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Updated: July 9, 2025
Old Mourteen is keeping me company again, and I am now able to understand the greater part of his Irish. He took me out to-day to show me the remains of some cloghauns, or beehive dwellings, that are left near the central ridge of the island.
After that Mourteen described the feats of poteen drinking and fighting that he did in his youth, and went on to talk of Diarmid, who was the strongest man after Samson, and of one of the beds of Diarmid and Grainne, which is on the east of the island.
He was dressed in miserable black clothes which seemed to have come from the mainland, and was so bent with rheumatism that, at a little distance, he looked more like a spider than a human being. Michael told me it was Pat Dirane, the story-teller old Mourteen had spoken of on the other island. I wished to turn back, as he appeared to be on his way to visit me, but Michael would not hear of it.
They began talking and laughing about the dispute last night and the noise made at it. 'The worst fights do be made here over nothing, said an old man next me. 'Did Mourteen or any of them on the big island ever tell you of the fight they had there threescore years ago when they were killing each other with knives out on the strand? 'They never told me, I said.
I spent all this last day with my blind guide, looking at the antiquities that abound in the west or north-west of the island. As we set out I noticed among the groups of girls who smiled at our fellowship old Mourteen says we are like the cuckoo with its pipit a beautiful oval face with the singularly spiritual expression that is so marked in one type of the West Ireland women.
He stopped as we reached the summit of the island, with the stretch of the Atlantic just visible behind him. 'Whisper, noble person, he began, 'do you never be thinking on the young girls? The time I was a young man, the devil a one of them could I look on without wishing to marry her. 'Ah, Mourteen, I answered, 'it's a great wonder you'd be asking me. What at all do you think of me yourself?
This old man talks usually in a mournful tone about his ill-health, and his death, which he feels to be approaching, yet he has occasional touches of humor that remind me of old Mourteen on the north island. To-day a grotesque twopenny doll was lying on the floor near the old woman. He picked it up and examined it as if comparing it with her.
Old Mourteen asked them why the house was in ruins, and who had lived in it. 'A rich farmer built it a while since, they said, 'but after two years he was driven away by the fairy host. The boys came on with us some distance to the north to visit one of the ancient beehive dwellings that is still in perfect preservation.
When we crawled in on our hands and knees, and stood up in the gloom of the interior, old Mourteen took a freak of earthly humour and began telling what he would have done if he could have come in there when he was a young man and a young girl along with him.
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