KERRY, CONNEMARA AND CLARE 241 



the rain has just stopped. Connemara is a strange 

 wild land, one once known never forgotten. With 

 her wondrous reaches of golden sands, miles of it, 

 with nothing to be seen on the beaches but the 

 black poUy cows dotted about when they come 

 down to the sea ; the sea birds circling down and 

 occasionally a child or two picking driftwood at 

 high-water mark. Such a great clear sea with 

 its depths of pure green water creeping on over 

 the sands, it calls you to bathe in it when it runs 

 deep in the creeks between rocks \vith the floor 

 of sand below. 



Where the weeds grow at low tide, you can 

 look down on calm days to see the tangle garden 

 of the deep. Great bands of rubber weed in rolls 

 and twinings of reddish brown ; strange bands 

 of other growth poised on their wrist stems, 

 reaching up as if lost merman struggled for the 

 thick grove of sea jungle. The drowning weed 

 drying on the rocks floating out as coarse mer- 

 maid's hair might to the touch of the rising 

 tide. Anemones, huge blobs of pink and green 

 and red, enormous things waving their feelers ; 

 great pink sea urchins. Here and there a crab 

 sidling evilly. There is no wickedness in the 

 Connemara sea, it can rise in majesty, and storm 

 white crested, but on fine days it is calm in its 

 splendid beauty, a sea you may boat on in safety 

 and bathe in happily. 



I have gone to bathe on the Miltown bay and felt 



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