While that zealous and hard-working young minister of the gospel, Father Rhatigan, was saying mass, and visiting that part of his flock congregated at Claddaghduff Chapel, I made my way over the intermittent isthmus of dry, hard, fine sand. It was an agreeable change from the road, which for some distance had lain over a "shaved bog"--that is, a locality from which the peat had been cut away down to its rocky bed. For some distance nothing was visible but stones, on which the rain came plashing down like a cataract. But the aspect and situation of Omey Island are such as to suggest to the speculative mind another and better Scheveningen without anything between it and Labrador. The island is not, however, purely sandbank, as Scheveningen appears to be, for it has a nucleus of rock, the sand being a later accumulation, every year increasing in volume, after the manner observed in Donegal, or as stones are amassed at Dungeness. I had heard wild stories of Omey Island, of troglodytes, hungry dwellers in rocky seaside caves, and rabbit-people burrowing in the sand. As Maundeville observes, "Verilie I have not seen them," but I can quite understand how the story was spread. Over against the inhabited part of the island is what is now a mere sandbank. It is now covered with sand, and not a soul dwells thereon. But there were people there once who clung to their stone cabins till the sand finally covered them; so that they might fairly be described as dwellers or burrowers therein. At last their cabins became sanded up, and the poor folk moved to their present situation. Now I have seen superb potatoes grown literally in the sand at Scheveningen, and was not surprised to hear that Omey Island was once so famous for the national staff of life that few cared to grow anything else. But there are difficulties everywhere, and it is parlous work to break up ground at Omey. There is too much fresh air; for it blows so hard that people are afraid to disturb the thin covering of herbage which overspreads the best part of the island. "If ye break the shkin of 'um, your honour, the wind blows the sand away and leaves your pitaties bare. And, begorra, there are nights when the pitaties thimselves 'ud be blown away."