The cord
is a taste thinner where you joined it but as strong as ever it
was.'
A few of the younger men looked doubtful, but the older people, who
have watched the rye turning into oats, seemed to accept the magic
frankly, and did not show any surprise that 'a duine uasal' (a noble
person) should be able to do like the witches.
My intercourse with these people has made me realise that miracles
must abound wherever the new conception of law is not understood. On
these islands alone miracles enough happen every year to equip a
divine emissary Rye is turned into oats, storms are raised to keep
evictors from the shore, cows that are isolated on lonely rocks
bring forth calves, and other things of the same kind are common.
The wonder is a rare expected event, like the thunderstorm or the
rainbow, except that it is a little rarer and a little more
wonderful. Often, when I am walking and get into conversation with
some of the people, and tell them that I have received a paper from
Dublin, they ask me - 'And is there any great wonder in the world at
this time?'
When I had finished my feats of dexterity, I was surprised to find
that none of the islanders, even the youngest and most agile, could
do what I did. As I pulled their limbs about in my effort to teach
them, I felt that the ease and beauty of their movements has made me
think them lighter than they really are. Seen in their curaghs
between these cliffs and the Atlantic, they appear lithe and small,
but if they were dressed as we are and seen in an ordinary room,
many of them would seem heavily and powerfully made.
One man, however, the champion dancer of the island, got up after a
while and displayed the salmon leap - lying flat on his face and then
springing up, horizontally, high in the air - and some other feats of
extraordinary agility, but he is not young and we could not get him
to dance.
In the evening I had to repeat my tricks here in the kitchen, for
the fame of them had spread over the island.
No doubt these feats will be remembered here for generations. The
people have so few images for description that they seize on
anything that is remarkable in their visitors and use it afterwards
in their talk.
For the last few years when they are speaking of any one with fine
rings they say: 'She had beautiful rings on her fingers like
Lady - ,' a visitor to the island.
I have been down sitting on the pier till it was quite dark. I am
only beginning to understand the nights of Inishmaan and the
influence they have had in giving distinction to these men who do
most of their work after nightfall.
I could hear nothing but a few curlews and other wild-fowl whistling
and shrieking in the seaweed, and the low rustling of the waves. It
was one of the dark sultry nights peculiar to September, with no
light anywhere except the phosphorescence of the sea, and an
occasional rift in the clouds that showed the stars behind them.
The sense of solitude was immense. I could not see or realise my own
body, and I seemed to exist merely in my perception of the waves and
of the crying birds, and of the smell of seaweed.
When I tried to come home I lost myself among the sandhills, and the
night seemed to grow unutterably cold and dejected, as I groped
among slimy masses of seaweed and wet crumbling walls.
After a while I heard a movement in the sand, and two grey shadows
appeared beside me. They were two men who were going home from
fishing. I spoke to them and knew their voices, and we went home
together.
In the autumn season the threshing of the rye is one of the many
tasks that fall to the men and boys. The sheaves are collected on a
bare rock, and then each is beaten separately on a couple of stones
placed on end one against the other. The land is so poor that a
field hardly produces more grain than is needed for seed the
following year, so the rye-growing is carried on merely for the
straw, which is used for thatching.
The stooks are carried to and from the threshing fields, piled on
donkeys that one meets everywhere at this season, with their black,
unbridled heads just visible beneath a pinnacle of golden straw.
While the threshing is going on sons and daughters keep turning up
with one thing and another till there is a little crowd on the
rocks, and any one who is passing stops for an hour or two to talk
on his way to the sea, so that, like the kelp-burning in the
summer-time, this work is full of sociability.
When the threshing is over the straw is taken up to the cottages and
piled up in an outhouse, or more often in a corner of the kitchen,
where it brings a new liveliness of colour.
A few days ago when I was visiting a cottage where there are the
most beautiful children on the island, the eldest daughter, a girl
of about fourteen, went and sat down on a heap of straw by the
doorway. A ray of sunlight fell on her and on a portion of the rye,
giving her figure and red dress with the straw under it a curious
relief against the nets and oilskins, and forming a natural picture
of exquisite harmony and colour.
In our own cottage the thatching - it is done every year - has just
been carried out. The rope-twisting was done partly in the lane,
partly in the kitchen when the weather was uncertain.
