In another case a girl was ill in the house, so the doctor interposed, and the people were allowed to remain after a merely formal eviction.  About midday, however, a house was reached where there was no pretext for mercy, and no money could be procured.  At a sign from the sheriff the work of carrying out the beds and utensils was begun in the middle of a crowd of natives who looked on in absolute silence, broken only by the wild imprecations of the woman of the house.  She belonged to one of the most primitive families on the island, and she shook with uncontrollable fury as she saw the strange armed men who spoke a language she could not understand driving her from the hearth she had brooded on for thirty years.  For these people the outrage to the hearth is the supreme catastrophe.  They live here in a world of grey, where there are wild rains and mists every week in the year, and their warm chimney corners, filled with children and young girls, grow into the consciousness of each family in a way it is not easy to understand in more civilised places.

The outrage to a tomb in China probably gives no greater shock to the Chinese than the outrage to a hearth in Inishmaan gives to the people.

When the few trifles had been carried out, and the door blocked with stones, the old woman sat down by the threshold and covered her head with her shawl.

Five or six other women who lived close by sat down in a circle round her, with mute sympathy.  Then the crowd moved on with the police to another cottage where the same scene was to take place, and left the group of desolate women sitting by the hovel.

There were still no clouds in the sky and the heat was intense.  The police when not in motion lay sweating and gasping under the walls with their tunics unbuttoned.  They were not attractive, and I kept comparing them with the islandmen, who walked up and down as cool and fresh-looking as the sea-gulls.

When the last eviction had been carried out a division was made:  half the party went off with the bailiff to search the inner plain of the island for the cattle that had been hidden in the morning, the other half remained on the village road to guard some pigs that had already been taken possession of.

After a while two of these pigs escaped from the drivers and began a wild race up and down the narrow road.  The people shrieked and howled to increase their terror, and at last some of them became so excited that the police thought it time to interfere.  They drew up in double line opposite the mouth of a blind laneway where the animals had been shut up.  A moment later the shrieking began again in the west and the two pigs came in sight, rushing down the middle of the road with the drivers behind them.

They reached the line of the police.  There was a slight scuffle, and then the pigs continued their mad rush to the east, leaving three policemen lying in the dust.