Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/267

 '' First-Foof in the British Isles, 259

these fair damsels, the one who can speak of the other as ' that flat-footed craythur' is pretty sure to win, although the flat-footed man may have three acres and a cow, and the other ' nothing but the rags on his back'. So strong is the feeling, and so deep is the impression made by this prejudice, that, although I have not been a fortnight in Ireland for the past twenty years or nearly, I can hardly help nmv feeling, when people look down- wards to where I stand, that they are inspecting my feet. You see I am, for the most part, of Teutonic descent, and, I sup- pose, a tendency to flat-footedness is one of the results of that misfortune.^

" Another is that I have reddish hair, and that was another cause of heart-burning. The red-haired people, even in Ulster (it may be worse elsewhere, but I don't know — yes, I know it is worse in Connaught, where they are savagely disliked), are all " Danes" or foreigners of some kind, who can never, somehow, come to be liked in a brotherly way, or altogether trusted. I inherit my ruddy locks from a Carkton family ; though many Welsh people, when told where I was born, suppose it to be a mark of Gwyddel blood. Even if it were, it would be just as bad in Ireland as if it were Saxon or Norman. Red-haired men are bad, but to meet a red-haired woman as you go out on any important journey, is such a terrible omen — or was in some parishes in my boyhood — that the man who will not turn back home again, must have nerve enough to face the devil.

" This mention of the Gwyddel reminds me that, although the Welsh make the term synonymous with ' Irish', the Goidels can never have been numerous in Ireland — or, if they were, the conquering race has grown very scarce — almost died out. Is it not held that the genuine Cymry, although they gave Wales their language, and taught the original dolichocephalic people to call themselves Cymry too, were but a hardy /^?f^.? I do not know enough of these things to be sure whether you are one of those who hold the Cymry to be scarce in Cymru at the present day.

1 Mr. Tierney is joking : since this letter was written I have had the pleasure of meeting him, but I do not recollect staring at his " understandings". I conclude that there is nothing peculiar about them.

S 3