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A Cave by the Irish Sea
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
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The
Charm of Ireland
By
Burton E. Stevenson
Author of "The Spell of Holland," "The Mystery of
the Boule Cabinet," etc.
With many Illustrations from
Photographs by the Author
New York
Dodd, Mead and Company
1914
COPYRIGHT, 1914
BYDODD..MEAD & COMPANY
TO
J. I. B.
THIS BOOK
2057924
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT l
II LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF AN ANCIENT CAP-
ITAL 9
III THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 26
IV ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK ... 42
V THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 59
VI DROGHEDA THE DREARY 85
VII HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL OF THE KINGS . . 97
VIII ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY 113
IX CUSHLA MA CHREE 128
X THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE .... 139
XI A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND .... 153
XII THE "GRAND TOUR" 177
XIII ROUND ABOUT KILLARNEY 192
XIV O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR . . . 203
XV THE RUINS AT ADARE 224
XVI "WHERE THE RIVER SHANNON FLOWS" . . 242
XVII LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE . - . . . . 265
XVIII GALWAY OF THE TRIBES 292
XIX IAR CONNAUGHT 314
XX JOYCE'S COUNTRY 339
XXI THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM 358
XXII THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR .... 375
XXIII THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS 398
XXIV THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE .... 415
XXV THE MAIDEN CITY . A .. ... ... ... ... . 438
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XXVI THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH 458
XXVII THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS ...... 472
XXVIII THE GLENS OF ANTRIM ....;.. 485
XXIX BELFAST . 503
XXX THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK 519
XXXI THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE 534
XXXII THE END OF THE PILGRIMAGE .... 559
INDEX 567
ILLUSTRATIONS
Two Tiny Connaught Toilers Frontispiece
FACING
FACE
Dublin Castle 10
O'Connell, alias Sackville, Street, Dublin 10
Ruins of St. Mary's Abbey Howth 22
The Evolution of the Jaunting Car 28
The Cross of Cong 40
The Shrine of St. Patrick's Bell 40
Glendalough and the Ruins of St. Kevin's Churches . . 66
The Road to St. Kevin's Seat 74
The First of St. Kevin's Churches 74
The Round Tower, Clondalkin . ... . . . 88
St. Lawrence's Gate, Drogheda 88
Holy Cross Abbey, from the Cloisters 100
The Mighty Ruins on the Rock of Cashel 10O
Cashel of the Kings 104
Blarney Castle 116
A Cottage at Inchigeelagh 144
The Shrine of St. Fin Barre 144
The Bay of Glengarriff 164
The Upper Lake, Killarney, from the Kenmare Road . 164
Old Weir Bridge, Killarney 188
The Meeting of the Waters 188
Ross Castle, Killarney 188
Muckross Abbey, Killarney 194
The Cloister at Muckross Abbey . . . . , . .194
The Choir of the Abbey at Adare 232
The Castle of the Geraldines, Adare 232
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
The Shannon, near World's End 248
St. Senan's Well 248
The Bridge at Killaloe 258
The Oratory at Killaloe 258
Entrance to St. Molua's Oratory 262
A Fisherman's Home 262
The Choir of the Abbey at Athenry 270
A Cottage at Athenry 270
The Goldsmith Rectory at Lissoy 276
The "Three Jolly Pigeons" 276
On the Road to Clonmacnoise 288
St. Kieran's Cathair, Clonmacnoise 288
The Market at Galway 296
"Ould Saftie" 296
The Claddagh, Galway 300
A Claddagh Home 300
A Galway Vista 302
The Memorial of a Spartan Father 302
The Connemara Marble Quarry 322
A Connemara Home 322
In "Joyce's Country" 344
On the Shore of Lough Mask 344
The Cloister at Cong Abbey 348
The Monks' Fishing-house, Cong Abbey .... 348
The Turf-Cutters 356
A Girl of "Joyce's Country" 356
Cromlechs at Carrowmore 392
Sligo Abbey from the Cloister 400
The Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis 400
A Ruin on the Shore of Lough Gill 402
The Last Fragment of an Ancient Stronghold . . . 402
A Cashel near Dromahair 408
St. Patrick's Holy Well 408
The Coast at Bundoran 416
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
The Home of "Colleen Bawn" 416
Birthplace of William Allingham 430
Castle Donegal 430
The Walls of Derry 466
The Grainan of Aileach 466
The "Giant's Head," near Portrush 480
The Ruins of Dunluce Castle ........ 480
The Giant's Causeway 482
The Cliffs beyond the Causeway 482
The Grave of Ossian 496
An Antrim Landscape 496
A Humble Home in Antrim 498
The Old Jail at Cushendall 498
The City Hall, Belfast 516
High Street, Belfast 516
The Grave of Patrick, Brigid and Columba .... 522
The Old Cross at Downpatrick 522
The Great Rath at Downpatrick 526
The Inner and Outer Circles 526
The Central Mound 526
The Eye Well at Struell 528
The Well of Sins at Struell . '. 528
The Birthplace of John Boyle O'Reilly 540
Entrance to Dowth Tumulus 540
Entrance to Newgrange 546
The Ruins of Mellifont 546
The Round Tower, Monasterboice 554
The High Cross, Monasterboice 554
Muiredach's Cross, Monasterboice . -.- 556
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
CHAPTER I
DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT
TWILIGHT was at hand when the little steamer, slender
as a greyhound, cast loose from the pier at Holyhead,
made its way cautiously out past the breakwater, and
then, gathering speed, headed away across the Irish
Sea, straight toward the setting sun.
The boat showed many evidences that the Irish Sea
can be savage when it chooses. Everything movable
about the decks was carefully lashed down; there were
railings and knotted ropes everywhere to cling to; and
in the saloon the table-racks were set ready at hand,
as though they had just been used, and might be
needed again at any moment. But, on this Saturday
evening in late May, the sea was in a pleasant, even a
jovial, mood, with just enough swell to send a thin
shower of spray across the deck from time to time, and
lend exhilaration to the rush of the fleet little turbine.
There were many boats in sight — small ones, for the
most part, rolling and pitching apparently much worse
than we; and then the gathering darkness obscured
them one by one, and presently all that was left of
them were the bobbing white lights at their mastheads.
A biting chill crept into the air, and Betty finally
sought refuge from it in the saloon, while I made my
way back to the smoking-room, hoping for a friendly
pipe with some one.
I was attracted at once by a rosy-faced old priest,
2 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
sitting at one of the corner tables. He was smoking
a black, well-seasoned briar, and he bade me a cheery
good-evening as I dropped into the seat beside him.
"You would be from America," he said, watching
me as I filled up.
"Yes," I answered. "From Ohio."
"Ah, I know Ohio well," and he looked at me with
new interest, "though for many years I have been in
Illinois."
"But you were born in Ireland?"
"I was so; near Tuam. I am going back now for
a visit."
"Have you been away long1?"
"More than thirty years," he said, and took a few
reflective puffs.
"No doubt you will find many changes," I ven-
tured.
But he shook his head. "I am thinking I shall find
Tuam much as I left it," he said. "There are not
many changes in Ireland, even in thirty years. 'Tis
not like America. I am afraid I shall have to give
up smoking while I am there," he added, with a little
sigh.
"Give up smoking*?" I echoed. "But why1?"
"They do not like their priests to smoke in Ireland."
I was astonished. I had no suspicion that Irish
priests were criticised for little things like that. In
fact, I had somewhere received the impression that they
were above criticism of every kind — dictators, in
short, no act of whose was questioned. My compan-
ion laughed when I told him this.
"That is not so at all," he said. "Every priest, of
DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT 3
course, has authority in spiritual matters; but if he
has any authority outside of that, it is because his
people trust him. And before they'll trust him, he
must deserve it. There is no people in the world so
critical, so suspicious, or so sharp-sighted as the Irish.
Take this matter of smoking, now. All Irishmen
smoke, and yet there is a feeling that it is not the right
thing for a priest. For myself, I see no harm in it.
My pipe is a fine companion in the long evenings,
when I am often lonely. But of course I can't do any-
thing that would be making the people think less of
me," and he knocked his pipe out tenderly and put it
sadly in his pocket, refusing my proffered pouch.
"You will have to take a few whiffs up the chimney
occasionally," I suggested.
His faded blue eyes lit up with laughter.
"Ah, I have done that same before this," he said,
with a little chuckle. "That would be while I was a
student at Maynooth, and a wild lot we were. There
was a hole high up in the wall where the stove-pipe
used to go, and we boys would draw a table under
it, and stand on the table, and smoke up the chimney,
turn and turn about," and he went on to tell me of
those far-off days at Maynooth, which is the great
Catholic college of Ireland, and of his first visit to
America, and his first sight of Niagara Falls, and of
how he had finally decided to enter the priesthood
after long uncertainty; and then presently some one
came to the door and said the lights of the Irish coast
could be seen ahead, and we went out to look at them.
Far away, a little to the right, a strong level shaft of
light told of a lighthouse. It was the famous Bailey
4 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
light, at the foot of the Hill of Howth, so one of
the deckhands said; and then, still farther off, another
light began to wink and wink, and then a third that
swept its level beam across the sea, stared one full in
the eye for an instant, and then swept on; and then
more lights and more — the green and red ones marking
the entrance to the harbour; and finally the lights of
Kingstown itself stretched away to the left like a
string of golden beads. And then we were in the
harbour; and then we were beside the pier; and then
Betty and I and the "chocolate-drop" — as we had
named the brown English wrap-up which had done
such yeoman service in Holland that we had vowed
never to travel without it, — went down the gang-plank,
and were in Ireland !
There is always a certain excitement, a certain exhil-
aration, in setting foot for the first time in any coun-
try; but when that country is Ireland, the Island of
the Saints, the home of heroic legend and history more
heroic still, the land with a frenzy for freedom yet
never free — well, it was with a mist of happiness be-
fore our eyes that we crossed the pier and sought seats
in the boat-train.
It is only five or six miles from Kingstown to Dub-
lin, so that at the end of a very few minutes our train
stopped in the Westland Row station, where a fevered
mob of porters and hotel runners was in waiting; and
then, after most of the passengers and luggage had
been disgorged, and a guard had come around and col-
lected twopence from me for some obscure reason I did
not attempt to fathom, went on again, along a viaduct
above gleaming streets murmurous with people, and
DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT 5
across the shining Liffey, to the station at Amiens
Street, which was our destination.
Our hotel, I knew, was only two or three blocks
away, and the prospect of traversing on foot the
crowded streets which we had glimpsed from the train
was not to be resisted; so I told the guard we wanted
a man to carry our bags, and he promptly yelled at a
ragamuffin, who was drifting past along the platform.
"Here !" he called. "Take the bags for the gintle-
man. Look sharrup, now !"
But there was no need to tell him to look sharp, for
he sprang toward me eagerly, his face alight with joy
at the prospect of earning a few pennies — maybe six-
pence— perhaps even a shilling!
"Where is it you'd be wantin' to go, sir?" he asked,
and touched his cap.
I named the hotel.
"It's in Sackville Street," I added. "That's not
far, is it?"
" 'Tis just a step, sir," he protested, and picked up
the bags and was off, we after him.
It was long past eleven o'clock, but when we got
down to the street, we found it thronged with a crowd
for which the sidewalks were much too narrow, and
which eddied back and forth and in and out of the
shops like waves of the sea. We looked into their
faces as we went along, and saw that they were good-
humoured faces, unmistakably Irish; their voices were
soft and the rise and fall of the talk was very sweet
and gentle; but most of them were very shabby, and
many of them undeniably dirty, and some had cele-
brated Saturday evening by taking a glass too much.
6 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
They were not drunk — and I may as well say here that
I did not see what I would call a drunken man all the
time I was in Ireland — but they were happy and up-
lifted, and required rather more room to walk than
they would need on Monday morning.
Our porter, meanwhile, was ploughing through the
crowd ahead of us like a ship through the sea, swing-
ing a bag in either hand, quite regardless of the shins
of the passers-by, and we were hard put to it to keep
him in sight. It was farther than I had thought, but
presently I saw a tall column looming ahead which
I recognised as the Nelson Pillar, and I assured Betty
that we were nearly there, for I knew that our hotel
was almost opposite the Pillar. Our porter, however,
crossed a broad street, which I was sure must be Sack-
ville Street, without pausing, and continued at top
speed straight ahead. We followed him for some mo-
ments; but the street grew steadily darker and more
deserted, and finally I sprinted ahead and stopped him.
"Look here," I said. "We don't want to keep on
walking all night. How much farther is the hotel1?"
He set down the bags and mopped his dripping
face with his sleeve.
"I'm not quite sure, sir," he said, looking about him.
"I don't believe it is up this way at all," I pro-
tested. "It's back there on Sackville Street."
"It is, sir," he agreed cheerfully, and picked up the
bags again and started back.
"That is Sackville Street, isn't it?" I asked.
"Sure, I don't know, sir."
"Don't know?" I echoed, and stared at him.
"Don't you know where the hotel is?"
DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT, 7
"You see, sir, I'm a stranger in Dublin, like your-
self," he explained.
"Well, why on earth didn't you say so?" I de-
manded.
He didn't answer; but of course I realised instantly
why he hadn't said so. If he had, he wouldn't have
got the job. That was what he was afraid of. In
fact, he was afraid, even yet, that I would take the
bags away from him and get some one else to carry
them. I didn't do that, but I took command of the
expedition.
"Come along," I said. "You follow me."
"Thank you, sir," he said, his face lighting up again,
and fell in behind us.
As we retraced our steps, I tried to figure out how
he had expected to find the hotel by plunging straight
ahead without asking the way of any one, and for how
long, if I had not stopped him, he would have kept on
walking. Perhaps he had expected to keep going
round and round until some good fairy led him to our
destination.
At the corner of Sackville Street, I saw a policeman's
helmet looming high above the crowd, and I went to
him and asked the way, while our porter waited in
the background. Perhaps he was afraid of policemen,
or perhaps it was just the instinctive Irish dislike of
them. This particular one bent a benignant face down
upon us from his altitude of something over six feet,
and in a moment set us right. The hotel was only a
few steps away. The door was locked, and I had to
ring, and while we were waiting, our porter looked
about him with a bewildered face.
8 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
"What name was it you gave this street, sir?" he
asked, at last.
"Sackville Street," I answered, and pointed for con-
firmation to the sign at the corner, very plain under
the electric light.
From the vacant look he gave it I knew he couldn't
read ; but he scratched his head perplexedly.
"A friend of mine told me 'twas O'Connell Street,"
he said finally, and I paid him and dismissed him
without realising that I had been brought face to face
with the age-long conflict between English officialism
and Irish patriotism.
Ten minutes later, I opened the window of our
room and found myself looking out at Lord Nelson,
leaning sentimentally on his sword on top of his pillar
• — posing as he so often did when he found himself in
the limelight. Far below, the street still hummed with
life, although it was near midnight. The pavements
were crowded, side-cars whirled hither and thither,
some of the shops had not yet closed. Dublin cer-
tainly seemed a gay town.
CHAPTER II
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF AN ANCIENT CAPITAL
I KNOW Dublin somewhat better now, and I no longer
think of it as a gay town — rather as a supremely
tragic one. Turn the corner from any of the main
thoroughfares, and you will soon find yourself in a
foul alley of crowded tenements, in the midst of a
misery and squalor that wring the heart. You will
wonder to see women laughing together and children
playing on the damp pavements. It is thin laughter
and half-hearted play; and yet, even here, there is a
certain air of carelessness and good-humour. It may
be that these miserable people do not realise their mis-
ery. Cleanliness is perhaps as painful to a person
reared in dirt as dirt is to a person reared in cleanli-
ness; slum dwellers, I suppose, do not notice the slum
odour; a few decades of slum life must inevitably
destroy or, at least, deaden those niceties of smell and
taste and feeling which play so large a part in the
lives of the well-to-do. And it is fortunate that this
is so. But one threads one's way along these squalid
streets, shuddering at thought of the vice and disease
that must be bred there, and mourning, not so much
for their unfortunate inhabitants, as for the blindness
and inefficiency of the social order which permits them
to exist.
These appalling alleys are always in the background
of my thoughts of Dublin ; and yet it is not them I see
10 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
when I close my eyes and evoke my memory of that
ancient town. The picture which comes before me
then is of the wide O'Connell Bridge, with the great
monument of the Liberator guarding one end of it, and
the curving street beyond, sweeping past the tall por-
tico of the old Parliament House, past the time-
stained buildings of Trinity College, and so on along
busy Grafton Street to St. Stephen's Green. This is
the most beautiful and characteristic of Dublin's vistas;
and one visualises it instinctively when one thinks of
Dublin, just as one visualises the boulevards and the
Avenue de 1' Opera when one thinks of Paris, or the
Dam and the Kalverstraat when one thinks of Am-
sterdam, or the Strand and Piccadilly when one thinks
of London.
It was in this direction that our feet turned, that
bright Sunday morning, when we sallied forth for the
first time to see the town, and we were impressed al-
most at once by two things : the unusual height of Dub-
lin policemen and the eccentric attitudes of Dublin
statues. There are few finer bodies of men in the
world than the Royal Irish Constabulary. They are
as spruce and erect as grenadiers; throughout the
length and breadth of Ireland, I never saw a fat one.
They are recruited all over the island, and the tallest
ones must be selected for the Dublin service. At any
rate, they tower a full head above the average citizen
of that town, and, in consequence, there is always one
or more of them in sight.
As for the statues, they sadly lack repose. The
O'Connell Monument is a riot of action, though the
Liberator himself is comparatively cool and self-pos-
DUBLIN CASTLE
© Underwood <fc Underwood. N. Y.
O'CONNELL, ALIAS SACKVILLE STREET, DUBLIN
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 11
sessed. Just beyond the bridge, Smith O'Brien poses
with leg advanced and head flung back and arms
proudly folded in the traditional attitude of haughty
defiance; opposite him, Henry Grattan stands with
hand outstretched midway of an eloquent period; and,
as you explore the streets, you will see other patriots in
bronze or marble doing everything but what they
should be doing : standing quietly and making the best
of a bad job. For to stand atop a shaft of stone and
endure the public gaze eternally is a bad job, even for
a statue. But a good statue conceals its feeling of
absurdity and ennui under a dignified exterior. Most
Dublin ones do not. They are visibly irked and im-
patient.
I mentioned this interesting fact, one evening, to a
Dublin woman of my acquaintance, and she laughed.
" 'Tis true they are impatient," she agreed. "But
perhaps they will quiet down once the government
stops calling O'Connell Street by a wrong name."
"Where is O'Connell Street?" I asked, for I had
failed to notice it.
"Your hotel faces it; but the government names it
after a viceroy whom nobody has thought of for a
hundred years."
It was then I understood the confusion of the man
who had carried our bags up from the station; for to
every good Irishman Sackville Street is always O'Con-
nell Street, in honour of the patriot whose monument
adorns it. That it is still known officially as Sackville
Street is probably due to the inertia of a government
always suspicious of change, rather than to any desire
to honour a forgotten viceroy, or hesitation to add
12 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
another leaf to O'Connell's crown of laurel. O'Con-
nell himself, in some critical quarters, is not quite the
idol he once was; but Irishmen agree that the wide
and beautiful street which is the centre of Dublin
should be named after him, and his monument, at one
end of it, is still the natural rallying-place for the
populace, whose orators love to illustrate their periods
by pointing to the figure of Erin breaking her fetters
at its base.
At the other end of the street is a very noble memo-
rial of another patriot — Charles Stewart Parnell. Par-
nell's fame burns brighter and clearer with the passing
years, and this memorial, so simple, so dignified, and
yet so full of meaning, is one which no American can
contemplate without a thrill of pride, for it is the work
of Augustus Saint-Gaudens — a consummate artist,
American to the marrow, though Dublin-born, of a
French father and an Irish mother.
Midway of this great thoroughfare, rises the Nelson
Pillar — a fluted column springing a hundred and fifty
feet into the air, dominating the whole town. I do
not understand why Nelson should have been so sig-
nally honoured in the Irish capital, for there was noth-
ing Irish about him, either in birth or temperament.
Perhaps that is the reason. Stranger things have hap-
pened in Ireland. And indeed it is no stranger than
the whim which set another statue to face the old Par-
liament House — a gilded atrocity representing Wil-
liam of Orange, garbed as a Roman emperor in laurel-
wreath and toga, bestriding a sway-backed horse!
The Home Rule Parliament will no doubt promptly
change the street signs along the broad thoroughfare
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 13
which forms the heart of Dublin ; but meanwhile every-
body agrees in calling the bridge O'Connell's monument
faces by his name. A very handsome bridge it is, and
there is a beautiful view from it, both up and down
the river. Dublin is like Paris, in that it is built on
both sides of a river, and the view from this point re-
minds one somewhat of the view along the Seine.
There are many bridges, and many domed buildings,
many boats moored to the quays — and many patient
fishermen waiting for a bite!
A short distance beyond the bridge is the great gran-
ite structure with curving fagade arid rain-blackened
columns, a queer but impressive jumble of all the
Greek orders, which now houses the Bank of Ireland.
Time was when it housed the Irish Parliament, and
that time may come again; meanwhile it stands as a
monument to the classical taste of the eighteenth cen-
tury and its fondness for allegorical sculpture — Erin
supported by Fidelity and Commerce, and Fortitude
supported by Justice and Liberty ! Those seem to me
to be mixed allegories, but never mind.
Those later days of the eighteenth century were the
days of Dublin's glory, for then she was really, as well
as sentimentally, the capital of Ireland. Her most
beautiful public buildings date from that period, and
all her fine spacious dwelling-houses. After the Union,
nobody built wide spacious dwellings, but only narrow
mean ones, to suit the new spirit; and the new spirit
was so incapable of living in the lovely old houses
that it turned them into tenements, and put a family
in every room, without any sense of crowding! I
sometimes fear that the old spirit is gone for good, and
14 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
that not even independence can bring it back to Dub-
lin.
It was the Irish House of Commons which, in 1752,
provided the funds for the new home of Trinity Col-
lege, just across the street — a great pile of time-worn
buildings, also in the classic style, and rather dull ; but
it is worth while to go in through the great gateway for
a look at the outer and inner quadrangles.
Beyond the college stretches Grafton Street, the
principal shopping-street of Dublin, and at its head is
St. Stephen's Green, a pretty park, with some beautiful
eighteenth century houses looking down upon it. This
was the centre of the fashionable residence district in
the old days, and the walk along the north side was
the "Beaux Walk." Such of the residences as remain
are mostly given over to public purposes, and the
square itself is redolently British ; for there is a statue
of George II in the centre, and one of Lord Eglinton
not far away, and a triumphal arch commemorating
the war in South Africa. But, if you look closely, you
may find the inconspicuous bust of James Clarence
Mangan, who coughed his life out in the Dublin slums
while Tom Moore — who was also born here — was pos-
ing before fine London ladies ; and Mangan had this re-
ward, that he remained sincere and honest and warmly
Irish to the last, a true bard of Erin, and one whose
memory she does well to cherish. How feeble Tom
Moore's tinklings sound beside the white passion of
"Dark Rosaleen!"
Over dews, over sands,
Will I fly for your weal :
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 15
Your holy, delicate white hands
Shall girdle me with steel.
At home in your emerald bowers,
From morning's dawn till e'en,
You'll pray for me, my flower of flowers,
My dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
You'll think of me through daylight's hours,
My virgin flower, my flower of flowers,
My dark Rosaleen!
A short walk down Kildare Street leads to a hand-
some, wide-flung building with a court in front, once
the mansion of the Duke of Leinster, but now occu-
pied by the Royal Dublin Society. The wing at the
right is the Science and Art Museum, that to the left
the National Library. The latter is scarcely worth a
visit, unless there is some reading you wish to do, but
we shall have to spend some hours in the museum.
On this Sunday morning, however, Betty and I
walked on through to Leinster Lawn, a pleasant en-
closed square, with gravelled walks and gardens gay
with flowers, but marred with many statues; and here
you will note that a Victorian government spent
a huge sum in commemorating the virtues of the Prince
Consort. We contemplated it for a while, and then
went on to the great building which closes in the park
on the north, and which houses the National Gallery
of Ireland. We found the collection surprisingly good.
It is especially rich in Dutch art, and possesses three
Rembrandts, one of an old and another of a young
man, and the other showing some shepherds building
a fire — just such a subject as Rembrandt loved. And
16 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
there is a good Teniers, and an inimitable canvas by
Jan Steen, "The Village School." There are also a
number of pictures by Italian masters, but these did not
seem to me so noteworthy.
This general collection of paintings is on the upper
floor. The ground floor houses the National Portrait
Gallery, composed for the most part of mediocre pre-
sentments of mediocre personalities, but with a high
light here and there worth searching for. Sir Godfrey
Kneller's portrait of Dick Steele is there, and Holbein's
Henry Wyatt, and Zuccaro's Raleigh, and there are
three or four portraits by Lely and Reynolds, but not,
I should say, in their best style.
Let me add here that there is in Dublin another pic-
ture gallery well worth a visit. This is the Municipal
Gallery, housed in a beautiful old mansion in Harcourt
Street — another memorial of spacious eighteenth cen-
tury days, where that famous judge and duellist, Lord
Clonmell, lived. The house itself would be worth
seeing, even if there were no pictures in it, for it is a
splendid example of Georgian domestic architecture;
but there are, besides some beautiful examples of the
Barbizon school, a number of modern Irish paintings
which promise much for the future of Irish art.
The day was so bright and warm that it seemed a
pity to spend the whole of it in town, so, 'after lunch,
we took a tram for the Hill of Howth. Most of
the tram lines of the city start from the Nelson Pillar,
so we had only to cross the street to the starting point.
There seems to be a considerable difference of opinion
as to the correct pronunciation of "Howth." Perhaps
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 17
that is because it is a Danish word — hoved, a head —
the Danes having left the mark of their presence in the
names of places all over Ireland, even in the names
of three of its four provinces. Only far Con-
naught escaped the stigma. At any rate, when I asked
a policeman which tram to take for Howth, I pro-
nounced the word as it is spelt, to rhyme with "south."
He corrected me at once.
' 'Tis the Hill of Hooth ye mean," he said, making
it rhyme with "youth," "and that's your tram yon-
der."
We clambered up the steep stairway at the back to
a seat on top, and presently we started; and then the
conductor came around with tickets, and asked where
we were going — in Ireland, as everywhere else in Eu-
rope, the fare is gauged by the length of the journey.
"To the Hill of Hooth," I answered proudly.
"Ah, the Hill of Hoth, is it," he said, making it
rhyme with "both," and he picked out the correct tick-
ets from the assortment he carried, punched them and
gave them to me.
We used the pronunciations indiscriminately, after
that, and I never learned which is right, though I sus-
pect that "Hoth" is.
Howth is a great detached block of mountain thrown
down, by some caprice of nature, at the sea-ward edge
of a level plain to the north of Dublin Bay, where it
stands very bold and beautiful. It is some eight or
ten miles from Dublin, and the tram thither runs
through the north-eastern part of the town, and then
emerges on the Strand, with Dublin Bay on one side
and many handsome residences on the other. Away
i8 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
across the bay are the beautiful green masses of the
Wicklow hills, and presently you come to Clontarf,
where, on Good Friday, nine hundred years ago, the
Irish, under their great king, Brian Boru, met the mar-
shalled legions of the Danes, and broke their power
in Ireland.
For the Danes had sailed up the Liffey a century
before, and built a castle to command the ford, some-
where near the site of the present castle; and about
this stronghold grew up the city of Dublin; and then
they built other forts to the south and north and west;
bands of raiders marched to and fro over the country,
plundering shrines, despoiling monasteries, levying
tribute, until all Ireland, with the exception of the
extreme west, crouched under the Danish power. The
Danes, it should be remembered, were the terror and
scourge of Europe, and since the Ireland of that day
was the richest country of Europe in churches and
monasteries and other religious establishments, it was'
upon Ireland the Pagan invaders left their deepest
mark.
For a hundred years they had their will of the land,
crushing down such weak and divided resistance as the
people were able to offer. And then came Brian Boru,
a man strong enough to draw all Ireland into one al-
liance, and at last the Danes met a resistance which
made them pause. For twenty years, Brian waged
desperate war against them, defeating them sometimes,
sometimes defeated; but never giving up, though often
besought to do so; retiring to his bogs until he could
recruit his shattered forces, and then, as soon as might
be, falling again upon his enemies.
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 19
In the intervals of this warfare, he devoted himself
to setting his kingdom in order, and to such good pur-
pose that, as the historians tell — and Tom Moore
rhymes — a lone woman could make the circuit of
Erin, without fear of molestation, though decked with
gold and jewels. Brian did more than that — and this
is the measure of his greatness : he built roads, erected
churches and monasteries to replace those destroyed
by the Danes, founded schools to which men came from
far countries, and "sent professors and masters to teach
wisdom and knowledge and to buy books beyond the
sea."
It was in 1014 that the final great battle of Clon-
tarf was fought. Both sides, realising that this was
the decisive struggle, had mustered every man they
could. With Brian were his own Munster men, and
the forces of O'Rourke and Hy Many from Connaught,
and Malachy with his Meath legions, and Desmond
with the men of Kerry and West Cork — a wild host,
with discipline of the rudest, trusting for victory not
to strategy or tactics, but to sheer strength of arm.
And what a muster of Danes there was ! Not only
the Danes of Dublin, but the hosts from the Orkneys
and "from every island on the Scottish main, from
Uist to Arran" ; and even from far-off Scandinavia and
Iceland the levies hastened, led by "Thornstein, Hall
of the Side's son, and Halldor, son of Gudmund the
Powerful, and many other northern champions of lesser
note." It is characteristic of Irish history through the
ages that, on this great day, one Irish province cast
in its lot with its country's enemies, for the battalions
of Leinster formed side by side with the Danes.
20 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
There are Danish and Irish sagas which tell the story
of that fight, and blood-stirring tales they are. Brian
Boru, bent under the weight of seventy-four years, took
station apart on a bit of rising ground, and there,
kneeling on a cushion, alternately prayed and watched
the battle. The Danes had the better of it, at first,
hewing down their adversaries with their gleaming
axes; but the Munster men stood firm and fought so
savagely that at last the Danes broke and fled. One
party of them passed the little hill where Brian knelt,
and paused long enough to cut him down ; but his life's
work was done: the power of the Danes was broken,
and there was no longer need to fear that the Norsemen
would rule Ireland.
