There are laments for other things besides death.  A man taken up ’not for sheep-stealing or any crime, but just for making a drop of poteen,’ tells of his hardships in Galway gaol.  A lover who has enlisted because he cannot get the girl he loves—­’a pity I not to be going to Galway with my heart’s love on my arm’—­tells of his hardships in the army:  ’The first day I enlisted I was well pleased and satisfied; the second day I was vexed and tormented; and the third day I would have given a pound if I had it to get my pardon.’  And I have heard a song ’made by a woman out of her wits, that lost her husband and married again, and her three sons enlisted,’ who cannot forgive herself for having driven them from home.  ’If it was in Ballinakill I had your bones, I would not be half so much tormented after you; but you to be standing in the army of the Gall, and getting nothing after it but the bit in your mouth.’

Here is a song of daily life, in which a girl laments the wandering and covetous appetite of her cow:—­

’It is following after the white cow I spent last night; and, indeed, all I got by it was the bones of an old goose.  Do you hear me, Michael Taylor?  Give word to your uncle John that, unless he can lay his hand on her, Nancy will lose her wits.

’It’s what she is wanting, is the three islands of Aran for herself; Brisbeg, that is in Maimen, and the glens of Maam Cross; all round about Oughterard, and the hills that are below it; John Blake’s farm where she often does be bellowing; and as far as Ballinamuca, where the long grass is growing; and it’s in the wood of Barna she’d want to spend her life.

     ’And when I was sore with walking through the dark hours of the
     night, it’s the coastguard came crying after her, and he maybe with
     a bit of her in his mouth.’

The little sarcastic hit at the coastguard, who may himself have stolen the cow he joins in the search for, is characteristic of Aran humour.  The comic song, as we know it, is unknown on the islands; the nearest to it I have heard there is about the awkward meeting of two suitors, a carpenter and a country lad, at their sweetheart’s house, and of the clever management of her mother, who promised to give her to the one who sang the best song, and how the country lad won her.

Douglas Hyde, who is almost a folk-poet, the people have taken so many of his songs to their heart, has caught this sarcastic touch in this ‘love’ song:—­

     ’O sweet queen, to whom I gave my love; O dear queen, the flower of
     fine women; listen to my keening, and look on my case; as you are
     the woman I desire, free me from death.

     ’He speaks so humbly, humble entirely.  Without mercy or pity she
     looks on him with contempt.  She puts mispleading in her cold
     answer; there is a drop of poison in every quiet word:—­