on his way. A quarter of a mile
further on I threw it over the ditch in a desolate place, where no
one was likely to find it.

In addition to the more genuine vagrants a number of wandering men
and women are to be met with in the northern parts of the county,
who walk out for ferns and flowers in bands of from four or five to
a dozen. They usually set out in the evening, and sleep in some
ditch or shed, coming home the next night with what they have
gathered. If their sales are successful, both men and women drink
heavily; so that they are always on the edge of starvation, and are
miserably dressed, the women sometimes wearing nothing but an old
petticoat and shawl--a scantiness of clothing that is sometimes met
with also among the road-women of Kerry.

These people are nearly always at war with the police, and are often
harshly treated. Once after a holiday, as I was walking home through
a village on the border of Wicklow, I came upon several policemen,
with a crowd round them, trying to force a drunken flower-woman out
of the village. She did not wish to go, and threw herself down,
raging and kicking on the ground. They let her lie there for a few
moments, and then she propped herself up against the wall, scolding
and storming at every one, till she became so outrageous the police
renewed their attack. One of them walked up to her and hit her a
sharp blow on the jaw with the back of his hand. Then two more of
them seized her by the shoulders and forced her along the road for a
few yards, till her clothes began to tear off with the violence of
the struggle, and they let her go once more.

She sprang up at once when they did so. 'Let this be the barrack's
yard, if you wish it,' she cried out, tearing off the rags that
still clung about her. 'Let this be the barrack's yard, and come on
now, the lot of you.'

Then she rushed at them with extraordinary fury; but the police, to
avoid scandal, withdrew into the town, and left her to be quieted by
her friends.

Sometimes, it is fair to add, the police are generous and
good-humoured. One evening, many years ago, when Whit-Monday in
Enniskerry was a very different thing from what it is now, I was
looking out of a window in that village, watching the police, who
had been brought in for the occasion, getting ready to start for
Bray. As they were standing about, a young ballad-singer came along
from the Dargle, and one of the policemen, who seemed to know him,
asked him wh