him in
the end.'

And a woman whose house they have often made their camp near, says:
'They are bad, and we don't like them to be coming near us. There was a
little lad of them came running to the door one night, and he called to
us to come; for there was a man killing his mother. But we drove him
away and didn't go; for we knew her to be a bad woman.' And another
woman says: 'If they have a religion, it's a wandering one; wandering
like themselves.'

And a farmer living by the roadside says: 'A bad class they are, indeed,
sleeping out under a little bit of cloth, and hardy for all that. Wild
beasts they are, stealing turf from the banks.'

But an old man from Slieve Echtge takes a more kindly view of them.
'There are very nice men among them,' he says; 'and they are as hardy as
goats or as Connemara sheep. They go about to fairs and deal in asses
and in horses, and sometimes they are rich. There was one I knew, a
sieve-maker--they are of the same class--and that married a tinker's
daughter; they were in here two or three times. I told him I wondered
they wouldn't settle down in one place; for if I knew the way to make
money, I said, I'd make plenty--for they are said to coin money. But he
said it made no difference if they had money; they couldn't stop in one
place; they must be walking always and going through the whole country.'

And then we got to the reason of their wandering.

'It was a tinker put St. Patrick astray one time. For he was a slave in
Ireland after he was brought out of France, and it would take a hundred
pounds to buy his freedom. And he found a lump of gold or of silver in
a field one day, where he was minding sheep; and he brought it to a
tinker and asked the value of it. "It's nothing at all but a bit of
solder," says the tinker. "Give it here to me." But St. Patrick brought
it to a smith then, and he told him the value of it. And then St.
Patrick put a curse on the tinkers that they might be for ever with
every man's face against them, and their face against every man; and
that they should get no rest for ever but to travel the world.

'And there are some say that when our Lord was on the cross there could
be no tradesman found to drive the nails in His hands and His feet till
a tinker was brought, and he did it; and that is why they have to walk
the world; and I never met anyone that had seen a tinker's funeral.

'But they may believe some things. For there was a woman of them told me
o