Page:My Irish Year.djvu/23

I stood in the middle of Ireland; the wind that came to me had blown across the wide space of the bog of Allen; the road I had travelled ran back to the valley like the dried bed of a river. If you hump up the index-finger against your thumb, the knuckle of the digit will indicate the elevation I had reached. The road before me was straight and level.

It was young in the morning. People were working in the fields. I spoke to one of the men.

"It's a good day."

"A good day indeed, thanks be to God."

"Has the priest passed this way yet?"

"He hasn't passed this way."

I was going to a "station" at Farral Markey's house, and as the priest had not passed, I was in good time. I loitered and surveyed a country so spacious that the carts that creaked upon the road would have taken the whole of a day to cross the bounds of my vision, travelling east and west, south and north. It was in stretches of bog and patches of arable land. Clumps of trees were around certain farm houses. And now three figures approached, a grandmother, a young child, and an old man. They, too, were going to Farral Markey's. I joined them, and we went along the level road.

Twice a year in parts of rural Ireland a "station"