The day was unbearably sultry, and the sand and the sea
near us were crowded with half-naked women, but neither of the young
men seemed to be aware of their presence. Before we went back to the
town a man came out to ring a young horse on the sand close to where
we were lying, and then the interest of my companions was intense.
Late in the evening I met Michael again, and we wandered round the
bay, which was still filled with bathing women, until it was quite
dark, I shall not see him again before my return from the islands,
as he is busy to-morrow, and on Tuesday I go out with the steamer.
I returned to the middle island this morning, in the steamer to
Kilronan, and on here in a curagh that had gone over with salt fish.
As I came up from the slip the doorways in the village filled with
women and children, and several came down on the roadway to shake
hands and bid me a thousand welcomes.
Old Pat Dirane is dead, and several of my friends have gone to
America; that is all the news they have to give me after an absence
of many months.
When I arrived at the cottage I was welcomed by the old people, and
great excitement was made by some little presents I had bought
them - a pair of folding scissors for the old woman, a strop for her
husband, and some other trifles.
Then the youngest son, Columb, who is still at home, went into the
inner room and brought out the alarm clock I sent them last year
when I went away.
'I am very fond of this clock,' he said, patting it on the back; 'it
will ring for me any morning when I want to go out fishing. Bedad,
there are no two clocks in the island that would be equal to it.'
I had some photographs to show them that I took here last year, and
while I was sitting on a little stool near the door of the kitchen,
showing them to the family, a beautiful young woman I had spoken to
a few times last year slipped in, and after a wonderfully simple and
cordial speech of welcome, she sat down on the floor beside me to
look on also.
The complete absence of shyness or self-consciousness in most of
these people gives them a peculiar charm, and when this young and
beautiful woman leaned across my knees to look nearer at some
photograph that pleased her, I felt more than ever the strange
simplicity of the island life.
Last year when I came here everything was new, and the people were a
little strange with me, but now I am familiar with them and their
way of life, so that their qualities strike me more forcibly than
before.
When my photographs of this island had been examined with immense
delight, and every person in them had been identified - even those
who only showed a hand or a leg - I brought out some I had taken in
County Wicklow. Most of them were fragments, showing fairs in
Rathdrum or Aughrim, men cutting turf on the hills, or other scenes
of inland life, yet they gave the greatest delight to these people
who are wearied of the sea.
This year I see a darker side of life in the islands. The sun seldom
shines, and day after day a cold south-western wind blows over the
cliffs, bringing up showers of hail and dense masses of cloud.
The sons who are at home stay out fishing whenever it is tolerably
calm, from about three in the morning till after nightfall, yet they
earn little, as fish are not plentiful.
The old man fishes also with a long rod and ground-bait, but as a
rule has even smaller success.
When the weather breaks completely, fishing is abandoned, and they
both go down and dig potatoes in the rain. The women sometimes help
them, but their usual work is to look after the calves and do their
spinning in the house.
There is a vague depression over the family this year, because of
the two sons who have gone away, Michael to the mainland, and
another son, who was working in Kilronan last year, to the United
States.
A letter came yesterday from Michael to his mother. It was written
in English, as he is the only one of the family who can read or
write in Irish, and I heard it being slowly spelled out and
translated as I sat in my room. A little later the old woman brought
it in for me to read.
He told her first about his work, and the wages he is getting. Then
he said that one night he had been walking in the town, and had
looked up among the streets, and thought to himself what a grand
night it would be on the Sandy Head of this island - not, he added,
that he was feeling lonely or sad. At the end he gave an account,
with the dramatic emphasis of the folk-tale, of how he had met me on
the Sunday morning, and, 'believe me,' he said, 'it was the fine
talk we had for two hours or three.' He told them also of a knife I
had given him that was so fine, no one on the island 'had ever seen
the like of her.'
Another day a letter came from the son who is in America, to say
that he had had a slight accident to one of his arms, but was well
again, and that he was leaving New York and going a few hundred
miles up the country.
