worked at themselves, to the great amusement of the girls, till they
had accomplished them all. On our way back to the village the young
girls ran wild in the twilight, flying and shrieking over the grass,
or rushing up behind the young men and throwing them over, if they
were able, by a sudden jerk or trip. The men in return caught them
by one hand, and spun them round and round four or five times, and
then let them go, when they whirled down the grassy slope for many
yards, spinning like peg-tops, and only keeping their feet by the
greatest efforts or good-luck.

When we got to the village the people scattered for supper, and in
our cottage the little hostess swept the floor and sprinkled it with
some sand she had brought home in her apron. Then she filled a crock
with drinking water, lit the lamp and sat down by the fire to comb
her hair. Some time afterwards, when a number of young men had come
in, as was usual, to spend the evening, some one said a niavogue was
on its way home from the sports. We went out to the door, but it was
too dark to see anything except the lights of a little steamer that
was passing up the sound, almost beneath us, on its way to Limerick
or Tralee. When it had gone by we could hear a furious drunken
uproar coming up from a canoe that was somewhere out in the bay. It
sounded as if the men were strangling or murdering each other, and
it seemed almost miraculous that they should be able to manage their
canoe. The people seemed to think they were in no special danger,
and we went in again to the fire and talked about porter and whisky
(I have never heard the men here talk for half an hour of anything
without some allusion to drink), discussing how much a man could
drink with comfort in a day, whether it is better to drink when a
man is thirsty or at ordinary times, and what food gives the best
liking for porter. Then they asked me how much porter I could drink