have brought my fiddle with me so that I may have
something new to keep up the interest of the people. I have played
for them several tunes, but as far as I can judge they do not feel
modern music, though they listen eagerly from curiosity. Irish airs
like 'Eileen Aroon' please them better, but it is only when I play
some jig like the 'Black Rogue'--which is known on the island--that
they seem to respond to the full meaning of the notes. Last night I
played for a large crowd, which had come together for another
purpose from all parts of the island.

About six o'clock I was going into the schoolmaster's house, and I
heard a fierce wrangle going on between a man and a woman near the
cottages to the west, that lie below the road. While I was listening
to them several women came down to listen also from behind the wall,
and told me that the people who were fighting were near relations
who lived side by side and often quarrelled about trifles, though
they were as good friends as ever the next day. The voices sounded
so enraged that I thought mischief would come of it, but the women
laughed at the idea. Then a lull came, and I said that they seemed
to have finished at last.

'Finished!' said one of the women; 'sure they haven't rightly begun.
It's only playing they are yet.'

It was just after sunset and the evening was bitterly cold, so I
went into the house and left them.

An hour later the old man came down from my cottage to say that some
of the lads and the 'fear lionta' ('the man of the nets'--a young
man from Aranmor who is teaching net-mending to the boys) were up at
the house, and had sent him down to tell me they would like to
dance, if I would come up and play for them.

I went out at once, and as soon as I came into the air I heard the
dispute going on still to the west more violently than ever. The
news of it had gone about the island, and little bands of girls and
boys were running along the lanes towards the scene of the quarrel
as eagerly as if they were going to a racecourse. I stopped for a
few minutes at the door of our cottage to listen to the volume of
abuse that was rising across the stillness of the island. Then I
went into the kitchen and began tuning the fiddle, as the boys were
impatient for my music. At first I tried to play standing, but on
the upward stroke my bow came in contact with the salt-fish and
oil-skins that hung from the rafters, so I settled myself at last on
a table in the corn