the rather childish Gaelic he uses.

He had once a little cur-dog, he said, and he knew nothing of the
dog licence; then one day the peelers--the boys with the little
caps--asked him into the barracks for a cup of tea. He went in
cheerfully, and then they put him and his little dog into the
lock-up till some one paid a shilling for him and got him out.

He has a stick he is proud of, bound with pieces of leather every
few inches--like one I have seen with a beggar in Belmullet. Since
the first night he has not had nightmare again, and he lies most of
the evening sleeping on the settle, and in the morning he goes round
among the houses, getting his share of meal and potatoes.

I do not think a beggar is ever refused in Kerry. Sometimes, while
we are talking or doing something in the kitchen, a man walks in
without saying anything and stands just inside the door, with his
bag on the floor beside him. In five or ten minutes, when the woman
of the house has finished what she is doing, she goes up to him and
asks: 'Is it meal or flour?' 'Flour,' says the man. She goes into
the inner room, opens her sack, and comes back with two handfuls. He
opens his bag and takes out a bundle carefully tied up in a cloth or
handkerchief; he opens this again, and usually there is another
cloth inside, into which the woman puts her flour. Then the cloths
are carefully knotted together by the corners, put back in the bag,
and the man mutters a 'God bless you,' and goes on his way.

The meal, flour and potatoes that are thus gathered up are always
sold by the beggar, and the money is spent on porter or second-hand
clothes, or very occasionally on food when he is in a neighbourhood