’This is what the old woman says at the Beulleaca when she sees a man without knowledge—­

’Were you ever at the house of the Still, did you ever get a drink from it?  Neither wine nor beer is as sweet as it is, but it is well I was not burnt when I fell down after a drink of it by the fire of Mr. Sloper.

’I praise Owen O’Hernon over all the doctors of Ireland, it is he put drugs on the water, and it lying on the barley.

’If you gave but a drop of it to an old woman who does be walking the world with a stick, she would think for a week that it was a fine bed was made for her.’

After that I had to get out my fiddle and play some tunes for them while they finished their whisky.  A new stock of porter was brought in this morning to the little public-house underneath my room, and I could hear in the intervals of our talk that a number of men had come in to treat some neighbors from the middle island, and were singing many songs, some of them in English or of the kind I have given, but most of them in Irish.

A little later when the party broke up downstairs my old men got nervous about the fairies—­they live some distance away—­and set off across the sandhills.

The next day I left with the steamer.