With his finger and explain
gib, topsail, and bowsprit, which were for me the most intelligible
features of the poem. Again, when the scene changed to Dublin,
'glass of whiskey,' 'public-house,' and such things were in English.
When the shower was over he showed me a curious cave hidden among
the cliffs, a short distance from the sea. On our way back he asked
me the three questions I am met with on every side - whether I am a
rich man, whether I am married, and whether I have ever seen a
poorer place than these islands.
When he heard that I was not married he urged me to come back in the
summer so that he might take me over in a curagh to the Spa in
County Glare, where there is 'spree mor agus go leor ladies' ('a big
spree and plenty of ladies').
Something about the man repelled me while I was with him, and though
I was cordial and liberal he seemed to feel that I abhorred him. We
arranged to meet again in the evening, but when I dragged myself
with an inexplicable loathing to the place of meeting, there was no
trace of him.
It is characteristic that this man, who is probably a drunkard and
shebeener and certainly in penury, refused the chance of a shilling
because he felt that I did not like him. He had a curiously mixed
expression of hardness and melancholy. Probably his character has
given him a bad reputation on the island, and he lives here with the
restlessness of a man who has no sympathy with his companions.
I have come over again to Inishmaan, and this time I had fine
weather for my passage. The air was full of luminous sunshine from
the early morning, and it was almost a summer's day when I set sail
at noon with Michael and two other men who had come over for me in a
curagh.
The wind was in our favour, so the sail was put up and Michael sat
in the stem to steer with an oar while I rowed with the others.
We had had a good dinner and drink and were wrought up by this
sudden revival of summer to a dreamy voluptuous gaiety, that made us
shout with exultation to hear our voices passing out across the blue
twinkling of the sea.
Even after the people of the south island, these men of Inishmaan
seemed to be moved by strange archaic sympathies with the world.
Their mood accorded itself with wonderful fineness to the
suggestions of the day, and their ancient Gaelic seemed so full of
divine simplicity that I would have liked to turn the prow to the
west and row with them for ever.
I told them I was going back to Paris in a few days to sell my books
and my bed, and that then I was coming back to grow as strong and
simple as they were among the islands of the west.
When our excitement sobered down, Michael told me that one of the
priests had left his gun at our cottage and given me leave to use it
till he returned to the island. There was another gun and a ferret
in the house also, and he said that as soon as we got home he was
going to take me out fowling on rabbits.
A little later in the day we set off, and I nearly laughed to see
Michael's eagerness that I should turn out a good shot.
We put the ferret down in a crevice between two bare sheets of rock,
and waited. In a few minutes we heard rushing paws underneath us,
then a rabbit shot up straight into the air from the crevice at our
feet and set off for a wall that was a few feet away. I threw up the
gun and fired.
'Buail tu e,' screamed Michael at my elbow as he ran up the rock. I
had killed it.
We shot seven or eight more in the next hour, and Michael was
immensely pleased. If I had done badly I think I should have had to
leave the islands. The people would have despised me. A 'duine
uasal' who cannot shoot seems to these descendants of hunters a
fallen type who is worse than an apostate.
The women of this island are before conventionality, and share some
of the liberal features that are thought peculiar to the women of
Paris and New York.
Many of them are too contented and too sturdy to have more than a
decorative interest, but there are others full of curious
individuality.
This year I have got to know a wonderfully humorous girl, who has
been spinning in the kitchen for the last few days with the old
woman's spinning-wheel. The morning she began I heard her exquisite
intonation almost before I awoke, brooding and cooing over every
syllable she uttered.
I have heard something similar in the voices of German and Polish
women, but I do not think men - at least European men - who are always
further than women from the simple, animal emotions, or any speakers
who use languages with weak gutturals, like French or English, can
produce this inarticulate chant in their ordinary talk.
She plays continual tricks with her Gaelic in the way girls are fond
of, piling up diminutives and repeating adjectives with a humorous
scorn of syntax. While she is here the talk never stops in the
kitchen. To-day she has been asking me many questions about Germany,
for it seems one of her sisters married a German husband in America
some years ago, who kept her in great comfort, with a fine 'capull
glas' ('grey horse') to ride on, and this girl has decided to escape
in the same way from the drudgery of the island.
