young man put on the suit, and strapped the

sword to his side like an officer, and got on the black horse and

rode faster than the wind, till he came to the palace.

The king's daughter saw him, and she brought him in and made him

kneel down before her. Then she looked at the back of his head and

saw the place where she had cut off the lock with her own hand. She

led him in to the king, and they were married, and the young man was

given all the estate.

That is my story.

Two recent attempts to carry out evictions on the island came to

nothing, for each time a sudden storm rose, by, it is said, the

power of a native witch, when the steamer was approaching, and made

it impossible to land.

This morning, however, broke beneath a clear sky of June, and when I

came into the open air the sea and rocks were shining with wonderful

brilliancy. Groups of men, dressed in their holiday clothes, were

standing about, talking with anger and fear, yet showing a lurking

satisfaction at the thought of the dramatic pageant that was to

break the silence of the seas.

About half-past nine the steamer came in sight, on the narrow line

of sea-horizon that is seen in the centre of the bay, and

immediately a last effort was made to hide the cows and sheep of the

families that were most in debt.

Till this year no one on the island would consent to act as bailiff,

so that it was impossible to identify the cattle of the defaulters.

Now however, a man of the name of Patrick has sold his honour, and

the effort of concealment is practically futile.

This falling away from the ancient loyalty of the island has caused

intense indignation, and early yesterday morning, while I was

dreaming on the Dun, this letter was nailed on the doorpost of the

chapel:--

'Patrick, the devil, a revolver is waiting for you. If you are

missed with the first shot, there will be five more that will hit

you.

'Any man that will talk with you, or work with you, or drink a pint

of porter in your shop, will be done with the same way as yourself.'

As the steamer drew near I moved down with the men to watch the

arrival, though no one went further than about a mile from the

shore.

Two curaghs from Kilronan with a man who was to give help in

identifying the cottages, the doctor, and the relieving officer,

were drifting with the tide, unwilling to come to land without the

support of the larger party. When the anchor had been thrown it gave

me a strange throb of pain to see the boats being lowered, and the

sunshine gleaming on the rifles and helmets of the constabulary who

crowded into them.

Once on shore the men were formed in close marching order, a word

was given, and the heavy rhythm of their boots came up over the

rocks. We were collected in two straggling bands on either side of

the roadway, and a few moments later the body of magnificent armed

men passed close to us, followed by a low rabble, who had been

brought to act as drivers for the sheriff.

After my weeks spent among primitive men this glimpse of the newer

types of humanity was not reassuring. Yet these mechanical police,

with the commonplace agents and sheriffs, and the rabble they had

hired, represented aptly enough the civilisation for which the homes

of the island were to be desecrated.

A stop was made at one of the first cottages in the village, and the

day's work began. Here, however, and at the next cottage, a

compromise was made, as some relatives came up at the last moment

and lent the money that was needed to gain a respite.

In another case a girl was ill in the house, so the doctor

interposed, and the people were allowed to remain after a merely

formal eviction. About midday, however, a house was reached where

there was no pretext for mercy, and no money could be procured. At a

sign from the sheriff the work of carrying out the beds and utensils

was begun in the middle of a crowd of natives who looked on in

absolute silence, broken only by the wild imprecations of the woman

of the house. She belonged to one of the most primitive families on

the island, and she shook with uncontrollable fury as she saw the

strange armed men who spoke a language she could not understand

driving her from the hearth she had brooded on for thirty years. For

these people the outrage to the hearth is the supreme catastrophe.

They live here in a world of grey, where there are wild rains and

mists every week in the year, and their warm chimney corners, filled

with children and young girls, grow into the consciousness of each

family in a way it is not easy to understand in more civilised

places.

The outrage to a tomb in China probably gives no greater shock to

the Chinese than the outrage to a hearth in Inishmaan gives to the

people.

When the few trifles had been carried out, and the door blocked with

stones, the old woman sat down by the threshold and covered her head

with her shawl.

Five or six other women who lived close by sat down in a circle

round her, with mute sympathy. Then the crowd moved on with the

police to another cottage where the same scene was to take place,

and left the group of desolate women sitting by the hovel.