Just north of Clontarf parish church stands an an-
cient yew, and tradition says that it was under this
tree that Brian's body was laid by his men. The tra-
dition may be true or not, but the wonderful tree, the
most venerable in Ireland, is worth turning aside a
few moments to visit. It stands in private grounds,
and permission must be asked to enter, but it is seldom
refused.
Like too many other spots in Ireland, Clontarf has
its tragic memory as well as its glorious one, for it was
here that O'Connell's Home Rule movement, to which
thousands of men had pledged fealty, dropped sud-
denly to pieces because of the indecision of its leader
at the first hint of British opposition. But there is
no need to tell that story here.
The town of Howth consists of one long street run-
ning around the base of the hill and facing the harbour
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 21
and the Irish Sea. The harbour is enclosed by impress-
ive piers of granite, and was once a busy place, for it
was the Dublin packet station until Kingstown super-
seded it. Since then, the entrance has silted up, and
now nothing rides at anchor there but small yachts and
fishing-boats. On that clear and sunny day the view
was very beautiful. A mile to the north was the
rugged little island known as Ireland's Eye, and far
away beyond the long stretch of low coast loomed the
purple masses of the Carlingford hills. Away to the
east stretched the Irish Sea, greenish-grey in the sun-
light, with a white foam-crest here and there, and to
the south lay Dublin Bay against the background of
the Wicklow mountains.
High on a cliff above the haven lie the ruins of St.
Mary's Abbey, and we presently clambered up to them.
We found them encircled by an embattled wall, but a
neighbourhood urchin directed us to a pile of tumble-
down buildings at the corner as the home of the care-
taker. He was not there, but his wife was, as well
as a large collection of ragged children, and one of
these, a girl of ten or thereabouts, was sent by her
mother to do the honours. She was very shy at first,
but her tongue finally loosened, and we were en-
raptured with her soft voice and beautiful accent.
Her father was a fisherman, she said; they were all
fisher-families who lived in the tumble-down pile,
which was once a part of the abbey and so comes legit-
imately by its decay, since it is four or five hundred
years old, and has apparently never been repaired.
Of the abbey church itself, only the walls remain,
and they are the survivals of three distinct buildings.
22 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
The west front is part of the original Danish church,
built in 1042, and is pierced by a small round-headed
doorway, above which rises an open bell-turret. In
1235, the Archbishop of Dublin rebuilt the Danish
church, retaining only its facade. The interior, as he
remodelled it, consisted of a nave and one aisle, sep-
arated by three pointed arches. They are still there,
very low and rude, marking the length of the Arch-
bishop's church. Two centuries later, this was found
too small, and so the church was lengthened by the
addition of three more arches. They also are still
standing, and are both higher and wider than the first
three. The tracery in the east window is still intact,
and is very graceful, as may be seen by the photograph
opposite this page, in which the variation in the arches
is also well shown. Note also the round-headed door-
way at the side, with the remains of a porch in front —
a detail not often seen in old Irish churches. And,
last of all, note the ruined building in the corner.
Although it has no roof, it is still used as a dwelling,
as the curtained window shows.
Just inside the east window of the church is the
tomb of Christopher, nineteenth Lord Howth, who
died about 1490. It is an altar tomb, bearing the re-
cumbent figures of the knight and his lady, the former's
feet resting, after the usual fashion, on his dog. Con-
sidering the vicissitudes of weather and vandalism
through which they have passed, both figures are sur-
prisingly well preserved.
The Howth peninsula still belongs to the Howth
family, who trace their line direct to Sir Almericus
Tristram, an Anglo-Norman knight who conquered and
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 23
annexed it in 1177, and the demesne, one of the most
beautiful in Ireland, lies to the west of the town. The
castle, a long, battlemented building flanked with tow-
ers, is said to contain many objects of interest, but
we did not get in, for the gardener informed us that
it was open to the public only on Tuesdays and Satur-
days. The grounds are famous for their gorgeous
rhododendrons, and there is a cromlech there, under
which, so legend says, lies Aideen, wife of Oscar, son
of Ossian and chief hero of those redoubtable warriors,
the Fianna.
In Ireland, during the summer months, sunrise and
sunset are eighteen hours apart, and so, though it was
rather late when we got back to the hotel, it was as
light as midday. We were starting for our room,
when a many-buttoned bell-boy, with a face like a
cherub, who was always hovering near, stopped us and
told us shyly that, if we would wait a few minutes, we
could see the parade go past.
During the morning, we had noticed gaily-uni-
formed bands marching hither and thither, convoying
little groups of people, some of them in fancy costume,
and had learned that there was to be a great labour
celebration somewhere, with music and much oratory.
We had not thought it worth while to run it down, but
we said we should be glad to see the parade, so our
guide took us out to the balcony on the first floor, and
then remained to talk.
"You would be from America, sir, I'm thinking,"
he began.
".Yes," I said.
24 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
"Then you have seen Indians!"
"Indians'? Why, yes, I've seen a few."
"On the war-path?" he cried, his eyes shining with
excitement.
I couldn't help laughing.
"No," I said. "They don't go on the war-path any
more. They're quite tame now."
His face fell.
"But you have seen cowboys'?" he persisted.
"Only in Wild West Shows," I admitted. "That's
where I have seen most of my Indians."
"They're brave lads, aren't they1?" and his eyes were
shining again.
"Why, have you seen them?" I questioned in sur-
prise.
"Ah, I have, sir, many times, in the moving-pic-
tures," he explained. "It must be a fine thing to live
in America!"
I found out afterwards that the Wild West film is
exceedingly popular in Ireland. No show is complete
without one. I saw some, later on, and most sangui-
nary and impossible they were; but they were always
wildly applauded, and I think most Irishmen believe
that the life of the average American is largely em-
ployed in fighting Indians and rescuing damsels in dis-
tress. I tried to tell the bell-boy that life in America
was much like life everywhere — humdrum and matter-
of-fact, with no Indians and few adventures ; but I soon
desisted. Why should I spoil his dream?
And then, from up the street, came the rattle and
blare of martial music, and we had our first view of
an Irish performer on the bass-drum. It is a remark-
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 25
able and exhilarating spectacle. The drummer grasps
a stick in each hand, and sometimes he pounds with
both of them, and sometimes he twirls one over his
head and pounds with the other, and sometimes he
crosses his arms over the top of the drum and pounds
that way. I suppose there is an etiquette about it, for
they all conduct themselves in the same frenzied fash-
ion, while the crowd stares fascinated. It is exhaust-
ing work, and I am told that during a long parade the
drummers sometimes have to be changed two or three
times. But there is never any lack of candidates.
There were thousands of men in line, that day, mem-
bers of a hundred different lodges, each with its banner.
Their women-folk trooped along with them, often arm-
in-arm ; and they trudged silently on with the slow and
dogged tread of the beast of .burden; and the faces of
men and women alike were the pale, patient faces of
those who look often in the eyes of want. It melted
the heart to see them — to see their rough and toil-worn
clothing, their gnarled and twisted hands, their heavy
hob-nailed shoes — and to think of their treadmill lives,
without hope and without beauty — just an endless
struggle to keep the soul in the body. Minute after
minute, for almost an hour, they filed past. What
they hoped to gain, I do not know — a living wage,
perhaps, since that is what labour needs most in Ire-
land— and what it has not yet won !
Our Buttons had watched the parade with the
amused tolerance of the uniformed aristocrat.
"There's a lot of mad people in Dublin," he re-
marked cheerfully, as we turned to go in.
CHAPTER III
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN
DUBLIN is by far the most fascinating town in Ire-
land. She has charm — that supreme attribute alike
of women and of cities; and she has beauty, which is
a lesser thing. She is rich in the possession of many
treasures, and proud of the memorials of many famous
sons. Despite all the vicissitudes of fortune, she has
remained the spiritual and artistic capital of Ireland,
and she looks forward passionately to the day when the
temporal crown will be restored to her. To be sure,
there is a canker in her bosom, but she knows that it is
there; and perhaps some day she will gather courage
to cut it out.
Among her memorials and treasures, are four of ab-
sorbing interest — the grave of Swift, the tomb of
Strongbow, the Cross of Cong and the Book of Kells.
It was for the first of these, which is in St. Patrick's
Cathedral, that we started Monday morning, and to
get there we mounted for the first time to the seats of
a jaunting-car^
I suppose I may as well pause here for a word about
this peculiarly Irish institution. Why it should be
peculiarly Irish is hard to understand, for it furnishes
a rapid, easy, and — when one has learned the trick —
comfortable means of locomotion. Every one, of
course, is familiar with the appearance of a jaunting-
car — or side-car, as it is more often called — with its
26
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 27
two seats back to back, facing outwards, and a foot-
rest overhanging each wheel.
Opposite the next page is a series of post-card pic-
tures showing its evolution from the primitive drag,
which is the earliest form of vehicle all the world over,
and which still survives in the hilly districts of Ireland,
where wheels would be useless on the pathless moun-
tain-sides. Then comes a rude cart with solid wheels
and revolving axle working inside the shafts, still used
in parts of far Connaught, and then the cart with spoke
wheels working outside the shafts on a fixed axle —
pretty much the form still used all the world over —
just such a "low-backed car" as sweet Peggy used when
she drove to market on that memorable day in spring.
The next step was taken when some comfort-loving
driver removed the side-boards, in order that he might
sit with his legs hanging down; and one sees them sit-
ting just so all over Ireland, with their women- folk
crouched on the floor of the cart behind, their knees
drawn up under their chins, and all muffled in heavy
shawls. I do not remember that I ever saw a woman
sitting on the edge of a cart with her legs hanging
over — perhaps it isn't good form !
Thus far there is nothing essentially Irish about any
of these vehicles ; but presently it occurred to some in-
ventive Jehu that he would be more comfortable if he
had a rest for his feet, and presto! the side-car. It
was merely a question of refinements, after that — the
addition of backs and cushions to the seats, the enlarge-
ment of the wheels to make the car ride more easily,
the attachment of long springs for the same purpose,
and the placing of a little box between the seats for
28 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the driver to sit on when his car is full. In a few of
the larger places, the development has reached the
final refinement of rubber tires, but usually these are
considered a too-expensive luxury.
Now evolution is supposed to be controlled by the
survival of the fittest, but this is only half-true of the
side-car; for, while admirably adapted to hilly roads, it
is the worst possible conveyance in wet weather.
Hilly roads are fairly frequent in Ireland, but they are
nowhere as compared to wet days, and the side-car is a
standing proof of the Irishman's indifference to rain.
Indeed, we grew indifferent to it ourselves, before we
had been in Ireland very long, for it really didn't seem
to matter.
I suppose it is the climate, so soft, so sweet, so balmy
that one gets no harm from a wetting. The Irish
tramp around without any thought of the weather,
work just the same in the rain as in the sun, never think
of using a rain-coat or an umbrella — would doubtless
consider the purchase of either a waste of money which
could be far better spent — and yet, all the time we
were in Ireland, we never saw a man or woman with
a cold ! The Irish are proud of their climate, and they
have a right to be. And, now I think of it, perhaps
the climate explains the jaunting-car.
That compound, by the way, is never used by an
Irishman. He says simply "car." "Car" in Ireland
means a side-car, and nothing else. In most other
countries, "car" is short for motor-car. In Ireland,
if one means motor, one must say motor. But the vis-
itor will never have occasion to mean motor unless he
owns one, for, outside of the trams in a few of the
THE KVOLL'TION OF THE JAUNTING CAR
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 29
larger cities, the side-car is practically the only •form
of street and neighbourhood conveyance. One soon
grows to like it; we have ridden fifty miles on one in
a single day, and many times we rode twenty-five or
thirty miles, without any undue sense of fatigue. The
secret is to pick out a car with a comfortably-padded
back extending in a curve around the rear end of each
seat. One can tuck oneself into this curve and swing
happily along mile after mile.
The driver of a side-car is called a jarvey. I don't
know why. The Oxford dictionary says the word is
a "by-form of the surname Jarvis," but I am not
learned enough to see the connecti9n, unless it was Mr.
Jarvis who drove the first side-car. I wish I could say
that the jarvey differed as much from the cabbies and
chauffeurs of other lands as his car does from the cab
and the taxi; but, alas, this is not the case. He is just
as rapacious and piratical as they, though he may rob
you with a smile, while they do it with a frown; and
he has this advantage : there is no taximeter with which
to control him. Everywhere, if one is not a million-
aire, one must be careful to bargain in advance. Once
the bargain is concluded, your jarvey is the most agree-
able and obliging of fellows. He usually has every
reason to be, for nine times out of ten he gets much
the better of the bargain! I have never been able to
decide whether, in these modern times when piracy on
the high seas has been repressed, men with piratical
instincts turn naturally to cab-driving, or whether all
men have latent piratical instincts which cab-driving
inevitably develops.
The Dublin jarvey is famous for his ability to turn
30 THE CHARM OE IRELAND
a corner at top-speed. He usually does it on one
wheel, and the person on the outside seat has the feel-
ing that, unless he holds tight, he will certainly be
hurled into misty space. We held on, that morning,
and so reached St. Patrick's without misadventure in
a surprisingly few minutes.
St. Patrick's Cathedral is not an especially impress-
ive edifice. It dates from Norman days, and was
built over one of St. Patrick's holy wells ; but, like most
Irish churches, it was in ruins most of the time, and
fifty years ago it was practically rebuilt in its present
shape. Sir Benjamin Guinness, of the Guinness Brew-
ery, furnished the money. Like all the other old re-
ligious establishments, it was taken from the Catholics
in the time of Henry VIII and given to his Established
Church — the Episcopal Church, here called the Church
of Ireland — and has remained in its possession ever
since, though the church itself was disestablished some
forty years ago.
By far the most interesting fact about St. Patrick's
is that Jonathan Swift was for thirty-two years its
Dean, and now lies buried there beside that "Stella"
whom he made immortal. A brass in the pavement
marks the spot where they lie side by side, and on the
wall not far away is the marble slab which enshrines the
epitaph he himself wrote. It is in Latin, and may be
Englished thus :
Jonathan Swift, for thirty years Dean of this
Cathedral, lies here, where savage indignation can
no longer tear his heart. Go, traveller, and, if you
can, imitate him who played a man's part as the
champion of liberty.
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 31
Another slab bears a second epitaph written by Swift
to mark the grave of "Mrs. Hester Johnson, better
known to the world by the name of 'Stella,' under
which she is celebrated in the writings of Dr. Jonathan
Swift, Dean of this Cathedral." Whether she should
have borne the name of him who celebrated her the
world will never know. She died seventeen years be-
fore him, "killed by his unkindness," and was buried
here at midnight, while he shut himself into a back
room of his deanery across the way that he might not
see the lights of the funeral party. He had faults and
frailties enough, heaven knows, but the Irish remember
them with charity, for, though his savage indignation
had other fuel than Ireland's wrongs and sorrows,
yet they too made his heart burn, and he voiced that
feeling in words more burning still. He died in a
madhouse, as he expected to die, leaving
"the little wealth he had
To build a house for fools and mad,
And showed by one satiric touch
No nation wanted it so much."
There is another characteristic epitaph of Swift's on
a tablet in the south wall, near the spot where General
Schomberg lies — that bluff old soldier who met glorious
death at the head of his victorious troops at the battle
of the Boyne. Swift wished to mark the grave with
an appropriate memorial, but Schomberg's relatives de-
clined to contribute anything toward its cost; where-
upon Swift and his Chapter put up this slab, paying
tribute to the hero's virtues, and adding that his valour
32 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
was more revered by strangers than by his own kindred.
There are many other curious and interesting monu-
ments in the place, well worth inspecting, but I shall
refer to only one of them — the one which started the
feud that sent Strafford to the scaffold. It is a tower-
ing structure, erected by the great Earl of Cork to the
memory of his "virtuous and religious" Countess, in
1629. It stood originally at the east end of the choir
near the altar, but Strafford, instigated by Archbishop
Laud, who protested that it was a monstrosity which
desecrated that sacred place, compelled its removal
to the nave, where it now stands. The Earl of Cork
never forgave him, and hounded him to his death.
The monument is a marvel of its kind, containing no
less than sixteen highly-coloured figures, most of them
life-size. The Earl and his lady lie side by side in
the central panel, with two sons kneeling at their head
and two at their feet, while their six daughters kneel
in the panel below, three on either side of an unidenti-
fied infant. After contemplating this huge atrocity,
one cannot but conclude that the Archbishop was right.
Back of the Cathedral is a little open square, where
the children of the neighbouring slums come to play
in the sunshine on the gravelled walks; and dirty and
ragged and distressful as they are, they have still about
them childhood's clouds of glory. So that it wrings
the heart to look at the bedraggled, gin-soaked, sad-
eyed, hopeless men and women who crowd the benches
and to realise not only that they were children once,
but that most of these children will grow to just such
miserable maturity.
We walked from the Cathedral up to the Castle,
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 33
that morning, crossing this square and traversing a
corner of the slums, appalling in their dirt and squalor,
where whole families live crowded in a single room.
In Dublin there are more than twenty thousand such
families. Think what that means: five, six, seven,
often even eight or nine persons, living within the same
four walls — some in dark basements, some in ricketty
attics — cooking and eating there, when they have any-
thing to cook and eat; sitting there through the long
hours; sleeping there through the foul nights; awak-
ing there each morning to another hopeless day of
misery. Think how impossible it is to be clean or de-
cent amid such surroundings. Small wonder self-re-
spect soon withers, and that drink, the only path of
escape from these horrors, even for a little while, is
eagerly welcomed. And the fact that every great city
has somewhere within her boundaries some such foul-
ness as this is perhaps the one thing our civilisation
has most reason to be ashamed of!
Dublin Castle is interesting only because of its his-
tory. It was here, by what was then the ford across
the Liffey just above the tideway, that the Danish in-
vaders built their first stronghold in 837, and from it
the last of them was expelled in 1170 by Strongbow
at the head of his Anglo-Norman knights; here, two
years later, Henry II received the submission of the
overawed Irish chiefs ; and from that day forward, this
old grey fortress cast its shadow over the whole land.
No tribesman was too remote to dread it, for the chance
of any day might send him to rot in its dungeon, or
shriek his life out in its torture-chamber, or set his
34 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
head to blacken on its tower — even as the shaggy
head of Shan the Proud blackened and withered there
for all the world to see. In a word, it is from the
Castle that an alien rule has been imposed on Ireland
for more than a thousand years, until to-day to say
"the Castle" is to say "the Government."
Of the mediaeval castle, only one of the four towers
remains, and the curtains which connected them have
been replaced by rows of office-buildings, where the
Barnacles who rule Ireland have their lairs. A
haughty attendant — not too haughty, however, to ac-
cept a tip — will show you through the state apart-
ments, which are not worth visiting; and another, more
human one, will show you through the chapel. It is
more interesting without than within, for over the
north door, side by side in delightful democratic equal-
ity, are busts of Dean Swift and St. Peter, while over
the east one Brian Boru occupies an exalted place be-
tween St. Patrick and the Virgin Mary, while on the
corbels of the window-arches the heads of ninety sov-
ereigns of Great Britain have been cut — I cannot say
with what fidelity.
It is but a step from the Castle to Christ Church
Cathedral, by far the most interesting building in Dub-
lin. The Danes founded it in 1038; then came
Strongbow, who built an English cathedral atop the
rude Danish church, which is now the crypt, and his
transepts and one bay of his choir still survive. There
were various additions and rebuildings, after that, but
in 1569 the bog on which the Cathedral is built moved
under its weight, the entire south wall of the nave
and the vaulted roof fell in, and the debris lay where
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 35
it fell until 1875, when Henry Roe, of Roe's Whiskey,
furnished the money for a complete restoration.
It is a significant coincidence that St. Patrick's was
restored from the profits of a brewery and Christ
Church from the profits of a distillery, for it was by
some such profits that they had to be restored, if they
were to be restored at all, because brewing and dis-
tilling are the only industries which have flourished in
Dublin since the Act of Union. All others have de-
cayed or withered entirely away. Wherein is food
for thought!
But this takes nothing from the fact that Christ
Church is an interesting structure; and the most in-
teresting thing in it is the tomb of Strongbow. Rich-
ard de Clare his name was, second Earl of Pembroke,
and it was to him, so legend says, that Dermot Mac-
Murrough, King of Leinster, appealed for aid, in 1 166,
after he had been driyen from his kingdom and com-
pelled to restore to Tiernan O'Rourke, Prince of
Breffni, Dervorgilla — otherwise Mrs. O'Rourke — with
whom he had eloped. It wasn't the lady that Dermot
wanted — it was revenge, and, most of all, his kingdom
— we shall hear more of this story later on — and
Strongbow readily agreed to assist. He needed lit-
tle persuasion, for the Normans had been looking long-
ingly across the Irish Sea for many years ; and Dermot
got more than he bargained for, for Strongbow brought
his legions over from Wales, entered Dublin, and soon
established English rule so firmly that it was never
afterwards displaced.
When Strongbow died, he was buried here in the
church that he had built, and a recumbent statue in
36 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
chain armour was placed above the tomb, with legs
crossed above the knees to indicate three crusades.
Crossed at the ankles would have meant one crusade,
between knee and ankle, two. I don't know how the
old sculptors indicated four crusades; perhaps they
never had to face that problem. Some critics assert
that this is not the old statue at all ; but if we paid heed
to the critics, there would be mighty little left to be-
lieve !
If you will lay your hand upon the head of the
statue, you will find that the top is worn away into a
hole. And that hole was worn by human fingers —
thousands upon thousands of them — placed there just
as yours are, as witness to the making of a deed or the
signing of an agreement or the paying of a debt. Al-
most all of such old documents in Dublin were "Made
at the Tomb of Strongbow." Thither people came
for centuries to settle accounts, and the Irish are so
conservative, so tenacious of tradition, that I dare say
the tomb is sometimes the scene of such transactions,
even yet. Beside the knight's statue lies a truncated
effigy supposed to represent his son, whom, in a fit of
rage, he cut in two with a single stroke of his sword for
cowardice on the battle-field.
There are many other things of interest about the
church, especially about the crypt, where one may see
the old city stocks, and the tabernacle and candlesticks
used at the Mass celebrated here for James II while
he was trying to conquer Ulster ; and the church is for-
tunate in possessing a most intelligent verger, with
whom it is a pleasure to explore it. We talked with
him quite a while that day, and he lamented bitterly
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 37
that so few visitors to Dublin think the church worth
seeing. I heartily endorse his opinion of them!
Which brings us to those two wonderful master-
pieces of ancient Irish art, the Cross of Cong and the
Book of Kells.
The Cross of Cong is in the National Museum of
Science and Art, and is only the most interesting of
many interesting things which have been assembled
there. The first exhibit as one passes through the
vestibule, has a flavour peculiarly Irish. It is an
elaborate state carriage, lavishly decorated with carv-
ings and inlay and bronze figures, and it was ordered
by some Irish lord, who, when it was completed,
found that he had no money to pay for it, and so left
it on the builder's hands. What the poor builder did
can only be conjectured. Perhaps he took down his
shillelagh and went out and assaulted the lord; per-
haps he fled to the hills and became a brigand ; perhaps
he just sat philosophically down and let his creditors
do the worrying.
Just beyond the vestibule is a great court, containing
a remarkable collection of plaster replicas of ancient
Celtic crosses. They should be examined closely, es-
pecially the two which reproduce the high and low
crosses at Monasterboice. We shall see the real crosses,
before we leave Ireland, but they have iron railings
around them, which prevent close examination, and
they are not provided with explanatory keys as the
replicas are. Half an hour's study of the replicas
helps immensely toward appreciation of the originals.
The chief glory of the museum is its collection of
38 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Irish antiquities on the upper floor. It starts with
the Stone Age, and we could not but remark how
closely the flint arrow-heads and spear-heads and other
implements resemble those of the Indians and Mound-
builders, so common in our part of Ohio. Then comes
the Bronze Age, with a magnificent collection of orna-
ments of hammered gold, and some extraordinarily in-
teresting examples of cinerary urns and food vessels
— for the old Irish burned their dead, and, after the
fashion of most Pagan peoples, put food in the grave
beside them, to start them on their journey in the other
world.
In the room beyond are the so-called Christian an-
tiquities: that is, all the objects of art, as well as of do-
mestic and military usage, which date from the time of
St. Patrick down to the Norman conquest — roughly,
from 400 A. D. to 1200 A. D. Before that time, Ire-
land was Pagan; after the Norman conquest, she was
crushed and broken. It was during these eight hun-
dred years, while the rest of Europe was struggling in
ignorance and misery through the Dark Ages, that Ire-
land touched the summit of her artistic and spiritual
development — and a lofty summit it was !
Her art was of home growth, uninfluenced from any
outside source, and it was admirable. Her schools
and monasteries were so famous that students from
all over Europe flocked to them, as the recognised
centres of learning. Scholars were revered and books
were holy things — so holy that beautiful shrines were
made to hold them, of gold or silver, set with precious
stones. Five or six of them, nine hundred years old
and more, are preserved in this collection.
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 39
The bells used by the early Irish saints in the cele-
bration of the Mass were also highly venerated, and,
cracked and worn by centuries of use, were at last
enclosed in shrines. Most holy of all, of course, was
the rude little iron bell used by St. Patrick, and re-
covered from his grave in 552. The exquisite shrine
made for it by some master artist about 1100 is here,
as is also the bell itself. There is a picture of the
shrine opposite the next page; the bell is merely a rude
funnel made of two bent iron plates rivetted together
and then dipped in molten bronze — not much to look
at, but an evoker of visions fifteen centuries old for
them who have eyes to see!
I should like to say something of the croziers, of
the brooches, of the chalices which are gathered here;
but I must hasten on to the chief treasure, the Cross of
Cong. It is perhaps the very finest example of early
Irish art in existence anywhere. It was made to en-
shrine a fragment of the True Cross, sent from Rome
in 1 123 to Turlough O'Conor, King of Ireland, and it
is called the "Cross of Cong" because Rory O'Conor,
the last titular King of all Ireland, took it with him
to the Abbey of Cong, at the head of Lough Corrib,
when he sought sanctuary there in his last years, and
it was by the Abbots of Cong that it was preserved re-
ligiously through the long centuries. The last Abbot
died about a hundred years ago, and the museum ac-
quired the cross by purchase.
There is a picture of it opposite the next page, which
gives some faint idea of its beauty. It was in a cavity
behind the central crystal that the fragment of the True
Cross was placed ; but it is not there now, and nobody
40 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
seems to know what became of it. Perhaps it doesn't
matter much; at any rate, all that need concern us
here is the fact that, eight hundred years ago in Ire-
land, there lived an artist capable of producing a mas-
terpiece like this.
• It is of oak, covered with plates of bronze and silver,
washed in places with a thick coating of gold, and with
golden filigree work of the most exquisite kind around
the central crystal. It is elaborately carved, front and
back, with the intertwined pattern characteristic of
Irish ornamentation, and every detail is of the finest
workmanship. It is inscribed with a Latin verse,
Hac cruce crux tegitur qua passus conditor orbis,
"In this cross is the cross enclosed upon which suffered
the Founder of the world"; and there is also a long
inscription in Irish which bids us pray, among others,
for Turlough O'Conor, King of Erin, for whom the
shrine was made, and for Maelisu MacBraddan
O'Echon, the man who fashioned it. Thus is pre-
served the name of a great artist, who has been dust for
eight centuries.
The Book of Kells is even more wonderful. It is
to the library of Trinity College we must go to see
it — and go we must! — for it is indisputably the "first
among all the illuminated manuscripts of the world."
No mere description can give any idea of its beauty, nor
can any picture, for each of its pages is a separate
masterpiece. Kells was a monastery celebrated for
its sanctity and learning, and it was there, sometime
in the eighth century, that an inspired monk executed
this Latin copy of the Gospels. It is of sheepskin
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 41
parchment, and each of its pages is framed with ex-
quisite tracery and ornamentation, and with a beauti-
ful harmony of colouring. Most wonderful of all,
perhaps, the colours are as fresh and brilliant as they
were when they came from the artist's brush, eleven
centuries ago.
There are many other things in this old library worth
seeing — among them the Book of Darrow, thirteen
centuries old, and ornamented with designs which, as
Betty remarked, would make beautiful crochet pat-
terns. And there is Brian Boru's harp — the very one,
perhaps, that shed the soul of music through Tara's
halls — only unfortunately, the critics say that it isn't
more than five or six hundred years old. And there
are stacks of modern books, and the attendant who
piloted us around remarked sadly that many of the
best of them were never taken off the shelves, except
to be dusted. I couldn't help smiling, for that is a
complaint common to all librarians!
We went out, that night, to a big bazar given for
the benefit of the Passionist Fathers, where we were
made almost riotously welcome. "America" is the
open sesame to every Irish heart; and how winning
those bright-eyed Irish girls were in their quaint cos-
tumes! Ordinarily Irish girls are shy with strangers;
but they were working in a good cause that night, and
if any man got out of the place with a penny in his
pocket it must certainly have been because he lacked
a heart! And the nice old women, with smiling eyes
and wrinkled, pleasant faces — we could have stayed and
talked to them till morning ! Indeed, we almost did !
CHAPTER IV
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK
OUR third day in Dublin was ushered in by a tre-
mendous explosion. In a minute the street outside was
filled with dense black smoke, and then in another
minute with excited people. When we got down to
breakfast, we found that the suffragettes had tried to
blow up the post-office, which is next to the hotel, by
throwing a bomb through the door. But the woman
who threw the bomb, like most women, couldn't throw
straight, and instead of going through the door, the
bomb struck a stone at the side of it and exploded.
Our bell-boy proudly showed us the hole that it had
made in the wall.
