A Little Later When I Went Down To The Kitchen I Found Two Men From
Inishmaan Who Had Been Benighted On The Island.
They seemed a
simpler and perhaps a more interesting type than the people here,
and talked with careful English about the history of the Duns, and
the Book of Ballymote, and the Book of Kells, and other ancient
MSS., with the names of which they seemed familiar.
In spite of the charm of my teacher, the old blind man I met the day
of my arrival, I have decided to move on to Inishmaan, where Gaelic
is more generally used, and the life is perhaps the most primitive
that is left in Europe.
I spent all this last day with my blind guide, looking at the
antiquities that abound in the west or north-west of the island.
As we set out I noticed among the groups of girls who smiled at our
fellowship - old Mourteen says we are like the cuckoo with its
pipit - a beautiful oval face with the singularly spiritual
expression that is so marked in one type of the West Ireland women.
Later in the day, as the old man talked continually of the fairies
and the women they have taken, it seemed that there was a possible
link between the wild mythology that is accepted on the islands and
the strange beauty of the women.
At midday we rested near the ruins of a house, and two beautiful
boys came up and sat near us.
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