In Wicklow and West Kerry by J. M. (John Millington) Synge
page 72 of 103 (69%)
page 72 of 103 (69%)
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up covering the Stones. Then he gave two leps or three, and the
peelers heard him give a great shriek down in the flood. They went home after--what could they do?--and the 'mergency man was found in the sea stuck in a net.' I was singularly pleased when I turned up the boreen at last to this cottage where I lodge, an looked down through a narrow gully to Dingle Bay. The people bade me welcome when came in, the old woman kissing my hand. There is no village near this cottage, yet many farms are scattered on the hills near it; and as the people are in some ways a leading family, many men and women look in to talk or tell stories, or to buy a few pennyworth of sugar or starch. Although the main road passes a few hundred yards to the west, this cottage is well known also to the race of local tramps who move from one family to another in some special neighbourhood or barony. This evening, when I came in, a little old man in a tall hat and long brown coat was sitting up on the settle beside the fire, and intending to spend, one could see, a night or more in the place. I had a great deal to tell the people at first of my travels in different parts of the county, to the Blasket Islands--which they can see from here--Corkaguiney and Tralee; and they had news to tell me also of people who have married or died since I was here before, or gone away, or come back from America. Then I was told that the old man, Dermot (or Darby, as he is called in English), was the finest story-teller in Iveragh; and after a while he told us a long story in Irish, but spoke so rapidly and indistinctly--he had no teeth--that I could understand but few passages. When he had |
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