A BOOK OF FISHING STORIES 



no sound breaks the stillness of the night save the creaking 

 of the tholepins and the gurgle of the yielding water at the 

 bow, or the far-off lowing of the cattle on the Galway shore. 



And then the grey seabirds come. They come from the 

 east, and they go to the west. Why ? No man knows. But 

 they come, and float over us noiselessly, unswervingly ; in 

 thousands they come. There is no sound from their waving 

 wings. Silently, mysteriously, they pass over us, following 

 some inscrutable law of their own. They come from the 

 east, they vanish in the west like wraiths ; without a sound, 

 without a trace — they are gone. 



I think of them as the spirits of the many races that have 

 lived and loved and warred and passed away over this mystic 

 land. Fomorians, Milesians, Celts ; Danes, and Normans and 

 Saxons — they have all left their traces here for those with eyes 

 to see. We carry on our dapping — and this to me is almost 

 its greatest attraction — in a region inconceivably rich in legen- 

 dary lore : of Maeve, and Finn, and Oisin : of Bryan of Kincora, 

 when he crushed the hosts of Asmond, and the Leinster 

 men broke before the Dalcassian battleaxes. Of the wars of 

 the Geraldines and the Butlers, of Confederates and Cove- 

 nanters ; and even still in the homes of the people they tell of 

 Sarsfield and his irresistible dragoons. And so my story ends. 



Next morning Danny and I exchange regretful but not 

 hopeless farewells. 



" Ye '11 be back for the dapping next year, sir ? " 



" Please God, Danny ; good-bye." 



He returns to his fruit-trees and his flowers — and I to noise 

 and smoke and civilisation ! 



66 



