countryfolk, but occupy the best parlour, a room large
enough, but blackened with smoke, and unutterably depressing, despite
the cabinet pianoforte opposite the fireplace. Musical instruments of
torture appear to be considered a necessary mark of competence in
Western Ireland, just as a big watch-chain is in certain parts of
England. Not a soul on Omey Island could play the pianoforte, thank
heaven; so it remained with its back against the wall, as mute
evidence of solvency. There was no carpet on the floor, which was of a
fine dirt-colour, and the chickens, ducks, and geese circulated freely
about.

Here now was a man paying, or promising to pay, 250l. a year in rent,
and who yet seemed to have not the faintest idea of comfort. It should
be recollected that my visit was paid on a Sunday, when his family
would be seen at their best; but the girls were running about with
bare feet and dirty faces, and the neighbouring gossips, also
barefooted and dirty beyond all imagination, were hanging round the
fire, talking amongst themselves about the stranger, and half mad with
curiosity concerning him. The farmer lived, it is true, in a wild
place; but sand is so clean a thing in itself that it is a mystery how
his tribe of children got so abominably dirty.

The drive homeward past Streamstown was wet enough, but still
interesting in many ways. In no part of Ireland has the curse of
middlemen been felt more severely than in Connemara. The middleman is
specially abhorrent to the people when he is one of themselves. He is
"not a gentleman, sure," is a deadly reproach in this part of the
country. Practically he is objectionable because, being one of the
people, he is aware of their tricks and their ways, and suspects them
as they hate and suspect him. What would be urbanity on the part of
the real "masther" is in the middleman viewed as deceit. The sharp
tone of command endurable in a superior is resented when employed by a
person of low origin. And it would seem that middlemen are not as a
race persons of agreeable character. All the old rags of feudalism
which have hung about Connemara long after their annihilation
elsewhere, have been saved wherever it was possible by the middleman.

I am not quite certain that any one of these has ever "hung out his
flag for fish" after the manner of the old proprietors who, when they
wanted fish for dinner, made their tenants obey their signal and put
back, whatever might be the chance of t