common. When I spoke to them in English, they
shook their heads and muttered something I could not hear; but when
I tried Irish they made me long speeches about the weather and the
clearness of the day.

In the evening, as I was coming home, I got a glimpse that seemed to
have the whole character of Corkaguiney--a little line of low
cottages with yellow roofs, and an elder tree without leaves beside
them, standing out against a high mountain that seemed far away, yet
was near enough to be dense and rich and wonderful in its colour.

Then I wandered round the wonderful forts of Fahan. The blueness of
the sea and the hills from Carrantuohill to the Skelligs, the
singular loneliness of the hillside I was on, with a few choughs and
gulls in sight only, had a splendour that was almost a grief in the
mind.

I turned into a little public-house this evening, where Maurice--the
fisherman I have spoken of before--and some of his friends
often sit when it is too wild for fishing. While we were talking a
man came in, and joined rather busily in what was being said, though
I could see he was not belonging to the place. He moved his position
several times till he was quite close to me, then he whispered:
'Will you stand me a medium, mister? I'm hard set for money this
while past.' When he had got his medium he began to give me his
history. He was a journeyman tailor who had been a year or more in
the place, and was beginning to pick up a little Irish to get along
with. When he had gone we had a long talk about the making of canoes
and the difference between those used in Connaught and Munster.

'They have been in this country,' said Maurice, 'for twenty or
twenty-five years only, and before that we had boats; a canoe will
cost twelve pounds, or maybe thirteen pounds, and there is one old
man beyond who charges fifteen pounds. If it is well done a canoe
will stand for eight years, and you can get a new skin on it when
the first one is gone.' I told him I thought canoes had been in
Connemara since the beginning of the world.

'That may well be,' he went on, 'for there was a certain man going
out as a pilot, up and down into Clare, and it was he made them
first in this place. It is a trade few can learn, for it is all done
within the head; you will have to sit down and think it out, and
then make up when it is all ready in your mind.'

I described the fixed thole-pins that are used in Connaught--here
they use two freely moving t