s. They are "going to" utilise the enormous
water-power of the River Erne, which runs to waste from Lough Erne to
the sea. They are "going to" run a few tweed and blanket factories
when they see their way quite clearly. They are "going to" start a
fishery fleet and a number of fish-curing sheds, to give employment to
the poor folks of the district. They need almost everything that man
_can_ need, and they have especial facilities for supplying needs, but
as yet they have lacked time and opportunity. The town is only a
thousand years old, and its inhabitants have not yet had time to look
about them. A number of English anglers stroll about with long salmon
rods, or float their little barks on the broad bosom of the Erne, the
population looking dreamily on from the long bridge over the river,
which, like the Shannon at Athlone, flows through the heart of the
town. Nobody seems to be doing anything, except a few old beggar woman
squalid and frowsy as the mendicant hordes of Tuam, Tipperary,
Limerick, and Galway. The beggars are pertinacious enough for
anything, but theirs is the only enterprise the stranger sees.
Compared with that of Donegal the salmon-fishing seems expensive. The
landlord of the Arran Hotel in that town offers the Eske at
half-a-crown a day, but in Ballyshannon you must pay four pounds a
week and give up all the take except two. Salmon are scarce all over
Ireland this year. Three English fishers on the Erne shared the
universal bad luck, for in three days they had only captured one
five-pounder. The unusual drought has made the water low. The weather
of the past five months has been finer and dryer than any season for
sixty years. Ballyshannon looks dirty and dingy in any weather. It
lacks the smartness, the cleanliness, the width of thoroughfare, which
mark the heretic towns. It lacks the factories, the large shops, the
shipping which would infallibly be to the fore if its inhabitants were
mainly of Teuton origin. On the other hand, the Ballyshannon folks are
religious. They go to mass regularly, and confess themselves at
frequent intervals. The confessional box is their only place to spend
a happy day, and the act of confession, with the following penance,
their pleasantest mode of passing away the time. They are mostly Home
Rulers, and are deferring special effort to better themselves until
the Irish Parliament does away with the necessity. That blessed
institution once fairly settled at College Green