* * * * *

Old Bridget Ruane will not do any more cures by charms or by simples, or ‘bring children home to the world’ any more.  For she died last winter; and we may be sure that among the green herbs that cover her grave, there are some that are ‘good for every bone in the body,’ and that are ‘very good for a sore heart.’

1900.

THE WANDERING TRIBE

When poor Paul Ruttledge made his great effort to escape from the doorsteps of law and order—­from the world, the flesh, and the newspaper—­and fell among tinkers, I looked with more interest than before at the little camps that one sees every now and then by the roadside for a few days or weeks.  And I wondered why our country people—­who are so kind to one another, and to tramps and beggars, that they seem to live by the rule of an old woman in a Galway sweet-shop:  ’Refuse not any, for one may be the Christ’—­speak of a visit of the tinkers as of frost in spring or blight in harvest.  I asked why they were shunned as other wayfarers are not, and I was told of their strange customs and of their unbelief.

‘They come mostly from the County Mayo,’ I am told; ’and, indeed, they have not much religion; but last year Father Prendergast offered to marry a man and woman of them for nothing.  But after he had them married, they made him give them a shilling for a lodging.

’The people wouldn’t like to let them into their house; for if you would let one man in, maybe twelve families would follow them and take possession of the whole place.

‘Some of them that do smiths’ work are middling decent.  They will sit there with their little pot and melt metal in it, and make things that belong to a plough; but the most of them have no trade but to be going to fairs and doing tricks, and having a table for getting money out of you with games.  Indeed the most of them are no better than pickpockets—­“newks” they are called.  And they never go to Mass; and, as to marriage, some used to say they lepped the budget, but it’s more likely they have no marriage at all.

’They never go in lodgings; but they’ll tilt up the cart, and put a bit of guano cloth over it and a little kennel of straw in it.  Or if a man is alone, he’ll lay down on the sheltery side of a wall and sleep there.  They are hardy with all the hardships they go through; they are the hardiest people in the world.

’And they make sport and fun sometimes.  I used to see them dancing at Rathin gate; but no one would dance along with them; it is only among themselves they would have it.  And they sing songs too—­“The sweet boy of Milltown” I heard them singing.

’There was a sweep in Gort joined them.  Charlie his name was.  He went into Greely’s shop one time, that had set up a little public-house, and bid him give him five pounds and he’d make his fortune.  And he was afraid to refuse; and gave it to him, and off walked Charlie, and was never seen there again.