The day was so bright and pleasant that we decided
to spend it somewhere in the country, and as we
wanted to see a round tower, and as there is a very
handsome one at Clondalkin, a few miles west of Dub-
lin, we decided to go there. The ride thither gave
us our first glimpse of rural Ireland — rather unkempt,
with the fields very lush and green ; and then, when we
got off the train, we were struck by a fact which we
had occasion to remark many times thereafter: that
railroads in Ireland are built with an entire disregard
of the towns along the route. Perhaps it is because
the towns are only Irish that the railroads are so
haughty and disdainful — for of course the roads are
English; at any rate, they never swerve an inch to get
42
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 43
closer to any town. The train condescends to pause
an instant at the point nearest the town, and then
puffs arrogantly on again, while the passengers who
have been hustled off hoof it the rest of the way.
We got off, that morning, at a little station with
"Clondalkin" on it, but when we looked about, there
was no town anywhere in sight. We asked the man
who took the tickets if this was all there was of the
town, and he said no, that the town was over yonder,
and he pointed vaguely to the south. There was no
conveyance, so we started to walk; and instead of
condemning Irish railroads, we were soon praising
their high wisdom, for if there is anything more de-
lightful than to walk along an Irish lane, between
hedgerows fragrant with hawthorn and climbing roses,
past fields embroidered with buttercups and primroses
and daisies, in an air so fresh and sweet that the lungs
can't get enough of it, I don't know what it is. And
presently as we went on, breathing great breaths of all
this beauty, we caught sight of the conical top of the
round tower, above the trees to the left.
I should say that Clondalkin is at least a mile from
its station, and we found it a rambling village of
small houses, built of stone, white-washed and with
roofs of thatch. Many of them, even along the prin-
cipal street, are in ruins, for Clondalkin, like so many
other Irish villages, has been slowly drying up for
half a century. There was a great abbey here once,
but nothing is left of it except the round tower and a
fragment of the belfry.
The tower stands at the edge of what is now the
main street, and is a splendid example of another pe-
44 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
culiarly Irish institution. For these tall towers of
stone, resembling nothing so much as gigantic chim-
neys, were built all over eastern and central Ireland,
nobody knows just when and nobody knows just why;
but there nearly seventy of them stand to this day.
They are always of stone, and are sometimes more
than a hundred feet high. Some of them taper to-
ward the top in a way which shows the high skill of
their builders. That they were well-built their sur-
vival through the centuries attests. The narrow en-
trance door is usually ten or twelve feet from the
ground, and there is a tiny window lighting each floor
into which the tower was divided. At the top there
are usually four windows, one facing each point of
the compass; and then the tower is finished with a
conical cap of closely-fitted stones.
As to their purpose, there has been violent contro-
versy. Different antiquarians have believed them to be
fire-temples of the Druids, phallic emblems, astronomi-
cal observatories, anchorite towers or penitential pri-
sons. But the weight of opinion seems to be that they
were built in connection with churches and monasteries
to serve the triple purpose of belfries and watch-towers
and places of refuge, and that they date from the
ninth and tenth centuries, when the Danes were pillag-
ing the country. In case of need, the monks could
snatch up the most precious of their treasures, run for
the tower, clamber up a ladder to the little door high
above the ground, pull the ladder up after them, bar
the door and be comparatively safe.
I confess I do not find this theory convincing. As
belfries the towers must have been failures, for the
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 45
small bells of those days, hung a hundred feet above
the ground in a chamber with only four tiny open-
ings, would be all but inaudible. As watch-towers
they were ineffective, for the enemy had only to ad-
vance at night to elude the lookout altogether; and
as places of refuge, they leave much to be desired.
For there is no way to get food or water into them, and
the enemy had only to camp down about them for a
few days to starve the inmates out. However, I am
not an antiquarian, and my opinion is of no especial
value — besides, I have no better theory to suggest.
Whatever their purpose, there they stand, and very
astonishing they are.
The Clondalkin tower, for the first thirteen feet, is
a block of solid masonry about twenty feet in diameter,
and above this is the little door opening into the first
story. New floors have been built at the different
levels and ladders placed between them, so that one
may climb the eighty-five feet to the top, but we were
contented to take the view for granted. While I
manoeuvred for a photograph in a field of buttercups
which left my shoes covered with yellow pollen, Betty
got into talk with the people who lived in the cottage
at the tower-foot, and then she crossed the street to
look over a wall at a tiny garden that was a perfect
riot of bloom, and by the time I got there, the fresh-
faced old woman with a crown of white hair who
owned the garden had come out, and, after a few
minutes' talk, started to pick Betty a bouquet of her
choicest flowers.
Betty was in a panic, for she didn't want the garden
despoiled, — at the same time she realised that she must
46 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
be careful or she would hurt the feelings of this kindly
woman, who was so evidently enjoying pulling her
flowers to give to the stranger from America. It was
at that moment the brilliant idea flashed into her head
to ask if the true shamrock grew in the neighbourhood.
"Sure, miss, I have it right here," was the answer,
and the owner of the garden1 picked up proudly a small
pot in which grew a plant that looked to me like clover.
"But doesn't it grow wild?" Betty asked.
"It does, miss; but 'tis very hard to find. This was
sent me by my brother in Tipperary. 'Tis the true
shamrock, miss," and she broke off a spray for each of
us.
Let me say here that she knew perfectly well Betty
was a married woman; her first question had been as
to our relationship. But all over Ireland, women,
whether married or single, are habitually addressed
as "miss," just as, conversely, in France they are ad-
dressed habitually as "madame." But we had got the
old woman's mind off her flowers, and we managed to
escape before she thought of them again.
There are not, I fancy, many visitors to Clondalkin,
for, as we sauntered on along the street, we found our-
selves objects of the liveliest interest. It was a kindly
interest, too, for every one who could catch our eyes
smiled and nodded and wished us good-day, just as
the Dutch used to do in the little towns of Holland.
We were heading for the church, and when we reached
it we found that there was a large school attached to it,
and most of the pupils were having their lessons out-
doors, a group in this corner and a group in that.
The small children were being taught by older ones,
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 47
and the older children were being taught by nuns ; but
I am afraid that our passage through the school-yard
nearly broke up the lessons. It was a sort of triumphal
progress, for, as we passed each class, the teacher in
charge would say "Stand !" and all the children would
rise to their feet and stare at us with round eyes, and
the teacher would bow gravely. I am sorry now I
didn't stop and talk to some of them, but the formal
nature of our reception confused and embarrassed us,
and we hastened on.
We took a look at the church, which is new and
bare; and then we walked on toward the gate, past a
lawn which two gardeners were leisurely mowing. It
was evident from the way they returned our greeting
that they wanted to talk, so we stopped and asked if
we could get a car in the village to take us back to the
station.
"You can, miss," said the elder of the two men,
who did all the talking, while his younger companion
stood by and grinned. "There is a very good car to be
had in the village," and he told us where to go to find
the owner. "You would be from America1? I have
a sister and two brothers there." And he went on
to tell us about them, where they lived and what
they were doing and how they had prospered. And
then Betty asked him if he could find her a piece of the
true shamrock. "I can, miss," he answered instantly,
and stepping over a low wire fence, he waded out into
a meadow and came back in a moment with a clover-
like clump in his hand. "This is it, miss," he said,
and gave it to her; "the true shamrock."
We examined it eagerly. It was a trefoil, the leaf
48 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
of which is like our white clover, except that it lacks
the little white rings which mark the leaf of ours, and
it blossoms with a tiny yellow flower. I confess that
it wasn't at all my idea of the shamrock, nor was it
Betty's, and she asked the gardener doubtfully if he
was sure that this was it.
"I am, miss," he answered promptly; "as sure as I
am of anything."
"But down in the village," said Betty, "a woman
gave me this," and she took the spray from her button-
hole, "and said it was the true shamrock. You see
the leaf is quite green and larger and the blossom is
white."
"True for you, miss; and there be some people who
think that the true shamrock. But it is not so — 'tis
only white clover. The true shamrock is that I have
given you."
"Well, you are a gardener," said Betty, "and ought
to know."
"Ah, miss," retorted the man, his eyes twinkling,
"you could start the prettiest shindy you ever saw by
getting all the gardeners in Ireland together, and ask-
ing them to decide which was the true shamrock!"
I suppose I may as well thresh out the question here,
so far as it is possible to thresh it out at all, for though,
in the east, the west, the north and south of Ireland, we
sought the true shamrock, we were no more certain of
it when we got through than before we began. The
only conclusion we could reach, after listening to
every one, was that there are three or four varieties of
the shamrock, and that almost any trefoil will do.
The legend is that, about 450, St. Patrick reached
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 49
the Rock of Cashel, in his missionary journey ings over
Ireland, and at once went to work to convert ^Engus
MacNatfraich, the ruling king who lived in the great
castle there. One day, out on the summit of the rock,
as the Saint was preaching to the king and his as-
sembled household, he started to explain the idea of
the Trinity, and found, as many have done since, that
it was rather difficult to do. Casting about for an il-
lustration, his eyes fell upon a trefoil growing at his
feet, and he stooped and plucked it, and used its three
petals growing from one stem as a symbol of the
Three-in-One. This simple and homely illustration
made the idea intelligible, and whenever after that St.
Patrick found himself on the subject of the Trinity,
he always stooped and plucked a trefoil to demonstrate
what he meant.
Now of course the true shamrock is the particular
trefoil which St. Patrick plucked first on the Rock of
Cashel, but there is no way of telling which that was.
In his subsequent preaching, the Saint would pluck
the first that came to hand, since any of them would
answer his purpose, and so, sooner or later, all the Irish
trefoils would be thus used by him. The Irish word
"seamrog" means simply a trefoil, and in modern times,
the name has been applied to watercress, to wood-
sorrel, and to both yellow and white clover; but nowa-
days only the two last-named kinds are generally worn
on St. Patrick's day. Whether white or yellow clover
is worn is said to depend somewhat on the locality, but
the weight of authority is, I think, slightly on the side
of the yellow.
Whatever its colour, it is a most elusive plant and
50 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
difficult to get. Our original idea was that every
Irish field was thick with shamrocks, but in no instance
except that of the gardener at Clondalkin, do I remem-
ber any one finding some growing wild right at hand.
Indeed, in most localities, it didn't seem to grow wild
at all, but was carefully raised in a pot, like a flower.
Where it did grow wild, it was always in some distant
and inaccessible place. I should have suspected that
this was simply blarney, and that our informants either
wished to keep our profane hands off the shamrock or
expected to get paid for going and getting us some, but
for the fact that those who raised it always eagerly
offered us a spray, and those who didn't usually dis-
claimed any exact knowledge of where it grew.
We bade the Clondalkin gardener and his helper
good-bye at last, and walked on down to the village
for a look at the remnant of the fort the Danes built
here as their extreme western outpost against the wild
Irish, and presently we fell in with an old woman,
bent with rheumatism, hobbling painfully along, and
she told us all about her ailment, and then as we passed
a handsome house set back in a garden surrounded by
a high wall, she pointed it out proudly as the residence
of the parish priest. Then we thought it was time to
be seeing about our car, and started down the street
to find its owner, when we heard some one running
after us. It was a man of about thirty, and his face,
though not very clean, was beaming with friendli-
ness.
"Is it a car your honour would be wantin"?" he
asked.
"Yes," I said. "How did you know?"
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 51
"The man up at the church told me, sir. He said
you'd be wishin' to drive to the station."
"Well, we do," I said. "It's too far to walk.
Have you a car4?"
"I have, sir, and it's myself would be glad to carry
you and your lady there."
"All right," I agreed; and then, as an afterthought,
"How much will you charge1?"
"Not a penny, sir," he protested warmly. "Not a
penny."
I stared at him. I confess I didn't understand. He
returned my stare with a broad smile.
"The Dublin train doesn't go for an hour yet, sir,"
he went on. "If you'll just be wanderin' down this
way when the time comes, you'll find me ready."
"It's mighty kind of you," I said hesitatingly; "but
we couldn't think of troubling you . . ."
"Niver a bit of trouble, sir," he broke in. "I'll be
that proud to do it."
He seemed so sincerely in earnest that we finally
agreed, and he raced away as he had come, while we
went on to the village post-office to mail a postcard —
and perhaps find some one else to talk to.
The post-office was a little cubby-hole of a place,
in charge of a white-haired, withered little old woman,
whom we found very ready to talk indeed. At first
there were the inevitable questions about America and
about our family history, and then she told us about
herself and her work and the many things she had to
do. For every Irish post-office, no matter how small,
is the centre of many activities. Not only does it
handle the village mail, but it is also the village tele-
52 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
graph-office, and it does the work — by means of the
parcel-post — which in this country has been done until
quite recently by the express companies. Furthermore
it is at the post-office that the old age pensions are dis-
bursed and the multifarious details of the workman's
insurance act attended to.
The latter is too complicated to be explained here,
but we soon had a demonstration of the working of
the old age pension, for, as we sat there talking, a
wrinkled old woman with a shabby shawl over her
head, came in, said something we did not understand,
held out her hand, was given three or four pennies, and
walked quickly out.
"The poor creatures," said the postmistress gently,
"how can one be always refusin' them!" And then,
seeing that we did not understand, she went on, "That
one gets an old age pension, five shillings the week;
but it never lasts the week out, and so she comes in for
a bit of an advance. I shouldn't be giving it to her,
for she's no better in the end, but I can't turn her away.
Besides, she thinks — and there's many like her — that
the pension may be stoppin' any time, next week
maybe, and so what she gets this week is so much
ahead. Many of them have no idea at all of where
the money do be coming from."
I am not myself partial to pensions of any sort, for
no permanent good can come from alms-giving, which
weakens instead of strengthens; but Ireland, perhaps,
needs special treatment. At any rate, the pensions
have been a great help. Every person over seventy
years of age and with an income of less than ten shil-
lings a week, receives five shillings weekly from the
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 53
government. The same law applies to England and
Scotland, but there is an impression that Ireland is
getting more than her share. Certainly there is a sur-
prisingly large number of people there whose income
is under ten shillings and whose years exceed three-
score and ten. I questioned the postmistress about this,
and she smiled.
"Yes, there be a great many," she agreed. "In this
small place alone there are fifty poor souls who get
their five shillings every Friday. Are they all over
seventy? Sure, I don't know; there be many of them
don't know themselves; but they all think they are,
only it was very hard sometimes to make the committee
believe it. There is Mary Clancy, now, as spry a
woman as you will see anywhere, and lookin' not a
day over fifty. The committee was for refusin' her,
but she said, said she, 'Your honours, I was the mother
of fourteen children, and the youngest of them was
Bridget, whom you see here beside me. Bridget was
married when she was seventeen, and she has fifteen
children of her own, and this is the youngest of them
she has by the hand — you'll see that he is four years
old. Now how old am I*?' The gentlemen of the
committee they looked at her and then they looked at
each other and then they took out their pencils and
made some figures and then they scratched their heads
and then they said she should have a pension. And
sure she deserved it!"
We agreed with her, — though, as I figured it out
afterwards, Mrs. Clancy may still have been a year
or two under seventy — and then she went on to explain
that the pensions had been a blessing in another way,
54 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
for not only do they give the old people a bit to live
on, but their children treat them better in consequence.
In the old days, the parents were considered an en-
cumbrance, and whenever a marriage contract was
made or a division of the property, it was always care-
fully stipulated who should look after them. Natu-
rally in a land where a man was hard put to it to pro-
vide for his own family, he was reluctant to assume
this additional burden, and the result often was that
the old people went to the workhouse — a place they
shunned and detested and considered it a disgrace to
enter. But the pension has changed all that, for a
person with a steady income of five shillings a week is
not to be lightly regarded in Ireland; and so the old
people can live with their children now, and the work-
houses are somewhat less crowded than they used to
be.
But they are still full enough, heaven knows, in
spite of the aversion and disgust with which the whole
Irish people regard them. Let me explain briefly why
this is so, because the establishment of the workhouse
system is typical of the blind fashion in which Eng-
land, in the past, has dealt with Irish problems, — the
whole Irish problem, as some protest, is merely the re-
sult of a stupid people trying to govern a clever one !
About eighty years ago, England realised that some-
thing must be done for the Irish poor. Irish indus-
tries had been killed by unfriendly legislation, the
land was being turned from tillage to grass, and so,
since there was no work, there was nothing for the
labouring class to do but emigrate or starve. In fact,
a large section of the people had not even those alter-
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 55
natives, for there was no way in which they could get
money enough to emigrate.
The Irish themselves suggested that something be
done to develop the industrial resources of the coun-
try, so that the able-bodied could find work, and that
some provision be made for the old, sick and infirm
who were unable to work, and for children who were
too young. Instead of that, and in spite of frenzied
and universal Irish protest, a bill was put through
Parliament extending the English workhouse system to
Ireland.
Now, the workhouse system was devised to provide
for tramps — for people who would not work, though
work was plentiful; so there is a stigma about the
workhouse which the Irish poor detest and which most
of them do not deserve. They enter it only when
driven by direst need — and how dire that need has
been may be judged by the fact that, in 1905, for in-
stance, the number of workhouse inmates exceeded
forty-five thousand. Of these, about four thousand
might be classified as tramps. The remainder were
aged and infirm men and women, young children, and a
sprinkling of starving middle-aged who could find no
work — but the disgrace of the workhouse was upon
them all.
To-day, the traveller in Ireland finds one of these
mammoth structures in every town — in nearly every
village, for their total number is 159. In fact, the
two most imposing buildings in the average Irish town
are the workhouse and the jail. And there is a savage
irony in this, for not only are there few voluntary
paupers in Ireland, but there is amazingly little crime.
56 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Six millions a year of Irish money are spent to maintain
the workhouses; how much the jails cost I don't know;
but perhaps in that golden age which some optimists
believe will follow the coming of Home Rule, work-
houses and jails alike will be transformed into schools
and factories, and Irish money will be spent in bright-
ening and beautifying the lives of Ireland's people.
We bade good-bye, at last, to the little Clondalkin
postmistress, with many mutual good wishes, and wan-
dered forth to find the Samaritan who had offered to
take us to the station; and finally we saw him stand-
ing in a gateway beckoning to us, and when we
reached him, we found the gateway led to the house
which had been pointed out to us as that of the par-
ish priest. It was a beautiful house, with lovely
grounds and gardens and a large conservatory against
one end, and we stood hesitating in the gateway, won-
dering if we would better enter.
"Come in, sir; come in, miss!" cried our new-found
friend. "The Father is away from home the day,
worse luck, but he'd never forgive me if I didn't make
you welcome."
"Oh, then you're the gardener," I said.
"Sure, I'm everything, sir," and he hustled us up
the path, his face beaming with happiness. "And
how grieved His Riverence will be when he comes back
and learns that he missed you. If he was anywhere
near, I'd have gone for him at once, but he went to
Dublin to the conference and he won't be back till
evenin'. He's a grand man, God bless him, and has
travelled all over the world, and it's himself would
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 57
know how to talk to you! There is the cart, sir; but
there's no hurry. I must cut some blooms for your
lady."
Betty was already admiring the flowers — great scar-
let peonies, white and pink geraniums, cinerarias,
laburnums, and I know not what beside; but she tried
to stop him as he made a dash at them, knife in
hand.
"Oh, but you mustn't cut them !" she cried. "What
would the Father say !"
"Sure, miss, if he was here, he'd make me cut twice
as many!" he retorted, and went on cutting and cut-
ting. "If he was here, 'tis not by this train you'd be
leaving. He'd take you all over the house, and it
would break his heart if you didn't stop for tea. It's
sorry he'll be when he gets home and I tell him of
you !"
We too were sorry, and said so — sorrier, next day,
when we learned from Katherine Tynan Hinkson
what an accomplished and interesting man he is.
Meanwhile, the gardener had entered the greenhouse
and was attacking the plants there. Almost by main
force, and sorely against his will, we made him stop.
As it was, Betty had about all she could carry — as
lovely a bouquet, she protested, as she had ever had in
her life. And the joy of this simple, kindly fellow
in being able to give it to her was beautiful to see.
Then he brought out a fat little mare and hitched
her to the cart, and insisted on driving us for a while
along the fragrant country roads before he took us to
the station. And I am sure that he valued our thanks
much more than the coin I slipped into his hand.
58 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
We went out, that night, to see some friends in
Dublin, and Betty took part of her bouquet along to
give to them. And as we were walking up Grafton
Street, an old and tattered woman, with two or three
grimy little bouquets in her hands, fell in beside us
and begged us to buy one. Finally she laid one of
them on top of the gorgeous bunch Betty was carry-
ing.
"Take it, miss; take it!" she urged. "Just see how
beautiful it is !"
"It's not beautiful at all !" Betty protested. "It's
faded."
"And so am I faded, miss," came the instant retort.
"Sure, we can't all be fresh and lovely like yourself!"
Of course, after that, I bought the bouquet !
CHAPTER V
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN
DUBLIN is fortunate in its environs. A few miles to
the south or west, and one is in the midst of lovely
scenery. The Liffey, just above the town, changes
from an unsightly stream into a beautiful river; just
to the south lie the Wicklow hills — one can reach
their foot by tram-line and some of their wildest beau-
ties are within an hour's walk; a short run by rail takes
one to Bray, from where the Dargle, a glen beloved of
Dubliners, is within easy reach. But the wise traveller
will keep on to Rathdrum, and from there drive over
to Glendalough. Or the trip may be made all the way
from Dublin by motor-omnibus, and by this route one
gets the full beauty of the Wicklow passes ; but I think
the car trip preferable, at least in fine weather.
The forty-mile run from Dublin to Rathdrum is by
the very edge of the sea. The roadway has been cut
high in the face of the cliffs that fringe the coast —
sometimes piercing a projecting headland, sometimes
spanning a deep gully, sometimes skirting a sheer
precipice — and the view at every turn is very romantic
and beautiful. The train pauses at Bray, and then,
still hugging the coast, reaches Wicklow, where it turns
inland and mounts toward the hills along a pleasant
valley to Rathdrum, perched in the most picturesque
way on the steep banks of the Avonmore, for all the
world like an Alpine village.
59
60 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Betty and I were the only ones who descended at
Rathdrum, that day, and we were glad, for it is pe-
culiarly true of a side-car that two are company and
any larger number a crowd. The car was waiting, and
in a few minutes we were off on the twelve-mile drive.
The road mounted steeply for a time, passed through
a dingy village clinging to a hillside, and then sud-
denly emerged high above the lovely Vale of Clara.
Far down, so far it seemed the merest ribbon, the Avon-
more sparkled over its rocky bed; beside it, here and
there, a thatched cottage nestled among the trees; and
the greenest of green fields ran back to the hills on either
side. Here the gorse began, mounting the hillsides
in a riot of golden bloom, only to be met and van-
quished on the highest slopes by the low, closely-grow-
ing heather, brown with last year's withered flowers,
but soon to veil the hilltops in a cloud of purple. But
the gorse was in its glory — every hedge, every fence,
every wall, every neglected corner was ablaze with it;
it outlined every field; the road we travelled was a
royal way, bordered on either side with gold. "Un-
profitably gay1?" Betty hotly disputed it. For how
could such beauty be unprofitable?
It was a perfect day, with the air magically soft and
the sun just warm enough for comfort, and we sat
there, mightily content, drinking in mile after mile
of loveliness. Away across the valley, we caught a
glimpse of Avondale House, a school of forestry now,
but sacred to every Irishman as the home of Parnell.
A little farther on, Castle Howard glooms down upon
the valley where the Avonmore meets the Avonbeg —
that "Meeting of the Waters" celebrated by Tom
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 61
Moore. But it would take a far greater poet to do
justice to that exquisitely beautiful Vale of Avoca,
stretching away into the shimmering distance.
The road turned away, at last, from the edge of the
valley and plunged into a beautiful wood, and we
could see that the bracken was alive with rabbits. It
was a game preserve, our driver said, and he told us to
whom it belonged, but I have forgotten. I suggested
that, when he had nothing better to do, it would be
easy enough to come out and knock over a rabbit.
"They would be putting a lad away for six months
for the likes of that," he protested.
"Surely no one would grudge you a rabbit now and
then!"
"Ah, wouldn't they*?" and he laughed grimly.
"There's nothing the keepers like so much as to get
their hands on one of us. Why, sir, 'tis a crime for a
man to be caught on the far side of that wall. Not
but what I haven't got me a rabbit before this," he
added, "and will again."
We passed a gang of men repairing the road, and
two or three others sitting along the roadside, break-
ing stone by hand, and wearing goggles to protect
their eyes from the flying splinters ; and our driver told
us how the contract for keeping each section of road
in shape was let each year by the county council to the
lowest bidder, and the roads inspected at regular in-
tervals to see that the work was properly done. Two
shillings a day — fifty cents — was about the average
wage. I suppose it is because stone is so plentiful and
labour so cheap that the roads all over Ireland are so
good; but one would be inclined to welcome a rut
62 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
now and then, if it meant a decent wage for the
labourers !
We emerged from the wood presently, and then,
away to the left, our jarvey pointed out the high peaks
which guard the entrance to Glendalough — and let
me say here that the word "lough," which occurs so
frequently in Irish geography, means lake, and is pro-
nounced almost exactly like the Scotch "loch." Glen-
dalough is one of the most beautiful and romantic
spots in Ireland, and its story runneth thus:
In the year 498, the King of Leinster had a son
whom he named Caomh-ghen, or Gentle-born, and
whom to-day we call Kevin. The King had been con-
verted by St. Patrick himself, and he brought his boy
up a Christian; and Kevin had never the slightest
doubt as to his vocation, but knew from the very first
that he must be a priest. So he was sent first to St.
Petroc's school in Wicklow, and then to his uncle, St.
Eugenius, who had a school near Glenealy.
Kevin grew in grace and wisdom, and likewise in
beauty, until a handsomer lad was to be found nowhere
in Erin, and many a girl looked sideways at him as he
passed, but he paid no heed. One of them, seeing him
so fair and saintly, lost her heart to him entirely, and
her head as well, for she grew so shameless that she
followed him in his walks, pleading with him, touch-
ing his hand, kissing his robe — all of which must have
been most embarrassing to that modest and retiring
man. At last, one day, she waylaid him in a wood,
and, hungry with passion, flung herself upon him.
There are two versions of what followed. One is
that St. Kevin escaped by jumping into a bush of
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 63
nettles, and cooled the damsel's ardour by beating her
with a branch of them, whereupon she asked his par-
don and made a vow of perpetual virginity. The
other, and much more plausible one, is that, after the
manner of women, she loved Kevin more desperately
after he had beaten her than she had before, and that
finally the Saint, worn out by a struggle in which he
saw that he would some day be defeated, resolved to
hide himself where no man could discover him, and be-
took himself to the wild and inaccessible spot where
the mountains meet above Glendalough. There high
in the side of the cliff above the lake, he found a crevice
where he made his bed, and lay down with a sigh of
relief for the first peaceful sleep he had had for a long
time. Here is Tom Moore's rendering of the rest of
the story:
On the bold cliff's bosom cast,
Tranquil now he sleeps at last;
Dreams of heaven, nor thinks that e'er
Woman's smile can haunt him there.
But nor earth nor heaven is free
From her power if fond she be;
Even now while calm he sleeps,
Kathleen o'er him leans and weeps.
Fearless she had tracked his feet
To this rocky, wild retreat,
And when morning met his view,
Her wild glances met it too.
Ah ! your saints have cruel hearts !
Sternly from his bed he starts,
And, with rude, repulsive shock,
Hurls her from the beetling rock.
64 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Glendalough, thy gloomy wave
Soon was gentle Kathleen's grave !
Soon the saint (but, ah ! too late)
Felt her love and mourned her fate.
When he said, "Heaven rest her soul !"
Round the lake light music stole,
And her ghost was seen to glide
Smiling o'er the fatal tide.
Most biographers of the Saint hotly deny that he
killed the fair Kathleen, and point out that he was
far too holy a man to do such a thing, even in a moment
of anger ; but, on the other hand, Kathleen's ghost may
be seen almost any night sitting on a rock by the lake-
side, combing its yellow hair and lamenting its sad
fate. What, then, are we to believe'? My own
theory is that when the Saint opened his eyes, that
fatal morning, and found his tempter bending over
him, he sprang hastily away, well knowing to what
lengths her passion led her, and inadvertently brushed
her off the narrow ledge of rock. The horrified Saint
scrambled down the cliff as quickly as he could, but the
too-impulsive girl was dead. A good many people will
add that it served the hussy right.
This seems to me a reasonable theory; whether it
be true or not, Saint Kevin dwelt seven years in his
cave, after Kathleen's death, without being further dis-
turbed. Then one day, a shepherd climbing down
over the cliff searching for a lost sheep, came upon the
holy man, sitting meditating in his cell, and hastened
away to spread the news of the discovery of a new
saint. Great throngs crowded the lake to get a glimpse
of him, much to his annoyance, and besought him to
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 65
come down so that they could see him better. This
he sternly refused to do, and told them to go away; but
finally he permitted them to build him a little chapel
on a shelf of rock near his cell. That was in June,
536; but the number of his disciples increased so rap-
idly that the chapel soon proved too small, and at last
an angel appeared to him and ordered him to found a
monastery at the lower end of the lake. This he did,
and it soon became one of the most famous in Ire-
land.
It must have been a picturesque place; for there was
a special stone-roofed cell for the Saint, and no less
than seven churches to hold the people, and a great
huddle of domestic buildings to protect the students
from the rain and cold, and finally a tall round tower,
from which to watch for the Norse invader. St. Kevin
himself died in the odour of sanctity on the third day
of June, 618. What I like about this story of St.
Kevin are the dates — they give it such an unimpeach-
able vraisemblance !
After his death, the monastery had a varied history.
It was destroyed by fire in 770, and sacked by the
Danes in 830 and many times thereafter; but the
final blow was struck by the English invaders in 1308,
when the place was burnt to the ground. Since then
it has been in ruins, much as it is to-day.
As we drove into the valley, that lovely day in May,
no prospect could have been more beautiful. To
right and left, in the distance, towered the bare brown
hills, very, steep and rugged, with the blue lake nes-
tling between. In the foreground lay the ruins of the
seven churches, with the round tower rising high above
66 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
them; and, from among the trees, peeped here and
there the thatched roof of a cottage with a plume of
purple smoke rising from its chimney. It was like a
vision — like some ideal, painted scene, too lovely to be
real — and we gazed at it in speechless enchantment
while our jarvey drove us around the lower lake, un-
der the shadow of the hills, and so to the little inn
where we were to have lunch.
