In Wicklow and West Kerry | Page 8

no one know it. But I do hope that the Lord--bless His holy
name!--has something in store for me. I've done all I can, and I don't
like going again' my mother and she dead. And now good evening,
your honour, and safe home.'
Intense nervousness is common also with much younger women. I
remember one night hearing some one crying out and screaming in the
house where I was staying. I went downstairs and found it was a girl
who had been taken in from a village a few miles away to help the
servants. That afternoon her two younger sisters had come to see her,
and now she had been taken with a panic that they had been drowned
going home through the bogs, and she was crying and wailing, and
saying she must go to look for them. It was not thought fit for her to
leave the house alone so late in the evening, so I went with her. As we
passed down a steep hill of heather, where the nightjars were clapping
their wings in the moonlight, she told me a long story of the way she
had been frightened. Then we reached a solitary cottage on the edge of
the bog, and as a light was still shining in the window, I knocked at the
door and asked if they had seen or heard anything. When they
understood our errand three half-dressed generations came out to jeer at
us on the doorstep.
'Ah, Maggie,' said the old woman, 'you're a cute one. You're the girl
likes a walk in the moonlight. Whist your talk of them big lumps of
childer, and look at Martin Edward there, who's not six, and he can go
through the bog five times in an hour and not wet his feet.'
My companion was still unconvinced, so we went on. The rushes were
shining in the moonlight, and one flake of mist was lying on the river.
We looked into one bog-hole, and then into another, where a snipe rose
and terrified us. We listened: a cow was chewing heavily in the shadow
of a bush, two dogs were barking on the side of a hill, and there was a
cart far away upon the road. Our teeth began to chatter with the cold of
the bog air and the loneliness of the night. I could see that the actual
presence of the bog had shown my companion the absurdity of her
fears, and in a little while we went home.
The older people in County Wicklow, as in the rest of Ireland, still
show a curious affection for the landed classes wherever they have
lived for a generation or two upon their property. I remember an old
woman, who told me, with tears streaming on her face, how much more

lonely the country had become since the 'quality' had gone away, and
gave me a long story of how she had seen her landlord shutting up his
house and leaving his property, and of the way he had died afterwards,
when the 'grievance' of it broke his heart. The younger people feel
differently, and when I was passing this landlord's house, not long
afterwards, I found these lines written in pencil on the door-post:
In the days of rack-renting And land-grabbing so vile A proud,
heartless landlord Lived here a great while. When the League it was
started, And the land-grabbing cry, To the cold North of Ireland He had
for to fly.
A year later the door-post had fallen to pieces, and the inscription with
it.

On the Road

ONE evening after heavy rains I set off to walk to a village at the other
side of some hills, part of my way lying along a steep heathery track.
The valleys that I passed through were filled with the strange splendour
that comes after wet weather in Ireland, and on the tops of the
mountains masses of fog were lying in white, even banks. Once or
twice I went by a lonely cottage with a smell of earthy turf coming
from the chimney, weeds or oats sprouting on the thatch, and a broken
cart before the door, with many straggling hens going to roost on the
shafts. Near these cottages little bands of half-naked children, filled
with the excitement of evening, were running and screaming over the
bogs, where the heather was purple already, giving me the strained
feeling of regret one has so often in these places when there is rain in
the air.
Further on, as I was going up a long hill, an old man with a white,
pointed face and heavy beard pulled himself up out of the ditch and
joined me. We spoke first about the broken weather, and then he