I Owe It To Mr. Synge And That Book That When I Came Back Here, After Not Hearing A Word Of Irish For Thirty Years, I Had As Good Irish, Or Maybe Better Irish, Than Any Person On The Island.

I could see all through his talk that the sense of superiority which his scholarship in this little-known language gave him above the ordinary seaman, had influenced his whole personality and been the central interest of his life.

On one voyage he had a fellow-sailor who often boasted that he had been at school and learned Greek, and this incident took place: -

One night we had a quarrel, and I asked him could he read a Greek book with all his talk of it.

'I can so,' said he.

'We'll see that,' said I.

Then I got the Irish book out of my chest, and I gave it into his hand.

'Read that to me,' said I, 'if you know Greek.'

He took it, and he looked at it this way, and that way, and not a bit of him could make it out.

'Bedad, I've forgotten my Greek,' said he.

'You're telling a lie,' said I. 'I'm not,' said he; 'it's the divil a bit I can read it.'

Then I took the book back into my hand, and said to him - 'It's the sorra a word of Greek you ever knew in your life, for there's not a word of Greek in that book, and not a bit of you knew.'

He told me another story of the only time he had heard Irish spoken during his voyages:

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