All The Evening Afterwards The Old Woman Sat On Her Stool At The
Corner Of The Fire With Her Shawl Over Her Head, Keening Piteously
To Herself.
America appeared far away, yet she seems to have felt
that, after all, it was only the other edge
Of the Atlantic, and now
when she hears them talking of railroads and inland cities where
there is no sea, things she cannot understand, it comes home to her
that her son is gone for ever. She often tells me how she used to
sit on the wall behind the house last year and watch the hooker he
worked in coming out of Kilronan and beating up the sound, and what
company it used to be to her the time they'd all be out.
The maternal feeling is so powerful on these islands that it gives a
life of torment to the women. Their sons grow up to be banished as
soon as they are of age, or to live here in continual danger on the
sea; their daughters go away also, or are worn out in their youth
with bearing children that grow up to harass them in their own turn
a little later.
There has been a storm for the last twenty-four hours, and I have
been wandering on the cliffs till my hair is stiff with salt.
Immense masses of spray were flying up from the base of the cliff,
and were caught at times by the wind and whirled away to fall at
some distance from the shore.
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