I was surprised to notice that several women who professed to know no English could make themselves understood without difficulty when it pleased them.

‘The rings is too dear at you, sir,’ said one girl using the Gaelic construction; ’let you put less money on them and all the girls will be buying.’

After the jewellery’ he displayed some cheap religious pictures—­abominable oleographs—­but I did not see many buyers.

I am told that most of the pedlars who come here are Germans or Poles, but I did not have occasion to speak with this man by himself.

I have come over for a few days to the south island, and, as usual, my voyage was not favourable.

The morning was fine, and seemed to promise one of the peculiarly hushed, pellucid days that occur sometimes before rain in early winter.  From the first gleam of dawn the sky was covered with white cloud, and the tranquillity was so complete that every sound seemed to float away by itself across the silence of the bay.  Lines of blue smoke were going up in spirals over the village, and further off heavy fragments of rain-cloud were lying on the horizon.  We started early in the day, and, although the sea looked calm from a distance, we met a considerable roll coming from the south-west when we got out from the shore.

Near the middle of the sound the man who was rowing in the bow broke his oar-pin, and the proper management of the canoe became a matter of some difficulty.  We had only a three-oared curagh, and if the sea had gone much higher we should have run a good deal of danger.  Our progress was so slow that clouds came up with a rise in the wind before we reached the shore, and rain began to fall in large single drops.  The black curagh working slowly through this world of grey, and the soft hissing of the rain gave me one of the moods in which we realise with immense distress the short moment we have left us to experience all the wonder and beauty of the world.

The approach to the south island is made at a fine sandy beach on the north-west.  This interval in the rocks is of great service to the people, but the tract of wet sand with a few hideous fishermen’s houses, lately built on it, looks singularly desolate in broken weather.

The tide was going out when we landed, so we merely stranded the curagh and went up to the little hotel.  The cess-collector was at work in one of the rooms, and there were a number of men and boys waiting about, who stared at us while we stood at the door and talked to the proprietor.

When we had had our drink I went down to the sea with my men, who were in a hurry to be off.  Some time was spent in replacing the oar-pin, and then they set out, though the wind was still increasing.  A good many fishermen came down to see the start, and long after the curagh was out of sight I stood and talked with them in Irish, as I was anxious to compare their language and temperament with what I knew of the other island.