I was watching a rainbow this afternoon—a shimmering ring in the sky between the fort at the mouth of the Owentocker river and Slieve a-Tooey beyond. “That’s a beautiful sight, now,” said a beggar, stopping on the road to have a word with me—the sort of person one meets everywhere in Ireland, friendly, garrulous, inquisitive, very proud of his knowledge of half-secret or hidden things, and anxious at all times to air it before strangers. “We do have a power of them this speckled weather.” He looked into the sky with a queer look, then started humming over the names of the colours to himself in Irish. “And they say, sir, it’s unlucky to pass through a rainbow. Did you ever hear that?”