The morning was fine, and seemed to promise one of the peculiarly
hushed, pellucid days that occur sometimes before rain in early
winter. From the first gleam of dawn the sky was covered with white
cloud, and the tranquillity was so complete that every sound seemed
to float away by itself across the silence of the bay. Lines of blue
smoke were going up in spirals over the village, and further off
heavy fragments of rain-cloud were lying on the horizon. We started
early in the day, and, although the sea looked calm from a distance,
we met a considerable roll coming from the south-west when we got
out from the shore.
Near the middle of the sound the man who was rowing in the bow broke
his oar-pin, and the proper management of the canoe became a matter
of some difficulty. We had only a three-oared curagh, and if the sea
had gone much higher we should have run a good deal of danger. Our
progress was so slow that clouds came up with a rise in the wind
before we reached the shore, and rain began to fall in large single
drops. The black curagh working slowly through this world of grey,
and the soft hissing of the rain gave me one of the moods in which
we realise with immense distress the short moment we have left us to
experience all the wonder and beauty of the world.
The approach to the south island is made at a fine sandy beach on
the north-west. This interval in the rocks is of great service to
the people, but the tract of wet sand with a few hideous fishermen's
houses, lately built on it, looks singularly desolate in broken
weather.
The tide was going out when we landed, so we merely stranded the
curagh and went up to the little hotel. The cess-collector was at
work in one of the rooms, and there were a number of men and boys
waiting about, who stared at us while we stood at the door and
talked to the proprietor.
When we had had our drink I went down to the sea with my men, who
were in a hurry to be off. Some time was spent in replacing the
oar-pin, and then they set out, though the wind was still
increasing. A good many fishermen came down to see the start, and
long after the curagh was out of sight I stood and talked with them
in Irish, as I was anxious to compare their language and temperament
with what I knew of the other island.
The language seems to be identical, though some of these men speak
rather more distinctly than any Irish speakers I have yet heard. In
physical type, dress, and general character, however, there seems to
be a considerable difference. The people on this island are more
advanced than their neighbours, and the families here are gradually
forming into different ranks, made up of the well-to-do, the
struggling, and the quite poor and thriftless. These distinctions
are present in the middle island also, but over there they have had
no effect on the people, among whom there is still absolute
equality.
A little later the steamer came in sight and lay to in the offing.
While the curaghs were being put out I noticed in the crowd several
men of the ragged, humorous type that was once thought to represent
the real peasant of Ireland. Rain was now falling heavily, and as we
looked out through the fog there was something nearly appalling in
the shrieks of laughter kept up by one of these individuals, a man
of extraordinary ugliness and wit.
At last he moved off toward the houses, wiping his eyes with the
tail of his coat and moaning to himself 'Ta me marbh,' ('I'm
killed'), till some one stopped him and he began again pouring out a
medley of rude puns and jokes that meant more than they said.
There is quaint humour, and sometimes wild humour, on the middle
island, but never this half-sensual ecstasy of laughter. Perhaps a
man must have a sense of intimate misery, not known there, before he
can set himself to jeer and mock at the world. These strange men
with receding foreheads, high cheekbones, and ungovernable eyes seem
to represent some old type found on these few acres at the extreme
border of Europe, where it is only in wild jests and laughter that
they can express their loneliness and desolation.
The mode of reciting ballads in this island is singularly harsh. I
fell in with a curious man to-day beyond the east village, and we
wandered out on the rocks towards the sea. A wintry shower came on
while we were together, and we crouched down in the bracken, under a
loose wall. When we had gone through the usual topics he asked me if
I was fond of songs, and began singing to show what he could do.
The music was much like what I have heard before on the islands - a
monotonous chant with pauses on the high and low notes to mark the
rhythm; but the harsh nasal tone in which he sang was almost
intolerable. His performance reminded me in general effect of a
chant I once heard from a party of Orientals I was travelling with
in a third-class carriage from Paris to Dieppe, but the islander ran
his voice over a much wider range.
His pronunciation was lost in the rasping of his throat, and, though
he shrieked into my ear to make sure that I understood him above the
howling of the wind, I could only make out that it was an endless
ballad telling the fortune of a young man who went to sea, and had
many adventures.
