’There is a part of my father’s books with me,
  Keeping in the bottom of a box,
  And when I read them the tears fall down from me. 
  But I found out in history
  That you are a son of the Dearg Mor,
  If it is fighting you want and you won’t be thankful.’

  The Eagle dressed his bravery
  With his share of arms and his clothes,
  He had the sword that was the sharpest
  Could be got anywhere. 
  I and my scythe with me,
  And nothing on but my shirt,
  We went at each other early in the day.

  We were as two giants
  Ploughing in a valley in a glen of the mountains. 
  We did not know for the while which was the better man. 
  You could hear the shakes that were on our arms under each other,
  From that till the sunset,
  Till it was forced on him to give up.

  I wrote a ‘challenge boxail’ to him
  On the morning of the next day,
  To come till we would fight without doubt at the dawn of the day. 
  The second fist I drew on him I struck him on the hone of his jaw,
  He fell, and it is no lie there was a cloud in his head.

  The Eagle stood up,
  He took the end of my hand:—­
  ’You are the finest man I ever saw in my life,
  Go off home, my blessing will be on you for ever,
  You have saved the fame of Eire for yourself till the Day of the Judgment.’

  Ah! neighbors, did you hear
  The goodness and power of Felim? 
  The biggest wild beast you could get,
  The second fist he drew on it
  He struck it on the jaw,
  It fell, and it did not rise
  Till the end of two days.

Well as I seem to know these people of the islands, there is hardly a day that I do not come upon some new primitive feature of their life.

Yesterday I went into a cottage where the woman was at work and very carelessly dressed.  She waited for a while till I got into conversation with her husband, and then she slipped into the corner and put on a clean petticoat and a bright shawl round her neck.  Then she came back and took her place at the fire.

This evening I was in another cottage till very late talking to the people.  When the little boy—­the only child of the house—­got sleepy, the old grandmother took him on her lap and began singing to him.  As soon as he was drowsy she worked his clothes off him by degrees, scratching him softly with her nails as she did so all over his body.  Then she washed his feet with a little water out of a pot and put him into his bed.

When I was going home the wind was driving the sand into my face so that I could hardly find my way.  I had to hold my hat over my mouth and nose, and my hand over my eyes while I groped along, with my feet feeling for rocks and holes in the sand.

I have been sitting all the morning with an old man who was making sugawn ropes for his house, and telling me stories while he worked.  He was a pilot when he was young, and we had great talk at first about Germans, and Italians, and Russians, and the ways of seaport towns.  Then he came round to talk of the middle island, and he told me this story which shows the curious jealousy that is between the islands:—­