And I wondered why our country
people--who are so kind to one another, and to tramps and beggars, that
they seem to live by the rule of an old woman in a Galway sweet-shop:
'Refuse not any, for one may be the Christ'--speak of a visit of the
tinkers as of frost in spring or blight in harvest. I asked why they
were shunned as other wayfarers are not, and I was told of their strange
customs and of their unbelief.

'They come mostly from the County Mayo,' I am told; 'and, indeed, they
have not much religion; but last year Father Prendergast offered to
marry a man and woman of them for nothing. But after he had them
married, they made him give them a shilling for a lodging.

'The people wouldn't like to let them into their house; for if you would
let one man in, maybe twelve families would follow them and take
possession of the whole place.

'Some of them that do smiths' work are middling decent. They will sit
there with their little pot and melt metal in it, and make things that
belong to a plough; but the most of them have no trade but to be going
to fairs and doing tricks, and having a table for getting money out of
you with games. Indeed the most of them are no better than
pickpockets--"newks" they are called. And they never go to Mass; and, as
to marriage, some used to say they lepped the budget, but it's more
likely they have no marriage at all.

'They never go in lodgings; but they'll tilt up the cart, and put a bit
of guano cloth over it and a little kennel of straw in it. Or if a man
is alone, he'll lay down on the sheltery side of a wall and sleep there.
They are hardy with all the hardships they go through; they are the
hardiest people in the world.

'And they make sport and fun sometimes. I used to see them dancing at
Rathin gate; but no one would dance along with them; it is only among
themselves they would have it. And they sing songs too--"The sweet boy
of Milltown" I heard them singing.

'There was a sweep in Gort joined them. Charlie his name was. He went
into Greely's shop one time, that had set up a little public-house, and
bid him give him five pounds and he'd make his fortune. And he was
afraid to refuse; and gave it to him, and off walked Charlie, and was
never seen there again.

'He died after that in hospital. He slept out one night and the frost
went through his body. There was another of them stole two of old Quin's
geese at Ballylee one night, and sold them to him again next day. After
h