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porting life-so wide are the pastures of rock and so thin the soil.

Primitive Aran, that has never seen a motor car, and probably never will, with its peasants in homespun and sandals of untanned cowhide, has other distinctions than antiquity of modes and virtues. Its history and speech and legends and only half-canonical saints are rivaled by its geological curiosities; for physically it is one of the most curious groups of islands on any coast whatever. Its cliffs are matched in wonder by its great prehistoric relics: forts made of stones fitted together by the Firbolgs with such refinement of labor that they have stood, without mortar, some of them two thousand years. Frankly, these strange relics of the warfare of legend's twilight fascinate me more than the beehive cells whither holy men withdrew for fasting and for prayer, or the "Grave of the Seven Romans," or even the old ruined churches and sites of monasteries. But here stood the schools that were cyclone cellars of Christian culture when the light of learning had seemingly been all but extinguished by the storm. of wars. waged on Ireland's mainland and in the brutalized Europe of the

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dark ages. Some say that these western. islands were more frequented in that time. than the shores near by; that, besides being a kind of university, Aran was in one sense the second birthplace of Christianity. That Christianity endured in Ireland, or in western Europe even, is credited in large part to the island missionaries, and Aran is crowded with their dismantled relics. At Seven Churches, on Aranmore, my voluntary guide. points to a dry well, and calls it the Well of the Holy Virgin. People still come to it on pilgrimage, for its waters (when they flowed). were famous for their cures; and on the. bushes that grow at its mouth they tie small bits of flannel to indicate the number of prayers they have already said each keeping a particular twig for her prayers or for his; so that the appearance of the well. is disorderly enough with red rag and blue rag and gray rag fluttering in the breeze. I recall some earlier traveler to the west of Ireland recording a remark spoken to some such peasant as the one I met at Seven Churches:

"Surely," said he, "you cannot think that the saints of heaven need those bits of rag to remind them of your prayers?"

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For my own part, I met no strangers at all on Aran, save an English concert master, some Irish gentlefolk from Dublin and Cork, several priests, a young actor of the Abbey Theater Company who was allowing himself a few short hours at Kilronan to absorb "local color," and two or three American tourists hardly convalescent from their rough trip out from Galway; but in the visitors' book at the St. Ronan Hotel I read some interesting badinage between English and German visitors to the place. Two Englishmen from Lancashire, who had spent parts of three days on the largest island in the summer of 1911, wrote this frank comment on what they saw and found:

A deeply interesting island and people, and a pleasant, homely hotel. If only the villagers' houses were as clean and cozy, Kilronan would become an almost popular holiday place. The white exteriors are curiously contradicted by the interiors, with their pigs, poultry, and peatsmoked walls. We commend to visitors a visit to the rocky coasts of the other side of the island, and the plays of J. M. Synge, which are concerned with the life of these islands. And the next entry, by "Heinrich Martens, Berlin, Germany," is brief and to the point. Herr Martens writes:

An Englishman can see nothing Irish except pigs.

It is perfectly true that Englishmen who live in neatly ordered villas at Bolton, Lancashire, or Americans inhabiting well-ordered flats in Manhattan or detached frame houses, eight rooms and bath, in Newton Lower Falls, would be miserable in the cottages of Aranmore. It is equally true that any one looking into one of those cottages stands a fair chance of seeing a cat on a chair, a dog on the dirt floor, and chickens and ducks quite at home 'most anywhere-pigs, too, no doubt. Why not? Wouldn't any one looking at it through lorgnettes exclaim, "How primitively sweet and St. Franciscan !" if it occurred in a painting of the Holy Family by some old master? For the Aran islanders are not sophisticated folk. And their spirit of communism, which keeps them, poor as they are, from supplying any candidates for Galway poorhouse, extends to the animal kingdom generally.

In the north of Ireland one hears the phrase, "a Protestant-looking town." It means (even when used by Catholics) that the houses are neat-perhaps even overgrown with roses. And in County Antrim I met a

hustling young Ulsterman who, discussing the poverty of the south, said: "You can't pity them very much. pity them very much. They won't work."

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Now, whether this be true of the south, I shall not argue here; but any one who uses this statement as an argument against Home Rule, and against Catholicism in Ireland as compared with the beneficence of Presbyterianism, ought to be reminded of these Aran Islands-flinty spoils snatched by devoted endeavor from the sea itself. "And if it is damp and wet so often," says an old man (and this on rather the richest of the islands), "lucky it is that it is so, for otherwise what rye would we have at all, and what potatoes?" For, no matter how poor the iand west of Ireland, these people seem able to grow fine potatoes on it, never a weed in the patch. Flowers too, since O'Flaherty's front yard is full of vivid pinks (a great flower in Ireland), bachelor's-buttons, asters, nasturtiums, hollyhocks, sweet-peas, and all sorts of flowers I don't know by name, with pansies of all colors and great size. The house itself is all rose vines and ivy, and there are geraniums brightening the windows. All these flowers bloom especially well in this Irish climate; the sea (as always) heightens their shades. This particular establishment is, you remember, on an island nearer to America than any other part of what we call Europe; its air is clean and clear and 66 And when it rains? pure. Oh, when it rains, it's dirty everywhere," says your islander.

I have mentioned John Synge in an earlier paragraph, quoting from his book on the Aran Islands-a book destined to live as one of the most personal and pungent of travel books, worthy of mention in one breath with Borrow's" Bible in Spain" and Stevenson's "Travels with a Donkey." Synge, the dramatist, and his use of Aran material must be known everywhere to those who know vivid English prose, instinct with the spirit of satire and the spirit of poetry. One evening in the kitchen of Edward O'Flaherty's little inn there were gathered round the range the man of the house and herself and Nellie (diligently reading by a ruinous light) and Michael and myself. And for the first time I mentioned the name of Synge and asked the assembly if they had ever heard of him. "He was a sort of poet and playwright," I explained," and came here from Dublin, I am told, and wrote books about it."

Michael had heard tell of him.

"He was

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"He was a nice-looking young man,' mused O'Flaherty, more charitable than the rest, for he alone was puffing a pipe.

"And 'twas a bad use he made of his looks, then," says Mrs. O'Flaherty, usually

so kind and charitable-so kind that she is sorry that German ships even should be "drowned" at sea-"for he went to the Atlantic Hotel on this island, and when he told them he was nephew of Mr. Synge, who had been the clergyman here, they made free with him, and he would sit with them evenings; and then afterwards he made a book of it all and didn't get things right either. For he was a stranger, and was only two weeks or the like in it at all."

I wonder if any one who ever wrote a really notable travel book, or regional fiction, or drama of strong vitality, was appreciated or tolerated even by those of whom he wrote ? I think of no such case. After they had once seen his writings Daudet never dared return to Tarascon, that I remember. Kipling thought to pay a tribute to our Massachusetts fishermen, but they found harsh words for him and rude corrections at Gloucester. Mr. Cable has been regarded in New Orleans as an interloping alien, I am told. And Canon Hannay, of St. Patrick'sGeorge A. Birmingham "-is not popular at Westport. When his play was acted there by an English company last spring, the scenery of "General John Regan" was damaged by the vegetables they threw.

The case of Synge and the Aran islanders is in no sense an exception.

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