four and make a swap with them for brandy." With that he set the
eight plates on the deck and began walking up and down and looking
on them.

'"The devil mend you," says I. "Will you take them up and come on,
if you're coming?"

'"I will," says he, "surely. I'm choicing out the ones that have
pictures on them, for it's that kind they do set store on?"'

Afterwards we began talking of boats that had been upset during the
winter, and lives that had been lost in the neighbourhood.

'A while since,' said the local man, 'there were three men out in a
canoe, and the sea rose on them. They tried to come in under the
cliff but they couldn't come to land with the greatness of the waves
that were breaking. There were two young men in the canoe, and
another man was sixty, or near it. When the young men saw they
couldn't bring in the canoe, they said they'd make a jump for the
rocks, and let her go without them, if she must go. Then they pulled
in on the next wave, and when they were close in the two young men
jumped on to a rock, but the old man was too stiff, and he was
washed back again in the canoe. It came on dark after that, and all
thought he was drowned, and they held his wake in Dunquin. At that
time there used to be a steamer going in and out trading in Valentia
and Dingle and Cahirciveen, and when she came into Dingle, two or
three days after, there was my man on board her, as hearty as a
salmon. When he was washed back he got one of the oars, and kept her
head to the wind; then the tide took him one bit and the wind took
him another, and he wrought and he wrought till he was safe beyond
in Valentia. Wasn't that a great wonder?' Then as he was ending his
story we ran down into Dingle.

Often, when one comes back to a place that one's memory and
imagination have been busy with, there is a feeling of smallness and
disappointment, and it is a day or two before one can renew all
one's enjoyment. This morning, however, when I went up the gap
between Croagh Martin and then back to Slea Head, and saw
Inishtooskert and Inishvickillaun and the Great Blasket Island
itself, they seemed ten times more grey and wild and magnificent
than anything I had kept in my memory. The cold sea and surf, and
the feeling of winter in the clouds, and the blackness of the rocks,
and the red fern everywhere, were a continual surprise and
excitement.

Here and there on my way I met old men with tail-coats of frieze,
that are becoming so un