The landlord’s son of Clifden, a very intelligent young fellow, was here exchanged for a new carman in the person of a raw Irisher of twenty years of age, ‘having’ little English, and dressed in that very pair of pantaloons which Humphrey Clinker was compelled to cast off some years since, on account of the offence which they gave to Mrs. Tabitha Bramble. This fellow, emerging from among the boats, went off to a field to seek for the black horse, which the landlady assured me was quite fresh and had not been out all day, and would carry me to Westport in three hours. Meanwhile I was lodged in a neat little parlour, surveying the Mayo side of the water, with some cultivated fields and a show of a village at the spot where the estuary ends, and above them lodges and fine dark plantations, climbing over the dark hills that lead to Lord Sligo’s seat of Delphi. Presently, with a curtsey, came a young woman who sold worsted socks at a shilling a pair, and whose portrait is here given.
It required no small pains to entice this rustic beauty to stand, while a sketch should be made of her. Nor did any compliments or cajolements, on my part or the landlady’s, bring about the matter; it was not until money was offered that the lovely creature consented. I offered (such is the ardour of the real artist) either to give her a sixpence, or to purchase two pairs of her socks, if she would stand still for five minutes. On which she said she would prefer selling the socks. Then she stood still for a moment in the corner of the room; then she turned her face towards the corner and the other part of her person towards the artist, and exclaimed in that attitude, ‘I must have a shilling more.’ Then I told her to go to the deuce. Then she made a proposition, involving the stockings and sixpence, which was similarly rejected; and finally, the above splendid design was completed at the price first stated.
However, as we went off, this timid little love barred the door for a moment, and said that ‘I ought to give her another shilling; that a gentleman would give her another shilling,’ and so on—she might have trod the London streets for ten years, and not have been more impudent and more greedy.
By this time the famous fresh horse was produced, and the driver, by means of a wraprascal, had covered a great part of the rags of his lower garment. He carried a whip and a stick, the former lying across his knee ornamentally, the latter being for service, and as his feet were directly under the horse’s tail, he had full command of the brute’s back, and belaboured it for six hours without ceasing.
What little English the fellow knew, he uttered with a howl, roaring into my ear answers, which, for the most part, were wrong, to various questions put to him. The lad’s voice was so hideous, that I asked him if he could sing; on which forthwith he began yelling the most horrible Irish ditty, of which he told me the title, that I have forgotten. He sang three stanzas, certainly keeping a kind of tune, and the latter lines of each verse were in rhyme; but when I asked him the meaning of the song, he only roared out its Irish title.
On questioning the driver further, it turned out that the horse, warranted fresh, had already performed a journey of eighteen miles that morning, and the consequence was, that I had full leisure to survey the country through which we passed. There were more lakes, more mountains, more bog, and an excellent road through this lonely district, though few only of the human race enlivened it. At ten miles from Leenane, we stopped at a roadside hut, where the driver pulled out a bag of oats, and borrowing an iron pot from the good people, half filled it with corn, which the poor, tired, galled, bewhipped black horse began eagerly to devour. The young charioteer himself hinted very broadly his desire for a glass of whisky, which was the only kind of refreshment that this remote house of entertainment supplied.
In the various cabins I have entered, I have found talking a vain matter; the people are suspicious of the stranger within their wretched gates, and are shy, sly, and silent. I have, commonly, only been able to get half-answers in reply to my questions, given in a manner that seemed plainly to intimate that the visit was unwelcome. In this rude hostel, however, the landlord was a little less reserved, offered a seat at the turf-fire, where a painter might have had a good subject for his skill. There was no chimney, but a hole in the roof, up which a small portion of the smoke ascended (the rest preferring an egress by the door, or else to remain in the apartment altogether); and this light from above lighted up as rude a set of figures as ever were seen. There were two brown women, with black eyes and locks, the one knitting stockings on the floor, the other ‘racking’ (with that natural comb which five horny fingers supply) the elf-locks of a dirty urchin between her knees. An idle fellow was smoking his pipe by the fire; and by his side sate a stranger, who had been made welcome to the shelter of the place—a sickly well-looking man, whom I mistook for a deserter at first, for he had evidently been a soldier.