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His own father had been a wild creature, full of daring dreams, and the
chief of them had centred in himself. Although brought up in a mud
cabin, and known as Daniel Neale, he believed that he belonged by lineal
descent to the highest aristocracy of his island, the O'Neills of the
Mansion House (commonly called the Big House) and the Barons of Castle
Raa. To prove his claim he spent his days in searching the registers of
the parish churches, and his nights in talking loudly in the village
inn. Half in jest and half in earnest, people called him "Neale the
Lord." One day he was brought home dead, killed in a drunken quarrel
with Captain O'Neill, a dissolute braggart, who had struck him over the
temple with a stick. His wife, my grandmother, hung a herring net across
the only room of her house to hide his body from the children who slept
in the other bed.
There were six of them, and after the death of her husband she had to
fend for all. The little croft was hungry land, and to make a sufficient
living she used to weed for her more prosperous neighbours.


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