The general ignorance of any precise hours in the day makes it
impossible for the people to have regular meals.
They seem to eat together in the evening, and sometimes in the
morning, a little after dawn, before they scatter for their work,
but during the day they simply drink a cup of tea and eat a piece of
bread, or some potatoes, whenever they are hungry.
For men who live in the open air they eat strangely little. Often
when Michael has been out weeding potatoes for eight or nine hours
without food, he comes in and eats a few slices of home-made bread,
and then he is ready to go out with me and wander for hours about
the island.
They use no animal food except a little bacon and salt fish. The old
woman says she would be very ill if she ate fresh meat.
Some years ago, before tea, sugar, and flour had come into general
use, salt fish was much more the staple article of diet than at
present, and, I am told, skin diseases were very common, though they
are now rare on the islands.
No one who has not lived for weeks among these grey clouds and seas
can realise the joy with which the eye rests on the red dresses of
the women, especially when a number of them are to be found
together, as happened early this morning.
I heard that the young cattle were to be shipped for a fair on the
mainland, which is to take place in a few days, and I went down on
the pier, a little after dawn, to watch them.
The bay was shrouded in the greys of coming rain, yet the thinness
of the cloud threw a silvery light on the sea, and an unusual depth
of blue to the mountains of Connemara.
As I was going across the sandhills one dun-sailed hooker glided
slowly out to begin her voyage, and another beat up to the pier.
Troops of red cattle, driven mostly by the women, were coming up
from several directions, forming, with the green of the long tract
of grass that separates the sea from the rocks, a new unity of
colour.
The pier itself was crowded with bullocks and a great number of the
people. I noticed one extraordinary girl in the throng who seemed to
exert an authority on all who came near her. Her curiously-formed
nostrils and narrow chin gave her a witch-like expression, yet the
beauty of her hair and skin made her singularly attractive.
When the empty hooker was made fast its deck was still many feet
below the level of the pier, so the animals were slung down by a
rope from the mast-head, with much struggling and confusion.
