his tricks of rolling the barrel and jumping over his spear, and had killed many of his enemies.  He told me the whole story, slightly familiarized in detail, but not very different from the version everyone knows.  A little further on he pointed across the sea to our left—­just beyond the strand where the races were to be run—­to a neck of sand where, he said, Oisin was called away to the Tir-na-nOg.

‘The Tir-na-nOg itself,’ he said, ’is below that sea, and a while since there were two men out in a boat in the night-time, and they got stuck outside some way or another.  They went to sleep then, and when one of them wakened up he looked down into the sea, and he saw the Tir-na-nOg and people walking about, and side-cars driving in the squares.’

Then he began telling me stories of mermaids—­a common subject in this neighbourhood.

‘There was one time a man beyond of the name of Shee,’ he said, ’and his master seen a mermaid on the sand beyond combing her hair, and he told Shee to get her.  “I will,” said Shee, “if you’ll give me the best horse you have in your stable.”  “I’ll do that,” said the master.  Then Shee got the horse, and when he saw the mermaid on the sand combing her hair, with her covering laid away from her, he galloped up, when she wasn’t looking, and he picked up the covering and away he went with it.  Then the waves rose up behind him and he galloped his best, and just as he was coming out at the top of the tide the ninth wave cut off his horse behind his back, and left himself and the half of his horse and the covering on the dry land.  Then the mermaid came in after her covering, and the master got married to her, and she lived with him a long time, and had children—­three or four of them.  Well, in the wind-up, the master built a fine new house, and when he was moving into it, and clearing the things out, he brought down an old hamper out of the loft and put it in the yard.  The woman was going about, and she looked into the hamper, and she saw her covering hidden away in the bottom of it.  She took it out then and put it upon her and went back into the sea, and her children used to be on the shore crying after her.  I’m told from that day there isn’t one of the Shees can go out in a boat on that bay and not be drowned.’

We were now near the sandhills, where a crowd was beginning to come together, and booths were being put up for the sale of apples and porter and cakes.  A train had come in a little before at a station a mile or so away, and a number of the usual trick characters, with their stock-in-trade, were hurrying down to the sea.  The roulette man passed us first, unfolding his table and calling out at the top of his voice: 

Come play me a game of timmun and tup,
The more you puts down the more you takes up.

’Take notice, gentlemen, I come here to spend a fortune, not to make one.  Is there any sportsman in a hat or a cap, or a wig or a waistcoat, will play a go with me now?  Take notice, gentlemen, the luck is on the green.’