Donn Byrne

Blind Raftery And His Wife, Hilaria Donn Byrne

As he sat there in the withdrawing-room of Patrick Lynch's inn, all the life, all the spirit of Galway was evident to him. He could sense the deep shadows of the room, and the May sunshine coming into it through the open windows, yellow as yellow wine. And to his nostrils came the salt Atlantic breeze, sweeping eastward from the islands of Aran. There scents on the wind he could pick out one by one, the odour of the tarred ships riding at anchor in Galway Bay, the smell of the dulse, or Irish seaweed, with its pungent iodine flavour, and there was the pathetic lonely virginal scent of the little flowers that grow in the clefts of sea rocks, and of the honey-like heather and the tang of the peat-smoke from the cottages, nostalgic as an ancient song.