280 SPORTING REMINISCENCES 



Her footprints going down to the well were plainly 

 visible, there were none coming back. 



This was in the papers, the police tried to trace 

 her but nothing was ever heard again. It was a 

 small shallow well. 



They have beautiful superstitions too, the Irish. 

 I never knew why, when anyone dies, some of 

 their clothes must be given away at once. And I 

 asked a little while ago. 



Because if nothing was given away the spirit 

 must go unclothed, shivering until the kindly act 

 gave it the right to be warm. 



Down in Connemara it is almost difficult not to 

 believe in the Little People, when you walk alone 

 on the hills you feel as if they must be peeping 

 out of the heather, hiding behind great cairns of 

 stone, waiting until you are gone to come out 

 dancing, leaping from tussock to tussock, swinging 

 on the pink bells, falling over the scarlet mosses. 



In Salruck churchyard, when first I went down 

 there, there were pipes for the dead to smoke 

 laid by the crossed oars which made the fisher- 

 men's tombstones. Now these are forbidden as 

 heathenish. 



Superstition is part of Irish natures; it will 

 never be rooted out. Belief in the Little People 

 will gradually be swept away to the wild places, 

 but the gods of good and bad luck will be ever in 

 evidence, believed in and feared. 



