Whenever
the cloud lifted I could see the edge of the sea below me on the
right, and the naked ridge of the island above me on the other side.
Occasionally I passed a lonely chapel or schoolhouse, or a line of
stone pillars with crosses above them and inscriptions asking a
prayer for the soul of the person they commemorated.
I met few people; but here and there a band of tall girls passed me
on their way to Kilronan, and called out to me with humorous wonder,
speaking English with a slight foreign intonation that differed a
good deal from the brogue of Galway. The rain and cold seemed to
have no influence on their vitality and as they hurried past me with
eager laughter and great talking in Gaelic, they left the wet masses
of rock more desolate than before.
A little after midday when I was coming back one old half-blind man
spoke to me in Gaelic, but, in general, I was surprised at the
abundance and fluency of the foreign tongue.
In the afternoon the rain continued, so I sat here in the inn
looking out through the mist at a few men who were unlading hookers
that had come in with turf from Connemara, and at the long-legged
pigs that were playing in the surf. As the fishermen came in and out
of the public-house underneath my room, I could hear through the
broken panes that a number of them still used the Gaelic, though it
seems to be falling out of use among the younger people of this
village.
The old woman of the house had promised to get me a teacher of the
language, and after a while I heard a shuffling on the stairs, and
the old dark man I had spoken to in the morning groped his way into
the room.
I brought him over to the fire, and we talked for many hours. He
told me that he had known Petrie and Sir William Wilde, and many
living antiquarians, and had taught Irish to Dr. Finck and Dr.
Pedersen, and given stories to Mr. Curtin of America. A little after
middle age he had fallen over a cliff, and since then he had had
little eyesight, and a trembling of his hands and head.
As we talked he sat huddled together over the fire, shaking and
blind, yet his face was indescribably pliant, lighting up with an
ecstasy of humour when he told me anything that had a point of wit
or malice, and growing sombre and desolate again when he spoke of
religion or the fairies.
He had great confidence in his own powers and talent, and in the
superiority of his stories over all other stories in the world.
