The Aran Islands. J. M. Synge

      No one who has not lived for weeks among these grey clouds and seas can realise the joy with which the eye rests on the red dresses of the women, especially when a number of them are to be found together, as happened early this morning.

      I heard that the young cattle were to be shipped for a fair on the mainland, which is to take place in a few days, and I went down on the pier a little after dawn to watch them.

      The bay was shrouded in the greys of coming rain, yet the thinness of the cloud threw a silvery light on the sea and an unusual depth of blue to the mountains of Connemara.

      As I was going across the sandhills, one dun-sailed hooker glided slowly out to begin her voyage and another beat up to the pier. Troops of red cattle, driven mostly by the women, were coming up from several directions, forming, with the green of the long tract of grass that separates the sea from the rocks, a new unity of colour.

      The pier itself was crowded with bullocks and a great number of the people. I noticed one extraordinary girl in the throng who seemed to exert an authority on all who came near her. Her curiously-formed nostrils and narrow chin gave her a witch-like expression, yet the beauty of her hair and skin made her singularly attractive.

      When the empty hooker was made fast, its deck was still many feet below the level of the pier, so the animals were slung down by a rope from the mast-head, with much struggling and confusion. Some of them made wild efforts to escape, nearly carrying their owners with them into the sea, but they were handled with wonderful dexterity and there was no mishap.

      When the open hold was filled with young cattle, packed as tightly as they could stand, the owners with their wives or sisters, who go with them to prevent extravagance in Galway, jumped down on the deck, and the voyage was begun. Immediately afterwards a rickety old hooker beat up with turf from Connemara, and while she was unlading all the men sat along the edge of the pier and made remarks upon the rottenness of her timber till the owners grew wild with rage.

      The tide was now too low for more boats to come to the pier, so a move was made to a strip of sand towards the south-east, where the rest of the cattle were shipped through the surf. Here the hooker was anchored about eighty yards from the shore and a curagh was rowed round to tow out the animals. Each bullock was caught in its turn and girded with a sling of rope by which it could be hoisted on board. Another rope was fastened to the horns and passed out to a man in the stern of the curagh. Then the animal was forced down through the surf and out of its depth before it had much time to struggle. Once fairly swimming, it was towed out to the hooker and dragged on board in a half-drowned condition.

      The freedom of the sand seemed to give a stronger spirit of revolt, and some of the animals were only caught after a dangerous struggle. The first attempt was not always successful, and I saw one three-year-old lift two men with his horns, and drag another fifty yards along the sand by his tail before he was subdued.

      While this work was going on, a crowd of girls and women collected on the edge of the cliff and kept shouting down a confused babble of satire and praise.

      When I came back to the cottage I found that among the women who had gone to the mainland was a daughter of the old woman’s, and that her baby of about nine months had been left in the care of its grandmother.

      As I came in she was busy getting ready my dinner, and old Pat Dirane, who usually comes at this hour, was rocking the cradle. It is made of clumsy wickerwork, with two pieces of rough wood fastened underneath to serve as rockers, and all the time I am in my room I can hear it bumping on the floor with extraordinary violence. When the baby is awake it sprawls on the floor and the old woman sings it a variety of inarticulate lullabies that have much musical charm.

      Another daughter, who lives at home, has gone to the fair also, so the old woman has both the baby and myself to take care of as well as a crowd of chickens that live in a hole beside the fire. Often when I want tea, or when the old woman goes for water, I have to take my own turn at rocking the cradle.

      One of the largest Duns, or pagan forts, on the islands, is within a stone’s throw of my cottage, and I often stroll up there after a dinner of eggs or salt pork, to smoke drowsily on the stones. The neighbours know my habit, and not infrequently someone wanders up to ask what news there is in the last paper I have received, or to make enquiries about the American war. If no one comes, I prop my book open with stones touched by the Fir-bolgs and sleep for hours in the delicious warmth of the sun. The last few days I have almost lived on the round walls, for, by some miscalculation, our turf has come to an end and the fires are kept up with dried cow- dung – a common fuel on the island – the smoke from which filters through into my room and lies in blue layers above my table and bed.

      Fortunately the weather is fine, and I can spend my days in the sunshine. When I look round from the top of these walls I can see the sea on nearly every side, stretching away to distant ranges of mountains on the north and south. Underneath me to the east there is the one inhabited district of the island, where I can see red figures moving about the cottages, sending up an occasional fragment of conversation or of the old island melodies.

      The baby is teething and has been crying for several days. Since his mother went to the fair, they have been feeding him with cow’s milk, often slightly sour, and giving him, I think, more than he requires.

      This morning, however, he seemed so unwell they sent out to look for a foster-mother in the village, and before long a young woman, who lives a little way to the east, came in and restored him his natural food.

      A few hours later, when I came into the kitchen to talk to old Pat, another woman performed the same kindly office, this time a person with a curiously whimsical expression.

      Pat told me a story of an unfaithful wife, which I will give further down, and then broke into a moral dispute with the visitor, which caused immense delight to some young men who had come down to listen to the story. Unfortunately it was carried on so rapidly in Gaelic that I lost most of the points.

      This old man talks usually in a mournful tone about his ill-health, and his death, which he feels to be approaching, yet he has occasional touches of humour that remind me of old Mourteen on the north island. Today a grotesque twopenny doll was lying on the floor near the old woman. He picked it up and examined it as if comparing it with her. Then he held it up. ‘Is it you is after bringing that thing into the world,’ he said, ‘woman of the house?’

      Here is his story:

      One day I was travelling on foot from Galway to Dublin, and the darkness came on me and I ten miles from the town I was wanting to pass the night in. Then a hard rain began to fall and I was tired walking, so when I saw a sort of a house with no roof on it up against the road, I got in the way the walls would give me shelter.

      As I was looking round I saw a light in some trees two perches off and, thinking any sort of a house would be better than where I was, I got over the wall and went up to the house to look in at the window.

      I saw a dead man laid on a table, and candles lighted, and a woman watching him. I was frightened when I saw him, but it was raining hard and I said to myself, if he was dead he couldn’t hurt me. Then I knocked on the door and the woman came and opened it.

      ‘Good evening, ma’am,’ says I.

      ‘Good evening kindly, stranger,’ says she. ‘Come in out of the rain.’

      Then she took me in and told me her husband was after dying on her, and she was watching him that night.

      ‘But it’s thirsty you’ll be, stranger,’ says she. ‘Come into the parlour.’