the reckless way in which it is used; for it
is now constantly protected by a metal cap, so
that it may be thrust lighted into the pocket
without burning a hole, as it used so often to
do before.

Close to Maam, on an island on an arm
of Lough Corrib, stands Caislen na Circe,
the Hen's Castle, the legend about which I
may perhaps tell you some other day. My
clerical friends went on to Cong. I hope they
will move their brethren of the neighbourhood
to get the great burial-ground there better cared
for. Heaps of skulls and thigh-bones, bits of
coffins, old coffin-plates, and tombstones just
resting on a few loose slates, are by no means
pleasing mementos mori. It is hard to understand
how a sensitive and imaginative people
can allow such a state of things to go on.
Anyhow, it is a matter in which the priests might
enforce a change for the better, if they would
but try. Their influence would of course be
all-sufficient in an arrangement of that kind. I am
Irish to the backbone—much more Irish than
the Irish, I am constantly being told; but I
cannot help getting in a rage whenever I see an
Irish churchyard. Why should their
gravestones be laid in that way, more like those of
some outlandish savages than of decent
Christians? Why is the whole place too often a
neglected wilderness of nettles and bits of
broken stone? I will tell you the "why"
which my father used to give for this savagery.
In the bad old times (said he) the Orangemen,
after their drinking-bouts, would sally forth,
and, instead of "wrecking " a few cottiers'
cabins, would sometimes, by way of a change,
wreck an old abbey with its churchyard. The
poor slaves, whom the penal laws had reduced
below the level of manhood, still clung to the
burial-places of their fathers; but they abstained
on purpose from decorating or even cleansing
them. Cui bono? The adornment would only
have been a sort of challenge to the vindictive
enemy. Hence the habit of neglect and the
painful disregard for things rightly held in
reverence. And, as the tyrant's oppression is always
visited on himself, the Orangeman grew as careless
about the decent ordering of churchyards as
he had driven the Catholic to be. He was like
the Englishmen of the Georgian age, whose
habits in regard to churchyards Hogarth has so
remorselessly stereotyped. And let us not be
too hard on Ireland, remembering that when
most of us were boys, chuck-farthing was played
on many an English gravestone, as it is in the
picture of the Idle Apprentice, and bone-heaps
were almost as common over here as they are now
over there. But it is high time for better things.
Orangeism has had its fangs drawn this long
while; and, if there were but such a thing in
Ireland as proper public opinion, it would
already have taught the natives the same "sweeter
manners" which it has brought in vogue among
ourselves. This is a digression, I had been
dropped by my two priests just by the Hen's
Castle. Thence, after a "lunch" at Maam Hotel,
I marched off along the four-mile road to meet
the car at Shindilla cross-roads. The view back
was for some time magnificent. A storm seemed
rising among the Pins, and the scene reminded
me of Llanberis Pass, softening down in front
into the Breconshire Beacons. This was followed,
as soon as I had crossed the water-shed, by a very
good imitation of the vale of Ffestiniog. A very
good imitation it was, with the "Pins" on the
right in their evening grandeur, the lar
Connaught range, dark purple, in front, the low
hills nearer—golden green or glorified grey, as
the sloping sun glints along them, and the crowd
of little lakes (covered, some of them, with white
water-lilies), some of which (I know) are the
head-waters of Loch Corrib.

I was in good time for the car. I don't like
having to meet such things; their time is very
uncertain; so I acted on the principle
impressed on me at the Clifden office: "It's
better for you to be waiting for it than
expecting it to be waiting for you." Almost as
soon as we started, the sunset began. I really
think the sun in Ireland very often goes to
bed by Greenwich time. I have seen many
good sunsets, but never one to beat this. The
whole sky was on fire. The "Pins" were
glorified; they did not seem the same as those
up whose sides in the early morning I had
watched the mists creep. When we lost them
by a turn in the road, we were consoled by the
mountain north-east of them, which literally
glowed red. "It always looks well when
there's a fine sunset; we call it Shaun na Graine,
the shining of the sun," remarked a
fellow-traveller.

But the sky was as beautiful as the mountains.
Above the fire which glowed over the mountain-tops
were masses of purple light, edged with flame,
and floating in an ocean of duller purple. The
west, too, was red; and the lake between was
literally flooded with colour. Ireland is the
land of sunsets. I should suppose the dampness
has something to do with it, only that
Indian friends tell me I should never talk of
sunsets again if I saw one over the Neilgherries.
As it is, I have three sun-effects to choose
from: my first love, the Killarney Reeks as I
once saw them from the top of Mangerton
when the sun was going down; this Connemara
sunset; and one (it was a sunrise)
behind the rock of Theben, in the Danube, off
Pressburg. Soon it got twilight, and one of
the party told anecdotes of the Martins, while
the other detailed how, while wolves were still
found in the district, an Irish Androcles had
pulled a great thorn out of a wolf's foot, and
tended the animal till it recovered. The grateful
beast went off, but soon after reappeared in
company with another wolf, the two between
them leading a fine Kerry cow, which they
placed unharmed beside the man's door. He
had the cow proclaimed at the chapel, but could
not hear of any owner. It is this which makes
me suspect the story. The wolves may have
done what is laid to their charge, but the Galway
man would never have been so weak as to
"advertise" his winnings.