And a farmer living by the roadside says:  ’A bad class they are, indeed, sleeping out under a little bit of cloth, and hardy for all that.  Wild beasts they are, stealing turf from the banks.’

But an old man from Slieve Echtge takes a more kindly view of them.  ‘There are very nice men among them,’ he says; ’and they are as hardy as goats or as Connemara sheep.  They go about to fairs and deal in asses and in horses, and sometimes they are rich.  There was one I knew, a sieve-maker—­they are of the same class—­and that married a tinker’s daughter; they were in here two or three times.  I told him I wondered they wouldn’t settle down in one place; for if I knew the way to make money, I said, I’d make plenty—­for they are said to coin money.  But he said it made no difference if they had money; they couldn’t stop in one place; they must be walking always and going through the whole country.’

And then we got to the reason of their wandering.

’It was a tinker put St. Patrick astray one time.  For he was a slave in Ireland after he was brought out of France, and it would take a hundred pounds to buy his freedom.  And he found a lump of gold or of silver in a field one day, where he was minding sheep; and he brought it to a tinker and asked the value of it.  “It’s nothing at all but a bit of solder,” says the tinker.  “Give it here to me.”  But St. Patrick brought it to a smith then, and he told him the value of it.  And then St. Patrick put a curse on the tinkers that they might be for ever with every man’s face against them, and their face against every man; and that they should get no rest for ever but to travel the world.

’And there are some say that when our Lord was on the cross there could be no tradesman found to drive the nails in His hands and His feet till a tinker was brought, and he did it; and that is why they have to walk the world; and I never met anyone that had seen a tinker’s funeral.

’But they may believe some things.  For there was a woman of them told me one time they were camping near the railway bridge that in the night-time she saw the whole wall beside her falling down and shattered; but in the morning it was standing as it did before.  “And we’ll get out of this place as fast as we can,” she said.’

‘They are a class of themselves,’ says another man, ’and they have been there ever since the world began.  I often heard it said that our Lord asked a tinker one time to make Him some vessel He wanted, and he refused Him.  He went then to a smith, and he did what was wanted.  And from that time the tinkers have been wandering on the roads; but they wouldn’t have refused Him if they had known He was God.  I never saw them at Mass; but I am sure they believe in God.  It was here in Ireland they refused our Lord, the time He walked the whole world after the Crucifixion.’

‘To be sure they are under a curse,’ said another, ’like the Jews, to be wandering always; and they have some religion of their own, but it’s a bad one.  It’s likely St. Patrick put the curse on them; for a fleet of children of tinkers went after him one time, mocking at him, and he turned one of them into a pillar of stone.’