DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 235 



and deny it to another. If there could be a time in 

 all the year to justify such opportunity to go from 

 house to house to sample, it must have been the day 

 of our arrival, when the town was full of Irishmen 

 dressed in their best. It was pig-fair da}^ a holiday 

 to the men, for it was the ladies that held the ropes 

 that had pigs' legs attached to them. I could not see 

 a man so employed. 



j\Iany pigs, with their bodies and legs in sacks, 

 were brought from distant islands in boats rowed 

 by men who, when the noisy freights were landed, 

 thrust their hands beneath their coat tails, raised 

 their noses above the level of such business, and staU<:ed 

 loftily away, leaving their spouses to do the dealing. 

 While watching a most heroic struggle between a full- 

 sized woman and a monster pig that threatened to 

 snap the rope or pull a ham off, I thought unkindly of 

 the husband who never even looked round to see the 

 issue of the tug-of-war; indeed, who could have helped 

 whispering as I did, 'You brutes, to leave your women 

 so?' But, before the fair was over, I was quite con- 

 vinced that women as a rule, and not men, should take 

 pigs to market. 



I feel some interest in a display of skill in business 

 deals, and have watched with admiration the selling 

 of a horse by a past master in the art, and I admire 

 the ready and truthful man who, when selling a kick- 

 ing cow, in answer to the query, 'Is she a good milker?' 

 replied, 'It's tired you'll be before you've done milking 

 her.' But the Irish pig-dealer has no equal, unless it 

 be the Irishwoman with whom he has to deal. 



It appeared at first that the pigs would be far in 

 excess of the demand, and that buyers were calmly 

 waiting for sellers to realise this and then to get them 

 at their own price; very possibly this attitude would 

 have imposed upon the absent husbands, but it seemed 

 to have the opposite effect upon the women-folk. 



Somewhere near the centre of the greatest crowd 



