n of old ropes and iron. In front of a
public-house a ballad-singer was singing a song in the middle of a
crowd of people. As far as I could hear it, the words ran like this:

As we came down from Wicklow
With our bundle of switches
As we came down from Wicklow,
Oh! what did we see?
As we came to the city
We saw maidens pretty,
And we called out to ask them to buy our heath-broom.
Heath-broom, freestone, black turf, gather them up.
Oh! gradh machree, Mavourneen,
Won't you buy our heath-broom?
When the season is over
Won't we be in clover,
With the gold in our pockets
We got from heath-broom.

It's home we will toddle,
And we'll get a naggin,
And we'll drink to the maidens that bought our heath-broom.
Heath-broom, freestone, black turf, gather them up.
Oh! gradh machree, Mavourneen,
Won't you buy our heath-broom?

Before he had finished a tinker arrived, too drunk to stand or walk,
but leading a tall horse with his left hand, and inviting anyone who
would deny that he was the best horseman in Wicklow to fight with
him on the spot. Soon afterwards I started on my way home, driving
most of the way with a farmer from the same neighbourhood.

A Landlord's Garden in County Wicklow

A STONE'S throw from an old house where I spent several summers in
County Wicklow, there was a garden that had been left to itself for
fifteen or twenty years. Just inside the gate, as one entered, two
paths led up through a couple of strawberry beds, half choked with
leaves, where a few white and narrow strawberries were still hidden
away. Further on was nearly half an acre of tall raspberry canes and
thistles five feet high, growing together in a dense mass, where one
could still pick raspberries enough to last a household for the
season. Then, in a waste of hemlock, there were some half-dozen
apple trees covered with lichen and moss, and against the northern
walls a few dying plum trees hanging from their nails. Beyond them
there was a dead pear tree, and just inside the gate, as one came
back to it, a large fuchsia filled with empty nests. A few lines of
box here and there showed where the flower-beds had been laid out,
and when anyone who had the knowledge looked carefully among them
many remnants could be found of beautiful and rare plants.

All round this garden there was a wall seven or eight feet high, in
which one could see three or four tracks with well-worn holes--like
the