’"The devil mend you,” says I.  “Will you take them up and come on, if you’re coming?”

’"I will,” says he, “surely.  I’m choicing out the ones that have pictures on them, for it’s that kind they do set store on?"’

Afterwards we began talking of boats that had been upset during the winter, and lives that had been lost in the neighbourhood.

‘A while since,’ said the local man, ’there were three men out in a canoe, and the sea rose on them.  They tried to come in under the cliff but they couldn’t come to land with the greatness of the waves that were breaking.  There were two young men in the canoe, and another man was sixty, or near it.  When the young men saw they couldn’t bring in the canoe, they said they’d make a jump for the rocks, and let her go without them, if she must go.  Then they pulled in on the next wave, and when they were close in the two young men jumped on to a rock, but the old man was too stiff, and he was washed back again in the canoe.  It came on dark after that, and all thought he was drowned, and they held his wake in Dunquin.  At that time there used to be a steamer going in and out trading in Valentia and Dingle and Cahirciveen, and when she came into Dingle, two or three days after, there was my man on board her, as hearty as a salmon.  When he was washed back he got one of the oars, and kept her head to the wind; then the tide took him one bit and the wind took him another, and he wrought and he wrought till he was safe beyond in Valentia.  Wasn’t that a great wonder?’ Then as he was ending his story we ran down into Dingle.

Often, when one comes back to a place that one’s memory and imagination have been busy with, there is a feeling of smallness and disappointment, and it is a day or two before one can renew all one’s enjoyment.  This morning, however, when I went up the gap between Croagh Martin and then back to Slea Head, and saw Inishtooskert and Inishvickillaun and the Great Blasket Island itself, they seemed ten times more grey and wild and magnificent than anything I had kept in my memory.  The cold sea and surf, and the feeling of winter in the clouds, and the blackness of the rocks, and the red fern everywhere, were a continual surprise and excitement.

Here and there on my way I met old men with tail-coats of frieze, that are becoming so uncommon.  When I spoke to them in English. they shook their heads and muttered something I could not hear; but when I tried Irish they made me long speeches about the weather and the clearness of the day.

In the evening, as I was coming home, I got a glimpse that seemed to have the whole character of Corkaguiney—­a little line of low cottages with yellow roofs, and an elder tree without leaves beside them, standing out against a high mountain that seemed far away, yet was near enough to be dense and rich and wonderful in its colour.

Then I wandered round the wonderful forts of Fahan.  The blueness of the sea and the hills from Carrantuohill to the Skelligs, the singular loneliness of the hillside I was on, with a few choughs and gulls in sight only, had a splendour that was almost a grief in the mind.