THE DARK WOMAN

We were talking together the other morning—the publican and myself—outside the inn door at Barra, when a dark woman passed. “God look to that poor creature,” says he; “she hasn’t as much on her as would stuff a crutch.” “Stuff a what?” says I, for I didn’t quite understand him. “The bolster of a crutch,” says he. “And she knows nobody. Her eye-strings is broke.”

CLADY RIVER, NEAR GWEEDORE.

BY LOCHROS BEAG

A waste of blown sand. The Atlantic breakers white upon its extremest verge. A patch of sea-bog before, exhaling its own peculiar fragrance—part fibre, part earth, part salt. Ricks of black turf stacked over it here and there, ready to be creeled inland against the winter firing. The dark green bulk of Slieve a-Tooey rising like a wall behind, a wisp of cloud lying lightly upon its carn. The village of Maghery, a mere clachan of unmortared stone and rain-beaten straw, huddling at its foot. A shepherd’s whistle, a cry in torrential Gaelic, or the bleat of a sheep coming from it now and again, only to accentuate the elemental quiet and wonder of the place. The defile of Maum opening beyond, scarped and precipitous, barely wide enough to hold the road and bog-stream that tumble through it to the sea. The rainbow air of our western seaboard enfolding all, heavy with rain and the fragrance of salt and peat fires.