oud clap of one hand into another, which always
marks the conclusion of a bargain.

A little further on I found a farmer I knew standing before a
public-house, looking radiant with delight. 'It's a fine fair,
Mister,' he said, 'and I'm after selling the lambs I had here a
month ago and no one would look at them. Then I took them to
Rathdrum and Wicklow, getting up at three in the morning, and
driving them in the creel, and it all for nothing. But I'm shut of
them now, and it's not too bad a price I've got either. I'm after
driving the lambs outside the customs (the boundary where the fair
tolls are paid), and I'm waiting now for my money.' While we were
talking, a cry of warning was raised: 'Mind yourselves below there's
a drift of sheep coming down the road.' Then a couple of men and
dogs appeared, trying to drive a score of sheep that some one had
purchased, out of the village, between the countless flocks that
were standing already on either side of the way. This task is
peculiarly difficult. Boys and men collect round the flock that is
to be driven out, and try to force the animals down the narrow
passage that is left in the middle of the road. It hardly ever
happens, however, that they get through without carrying off a few
of some one else's sheep, or losing some of their own, which have to
be restored, or looked for afterwards.

The flock was driven by as well as could be managed, and a moment
later an old man came up to us, and asked if we had seen a ewe
passing from the west. 'A sheep is after passing,' said the farmer I
was talking to, 'but it was not one of yours, for it was too wilful;
it was a mountain sheep.' Sometimes animals are astray in this way
for a considerable time--it is not unusual to meet a man the day
after a fair wandering through the country, asking after a lost
heifer, or ewe--but they are always well marked and are found in the
end.

When I reached the green above the village I found the curious
throng one always meets in these fairs, made up of wild mountain
squatters, gentlemen farmers, jobbers and herds. At one corner of
the green there was the usual camp of tinkers, where a swarm of
children had been left to play among the carts while the men and
women wandered through the fair selling cans or donkeys. Many odd
types of tramps and beggars had come together also, and were
loitering about in the hope of getting some chance job, or of
finding some one who would stand them a drink. Onc