l ... I only thought of the dark harassed thing--inside all the
youth and pride and beauty ..."

Section 5

He met her for the first time at a neighboring fair ...

Eleven on a hot June morning, and the little town was crowded, like some
old-time immigrant ship. Women in plaid shawls and frilled caps, men in
somber black as befitted a monthly occasion. Squawking of ducks and
hens, trudging of donkeys, creaking of carts, unbelievably stubborn
bullocks and heifers being whacked by ash-plants, colts frisking. Girls
with baskets of eggs and butter; great carts of hay and straw.
Apple-women with bonnets of cabbage-leaves against the sun. Herring-men
bawling like auctioneers. Squealing of young pigs. An old clothes dealer
hoarse with effort. A ballad singer split the air with an English
translation of _Bean an Fhir Ruaidh_, "The Red-haired Man's Wife."

Ye Muses Nine,
Combine, and lend me your aid,
Until I raise
the praise of a beautiful maid--

The crash of a drover driving home a bargain:

"Hold out your hand now, by God! till I be after making you an offer.
Seven pound ten, now. Hell to my soul if I give you another ha' penny.
Wait now. I 'll make it seven pound fifteen."

"Is it insulting the fine decent beast you are?"

"Eight pounds five and ten shillings back for a luck-penny?"

"Is it crazy you've gone all of a sudden, dealing man. If the gentle
creature was in Dublin town, sure they'd be hanging blue ribbons around
her neck until she wilted with the weight of them."

"It's hanging their hats on the bones of her they'd be, and them
sticking out the like of branches from a bush."

"Yerra Jasus! Do you hear the man, and her round as a bottle from the
fine filling feeding. You could walk your shin-bones off to the knee,
and you'd not find a cow as has had the treatment of this cow. Let you
be on our way now."

"Look, honest man. Put out your hand, and wait till I spit on my fist--"

Through the doors of Michael Doyle's public house a young farmer walked
uncertainly. He gently swung a woman's woolen stocking in his right
hand, and in the foot of the stocking was a large round stone:

"I am young Packy McGee of Ballymoyle," he announced, "the son of old
Packy McGee of Ballymoyle, a great man in his day, but never the equal
of young Packy McGee. I have gone through Scotland and Ireland, Wales,
the harvest fields of England, and I have never yet found the equal for
murder and riot of young