They came away from the hill in a mood of depression. It seemed to Henry that the Gaelic Movement could never take root in that soil. What was the good of asking Jamesey McKeown to sing Gaelic songs and till the land when his heart was hungering for the tuppeny excitements of a Glasgow music-hall? What would Jamesey McKeown make of Galway's translations? Would

O woman of the gleaming hair
(Wild hair that won men's gaze to thee),
Weary thou turnest from the common stare,
For the Shuiler Christ is calling thee.

bind him to the nurture of the earth when

What ho! she bumps

called him to Glasgow?

"We must think of something!" Marsh was saying, but Henry was busy with his own thoughts and paid no heed to him.

What, after all, had a farm to offer a quick-witted man or woman? That girl, Lizzie McCamley of whom his father had spoken once, she had preferred to go to Belfast and work in a linen mill and live in a slum rather than continue in the country; and Jamesey McKeown, who was so quick and eager and anxious to succeed, had weighed farms and fields and hills and valleys in the balance and found them of less weight and value than a Glasgow bar and a Glasgow music-hall. Henry remembered that his father was more interested in the land than most men—and he resolved to ask for his opinion. What was the good of all this co-operation, this struggle to discover the best way of making the earth yield up the means of life, this effort to increase and multiply, when nothing they could do seemed to make the work attractive to those who did it?...

Marsh was still murmuring to him. "I see," he was saying, "that something must be done. That girl ... what's her name?... Sheila something?..."

"Sheila Morgan!" Henry said.

"Yes. Sheila Morgan ... she said something about dancing classes, didn't she? We'll start a dancing class ... we'll teach them the Gaelic dances!..."

It suddenly seemed funny to Henry that Marsh should propose to solve the Land Problem ... the real Land Problem ... by means of dancing classes.

"They'll want more than that," he said. "They can't always be dancing!"

"No," Marsh answered, "but we can begin with that!"

Marsh's depression swiftly left him. He began to speculate on the future of the countryside when the Gaelic revival was complete. There would be Gaelic games, Gaelic songs, Gaelic dances and a Gaelic literature. "I don't see why we shouldn't have a theatre in every village, with village actors and village plays.... There must be a great deal of talent hidden away in these houses that never comes out because there is no one to bring it out.... I wish you were older, Henry, and were quit of Trinity. You and I ... and Galway ... of course, we must have Galway ... might start the Movement on a swifter course than it has now!..." He broke off and made a gesture of impatience. "Oh, my God, why can't a man do more!" he said.