'Maybe you don't drink so,' said his wife, who was near us, 'and
that way your living wouldn't be so costly at all.'
An interruption was made by a stop at a small station and the
entrance of a ragged ballad-singer, who sang a long ballad about the
sorrows of mothers who see all their children going away from them
to America.
Further on, when the carriage was much emptier, a middle-aged man
got in, and we began discussing the fishing season, Aran fishing,
hookers, nobbies, and mackerel. I could see, while we were talking,
that he, in his turn, was examining me with curiosity. At last he
seemed satisfied.
'Begob,' he said, 'I see what you are; you're a fish-dealer.'
It turned out that he was the skipper of a trawler, and we had a
long talk, the two of us and a local man who was going to Dingle
also.
'There was one time a Frenchman below,' said the skipper, 'who got
married here and settled down and worked with the rest of us. One
day we were outside in the trawler, and there was a French boat
anchored a bit of a way off. "Come on," says Charley--that was his
name--"and see can we get some brandy from that boat beyond." "How
would we get brandy," says I, "when we've no fish, or meat, or
cabbages or a thing at all to offer them?" He went down below then
to see what he could get. At that time there were four men only
working the trawler, and in the heavy season there were eight. Well,
up he comes again and eight plates under his arm. "There are eight
plates," says he, "and four will do us; so we'll take out the other
four and make a swap with them for brandy." With that he set the
eight plates on the deck and began walking up and down and looking
on them.
'"The devil mend you," says I. "Will you take them up and come on,
if you're coming?"
'"I will," says he, "surely. I'm choicing out the ones that have
pictures on them, for it's that kind they do set store on?"'
Afterwards we began talking of boats that had been upset during the
winter, and lives that had been lost in the neighbourhood.
'A while since,' said the local man, 'there were three men out in a
canoe, and the sea rose on them. They tried to come in under the
cliff but they couldn't come to land with the greatness of the waves
that were breaking. There were two young men in the canoe, and
another man was sixty, or near it. When the young men saw they
couldn't bring in the canoe, they said they'd make a jump for the
rocks, and let her go without them, if she must go. Then they pulled
in on the next wave, and when they were close in the two young men
jumped on to a rock, but the old man was too stiff, and he was
washed back again in the canoe. It came on dark after that, and all
thought he was drowned, and they held his wake in Dunquin. At that
time there used to be a steamer going in and out trading in Valentia
and Dingle and Cahirciveen, and when she came into Dingle, two or
three days after, there was my man on board her, as hearty as a
salmon. When he was washed back he got one of the oars, and kept her
head to the wind; then the tide took him one bit and the wind took
him another, and he wrought and he wrought till he was safe beyond
in Valentia. Wasn't that a great wonder?' Then as he was ending his
story we ran down into Dingle.
Often, when one comes back to a place that one's memory and
imagination have been busy with, there is a feeling of smallness and
disappointment, and it is a day or two before one can renew all
one's enjoyment. This morning, however, when I went up the gap
between Croagh Martin and then back to Slea Head, and saw
Inishtooskert and Inishvickillaun and the Great Blasket Island
itself, they seemed ten times more grey and wild and magnificent
than anything I had kept in my memory. The cold sea and surf, and
the feeling of winter in the clouds, and the blackness of the rocks,
and the red fern everywhere, were a continual surprise and
excitement.
Here and there on my way I met old men with tail-coats of frieze,
that are becoming so uncommon. When I spoke to them in English, they
shook their heads and muttered something I could not hear; but when
I tried Irish they made me long speeches about the weather and the
clearness of the day.
In the evening, as I was coming home, I got a glimpse that seemed to
have the whole character of Corkaguiney--a little line of low
cottages with yellow roofs, and an elder tree without leaves beside
them, standing out against a high mountain that seemed far away, yet
was near enough to be dense and rich and wonderful in its colour.
Then I wandered round the wonderful forts of Fahan. The blueness of
the sea and the hills from Carrantuohill to the Skelligs, the
singular loneliness of the hillside I was on, with a few choughs and
gulls in sight only, had a splendour that was almost a grief in the
mind.
I turned into a little public-house this evening, where Maurice--the
fisherman I have spoken of before--and some of his friends
often sit when it is too wild for fishing. While we were talking a
man came in, and joined rather busily in what was being said, though
I could see he was not belonging to the place. He moved his position
several times till he was quite close to me, then he whispered:
'Will you stand me a medium, mister? I'm hard set for money this
while past.' When he had got his medium he began to give me his
history. He was a journeyman tailor who had been a year or more in
the place, and was beginning to pick up a little Irish to get along
with. When he had gone we had a long talk about the making of canoes
and the difference between those used in Connaught and Munster.
'They have been in this country,' said Maurice, 'for twenty or
twenty-five years only, and before that we had boats; a canoe will
cost twelve pounds, or maybe thirteen pounds, and there is one old
man beyond who charges fifteen pounds. If it is well done a canoe
will stand for eight years, and you can get a new skin on it when
the first one is gone.' I told him I thought canoes had been in
Connemara since the beginning of the world.
'That may well be,' he went on, 'for there was a certain man going
out as a pilot, up and down into Clare, and it was he made them
first in this place. It is a trade few can learn, for it is all done
within the head; you will have to sit down and think it out, and
then make up when it is all ready in your mind.'
I described the fixed thole-pins that are used in Connaught--here
they use two freely moving thole-pins, with the oar loose between
them, and they jeered at the simplicity of the Connaught system.
Then we got on the relative value of canoes and boats.
'They are not better than boats,' said Maurice, 'but they are more
useful. Before you get a heavy boat swimming you will be wet up to
your waist, and then you will be sitting the whole night like that;
but a canoe will swim in a handful of water, so that you can get in
dry and warm the whole night. Then there will be seven men in a big
boat and seven shares of the fish; but in a canoe there will be
three men only and three shares of the fish, though the nets are the
same in the two.'
After a while a man sang a song, and then we began talking of tunes
and playing the fiddle, and I told them how hard it was to get any
sound out of one in a cottage with a floor of earth and a thatched
roof over you.
'I can believe that,' said one of the men. 'There was a man a while
since went into Tralee to buy a fiddle; and when he went into the
shop an old fiddler followed him into it, thinking maybe he'd get
the price of a pint. Well, the man was within choicing the fiddles,
maybe forty of them, and the old fiddler whispered to him to take
them out into the air, "for there's many a fiddle would sound well
in here wouldn't be worth a curse outside," says he; so he was
bringing them out and bringing them out till he found a good one
among them.'
This evening, after a day of teeming rain, it cleared for an hour,
and I went out while the sun was setting to a little cove where a
high sea was running. As I was coming back the darkness began to
close in except in the west, where there was a red light under the
clouds. Against this light I could see patches of open wall and
little fields of stooks, and a bit of laneway with an old man
driving white cows before him. These seemed transfigured beyond any
description.
Then I passed two men riding bare-backed towards the west, who spoke
to me in Irish, and a little further on I came to the only village
on my way. The ground rose towards it, and as I came near there was
a grey bar of smoke from every cottage going up to the low clouds
overhead, and standing out strangely against the blackness of the
mountain behind the village.
Beyond the patch of wet cottages I had another stretch of lonely
roadway, and a heron kept flapping in front of me, rising and
lighting again with many lonely cries that made me glad to reach the
little public-house near Smerwick.