262 Wild Life in a Southern County 



aimlessly, or to be determined simply by considerations of 

 water and pasture. But those who have lived with and 

 studied them say that, though they have no maps, each 

 tribe, and even each particular family, has its own special 

 route and special camping-ground. Could these routes be 

 mapped out, they would present an interlaced pattern of 

 lines crossing and recrossing without any appreciable 

 order ; yet one family never interferes with another family. 

 This statement seems to me to be most interesting if com- 

 pared with the habits of birds that roam hither and thither 

 apparently without order or method, that come back in the 

 spring to particular places, and depart again after their 

 young are reared. Though to us they wander aimlessly, 

 it is possible that from their point of view they may be 

 following strictly prescribed routes sanctioned by imme- 

 morial custom. 



And so itinerant labourers move about. In the parti- 

 cular district which has been described their motions are 

 roughly these : — In the early spring they go up on the 

 uplands, where there are many thousand acres of arable 

 land, for the hoeing. Then comes a short space of employ- 

 ment — haymaking in the water-meadows that follow the 

 course of the rivers there, and which are cut very early. 

 Next, they return down into the vale, where the hav- 

 making has then commenced. Just before it begins the 

 Irish arrive in small parties, coming all the way from their 

 native land to gather the high wages paid during the 

 English harvest-time. They show a pleasing attachment 

 to the employer who has once given them work and treated 

 them with a little kindness. To him they go first ; and 

 thus it often happens that the same band of Irish return 

 to the same farm year after year as regularly as the cuckoo. 

 They lodge in an open shed, making a fire in the corner of 



