When we reached the light I saw that his head was rolled up in an
extraordinary collection of mufflers to keep him from the cold, and
that his face was much older than when I saw him before, though
still full of intelligence.
He began to tell how he had gone to see a relative of mine in Dublin
when he first left the island as a cabin-boy, between forty and
fifty years ago.
He told his story with the usual detail: -
We saw a man walking about on the quay in Dublin, and looking at us
without saying a word. Then he came down to the yacht. 'Are you the
men from Aran?' said he.
'We are,' said we.
'You're to come with me so,' said he. 'Why?' said we.
Then he told us it was Mr. Synge had sent him and we went with him.
Mr. Synge brought us into his kitchen and gave the men a glass of
whisky all round, and a half-glass to me because I was a boy - though
at that time and to this day I can drink as much as two men and not
be the worse of it. We were some time in the kitchen, then one of
the men said we should be going. I said it would not be right to go
without saying a word to Mr. Synge. Then the servant-girl went up
and brought him down, and he gave us another glass of whisky, and he
gave me a book in Irish because I was going to sea, and I was able
to read in the Irish.
I owe it to Mr. Synge and that book that when I came back here,
after not hearing a word of Irish for thirty years, I had as good
Irish, or maybe better Irish, than any person on the island.
I could see all through his talk that the sense of superiority which
his scholarship in this little-known language gave him above the
ordinary seaman, had influenced his whole personality and been the
central interest of his life.
On one voyage he had a fellow-sailor who often boasted that he had
been at school and learned Greek, and this incident took place: -
One night we had a quarrel, and I asked him could he read a Greek
book with all his talk of it.
'I can so,' said he.
'We'll see that,' said I.
Then I got the Irish book out of my chest, and I gave it into his
hand.
'Read that to me,' said I, 'if you know Greek.'
He took it, and he looked at it this way, and that way, and not a
bit of him could make it out.
'Bedad, I've forgotten my Greek,' said he.
'You're telling a lie,' said I. 'I'm not,' said he; 'it's the divil
a bit I can read it.'
Then I took the book back into my hand, and said to him - 'It's the
sorra a word of Greek you ever knew in your life, for there's not a
word of Greek in that book, and not a bit of you knew.'
He told me another story of the only time he had heard Irish spoken
during his voyages: -
One night I was in New York, walking in the streets with some other
men, and we came upon two women quarrelling in Irish at the door of
a public-house.
'What's that jargon?' said one of the men.
'It's no jargon,' said I.
'What is it?' said he.
'It's Irish,' said I.
Then I went up to them, and you know, sir, there is no language like
the Irish for soothing and quieting. The moment I spoke to them they
stopped scratching and swearing and stood there as quiet as two
lambs.
Then they asked me in Irish if I wouldn't come in and have a drink,
and I said I couldn't leave my mates.
'Bring them too,' said they.
Then we all had a drop together.
While we were talking another man had slipped in and sat down in the
corner with his pipe, and the rain had become so heavy we could
hardly hear our voices over the noise on the iron roof.
The old man went on telling of his experiences at sea and the places
he had been to.
'If I had my life to live over again,' he said, 'there's no other
way I'd spend it. I went in and out everywhere and saw everything. I
was never afraid to take my glass, though I was never drunk in my
life, and I was a great player of cards though I never played for
money'
'There's no diversion at all in cards if you don't play for money'
said the man in the corner.
'There was no use in my playing for money' said the old man, 'for
I'd always lose, and what's the use in playing if you always lose?'
Then our conversation branched off to the Irish language and the
books written in it.
He began to criticise Archbishop MacHale's version of Moore's Irish
Melodies with great severity and acuteness, citing whole poems both
in the English and Irish, and then giving versions that he had made
himself.
'A translation is no translation,' he said, 'unless it will give you
the music of a poem along with the words of it. In my translation
you won't find a foot or a syllable that's not in the English, yet
I've put down all his words mean, and nothing but it.
