156 STRAY-AWAYS 



fronted in Skibbereen, with similar trays for sale 

 at a less sum). It was not easy to drive these obstruc- 

 tions through the populace, and the steamer, when 

 we came up with her, was fast to the quay, and bereft 

 of the brilliancy of her first appearance ; leaving the 

 dock, we wandered by a tributary canal to where the 

 babel and barter of the fish-market rose from a 

 hundred yards of women in white sun-bonnets. They 

 sat on a broad pavement, by the parapet of the canal, 

 selling live fish out of water-tanks, an operation which 

 it is sufficient to see once. They flung the dripping, 

 flapping sole or plaice on a board, they cut its fins off 

 with a few sweeps of a knife, and having trimmed it 

 round generally, transferred it, still flapping, to the 

 customer's basket. In what manner they dealt with 

 the eels that lay in black coils in the tanks we 

 endeavoured not to see, and fell to photographing 

 the fish-wife whose business was slackest. From the 

 jovial ajplomh with which she shook her fist in our faces 

 at the critical moment — it was clear that it was not a 

 first experience, yet neither she nor her fellow-butchers 

 were eminent in that obvious picturesqueness that 

 has almost vulgarised the market woman. They 

 wore black bombazine, linsey, or some other graceless 

 material, undistinguished by anything peculiar to 

 their country, in spite of fables abovit the market 

 women from Amager Island, and their elaborate 

 peasant dress, the survival of a Dutch ancestry. (I 

 did once meet a woman in peasant costume in a street 

 in Copenhagen, but I believe her to have been going 

 to a fancy ball.) Yet in the sunshine and the clear 

 air the homely blonde faces and the white bonnets 

 had a charm of their own, and if their dress lacked 

 colour, there was enough and to spare in the green 

 and red boats that lay in the canal below — colour in 

 their sunburned orange sails, colour in their cargoes 



