A Son of Aran Read Online Free

steps along the Long Walk, he met a well dressed gentleman in a flowing black coat and tall hat sauntering in the opposite direction, wielding a silver mounted cane as he walked. At work some associates to whom he told his story remarked, ‘You’d need to watch out for yourself on the Long Walk at night; some unsavoury characters are known to frequent that place.’
    â€˜And what would bring them down there?’ asked Peadar. ‘Surely they could as easily take the air in Claddagh Park or along Sea Road?’
    â€˜I don’t think it’s sea air those bucks are after,’ one man said laughingly. The others hung their heads and didn’t respond. Although he laughed with him, Peadar was puzzled by the man’s remark, but he didn’t want to show his ignorance of what might attract men to the area. Saureen was dismissive when he told her what the man had said.
    â€˜Don’t be listening to those fellows,’ she said, ‘they don’t know their arse from their elbow. What would they know about people on the Long Walk or their business?’
    She didn’t allow Peadar’s return to interfere with her routine. They met on a regular basis; sometimes they went to the Town Hall cinema. On one occasion she took him dancing to The Hanger. Peadar wasn’t conversant with modern slow waltzes and foxtrots but, whenever a céilidhe and old time dance was called, he was able to hold his own in battering the floor. Saureen, proud to show him off, cut a dash as she paraded him before her acquaintances.
    â€˜An unusual association!’ one woman was heard to comment. ‘I wonder what she’s up to—a city woman taking up with a man from the Aran Islands? There’s more here than meets the eye.’
    Tongues wagged. Oblivious to all that was whispered or said, Peadar was glad to be seen in her company. He was happy in his new environment. He was close to the love of his life. The more he saw of her the more he wanted to spend his life with her. On a Sunday in September, arm in arm, they climbed among tufts of blooming heather on the hills west of Bearn, and gazed in rapture across Galway Bay to Ballyvaughan and Black Head. Far out to sea the Aran Islands, shrouded in a delicate haze of blue, appeared to rise from the sea like scenes from a fairy tale.
    â€˜Somewhere out there is Hy Brasil, the Isle of the Blest,’ Peadar told her, as he related the legend to her.
    â€˜I’d like to search for that island some day,’ he added with passion. ‘I know it’s out there somewhere. My mother claimed it was where my father went. He was so happy there he never returned.’
    In a spontaneous moment of wellbeing he whispered, ‘Saureen, will you come with me to Hy Brasil? I’d like if we could find the place and be together on it. I love you very much. Will you marry me?’
    â€˜Of course I will, Peadar,’ she replied. ‘I thought you’d never ask me.’
    For weeks afterwards Peadar floated on air. He hadn’t used his lovely tenor voice since his mother’s death; now he sang quietly to himself as he carried bags of fertiliser in MacDonacha’s factory and on his way to work. He improvised the words of his favourite song, ‘Eileen, my Eileen,’ to read ‘Saureen, my Saureen.’
    He sang it to her whenever they were alone:
    Saureen, my Saureen,
    Wait for me, Saureen.
    Delighted with his patronage, she even tried to join in. ‘That song has a ring of sincerity,’ she thought.
    â€˜When will we have the big day?’ she asked, when the traditional period of mourning for Peadar’s mother was over. ‘I’d like if we were married in spring.’
    â€˜Will we go back to Aran then?’ Peadar asked. ‘I’d need to do a few things with the cottage and to bring a fresh supply of turf from Connemara for there’s no fuel on the island.’
    â€˜Peadar, love, that might