We were looking in delight at the inn, with its
thatched roof and whitewashed walls, when a formi-
dable figure appeared in the door — a towering young
woman, with eyes terrifically keen and a thick shock
of the reddest hair I ever saw. She was a singularly
pure specimen, as I afterwards learned, of the red
Irish — a sort of throw-back, I suppose, to the old Vi-
kings of the Danish conquest. I admit that I quailed
a little, for she was looking at us with an expression
which seemed to me anything but friendly.
"Can we get lunch1?" I inquired.
"You can," she answered, short and sharp like the
snap of a whip, and she stood in the doorway staring
at us, without making any sign that we should enter.
"Is it ready1?" I ventured further, for the long drive
had made us very hungry.
"It is not."
Let me say here that very rarely does any one of
Irish blood say "yes" or "no" in answer to a question.
When you ask the man at the station, "Is this the train
for So-and-so*?" he will invariably answer, "It is," or
"It is not," as the case may be. When you ask your
jarvey if he thinks it will rain to-day, his invariable
answer is "It will not." T never heard an Irishman
© Underwood & L'ml.-rwoo.l. N. Y.
GLENDALOUGH AND THE RUINS OF ST. KEVIN'S
CHURCHES
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 67
admit unreservedly that it was going to rain.. But
before I had time to ask the red-headed girl any further
questions, she was hustled aside by a typical little
brown Irishwoman, who asked us in and made us wel-
come. Lunch would be ready in fifteen minutes, she
said; meanwhile, if we wished, we could walk to the
waterfall.
Of course we did wish, and set eagerly forth past
the end of the upper lake, across a bridge, past a great
empty hotel which was falling to decay, and up a little
stream to the fall. It is really a series of rapids rather
than a fall, and only mildly pretty; but growing abun-
dantly in the damp ground along the margin of the
stream was what Betty declared to be the true sham-
rock— a very beautiful trefoil, evidently a variety of
oxalis, and certainly much nearer our ideal of the
shamrock than the skimpy plant shown us by the gar-
dener at Clondalkin. We gathered some of it, and
then hastened back — for we didn't want to be late for
lunch. As we were passing the lake, we noticed an
extremely dirty and unkempt individual, who looked
like a vagabond, sitting on a stone, and as soon as he
saw us, he jumped up and fell in beside us.
"Your honour will be goin' to St. Kevin's bed," he
began.
"Where is the bed?" I asked.
"In the cliff beyant there, sir," and he pointed across
the lake.
"How do we get to it*?"
"Sure I'll carry your honour and your lady in me
boat."
I looked at the fellow, and at the wide lake, and at
68 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the little flat-bottomed skiff moored to a rock near by,
and I had my doubts as to the wisdom of entrusting
ourselves to the combination. He read the doubt in
my face, and broke in with voluble protests.
"Arrah, you must go to the bed, your honour," he
cried; "and your honour's lady, too. 'Tis the place
where the blessed Saint lived for siven years, and if
you sit down in his seat you will niver have the back-
ache, and if you lie down in his bed you will niver
have any ache at all, at all, and if you make three
wishes they will surely come true."
Betty and I glanced at each other. We were
tempted. Then I looked at our would-be guide.
"Why don't you make three wishes yourself?" I
asked.
"I have, your honour."
"Did they come true?"
"They did, your honour," he answered instantly.
"I asked for a light heart, a quick wit and a ready
tongue. Your honour can see that I have all of
them."
. My heart began to warm to him, for he was the first
person we had met in Ireland who talked like this.
"Now just be lookin' at this, your honour," he went
on, and led us to the side of the road where stood a
cross of stone — the terminal cross, as I afterwards
learned, which marked the boundary of the old mon-
astery. "Do you see them marks'? This large one is
the mark of a horse's hoof, and this small one of a
colt's; and 'twas by a miracle they came there. In
the old time, there was a man who stole a mare and her
foal, but who denied it, and who was brought before
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 69
St. Kevin. The Saint placed the man in front of this
cross and told him if he was guilty to be sayin' it, and
if he was not guilty to be sayin' it; and the man said
he was not guilty. And as he spoke the words, the
shape of the hoofs appeared on the cross, and when the
man saw them, he knew it was no use tryin' to de-
ceive the Saint, so he confessed everything. And there
the hoof-prints are to this day."
They certainly bore some resemblance to hoof-prints,
and I could not but admire the ingenuity of the tale
which had been invented to explain them.
"What happened to the thief?" I asked. "Did the
Saint let him go?"
"He did not, your honour, for it was the law that he
must be hanged. But before he died, he asked the
Saint to grant him one favour, and the Saint told him
to name it; and the man asked that he be buried in
the same graveyard with the Saint himself, and that on
his grave a stone be placed with a hole in the middle,
so that, if a horse stepped over his grave, he might
put out his hand and pull it in. The Saint kept his
promise, and in the graveyard yonder you may see
the stone."
As, indeed, we did; at least, there is a grave there
covered by a stone with a large round hole in the
middle.
"And now, your honour," went on our guide, as we
came to the door of the inn, "you will be wantin' me
to row you over to the Saint's bed, I'm thinkin'."
"What is the fare?" I asked.
"As much over sixpence as you care to give, your
honour."
70 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
"All right," I said. "We'll be ready presently."
And we went in to lunch.
We certainly enjoyed that meal, though I have for-
gotten its ingredients; but I have not forgotten the
clean, pleasant dining-room in which it was served.
And then we sallied forth for the visit to St. Kevin's
bed.
Our guide was awaiting us, and helped us into his
boat and pushed off; and at once began to recount the
legends of the lake; how the fairies danced punctually
at nine every evening, whenever there was a moon,
while at eleven the ghost of the fair Kathleen sat on a
stone and sang and combed her hair, and at twelve the
wraith of a wicked sorceress struck blind by St. Kevin
glided about the lake. I forget what else happened,
but it was evident that any one spending a night there
would not lack for entertainment. And he told us
why no skylark ever sings in the vale of Glendalough.
It seems that when St. Kevin was building his mon-
astery, he had a great number of workmen employed,
and the rule was that they should begin the day's
labour with the singing of the lark and end it when
the lambs lay down to rest. It was summer time, and
the larks began to sing about three in the morning,
while the lambs refused to retire until nine at night.
The workmen thought these hours excessive, and so
complained to St. Kevin, and he listened to them, and
looked at them, and when he saw their poor jaded
faces and tired eyes wanting sleep, his kind heart pitied
them, and he promised to see what he could do. So he
raised his eyes to heaven and put up a prayer that the
lark might never sing in the valley, and that the lamb
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 71
might lie down before the sun was set; and the prayer
was granted, and from that day to this Glendalough
has been famous as
"the lake whose gloomy shore
Skylark never warbles o'er."
At what hour the lambs now go to rest our boatman
did not state, and I did not have time to make any
observations for myself; but I commend the question
to the attention of antiquarians.
By the time all these tales had been told, we were
across the lake and drawing in toward a high cliff on
the other side; and suddenly somebody shouted at us,
and, as the hills shuttlecocked the echo back and forth
across the water, we looked up and saw two men cling-
ing to the cliff about forty feet up. As our boat ran
in to the shore, they came scrambling down and helped
us out upon a narrow strand.
"The seat and the bed are up yonder," said our
guide. "Them ones will help your honour up."
I looked at the perpendicular cliff, quite smooth ex-
cept for a little indentation here and there where one
might possibly put one's toe, and my desire to sit in
St. Kevin's seat suffered a severe diminution, for I
have no head for heights. I said as much and listened
sceptically to the fervent assurances of the guides that
there was no danger at all, at all, that they had piloted
thousands of people up and down the cliff without a
single mishap, glory be to God. I knew they were
talking for a tip, and not from any abstract love of
truth. But in matters of this sort, Betty is much more
impulsive than I — as will appear more than once in
72 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the course of this narrative — and she promptly de-
clared that she was going up, for the chance to be
granted three wishes was too good to be missed. So
up she went, one man pulling in front and the other
guiding her toes into those little crevices in the rock;
and presently she passed from sight, and then her voice
floated down to me saying that she was all right.
Of course I had to follow, if I was to escape a life-
time of derision, and after a desperate scramble, I
found her sitting on a narrow ledge at the back of a
shallow cave in the cliff, with her eyes closed, making
her three wishes. Then I sat down and made mine;
and then the guides offered to conduct us to St. Kevin's
bed, but when I found that the bed was a hole in the
cliff into which one had to be poked feet first, and that
to get to it one had to walk along a ledge about three
inches wide, I interposed a veto so vigorous that it pre-
vailed.
Having got up, it was necessary to get down, and
when I looked at the cliff, I understood why St. Kevin
had stayed there seven years. The method of descent
is simply to sit on the edge and slide over and trust to
the man below. Fortunately he was on the job, so
we live to tell the tale. As to the efficacy of the seat,
I can only say that two of my three wishes came true,
which is a good average. I don't know about Betty's,
for it breaks the charm to tell !
I asked our boatman afterwards why he didn't pilot
his passengers up the cliff himself, and so earn the extra
sixpence which is the fee for that service; and he told
me that he couldn't because that was an hereditary
right, controlled by one family, in which it had been
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 73
handed down for generations. The father trains his
sons in the precise method of handling the climbers, so
that they become very expert at it, and there is really
no great danger. One member of the family is al-
ways on the lookout above the cliff, and when any
visitor approaches, two members climb down to offer
their services. Our boatman added that he wished
he belonged to the family, because in good seasons they
made a lot of money.
We pushed out into the lake again, and rowed up
a little farther to another narrow beach, whence a rude
flight of steps led to a shelf of rock many feet above
the lake, on which are the ruins of St. Kevin's first
little church. There is not much left of it, which is
natural enough since it was built nearly a thousand
years before America was discovered; but I took the
picture of it which is reproduced opposite the next
page, and which gives a faint idea of the beauty of the
lake.
All during the afternoon, I had been conscious, at
intervals, of a dull rumbling among the hills, and as
we pushed out from the shore, I heard it again, and
asked the boatman if it was. thunder, for the clouds had
begun to bank up along the horizon, and I remembered
that we had twelve miles to ride on a side-car before
we reached the station. But he said that it wasn't
thunder; there was an artillery camp many miles away
among the hills and the rumbling was the echo of the
guns. He also assured me, after a look around, that
it wouldn't rain before morning. The basis of an
Irish weather prediction, as I have said before, is not
at all a desire to foretell what is coming, but merely
74 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the wish to comfort the inquirer; but in this case the
prediction happened to come true.
When we got back to the inn, we found a new ar-
rival, a very pleasant woman who had come over in
the coach from Dublin. Her husband, I learned, was
an inspector employed by the National Education
Board, who had come to Glendalough to inspect the
schools in the neighbourhood. He had started out to
inspect one at once, but when he returned I had a
most interesting talk with him concerning education
in Ireland, and the problems which it has to face.
The Irish schools, like everything else Irish, are con-
trolled by a central board which sits at Dublin Castle.
There are sixty-six other boards and bureaus and de-
partments sitting there, each dealing with some special
branch of Irish affairs, and all of them are costly and
complicated. These sixty-seven varieties must cause a
pang of envy in the breast of our own Heinz, for that
is ten more than he produces! The particular board
which controls the schools is called the National Edu-
cation Board, and, like all the others, it is in no way
responsible to the Irish people. In fact, it isn't re-
sponsible to anybody. Its members are appointed for
life, and it is virtually a self-perpetuating body, for
vacancies are usually filled in accordance with the
recommendation of a majority of its members. It is
absolutely supreme in Irish educational affairs.
The elementary schools in Ireland are known as
"National Schools," and each of them is controlled by
a local manager, who is always either the priest or tfre
rector of the parish — the priest if the parish is largely
Roman Catholic, the rector if it is largely Protestant.
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 75
If there are enough children, both Catholic and Prot-
estant, to fill two schools, there will be two, and the
two creeds will be separated. This is always done, of
course, in the cities, and in the north of Ireland there
are separate schools for the Presbyterians; but in the
country districts this cannot be done, so that, whatever
the religious complexion of the school, there will al-
ways be a few pupils of the other denomination in it.
In the villages where there is a church, as at Clondal-
kin, the school is usually connected with the church and
in that case, if it is Roman Catholic, the teachers will
be nuns.
The local manager of the school has absolute author-
ity over it. He employs and dismisses the teachers;
he prescribes the course of study; no book which he
prohibits may be used in the school ; any book, within
very wide limits, which he wishes to use, he may use;
he determines the character of the religious instruction.
If he is a Catholic, this is, of course, Catholicism; if
he is a Protestant, it is Protestantism — which means
in Ireland either Presbyterianism in the north or Church
of Irelandism in the south and west. But, as a very
noted preacher remarked to me one evening, if he should
happen to be a Mohammedan, he would be perfectly
free to teach Mohammedanism.
The secular instruction given in the schools is sup-
posed not to be coloured by religion, but it is inevitable
that it should be; and this is especially true of Ire-
land, in whose history religious differences have played
and still play so large a part. The result is that
the memory of old wrongs, far better forgotten,
is kept alive and flaming; and not only that, but the
76 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
wrongs themselves are magnified and distorted out of
all resemblance to the truth. Some one has remarked
that half the ill-feeling in Ireland is caused by the
memory of things that never happened; and further-
more such atrocities as did occur in some far distant
day are spoken of as though they happened yesterday.
To every Catholic, Limerick is still "The City of the
Violated Treaty," although the treaty referred to was
made (and broken) in 1691, and Catholics have long
since been given every right it granted them. In
Derry, the "siege" is referred to constantly as though
it were just over, though as a matter of fact it oc-
curred in 1689. To shout "To hell with King Billy !"
is the deadliest insult that Catholic can offer Protestant,
though King Billy, otherwise William III of Orange,
has been dead for more than two centuries. And
when one asks the caretaker of any old ruin how the
place came to be ruined, the invariable answer is
" 'Twas Crummell did it!" although it may have been
in ruins a century before Cromwell was bora.
A certain period of every day, in every National
School, is set apart for religious instruction. When
that period arrives, a placard on the wall bearing the
words "Secular Instruction," is reversed, displaying
the words "Religious Instruction" printed on the other
side. Then everybody in the schoolhouse who does
not belong to the denomination in which religious in-
struction is to be given is chased outside. Thus, as
you drive about Ireland, you will see little groups of
boys and girls standing idly in front of the school-
houses, and you will wonder what they are doing
there.
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 77
They are waiting for the religious instruction period
to be ended.
No Protestant child is permitted to be present while
Catholic instruction is going on, and no Catholic child
while Protestant instruction is being given. The law
used to require the teacher forcibly to eject such a child;
but this raised an awful rumpus because, of course,
both Catholics and Protestants are anxious to make
converts, and the teachers used to say that they had
conscientious scruples against driving out any child
who might wish to be converted. So the law now re-
quires the teacher to notify the child's parents; and the
result is, I fancy, very painful to the child.
All of which, I will say frankly, seems to me ab-
surd. I do not believe that religious and secular in-
struction can be combined in this way, especially with
a mixed population, without impairing the efficiency of
both. The first real struggle the Home Rule Parlia-
ment will have to face, in the opinion of my friend the
inspector, is the struggle to secularise education. And
this, he added, will not be a struggle of Protestant
against Catholic, but of clerical against anti-clerical,
for, while religious instruction is a far more vital prin-
ciple with the Catholic church than with the Protestant
church, Protestant preachers in Ireland are just as
jealous of their power over the schools and just as
determined to retain it, as the Catholic priests. The
influence of the clergy in Ireland is very great, and I
am inclined to think they will win the first battle; but
I also think that they are certain to lose in the end.
The General Education Board keeps in touch with
the local schools by employing inspectors, who visit
78 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
them three times a year and report on their condition.
These visits are supposed to be unexpected, but, as a
matter of fact, they seldom are.
"Word always gets about," my informant explained,
with a smile, "that we are in the neighbourhood, and of
course things are furbished up a bit."
"I should like to visit some of the schools," I said.
"You are at perfect liberty to do so. Any orderly
person has the right to enter any school at any time."
"It is the poor little schools I wish to see," I added.
"You will find plenty of them in the west of Ire-
land— in fact, that is about the only kind they have
there. And you will probably scare the teacher out of
a year's growth when you step in. He will think you
are an inspector, or a government official of some kind,
who has heard something to his discredit and has come
to investigate."
"Something to his discredit1?" I repeated.
"Perhaps that he doesn't try to make the children
in his district come to school. That is one great fault
with our system. We have a compulsory education
law, and every child in Ireland is supposed to go to
school until he is fourteen. But no effort is made to
enforce it, and not over half the children attend school
with any sort of regularity. Often, of course, their
parents need them; but more frequently it is because
the parents are so ignorant themselves that they don't
appreciate the value of an education. That isn't their
fault entirely, for until thirty or forty years ago, it
was practically impossible for a Catholic child to get
any education, since the schools were managed by
Protestants in a proselytising spirit and the priests
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 79
would not allow Catholic children to attend them.
"I have some of the old readers that were used in
those days," went on the inspector, with a smile, "and
I wish I had them here. They would amuse you. In
one of them, the Board cut out Scott's lines,
" 'Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself has said
This is my own, my native land,'
and so on, fearing that they might have a bad effect
upon Irish children by teaching them to love the land
they were born in, and substituted some verses written
by one of their own members. One stanza ran some-
thing like this:
" 'I thank the goodness and the grace
Which on my birth have smiled,
And made me in these Christian days
A happy English child.'
The Board claimed there was nothing sectarian about
that stanza, but I wonder what the O'Malleys over in
Joyce's Country thought when their children recited
it? I'll bet there was a riot! And the histories had
every sort of history in them except Irish history. Ire-
land was treated as a kind of tail to England's kite,
and the English conquest was spoken of as a thing for
which Ireland should be deeply grateful, and the Eng-
lish government was held up to admiration as the best
and wisest that man could hope to devise.
"Ah, well, those days are over now, and they don't
try to make a happy English child out of an Irish
8o THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Catholic any longer. The principal trouble now is
that there isn't enough money to carry on the schools
properly. Many of the buildings are unfit for school-
houses, and the teachers are miserably paid. The
school-books are usually poor little penny affairs, for
the children can't afford more expensive ones. We
visit the schools three times a year and look them over,
but there isn't anything we can do. Here is the blank
we are supposed to fill out."
The blank was a portentous four-page document,
with many printed questions. The first section dealt
with the condition of the schoolhouse and premises, the
second with the school equipment, the third with the
organisation, and so on. As might be expected, many
of the questions have to do with the subject of religious
instruction. Here are some of them:
Note objections (if any) to arrangements for Religious In-
struction.
Have you examined the Religious Instruction Certificate
Book?
Are the Rules as to this book observed ?
Is the school bona fide open to pupils of all denominations ?
In case of Convent or Monastery schools, paid by capitation,
state is the staff sufficient.
The "Religious Instruction Certificate Book" — note
the reverent capitals — is the book in which the religion
of each child is certified to by its parents, so that there
can be no controversy on the subject, and in which the
child's attendance is carefully entered. There is also
a Punishment Book, in which the teacher, when a child
is punished, must enter the details of the affair for the
inspector's information; and an Observation Book, in
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 81
which the inspector is supposed to note suggestions for
the teacher's guidance ; as well as records of attendance
and proficiency, and all the usual red tape of the Cir-
cumlocution Office. I have never seen any of these
books, but I fancy that, with the exception of the first-
named, few teachers spend much time over them.
As I have said before, the local manager has absolute
control of the school, and the poverty of the school
funds is sometimes due to his desire to keep this power
wholly in his own hands. The government grant is
intended only as a partial support, and is supposed to
be supplemented by a local contribution. But fre-
quently no local contribution is asked for or desired,
because, if one was made, the persons who made it
would rightfully claim some voice in the management
of the school. I have heard queer tales of managers'
eccentricities. One of them read somewhere of the
high educational value of teaching children to fold
paper in various shapes, and so had the children in his
school devote an hour every day to this exercise. It
was popular with the children, but the indignation
of their parents may be imagined. They were, how-
ever, quite powerless to do anything except raise a
row. Another, who believed that the highest func-
tion of education was to develop the aesthetic conscious-
ness, had the children in his school arrange rags of
various colours in symphonies, and the people in his
parish nearly went mad with rage.
But these, of course, were exceptions. As a rule, the
course of study is utilitarian and humdrum enough,
and the only colour the manager injects into it is that
of religion. I note that the subjects of study men-
82 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
tioned in the inspector's blank are oral and written
English, history, arithmetic, geography, object lessons
and elementary science, cookery and laundry work,
singing, drawing, needlework, and training of infants.
This sounds ambitious enough, but I fancy it is mostly
blarney, so far as the small schools are concerned, at
any rate. About all most of them do is to teach the
children to read and write and cipher — and these most
haltingly. Twenty per cent, of the people in western
Ireland are still unable to do even that.
"You are a Nationalist, I suppose*?" I said, after I
had finished looking through the blank.
"I am," he assented emphatically.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because it is bad for Ireland to be treated like a
spoiled child. That is the way England treats us now
— we can get anything we want if we yell loud
enough. And it's bad for England, too. She has
problems enough of her own, heaven knows, but all
she can think about is Ireland. Every sensible Eng-
lishman will be glad to get rid of us, so his govern-
ment can have a little time to attend to its own affairs.
What Ireland needs is to be chucked overboard and
told to sink or swim. We'll swim, of course, but the
shore's a long way off, and it will be a hard pull ; but
the harder it is, the closer we Irishmen will be drawn
together. Home Rule won't bring any shower of
blessings — it's more apt to bring hardships for a while ;
but it will give us a chance to stop thinking about our
wrongs, and go to work to make Ireland a country
worth living in."
The time had come for us to take our leave, and the
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 83
inspector and his wife walked with us, for half a mile
or so, along a beautiful path through the woods on the
other side of the lower lake, and finally, with many ex-
pressions of good-will, bade us good-bye. We went
on again, to the ruins of St. Kevin's seven churches,
with the round tower looming high above them, while
all about are the mounds and slabs of the old grave-
yard. All the churches are little ones — mere midgets,
some of them — and they are in all states of preserva-
tion, from a few fragments of wall to the almost per-
fect "St. Kevin's Kitchen" — a tiny structure with high
stone roof, which was set apart for the Saint's use, and
which was so solidly built that it passed unharmed
through the many burnings and sackings of the mon-
astery, and still stands intact, defying the centuries.
There is a queer little tower at one end of it, and a
chamber above between the vault and the high roof;
but most of these pre-Norman churches are small and
bare of ornament, and remarkable only for their great
age.
We spent some time in the graveyard, looking at the
crosses and ornamented tombstones, and sculptured
fragments lying about, and then we inspected the
round tower ; but my picture of it looks like a silhouette
against the sunset sky; and finally we went on to the
road, where our car was waiting. As we swung along
through the fresh, cool air of the evening, we drew our
jarvey into talk. He was very pessimistic about the
state of the country, and apparently did not believe
that Home Rule would help it much. There was no
chance, he said, for a man to get ahead. It was a
hard struggle for most of them to get enough to eat
84 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
and a place to sleep and a few clothes to wear. A
little sickness or bad luck, and there was nothing left
but the workhouse — the workmen's insurance act did
not include men like him. His own wages were ten
shillings ($2.40) a week, and there were many who
could not earn even that. On ten shillings — eked out
by such tips as he picked up from his passengers — he
managed to clothe and feed himself, but that was all.
Marriage was not to be thought of; there was no hope
of saving money enough to go to America; in fact,
there was no hope of any kind. But though he spoke
bitterly enough, he didn't seem unreasonably cast
down, and I dare say spent little time thinking about
his hard fate except when some passing Americans
like ourselves reminded him of it.
And at last, just as dusk was falling, we wound
down into the valley at Rathdrum; and presently our
train came along; and an hour later we were again
walking along O'Connell Street. It was long past
nine o'clock, but not yet dark.
CHAPTER VI
DROGHEDA THE DREARY
THERE was one more excursion we wanted to make
from Dublin. That was to Drogheda (pronounced
Drawda) of bitter memory; from where we hoped to
drive to the scene of the battle of the Boyne, and on
to Dowth and Newgrange, the sepulchres of the ancient
kings of Erin, and finally to the abbeys of Mellifont
and Monasterboice. So we set forth, next morning,
on this pilgrimage; but fate willed that we were not
to accomplish it that day.
Drogheda is about thirty miles north of Dublin,
near the mouth of the River Boyne, and the ride
thither, for the most part close beside the sea, is not
of special interest, as the coast is flat and the only
town of any importance on the way is Balbriggan,
celebrated for its hosiery. Drogheda itself is an up-
and-down place, built on the side of a hill. I suppose
the castle which was the nucleus of the town stood
on top of the hill, and houses were gradually built from
it down to the ford from which the town takes its name.
Encircled with walls and dominated by its castle, it
was no doubt picturesque enough, but it is singularly
dingy and unattractive now, with slums almost as bad
as Dublin's and evidences of biting poverty every-
where.
We blundered into the fish-market, as we were ex-
ploring the streets, and watched for some time the
85
86 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
haggling between the dealers and the women who had
come to market — a haggling so vigorous that it often
threatened to end in blows. Most of the fish had been
cut up into pieces, and every piece was fingered and
poked and examined with a scrutiny almost micro-
scopic; and then the would-be purchaser would make
an offer for it, which would be indignantly refused.
Then the dealer would name his price, and this never
failed to arouse a storm of protest. Then dealer and
purchaser would indulge in a few personalities, recall-
ing with relish any discreditable facts in the other's
private life or family history; and finally, sometimes,
an agreement would be reached. In any case, the price
was never more than a few pennies, and the reluctance
with which they were produced and handed over proved
how tremendously hard it had been to earn them.
Drogheda recalls Cromwell to every Irishman,
usually with a malediction, for it was here that the
massacre occurred which made and still makes the
Great Protector anathema in Catholic Ireland.
Briefly, the facts are these: The Irish Catholics, un-
der Owen Roe O'Neill, had, naturally enough, sup-
ported Charles I against the Parliament, and when the
Parliament cut off his head, promptly declared for his
son, Charles II, and started in to conquer Ulster, which
was largely Protestant then as now.
Cromwell realised that, before the Commonwealth
would be safe, the rebellion in Ireland must be put
down, and at once addressed himself to the task. He
landed at Dublin about the middle of August, 1649,
and marched against Drogheda, which was held by an
Irish force of some three thousand men. Arrived be-
DROGHEDA THE DREARY 87
fore it, he summoned the town to surrender; upon its
refusal, took it by storm, and "in the heat of action,"
as he afterwards wrote, ordered that the whole garri-
son be put to the sword. Not more than thirty of the
three thousand escaped, and such Catholic priests as
were found in the place were hanged. Cromwell after-
wards sought to justify this cruelty on two grounds:
as a reprisal for the killing of Protestants in Ulster,
and as the most efficacious way to strike terror to the
Irish and end the rebellion. As a matter of fact, it
cannot be justified, as John Morley very clearly points
out in a chapter of his life of Cromwell which should
be read by every one interested in Irish history.
Some fragments of the old walls still remain, and one
of the gates, which will be found pictured opposite the
next page. It spans what is now the principal street,
and consists of two battlemented towers, pierced with
loopholes in each of their four stories, and connected
by a retiring wall also loopholed. It is so well pre-
served because it stands on the opposite side of the
town from the one Cromwell attacked, and is the most
perfect specimen of the mediaeval city-gate which I
saw anywhere in Ireland. When one has seen it, one
has exhausted the antiquarian interest of Drogheda,
for all that is left of the old monastery is a battered
fragment. As for the modern town, the churches are
rococo and ugly, while the most imposing building is
the workhouse, capable of accommodating a thousand
inmates.
Having satisfied our curiosity as to Drogheda, we ad-
dressed ourselves to getting out to the battlefield and
abbeys. The railroads sell combination tickets for the
88 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
whole trip, at three or four shillings each, carrying their
passengers about in brakes ; but these excursions do not
start till June, so it was necessary that we get a car.
At the station, and again at the wharf by the river,
we had observed large bulletin boards with a list of the
jaunting-car tariffs fixed by the corporation, and giv-
ing the price of the trip we wanted to take as ten shill-
ings for two people. In the square by the post-office, a
number of cars were drawn up along the curb, and,
picking out the best-looking one, I told the jarvey
where we wanted to go.
"Very good, sir," he said. "I'm the lad can take ye.
Do you and your lady get right up."
"What is the fare4?" I asked.
"One pound, sir."
"The legal fare is just half that," I pointed out. .
"It may be," he agreed pleasantly.
We left him negligently flicking his horse with his
whip, and presently we met a policeman, and told him
we wanted to drive out to Monasterboice, and while
we didn't mind being robbed, we didn't care to be
looted, and we asked his advice. He scratched his
head dubiously.
"Ye see it is like this, sir," he said; "there is no one
to enforce the regulations, so the jarvies just charge
what they please. I'm free to admit they have no
conscience. There is one, though, who is fairly hon-
est," and he directed us to his house. "Tell him you
come from me, and he'll treat you well."
But that transaction was never closed. We found
the house — grimy, dark, dirt-floored, trash-littered —
with the man's wife and assorted children within; but
DROGHEDA THE DREARY 89
the woman told us that "himself" had driven out into
the country and would not be back till evening. And
just then it began to drizzle most dismally.
"This is no day for the trip, anyway," I said.
"Suppose we wait till we get to Belfast, and run down
from there."
So it was agreed, and we made our way back to the
station, through a sea of sticky mud, and presently
took train again for Ireland's ancient capital.
We were ready to leave Dublin for a swing clear
around the coast of Ireland, and late that afternoon,
having sifted our luggage to the minimum and armed
ourselves cap-a-pie against every vicissitude of weather,
we bade our friends at the hotel good-bye (not for-
getting the bell-boy), drove to the station, and got
aboard a train, which presently rolled away south-
wards. It was very full — the third-class crowded
with soldiers in khaki bound for the camp on the Cur-
ragh of Kildare, and our own compartment jammed
with a variety of people.
