foamed at the mouth and tore each other with their teeth.

After a while there was a pause. The whole slip was covered with amass of
sobbing animals, with here and there a terrified woman crouching among
the bodies and patting some special favourite, to keep it quiet while the
curraghs were being launched. Then the screaming began again while the
pigs were carried out and laid in their places, with a waistcoat tied
round their feet to keep them from damaging the canvas. They seemed to
know where they were going, and looked up at me over the gunnel with an
ignoble desperation that made me shudder to think that I had eaten this
whimpering flesh. When the last curragh went out, I was left on the slip
with a band of women and children, and one old boar who sat looking out
over the sea.

The women were over-excited, and when I tried to talk to them they
crowded round me and began jeering and shrieking at me because I am not
married. A dozen screamed at a time, and so rapidly that I could not
understand all they were saying, yet I was able to make out that they
were taking advantage of the absence of their husbands to give me the
full volume of their contempt. Some little boys who were listening threw
themselves down, writhing with laughter among the sea-weed, and the young
girls grew red and embarrassed and stared down in the surf.' The book is
full of such scenes. Now it is a crowd going by train to the Parnell
celebration, now it is a woman cursing her son who made himself a spy for
the police, now it is an old woman keening at a funeral. Kindred to his
delight in the harsh grey stones, in the hardship of the life there, in
the wind and in the mist, there is always delight in every moment of
excitement, whether it is but the hysterical excitement of the women over
the pigs, or some primary passion. Once indeed, the hidden passion
instead of finding expression by its choice among the passions of others,