EEMINISCENCES OF THE LEWS. 225 



dreaders ; for I never met a fairy myself, by 

 day or by night, though I lived a long time in 

 their peculiar land — Kerry. 



But for true night-fear commend me to the 

 Lews. Very few, indeed, ever ventured on 

 night-travelling, and that only in troops. I 

 had a very excellent workman in my employ 

 almost all the time I was at Soval. He cut my 

 peats, did all my farmwork, which consisted 

 chiefly in keeping up a turf fence round a field 

 that produced nothing but a small crop of 

 rushes, though it had been drained in every 

 possible manner. This turf fence was always 

 cracking and crumbling back into the field in 

 the dry weather, and tumbling down into the 

 ditch and the road or the loch in the wet 

 weather. On the whole, I never knew what 

 good the field did any one but poor Galium, to 

 whom it afforded constant work. From being 

 the poorest man in his township, he became the 

 richest, and purchased a cart and pony, which 

 was also very much employed. So that, but 

 for the mortahty in his family, he would have 

 done well. But, poor fellow ! all his sons and 

 daughters sickened as they grew up, and died 

 away of consumption ; and he, the last time I 

 saw him, was a miserable object, just about to 

 join them. "Well, this poor Galium was the 



