The Aran Islands

J >> John M. Synge >> The Aran Islands

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'When we were quite close one man threw the pin and the other man
hit at them with his rowing stick, and the two of them fell over in
the curagh, and she turned on her side and only it was quite calm
the lot of us were drowned.

'I think those black gulls and the ship were the same sort, and
after that I never went out again as a pilot. It is often curaghs go
out to ships and find there is no ship.

'A while ago a curagh went out to a ship from the big island, and
there was no ship; and all the men in the curagh were drowned. A
fine song was made about them after that, though I never heard it
myself.

'Another day a curagh was out fishing from this island, and the men
saw a hooker not far from them, and they rowed up to it to get a
light for their pipes--at that time there were no matches--and when
they up to the big boat it was gone out of its place, and they were
in great fear.'

Then he told me a story he had got from the mainland about a man who
was driving one night through the country, and met a woman who came
up to him and asked him to take her into his cart. He thought
something was not right about her, and he went on. When he had gone
a little way he looked back, and it was a pig was on the road and
not a woman at all.

He thought he was a done man, but he went on. When he was going
through a wood further on, two men came out to him, one from each
side of the road, and they took hold of the bridle of the horse and
led it on between them. They were old stale men with frieze clothes
on them, and the old fashions. When they came out of the wood he
found people as if there was a fair on the road, with the people
buying and selling and they not living people at all. The old men
took him through the crowd, and then they left him. When he got home
and told the old people of the two old men and the ways and fashions
they had about them, the old people told him it was his two
grandfathers had taken care of him, for they had had a great love
for him and he a lad growing up.

This evening we had a dance in the inn parlour, where a fire had
been lighted and the tables had been pushed into the corners. There
was no master of the ceremonies, and when I had played two or three
jigs and other tunes on my fiddle, there was a pause, as I did not
know how much of my music the people wanted, or who else could be
got to sing or play. For a moment a deadlock seemed to be coming,
but a young girl I knew fairly well saw my difficulty, and took the
management of our festivities into her hands. At first she asked a
coastguard's daughter to play a reel on the mouth organ, which she
did at once with admirable spirit and rhythm. Then the little girl
asked me to play again, telling me what I should choose, and went on
in the same way managing the evening till she thought it was time to
go home. Then she stood up, thanked me in Irish, and walked out of
the door, without looking at anybody, but followed almost at once by
the whole party.

When they had gone I sat for a while on a barrel in the public-house
talking to some young men who were reading a paper in Irish. Then I
had a long evening with the scholar and two story-tellers--both old
men who had been pilots--taking down stories and poems. We were at
work for nearly six hours, and the more matter we got the more the
old men seemed to remember.

'I was to go out fishing tonight,' said the younger as he came in,
'but I promised you to come, and you're a civil man, so I wouldn't
take five pounds to break my word to you. And now'--taking up his
glass of whisky--'here's to your good health, and may you live till
they make you a coffin out of a gooseberry bush, or till you die in
childbed.'

They drank my health and our work began.

'Have you heard tell of the poet MacSweeny?' said the same man,
sitting down near me.

'I have,' I said, 'in the town of Galway.'

'Well,' he said, 'I'll tell you his piece "The Big Wedding," for
it's a fine piece and there aren't many that know it. There was a
poor servant girl out in the country, and she got married to a poor
servant boy. MacSweeny knew the two of them, and he was away at that
time and it was a month before he came back. When he came back he
went to see Peggy O'Hara--that was the name of the girl--and he
asked her if they had had a great wedding. Peggy said it was only
middling, but they hadn't forgotten him all the same, and she had a
bottle of whisky for him in the cupboard. He sat down by the fire
and began drinking the whisky. When he had a couple of glasses taken
and was warm by the fire, he began making a song, and this was the
song he made about the wedding of Peggy O'Hara.'

He had the poem both in English and Irish, but as it has been found
elsewhere and attributed to another folk-poet, I need not give it.

We had another round of porter and whisky, and then the old man who
had MacSweeny's wedding gave us a bit of a drinking song, which the
scholar took down and I translated with him afterwards:--

'This is what the old woman says at the Beulleaca when she sees a
man without knowledge--

'Were you ever at the house of the Still, did you ever get a drink
from it? Neither wine nor beer is as sweet as it is, but it is well
I was not burnt when I fell down after a drink of it by the fire of
Mr. Sloper.

'I praise Owen O'Hernon over all the doctors of Ireland, it is he
put drugs on the water, and it lying on the barley.

'If you gave but a drop of it to an old woman who does be walking
the world with a stick, she would think for a week that it was a
fine bed was made for her.'

After that I had to get out my fiddle and play some tunes for them
while they finished their whisky. A new stock of porter was brought
in this morning to the little public-house underneath my room, and I
could hear in the intervals of our talk that a number of men had
come in to treat some neighbors from the middle island, and were
singing many songs, some of them in English or of the kind I have
given, but most of them in Irish.

A little later when the party broke up downstairs my old men got
nervous about the fairies--they live some distance away--and set off
across the sandhills.

The next day I left with the steamer.

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