the people dying without priest, or bishop, or anything at all. But over
in Connemara it was the dogs brought the bodies out of the houses, and
asked no leave."


THE CHOLERA

"The cholera was worse again. It came from foreign, and it lasted a
couple of years, till God drove it out of the country. It is often I saw
a man ploughing the garden in the morning till dinner time, and before
evening he would be dead. It was as if on the wind it came, there was no
escape from it; on the wind, the same as it would come now and would
catch on to pigs. Sheds that would be made out in the haggards to put
the sick in, they would turn as black as your coat. There was no one
could go near them without he would have a glass of whiskey taken, and
he wouldn't like it then."


A LONG REMEMBERING

"The longest thing I remember is the time of the sickness, and my father
that was making four straw mats for four brothers that died, and that
couldn't afford coffins. The bodies were put in the mats and were tied
up in them. And the second thing I remember is the people digging in the
stubble after the oats and the wheat; to see would they meet a potato,
and sometimes they did, for God sent them there."


THE TERRY ALTS