with. When he had gone we had a long talk about the making of canoes
and the difference between those used in Connaught and Munster.

'They have been in this country,' said Maurice, 'for twenty or
twenty-five years only, and before that we had boats; a canoe will
cost twelve pounds, or maybe thirteen pounds, and there is one old
man beyond who charges fifteen pounds. If it is well done a canoe
will stand for eight years, and you can get a new skin on it when
the first one is gone.' I told him I thought canoes had been in
Connemara since the beginning of the world.

'That may well be,' he went on, 'for there was a certain man going
out as a pilot, up and down into Clare, and it was he made them
first in this place. It is a trade few can learn, for it is all done
within the head; you will have to sit down and think it out, and
then make up when it is all ready in your mind.'

I described the fixed thole-pins that are used in Connaught--here
they use two freely moving thole-pins, with the oar loose between
them, and they jeered at the simplicity of the Connaught system.
Then we got on the relative value of canoes and boats.

'They are not better than boats,' said Maurice, 'but they are more
useful. Before you get a heavy boat swimming you will be wet up to
your waist, and then you will be sitting the whole night like that;
but a canoe will swim in a handful of water, so that you can get in
dry and warm the whole night. Then there will be seven men in a big
boat and seven shares of the fish; but in a canoe there will be
three men only and three shares of the fish, though the nets are the
same in the two.'