346 WILD SPORTS OF THE WEST. 



and the merciless badinage of that black-eyed coquette 

 who embodies all that Moore idealized in sketching 

 his Nora Crina. 



How soft the evening twilight falls on the waters of 

 the estuary ! the tide kisses the very verge of the 

 greensward, and looks so treacherously calm, as if its 

 storms were for ever ended. Boat after boat hurries 

 down the inlet to shoot their herring-nets for the night ; 

 and many an ancient ditty, or ruder tale, will while 

 away the time till morning. Occasionally a struggle 

 between two rival barks ensues and I remark, the 

 contest invariably takes place before the windows of 

 the Lodge. One very singular one amused me much. 

 A boat rowed by four women challenged, and actually 

 out-pulled another, though propelled by a similar number 

 of the coarser sex. 



Indeed, the occupations of the ladies of Ballycroy 

 are not essentially feminine : the roughest and most 

 dangerous employments they share in common with the 

 men. A Mahratta woman, they told me in India, 

 regularly shampoos her husband's horse. Were I of the 

 fair sex, I would rather operate on a quadruped than row 

 a fishing-boat by the day, and cut sea-weed up to the 

 waist in water, with the expectation of being swept from 

 my precarious tooting by the first mountainous surge. 