In one corner, a white-haired priest mumbled his
breviary and watched the crowd with absent eyes,
while across from him a loud-voiced woman, evidently,
from her big hat and cheap finery, just home from
America, was trying to overawe the friends who had
gone to Dublin to meet her by an exhibition of sham
gentility. In the seat with us was a plump and com-
fortable woman of middle age, with whom we soon
got into talk about everything from children to Home
Rule.
What she had to say about Home Rule was inter-
90 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
esting. Her home was somewhere down in the Vale of
Tipperary, and I judged from her appearance that she
was the wife of a well-to-do farmer. She was most
emphatically not a Nationalist.
"It isn't them who own land, or who are buyin' a
little farm under the purchase act that want Home
Rule," she said. "No, no; them ones would be glad
to let well enough alone. Tis the labourers, the
farm-hands, the ditch-diggers, and such-like people,
who have nothin' to lose, that shout the loudest for it.
They would like a bit of land themselves, and they
fancy that under Home Rule they'll be gettin' it; but
where is it to come from, I'd like to know, unless off
of them that has it now; and who would be trustin' the
likes of them to pay for it1? Ah, 'tis foolish to think
of! Besides, if everybody owned land, where would
we be gettin' labour to work it1? No, no; 'tis time to
stop, I say, and there be many who think like me."
"What wages does a labourer make*?" I asked.
"From ten to twelve shillin's a week."
"All the year round1?"
"There's no work in winter, so how can one be payin'
wages then?"
"But how can they live on that?"
"They can't live on it," she said fiercely; "many of
them ones couldn't live at all, if it wasn't for the
money that's sent them from America. But what can
the farmers do? If they pay higher wages, they ruin
themselves. Most of them have give up in disgust
and turned their land into grass."
"What do the labourers do then?" I asked.
DROGHEDA THE DREARY 91
"They move away some'rs else — to America if they
can."
"Perhaps Home Rule will make things better," I
suggested.
"How, I'd like to know*? By raisin' taxes? That
same is the first thing will happen! No, no; the solid
men hereabouts don't want Home Rule — they're
afraid of it; but they know well enough they must
keep their tongues in their mouths, except with
each other. The world's goin' crazy — that's what I
think."
Now I look back on it, that conversation seems to
me to sum up pretty well the situation in rural Ire-
land— the small farmer, handicapped by poverty and
primitive methods, ground down in the markets of the
world, and in turn grinding down the labourers be-
neath him, or turning his farm into grass, so that there
is no work at all except for a few shepherds. And I
believe it is true that, as a whole, only the upper class
and the lower class of Irishmen really want Home Rule
— the upper class from motives of patriotism, the lower
class from hope of betterment; while the middle class
is either lukewarm or opposed to it at heart. The
middle class is, of course, always and everywhere, the
conservative class, the class which fears change most
and is the last to consent to it; in Ireland, it is com-
posed largely of small farmers, who have dragged
themselves a step above the peasantry and who are just
finding their feet under the land purchase act, and I
think their liveliest fear is that a Home Rule Parlia-
ment will somehow compel them to pay living wages
92 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
to their labourers. I can only say that I hope it will !
Outside, meanwhile, rural Ireland was unfolding it-
self under our eyes, varied, beautiful — and sad. The
first part of it we had already traversed on our excur-
sion to Clondalkin; beyond that village, the road
emerged from the hills encircling Dublin, and soon we
could see their beautiful rounded masses far to the
left, forming a charming background to meadows whose
greenness no words can describe. Every foot of the
ground is historic; for first the train passes Celbridge
where Swift's "Vanessa" dwelt, and just beyond is
Lyons Hill, where Daniel O'Connell shot and killed a
Dublin merchant named D'Esterre in a duel a hundred
years ago — an affair, it should be added, in which
D'Esterre was the aggressor; and presently the line
crosses a broad and beautiful undulating down, the
Curragh of Kildare, where St. Brigid pastured her
flocks, and it was made in this wise :
One time, when Brigid, who was but a poor serving-
girl, being the daughter of a bond-woman, was mind-
ing her cow, with no place to feed it but the side of the
road, the rich man who owned the land for leagues
around came by, and saw her and her cow, and a pity
for her sprang into his heart.
"How much land would it take to give grass to the
cow*?" said he.
"No more than my cloak would cover," said she.
"I will give that," said the rich man.
"Glory be to God !" said Brigid, and she took off her
cloak and laid it on the ground, and she had no sooner
done so than it began to grow, until it spread miles
and miles on every side.
DROGHEDA THE DREARY 93
But just then a silly old woman came by, bad cess to
her, and she opened her foolish mouth and she said,
"If that cloak keeps on spreading, all Ireland will be
free."
And with that the cloak stopped and spread no more ;
but the rich man was true to his word, and Brigid held
the land which it covered during all her lifetime, and
it has been a famous grazing-ground ever since, though
the creatures are crowded off part of it now by a great
military camp.
Beyond the Curragh, the train rumbles over a wide
bog, which trembles uneasily beneath it, and the black
turf-cuttings stretch away as far as the eye can see;
and then the Hill of Allen looms up against the hori-
zon, where the Kings of Leinster dwelt in the old days,
and the fields grow greener than ever, but for miles
and miles there is not a single house.
And this is the sad part of it; for this fertile land,
as rich as any in the world, supports only flocks and
herds, instead of the men and women and children
who once peopled it. They have all been driven
away, by eviction, by famine, by the hard necessity of
finding work; for there is no work here except for a
few herdsmen, and has not been for half a century.
For when the landlords found — or fancied they found
— there was more money in grazing than in agriculture,
they turned the people out and the sheep and cattle
in — and the sheep and cattle are still there.
But the landscape grows ever lovelier and more
lovely. Away on either hand, high ranges of hills
spring into being, closing in the Golden Vale of Tip-
perary, and one realises it was a true vision of the
94 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
place of his birth that Denis McCarthy had when he
wrote his lilting verses in praise of it:
Ah, sweet is Tipperary in the springtime of the year,
When the hawthorn's whiter than the snow,
When the feathered folk assemble and the air is all a-tremble
With their singing and their winging to and fro;
When queenly Slievenamon puts her verdant vesture on
And smiles to hear the news the breezes bring ;
When the sun begins to glance on the rivulets that dance —
Ah, sweet is Tipperary in the spring !
Slievenamon is not in sight from the train — we shall
see it to-morrow from the Rock of Cashel; but just
ahead is a rugged hill with a singular, half-moon de-
pression at the summit, for all the world as though
some one had taken a great bite out of it — and that
is precisely what happened, for once upon a time the
Prince of Darkness passed that way, and when he
came to the hill, being pressed with hunger, he took
a bite out of the top of it; but it was not to his taste,
so he spat it out again, and it fell some miles away
across the valley, where it lies to this day, and is called
the Rock of Cashel, while the hill is known as the
Devil's Bit.
And then we came to Thurles — and to earth.
Now Thurles — the word is pronounced in two syl-
lables, as though it were spelled Thurless — is a small
town and has only two inns. We knew nothing of
either, so we asked the advice of a bluff, farmer-look-
ing man in our compartment, who was native to the
place. He declined, at first, to express an opinion,
saying it would ill become him to exalt one inn at the
DROGHEDA THE DREARY 95
expense of the other, since the keepers of both were
friends of his; but after some moments of cogitation,
he said that he would recommend one of them, since it
was kept by a poor widow woman. I confess this
did not seem to me a convincing reason for going there ;
but our new-found friend took charge of us, and, hav-
ing seen us safely to the platform, called loudly for
"Jimmy," and an old man presently shambled for-
ward, to whose care, with many wishes for a pleas-
ant journey, we were committed.
The old man proved to be the driver of a very ram-
shackle omnibus, in which we were presently rumbling
along a wide and dreary street. The hotel, when we
got to it, proved bare and cheerless, with every corner
crowded with cots. The landlady explained that the
great horse-fair opened in a day or two, and that she
was preparing for the crowds which always attended
it; but finally she found a room for us away up in the
attic, and left us alone with a candle. The weather
had turned very cold, and we were tired and uncom-
fortable, and even our electric torch could not make the
room look otherwise than dingy; and I think, for a
moment, we regretted that we had come to Ireland —
and then, presto! change . . .
For there came a knock at the door, and a soft-voiced
maid entered with towels and hot water, and asked
if there wasn't something else she could do for us; and
then another came, to see if there was anything she
could do, and between them they lapped us in such a
warmth of Irish welcome that we were soon aglow.
I left them blarneying Betty and went down to the
shining little bar, where I smoked a pipe in company
96 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
with two or three habitues and the barmaid, and had
a most improving talk about the state of the country.
They were as hungry to hear about America as I was
to hear about Ireland, and it was very late before I
mounted the stairs again.
All through the night, we were awakened at inter-
vals by the tramping and neighing of the horses arriv-
ing for the fair.
CHAPTER VII
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL OF THE KINGS
IF one doesn't like bacon and eggs, one must go with-
out breakfast in Ireland, unless one likes fish, or is con-
tent with bread and butter. Every evening Betty
would have a colloquy with the maid, which ran some-
thing like this:
"What will ye be wantin' for breakfast, miss*?"
"What can we have?"
"Oh, anything ye like, miss."
"Well, what, for instance?"
"There's bacon and eggs, miss, and there's fish."
We usually took bacon and eggs, for fish seemed out
of place on the breakfast-table. Besides, we were sure
to encounter it later at dinner.
"And will ye have coffee or tay, miss?" the maid
would continue.
We took coffee once, and after that we took tea.
The tea is good, though strong, and it seems somehow
to suit the climate; but one sip of Irish coffee will be
enough for most people.
So next morning we sat down to our breakfast of tea
and bacon and eggs with a good appetite. The cloth
was not as clean as it might have been, but the eggs
were fresh and the bacon sweet, and the bread and
butter were delicious — as they are all over Ireland —
and the tea tasted better than I had ever imagined tea
could taste, and outside the sun was shining brightly,
97.
98 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
but no brighter than the face of the maid who waited
on us, and there was a pleasant stir of movement up
and down the street, for it was Saturday and market-
day, so that it was quite impossible to be otherwise
than happy and content. And presently the car I had
arranged for the night before drove up, and we were
off on the four-mile drive to the ruins of Holy Cross
Abbey.
We had to go slowly, at first, for the street was
crowded with people come to market, and with the
wares exposed for sale. There were little carts heaped
high with brown turf, which might be bought for two
or three shillings a load, though every load repre-
sented as many days' hard work; there were red calves
in little pens, and chickens in crates, and eggs and
butter in baskets; and there were a lot of pedlars of-
fering all sorts of dry-goods and hardware and odds
and ends to the country-people who stood stolidly
around, apparently rather sorry they had come. The
faces were typically Irish — the men with short noses
and shaved lips and little fuzzy side-whiskers, and
the women with cheeks almost startlingly ruddy; but
there wasn't a trace of those rollicking spirits which
the Irish in books and on the stage seldom fail to dis-
play.
Once clear of the crowd, we rolled out of the town,
over a bridge above the railway, and along a pleasant
road, past little thatched cottages overflowing with
children; meeting, from time to time, a family driving
to town, all crowded together on a little cart behind a
shaggy donkey, the men with their feet hanging down,
the women scrooched up under their shawls, with their
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL 99
knees as high as their chins. They all stared at us
curiously; but our driver passed them by with disdain,
as not worth his notice, and from a word or two he let
fall, it was evident that he considered them beneath
him.
The road was rather higher than the surrounding
country, and we could see across it, north and south,
for many miles; then it descended to a winding stream,
the Suir, flowing gently between rushy banks, and pres-
ently we saw ahead a great pile of crumbling build-
ings— and then we were at Holy Cross, one of the most
exquisite and interesting of the hundreds of ruins which
cover Ireland.
That word "hundreds" is no exaggeration. In a
single day's journey, one will see scores; and as one
goes on thus, day after day, one begins to realise what
a populous and wealthy country Ireland was eight hun-
dred years ago, how crowded with castles and monas-
teries; and I think the deepest impression the traveller
bears away with him is the memory of these battered
and deserted remnants of former grandeur. And yet
it is not quite just to blame England for them, as most
of the Irish do. It was the English, of course, who
broke up the monasteries and destroyed many of the
castles ; but the march of the centuries would probably
have wrought much the same ruin in the end; for men
no longer live in castles, finding homes far pleasanter;
and it is not now to monks they go for learning, nor
is the right of sanctuary needed as it was in the time
when might made right, and a poor man's only hope
of safety lay in getting to some altar ahead of his
pursuers. Yet one cannot tread these beautiful places
ioo THE CHARM OF IRELAND
without a certain sadness and regret — regret for the
vanished pomp and ceremony, the cowled processions
and torch-lit feasts, the shuffle of feet and the songs of
minstrels — in a word, for the old order, so impressive,
so picturesque — and so cruel !
Holy Cross was a great place in those days, for, as
its name indicates, it held as its most precious relic a
fragment of the True Cross, given by the Pope, in
1110, to Donough O'Brien, grandson of Brian Boru,
and thousands of pilgrims came to pray before it. The
relic had many strange vicissitudes, in the centuries
that followed, but it was not lost, as was the one which
the Cross of Cong enshrined, and it is preserved to-day
in the Ursuline convent at Blackrock. Holy Cross had
better luck than most, for, at the dissolution in 1563,
it was granted to the Earl of Ormonde, a friend who
cherished it. But the end came with the passing of
the Stuarts, and now it is deserted save for the old
woman who acts as caretaker, and who lives in a little
ivy-covered house built against the wall of the great
church.
She opened the iron gate which bars access to the
ruins, and let us wander about them at will, for which
we were grateful. The plan of the place is that com-
mon to almost all monastic establishments : a cruciform
church, with the altar at the east end, as nearest Jeru-
salem, the arms of the cross, or transepts, stretching
north and south, and the body of the cross, or nave,
extending to the west, where the main entrance was ; a
door from the nave opened to the south into a court
around which were the cloisters and the domestic build-
ings— the refectory, the chapter-house and the dormi-
HOLY CROSS ABBEY, FROM THE CLOISTERS
THE MIGHTY RUINS ON THE ROCK OF CASHEL
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL 101
tories; and still beyond these were the granaries and
storehouses and guest-houses and various out-build-
ings. Also, like most others, it stands on the bank of
a river, for the monks were fond of fishing, — and had
no mind to go hungry on Friday !
The roof of the church has fallen in, but it is other-
wise well-preserved, even to the window-tracery; and
the square tower above the crossing is apparently as
firm as ever. The whole place abounds in beautiful
detail, proof of the loving workmanship that was lav-
ished on it; but its bright particular gem is a little
sanctum in the north transept, surrounded by delicate
twisted pillars and covered by a roof beautifully
groined. Whether this was the sanctuary of the relic,
or the place where the monks were laid from death to
burial, or the tomb of some saintly Abbot, no one
knows ; but there it is, a living testimony to the beauty
of Irish artistry.
The cloister is now a grass-grown court, and only a
few arches remain of the colonnade which once sur-
rounded it; but the square of domestic buildings about
it is better preserved than one will find almost any-
where else, and deserves careful exploration.
As was the custom in most of the abbeys, the friars,
when they died, were laid to rest beneath the flags of
the church floor; the church is still used as a burial
place, and is cluttered with graves, marked by stones
leaning at every angle. One's feet sink deep into the
mould — a mould composed, so the caretaker told us in
awestruck voice, of human dust.
We mounted the narrow staircase to the tower roof
and sat there for a long time, gazing down on these
102 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
lichened and crumbling walls, restoring them in im-
agination and repeopling them with the White Brothers
and the pilgrims and the innumerable hangers-on who
once crowded them. It required no great stretch of
fancy to conjure the old days back — that day, for in-
stance, three centuries and more ago, when Red Hugh
O'Donnell, marching southward from Galway with his
army to join the Spaniards at Kinsale, came down yon-
der white highway, and stopped at the monastery gate,
and invoked a blessing from the Abbot. And the
Abbot, with all the monks in attendance, carried the
fragment of the Cross in its gilded shrine out to the
gate, and held it up for all to see, and Red Hugh and
his men knelt down there in the road, while the priest
prayed that through them Ireland might win freedom.
And even as they knelt, a wild-eyed rapparee came
pounding up with the news that a great force of Eng-
lish was at Cashel, a few miles away ; so Red Hugh had
to flee with his men over the hills to the westward, to
die a year later, poisoned by a man he thought his
friend.
We descended after a time, and crossed the river to
have a look at the Abbey from that vantage-ground;
and at last, most regretfully, we mounted the car again
and drove back to Thurles. An hour later, we were at
Cashel — the one place in all Ireland best worth seeing.
I write that in all earnestness. If the traveller has
time for only one excursion out of Dublin, he should
hesitate not an instant, but go to Cashel. I shall try
to tell why.
Cashel is a rock some three hundred feet high
dropped down among the pastures along the northern
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL 103
edge of the Golden Vale of Tipperary. I do not know
how the geologists explain it. How the Irish explain
it I have told already. Its sides are of the steepest,
and its flat top is about two acres in extent. In itself
it is a natural fortress, and it was of course seized upon
as such by the dim people who fought back and forth
over the length and breadth of Ireland in the far ages
before history begins. At first it was strengthened by
a wall around the top. Any such defensive wall in
Ireland is called a cashel, as one of earth is called a
rath, and there are both raths and cashels all up and
down the land, for forts have always been sorely needed
there; but this is the Cashel above all others.
Buildings were put up inside the wall, rude at first,
but gradually growing more elaborate, and when the
real history of the place begins, say about fifteen cen-
turies ago, it was already the seat of the Kings of
Munster, that is of the southern half of Ireland.
Hither about 450 came St. Patrick to convert the King
and his household; it was while preaching here that
he is said first to have plucked tie trefoil or sham-
rock to illustrate the principle of the Three-in-One ;
Brian Boru strengthened its fortifications; and in 1134
was consecrated here that wonderful chapel of Cormac
McCarthy, King of Munster, which still endures as a
most convincing demonstration of the beauty of old
Irish architecture. Then a round tower was put up,
and then a castle, and then a great cathedral, for King
Murtough had granted the Rock to "the religious of
Ireland," and the Archbishop of Cashel came, before
long, to be nearly as powerful as the great Archbishop
of Armagh; and then a monastery was built, and
104 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
schools, under the sway first of the Benedictines and
later of the Cistercians. All this made a stupendous
group of buildings, a splendid and impressive symbol
of Cashel's greatness.
But under Elizabeth, the scale turned. Dermot
O'Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel, was taken prisoner
and carried to Dublin and hanged. His successor,
Milar Magrath, abjured his religion, under Elizabethan
pressure, and to prove the sincerity of his Protestant-
ism, married not once, but twice. From that time
on, the place was used as a Protestant cathedral, un-
til, in 1744, Archbishop Price succeeded to the see.
Now the Archbishop was a man who loved his ease,
and though his palace was situated conveniently enough
at the foot of the Rock, his church was perched most
inconveniently upon it, and the only way even an
archbishop could get to it was to walk. Price spent a
lot of money trying to build a carriage road up the
Rock, but finally he gave it up and procured from Par-
liament an act decreeing that, whereas, "in several
dioceses, cathedral churches are so incommodiously sit-
uated that they cannot be resorted to for divine serv-
ice," power should be given the chief governor, with
assent of the privy council, to "remove the site of a
cathedral church to some convenient parish church."
Two years later, in 1749, an act was passed directing
that the cathedral be removed from the Rock into the
town. This was, of course, impossible in any but a
metaphorical sense ; but, incredible as it may seem, since
he couldn't remove it, Price determined to destroy it,
secured from the government the loan of a regiment of
soldiers, and set them to work tearing it down. They
) I tnderwood & Underwood, N. Y.
CASHEL OF THE KINGS
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL 105
stripped off the leaden roof, knocked in the vaulting,
and left the place the ruin that it is to-day. It might
be remarked, in passing, that here is one ruin "Crum-
mell" didn't make. George II was King of England
in 1749, and Cromwell had been dead nearly a hun-
dred years.
I shall never forget my first glimpse of this stupen-
dous pile of buildings, looming high in air, all turrets
and towers, like those fairy palaces which Maxfield
Parrish loves to paint. A short branch runs from
Goold's Cross to Cashel, and it was from the windows
of the rickety little train we peered, first on this side
and then on that — and then, quite suddenly, away to
the left, we saw the Rock, golden-grey, high against the
sky, so fairy-like and ethereal that it seemed impossible
it could be anything more than a wonderful vision or
mirage. And then the train stopped, and we jumped
out, and hurried from the station, and presently we
were following the path around the Rock. But that
was too slow, and with a simultaneous impulse we
left the path and climbed the wall, and hastened up-
ward over rock and heather, straight toward this new
marvel. We skirted another wall, and climbed a stile
— and then we were stopped by a high iron gate, se-
cured with a chain and formidable padlock.
But we had scarcely time to feel the shock of dis-
appointment, when we saw hastening upward toward
us a sturdy old man, with weather-beaten face framed
by a shock of reddish-grey hair and beard, and a mo-
ment later we had the pleasure of meeting John Min-
ogue, the caretaker — the most accomplished caretaker,
I venture to say, in all the length and breadth of Ire-
106 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
land. For, as we soon found, he has the history and
legends and architectural peculiarities of Cashel at his
tongue's end — he knows them intimately, accurately,
in every detail, for he has lived with them all his life
and loves them.
He unlocked the iron gate and ushered us in, and
chased away the rabble of ragged children who had
followed him up from the village; and then began one
of the most delightful experiences that I have ever had.
I almost despair of attempting to describe it.
At our feet lay the Vale of Tipperary — an expanse
of greenest green stretching unbroken to the foot of a
great mountain-chain, the Galtees, thirty miles away.
Farther to the north, we could just discern the gap
of the Devil's Bit, beyond which lay Limerick and
the Shannon. And then we walked to the other side
of the Rock, and there, away in the distance, towered
the great bulk of "queenly Slievenamon," the Moun-
tain of Fair Women, and as we stood there gazing at it,
John Minogue told us how it got its name.
It was in the days when Cormac son of Art was King
of Erin, and Finn son of Cumhal, Finn the Fair, he of
the High Deeds, — whose name I shall spell hereafter
as it is pronounced, Finn MacCool — had been declared
by birthright and by swordright Captain of that in-
vincible brotherhood of fighting-men, the Fianna.
Finn was past his youth, and had a comely son, Ossian
the sweet singer; but at times his spirit hung heavy
on him, for his wife was dead, and no man has peaceful
slumber who is without a fitting mate. So he looked
about for one to share his bed, but found it hard to
choose, for there were many fine women in Erin; and
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL 107
at last in his perplexity he sat himself down on the
summit of Slievenamon, and said that all who wished
might run a race from the bottom to the top, and she
who won should be his wife. So it was done, and the
race was won by Grainne, daughter of the great Cormac
himself. The feast was set for a fortnight later, in the
king's hall at Tara — and what happened there we shall
hear later on.
We might have been standing yet upon the Rock,
gazing out across that marvellous valley, if John
Minogue had not dragged us away to see the wonders
of the place. Not the least of them is the weather-
beaten stone cross, with the crucifixion on one side and
an effigy of St. Patrick on the other, which stands just
outside the castle entrance, on the rude pedestal where
the Kings of Munster were crowned in the old, old
days. Here it was, perhaps, that St. Patrick himself
stood when he stooped to pluck the trefoil, and that
King JSngus was baptised. Legend has it that, as he
was performing that ceremony, the Saint, without
knowing it, drove the spiked end of his crozier through
the King's foot. ^Engus said never a word, nor made
complaint, thinking it part of the rite; but when the
Saint went to take up his crozier and saw what he had
done, he blessed the King and promised that none of
that royal stock should die of wounds forever. Per-
haps the promise was not "forever," for, five centuries
later,. Brian Boru, the greatest of them all, was killed
in battle at Clontarf, as I have told.
But the greatest wonder of all at Cashel is the jewel
of a chapel built by Cormac and standing as firm to-
day as when its stones were laid, eight centuries ago.
io8 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
It nestles in between the choir and south transept of
the later cathedral, and its entrance is the most mag-
nificent doorway of its kind existing anywhere on this
earth.
It is round-headed, as in all Irish Romanesque, with
five deep mouldings rich in dog-tooth and lozenge orna-
mentation, and though it is battered and weather-worn,
it is still most beautiful and impressive.
Inside, the chapel is divided into nave and chancel,
both very small, but decorated with a richness and
massiveness almost oppressive — twisted columns, ar-
caded walls, dog-tooth mouldings, rounded arches,
traceried surfaces, sculptured capitals, and I know not
what beside. Facing the choir is a stone sarcophagus,
beautifully ornamented with characteristic Celtic ser-
pent work, as may be seen in the photograph. It is
called "King Cormac's Coffin." It was in the small
apartment over the nave and under the steep stone roof
that Cormac was struck down by an assassin, as he
knelt in prayer.
It was something of a relief to get out into the high,
roofless cathedral, where one feels at liberty to draw a
deep breath. The cathedral is rich with sculptures,
too; but I shall not attempt to describe them. I can
only hope that it may be your fortune to visit the place,
some day, and have John Minogue to take you round.
But, let me warn you, he does not waste himself on the
unsympathetic. While we stood admiring the sculp-
tures of St. Patrick and St. Brigid and eleven of the
apostles, in the north transept (the sculptor omitted St.
Matthew for some unknown reason; or perhaps our
guide told me why and I have forgotten) ; as we stood
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL 109
there gazing in delight at these inimitable figures, a
party of four or five entered the church, and stood star-
ing vacantly about.
"See here, Mr. Minogue," I said, after a time, "we
can amuse ourselves for a while, if you'd like to look
after those other people."
Minogue shot one glance at them.
"No," he said; "they're not worth it. Now come —
I must show you the round tower."
A beauty the tower is, with walls four feet thick,
built of great blocks of stone, and a little round-
headed doorway, twelve feet above the ground. It
stands eighty-five feet high, and is wonderfully pre-
served; but when we looked up it from the inside, we
saw that the old masons did not succeed in getting it
quite true.
It was an hour later — or perhaps two hours later —
that we emerged again from the iron gate, and found
the rabble of children still waiting. They closed in
on us at once, murmuring something in a queer half-
mumble, half-whisper, of which we could not under-
stand a word.
"What is it they're saying?" we asked.
"They're saying," explained Minogue, "that if your
honour will toss a penny amongst them, they will fight
for it; or, if you'd rather, they will put up a prayer for
you, so that you will get safe home again. They
don't consider that begging, you see, since they offer
some return for the money."
And then, as they hustled us more closely, he turned
and shouted something at them — some magic incanta-
no THE CHARM OF IRELAND
tion, I fancy, for they scurried away as though the devil
was after them. I regretted, afterwards, that I had
not asked him for the formula — but in the end, we
found one of our own, as you shall hear.
Our guide insisted that we go down with him to his
house and see his books, and write our names in his
album, and have a cup of tea. He lived in an ivy-
covered cottage, just under the Rock, and his old wife
came out to welcome us; and we sat and talked and
wrote our names and looked at his books — one had been
given him by Stephen Gwynne, and others by other
writers whose names I have forgotten ; but the treasure
of his library was a huge volume, carefully wrapped
against possible soiling, which, when unwrapped,
proved to be a copy of Arthur Champneys' "Irish Ec-
clesiastical Architecture," and with gleaming face our
host turned to the preface and showed us where Champ-
neys acknowledged his indebtedness for much valuable
assistance to John Minogue, of the Rock of Cashel.
We bade him good-bye, at last, and made our way
down through the quaint little town, which snuggles
against one side of the Rock — a town of narrow,
crooked streets, and thatched houses, and friendly
women leaning over their half-doors, and multitudi-
nous children; but the most vivid memory I have of it,
is of the pleasant tang of turf smoke in the air. And
presently we came out again upon the road leading
to the station.
From the top of the Rock we had seen, in the middle
of a field not far away, a ruin which seemed very ex-
tensive, and Minogue told us that it was Hore Abbey,
a Cistercian monastery built about 1272, but had added
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL ill
that it was scarcely worth visiting after Cashel. That
was perhaps true — few ruins can compare with Cashel
— but when we saw the grey bulk of the old abbey
looming above the wall at our left, we decided to get
to it, if we could.
It required some resolution, for the way thither lay
across a very wet and muddy pasture, with grass knee-
high in places, and Betty would probably have de-
clined to venture but for the assurance that there are
no snakes in Ireland. The nearer we got to the ruin,
the worse the going grew, but we finally scrambled in-
side over a broken wall, and sat down on a block of
fallen masonry to look about us.
The mist, which had been thickening for the last half
hour, had, almost imperceptibly, turned to rain, and
this was mizzling softly down, shrouding everything as
with a pearly veil, and adding a beauty and sense of
mystery to the place which it may have lacked at other
times. But it seemed to us singularly impressive, with
its narrow lancet windows, and plain, square pillars.
Such vaulting as remains, at the crossing and in the
chapels, is very simple, and the whole church was
evidently built with a dignity and severity of detail
which modern builders might well imitate. It seems
a shame that it is not kept in better order and a decent
approach built to it; but I suppose the Board of Works,
whose duty it is to care for Irish ruins, finds itself over-
burdened with the multiplicity of them.
We sat there absorbing the centuries-old atmosphere,
until a glance at my watch told me that we must hurry
if we would catch our train. We did hurry, though
with many a backward glance, for one is reluctant to
112 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
leave a beautiful place which one may never see again ;
but we caught the train, and the last glimpse we had
of Cashel was as of some gigantic magic palace, sus-
pended in air and shrouded in mist.
CHAPTER VIII
ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY
IT was getting on toward evening when we caught our
train on the main line at Goold's Cross. The storm
had swept southward, and the hills there were masked
with rain, but the Golden Vale had emerged from its
baptism more lush, more green, more dazzling than
ever. We left it behind, at last, plunged into a wood
of lofty and magnificent trees, and paused at Limerick
Junction, with its great echoing train-shed and wide
network of tracks and switches. Beyond the Junction,
one gets from the train a splendid view of the pictur-
esque Gal tees, the highest mountains in the south of
Ireland, fissured and gullied and folded into deep ra-
vines in the most romantic way.
