GROUSE-SHOOTING IN MAYO 



have bagged, at the end of an average day's sport, to 

 his own gun, from five to twelve or fifteen brace of 

 grouse, varying with the state of preservation and the 

 nature of the ground over which he is shooting. In 

 Mayo, Galway, and other parts of the west of Ireland, 

 it is usual, as the packs of grouse are often scarce and 

 scattered over a large expanse of mountain, to send out 

 some of the country people in the early hours of the 

 morning to hear the cock birds crowing, and so locate 

 the game and save a good deal of rough and fruitless 

 walking. It is a fact which very well illustrates the 

 benighted and superstitious condition of the west of 

 Ireland peasantry, that here in Mayo you cannot per- 

 suade these people to pass a night in the heather, and 

 so save themselves much unnecessary labour in going 

 and coming from and to the lodges. They do not care 

 to venture among the mountains — in fact they will not 

 — until after one o'clock in the morning, because of the 

 "good people," or fairies, whom they believe still to 

 have their haunts among these wild solitudes. They 

 prefer, therefore, to walk out eight or ten miles to the 

 grouse mountains after one o'clock in the early morn- 

 ing, hear the birds calling, and "spot" the packs, and 

 return home to breakfast. They are then ready to ac- 

 company the gunners over the same long journey, walk 

 with them during a hard day's shooting, and return 

 again at night, not seldom accomplishing a distance 

 of from thirty-five to forty miles in this way, over 

 extremely rough country, during the twenty-four hours. 

 They are a hardy folk indeed, these west of Ireland 

 peasantry. 



We quitted the comfortable lodge at Stramore, in 

 county Mayo, one morning in early September for a 

 day's shooting. It was something like eight miles to 

 our ground, where D., my host, had 16,000 odd Irish 



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