The weather has been rough, but early this afternoon the sea was calm enough for a hooker to come in with turf from Connemara, though while she was at the pier the roll was so great that the men had to keep a watch on the waves and loosen the cable whenever a large one was coming in, so that she might ease up with the water.

There were only two men on board, and when she was empty they had some trouble in dragging in the cables, hoisting the sails, and getting out of the harbour before they could be blown on the rocks.

A heavy shower came on soon afterwards, and I lay down under a stack of turf with some people who were standing about, to wait for another hooker that was coming in with horses.  They began talking and laughing about the dispute last night and the noise made at it.

‘The worst fights do be made here over nothing,’ said an old man next me.  ’Did Mourteen or any of them on the big island ever tell you of the fight they had there threescore years ago when they were killing each other with knives out on the strand?’

‘They never told me,’ I said.

‘Well,’ said he, ’they were going down to cut weed, and a man was sharpening his knife on a stone before he went.  A young boy came into the kitchen, and he said to the man—­“What are you sharpening that knife for?"’

’"To kill your father with,” said the man, and they the best of friends all the time.  The young boy went back to his house and told his father there was a man sharpening a knife to kill him.

’"Bedad,” said the father, “if he has a knife I’ll have one, too.”

’He sharpened his knife after that, and they went down to the strand.  Then the two men began making fun about their knives, and from that they began raising their voices, and it wasn’t long before there were ten men fighting with their knives, and they never stopped till there were five of them dead.

’They buried them the day after, and when they were coming home, what did they see but the boy who began the work playing about with the son of the other man, and their two fathers down in their graves.’

When he stopped, a gust of wind came and blew up a bundle of dry seaweed that was near us, right over our heads.

Another old man began to talk.

‘That was a great wind,’ he said.  ’I remember one time there was a man in the south island who had a lot of wool up in shelter against the corner of a wall.  He was after washing it, and drying it, and turning it, and he had it all nice and clean the way they could card it.  Then a wind came down and the wool began blowing all over the wall.  The man was throwing out his arms on it and trying to stop it, and another man saw him.

’"The devil mend your head!” says he, “the like of that wind is too strong for you.”

’"If the devil himself is in it,” said the other man, “I’ll hold on to it while I can.”

’Then whether it was because of the word or not I don’t know, but the whole of the wool went up over his head and blew all over the island, yet, when his wife came to spin afterwards she had all they expected, as if that lot was not lost on them at all.’