"Is that a court-house over there?"
"Yis, sir, but we haven't much use for it. Only open it wanst a fortnight, and shortly we won't open it at all, at all. Thim lawyers've 'ad their own way long enough, it's time the car drivers had a show." (Wherein lawyers interfered with car drivers was not stated.)
"Are you mostly Catholics around here?"
"Yis, sir."
"Is not that a Methodist chapel yonder?"
"Yis, but not much good at all, and would shut up altogether only some old man with more money than sinse left it twenty pounds a year."
Passing onward into the highlands, we stopped for water at a little stone house, from which the children swarmed out like flies,—seven,—belonging to one man, and his wife ventures the statement that if we come back in seven years there will be seven more. She speaks feelingly; evidently there is no race suicide here.
This far western Ireland is much like the highlands of Scotland, but far wilder. Auto cars are rarely seen here. While the land is still orderly and apparently prosperous, I think I note the change towards the shiftlessness so prevalent in the south. There are many roofless and abandoned cottages and the heaps of manure are becoming more frequent.
We shall shortly reach Newport near Clew Bay and pass on to Mallaranny and Achill Island, the wildest part of Ireland. Well up into the hills, we pause for some slight repairs, and the usual group of men and boys, a girl and a dog, appear as from nowhere and squat on the adjacent bank. They say they can speak the ancient tongue and that all the old customs and usages are still in vogue hereabouts. I ask for a wake, but that puzzles them. "It might be difficult to arrange, sir." However, I shall probably attend one before I leave the land, hoping that it may not prove my own. I ask if these boys live near here.
"They all do, sir."