Be they soldiers or policemen, Great Britain keeps nearly 50,000 armed men in Ireland. The male adult and able population of the island being under 500,000 men, of whom 200,000 at least are opposed to the agrarian and autonomist movement, one can assume that there is on an average one armed soldier or constable for every six unarmed Irishmen. * * * * * On the dusty road before us are slowly walking five cows in rather an emaciated condition. Those beasts strike me by an odd appearance which I am unable to make out at first. When I am close to them I see what it is: _they have no tails_. The absence of that ornament gives the poor animals the awkwardest and most absurd look. I turn to my guide, who is laughing in his sleeve. “Look at their master!” he whispers in a low voice. “Well?” “The cows have no tails, and the man has no ears....” It is true. The unlucky wretch vainly endeavoured to hide his head, as round as a cheese, under the brim of his battered old hat; he did not succeed in hiding his deformity. “By Jove! who arranged you in this guise, you and your cows?” I said to the poor devil, stopping before him. He made a few grimaces before explaining; but the offer of a cigar, that rarely misses its effect, at last unloosed his tongue. He then told me that the Moonlighters had come with a razor to cut his ears, a week after having cut the tails of his cows as a warning. “And what could have been the motive of such cowardly, barbarous mutilation?” He had accepted work on a _boycotted_ farm, though the League had expressly forbidden it; in other words, he was what the Irish call a “land-grabber.” “Where are you going with your cows?” “To sell them at Listowel, if I may, which is not certain.” “Why is it not certain? Because they are unprovided with a tail? At the worst that would only prevent them being made into ox-tail soup,” I say, trying to enliven the conversation by an appropriate joke. “That’s not it,” answers the man. “But the interdict applies to the sale of the cows as well as to having any intercourse with me. I am forbidden to buy anything, and anyone speaking to me is fined two shillings.” He seemed to think this perfectly natural and even just, like the Leper of the “Cité d’Aoste,” or like common convicts when one talks to them of their punishment. “I gambled and I lost—so much the worse for me!...” all his resigned attitude seemed to say. “Perhaps they don’t know it yet in Listowel!” he resumed with a sigh, and hopefully pushed on with his cows. * * * * * “Have there been many cases of such agrarian mutilation in the country?” I ask MacMahon.