'Well,' she went on, 'here is my daughter going there too; and maybe
you'd look after her, for I'm getting down at the next station. She
is going up to a hospital for some little complaint in her ear, and
she has never travelled before, so that she's lonesome in her mind.'
I told her I would do what I could, and at the next station I was
left alone with my charge, and one other passenger, a returned
American girl, who was on her way to Mallow, to get the train for
Queenstown. When her mother was lost sight of the young girl broke
out into tears, and the returned American and myself had trouble to
quiet her.
'Look at me,' said the American. 'I'm going off for ten years to
America, all by myself, and I don't care a rap.'
When the girl got quiet again, the returned American talked to me
about scenery and politics and the arts--she had been seen off by
her sisters in bare feet, with shawls over their heads--and the
life of women in America.
At several stations girls and boys thronged in to get places for
Queenstown, leaving parties of old men and women wailing with
anguish on the platform. At one place an old woman was seized with
such a passion of regret, when she saw her daughters moving away
from her for ever, that she made a wild rush after the train and
when I looked out for a moment I could see her writhing and
struggling on the platform, with her hair over her face, and two men
holding her by the arms.
Two young men had got into our compartment for a few stations only,
and they looked on with the greatest satisfaction.
'Ah,' said one of them, 'we do have great sport every Friday and
Saturday, seeing the old women howling in the stations.'
When we reached Dublin I left my charge for a moment to see after my
baggage, and when I came back I found her sitting on a luggage
barrow, with her package in her hand, crying with despair because
several cabmen had refused to let her into their cabs, on the
pretext that they dreaded infection.
I could see they were looking out for some rich tourist with his
trunks, as a more lucrative fare; so I sent for the head-porter, who
had charge of the platform. When the porter arrived we chose a cab,
and I saw my charge driven off to her hospital, sitting on the front
seat, with her handkerchief to her eyes.
For the last few days--I am staying in the Kerry cottage I have
spoken of already--the people have been talking of horse-races that
were to be held on the sand, not far off and this morning I set out
to see them with the man and woman of the house and two of their
neighbours. Our way led through a steep boreen for a quarter of a
mile to the edge of the sea, and then along a pathway between the
cliffs and a straight grassy hill. When we had gone some distance
the old man pointed out a slope in front of us, where, he said,
Diarmuid had done his tricks of rolling the barrel and jumping over
his spear, and had killed many of his enemies. He told me the whole
story, slightly familiarized in detail, but not very different from
the version everyone knows. A little further on he pointed across
the sea to our left--just beyond the strand where the races were to
be run--to a neck of sand where, he said, Oisin was called away to
the Tir-na-nOg.
'The Tir-na-nOg itself,' he said, 'is below that sea, and a while
since there were two men out in a boat in the night-time, and they
got stuck outside some way or another. They went to sleep then, and
when one of them wakened up he looked down into the sea, and he saw
the Tir-na-nOg and people walking about, and side-cars driving in
the squares.'
Then he began telling me stories of mermaids--a common subject in
this neighbourhood.
'There was one time a man beyond of the name of Shee,' he said, 'and
his master seen a mermaid on the sand beyond combing her hair, and
he told Shee to get her. "I will," said Shee, "if you'll give me the
best horse you have in your stable." "I'll do that," said the
master. Then Shee got the horse, and when he saw the mermaid on the
sand combing her hair, with her covering laid away from her, he
galloped up, when she wasn't looking, and he picked up the covering
and away he went with it. Then the waves rose up behind him and he
galloped his best, and just as he was coming out at the top of the
tide the ninth wave cut off his horse behind his back, and left
himself and the half of his horse and the covering on the dry land.
Then the mermaid came in after her covering, and the master got
married to her, and she lived with him a long time, and had
children--three or four of them. Well, in the wind-up, the master
built a fine new house, and when he was moving into it, and clearing
the things out, he brought down an old hamper out of the loft and
put it in the yard. The woman was going about, and she looked into
the hamper, and she saw her covering hidden away in the bottom of
it. She took it out then and put it upon her and went back into the
sea, and her children used to be on the shore crying after her. I'm
told from that day there isn't one of the Shees can go out in a boat
on that bay and not be drowned.'
We were now near the sandhills, where a crowd was beginning to come
together, and booths were being put up for the sale of apples and
porter and cakes. A train had come in a little before at a station a
mile or so away, and a number of the usual trick characters, with
their stock-in-trade, were hurrying down to the sea. The roulette
man passed us first, unfolding his table and calling out at the top
of his voice:
Come play me a game of timmun and tup,
The more you puts down the more you takes up.
'Take notice, gentlemen, I come here to spend a fortune, not to make
one. Is there any sportsman in a hat or a cap, or a wig or a
waistcoat, will play a go with me now? Take notice, gentlemen, the
luck is on the green.'