There were still no clouds in the sky and the heat was intense. The

police when not in motion lay sweating and gasping under the walls

with their tunics unbuttoned. They were not attractive, and I kept

comparing them with the islandmen, who walked up and down as cool

and fresh-looking as the sea-gulls.

When the last eviction had been carried out a division was made:

half the party went off with the bailiff to search the inner plain

of the island for the cattle that had been hidden in the morning,

the other half remained on the village road to guard some pigs that

had already been taken possession of.

After a while two of these pigs escaped from the drivers and began a

wild race up and down the narrow road. The people shrieked and

howled to increase their terror, and at last some of them became so

excited that the police thought it time to interfere. They drew up

in double line opposite the mouth of a blind laneway where the

animals had been shut up. A moment later the shrieking began again

in the west and the two pigs came in sight, rushing down the middle

of the road with the drivers behind them.

They reached the line of the police. There was a slight scuffle, and

then the pigs continued their mad rush to the east, leaving three

policemen lying in the dust.

The satisfaction of the people was immense. They shrieked and hugged

each other with delight, and it is likely that they will hand down

these animals for generations in the tradition of the island.

Two hours later the other party returned, driving three lean cows

before them, and a start was made for the slip. At the public-house

the policemen were given a drink while the dense crowd that was

following waited in the lane. The island bull happened to be in a

field close by, and he became wildly excited at the sight of the

cows and of the strangely-dressed men. Two young islanders sidled up

to me in a moment or two as I was resting on a wall, and one of them

whispered in my ear--'Do you think they could take fines of us if we

let out the bull on them?'

In face of the crowd of women and children, I could only say it was

probable, and they slunk off.

At the slip there was a good deal of bargaining, which ended in all

the cattle being given back to their owners. It was plainly of no

use to take them away, as they were worth nothing.

When the last policeman had embarked, an old woman came forward from

the crowd and, mounting on a rock near the slip, began a fierce

rhapsody in Gaelic, pointing at the bailiff and waving her withered

arms with extraordinary rage.

'This man is my own son,' she said; 'it is I that ought to know him.

He is the first ruffian in the whole big world.'

Then she gave an account of his life, coloured with a vindictive

fury I cannot reproduce. As she went on the excitement became so

intense I thought the man would be stoned before he could get back

to his cottage.

On these islands the women live only for their children, and it is

hard to estimate the power of the impulse that made this old woman

stand out and curse her son.

In the fury of her speech I seem to look again into the strangely

reticent temperament of the islanders, and to feel the passionate

spirit that expresses itself, at odd moments only, with magnificent

words and gestures.

Old Pat has told me a story of the goose that lays the golden eggs,

which he calls the Phoenix:--

A poor widow had three sons and a daughter. One day when her sons

were out looking for sticks in the wood they saw a fine speckled

bird flying in the trees. The next day they saw it again, and the

eldest son told his brothers to go and get sticks by themselves, for

he was going after the bird.

He went after it, and brought it in with him when he came home in

the evening. They put it in an old hencoop, and they gave it some of

the meal they had for themselves;--I don't know if it ate the meal,

but they divided what they had themselves; they could do no more.

That night it laid a fine spotted egg in the basket. The next night

it laid another.

At that time its name was on the papers and many heard of the bird

that laid the golden eggs, for the eggs were of gold, and there's no

lie in it.

When the boys went down to the shop the next day to buy a stone of

meal, the shopman asked if he could buy the bird of them. Well, it

was arranged in this way. The shopman would marry the boys'

sister--a poor simple girl without a stitch of good clothes--and get

the bird with her.

Some time after that one of the boys sold an egg of the bird to a

gentleman that was in the country. The gentleman asked him if he had

the bird still. He said that the man who had married his sister was

after getting it.

'Well,' said the gentleman, 'the man who eats the heart of that bird

will find a purse of gold beneath him every morning, and the man who

eats its liver will be king of Ireland.'

The boy went out--he was a simple poor fellow--and told the shopman.

