Then the luring excitement became more powerful than my will, and my limbs moved in spite of me.

In a moment I was swept away in a whirlwind of notes.  My breath and my thoughts and every impulse of my body, became a form of the dance, till I could not distinguish between the instruments and the rhythm and my own person or consciousness.

For a while it seemed an excitement that was filled with joy, then it grew into an ecstasy where all existence was lost in a vortex of movement.  I could not think there had ever been a life beyond the whirling of the dance.

Then with a shock the ecstasy turned to an agony and rage.  I Struggled to free myself, but seemed only to increase the passion of the steps I moved to.  When I shrieked I could only echo the notes of the rhythm.

At last with a moment of uncontrollable frenzy I broke back to consciousness and awoke.

I dragged myself trembling to the window of the cottage and looked out.  The moon was glittering across the bay, and there was no sound anywhere on the island.

I am leaving in two days, and old Pat Dirane has bidden me goodbye.  He met me in the village this morning and took me into ’his little tint,’ a miserable hovel where he spends the night.

I sat for a long time on his threshold, while he leaned on a stool behind me, near his bed, and told me the last story I shall have from him—­a rude anecdote not worth recording.  Then he told me with careful emphasis how he had wandered when he was a young man, and lived in a fine college, teaching Irish to the young priests!

They say on the island that he can tell as many lies as four men:  perhaps the stories he has learned have strengthened his imagination.  When I stood up in the doorway to give him God’s blessing, he leaned over on the straw that forms his bed, and shed tears.  Then he turned to me again, lifting up one trembling hand, with the mitten worn to a hole on the palm, from the rubbing of his crutch.

‘I’ll not see you again,’ he said, with tears trickling on his face, ’and you’re a kindly man.  When you come back next year I won’t be in it.  I won’t live beyond the winter.  But listen now to what I’m telling you; let you put insurance on me in the city of Dublin, and it’s five hundred pounds you’ll get on my burial.’

This evening, my last in the island, is also the evening of the ’Pattern’—­a festival something like ‘Pardons’ of Brittany.

I waited especially to see it, but a piper who was expected did not come, and there was no amusement.  A few friends and relations came over from the other island and stood about the public-house in their best clothes, but without music dancing was impossible.

I believe on some occasions when the piper is present there is a fine day of dancing and excitement, but the Galway piper is getting old, and is not easily induced to undertake the voyage.

Last night, St. John’s Eve, the fires were lighted and boys ran about with pieces of the burning turf, though I could not find out if the idea of lighting the house fires from the bonfires is still found on the island.