After I left him I went on towards Dunquin, and lay for a long time
on the side of a magnificently wild road under Croagh Martin, where
I could see the Blasket Islands and the end of Dunmore Head, the
most westerly point of Europe. It was a grey day, with a curious
silence on the sea and sky and no sign of life anywhere, except the
sail of one curagh--or niavogue, as they are called here--that was
sailing in from the islands. Now and then a cart passed me filled
with old people and children, who saluted me in Irish; then I
turned back myself. I got on a long road running through a bog, with
a smooth mountain on one side and the sea on the other, and Brandon
in front of me, partly covered with clouds. As far as I could see
there were little groups of people on their way to the chapel in
Ballyferriter, the men in homespun and the women wearing blue
cloaks, or, more often, black shawls twisted over their heads. This
procession along the olive bogs, between the mountains and the sea,
on this grey day of autumn, seemed to wring me with the pang of
emotion one meets everywhere in Ireland--an emotion that is partly
local and patriotic, and partly a share of the desolation that is
mixed everywhere with the supreme beauty of the world.

In the evening, when I was walking about the village, I fell in with
a man who could read Gaelic, and was full of enthusiasm for the old
language and of contempt for English.

'I can tell you,' he said, 'that the English I have is no more good
to me than the cover of that pipe. Buyers come here from Dingle and
Cork and Clare, and they have good Irish, and so has everyone we
meet with, for there is no one can do business in this place who
hasn't the language on his tongue.'

Then I asked him about the young men who go away to America.

'Many go away,' he said, 'who could stay if they wished to, for it
is a fine place for fishing, and a man will get more money and
better health for himself, and rear a better family, in this place
than in many another. It's a good place to be in, and now, with the
help of God, the little children will all learn to read and write in
Irish, and that is a great thing, for how can people do any good, or
make a song even, if they cannot write? You will be often three
weeks making a song, and there will be times when you will think of
good things to put into it that could never be beaten in the whole
world; but if you cannot write them down you will forget them,
may