Then the shopman brought in the bird and killed it, and he ate the

heart himself and he gave the liver to his wife.

When the boy saw that, there was great anger on him, and he went

back and told the gentleman.

'Do what I'm telling you,' said the gentleman. 'Go down now and tell

the shopman and his wife to come up here to play a game of cards

with me, for it's lonesome I am this evening.'

When the boy was gone he mixed a vomit and poured the lot of it into

a few naggins of whiskey, and he put a strong cloth on the table

under the cards.

The man came up with his wife and they began to play.

The shopman won the first game and the gentleman made them drink a

sup of the whiskey.

They played again and the shopman won the second game. Then the

gentleman made him drink a sup more of the whiskey.

As they were playing the third game the shopman and his wife got

sick on the cloth, and the boy picked it up and carried it into the

yard, for the gentleman had let him know what he was to do. Then he

found the heart of the bird and he ate it, and the next morning when

he turned in his bed there was a purse of gold under him.

That is my story.

When the steamer is expected I rarely fail to visit the boat-slip,

as the men usually collect when she is in the offing, and lie

arguing among their curaghs till she has made her visit to the south

island, and is seen coming towards us.

This morning I had a long talk with an old man who was rejoicing

over the improvement he had seen here during the last ten or fifteen

years.

Till recently there was no communication with the mainland except by

hookers, which were usually slow, and could only make the voyage in

tolerably fine weather, so that if an islander went to a fair it was

often three weeks before he could return. Now, however, the steamer

comes here twice in the week, and the voyage is made in three or

four hours.

The pier on this island is also a novelty, and is much thought of,

as it enables the hookers that still carry turf and cattle to

discharge and take their cargoes directly from the shore. The water

round it, however, is only deep enough for a hooker when the tide is

nearly full, and will never float the steamer, so passengers must

still come to land in curaghs. The boat-slip at the corner next the

south island is extremely useful in calm weather, but it is exposed

to a heavy roll from the south, and is so narrow that the curaghs

run some danger of missing it in the tumult of the surf.

In bad weather four men will often stand for nearly an hour at the

top of the slip with a curagh in their hands, watching a point of

rock towards the south where they can see the strength of the waves

that are coming in.

The instant a break is seen they swoop down to the surf, launch

their curagh, and pull out to sea with incredible speed. Coming to

land Is attended with the same difficulty, and, if their moment is

badly chosen, they are likely to be washed sideways and swamped

among the rocks.

This continual danger, which can only be escaped by extraordinary

personal dexterity, has had considerable influence on the local

character, as the waves have made it impossible for clumsy,

foolhardy, or timid men to live on these islands.

When the steamer is within a mile of the slip, the curaghs are put

out and range themselves--there are usually from four to a dozen--in

two lines at some distance from the shore.

The moment she comes in among them there is a short but desperate

struggle for good places at her side. The men are lolling on their

oars talking with the dreamy tone which comes with the rocking of

the waves. The steamer lies to, and in an instant their faces become

distorted with passion, while the oars bend and quiver with the

strain. For one minute they seem utterly indifferent to their own

safety and that of their friends and brothers. Then the sequence is

decided, and they begin to talk again with the dreamy tone that is

habitual to them, while they make fast and clamber up into the

steamer.

While the curaghs are out I am left with a few women and very old

men who cannot row. One of these old men, whom I often talk with,

has some fame as a bone-setter, and is said to have done remarkable

cures, both here and on the mainland. Stories are told of how he has

been taken off by the quality in their carriages through the hills

of Connemara, to treat their sons and daughters, and come home with

his pockets full of money.

Another old man, the oldest on the island, is fond of telling me

anecdotes--not folktales--of things that have happened here in his

lifetime.

He often tells me about a Connaught man who killed his father with

the blow of a spade when he was in passion, and then fled to this

island and threw himself on the mercy of some of the natives with

whom he was said to be related. They hid him in a hole--which the

old man has shown me--and kept him safe for weeks, though the police

came and searched for him, and he could hear their boots grinding on

the stones over his head. In spite of a reward which was offered,

the island was incorruptible, and after much trouble the man was

safely shipped to America.

