poor--you can see that for yourself--and the people have little
else to live on; so that when there is a long family, one son will
stay at home and keep on the farm, and the others will go away
because they must go. Then when they once pass out of the Dingle
station in Tralee they won't hear a word of Irish, or meet anyone
who'd understand it; so what good, I ask you, is a man who hasn't
got the English, and plenty of it?'

After I left him I went on towards Dunquin, and lay for a long time
on the side of a magnificently wild road under Croagh Martin, where
I could see the Blasket Islands and the end of Dunmore Head, the
most westerly point of Europe. It was a grey day, with a curious
silence on the sea and sky and no sign of life anywhere, except the
sail of one curagh--or niavogue, as they are called here--that was
sailing in from the islands. Now and then a cart passed me filled
with old people and children, who saluted me in Irish; then I
turned back myself. I got on a long road running through a bog, with
a smooth mountain on one side and the sea on the other, and Brandon
in front of me, partly covered with clouds. As far as I could see
there were little groups of people on their way to the chapel in
Ballyferriter, the men in homespun and the women wearing blue
cloaks, or, more often, black shawls twisted over their heads. This
procession along the olive bogs, between the mountains and the sea,
on this grey day of autumn, seemed to wring me with the pang of
emotion one meets everywhere in Ireland--an emotion that is partly
local and patriotic, and partly a share of the desolation that is
mixed everywhere with the supreme beauty of the world.

In the evening, when I was walking about the village, I fell in with
a man who could read Gaelic, and was full of enthusiasm for the old