As I read The Aran Islands right through for the first time since he showed it me in manuscript, I e to uand how muowledge of the real life of Irelao the creation of a world which is yet as fantastic as the Spain of Cervantes. Here is the story of The Playboy, of The Shadow of the Glen; here is the ghost on horsebad the finding of the young mans body of Riders to the Sea, numberless ways of speed vehement pictures that had seemed to owe nothing to observation, and all to some overflowing of himself, or to some mere y of dramatistru. I had thought the violent quarrels of The Well of the Saints came from his love of bitter ents, but here is a couple that quarrel all day long amid neighbours who gather as for a play. I had defehe burning of Christy Mahons leg on the ground that an artist need but make his characters self?sistent, ahat too was observation, for although these people are kindly towards each other and their children, they have no sympathy for the suffering of animals, and little sympathy for paihe person who feels it is not in danger. I had thought it was in the wantonness of fancy Martin Dhoul accused the smith of plug his living ducks, but a few lines further on, in this book where moral indignation is unknown, I read, Sometimes when I go into a cottage, I find all the women of the place down on their knees plug the feathers from live ducks and geese.
He loves all that has edge, all that is salt in the mouth, all that is rough to the hand, all that heightens the emotions by test, all that stings into life the sense edy; and in this book, uhe plays where nearo his audience moves him to mischief, he shows it without thought of other taste than his. It is so stant, it is all set out so simply, so naturally, that it suggests a correspondeween a lasting mood of the soul and this life that shares the harshness of rocks and wind. The food of the spiritual?minded is sweet, an Indian scripture says, but passionate minds love bitter food. Yet he is no indifferent observer, but is certainly kind and sympathetic to all about him. When an old and ailing man, dreading the ing winter, cries at his leaving, not thinking to see him again; aices that the old mans mitten has a hole in it where the palm is aced to the stick, one knows that it is with eyes full of ied affe as befits a simple man and not in the curiosity of study. When he had left the Blaskets for the last time, he travelled with a lame pensioner who had drifted there, why heaven knows, and one m having missed him from the inhey were staying, he believed he had gone back to the island and searched everywhere and questioned everybody, till he uood of a sudden that he was jealous as though the island were a woman.
The book seems dull if you read much at a time, as the later Kerry essays do not, but nothing that he has written recalls so pletely to my sehe man as he was in daily life; and as I read, there are moments when every line of his face, every iion of his voice, grows so clear in memory that I ot realize that he is dead. He was no nearer when we walked and talked than now while I read these unarranged, unspeculating pages, wherein the only life he loved with his whole heart reflects itself as iill water of a pool. Thought es to him slowly, and only after long seemingly uative watg, and when it es, (and he had the same character in matters of business) it is spoken without hesitation and never ged. His versation was not an experimental thing, an instrument of