CLARE ROADS 



waste in far Cromwellian times. Perhaps there are no 

 more than fifteen smoking hearths left, beaten by passionate 

 seas, guarded by the tremendous black cliffs. Life here, it 

 would seem, must be hard won indeed from stony fields 

 and treacherous waters. 



Very soon, while the chauffeur worked at the wheel, a 

 small knot of onlookers gathers about us / children with a 

 tangled thatch of bleached hair, and eyes that look half- 

 fiercely, halfappealingly out from under it. Black eyes 

 they seem at first sight, set as they are with raven lashes. 

 It is only on examination that you find them to be richly 

 violet. There is an old man fantastically attired in a blanket 

 laced with twine down to his knees. Such a creature of 

 savage primitiveness he seems that one of the party is 

 moved to ask him humorously if he has ever driven in a 

 motor-car. He surveys us with his mild blue eyes that are 

 as innocent as the child's beside him, and shakes his shaggy 

 white head. 



" Bedad, I have/' he then says unexpectedly. " And sure 

 it never touched the ground at all but an odd time between 

 here and Connemara," 



Yet motor-cars must be very rare apparitions along these 

 Clare roads / for at their approach the people fling them- 

 selves sideways into the ditches and against the walls, 

 when they cannot escape through a gap into the fields. 

 Even the dogs will flee. One poor Collie flattened himself 

 on a bank in a paroxysm of terror that we cannot forget. 

 When I remember how along the English roads my heart 

 is for ever in my mouth over the callous indifference of the 

 British cur, I realize that canine folk are very much like 

 human beings when all is said and done. 



t 289 