This impulse to protect the criminal is universal in the west. It

seems partly due to the association between justice and the hated

English jurisdiction, but more directly to the primitive feeling of

these people, who are never criminals yet always capable of crime,

that a man will not do wrong unless he is under the influence of a

passion which is as irresponsible as a storm on the sea. If a man

has killed his father, and is already sick and broken with remorse,

they can see no reason why he should be dragged away and killed by

the law.

Such a man, they say, will be quiet all the rest of his life, and if

you suggest that punishment is needed as an example, they ask,

'Would any one kill his father if he was able to help it?'

Some time ago, before the introduction of police, all the people of

the islands were as innocent as the people here remain to this day.

I have heard that at that time the ruling proprietor and magistrate

of the north island used to give any man who had done wrong a letter

to a jailer in Galway, and send him off by himself to serve a term

of imprisonment.

As there was no steamer, the ill-doer was given a passage in some

chance hooker to the nearest point on the mainland. Then he walked

for many miles along a desolate shore till he reached the town. When

his time had been put through he crawled back along the same route,

feeble and emaciated, and had often to wait many weeks before he

could regain the island. Such at least is the story.

It seems absurd to apply the same laws to these people and to the

criminal classes of a city. The most intelligent man on Inishmaan

has often spoken to me of his contempt of the law, and of the

increase of crime the police have brought to Aranmor. On this

island, he says, if men have a little difference, or a little fight,

their friends take care it does not go too far, and in a little time

it is forgotten. In Kilronan there is a band of men paid to make out

cases for themselves; the moment a blow is struck they come down and

arrest the man who gave it. The other man he quarreled with has to

give evidence against him; whole families come down to the court and

swear against each other till they become bitter enemies. If there

is a conviction the man who is convicted never forgives. He waits

his time, and before the year is out there is a cross summons, which

the other man in turn never forgives. The feud continues to grow,

till a dispute about the colour of a man's hair may end in a murder,

after a year's forcing by the law. The mere fact that it is

impossible to get reliable evidence in the island--not because the

people are dishonest, but because they think the claim of kinship

more sacred than the claims of abstract truth--turns the whole

system of sworn evidence into a demoralising farce, and it is easy

to believe that law dealings on this false basis must lead to every

sort of injustice.

While I am discussing these questions with the old men the curaghs

begin to come in with cargoes of salt, and flour, and porter.

To-day a stir was made by the return of a native who had spent five

years in New York. He came on shore with half a dozen people who had

been shopping on the mainland, and walked up and down on the slip in

his neat suit, looking strangely foreign to his birthplace, while

his old mother of eighty-five ran about on the slippery seaweed,

half crazy with delight, telling every one the news.

When the curaghs were in their places the men crowded round him to

bid him welcome. He shook hands with them readily enough, but with

no smile of recognition.

He is said to be dying.

Yesterday--a Sunday--three young men rowed me over to Inisheer, the

south island of the group.

The stern of the curagh was occupied, so I was put in the bow with

my head on a level with the gunnel. A considerable sea was running

in the sound, and when we came out from the shelter of this island,

the curagh rolled and vaulted in a way not easy to describe.

At one moment, as we went down into the furrow, green waves curled

and arched themselves above me; then in an instant I was flung up

into the air and could look down on the heads of the rowers, as if

we were sitting on a ladder, or out across a forest of white crests

to the black cliff of Inishmaan.

The men seemed excited and uneasy, and I thought for a moment that

we were likely to be swamped. In a little while, however I realised

the capacity of the curagh to raise its head among the waves, and

the motion became strangely exhilarating. Even, I thought, if we

were dropped into the blue chasm of the waves, this death, with the

fresh sea saltness in one's teeth, would be better than most deaths

one is likely to meet.

When we reached the other island, it was raining heavily, so that we

could not see anything of the antiquities or people.

