them. The little hostess sat at the fire while they danced, plucking
and drawing a cormorant for the men's dinner, and calling out to the
girls when they lost the step of the dance.

In the evenings of Sundays and holidays the young men and girls go
out to a rocky headland on the north-west, where there is a long,
grassy slope, to dance and amuse themselves; and this evening I
wandered out there with two men, telling them ghost stories in Irish
as we went. When we turned over the edge of the hill we came on a
number of young men lying on the short grass playing cards. We sat
down near them, and before long a party of girls and young women
came up also and sat down, twenty paces off on the brink of the
cliff some of them wearing the fawn-coloured shawls that are so
attractive and so much thought of in the south. It was just after
sunset, and Inishtooskert was standing out with a smoky blue outline
against the redness of the sky. At the foot of the cliff a wonderful
silvery light was shining on the sea, which already, before the
beginning of autumn, was eager and wintry and cold. The little group
of blue-coated men lying on the grass, and the group of girls
further off had a singular effect in this solitude of rocks and sea;
and in spite of their high spirits it gave me a sort of grief to
feel the utter loneliness and desolation of the place that has given
these people their finest qualities.

One of the young men had been thrown from a car a few days before on
his way home from Dingle, and his face was still raw and bleeding
and horrible to look at; but the young girls seemed to find romance
in his condition, and several of them went over and sat in a group
round him, stroking his arms and face. When the card-playing was
over I showed the young men a few tricks and feats, which they