e race, and we're anxious to
preserve the race, otherwise there will be no religion, or a different
religion in Ireland."

"That is not certain."

Later on I asked him if the people still believed in fairies. He said
that traces of such beliefs survived among the mountain folk.

"There is a great deal of Paganism in the language they wish to revive,
though it may be as free from Protestantism as Father O'Hara says it
is."

For some reason or other I could see that folk-lore was distasteful to
him, and he mentioned causally that he had put a stop to the telling of
fairy-tales round the fire in the evening, and the conversation came to
a pause.

"Now I won't detain you much longer, Father Madden. My horse and car
are waiting for me. You will think over the establishment of looms. You
don't want the country to disappear."

"No, I don't! And though I do not think the establishment of work-rooms
an unmixed blessing I will help you. You must not believe all Father
O'Hara says."

The horse began to trot, and I to think. He had said that the idealism
of the Irish peasant goes into other things than sex.

"If this be true, the peasant is doomed," I said to myself, and I
remembered that Father Madden would not admit that religion is
dependent on life, and I pondered. In this country religion is hunting
life to the death. In other countries religion has managed to come to
terms with Life. In the South men and women indulge their flesh and
turn the key on religious inquiry; in the North men and women find
sufficient interest in the interpretation of the Bible and the founding
of new religious sects. One can have faith or morals, both together
seem impossible. Remembering how the priest had chased the lovers, I
turned to the driver and asked if there was no courting in the country.

"There used to be courting," he said, "but now it is not the custom of
the country any longer."

"How do you make up your marriages?"

"The marriages are made by the parents, and I've often seen it that the
young couple did not see each other until the evening before the
wedding--sometimes not until the very morning of the wedding. Many a
marriage I've seen broken off for a half a sovereign--well," he said,
"if not for half a sovereign, for a sovereign. One party will give
forty-nine pounds and the other party wants fifty, and they haggle over
that pound, and then the boy's father will say, "Well, if you won't
give the pound you can keep t