For the greater part of the afternoon we sat on the tops of empty

barrels in the public-house, talking of the destiny of Gaelic. We

were admitted as travellers, and the shutters of the shop were

closed behind us, letting in only a glimmer of grey light, and the

tumult of the storm. Towards evening it cleared a little and we came

home in a calmer sea, but with a dead head-wind that gave the rowers

all they could do to make the passage.

On calm days I often go out fishing with Michael. When we reach the

space above the slip where the curaghs are propped, bottom upwards,

on the limestone, he lifts the prow of the one we are going to

embark in, and I slip underneath and set the centre of the foremost

seat upon my neck. Then he crawls under the stern and stands up with

the last seat upon his shoulders. We start for the sea. The long

prow bends before me so that I see nothing but a few yards of

shingle at my feet. A quivering pain runs from the top of my spine

to the sharp stones that seem to pass through my pampooties, and

grate upon my ankles. We stagger and groan beneath the weight; but

at last our feet reach the slip, and we run down with a half-trot

like the pace of bare-footed children.

A yard from the sea we stop and lower the curagh to the right. It

must be brought down gently--a difficult task for our strained and

aching muscles--and sometimes as the gunnel reaches the slip I lose

my balance and roll in among the seats.

Yesterday we went out in the curagh that had been damaged on the day

of my visit to Kilronan, and as we were putting in the oars the

freshly-tarred patch stuck to the slip which was heated with the

sunshine. We carried up water in the bailer--the 'supeen,' a shallow

wooden vessel like a soup-plate--and with infinite pains we got free

and rode away. In a few minutes, however, I found the water spouting

up at my feet.

The patch had been misplaced, and this time we had no sacking.

Michael borrowed my pocket scissors, and with admirable rapidity cut

a square of flannel from the tail of his shirt and squeezed it into

the hole, making it fast with a splint which he hacked from one of

the oars.

During our excitement the tide had carried us to the brink of the

rocks, and I admired again the dexterity with which he got his oars

into the water and turned us out as we were mounting on a wave that

would have hurled us to destruction.

With the injury to our curagh we did not go far from the shore.

After a while I took a long spell at the oars, and gained a certain

dexterity, though they are not easy to manage. The handles overlap

by about six inches--in order to gain leverage, as the curagh is

narrow--and at first it was almost impossible to avoid striking the

upper oar against one's knuckles. The oars are rough and square,

except at the ends, so one cannot do so with impunity. Again, a

curagh with two light people in it floats on the water like a

nut-shell, and the slightest inequality in the stroke throws the

prow round at least a right angle from its course. In the first

half-hour I found myself more than once moving towards the point I

had come from, greatly to Michael's satisfaction.

This morning we were out again near the pier on the north side of

the island. As we paddled slowly with the tide, trolling for

pollock, several curaghs, weighed to the gunnel with kelp, passed us

on their way to Kilronan.

An old woman, rolled in red petticoats, was sitting on a ledge of

rock that runs into the sea at the point where the curaghs were

passing from the south, hailing them in quavering Gaelic, and asking

for a passage to Kilronan.

The first one that came round without a cargo turned in from some

distance and took her away.

The morning had none of the supernatural beauty that comes over the

island so often in rainy weather, so we basked in the vague

enjoyment of the sunshine, looking down at the wild luxuriance of

the vegetation beneath the sea, which contrasts strangely with the

nakedness above it.

Some dreams I have had in this cottage seem to give strength to the

opinion that there is a psychic memory attached to certain

neighbourhoods.

Last night, after walking in a dream among buildings with strangely

intense light on them, I heard a faint rhythm of music beginning far

away on some stringed instrument.

It came closer to me, gradually increasing in quickness and volume

with an irresistibly definite progression. When it was quite near

the sound began to move in my nerves and blood, and to urge me to

dance with them.

I knew that if I yielded I would be carried away to some moment of

terrible agony, so I struggled to remain quiet, holding my knees

together with my hands.

The music increased continually, sounding like the strings of harps,

tuned to a forgotten scale, and having a resonance as searching as

the strings of the cello.

Then the luring excitement became more powerful than my will, and my

limbs moved in spite of me.

