In front of me, Galway Bay, too blue almost to look
at, on my right, the Atlantic on my left, a perpendicular cliff
under my ankles, and over me innumerable gulls that chase each other
in a white cirrus of wings.
A nest of hooded crows is somewhere near me, and one of the old
birds is trying to drive me away by letting itself fall like a stone
every few moments, from about forty yards above me to within reach
of my hand.
Gannets are passing up and down above the sound, swooping at times
after a mackerel, and further off I can see the whole fleet of
hookers coming out from Kilronan for a night's fishing in the deep
water to the west.
As I lie here hour after hour, I seem to enter into the wild
pastimes of the cliff, and to become a companion of the cormorants
and crows.
Many of the birds display themselves before me with the vanity of
barbarians, performing in strange evolutions as long as I am in
sight, and returning to their ledge of rock when I am gone. Some are
wonderfully expert, and cut graceful figures for an inconceivable
time without a flap of their wings, growing so absorbed in their own
dexterity that they often collide with one another in their flight,
an incident always followed by a wild outburst of abuse. Their
language is easier than Gaelic, and I seem to understand the greater
part of their cries, though I am not able to answer. There is one
plaintive note which they take up in the middle of their usual
babble with extraordinary effect, and pass on from one to another
along the cliff with a sort of an inarticulate wail, as if they
remembered for an instant the horror of the mist.
On the low sheets of rock to the east I can see a number of red and
grey figures hurrying about their work. The continual passing in
this island between the misery of last night and the splendor of
to-day, seems to create an affinity between the moods of these
people and the moods of varying rapture and dismay that are frequent
in artists, and in certain forms of alienation. Yet it is only in
the intonation of a few sentences or some old fragment of melody
that I catch the real spirit of the island, for in general the men
sit together and talk with endless iteration of the tides and fish,
and of the price of kelp in Connemara.
After Mass this morning an old woman was buried. She lived in the
cottage next mine, and more than once before noon I heard a faint
echo of-the keen.