The races had to be run between two tides while the sand was dry, so
there was not much time to be lost, and before we reached the strand
the horses had been brought together, ridden by young men in many
variations of jockey dress. For the first race there was one genuine
race-horse, very old and bony, and two or three young horses
belonging to farmers in the neighbourhood. The start was made from
the middle of the crowd at the near end of the strand, and the
course led out along the edge of the sea to a post some distance
away, back again to the starting-point, round a post, and out and
back once more.
When the word was given the horses set off in a wild helter-skelter
along the edge of the sea, with crowds cheering them on from the
sandhills. As they got small in the distance it was not easy to see
which horse was leading, but after a sort of check, as they turned
the post, they began nearing again a few yards from the waves, with
the old race-horse, heavily pressed, a good length ahead. The
stewards made a sort of effort to clear the post that was to be
circled, but without much success, as the people were wild with
excitement. A moment later the old race-horse galloped into the
crowd, twisted too suddenly, something cracked and jolted, and it
limped out on three legs, gasping with pain. The next horse could
not be stopped, and galloped out at the wrong end of the crowd for
some little way before it could be brought back, so the last horses
set off in front for the final lap.
The lame race-horse was now mobbed by onlookers and advisers,
talking incoherently.
'Was it the fault of the jock?' said one man.
'It was not,' said another, 'for Michael (the owner) didn't strike
him, and if it had been his fault, wouldn't he have broken his bones?'
'He was striving to spare a young girl had run out in his way,' said
another. 'It was for that he twisted him.'
'Little slut!' said a woman; 'what did she want beyond on the sand?'
Many remedies were suggested that did not sound reassuring, and in
the end the horse was led off in a hopeless condition. A little
later the race ended with an easy win for the wildest of the young
horses. Afterwards I wandered up among the people, and looked at the
sports. At one place a man, with his face heavily blackened, except
one cheek and eye--an extraordinary effect--was standing shots of
a wooden ball behind a board with a large hole in the middle, at
three shots a penny. When I came past half an hour afterwards he had
been hit in the mouth--by a girl some one told me--but seemed as
cheerful as ever.
On the road, some little distance away, a party of girls and young
men were dancing polkas to the music of a melodeon, in a cloud of
dust. When I had looked on for a little while I met some girls I
knew, and asked them how they were getting on.
'We're not getting on at all,' said one of them, 'for we've been at
the races for two hours, and we've found no beaux to go along with
us.'
When the horses had all run, a jennet race was held, and greatly
delighted the people, as the jennets--there were a number of them--got
scared by the cheering and ran wild in every direction. In the
end it was not easy to say which was the winner, and a dispute began
which nearly ended in blows. It was decided at last to run the race
over again the following Sunday after Mass, so everyone was
satisfied.
The day was magnificently bright, and the ten miles of Dingle Bay
were wonderfully brilliant behind the masses of people, and the
canvas booths, and the scores of upturned shafts. Towards evening I
got tired taking or refusing the porter my friends pressed on me
continually, so I wandered off from the racecourse along the path
where Diarmuid had tricked the Fenians.
Later in the evening news had been coming in of the doings in the
sandhills, after the porter had begun to take effect and the
darkness had come on.
'There was great sport after you left,' a man said to me in the
cottage this evening. 'They were all beating and cutting each other
on the shore of the sea. Four men fought together in one place till
the tide came up on them, and was like to drown them; but the priest
waded out up to his middle and drove them asunder. Another man was
left for dead on the road outside the lodges, and some gentleman
found him and had him carried into his house, and got the doctor to
put plasters on his head. Then there was a red-headed fellow had his
finger bitten through, and the postman was destroyed for ever.'
'He should be,' said the man of the house, 'for Michael Patch broke
the seat of his car into three halves on his head.'
'It was this was the cause of it all,' said Danny-boy: 'they
brought in porter east and west from the two towns you know of, and
the two porters didn't agree together, and it's for that the people
went raging at the fall of night.'
I have been out to Bolus Head, one of the finest places I have met
with. A little beyond Ballinskelligs the road turns up the side of a
steep mountainy hill where one sees a brilliant stretch of sea, with
many rocks and islands--Deenish, Scariff the Hog's Head, and Dursey
far away. As I was sitting on the edge of the road an old man came
along and we began to talk. He had little English, but when I tried
him in Irish we got on well, though he did not follow any Connaught
forms I let slip by accident. We went on together, after a while, to
an extraordinary straggling village along the edge of the hill. At
one of the cottages he stopped and asked me to come in and take a
drink and rest myself. I did not like to refuse him, we had got so
friendly, so I followed him in, and sat down on a stool while his
wife--a much younger woman--went into the bedroom and brought me a
large mug of milk. As I was drinking it and talking to the couple, a
sack that was beside the fire began to move slowly, and the head of
a yellow, feverish-looking child came out from beneath it, and began
looking at me with a heavy stare. I asked the woman what ailed it,
and she told me it had sickened a night or two before with headache
and pains all through it; but she had not had the doctor, and did
not know what was the matter. I finished the milk without much
enjoyment, and went on my way up Bolus Head and then back to this
cottage, wondering all the time if I had the germs of typhus in my
blood.