In a moment I was swept away in a whirlwind of notes. My breath and

my thoughts and every impulse of my body, became a form of the

dance, till I could not distinguish between the instruments and the

rhythm and my own person or consciousness.

For a while it seemed an excitement that was filled with joy, then

it grew into an ecstasy where all existence was lost in a vortex of

movement. I could not think there had ever been a life beyond the

whirling of the dance.

Then with a shock the ecstasy turned to an agony and rage. I

Struggled to free myself, but seemed only to increase the passion of

the steps I moved to. When I shrieked I could only echo the notes of

the rhythm.

At last with a moment of uncontrollable frenzy I broke back to

consciousness and awoke.

I dragged myself trembling to the window of the cottage and looked

out. The moon was glittering across the bay, and there was no sound

anywhere on the island.

I am leaving in two days, and old Pat Dirane has bidden me goodbye.

He met me in the village this morning and took me into 'his little

tint,' a miserable hovel where he spends the night.

I sat for a long time on his threshold, while he leaned on a stool

behind me, near his bed, and told me the last story I shall have

from him--a rude anecdote not worth recording. Then he told me with

careful emphasis how he had wandered when he was a young man, and

lived in a fine college, teaching Irish to the young priests!

They say on the island that he can tell as many lies as four men:

perhaps the stories he has learned have strengthened his

imagination. When I stood up in the doorway to give him God's

blessing, he leaned over on the straw that forms his bed, and shed

tears. Then he turned to me again, lifting up one trembling hand,

with the mitten worn to a hole on the palm, from the rubbing of his

crutch.

'I'll not see you again,' he said, with tears trickling on his face,

'and you're a kindly man. When you come back next year I won't be in

it. I won't live beyond the winter. But listen now to what I'm

telling you; let you put insurance on me in the city of Dublin, and

it's five hundred pounds you'll get on my burial.'

This evening, my last in the island, is also the evening of the

'Pattern'--a festival something like 'Pardons' of Brittany.

I waited especially to see it, but a piper who was expected did not

come, and there was no amusement. A few friends and relations came

over from the other island and stood about the public-house in their

best clothes, but without music dancing was impossible.

I believe on some occasions when the piper is present there is a

fine day of dancing and excitement, but the Galway piper is getting

old, and is not easily induced to undertake the voyage.

Last night, St. John's Eve, the fires were lighted and boys ran

about with pieces of the burning turf, though I could not find out

if the idea of lighting the house fires from the bonfires is still

found on the island.

I have come out of an hotel full of tourists and commercial

travelers, to stroll along the edge of Galway bay, and look out in

the direction of the islands. The sort of yearning I feel towards

those lonely rocks is indescribably acute. This town, that is

usually so full of wild human interest, seems in my present mood a

tawdry medley of all that is crudest in modern life. The nullity of

the rich and the squalor of the poor give me the same pang of

wondering disgust; yet the islands are fading already and I can

hardly realise that the smell of the seaweed and the drone of the

Atlantic are still moving round them.

One of my island friends has written to me:--

DEAR JOHN SYNGE,--I am for a long time expecting a letter from you

and I think you are forgetting this island altogether.

Mr.--died a long time ago on the big island and his boat was on

anchor in the harbour and the wind blew her to Black Head and broke

her up after his death.

Tell me are you learning Irish since you went. We have a branch of

the Gaelic League here now and the people is going on well with the

Irish and reading.

I will write the next letter in Irish to you. Tell me will you come

to see us next year and if you will you'll write a letter before

you. All your loving friends is well in health.--Mise do chara go

huan.

Another boy I sent some baits to has written to me also, beginning

his letter in Irish and ending it in English:--

DEAR JOHN,--I got your letter four days ago, and there was pride and

joy on me because it was written in Irish, and a fine, good,

pleasant letter it was. The baits you sent are very good, but I lost

two of them and half my line. A big fish came and caught the bait,

and the line was bad and half of the line and the baits went away.

My sister has come back from America, but I'm thinking it won't be

long till she goes away again, for it is lonesome and poor she finds

the island now.--I am your friend. ...

Write soon and let you write in Irish, if you don't I won't look on

it.