cover family
vaults, trip you up at every step. Every yard of progress is made with
difficulty, and you move nervously among the tall rank nettles in
momentary fear of dislocating your ankle, or of being suddenly
precipitated into the reeking charnel house of some defunct Mayo
family. The Connaught dead seem to be very exclusive. Most of the
ground is enclosed in small squares, each having a low stone wall,
half-a-yard thick, with what looks like the gable-end of a stone
cottage at the west end. Seen from a distance the churchyard looks
like a ruined village. At first sight you think the place a relic of
some former age, tenanted by the long-forgotten dead, but a closer
inspection proves interments almost up to date. Weird memorials of the
olden time stand cheek by jowl with modern monuments of marble; and
two of suspiciously Black Country physiognomy are of cast-iron, with
I.H.S. and a crucifix all correctly moulded, the outlines painted
vermilion, with an invitation to pray for the souls of the dead in the
same effective colour. The graveyard shows no end of prayer, but
absolutely no work. No tidiness, order, reverence, decency, or
convenience. Nothing but ruin, neglect, disorder, untidiness,
irreverence, and inconvenience. _Ora et labora_ is an excellent
proverb which the Irish people have not yet mastered in its entirety.
To pray _and_ work is as yet a little too much for them. They stop at
the first word, look round, and think they have done all. This
graveyard displays the national character. Heaps of piety, but no
exertion. Any amount of talk, but no work. More than any people, the
Irish affect respect for their dead. You leave the graveyard of
Oughewall smarting with nettle stings, and thankful that you have not
broken your neck. The place will doubtless be tidied, the nettles
mowed down and pathways made, when the people get Home Rule. They are
clearly waiting for something. They wish to be freed from the cruel
English yoke. When this operation is happily effected, they will clean
their houses, move the dunghills from their doors, wash themselves,
and go to work in earnest. The Spanish Queen vowed she would never
wash herself till Gibraltar was retaken from the English. Seven
hundred years ago the Irish nation must have made a similar vow--and
kept it.

A passing shower drove me to the shelter of a neighbouring farmhouse,
where lived a farmer, his wife, and their son and daughter. The place
was poor but tole