Walk to Loughrea

Walk to Loughrea—Thoughts of Home—A New Day—A Fellow Traveller—Cabin Theology—Such a Bed!—Hearty Welcome in Banagher—An Anxious Mother—A Noble-hearted Daughter—Incursion of a Troop of Connaughtmen into an Inn, and how they behaved themselves—Visit to Mr. S.—Rejection—Christian kindness of Poor Mary and her Brother

The time to go arrived, and at ten o'clock the sun looked out, and I promised my urgent friend, should the clayey road be impassable, I would return and spend another night; and though for four Irish miles I was literally sticking in clay, I kept on, hoping the road would improve, and stopping when I could walk no longer, and feeling I must not and could not go back; and at last a man with a team overtook me, saying, "God save ye kindly, lady, and the mountain is a long one, and will ye put the basket on the load?" He kept my company for some miles, and then stopped to feed his horses, and gave me my basket; which, to my weary feet, already blistered, seemed to be almost an insupportable clog, and much more so, as night was gathering, the mountains were wild and barren, the cabins, like angels' visits,

Ireland’s Welome to the Stranger is one of the best accounts of Irish social conditions, customs, quirks and habits that you could wish for. The author, Mrs Asenath Nicholson, was an American widow who travelled extensively in Ireland on the eve of the Great Famine and meticulously observed the Irish peasantry at work and play, as well as noting their living conditions and diet. The book is also available from Kindle.