Yesterday I went into a cottage where the woman was at work and very
carelessly dressed. She waited for a while till I got into
conversation with her husband, and then she slipped into the corner
and put on a clean petticoat and a bright shawl round her neck. Then
she came back and took her place at the fire.
This evening I was in another cottage till very late talking to the
people. When the little boy - the only child of the house - got
sleepy, the old grandmother took him on her lap and began singing to
him. As soon as he was drowsy she worked his clothes off him by
degrees, scratching him softly with her nails as she did so all over
his body. Then she washed his feet with a little water out of a pot
and put him into his bed.
When I was going home the wind was driving the sand into my face so
that I could hardly find my way. I had to hold my hat over my mouth
and nose, and my hand over my eyes while I groped along, with my
feet feeling for rocks and holes in the sand.
I have been sitting all the morning with an old man who was making
sugawn ropes for his house, and telling me stories while he worked.
He was a pilot when he was young, and we had great talk at first
about Germans, and Italians, and Russians, and the ways of seaport
towns. Then he came round to talk of the middle island, and he told
me this story which shows the curious jealousy that is between the
islands: -
Long ago we used all to be pagans, and the saints used to be coming
to teach us about God and the creation of the world. The people on
the middle island were the last to keep a hold on the
fire-worshipping, or whatever it was they had in those days, but in
the long run a saint got in among them and they began listening to
him, though they would often say in the evening they believed, and
then say the morning after that they did not believe. In the end the
saint gained them over and they began building a church, and the
saint had tools that were in use with them for working with the
stones. When the church was halfway up the people held a kind of
meeting one night among themselves, when the saint was asleep in his
bed, to see if they did really believe and no mistake in it.