The train had been comparatively empty thus far,
and we had rejoiced in a compartment to ourselves;
but as we drew into the station at Charleville, we were
astonished to see a perfect mob of people crowding the
platform, with more coming up every minute. The
instant the train stopped, the mob snatched open the
doors and swept into it like a tidal wave. When the
riot subsided a bit, we found that four men and two
girls were crowded in with us, and the corridor out-
side was jammed with people standing up. We asked
the cause of the excitement, and were told that there
had been a race-meeting at Charleville, which had at-
tracted a great crowd from all over the south-eastern
"3
114 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
part of Ireland, especially from Cork, thirty-five miles
away.
Our companions soon got to chaffing each other, and
it developed that all of them, even the two girls, had
been betting on the races, and I inferred that they had
all lost every cent they had. It was assumed, as a
matter of course, that nobody would go to a race-meet-
ing without putting something on the horses; it was
also assumed that every normal man and woman would
make almost any sacrifice to get to a meeting; and there
was a lively discussion as to possible ways and means
of attending another meeting which was to be held
somewhere in the neighbourhood the following week.
And finally, it was apparent that everybody present
had contemplated the world through the bottom of a
glass more than once that day. As I looked at them
and listened to them, I began to understand the cause
of at least a portion of Irish poverty.
It was a good-humoured crowd, in spite of its re-
verses, and when a girl with a tambourine piped up a
song, she was loudly encouraged to go on and even
managed to collect a few pennies, found unexpectedly
in odd pockets. Then one of the men in our compart-
ment told a story ; I have forgotten what it was about,
but it was received uproariously; and then everybody
talked at once as loud as possible, and the clatter was
deafening.
We were glad when we got to Cork.
Cork is superficially a sort of smaller Dublin. It
has one handsome thoroughfare, approached by a hand-
some bridge, and the rest of the town is composed for
ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY 115
the most part of dirty lanes between ugly houses. In
Dublin, the principal street and bridge are dedicated to
O'Connell; in Cork both bridge and street are named
after St. Patrick — that is about the only difference,
except that Cork lacks that atmosphere of charm and
culture which makes Dublin so attractive.
We took a stroll about the streets, that Saturday
night after dinner, and found them thronged with peo-
ple, as at Dublin; but here there was a large admix-
ture of English soldiers and sailors, come up from
Queenstown to celebrate. Many of them had girls
on their arms, and those who had not were evidently
hoping to have, and the impression one got was that
Cork suffers a good deal from the evils of a garrison
town. There is a tradition that the girls of Cork are
unusually lovely ; but I fear it is only a tradition. Or
perhaps the lovely ones stay at home on Saturday
night.
Sunday dawned clear and bright, and as soon as we
had breakfasted, we set out for the most famous spot
in the vicinity of Cork, and perhaps in all Ireland,
Blarney Castle. Undoubtedly the one Irish tradition
which is known everywhere is that of the blarney stone ;
"blarney" itself has passed into the language as a noun,
an adjective, and a verb; and the old tower of which
the stone is a part has been pictured so often that its
appearance is probably better known than that of any
other ruin in Europe. Blarney is about five miles from
Cork, and the easiest way of getting there is by the
light railway, which runs close beside a pretty stream,
in which, this bright morning, many fishermen were
trying their luck. And at last, high above the trees,
ii6 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
we saw the rugged keep which is all that is left of the
old castle. Almost at once the train stopped at the
station, which is just outside the entrance to the castle
grounds.
"The Groves of Blarney" are still charming, though
they have changed greatly since the day when Richard
Milliken wrote his famous song in praise of them.
There were grottoes and beds of flowers, and terraces
and rustic bowers there then, and statues of heathen
gods and nymphs so fair all standing naked in the
open air; but misfortune overtook the castle's owner
and
The muses shed a tear when the cruel auctioneer,
With his hammer in his hand, to sweet Blarney came.
So the statues vanished, together with the grottoes and
the terraces; but the sweet silent brook still ripples
through the grounds, and its banks are covered with
daisies and buttercups, and guarded by giant beeches.
Very lovely it is, so that one loiters to watch the danc-
ing water, even with Blarney Castle close at hand.
Approached thus, the massive donjon tower, set on
a cliff and looming a hundred and twenty feet into the
air, is most impressive. To the left is a lower and more
ornamental fragment of the old castle, which, in its
day, was the strongest in all Munster. Cormac Mc-
Carthy built it in the fifteenth century as a defence
against the English, and it was held by the Irish until
Cromwell's army besieged and captured it. Around
the top of the tower is a series of machicolations, or
openings between supporting corbels, through which
the besieged, in the old days, could drop stones and
ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY 117
pour molten lead and red-hot ashes and such-like things
down upon the assailants, and it is in the sill of one
of these openings that the famous Blarney stone is
fixed.
Legend has it that, once upon a time, in the spring
of the year when the waters were running high, Cor-
mac McCarthy was returning home through the black-
ness of the night, and when he put his horse at the
last ford, he thought for a moment he would be swept
away, so swift and deep was the current. But his
horse managed to keep its feet, and just as it was
scrambling out upon the farther bank, McCarthy heard
a scream from the darkness behind him, and then a
woman's voice crying for help. So he dashed back
into the stream, and after a fearful struggle, dragged
the woman to safety.
In the dim light, McCarthy could see only that she
was old and withered; but her eyes gleamed like a
cat's when she looked at him; and she called down
blessings upon him for his courage, and bade him,
when he got home, go out upon the battlement and kiss
a certain stone, whose location she described to him.
Thereupon she vanished, and so McCarthy knew it was
a witch he had rescued. Next morning, he went out
upon the battlement and found the stone and kissed
it, and thereafter was endowed with an eloquence so
sweet and persuasive that no man or woman could re-
sist it.
Such is the legend, and it may have had its origin
in the soft, delutherin speeches with which Dermot Mc-
Carthy put off the English, when they called upon him
to surrender his castle. Certain it is that it was fixed
ii8 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
finally and firmly in the popular mind by the stanza
which Father Prout added to Milliken's song:
There is a stone there, that whoever kisses
Oh! he never misses to grow eloquent.
'Tis he may clamber to a lady's chamber,
Or become a member of Parliament.
A clever spouter he'll sure turn out, or
An out and outer, to be let alone ;
Don't hope to hinder him, or to bewilder him,
Sure he's a pilgrim from the Blarney Stone.
And ever since then, troops of pilgrims have thronged
to Blarney to kiss the stone.
The top of the tower is reached by a narrow stair-
case which goes round and round in the thickness of
the wall, with narrow loopholes of windows here and
there looking out upon the beautiful country, and a
door at every level giving access to the great, square
interior. The floors have all fallen in and there is only
the blue sky for roof, but the graceful old fireplaces
still remain and some traces of ornamentation, and the
ancient walls, eighteen feet thick in places, and with
mortar as hard as the rock, are wonderful to see; and
finally you come out upon the battlemented parapet,
with miles and miles of Ireland at your feet.
But it wasn't to gaze at the view we had come to
Blarney Castle, it was to kiss the stone, and we went at
once to look for it. It was easy enough to find, for, on
top of the battlement above it, a row of tall iron spikes
has been set, and the stone itself is tied into the wall
by iron braces, for one of Cromwell's cannon-balls al-
most dislodged it, and it is worn and polished by the
ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY 119
application of thousands of lips. But to kiss it — well,
that is another story!
For the sill of which the stone forms a part is some
two feet lower than the level of the walk around the
parapet, and, to get to it, there is a horrid open space
some three feet wide to span, and below that open
space is a sheer drop of a hundred and twenty feet to
the ground below. When one looks down through it,
all that one can see are the waving tree-tops far, far
beneath. There is just one way to accomplish the feat,
and that is to lie down on your back, while somebody
grasps your ankles, and then permit yourself to be
shoved backward and downward across the abyss until
your mouth is underneath the sill.
Betty and I looked at the stone and at the yawning
chasm and then at each other; and then we went away
and sat down in a corner of the battlement to think it
over.
We had supposed that there would be some expe-
rienced guides on hand, anxious to earn sixpence by
assisting at the rite, as there had been at St. Kevin's
bed; but the tower was deserted, save for ourselves.
"Well," said Betty, at last, "there's one thing cer-
tain— I'm not going away from here until I've kissed
that stone. I'd be ashamed to go home without kiss-
ing it."
"So would I," I agreed; "but I'd prefer that to hang-
ing head downward over that abyss. Anyway, I won't
take the responsibility of holding you by the heels
while you do it. Perhaps some one will come up, after
awhile, to help."
So we looked at the scenery and talked of various
120 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
things; but all either of us thought about was kissing
the stone, and we touched on it incidentally now and
then, and then shied away from it, and pretended to
think of something else. Presently we heard voices
on the stair, and a man and two women emerged on
the parapet. We waited, but they didn't approach
the stone, they just looked around at the landscape;
and finally Betty inquired casually if they were going
to kiss the Blarney stone.
"Kiss the Blarney stone?" echoed the man, who was
an Englishman. "I should think not ! It's altogether
too risky!"
"But it seems a shame to go away without kissing it,"
Betty protested.
"Yes, it does," the other agreed; "but I was here
once before, and I fought that all out then. It's really
just a silly old legend, you know — nobody believes
it!"
Now to my mind silly old legends are far more
worthy of belief than most things, but it would be
folly to say so to an Englishman. So the conversation
dropped, and presently he and his companions went
away, and Betty and I sat down again and renewed
our conversation.
And then again we heard voices, and this time it was
two American women, well along in years. They
asked us if we knew which was the Blarney stone, and
we hastened to point it out to them, and explained the
process of kissing it. There were postcards illustrat-
ing the process on sale at the entrance, and we had
studied them attentively before we came in, so that we
knew the theory of it quite well.
ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY 121
"We were just sitting here trying to screw up cour-
age to do it," Betty added.
The newcomers looked at the stone, and then at the
abyss.
"Well, I'll never do it !" they exclaimed simultane-
ously, and they contented themselves with throwing a
kiss at it; and then they went away, and Betty and I,
both rather pale around the gills, continued to talk of
ships and shoes and sealing-wax. But I saw in her
eyes that somehow or other she was going to kiss the
stone.
And then a tall, thin man came up the stair, and he
asked us where the stone was, and we showed him, and
he looked at it, and then he glanced down into the
intervening gulf, and drew back with a shudder.
"Not for me," he said. "Not— for— me !"
"We've come all the way from America," said Betty,
"and we simply can't go away until we've kissed it."
"Well, I've come all the way from New Zealand,
madam," said the man, "but I wouldn't think for a
minute of risking my life like that."
"It used to be a good deal more dangerous than it
is now," I pointed out, as much for my own benefit as
for his. "They used to take people by the ankles and
hold them upside down outside the battlement. I sup-
pose they dropped somebody over, for those spikes were
put there along the top to stop it. If the people who
hold your legs are steady, there really isn't any danger
now."
The New Zealander took another peep over into
space.
"No sirree!" he said. "No sir— reel"
122 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
But he didn't go away. Instead, he sat down and
began to talk; and I fancied I could see in his eyes
some such uneasy purpose as I saw in Betty's.
And then a boy of twelve or fourteen came up. He
was evidently native to the neighbourhood, and I asked
him if he had ever kissed the stone.
"I have, sir, many a time," he said.
"Would you mind doing it again, so that we can see
just how it is done?"
He readily consented, and lay down on his back with
his head and shoulders over the gulf, and the New Zea-
lander took one leg and I took the other. Then the
boy reached his hands above his head and grasped the
iron bars which ran down inside the battlement to hold
the stone in place.
"Now, push me down," he said.
My heart was in my mouth as we pushed him down,
for it seemed an awful distance, though I knew we
couldn't drop him because he wasn't very heavy; and
then we heard a resounding smack.
"All right," he called. "Pull me up."
We pulled him up, and in an instant he was on his
feet.
"That's all there is to it," he said, and sauntered
off.
"Hm-m-m!" grunted the New Zealander, and sat
down again.
I gazed at the landscape for a minute or two, my
hands deep in my pockets.
When I turned around, Betty had her hat and coat
off, and was spreading her raincoat on the parapet op-
posite the stone.
ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY 123
"What are you going to do*?" I demanded sternly.
She sat down on the raincoat with her back to the
abyss.
"Come on, you two, and hold me," she commanded.
I suppose I might have refused, but I didn't. The
truth is, I wanted her to kiss the stone as badly as
she wanted to; so I knelt on one side of her and the
New Zealander knelt on the other, and we each grasped
an ankle. She groped for the iron bars, found them
after an instant, and drew herself toward them.
"Now, push me down," she said.
We did; and as soon as we heard the smack, we
hauled her up again, her face aglow with triumph. It
took her some minutes to get her hair fixed, for most of
the hair-pins had fallen out. When she looked up, she
saw that I had taken off my coat.
"What are you going to do*?" she demanded, in much
the same tone that I had used.
"I'm going to kiss that stone," I said. "Do you
suppose I'd go away now, without kissing it? Why,
I'd never hear the last of it! Get hold of my legs,"
and I sat down, keeping my eyes carefully averted from
the hundred-and-twenty-foot drop.
"Oh, but look here," she protested, "I don't know
whether I'm strong enough to hold you."
"Yes, you are," I said, making sure that there was
nothing in my trousers' pockets to fall out. "Now,
then!"
Just then four or five Irish girls came out upon the
tower, and Betty, stricken with the fear of losing me,
asked them if they wouldn't help, and they said they
would ; so, with one man and four women holding on to
124 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
my legs, I let myself over backwards. One doesn't
realise how much two feet is, till one tries to take it
backwards ; it seemed to me that I was hanging in mid-
air by my heels, so I kissed a stone hastily and started
to come up.
"That wasn't it," protested one of the girls who
had been watching me; "you've got to go farther
down."
So they pushed me farther down, and I saw the
smooth, worn stone right before my eyes.
"Is this it?' I asked.
"Yes," she said; so I kissed it, and in a moment was
right side up again; and I don't know when I have felt
prouder.
And then the New Zealander, his face grim and set,
began to take things out of his trousers' pockets.
"If you people will hold me," he said, "I'll do it
too."
So we held him, and he did it.
Then he and I offered to hold the Irish girls, but
they refused, giggling, and as there was nothing more
to do on top of that tower, we went down again, tread-
ing as if on air, more elated than I can say.
That sense of elation endures to this day, and I
would earnestly advise every one who visits Blarney
Castle to kiss the stone. I am not aware that I am
any more eloquent than I ever was, and Betty never
had any real need to kiss it, but to go to Blarney with-
out doing so is — well, is like going to Paris without
seeing the Louvre, or to the Louvre without seeing the
Winged Victory and the Venus of Milo. Really,
there isn't any danger, if you have two people of aver-
ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY 125
age strength holding you ; and there isn't even any very
great sense of danger, since your back is to the abyss
and you can't see it. My advice is to do it at once, as
soon as you get to the top of the tower, without stop-
ping to think about it too long. After that, with a
serene mind, you can look at the view, which is very,
very lovely, and explore the ruin, which is one of the
most interesting and noteworthy in Ireland.
We sat down on a bench just outside the castle en-
trance to rest after our exertions. There was a young
man and woman on the bench, and in about a minute
we were talking together. It turned out that they
were members of Alexander Marsh's company, then
touring Ireland in classical repertoire, and would open
in Cork in "The Three Musketeers" the following even-
ing. I had never heard of Alexander Marsh, but they
both pronounced his name with such awe and rever-
ence that I fancied he must be a second Irving, and I
said at once that we should have to see the play. We
went on to talk about that high-hearted story, which I
love; and I noticed a growing embarrassment in our
companions.
"See here," said the man at last, "you know the book
so well and think so much of it, that I'm afraid the
play will disappoint you. For one thing, we can't put
on Richelieu. The play makes rather a fool of him,
and the Catholics over here would get angry in a min-
ute if we made a fool of a Cardinal, even on the stage.
So we have to call him Roquefort, and leave out the
Cardinal altogether, which, of course, spoils the whole
point of the plot. It's a pity, too, because his robes
126 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
are gorgeous. Of course it doesn't make so much dif-
ference to people who haven't read the book — and
mighty few over here have; but I'm afraid you
wouldn't like it."
I was afraid so, too; so we promised we wouldn't
come.
And then they went on to tell us about themselves.
They were married, it seemed, and were full of enthu-
siasms and ideals, and they spoke with that beautiful
accent so common on the English stage; and he had
been to New York once, and for some reason had fared
pretty badly there; but he hoped to get to America
again. He didn't say why, but I inferred it was be-
cause in America he could earn a decent salary, which
was probably impossible in the Irish provinces.
We left them after a while, and wandered through
what is left of the groves of Blarney, and visited the
caves in the cliffs under the castle, at one time used for
dungeons, into which the McCarthys thrust such of
their enemies as they could capture. And then we ex-
plored the charming little river which runs along under
the cliff, and walked on to Blarney Lake, a pretty bit
of water, with more than its share of traditions: for,
at a certain season of the year, a herd of white cows
rises from its bosom and feeds along its banks, and it
is the home of a red trout which will not rise to the
fly, and it was into this lake that the last of the Mc-
Carthys cast his great chest of plate, when his castle
was declared forfeited to the English, and his spirit
keeps guard every night along the shore, and the secret
of its whereabouts will never be revealed until a Mc-
Carthy is again Lord of Blarney.
ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY 127
We walked back to the entrance, at last, and had a
most delicious tea on the veranda of a clean tea-shop
there, with gay little stone-chatters hopping about
our feet, picking up the crumbs; and then we loitered
about the quaint little village, and visited the church,
set in the midst of a pretty park, and wandered along a
road under lofty trees, and were wholly, completely,
riotously happy.
We had kissed the Blarney Stone !
CHAPTER IX
CUSHLA MA CHREE
IT was very evident, as we went back to Cork, that
the people who live there do not regard it as an earthly
paradise, for it seemed as though the whole popula-
tion of the place was out in the fields. We had seen
the same thing at Dublin the Sunday before — every
open space near the city crowded with men and women
and children; from which I infer that the Irish have
sense enough — or perhaps it is an instinct — to get out
of their slums and into the fresh, clean air whenever
they have a chance. And the way they lie about in the
moist grass on the damp ground is another proof of the
amenity of the Irish climate.
When we got back to the town, we • decided we
could spend an hour very pleasantly driving about and
seeing the place ; and, since the day was fine, we voted
for an outside car. Be it known, there are two varie-
ties of car in Cork : one the common or garden variety,
the outside car, and the other a sort of anti-type called
an inside car. The difference is that, in an outside
car you sit on the inside, that is in the middle with
your feet hanging over the wheel, while in an inside
car you sit on the outside, that is over the wheel with
your feet hanging down in the middle. Also the in-
side car has a top over it and side-curtains which can
be let down in wet weather. I hope this is clear, for
I do not know how to make it clearer without a dia-
128
CUSHLA MA CHREE 129
gram. Both inside and outside cars are rather more
ramshackle in Cork than anywhere else in Ireland.
The legal rate for a car in Cork is one shilling six-
pence per hour, and I decided in advance that, come
what might, come what may, I would not pay more
than twice the legal rate for the use of one. So when
we got off the train at the Cork terminus, I passed
under review the cars standing in the street in front of
it, while each individual jarvey, seeing I was inter-
ested, stood up in his seat and bellowed at the top of
his voice. Finally I picked out the least disreputable
one and looked the j arvey in the eye.
"We want to drive around for an hour or two," I
said. "How much will you charge an hour*?"
"Jump right up, sir," he cried, and wheeled his car
in front of me with a flourish.
"You'll have to answer my question first."
" 'Twill be only five shillings an hour, sir."
I passed on to the next driver, who had been listen-
ing to this colloquy with absorbed interest. His price
was four shillings. So I passed on to the third. His
price was three shillings. I suppose if I had passed
once again, the price would have been two shillings;
but three shillings was within my limit, so we mounted
into our places and were off.
I fear, however, that that phrase, "we were off,"
gives a wrong idea of our exit. We did not whirl up
the street, with our horse curvetting proudly and the
jarvey clinging to the reins. No, nothing like that.
The horse trotted — I convinced myself of this, from
time to time, by looking at him — but he was one of
those up-and-down trotters, that come down in almost
I3o THE CHARM OF IRELAND
exactly the same place from which they go up. The
jarvey encouraged him from time to time by touching
him gently with the whip, but the horse never varied
his gait, except that, whenever he came to a grade, he
walked. Sometimes we would catch up with a pedes-
trian sauntering in the same direction, and then it was
quite exciting to see how we worked our way past him,
inch by inch. This mode of progression had one ad-
vantage: it was not necessary to stop anywhere to ex-
amine architectural details or absorb local atmosphere.
We had plenty of time to do that as we passed. In
fact, in some of the slum streets, we absorbed rather
more of the atmosphere than we cared for.
Cork is an ancient place, built for the most part on
an island in the River Lee. St. Fin Barre started it
in the seventh century by founding a monastery on the
island; the Danes sailed up the river, some centuries
later, and captured it; and then the Anglo-Normans
took it from the Danes and managed to keep it by
ceaseless vigilance. The Irish peril was so imminent,
that the English had to bar the gates not only at night,
but whenever they went to church or to their meals,
and no stranger was suffered inside the walls until he
had checked his sword and dagger and other lethal
weapons with the gate-keeper.
But the Irish have always had a way with them;
and what they couldn't accomplish by force of arms,
they did by blarney; — or maybe it was the girls who
did it! At any rate, at the end of a few generations
Cork was about the Irishest town in Ireland, and levied
its own taxes and made its own laws and even set up
its own mint, and when the English Parliament at-
CUSHLA MA CHREE 131
tempted to interfere, invited it to mind its own busi-
ness. The climax came when that picturesque im-
postor, Perkin Warbeck, landed in the town, was hailed
as a son of the Duke of Clarence and the rightful King
of England by the mayor, and provided with new
clothes and a purse of gold by the citizens, together
with a force for the invasion of England. The result
of which was that the mayor lost his head and the city
its charter.
Cork is a tragic word in Irish ears not because of
this ancient history, but because of the dreadful scenes
enacted here in the wake of the great famine of 1847.
It was here that thousands and thousands of famished,
hopeless, half -crazed men and women said good-bye to
Ireland forever and embarked for the New World.
Hundreds more, unable to win farther, lay down in the
streets and died, and every road leading into the town
was hedged with unburied bodies. That ghastly tor-
rent of emigration has kept up ever since, though it
reached its flood some twenty years ago, and is by no
means so ghastly as it was. Yet every train that
comes into the town bears its quota of rough-clad peo-
ple, mere boys and girls most of them, with wet eyes
and set faces, and behind it, all through the west and
south, it leaves a wake of sobs and wails and bitter
weeping.
Cork possesses nothing of antiquarian interest. The
old churches have all been swept away. The oldest
one still standing dates only from 1722, and is worth
a visit not because of itself, but because of some verses
written about its bells by a poet who lies buried in its
churchyard. St. Anne Shandon, with its tall, parti-
132 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
coloured tower surmounted by its fish-weathervane,
stands on a hill to the north of the Lee. The tower
contains a peal of eight bells, and it was their music
which furnished inspiration for Father Prout's plea-
sant lines:
With deep affection and recollection
I often think of the Shandon bells,
Whose sounds so wild would, in the days of childhood,
Fling round my cradle their magic spells.
On this I ponder where'er I wander,
And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee, —
With thy bells of Shandon, that sound so grand on
The pleasant waters of the River Lee.
Of course we wanted to see St. Anne Shandon and
to hear the bells, so, with some difficulty, we persuaded
our driver to put his horse at the ascent. The streets
rising up that hill are all slums, with little lanes more
slummy still ambling away in various directions; and
all of them were full of people, that afternoon, who
hailed our advent as an unexpected addition to the
pleasures and excitements of the day, and followed
along, inspecting us curiously, and commenting frankly
upon the details of our attire. The impression we
made was, I think, on the whole, favourable, but there
is a certain novelty in hearing yourself discussed as
impersonally as if you were a statue, and after the
first embarrassment, we rather enjoyed it. At last we
reached the church, and stopped there in the shadow
of the tower until the chimes rang. They are very
sweet and melodious, and fully deserve Father Prout's
rhapsody.
CUSHLA MA CHREE 133
The wife of the inspector we met at Glendalough
had told Betty of a convent at Cork where girls were
taught lace-making, and had given her the names of
two nuns, either of whom, she was sure, would be glad
to show us the school. It is in the convents that most
of the lace-making in Ireland is taught nowadays, and
of course we wanted to see one of the schools, so Mon-
day morning we sallied forth in search of this one.
We found it without difficulty — a great barrack of a
building opening upon a court. Both nuns were there,
and I do not remember ever having received anywhere
a warmer welcome. Certainly we might see the lace-
makers, and Sister Catherine took us in charge at once,
explaining on the way that there were not as many girls
at work as usual that morning, because one of their
number had been married the day before, and the whole
crowd had stayed up very late celebrating the great
event. And then she led us into a room where about
twenty girls were bending over their work.
They all arose as we entered, and then I sat down
and watched them, while Sister Catherine took Betty
about from one girl to the next, and explained the kind
of lace each was making. Some of it was Carrick-
macross, of which, it seems, there are two varieties,
applique and guipure; and some of it was needle-point,
that aristocrat of laces of which one sees so much in
Belgium ; and some of it was Limerick, and there were
other kinds whose names I have forgotten, but all of
it was beautifully done. The designing is the work of
Sister Catherine, and, while I am very far from being
a connoisseur, some of the pieces she afterwards showed
us were very lovely indeed. Then we were asked if
134 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
we wouldn't like to hear the girls sing, and of course
we said we would, so one of them, at a nod from the
Sister, got to her feet and very gravely and earnestly
sang John Philpot Curran's tender verses, "Cushla ma
Chree," which is Irish for "Darling of My Heart" :
Dear Erin, how sweetly thy green bosom rises !
An emerald set in the ring of the sea !
Each blade of thy meadows my faithful heart prizes,
Thou queen of the west ! the world's cushla ma chree !
Thy gates open wide to the poor and the stranger —
There smiles hospitality hearty and free;
Thy friendship is seen in the moment of danger,
And the wanderer is welcomed with cushla ma chree.
Thy sons they are brave; but, the battle once over,
In brotherly peace with their foes they agree;
And the roseate cheeks of thy daughters discover
The soul-speaking blush that says cushla ma chree.
Then flourish forever, my dear native Erin,
While sadly I wander an exile from thee;
And, firm as thy mountains, no injury fearing,
May heaven defend its own cushla ma chree !
It is a very characteristic Irish poem of the senti-
mental sort, and it has been set to a soft and plaintive
air also characteristically Irish, and it took on a beauty
which the lines by themselves do not possess as we
heard it sung that morning, with the girls, bending to
their work, joining in the chorus. Then we were
shown over the convent, and finally taken to the
parlour, where Sister Bonaventura joined us, and where
we had a very pleasant talk.
CUSHLA MA CHREE 135
The convent's chief treasure is the great parchment
volume in which its history is noted from day to day.
How far back it goes I have forgotten, but I think to
the very founding of the institution, and it is illumi-
nated throughout very beautifully, while the lettering
is superb. The great events in the life of every nun
are recorded here, and those events are three: when
she became a novice, when she took the final vows,
and when she died. Those are the only events that
concern the community, except that sometimes when
death followed a painful and lingering illness, it was
noted how cheerfully the pain was borne. Occasion-
ally some delicate woman found the hard life more
than she could endure, and then she was permitted to
put aside her robes and go back into the world.
I spent half an hour looking through the book, and
Sister Bonaventura showed me the record of her own
entry into the convent. It was in the year in which
I was born, and I shivered a little at the thought that,
during all the long time I had been growing to boy-
hood and manhood and middle age, she had been im-
mured here in this convent at Cork; during all the
years that I had been reading and writing and talking
with men and women and knocking about the world,
she had been doing over and over again her little round
of daily duties ; but when I looked at her bright brave
face and quiet eyes, and listened to her calm sweet
voice, I wondered if, after all, she hadn't got farther
than I!
It would be a mistake, however, to think of these
nuns — or of any I ever met — as pious, strait-laced,
lachrymose creatures. They were quite the reverse of
136 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
that; they were fairly bubbling over with good humour
and with big-hearted blarney. Some one had given
them a victrola, and it was evidently the supreme de-
light of their lives.
"We can't go to the opera," they said; "but the
opera comes to us. We have a concert nearly every
evening, and it's sorry we are when the bell rings and
we have to go to bed."
They showed us their austere little chapel, after that,
and introduced us to the Mother Superior, a very deli-
cate, placid, transparent woman of more than eighty,
who reminded me of the sister of Bishop Myriel; and
I am sure they were sorry when we had to say good-
bye.
We went down to Monkstown by rail, that after-
noon, to see Queenstown harbour. The line runs close
to the river, passing Passage, whose charms have been
celebrated by Father Prout, and finally reaching
Monkstown, on the heights above which stands the fa-
mous, four-square castle which cost its owner only four-
pence. The story goes that, in 1636, John Archdeckan
marched away to the war in Flanders, and his wife
determined to surprise him, on his return, by presenting
him with a stately castle. So she gathered a great
number of builders together and gave them the job on
the condition that they would buy all their food and
drink and clothing from her. When the castle was
done, she balanced her accounts and found that she
had expended fourpence more than she had received.
At Monkstown, we took a boat and ferried across
the harbour, past many grey men-of-war which lay at
CUSHLA MA CHREE 137
anchor there. Very beautiful it is, with the high,
green-clad hills pressing about it on all sides, and
shrouding the entrance so completely that one might
fancy oneself in a landlocked lake. Queenstown is
built on the side of one of these hills, and is dominated
by the great, white cathedral, which has been building
for fifty years, and is not yet finished.
