“This is the best village for its size this side of Galway,” said my cousin, with a languid indifference that, as I well knew, masked the seething self-satisfaction of the resident in the neighbourhood. “And the place has improved so wonderfully. For instance, there’s the Widow’s Almshouse. It isn’t so very long ago since an old woman said to my grandmother, ‘That’s the Widdies’ Almhouse, and sorra widdy in it but one little owld man,’ and now it’s simply bursting with widows—at least, I mean——”
“MR. FLAHERTY’S BOY WAS DEMONSTRATING WITH A PITCH-FORK.”
This remarkable illustration of the prosperity of Oughterard was suddenly interrupted. We had forgotten that the residence of the too fascinating Mr. Flanigan was at hand, but not so Sibbie. With the subtlety of her race, she cloaked her design in a fulsome submissiveness, as the deadly spirit is sheathed in the syrup of the liqueur, and turning in full career, without so much as an indication from her long expressive ears, she made for the gate of which we had been warned. By a special interposition of Providence it was closed, but we were both jerked forward in a very humiliating way, and there was much unseemly hectoring and lashing before we could drag her from the haven where she would be. The seeds of distrust were from that moment sown in our hearts, and we proceeded with a want of confidence that we had never afterwards reason to regret.
A few moments of steep ascent brought us out on to the moor that is the entrance to Connemara; a wide brown place of heather and bog, with the sinuous shining of the Oughterard river saving it from the suspicion of monotony. The level road ran out in front of us till it dwindled into a white thread, the distant hills were no more than confidential blue hints of what we were to see, the sun shone, the strong west wind made us rejoice that we had stitched elastic into our hats, and the exhilaration of our feelings found vent in one passion-fraught word—luncheon.
A great many people have asked us why we did not make our journey through Connemara on tricycles: the roads are so good, the mail-cars offer such facilities for the transport of baggage, the speed and simplicity are so great. To this we have our reply—what then of the luncheon hamper? These objectors have not taken into account the comfortable wayside halt by the picturesque and convenient lake; the unpacking of the spirit lamp, and its glittering bride the tin kettle, the dinner knives at sixpence apiece, the spoons at two-pence-halfpenny; the potted meats, the Bath Olivers, the Bovril and the Burgundy. In the abstract we are not fond of picnics, and agree with the Bard of “Ballads from Punch” in thinking that—
They who in contempt, the Dryad’s haunts
Profane with empty bottles and loose papers,
Find tongues in tarts, ants running on their boots,
Wasps in the wine, and salt in everything!
But a long road and an early breakfast create an earnestness and sincerity in the matter of luncheon that were lacking in the artificial junketings of the Bard. Certainly, our stopping-places were not such as a Dryad could haunt with any degree of comfort. On this first day we pulled up under the lee of a low bank, one of the few roadside fences we had come to in that waste of heather and grey-blue lakes, and spread out our eatables on the seats of the cart with a kind of bashfulness of the possible passer-by; a bashfulness soon to be hardened by custom into a brazen contempt for even the passing mail-car and the fraternal backward grin of its driver. Most people who have wolfed the furtive sandwich in a crowded railway carriage have felt all of a sudden how gross and animal was the action, but how, if persevered in, a callous indifference may be attained; this was the case with us.
After that first lunch the complexion of things changed. The wind sharpened into a wet whip, the clouds swooped down on the hilltops, the lakes turned a ruffled black, like a Spanish hen with its plumage blown the wrong way, and the first mishap to the