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At a Wicklow Fair

The Place and the People

A YEAR or two ago I wished to visit a fair in County Wicklow, and as
the buying and selling in these fairs are got through very early in
the morning I started soon after dawn to walk the ten or twelve
miles that led to Aughrim, where the fair was to be held. When I
came out into the air the cold was intense, though it was a morning
of August, and the dew was so heavy that bushes and meadows of
mountain grass seemed to have lost their greenness in silvery grey.
In the glens I went through white mists were twisting and feathering
themselves into extraordinary shapes, and showing blue hills behind
them that looked singularly desolate and far away. At every turn I
came on multitudes of rabbits feeding on the roadside, or on even
shyer creatures--corncrakes, squirrels and snipe--close to
villages where no one was awake.

Then the sun rose, and I could see lines of smoke beginning to go up
from farm-houses under the hills, and sometimes a sleepy,
half-dressed girl looked out of the door of a cottage when my feet
echoed on the road. About six miles from Aughrim I began to fall in
with droves of bullocks and sheep, in charge of two or three dogs
and a herd, or with whole families of mountain people, driving
nothing but a single donkey or kid. These people seemed to feel
already the animation of the fair, and were talking eagerly and
gaily among themselves. I did not hurry, and it was about nine
o'clock when I made my way into the village, which was now thronged
with cattle and sheep. On every side the usual half-humorous
bargaining could be heard above the noise of the pigs and donkeys
and lambs. One man would say:

'Are you going to not divide a shilling with me? Are you going to
not do it? You're the biggest schemer ever walked down into
Aughrim.'

A little further on a man said to a seller: 'You're asking too much
for them lambs.' The seller answered: 'If I didn't ask it how would
I ever get it? The lambs is good lambs, and if you buy them now
you'll get home nice and easy in time to have your dinner in
comfort, and if you don't buy them you'll be here the whole day
sweating in the heat and dust, and maybe not please yourself in the
end of all.'

Then they began looking at the lambs again, talking of the cleanness
of their skin and the quality of the wool, and making many
extravagant remarks in their praise or against them. As I turned
away I heard the l