126 STRAY- AW AYS 



of Galway. Yet if the raw eccentricities of the live 

 stock, and the lavish intellectual display of the Conne- 

 mara man were absent, so also the English prosperity 

 and robust arrogance of merit were not salient in 

 beast or owner. All was rational, respectable, more 

 by effort than by easy circumstances, void of extremes, 

 and singularly void of humour. 



In long refreshment tents the farmers sat in decorous 

 rows at their dinners ; a few wore high-crowned cloth 

 caps of an unfamiliar shape ; a few had the broad light 

 beard and square shoulders and sea-blue eyes of their 

 Viking ancestry ; but the majority were men of middle 

 height, with pale faces, irregular noses, and light, 

 reasonable eyes, full of acquaintance with civilisation. 

 To find refuge from one of many showers, my cousin 

 and I paid our thirty ore each, and squeezed into an 

 acrobat's tent, where three fair-haired children in dirty 

 tights went gravely through a succession of somer- 

 saults and contortions, while the big drops drummed 

 on the canvas overhead, and the wet Danes crowded 

 in behind with unceasing pressure, and the anxious 

 faces of the little acrobats called forth applause for 

 each elementary achievement and time-honoured pose. 



Having escaped in a fine interval from the yellow 

 glare of the wet canvas and the carpet of damp grass 

 in the tent, and made a tour of the booths, we bought 

 confectionery from the banks of it that sloped solidly 

 upwards to the chins of the old women who stood 

 behind the counters. For fifty ore we received an 

 amount that would have wrecked any English nursery, 

 and having sacrificed our hostess' children to the 

 necessity of getting rid of it, we forthwith became a 

 prey to misgiving. It was reassuring to find them 

 presently revolving with hideous velocity on the backs 

 of a giraffe and a tiger, to the unexpected strains of 

 " Patrick's Day." It occurred to us that Nature had 



