I told them that I had often been in France, and one of the boys began counting up the numerals in French to show what he had learnt from their buyers.  A little later, when the talk was beginning to flag, I turned to a young man near me—­the best fiddler, I was told, on the island—­and asked him to play us a dance.  He made excuses, and would not get his fiddle; but two of the girls slipped off and brought it.  The young man tuned it and offered it to me, but I insisted that he should take it first.  Then he played one or two tunes, without tone, but with good intonation and rhythm.  When it was my turn I played a few tunes also; but the pitch was so low I could not do what I wanted, and I had not much success with the people, though the fiddler himself watched me with interest.  ’That is great playing,’ he said, when I had finished; and I never seen anyone the like of you for moving your hand and getting the sound out of it with the full drag of the bow.’  Then he played a polka and four couples danced.  The women, as usual, were in their naked feet, and whenever there was a figure for women only there was a curious hush and patter of bare feet, till the heavy pounding and shuffling of the men’s boots broke in again.  The whirl of music and dancing in this little kitchen stirred me with an extraordinary effect.  The kindliness and merrymaking of these islanders, who, one knows, are full of riot and severity and daring, has a quality and attractiveness that is absent altogether from the life of towns, and makes one think of the life that is shown in the ballads of Scotland.

After the dance the host, who had come in, sang a long English doggerel about a poor scholar who went to Maynooth and had great success in his studies, so that he was praised by the bishop.  Then he went home for his holiday, and a young woman who had great riches asked him into her parlour and told him it was no fit life for a fine young man to be a priest, always saying Mass for poor people, and that he would have a right to give up his Latin and get married to herself.  He refused her offers and went back to his college.  When he was gone she went to the justice in great anger, and swore an oath against him that he had seduced her and left her with child.  He was brought back for his trial, and he was in risk to be degraded and hanged, when a man rode up on a horse and said it was himself was the lover of the lady, and the father of her child.

Then they told me about an old man of eighty years, who is going to spend the winter alone on Inishvickillaun, an island six miles from this village.  His son is making canoes and doing other carpenter’s jobs on this island, and the other children have scattered also; but the old man refuses to leave the island he has spent his life on, so they have left him with a goat, and a bag of flour and stack of turf.