It is a curious coincidence that the two ports of Ire-
land by which most visitors enter and leave it should
be named after two people whom the Irish have little
reason to love. In 1821, when George IV embarked
at the port of Dunleary, just below Dublin, he "gra-
ciously gave permission" that its name might be
changed to Kingstown in honour of the event. In
1849, Queen Victoria paid one of her very few visits
to Ireland, and sailed into the Cove of Cork. As she
herself wrote, "To give the people the satisfaction of
calling the place Queenstown, in honour of its being
the first spot on which I set foot on Irish ground, I
stepped on shore amidst the roar of cannon and the
enthusiastic shouts of the people." Forty years later,
when the Irish had come to realise that the Queen had
no interest in them, they had the dignity and good
sense to put aside the servility to which they have some-
times been too prone, and to refuse to take part in the
celebration of her Jubilee. But Queenstown is still
Queenstown.
The town consists of a single long street of public
houses and emigrant hotels and steamship offices fac-
ing the water, and some steep lanes running back up
over the hill, and the day we were there, it was crowded
with emigrants, Swedes and Norwegians mostly, who
138 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
had been brought ashore from the stranded Haverford,
and who spent their time wandering aimlessly up and
down, trying to find out what was going to happen to
them. There were many sailors and marines knocking
about the grog-shops, as well as the crowd of navvies
and longshoremen always to be found lounging about
a water-front. This water-front is one great landing-
stage, and it is here that perhaps a million Irish men
and women have stepped forever off of Irish soil.
We climbed up the hill presently to the cathedral,
which owes not a little of its impressiveness to its
superb site. Its exterior is handsome and imposing —
good Gothic, though perhaps a trifle too florid for the
purest taste; but the effect of the interior is ruined by
the absurd columns of the nave, made of dark marble,
and so slender that the heavy structure of white stone
above them seems to be hanging in the air.
We had hoped to go by rail to Youghal and take
steamer up the Blackwater to Cappoquin, and from
there drive over to the Trappist monastery at Mt.
Melleray; but we found that the steamer did not start
until the fifteenth of June, so most regretfully that
excursion had to be abandoned. Those who have
made it tell me it is a very beautiful one. Cloyne is
also perhaps worth visiting; but we were tired of Cork
and hungering for Killarney, and so decided to turn
our faces westward next day.
CHAPTER X
THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE
THERE are two ways of getting from Cork to Killar-
ney, one by the so-called "Prince of Wales Route," be-
cause the late King Edward went that way in 1858,
and the other by way of Macroom. Both routes con-
verge at Glengarriff and are identical beyond that, and
as the best scenery along the route is between Glen-
garriff and Killarney, I don't think it really matters
much which route is chosen. The "Prince of Wales
Route" is by rail to Bantry, and then either by boat
or coach to Glengarriff, which is only a few miles
away. The other route is to Macroom by rail, and
from there there is a very fine ride by coach of nearly
forty miles to Glengarriff. We chose the Macroom
route because of the longer coach ride and because it
touches Gougane Barra, the famous retreat of St. Fin
Barre. I think, on the whole, it is the more pictur-
esque of the two routes ; but either is vastly preferable
to the all-rail route. Indeed, the visitor to Killarney
who misses the run from Glengarriff, misses some of
the most beautiful and impressive scenery in all Ire-
land.
It was shortly after nine o'clock that our train pulled
out of the station at Cork, and at first the line ran be-
tween small, well-tilled fields, each with its cosy cot-
tage. The whole country-side had an air of content
139
i4o THE CHARM OF IRELAND
and passable well-being; every wall was gay with the
yellow gorse, and in the fields the green of potato and
turnip was just beginning to show above the dark
earth of the ridges in which they were planted. These
ridged fields, which we were to see so often afterwards
in the west of Ireland, tell of a ground so soaked with
moisture that it must be carefully and thoroughly
drained before anything will grow in it. The ridges,
which run with the slope of the land, are usually about
eighteen inches wide, and are separated by ditches a
foot wide and a foot deep to carry off the excess mois-
ture. There is always a trickle of water at the bottom
of these ditches, and the task of keeping them open and
free from weeds is a never-ending one.
Presently on a high rock away to the left, appeared
the tower which is all that is left of the old stronghold
of the Barretts, and farther on are the green-clad ruins
of Kilcrea Abbey, and near by is another great keep
marking an old castle of the McCarthys. And then
the train skirts the wild bog of Kilcrea, and then there
are more ruins, and still more; and at last the train
stops at its terminus, Macroom.
The motor-coach was awaiting us, and we were re-
lieved to find that, so far from being crowded, there
was only one other couple, Americans like ourselves, to
make the trip. The season had opened only the day
before, and, after we got started, the driver confided
to us that this was the first time he had ever been over
the road. Even if he hadn't told us, we should soon
have had every reason to suspect it.
The road follows the valley of the Lee, which is not
here the single clear and shining stream which we saw
THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE 141
above Cork, but is broken into a score of channels be-
tween islands covered with low-growing brush — a sort
of morass, of a strange and weird appearance. Here
and there an ivied ruin towers above the trees, for this
was the country of the O'Learys and these are the
strongholds they built to defend it against the aggres-
sions of their neighbours ; and then we rattled down the
street of a little village, and the driver brought the
coach to a stop before the door of an inn, told us that
this was Inchigeelagh and that there would be ten
minutes for refreshments, and then disappeared in the
direction of the bar.
I suppose he got his refreshments for nothing, as a
reward for stopping there. At least I can think of no
other reason for stopping, since Inchigeelagh is only half
an hour from Macroom, unless it was to give the nerves
of the passengers a chance to quiet down a little. For
we had already begun to realise that our driver was a
speed-maniac. He had struck a hair-raising gait from
the start, had sent the lumbering bus down grades and
around turns at a rate that was decidedly disconcerting,
and while there had been no especial danger except to
the people we met — for the road was bordered by high
earthen walls — the rattle and jar of the solid tires
had been enough to make the teeth chatter.
So we were glad when the racket stopped, and we
could get down and stroll about a little; and we soon
found that Inchigeelagh is a very quaint village. We
walked down to the bridge over the Lee, and looked
at Lough Allua stretching away to the west; and then
we stopped at a tumbledown cottage to talk to an old
woman who was leaning over her half-door; and she
142 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
invited us in and asked us to sit down. It was my
first glimpse of the interior of an Irish cottage of the
poorer class, and it opened my eyes to the cruel lot of
the people — and there are many, many thousands of
them — who are compelled to live in such surroundings.
There was just one room, perhaps eight feet by fif-
teen, lighted by two little windows about eighteen
inches square, one on either side the door. The door-
way was just high enough to enter without stooping,
and ran from the ground right up to the eaves. The
floor was of clay, and the walls inside had been daubed
with mud to fill up the cracks and then whitewashed,
but the damp had flaked the whitewash off in great lep-
rous-looking blotches. The ceiling was formed by
some rough boards laid on top of the joists overhead,
so low that one feared to stand upright, and I suppose
the dark space under the thatch was used as a sleeping-
room, for there was a ladder leading to it, and I saw
nothing in the room below which looked like a bed.
There may have been a bed there, however, which, be-
ing new to rural Ireland, I did not recognise as such.
At one end of the room was an open fireplace in
which a few blocks of turf smoked and flared, with
that pungent odour which we had already come to like,
but which, at such close quarters, was a little over-
powering. A black and battered pot hung on a crane
above the fire, and some sort of mess was bubbling in
it — potatoes I suppose. There was a rude table, and
two or three chairs, and all sorts of rags and debris
hung against the walls and piled in the corners, and a
few dishes in a rough home-made dresser, and an old
brush-broom, and some boxes and a lot of other in-
THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE 143
describable trash. Three or four bedraggled chickens
were wandering in and out, and I glanced around for
the pig. But there was no pig — this family was far
too poor to own one.
It seemed impossible that a human being could live
for any length of time in a place so bare of comfort,
and I looked at the old woman, who had sat down
across from us, and wondered how she managed to
survive. I suspect she was not half so old as her
wrinkled face and sunken eyes and shrivelled hands
indicated. She lived there with her husband, she said,
and had for many years. He was a labourer, and, in
good times, could earn ten shillings a week; but most
of the time it was impossible to find any work at all.
She had no relatives in America to turn to, and neither
she nor her husband was old enough to get a pension,
so that it was a hard struggle to keep out of the work-
house. But they had kept out thus far, glory be to
God, though the struggle was growing harder every
year, for they were getting older and their rheumatism
was getting worse, and neither of them could work as
they once could.
All this was said quite simply, in a manner not com-
plaining, but resigned, as if accepting the inevitable.
Her philosophy of life seemed to be that, since Fate
had chosen to set herself and her husband in the midst
of circumstances so hard, there was nothing to do but
struggle on as long as possible, with the certainty of
coming to the workhouse in the end. No doubt they
would be far more comfortable in the workhouse than
they had ever been outside of it, and yet they had that
horror of it which is common to all Irish men and
144 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
women. The horror, I think, is not so much at the
abstract idea of receiving charity as at the public stigma
which the workhouse gives. The Irish have been eager
enough to draw their old age pensions, and many of
them, who shrink from the workhouse as from a foul
disgrace, do not hesitate to beg a few pennies from the
passing stranger.
The old woman at Inchigeelagh, however, did not
beg, nor intimate in any way that she desired or ex-
pected money, but she did not refuse the coin I slipped
into her hand, after I had taken the picture of her and
of her cottage, which you will find opposite this page.
Perhaps she would have liked to do so, but the little
coin represented a measure of potatoes or of turnips,
and so a little less hunger, a little more strength. How
many of us, I wonder, would be too proud to beg if
we could find no work to do, and our backs were bare
and our stomachs empty1?
The tooting of the horn warned us that our bus was
ready to go on again, and we were soon skirting the
shore of Lough Allua, with picturesque mountains
closing in ahead. And then our driver crossed the
bridge over the Lee, and made a wrong turning, and
didn't know it until somebody shouted at him and set
him right; and this small misadventure seemed com-
pletely to wreck his self-control, so that, when he got
back to the main road, he rushed along in a manner
more terrifying than ever. The fearful racket heralded
our approach, else there must have been more than
one bad accident; and I can yet see wild-eyed men
leaping from their seats and springing frantically to
their horses' heads, while the white-faced women seated
A COTTAGE AT INCHIGEELAGH
THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE
THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE 145
in the carts peered out at us under their shawls as we
brushed past, and no doubt sent a malediction after
us. Geese, chickens and pigs scurried wildly in every
direction, and that we did not leave the road strewn
with their dead bodies was little less than a miracle.
The road ran between high hedges, so that we could
see only a little way ahead, and we got to watching the
curves with a sort of fascination, for it seemed certain
that we must run into something at the next one.
We had been mounting gradually all this time, often
up gradients so steep that they kept the driver busy
with his gears, and the view had gradually widened
and grown in impressiveness. Then we turned off a
narrow road at the right, and I thought for a moment
our driver had gone wrong again.
"We're going to Gougane Barra," he explained, see-
ing my look, for I sat on the seat beside him, and in a
few minutes we were skirting a narrow lough, hemmed
in, on the north, by a range of precipitous mountains,
with gullied sides patched with grey granite and dark
heather, as bare and desolate as a mountain could be.
There is an inn by the lake shore, and the bus
stopped in front of it. The driver showed us with a
gesture the little island containing the shrine of St.
Fin Barre, and then hastened away into the inn. We
four started for the island, and presently we heard
heavy steps behind us, and an animated scarecrow
armed, with a big stick came running up and shouted
something in an incomprehensible tongue, and waved
the stick above his head, and proceeded to lead the way.
He was evidently the guide, so we followed him along
the border of the lake, and across the narrow strip of
146 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
land which now connects the island with the shore, and
all the time our guide was talking in the most earnest
way, but not a word could any of us understand. It
sounded remotely like English, and he evidently under-
stood English, for when we asked him to repeat some
particularly emphatic bit, he would do so with added
emphasis, but quite in vain. I shall never forget how
earnestly he would look in our faces, raising his voice
as though we were deaf, and pointing with his stick,
and gesturing with his other hand, in the effort to make
us understand.
We persuaded him to go and sit down, after awhile,
and then we had a chance really to look about us.
There is something indescribably savage and threaten-
ing about that dark sheet of water, shadowed by
gloomy cliffs, bare of vegetation, and torn into deep
gullies by the cataracts which leap down them.
Through the hills to the east, the water from the lake
has carved itself a narrow outlet, and the stream which
. rushes away through this gorge is the beginning of the
River Lee. No place so grand and desolate would be
without its legend, and this is Gougane Barra's :
When the blessed Saint Patrick gathered together
all the snakes in Ireland and drove them over the
mountains and into the western sea, there was one
hideous monster which he overlooked, so well had it
concealed itself in this mountain-circled tarn. It was
a winged dragon, and it kept very quiet until the Saint
was dead, for fear of what might happen; but, once
Patrick was gathered to his fathers, the dragon fancied
it might do as it pleased. So it issued forth, all the
more savage for its years of retirement, and started to
THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE 147
lay waste the country. The frightened people ap-
pealed to their saints to help them, and among those
who put up prayers was a holy man named Fineen
Barre, who had a hermitage on an island in the lake,
and so knew the dragon well. And the saints in heaven
looked down and saw the distress of the poor people
and pitied them, and they told Fineen Barre that they
would give him power to slay the dragon on one condi-
tion, and that condition was that he should build a
church on the spot where the waters of the lake met
the tide of the sea.
Fineen accepted the condition gladly, and went out
and met the monster and slew it and threw its body
into the lake, and its black blood darkens the water to
this day. And when that was done, he set off down the
river, and at the spot where its waters met the tide, he
built his church, and the city of Cork grew up about
it. And then in place of the church, he built a great
cathedral, and when he died his body was placed in a
silver coffin and buried before its high altar. Then
the city was plundered by the Danes, who dug up the
coffin and carried it away, and what became of the
Saint's bones no one knows.
But the little island where he first lived has been a
holy place from that day to this, and on the anniver-
sary of his death, which comes in September, crowds
of pilgrims journey here to say their prayers before
the thirteen stations set apart by tradition, and to bless
themselves with water from the Saint's well.
The well is just at the entrance to the island, and its
water is supposed to possess miraculous power. Our
voluble but ununderstandable guide invited us by ur-
148 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
gent gestures to test its efficacy, but the water looked
scummy and dirty, and we declined. A few steps
farther on is a small, stone-roofed chapel, built in the
likeness of Cormac's chapel on the Rock of Cashel, and
in it services are held during, the days of pilgrimage to
the shrine. There are also some remains of an old
chapel, supposed to have been Saint Fin Barre's own;
but by far the most interesting thing on the island is
the stone enclosure within which the pilgrims say their
prayers.
The enclosure, which is surrounded by a heavy wall
of stones laid loosely on each other, after the ancient
Irish fashion, is about thirty feet square, and its level
is some feet below that of the ground outside, so that
one goes down into it by a short flight of steps. In
the centre of the enclosure a plain wooden cross stands
on a platform of five steps. On the flagstone at its
foot is an inscription telling in detail how the "rounds"
are to be performed on the vigil and forenoon of St.
Fin Barre's feast-day. In the enclosing wall, which
is fourteen feet thick in places, under heavy arches,
are eight cells, which may be used as places of retreat
by those undergoing penance. The Stations of the
Cross are set in the upper portion of the wall, but are
ugly modern plaster-casts. I took a picture of the
place, which will be found opposite page 144, and
which gives a fairly good idea of it.
In the middle of a scrubby grove, a little way from
the enclosure, is a wishing-stone, which had evidently
been much used, I hope to good purpose, for the stone
itself was covered with trinkets and the bushes round
about were hung thickly with rags and hairpins and
THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE 149
rosaries and other tokens. I picked up somewhere,
perhaps from the jargon of the guide, that this wishing-
stone is the altar of Fin Barre's old chapel, but I
haven't been able to verify this, and it may not be so;
but the game is to put up a prayer to the Saint, and
make your wish, and leave some token to show you
are in earnest, and the wish will surely come true. Of
course we made a wish and added some half-pennies to
the collection on the altar. In turning over the
trinkets already deposited there, we were amused to
find two bright Lincoln cents.
On the shore just opposite the island is a little ceme-
tery held in great repute because of the holy men who
are buried there. For the island has been the home of
a succession of hermits from the time St. Fin Barre
left it to build his church at Cork, and there are many
legends of their saintly lives and wonderful deeds.
When they died, they were buried in the cemetery,
where there is also a cross to the memory of Jeremiah
Callanan, a poet native to the neighbourhood, who cele-
brated the shrine in some pretty verses beginning :
There is a green island in lone Gougane Barra,
Where Allua of songs rushes forth as an arrow;
In deep-valleyed Desmond — a thousand wild fountains
Come down to that lake, from their home in the mountains.
But the wild honking of the horn told us it was time
to go ; our guide realised this, too, and was back at our
heels more voluble and inarticulate than ever; not too
inarticulate, however, to sell a knobby shillelagh to our
companions and to accept with thanks the pennies I
dropped into his hand. He tried to stay, hat in hand,
,50 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
until we departed, but the strain was too much for
him, and after a moment he made off for the bar of the
inn.
Our chauffeur was evidently vexed that we had lin-
gered so long at the shrine of the Saint, for he hurtled
us down the rough by-road at a great rate, whirled into
the smoother highway on two wheels, and then opened
his throttle wide and pushed up his spark and let her
rip. The road mounted steadily, with the view to
the south opening more and more, and a rugged range
of hills ahead coming closer and closer, until they lay
flung right across the road, and then we swept around
a sharp turn and entered the Pass of Keimaneigh.
The guide-books assert that no pass in Europe ex-
ceeds it in grandeur, but this is a gross exaggeration —
it is not nearly so fine, for instance, as the Pass of Llan-
beris ; and yet it is wild and savage and very beautiful
— a deep gorge cut right through the mountains by a
glacier, which has left the marks of its passage on the
rocks on either side. There is just room between the
craggy precipices for a narrow road and the rugged
channel of the rushing stream which drains the moun-
tains. The pass is most picturesque near its eastern
end, for there the cliffs are steepest, and the overhang-
ing crags assume their most fantastic shapes. In
every nook and cranny of the rocks ferns and heather
and wild-flowers have found a foothold, the feathery
plumes of London-pride being especially noticeable.
Here in Ireland it is called St. Patrick's Cabbage, and
no doubt there is a legend connecting the Saint with it,
but I have never happened to run across it.
As we plunged deeper into the pass, the walls on
THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE 151
either side closed in more and more, great boulders dis-
lodged from the heights above crowded the road so
closely that more than once it was forced to turn aside
to avoid them; the greenery of fern and colour of
flower gave place to the sober hue of the heather and
the dark green of the bog-myrtle; and then we were
suddenly conscious that the stream by the roadside,
which had been flowing back toward Cork, was flowing
forward toward Bantry Bay, and we knew that we
had reached the summit of the watershed dividing east
from west. And then the hills fell back, and there,
far below us, stretched a great rugged valley, with a
tiny river wandering through, and white threads of
roads curving here and there, and Lilliputian houses
scattered among the fields.
The car paused for an instant on the edge of this
abyss and then plunged into it. At least, that was the
sensation it gave its passengers. I do not know that I
have ever travelled a steeper road, or one which wound
more threateningly near the unguarded edges of preci-
pices— certainly not in a heavy motor-bus hurtling
along at thirty miles an hour. Perhaps the brakes
were not holding, or perhaps the driver had had a
drink too much; at any rate, we bounced from rock to
rock and spun around sharp turns, only a foot or two
from the edge of the road, which there was absolutely
nothing to guard and which dropped sheer for hundreds
of feet. But at last the more hair-raising of these
turns were left behind, the road straightened out along
the side of the hill, and then, far ahead, we saw open-
ing out below us the blue waters and craggy shores of
Bantry Bay.
152 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Down and down we dropped, with new vistas open-
ing every minute, until we were running close beside
the border of the bay, and for ten miles we followed
its convolutions. Then we swung away between high
hedges, and Betty nearly fell out of the bus — for the
hedges were of fuchsias, ten feet high and heavy with
scarlet flowers !
That was the crowning delight of that wonderful
drive. We ran between high rows of fuchsias for per-
haps half a mile; then we turned through a gate into
beautiful grounds; and a moment later we were climb-
ing out in front of the hotel at Glengarriff — half an
hour ahead of schedule time !
CHAPTER XI
A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND
You may well believe that, with such variegated love-
liness all about us, we did not linger in the hotel a mo-
ment longer than was necessary, but made a hasty tea
and sallied forth to explore the neighbourhood. First
of all, Betty must pick some fuchsias, so we went back
to the road, and climbed over a wall into a field sur-
rounded by high hedges of the gorgeous flower. It was
a new experience for Betty to reach up overhead and
break off great branches which were simply masses of
scarlet bells, until she had her arms full, and I sus-
pect she went a little wobbly over it; but she was to
have the same experience many times thereafter, for the
fuchsia grows in great profusion throughout southern
and western Ireland.
I saw but one variety, however, the flower of which
has a dark blue trumpet and scarlet bell, but this is
perhaps the most showy of all, and nothing could be
more gorgeous than a hedge in full bloom. In the
woods, or in gardens where they are left untrimmed,
the bushes will grow into veritable trees, twenty-five
or thirty feet high.
We went back to the hotel, when Betty had gathered
all she could carry, and she sent the flowers up to our
room by a maid who laughed sympathetically — I fancy
she had seen such attacks of madness more than once
before — and then we started along a winding path
154 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
which led through the woods down to the shore of the
bay. And we soon found that fuchsias were not the
only things which grow to giant proportions here, for
the path was hedged with ferns four or five feet high —
great, lordly fellows, standing stiffly upright as though
on parade. Ferns were everywhere, even on the trees
overhead, for the trees are padded with moss, and in
this the ferns have found a foothold. And there were
holly trees still scarlet with last year's berries, and haw-
thorn fragrant with bloom; and over everything the
English ivy ran riot — rather in the same fashion, I
thought as I looked at it, in which England herself
has run riot over Ireland.
We got down to the shore of the bay, at last, and I
quite agree with Thackeray that it is a world's wonder,
with its rock-strewn shore and emerald islands and
pellucid water, framed in, all about, by rugged moun-
tains. We wandered along its edge, gay with sea-
pinks, for an hour or more, and then spent another
hour loitering in the woods, and finally walked on, be-
tween the flaming hedges and fern-draped trees, to the
little village, which we could smell, long before we
came to it, by the tang of peat-smoke in the air. It is
a mere huddle of low, thatched houses, and I judge
that, even amid these gorgeous surroundings, life can
be as hard and sordid as anywhere in Ireland.
A little distance from the village was a pretty, two-
storied villa, covered with roses and climbing vines,
and with a large garden beside it, blazing with a great
variety of gorgeous bloom. We stopped to look at it
over the gate, and the gardener espied us and came
hurrying forward to ask us in to see the flowers. And
A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND 155
one of the plants he showed us most proudly was a
single, sickly-looking stalk of Indian corn, about a
foot high, growing in a pot. When we told him that,
in the state we came from, Indian corn filled thousands
and thousands of acres every summer, and grew from
eight to ten feet high, he looked as though he scarcely
believed us. But that little stalk of corn brought
home to me, as perhaps nothing else could have done,
the fact that my own particular corner of the earth is
divinely favoured, too, in ways unknown even to Glen-
garriff.
I had a most improving conversation, that night, in
the smoking-room of the hotel, with a Catholic priest
and a salesman for the British Petroleum Company.
The priest, who must have been at least sixty-five,
had the typical long, thin Irish face, and was intensely
Nationalist. The salesman was younger and rather
rubicund, and I judge that he was an Englishman and
a Unionist. It was the priest who did most of the
talking about Home Rule, after I got him started, and
he protested earnestly that Ulster's fears of unfair
treatment were utterly unfounded. The Catholics, he
said, didn't want supremacy; all they wanted was
equality, but they did want that, and felt they were
entitled to it. England, he admitted, had made great
strides within the past ten years toward atoning for
her old injustice to Ireland, and was evidently trying
hard to do what was right.
"Yes," broke in the salesman; "she's going alto-
gether too far. What with old age pensions and the
purchase act and poor relief and railway building and
156 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
putting up labourers' houses and what not, she's spend-
ing twice as much on this country as she gets out of it.
It won't do; it has got to stop."
"I don't believe England spends more on Ireland
than she gets out of us," said the priest quickly.
"Here it is in black and white," and the other trium-
phantly slapped the paper he had been reading. "Im-
perial expenditures for Ireland, 1912-13, £12,381,500;
received from Ireland, £10,850,000; deficit, £1,531,500
— that would be about seven and a half million dol-
lars," he added, for my benefit. "Over a million and
a half pounds sterling that England has made Ireland
a present of in the past year ! What do you think of
that4?" and he turned back to the priest.
"The figures may be true," said the latter, slowly,
"and then again they may not. I have been told that
England burdens Ireland with many expenditures
which don't belong to us. But in any event, I agree
with you that charity does us no good — it does us
harm. We don't want charity."
"Hm-m-m !" grunted the salesman sceptically.
'Til admit," went on the other, "that there are and
always have been many Irishmen only too eager to
take alms — more shame to them. There have always
been many ready to sell themselves for a good position
under government, and to sell their country too, if
need be. We have our share of patriots, but we have
more than our share of traitors, I sometimes think.
But it isn't by them the country should be judged.
What true Irishmen want is the right to stand alone
like men and fight their own battles, and in fighting
them, the north and south will forget their foolish
A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND 157
quarrel and become friends again as they should be.
They aren't half as far apart, even now, as some would
have you believe. Most of this talk about Ulster is
the black work of men who make their living out of
it, who care nothing for Ireland, and take advantage of
every little by-election to stir the fire and keep the pot
bubbling."
I remarked that this ceaseless agitation over elec-
tions was unknown in America, where all the elections
were held on one day, after which there were no more
elections for a year.
The priest stared at me in astonishment.
"Did I understand you to say," he asked, "that the
elections all over your country are held on the same
day?"
"Yes," I said; "on a day early in November, fixed
by law."
"I don't see how you manage it."
"It isn't hard to manage — it's really very simple."
"But where do you get enough police*?"
"Enough police?"
"Yes. Here in Ireland, when we have an election,
we have to send in the police from all the country
round to keep the peace. If we tried to have all our
elections on one day, there would be riots everywhere."
"What about?" I asked.
"I don't know — the people wouldn't know them-
selves, most likely; but there's many of them would
welcome the chance for a shindy, if the police wasn't
there. Isn't it the same in America?"
I told him I had been an election officer many times,
but had never seen any serious disorder at the polls.
158 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
"Aren't there many riots next day?" he asked.
"Why," I said, "the day after election is the quiet-
est day in the year. Everybody goes to work as
though nothing had happened."
"I don't think there is much danger of riots," put
in the salesman, "but we couldn't have your system
over here because with us a man has a right to vote
wherever he owns property and pays taxes, and if all
the elections were held on one day, he couldn't get
around."
"Ah, yes," nodded the priest; "I did not think of
that. How do you manage it in America*?"
"With us," I explained, "every man has one vote
and no more."
Again his eyes goggled.
"Would you be telling me," he gasped, "that your
millionaires, your men of vast properties, have no more
votes than the poor man*?"
And when I told him that was so, I think he was by
way of pitying our millionaires, as men deprived of
their just rights — as, perhaps, in some respects, they
are.
And then the salesman told me that he had been
to America, as far west as Kansas, where he had visited
some friends. He had gone over, he said, with that
sort of good-natured contempt for everything American
so common in England, but he had come away con-
vinced that there was no country on earth to match it.
"The only thing I saw to criticise in America were
the roads," he added. "Why don't you take a leaf
from Lloyd George's book*? He has put a tax of
three-pence a gallon on gasoline used by pleasure cars,
A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND 159
and this tax goes into a fund for the upkeep of the
highways, proportioned according to the number of
cars in each county. Gasoline used in commercial
cars pays a tax of three-ha' -pence a gallon. A great
sum is collected in this way, and the upkeep of the high-
ways is thrown upon the people who do them the most
damage. If you'd do the same in America, your roads
would soon be as good as ours ; and nobody could com-
plain that the tax was unjust."
I agreed that it was a clever idea, and I hereby call
it to the attention of our lawmakers.
"Well," said the priest, who had been listening at-
tentively to all this, "I am glad to know the truth
about this tax. I had heard of it, and had thought it
another English exaction laid upon Ireland. Now I
.see that I was wrong; for, as you say, it is a just tax."
And then he told us some stories of the old days,
of famine and persecution and eviction, of the hard
fight for life on the rocky hillsides, while the fertile
valleys were given over to grazing or ringed with high
walls and turned into game preserves. There were
lighter stories, too, of the humorous side of Irish char-
acter, and one of them, though I suspect it is an old
one, I will set down here.
The southwest coast of Ireland, of which Bantry
Bay forms a part, is one of the most dangerous in the
world, because of the rugged capes which stretch far
out into the ocean and the small islands and hidden
reefs which lie beyond. It is just the sort of coast
where fish abound, and so little villages are scattered
all along it, whose men-folks fish whenever the weather
lets them, and at other times labour in the tiny potato
160 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
patches up on the rocky hillsides. Naturally they are
familiar with all the twists and turnings of the coast,
and are always on the lookout to add to their scanty
incomes by a job of piloting.
One day the crew of a fishing-boat perceived a big
freighter nosing about in a light fog, rather closer in-
shore than she should have been, and at once lay along-
side and put a man aboard.
"Will you be wantin' a pilot, sir1?" he asked the
captain, who was anxiously pacing the bridge.
The captain stared a moment at the dirty and tat-
tered visitor.
"Who the devil are you^" he demanded, at last.
"Me name's McCarthy, sir. I'm a pilot, sir."
"A pilot!" and the captain looked at McCarthy
again. "I don't believe it."
" 'Tis the truth I'm tellin' you, sir," protested Mc-
Carthy.
"Well," said the captain, "if it's the truth, you can
easily prove it. Let me hear you box the compass."
McCarthy was nonplussed. More than once, sitting
over a pot of ale in some public house, he had heard
old sailors proudly rattle off the points of the com-
pass, but, though he remembered how the rigmarole
sounded, he had no idea how to do it, nor even any
very clear idea of what it meant.
"Faith, I can't do it, sir," he admitted.
"Can't do it*?" roared the captain. "Can't box the
compass! And yet you call yourself a pilot."
