ning his brother in Glasgow....

"What does your brother do, Jamesey?" Marsh asked.

"He's a barman."

"A barman!" they repeated, a little blankly.

"Aye. That's what I'm goin' to be ... in the same place as him!"

They did not speak for a while. It seemed to both of them to be
incredible that any one could wish to exchange the loveliness of the
Antrim country for a Glasgow bar....

"What hours does your brother work?" Marsh asked drily.

"He works from eight in the mornin' till eight at night, an' it's later
on Saturdays, but he has a half-day a week til himself, an' he has all
day Sunday. They don't drink on Sunday in Glasgow!"

Marsh smiled. "Don't they?" he said.

"It's long hours," Jamesey admitted, "but he has great diversion. D'ye
know this, Mr. Marsh!" he continued, rolling over on his side and
speaking more quickly, "he can go to a music-hall twice on the one night
an' hear all the latest songs for tuppence. That's all it costs him. He
goes to the gallery an' he hears gran', an' he can go to two music-halls
in the one night ... _in the one night_, mind you ... for fourpence!
Where would you bate that? You never get no diversion of that sort in
this place ... only an oul' magic-lantern an odd time, or the Band of
Hope singin' songs about teetotallers!..."

That was the principal burden of Jamesey's complaint, that there was no
diversion in Ballymartin. "If you were to go up the street now," he
said, "you'd see the fellas stan'in' at the corner, houl'in' up the
wall, an' wonderin' what the hell to do with themselves, an' never
gettin' no answer!..."

"You never hear noan of the latest songs here," he complained again. "I
got a quare cut from my brother once, me singin' a song that I thought
was new, an' he toul' me it was as oul' as the hills. It was more nor a
year oul', anyway!..."

4

They came away from the hill in a mood of depression. It seemed to Henry
that the Gaelic Movement could never take root in that soil. What was
the good of asking Jamesey McKeown to sing Gaelic songs and till the
land when his heart was hungering for the tuppeny excitements of a
Glasgow music-hall? What would Jamesey McKeown make of Galway's
translations? Would

O woman of the gleaming hair
(Wild hair that won men's gaze to thee),
Weary thou turnest from the common stare,
For the Shuiler Christ is calling thee.

bind him to the nurture of the earth when

What ho! she bumps

called him to G