Last night, when I got back to the cottage, I found that another
'travelling man' had arrived to stay for a day or two; but he was
hard of hearing and a little simple in his head, so that we had not
much talk. I went to bed soon after dark and slept till about two
o'clock in the morning, when I was awakened by fearful screams in
the kitchen. For a moment I did not know where I was; then I
remembered the old man, and I jumped up and went to the door of my
room. As I opened it I heard the door of the family room across the
kitchen opening also, and the frightened whispers of the people. In
a moment we could hear the old man, who was sleeping on the settle,
pulling himself out of a nightmare, so we went back to our beds.
In the morning the woman told me his story:
'He was living above on a little hillside,' she said, 'in a bit of a
cabin, with his sister along with him. Then, after a while, she got
ailing in her heart, and he got a bottle for her from the doctor,
and he'd rise up every morning before the dawn to give her a sup of
it. She got better then, till one night he got up and measured out
the spoonful, or whatever it was, and went to give it to her, and he
found her stretched out dead before him. Since that night he wakes
up one time and another, and begins crying out for Maurya--that was
his sister--and he half in his dreams. It was that you heard in the
night, and indeed it would frighten any person to hear him screaming
as if he was getting his death.'
When the little man came back after a while, they began asking him
questions till he told his whole story, weeping pitiably. Then they
got him to tell me about the other great event of his life also, in
the rather childish Gaelic he uses.
He had once a little cur-dog, he said, and he knew nothing of the
dog licence; then one day the peelers--the boys with the little
caps--asked him into the barracks for a cup of tea. He went in
cheerfully, and then they put him and his little dog into the
lock-up till some one paid a shilling for him and got him out.
He has a stick he is proud of, bound with pieces of leather every
few inches--like one I have seen with a beggar in Belmullet. Since
the first night he has not had nightmare again, and he lies most of
the evening sleeping on the settle, and in the morning he goes round
among the houses, getting his share of meal and potatoes.
I do not think a beggar is ever refused in Kerry. Sometimes, while
we are talking or doing something in the kitchen, a man walks in
without saying anything and stands just inside the door, with his
bag on the floor beside him. In five or ten minutes, when the woman
of the house has finished what she is doing, she goes up to him and
asks: 'Is it meal or flour?' 'Flour,' says the man. She goes into
the inner room, opens her sack, and comes back with two handfuls. He
opens his bag and takes out a bundle carefully tied up in a cloth or
handkerchief; he opens this again, and usually there is another
cloth inside, into which the woman puts her flour. Then the cloths
are carefully knotted together by the corners, put back in the bag,
and the man mutters a 'God bless you,' and goes on his way.
The meal, flour and potatoes that are thus gathered up are always
sold by the beggar, and the money is spent on porter or second-hand
clothes, or very occasionally on food when he is in a neighbourhood
that is not hospitable. The buyers are usually found among the
coastguards' wives, or in the little public-houses on the roadside.
'Some of these men,' said the woman of the house, when I asked her
about them, 'will take their flour nicely and tastily and cleanly,
and others will throw it in anyway, and you'd be sorry to eat it
afterwards.'
The talk of these people is almost bewildering. I have come to this
cottage again and again, and I often think I have heard all they
have to say, and then some one makes a remark that leads to a whole
new bundle of folk-tales, or stories of wonderful events that have
happened in the barony in the last hundred years. Tonight the people
were unusually silent, although several neighbours had come in, and
to make conversation I said something about the bull-fights in Spain
that I had been reading of in the newspapers. Immediately they
started off with stories of wicked or powerful bulls, and then they
branched off to clever dogs and all the things they have done in
West Kerry, and then to mad dogs and mad cattle and pigs--one
incident after another, but always detailed and picturesque and
interesting.
I have come back to the north of Dingle, leaving Tralee late in the
afternoon. At the station there was a more than usually great crowd,
as there had been a fair in the town and many people had come in to
make their Saturday purchases. A number of messenger boys with
parcels from the shops in the town were shouting for the owners,
using many familiar names, Justin MacCarthy, Hannah Lynch and the
like. I managed to get a seat on a sack of flour beside the owner,
who had other packages scattered under our feet. When the train had
started and the women and girls--the carriage was filled with
them--had settled down into their places, I could see I caused great
curiosity, as it was too late in the year for even an odd tourist,
and on this line everyone is known by sight.
Before long I got into talk with the old man next me, and as soon as
I did so the women and girls stopped their talk and leaned out to
hear what we were saying.
He asked first if I belonged to Dingle, and I told him I did not.
'Well,' he said, 'you speak like a Kerry man, and you're dressed
like a Kerry man, so you belong to Kerry, surely.'
I told him I was born and bred in Dublin, and that I had travelled
in many places in Ireland and beyond it.
'That's easy said,' he answered, 'but I'd take an oath you were
never beyond Kerry to this day.'