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boats,” I repeated.
    “Oh, you mean in a canoe,” said one man. He turned to the others and muttered something incomprehensible. He was speaking Irish, which is still the common language in the Dingle. “We have canoes all right. But the weather’s not right for it. And you need to know what you’re doing before you go out in a canoe. It would be dangerous for a stranger.”
    “Of course I will pay you for your trouble, and I’m prepared to take the risk,” I coaxed.
    “No,” said the spokesman, “it’s too dangerous today. We’d all be killed. Maybe tomorrow.”
    “What if I paid you three pounds each just for a quick spin?”
    “Ah now! That would be different!”
    So off we went to find their “canoes,” a strange little procession that kept stopping and starting and changing its composition. One old man dropped out. Another was hallooed from a field to take his place. And the fourth—a younger man with a bright yellow flower stuck jauntily in his hatband—was recruited at the cliff edge just before we started down a steep path to the landing place where a dozen curraghs lay upside down on their stages or props beside the water’s edge. The crew talked in Irish all the while, so I needed an interpreter. As luck would have it, on the road we passed a young man who was evidently a trainee schoolmaster, one of many sent to spend a few months in the Dingle to improve their knowledge of Irish before taking up their jobs.
    “Would you care to come for a boat ride?” I called out to him. “You could help me with some translation as well.”
    “Why of course,” came the cheerful reply, and ten minutes later the poor fellow was sitting nervously beside me on the rear thwart of a curragh as it bounced up and down in the spray.
    “Have you ever been in a small boat before?” I asked him.
    “No,” he replied, looking startled and clutching the gunwale. “Will we be away long?”
    The trip was fascinating. To carry the boat to the water’s edge, the crew crawled beneath one of the upturned curraghs, crouched so their shoulders pressed up on the thwarts, and then straightened their backs so that the curragh shot smartly into the air like a strange black beetle heaving itself up onto four pairs of legs which then marched off to the edge of the slipway. With a swift movement the boat was lowered to the ground, tipped right side up, and when the next wave washed up, she was swirled afloat as casually as a toy. One by one we jumped in, taking care not to put a foot through the thin canvas. The oarsmen settled in their places; one good strong heave, and the curragh shot forward into the waves faster than any oared sea boat I have ever ridden in. In a moment we were out in the sound and curvetting like a horse over the waves. Balance was critical. If the boat stayed level, she flew over the waves and scarcely a drop of water came aboard. Through my interpreter I bombarded the crew with questions. How many curraghs were still used in the Dingle? About a hundred. What were they used for? Lobster pots and setting salmon nets.Would they stand a really rough sea? If they were handled right, came the response. What happens in a capsize? The boat stays wrong side up, and you drown.
    “Can you carry heavy loads all right?” I asked.
    “Why, yes. In spring we take cattle out in the canoes to leave them to graze on the islands,” came one answer, and someone else added a comment which made the other laugh.
    “What did he say?” I asked my schoolteacher-interpreter.
    “He said the cows are less trouble. They don’t ask so many questions.”
    When we were ready to return to the slipway, I asked the curragh crew to perform a small but important experiment. I asked them to row the boat on a figure-eight course, because I wanted to learn how the curragh rode the seas at different angles. Up to that moment, I had noticed, the oarsmen had been keeping the boat heading directly into the waves or directly away from them.