oes, which enables them to exist in
greater luxury and with less trouble. Their way is to plant the
potatoes, dig them as required, and live on them either with the aid
of a cow or with the butter-milk of a neighbour who has a cow. No
provision for the future is attempted, because the relatives are sure
to provide for the worn-out and sickly. That shows their
goodheartedness, but it does away with self-dependence. There are some
things so deeply ingrained in the Irish character that nothing and
nobody can touch them. The very priests themselves cannot move them.
Although these people believe that the priests could set them on fire
from head to heel, or strike them paralytic, or refuse them entrance
into heaven, yet the force of habit is so great, and the dread of
public opinion is so powerful, that the people, so long as they remain
in Ireland, will never depart a hair's-breadth from the old ways."

A woman who washed and tidied her children would be a mark for every
bitter tongue in the parish. A striking case came under my own
observation. A woman of the place was speaking most bitterly of
another, and she finished up with,--

"She's the lady all out, niver fear. Shure, she washes and dhresses
the childer ivery mornin', and turns out the girls wid hats on their
heads an' shoes on their feet. Divil a less would sarve her turn! She
has a brick flure to her house, an' she washes it--divil a lie I tell
ye--she washes it--wid wather--an' wid soap an' wather, ivery
Sattherday in the week! The saints betune us an' harm, but all she
wants now is to turn Protestant altogether!"

Four miles away is the village of Carnaun, and there I met Philip
Fahy, with his son Michael, and another young fellow, all three
returning from field work, wearily toiling along the rocky road which
runs through the estate of Major Lobdell. The party stopped and sat
down to smoke with me. The senior took the lead, not with a brogue but
with an accent, translating from the Irish vernacular as he went on.
"Long ye may live! We're glad we met ye, thanks be to God. Yer
honner's glory is the foinest, splindidist man I seen this twinty
year. May God protect ye! 'Tis weary work we does. That foine, big boy
ye see foreninst ye, has eighteenpence a day, nine shillin' a week.
'Tis not enough to support him properly. I have a son in England, the
cliverist lad ye seen this many a day. Sich a scholar, 'twould be no
discredit to have the Queen for his aunt, no i