208 Proceedings of the Roijal Irish Academy. 



and was driTen to asking permission of my master to leave the 

 castle. This he refused, ordering at the same time that no one 

 should annoy me or cause me trouble. The characteristic of these natives 

 (salvajes) is that they live like brutes in the mountains, of which 

 there are very wild ones in the part of Ireland where we were lost. They 

 live in huts made of straw. ^ The men are big-bodied,^ with handsome 

 features and limbs, active and nimble as roe deer ; they eat but one 

 meal in the day, and that at night : their usual food is butter and 

 oaten-bread ; their drink is sour milk, having none other ; they 

 do not drink water which is the best of all. On feast days they 

 eat some half-cooked flesh meat, without bread or salt, such being 

 their custom. They dress after their fashion with tight hose 

 and short coats (sayas) made of veiy coarse goats' hair ; they cover 

 themselves with cloaks, and wear the hair down to the very eyes. 

 They are great pedestrians, and very enduring as regards fatigue. 

 They are continually at war with the English who hold garrison 

 near by in the Queen's service, and from whom they defend them- 

 selves, not allowing them to enter on their territory, which is mainly 

 submerged and covered with lakes. They range over a district some 

 forty leagues in length and breadth. Their greatest tendency is to 

 thieving, so that they are continually robbing one another, and that 

 hardly a day passes without a call to arms amongst them, for so soon 

 as the people of one village learn that in some other one there are 

 cattle or something else, immediately they go by night armed, and 

 engage in deadly conflict. The English of the fortresses knowing 

 the parties who had ' lifted ' and collected the most cattle imme- 

 diately attack them, in order to spoil them of their plunder, so that 

 they have but one resource, that is, to fly to the mountains with 

 their women and cattle than which they have no other property, 

 nor furniture, nor store of clothing. 



"They sleep on the ground on freshly cut rushes, full of water and 

 frost. The most of the women are very handsome, but ill-arranged 

 ('tothery'), wearing only a shirt and a cloak which covers them 



^ ' ' The cotters who dwell in the more retired and mountainous parts are poor, 

 and their cabins are wretched huts, with a wattled door and a straw mat on the 

 inside." — Lewis' "Topograph. Diet." (Fermanagh). 



2 Compare Lewis' " Diet." (Fermanagh), 1837: " The peasantry are a fine race, 

 much superior in appearance to those of any of the other northern districts ; they 

 are tall, well formed, and robust ; their countenances display the bloom of health,! 

 and they possess that uninterrupted flow of spirits which is the constant attendant 

 on regular living and active, yet not overstraining, industry." 



