Before they covered the coffin an old man kneeled down by the grave and repeated a simple prayer for the dead.

There was an irony in these words of atonement and Catholic belief spoken by voices that were still hoarse with the cries of pagan desperation.

A little beyond the grave I saw a line of old women who had recited in the keen sitting in the shadow of a wall beside the roofless shell of the church.  They were still sobbing and shaken with grief, yet they were beginning to talk again of the daily trifles that veil from them the terror of the world.

When we had all come out of the graveyard, and two men had rebuilt the hole in the wall through which the coffin had been carried in, we walked back to the village, talking of anything, and joking of anything, as if merely coming from the boat-slip, or the pier.

One man told me of the poteen drinking that takes place at some funerals.

‘A while since,’ he said, ’there were two men fell down in the graveyard while the drink was on them.  The sea was rough that day, the way no one could go to bring the doctor, and one of the men never woke again, and found death that night.’

The other day the men of this house made a new field.  There was a slight bank of earth under the wall of the yard, and another in the corner of the cabbage garden.  The old man and his eldest son dug out the clay, with the care of men working in a gold-mine, and Michael packed it in panniers—­there are no wheeled vehicles on this island—­for transport to a flat rock in a sheltered corner of their holding, where it was mixed with sand and seaweed and spread out in a layer upon the stone.

Most of the potato-growing of the island is carried on in fields of this sort—­for which the people pay a considerable rent—­and if the season is at all dry, their hope of a fair crop is nearly always disappointed.

It is now nine days since rain has fallen, and the people are filled with anxiety, although the sun has not yet been hot enough to do harm.

The drought is also causing a scarcity of water.  There are a few springs on this side of the island, but they come only from a little distance, and in hot weather are not to be relied on.  The supply for this house is carried up in a water-barrel by one of the women.  If it is drawn off at once it is not very nauseous, but if it has lain, as it often does, for some hours in the barrel, the smell, colour, and taste are unendurable.  The water for washing is also coming short, and as I walk round the edges of the sea, I often come on a girl with her petticoats tucked up round her, standing in a pool left by the tide and washing her flannels among the sea-anemones and crabs.  Their red bodices and white tapering legs make them as beautiful as tropical sea-birds, as they stand in a frame of seaweeds against the brink of the Atlantic.  Michael, however, is a little uneasy when they are in sight, and I cannot pause to watch them.  This habit of using the sea water for washing causes a good deal of rheumatism on the island, for the salt lies in the clothes and keeps them continually moist.