McCarthy did some rapid thinking, for he saw a good
job, which he could ill afford to lose, slipping through
his fingers.
A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND 161
"It's like this, sir," he said, finally, "in our small
place, it's the Irish we would be using, niver a word of
English, and all the English any of us knows is just
the little we might pick up from bein' after the ships.
I can't box the compass in English, but I can box it in
the Irish, sir, if that will do."
The captain looked into the speaker's guileless eyes
and also did some rapid thinking. He knew no Gaelic,
but he needed a pilot badly, and he reflected that, in
any language, it ought to be possible to tell whether
the compass was being boxed correctly, because the
words would have to follow each other with a certain
similarity of sound, as north, north-and-by-east, north-
north-east, north-east-by-north, and so on.
"All right," he growled, "go ahead and let's hear
you."
"My father," McCarthy began solemnly in his
homely Gaelic; "my grandfather, my grandfather's
grandmother, my grandmother's grandfather, my great
grandfather, my great grandfather's grandmother, my
great grandmother's great ..."
"Hold on," shouted the captain, quite convinced.
"I see you know how. Take charge of the ship !"
And McCarthy thereupon proved he knew how by
getting the vessel safely past Cape Clear!
It was pouring rain, next morning, a steady, driv-
ing rain, which looked as though it might last forever,
and we were confronted by the problem which so often
confronts the traveller in Ireland, whether to go or
stay. To go meant the possibility of having the most
beautiful drive in Ireland obscured in mist; to stay
162 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
meant a dreary day at the hotel, with no assurance
that the next day would be any better, or the next, or
the next. At last we decided to go.
Never after that was the problem so difficult, for we
soon realised the folly of permitting Irish rain to in-
terfere with any plan. In the first place, the rain is
not an unmixed evil, for it is soft and fresh and vivify-
ing, and it adds mystery and picturesqueness to the
most commonplace landscape; and in the second place,
it is very fickle, begins unaccountably, stops unexpect-
edly, and rarely lasts the day through. In fact, the
crest of any ridge may take one into it, or out of it, as
we were to find that day.
So when, about ten o'clock, the bus came puffing up
to the door, we climbed aboard. The road, for a little
way, wound up the valley of the Glengarriff River, and
then, striking off into the mountains, climbed upward
at a gradient that tested the power of the engine. Al-
most at once we were in the mountain mist, soft and
grey, eddying all about us, whirling aside for an in-
stant now and then to give us tantalising glimpses
down into the valleys, and then closing in again. Up
and up we went, a thousand feet and more, and at last
we came to the crest of the mountain range which
divides County Cork from County Kerry. The road
plunges under the crest through a long tunnel, and
then winds steeply down into the valley of the Sheen.
Again there was a series of sharp and unprotected
turns, just as on the day before, and this time with the
added complication of a slippery, sloppy road; but I
have never ridden with a more careful or more ac-
complished driver than we had that day, and he nursed
A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND 163
the heavy bus along so quietly and with such easy
mastery that no one thought of danger. Gradually
the mist lightened and cleared away, until we could see
the wide valley far below, with the tiny winding river
at the bottom, and the walled fields and midget houses.
There was a succession of such valleys all the way to
Kenmare, and we finally rolled up before the big hotel
there just in time for lunch.
We walked down into the village, afterwards, and
found it more bustling and prosperous than any of the
other small villages we had seen. This is due partly
perhaps to the tourist traffic, for Kenmare is a famous
bathing and fishing resort; but homespun tweeds are
manufactured there in considerable quantities, and at
the convent scores of girls are employed at lace-mak-
ing, Celtic embroidery, wood-carving and leather-work.
The school is said to be, one of the best managed in
Ireland, and I was sorry that we did not have time
to visit it. We saw, however, some of the Kerry girls in
the street, and they were fully handsome enough to
give colour to the doggerel :
'Tis sure that the lads will be goin' to Cork
When their money is gone and they're wantin' to work ;
But 'tis just as sure that they'll turn back to Kerry
For a purty colleen when they're wantin' to marry.
Kerry is a poor country and always will be, for it
consists mostly of stony hills, and though it is renowned
for its scenery, no one except the hotel keepers can live
on that. Such little hill farms as have been wrested
from the rocks produce but scantily ; so when there is a
"long family," as the Irish put it — and "long fami-
164 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
lies" are the rule — one son will stay at home to look
after the old people, and the others will fare forth into
the world to search for a living. I hope it is true that
they come back when they're searching for wives.
Otherwise the lot of the Kerry girls, hard enough
under any circumstances, would be harder still. No-
where in Ireland are there brighter eyes or redder
cheeks.
The rain was quite over by the time we were ready
to start again, and the mist had disappeared under the
rays of the sun, so that we had the benefit of the full
beauty of the Kenmare River, which is really a wide
bay, as we ran close along its western bank. Then the
road doubled back from it, and presently the driver
stopped at a spot where a narrow footpath struck
down into the woods, and advised us to take it, saying
that he would wait for us at its other end. In a mo-
ment we found ourselves clambering down the side of
a wildly-beautiful ravine, with the roar of rushing
water rising from below, and trees festooned with ferns
and ivy meeting above our heads. And then, high
above us, we saw the arch of a stone bridge ; and quite
suddenly we came out upon the stream, the Black-
water, foaming over the rocks. It was at its very best,
from the heavy rain of the morning, and we stood there
watching it, fascinated by its beauty, as long as we
dared.
We went on again close beside the shore of the bay,
and in half an hour came to Parknasilla, where there
is another big hotel, set in the midst of beautiful
grounds, and with superb views opening on every side.
The climate here is sub-tropical, and the vegetation
THE BAY AT GLENGARRIFF
THE UPPER LAKE, KILLARNEY, FROM THE
KENMARE ROAD
A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND 165
mounts to a climax of riotous profusion, with palms
and calla lilies growing in the open. The bay, too, is
very fine, with bluff, rock-strewn shores, and innumer-
able green islets speckling its sparkling waters, and
rugged mountains closing in the distance.
Then again we were off, mounting steadily, steadily,
winding under beetling crags and above grey precipices;
up and up, with the world sinking away into the valley
at our left, and the heathery, rock-strewn heights soar-
ing upward at our right; and finally, at our feet,
opened the wonderful panorama of the Brown Valley
— brown bog, brown rock, brown heather, mounting to
the distant slopes of Macgillicuddy's Reeks. We
dropped down toward it, mile after mile; then up and
up again, to the crest of the ridge beyond — and there,
far below us, lay the lakes of Killarney, rimmed with
green hills and dotted with green islands — the most
sweetly beautiful in all the world.
The loveliest general view of the lakes of Killarney
to be had from anywhere is as one drops down toward
them along the Kenmare road. Their individual
beauties may, of course, be seen to better advantage
closer at hand ; but from this height, the whole wonder-
ful panorama stretches before one. Right across the
valley opens the Gap of Dunloe, with the rugged Reeks
on one side and the green clad Purple Mountain on the
other ; below is the narrow, island-dotted, hill-encircled
upper lake ; farther away is Muckross Lake, and far in
the distance stretch the blue waters of Lough Leane,
the largest of them all. My advice is to take a long
look at it, for you will never see anything more lovely.
166 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
The road soon dropped among the trees, and our
driver pointed out with evident pride the Queen's cot-
tage on the shore of the upper lake, built a good many
years ago in order that Victoria, on her tour of the
lakes, might have a fitting place in which to lunch,
and which has never been occupied since. Then the
road ran close beside the border of the middle lake,
plunged again into the woods for a mile or two; and
at last the bus stopped before the inn where we in-
tended to stay, and we climbed down regretfully.
The inn was a long, two-storied building, standing
a little back from the road, and the porter who came
running out to take our bags, might have stepped
straight out of Pickwick, he was so fat, so jolly, and
so rubicund. I had some films I wanted developed at
once, because I was afraid the damp weather would
affect them, and I asked him where I could get it done.
"There's a man just this side of the village can do it,
sir," he said. "You will see his sign as you go along
the road."
"How far is it?" I asked.
"The village is two mile, sir."
"Then it's less than two miles?"
"It is, sir."
I turned to Betty.
"We've got plenty of time before dinner," I said.
"Suppose we walk in and see the town."
And Betty, wotting little of what was before her,
consented.
I put my films in my pocket, and we set off eagerly
along the pleasant road, past a little village, past a
church with a graveyard back of It and a Celtic cross
A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND 167
high on the hillside above it, past a hotel or two, around
one turn after another, with green-clad hills mounting
steeply to our right and the blue lake lying low on our
left. We met an occasional cyclist, or a donkey-cart
being driven home from market, or a labourer trudging
stolidly home from work, or two or three girls strolling
along with arms interlaced, exchanging confidences.
And the air was very sweet and the evening very cool
and pleasant, and the sky full of glorious colour —
"We must certainly have come two miles," said
Betty. "What do you suppose is the matter*?"
"I don't know," I said, looking at my watch and
noting that we had been half an hour on the road.
"Perhaps we'll see the town around the next turn."
But we didn't. All we saw was about half a mile
of empty road. We covered this and came to another
turn, and there before us lay another long stretch of
road. Determined not to give up, we pushed on, and
came to a bridge over a rippling little stream, which
we learned afterward was the Flesk, and we stopped
and looked at it awhile and rested.
"We must be nearly there," I said encouragingly.
"What's bothering me," explained Betty, "isn't the
distance we have to go to get there; it's the distance
we have to go to get back."
There was another bend in the road just beyond the
bridge, and we turned this, confident that the village
would be there. But it wasn't. We saw nothing but
the smooth highway, stretching away and away into
the dim distance. I looked at my watch again.
"We've been walking nearly an hour," I said. "It
looks as though we might miss dinner, after all."
168 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
And just then there came the trot of a horse and
the jingle of harness along the road behind us, and a
side-car drew up with a flourish.
"Would your honour be wantin' a car1?" asked the
jarvey, leaning toward us ingratiatingly.
"We were told there was a photographer's just this
side of the village. Do you know where it is*?"
"I do, your honour."
"How far is it?"
" 'Tis just over there beyont. If you will step up
on the car, I'll have ye there in a minute. I'm goin'
right past it."
Of course we got up. And, as the jarvey had said,
the photographer's shop was just around the next bend.
But before I got down, I made a bargain with him to
drive us back to our hotel, and, after I had left my
films, we set merrily off through the gathering dusk.
"There's one thing I don't understand," I said, at
last. "The porter at the hotel said it was only two
miles to the village. Yet we walked for an hour
without getting there."
"He meant Irish miles, your honour," explained the
jarvey, laughing. "There is an old saying that 'an
Irish mile is a mile and a bit, and the bit is as long as
the mile.' You see, here in ould Ireland we always
stretch everything."
I have found since that the Irish mile is about a mile
and a quarter; but this is no real measure of its elas-
ticity. More than once thereafter we saw one mile
stretch out to three; and we soon came to realise that
the Irish mind is extremely vague and inexact when it
comes to distances and directions.
A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND 169
We got back to the hotel to have our first view of
what proved to be a nightly ceremony. On a stand
in the entrance hall was a huge platte , and on the
platter lay a huge salmon, and a card ler'iing against
it announced that it weighed fourteen pounds and had
been caught that day by Captain Gregory, and there
were flowers all about it, so it's a proud fish it should
have been. There were five or six other salmon on a
lower table, each with a card giving its weight — any-
where from five pounds to eleven — and the whole col-
lection represented the day's catch of the guests of the
hotel.
For the hotel, being handy to the lakes, and clean
and comfortable and homelike, is a favourite resort of
the fishermen who come to Killarney during the salmon
season. Every evening while we were there, as the
fishermen came in, tired and wet, with their boatmen
tramping behind them carrying the fish — if there were
any — they were met at the door by the rotund porter,
his face beaming like a full moon — a red harvest moon !
— and the fish would be solemnly weighed, and the big-
gest would be decorated with flowers and awarded the
place of honour, and the others would be grouped
around it, and after dinner, the fishermen would stand
and look at them, their hands deep in their pockets;
and later on there would be a great bustle as the fish
were wrapped in straw and tied up, ready to be sent
by parcel-post to admiring friends back home !
It was a cosmopolitan crowd which gathered that
evening after dinner about the big fireplace in the smok-
ing-room, where a most welcome and comforting wood
i7o THE CHARM OF IRELAND
fire blazed and crackled. The weather had turned
very cold, and Betty and I were dressed as warmly as
we had been at any time during the winter, though it
was the fifth of June, and the papers were running long
columns about the fearful heat wave which had
America in its grip. There was a sturdy, ' red-faced
old Scotchman in carpet slippers, and a sallow, heavy-
lidded ancient whom the others addressed as "colonel,"
and just such a close-clipped, stiff-backed sporting
squire as is Canon Hannay's Major Kent, of near
Ballymoy; and there were two or three other English-
men with no outstanding characteristic except their in-
sularity; and the talk was of flies and rods and casts,
and everybody was indignant at the suffragette who
had rushed out on the track and tried to stop the Derby;
and there was a steady emptying of tall glasses and a
steadily-deepening cloud of tobacco smoke, and every-
body was very comfortable and cosy. And presently
the old Scotchman took pity on me as a mere American
who knew nothing about the high mysteries of sport.
"It must be a great pleasure for you to sit before
an open fire like this," he said.
"It is," I agreed. "There's nothing more pleasant
than a wood fire."
"Ye may well say so. But of course in America
you have nothing like it."
"Nothing like it?" I repeated, looking at him.
"Why no,", he said. "You never see an open fire
in America. All you have is steam pipes running all
around the room."
I looked at him again to see if he was in earnest; and
then I tried gently to disabuse his mind of that idea.
A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND 171
But it was no use. Indeed, he got rather huffy when
I said I had never seen a room with steam pipes running
all around it.
The savage insularity of the average Englishman is
matter for never-ending amusement, once one has
grown accustomed to his contempt. He believes that
all American men are money-grubbers, and all Ameri-
can women social climbers, who chew gum and talk
loudly, while their daughters are forward minxes who
call their fathers "popper," and that men, women, and
children are alike wholly lacking in culture and good-
taste. The peculiar thing about it is that he never
for an instant doubts his own good taste in telling one
all this frankly to one's face.
This is no fancy sketch. My own opinion is that
the average Englishman has no genuine feeling of
friendship for America, and his ignorance of things
American is abysmal. One day, on the boat coming
home, a well-educated Englishman whom I had got
to know, asked me the name of a man with whom I
had been talking.
"That is Senator So-and-so," I answered.
"What is a senator?" he inquired.
I remember that one day Betty and I and two other
Americans happened to be driving through the Tyrol
in a coach with two Englishmen, and they began to
discuss American railway accidents — a favourite topic
with Englishmen when Americans are present; and one
of them remarked that it was no wonder there were so
many accidents in America, since when Americans
built a railroad all they did was to lay the ties along
on top of the ground and spike the rails to them. I
172 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
asked him if he had ever been to America, and he said
no, and I advised him to run over and pay us a visit
some time. This huffed him.
"Ah!" he said. "But what you Americans would
give for a king!"
"Give for a king*?"
"Yes; you would give anything for a king. Then
you could have a court and an aristocracy, and some
real society. You're sick of your limping, halting,
make-believe government, and you know it!"
We all four stared at him in astonishment, wonder-
ing if he had gone suddenly mad. Then Betty got
her breath.
"No," she said; "you're really wrong about that.
You see we settled the king question back in 1776."
The rest was silence.
But really Englishmen aren't to blame for their
distorted ideas of America, for they get those ideas
from the English newspapers, and the only kind of
American news most English newspapers publish is
freak news. During that week, for instance, almost
the only American news in any of the papers was about
the terrific heat-wave, about Harry Thaw's escape from
Matteawan, and about some millionaire who had taken
bichloride of mercury by mistake, and lived for ten days
or so afterwards, occupying the time very cheerfully
in closing up his affairs. After his death, one of the
great London dailies published a column editorial about
the affair, reasoning in the most solemn manner that
his survival for so long a time could have been due
only to the remarkable tonic properties of the Ameri-
can climate.
A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND 173
With the Irish it is entirely different. In the first
place, America is to them the haven to which a million
Irishmen have fled from English persecution; and in
the next place, their knowledge of the country comes
not from newspapers but from letters written by rela-
tives and friends. The letters are somewhat rosier, I
fear, than the facts warrant, but they establish a kindly
feeling which makes every Irishman ready to welcome
the passing American as a friend and brother. The
only trouble is that he is also apt to regard him as neces-
sarily a millionaire.
It is undoubtedly true that a large portion of the
lower-class Irish consider it no disgrace to beg from
an American. Not that they are habitual beggars,
but when an American comes their way, they seem to
consider it a waste of opportunity if they do not apply
for a small donation. In tourist centres, such as Dub-
lin and Killarney, they are very persistent, especially
the children, and will follow along for minutes on end
telling the tale of their poverty and distress in queer
bated voices, as though they lacked the strength to
speak aloud. But Betty accidentally discovered a
cure for this nuisance, quite as effective as John Mino-
gue's, and I take pleasure in passing it on.
Like most other people who have lived together for
a long time, we have developed a lot of symbols and
pass-words, without meaning to any one but ourselves ;
and it has become a rather foolish habit of mine when
we are together and I see something I especially admire,
to express my admiration by uttering the single word
"Hickenlooper." And Betty, if she agrees, says "Op-
penheimer," and we understand each other and pass
i74 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
on. One day in Cork, a group of children were un-
usually annoying, and followed along and followed
along, until Betty, losing patience, turned upon them
sharply, pointed her finger at them, and said "Oppen-
heimer!" I shall never forget the startled look in
their eyes, as they stopped dead in their tracks, stared
at her for an instant, and then fled helter-skelter. We
decided afterwards that they thought she was putting
a curse on them. She tried it more than once there-
after, and it never failed to work; so, if you are an-
noyed beyond endurance by juvenile beggars in Ire-
land, turn upon them sharply, point your finger at
them, and say "Oppenheimer !"
And since I am giving advice, I will give one bit
more before I close this chapter.
Among the purchases which Betty had made in New
York, just before we sailed, was a small electric torch.
I had derided it as unnecessary, but she had insisted
on bringing it along, and had put it in our travelling-
bag when we were sorting over our luggage in Dub-
lin. The first night at Thurles, in a dreary little room,
with only the flickering candle for a light, I acknowl-
edged her wisdom, for the bright glow of the torch
was very welcome. Again at Glengarriff candles were
the only illumination, and that night at Killarney, when
I got to our room, I found her in animated conversa-
tion with the chambermaid by the light of a single tal-
low dip. They were talking about America, I think,
and the maid's eyes were shining with excitement and
her cheeks were flushed and the beautiful soft brogue
was rolling off her tongue, when a sudden gust from
A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND 175
the open window blew the candle out. Betty picked
up the torch from the dresser and pressed the button.
"Glory be to God ! What's that?" cried the girl, as
the glare flashed into her astonished eyes.
"It's only a torch," said Betty. "It won't hurt
you." And then, when I had lighted the candle again,
she showed the girl how it worked.
"Glory be to God !" she cried again. "The wonder
of it! You would niver be gettin' that in Ireland!"
"No; I got it in New York."
"Ah, 'tis a wonderful place," said the girl, reveren-
tially. "No place but America would be havin' such
things as that!"
Now this is no doubt a libel upon Ireland, for I
suppose one can get electric torches there. At any
rate, my advice is to get one somewhere — a good one —
and take it along in your handbag. This advice is
good for the continent as well as for Ireland, but it is
especially good for the latter, and the reason is this:
In the old days, when English prodigals wasted their
substance on castellated palaces, the Irish squire, being
a wiser man, spent his money on good wine and good
horses — or, when he had no money, ran light-heartedly
into debt for them. As to his family mansion, he con-
tented himself with adding a wing from time to time,
as it might be needed, either because of the increasing
number of his children, or the widening circle of his
friends. The result was a singular house, often only
one story high, never more than two, flung wide over a
great deal of ground, and of a most irregular plan.
Such a house had many advantages, for, as another
176 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
writer has pointed out, "at one end of it the ladies
could sleep undisturbed, no matter how joyous the
men were at the other; there were no stairs to fall
down; and the long narrow corridors were pleasant to
those who found it hard to direct their devious steps."
But the time came when these hospitable Irishmen
found themselves overwhelmed by debt, their houses
were taken from them, and many of them, since they
were too large for any private family, were converted
into inns. The traveller in rural Ireland will en-
counter more than one of them, and will find those
long, shadowy, zig-zag corridors eerie places after
night, unless he has a torch to light his steps. The
doors are not always fitted with locks, and if the
window is kept open, an intruder has only to step over
the sill. We never had any intruder; but had we had,
I am sure one flash from the torch would have sent
him flying.
CHAPTER XII
THE "GRAND TOUR"
THERE are many excursions which can be made over
and around the Killarney lakes, but the most important
one — the "grand tour," so to speak — starts at the town,
proceeds by car to Kate Kearney's cottage, then by
pony through the Gap of Dunloe, then by boat the full
length of the lakes to Ross Castle, and back to town
again by car. This round takes a day to accomplish,
and gives one a very fair idea of Killarney. It is
about all most of the people who come to Killarney
ever see of it. In fact, some of them don't see that
much — as will presently appear.
Now Killarney is to Ireland what the Trossachs are
to Scotland and Niagara Falls to America — in other
words, its most famous show-place ; and so it has passed
more or less under the control of that ubiquitous ex-
ploiter of show-places, Thomas Cook. Cook arranges
all the excursions, Cook controls most of the vehicles,
Cook's boats are the biggest and safest, and so, if you
wish to see Killarney "in the least fatiguing manner,"
you must resign yourself to Cook. Let me say here that
I admire Cook; there is no place where a traveller is
served more courteously, more fairly, or more intelli-
gently than in a Cook office. No one need be ashamed
to make intelligent use of Cook. The reason of his
disrepute is that he has come to be used so largely by
self-complacent people whose idea of seeing Europe
177.
178 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
is to gallop from place to place in charge of a con-
ductor. But that isn't Cook's fault.
Killarney is the one place in Ireland which every
tourist wants to see, not because it is characteristically
Irish, but because it has been very carefully exploited.
In my own opinion, a trip to Holy Cross and Cashel,
or to Mellifont and Monasterboice and the tombs of
the kings, or to the congested districts of Connaught, is
far better worth while. But the great bulk of tourist
traffic follows the beaten path, and in Ireland the
beaten path leads straight to Killarney.
As we sat at breakfast next morning, we witnessed
the ceremonial rites involved in getting the fishermen
started off for the day's sport. The rotund porter
acted as major-domo, and purled and panted and hur-
ried hither and yon, his brow creased with the anxieties
of his high office.
It is a point of honour with all true fishermen to
wear only the most faded, rain-stained, disreputable
of garments, and it was a weird-looking company which
gathered in front of the hotel that morning, with their
hats, decorated with many-coloured flies, flapping
around their brick-red faces. There was one woman
in the lot who was going out with her father — a short,
square spinster, evidently hard as nails, with a face
as red as the reddest, and boots as heavy as the heavi-
est. The wonder was that she didn't smoke a pipe
like the others. They overhauled their tackle with
great care — shook out the lines, tested rods and reels,
examined the flies, and finally trudged away, the boat-
man following, laden with rain-proofs and lunch-basket
THE "GRAND TOUR" 179
and gaff and landing-net, and with a broad grin on his
face at the prospect of sharing his employer's tobacco
and lunch, and of earning a few shillings in so pleas-
ant a manner.
When we had finished breakfast, we went out to have
a look at the weather, and found the sun shining
brightly, with every prospect of a pleasant day. The
porter assured us that there was no chance of rain ; but
we had already had some experience of the fickleness of
the Irish climate, so we went back and prepared for
the worst, and clambered presently to the seat of the
car Cook sent for us.
On the way in to the village, we stopped at another
hotel to pick up three American women who had been
touring the continent and England, and who, by a long
jump, had managed to squeeze in one day for Killarney
before hastening on to Queenstown to catch their boat.
They had arrived late the night before, and would
leave for Cork as soon as the tour of the lakes had
been completed, and they were jubilant because the
day was so fine. They had feared it might rain, and
that their long journey would be for nothing. The
only protection against rain they had with them was
two small umbrellas, and I could see that they were
somewhat amused at our rain-coats and leggings.
There was a long open coach, with seats for about
twenty people, waiting in front of Cook's office in the
village, and presently, as cars drove in from the
various hotels, this was filled to overflowing, and at
last we rumbled away. We were fortunate in having
been assigned to the front seat with the driver, a hand-
some, good-humoured fellow, not averse to talking;
i8o THE CHARM OF IRELAND
and behind us we could hear the merry chatter of the
happy and contented crowd. We passed the work-
house, which, as usual, is the biggest building in the
place, and then the lunatic asylum, which is almost as
big, and then we saw the ruins of Aghadoe high on
the hillside — and then I felt a drop of rain on my cheek.
There was another drop, and then another, and then a
gentle patter, and then a rushing and remorseless down-
pour.
We held the rubber lap-robe up under our chins and
the water ran down it in streams. The happy chatter
had turned to exclamations of consternation and dis-
may, and we did not need to look around to realise
the havoc which the rain was working. The driver
chirruped to his horses and endeavoured to divert
his passengers with a few stanzas of a classic Irish
drinking song, rendered in a resounding baritone :
Let the farmer praise his grounds,
Let the huntsman praise his hounds,
The shepherd his dew-scented lawn ;
But I, more blest than they,
Spend each happy night and day
With my charming little cruiskeen lawn, lawn, lawn,
With my charming little cruiskeen lawn.
"What does cruiskeen lawn mean?" asked a man's
voice behind us.
"Oh, it is just a term of endearment," said a woman's
voice in answer. "Don't you remember the song about
Willy Reilly and his dear cruiskeen lawn?"
"Oh, yes," said the man.
I caught a twinkle in our driver's eye, but he said
nothing. After all, Willy Reilly, being a true Irish-
THE "GRAND TOUR" 181
man, no doubt loved his cruiskeen lawn, or little full
jug, almost as well as his colleen bawn, or fair-haired
lassie.
So we rolled merrily on, and presently turned into
a hilly lane, where a crowd of ragamuffins mounted on
bony steeds awaited us. These were the pony-boys,
and a wild-looking lot they were as they fell in about
us and proceeded to act as a sort of cavalry escort. We
took a bridge and a steep grade beyond at a gallop, and
drew up in front of a white-washed, slate-roofed little
house, which our driver announced was Kate Kearney's
cottage, and his bedraggled passengers made a break
for its welcome shelter. It was Lady Morgan who
celebrated Kate's charms in the ingenuous verses be-
ginning,
Oh, did you not hear of Kate Kearney?
She lives on the banks of Killarney,
From the glance of her eye shun danger and fly,
For fatal's the glance of Kate Kearney,
and she is supposed to have lived somewhere in this
neighbourhood, though it is a long way from the "banks
of Killarney." At any rate, this spick-and-span cot-
tage, very unlike Kate's, has been given her name, and
I dare say that any of the girls who tend bar inside
would answer to it, just to keep up the local colour.
The room into which the door opens has a bar at
one end and an open fire at the other, and while the
women of the party crowded about the fire, the men
paused before the bar for a taste of potheen. There
are many other opportunities to taste it before one gets
through the gap, but if it is to be done at all, it would
182 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
better be done here, for here one gets a clean glass to
drink it out of. The whiskey is supposed to be surrep-
titious, but of course it has paid the tax like any other ;
an inch of it is poured into the bottom of the glass, and
then the glass is filled with milk, and one drinks it and
smacks one's lips and looks knowing. I drank a glass
of it in the interests of this narrative, and I am free to
say I have drunk many things I liked better.
At the end of half an hour, everybody had managed
to get fairly dry, and a prolonged discussion arose
whether to go on through the gap or turn back to the
town. The rain was still falling steadily, and there
was no sign of break in the heavy clouds, though our
conductor contended that they were clearing away to
the westward. The motley crew of pony-boys, with
their shaggy "coppaleens," were all most insistent that
the shower would soon be over, and that it would be a
great mistake to go back. Betty and I had already
made up our minds: we were going to see the thing
through whatever happened; but the rest of the crowd
vacillated back and forth in cruel indecision, especially
the three women who must see Killarney to-day or
never. We advised them to risk it; but in the end,
only one other member of the party, a little German
Jew, decided to do so, and all the rest clambered back
into the bus and were driven off toward the town. The
Cook's conductor stayed with us to act as pilot.
I wish you could have heard the chorus of commen-
dation from those Irish throats as Betty mounted her
pony. Sure she was the brave lady, she was the wise
lady, the torrents and cataracts would be that fine ; let
the featherbed trash drive off back to the town, sure
THE "GRAND TOUR" 183
they were not worth a thought; the shower would soon
pass by, and it would be a fine day, and anyway the
Irish rain was a soft sweet rain that never did any
harm, and the gap was the grandest sight in the whole
world — so their tongues ran on.
I gave my camera into the keeping of the pony-boy
who was going along with us, and scrambled into the
saddle. I have had mighty little equestrian experience
since my hobby-horse days, and I cannot pretend that
I enjoyed that ride, for the road was rough and up-
and-down and the pony anything but a smooth stepper.
If I had it to do again, I think I should walk. The
distance is only about five miles, and a person not thor-
oughly at home in the saddle has far more leisure to
survey the beauties of the gap when he is using his own
legs than when he is bumping along on a "coppaleen."
The accompaniments of the ride are more diverting
than the ride itself. We had gone scarcely a dozen
yards, when we found a photographer with his camera
set up in the middle of the road, who took our pic-
tures on the off chance that we'd buy one. Then from
the shelter of a rock arose a battered human, with a
still more battered cornet, which looked as though it
had been used as a shillelagh in moments of absent-
mindedness, and he offered to awake the echo for a
penny. I produced the penny, but the blast he blew
upon the horn was so faint and wavering that Echo
slept on undisturbed. Then we came to an individual
playing with great violence upon a wheezy accordion.
The pony-boys said that he had been a great actor, but
that rheumatism had overtaken him, so that he could
strut the boards no longer, and he had finally been re-
i84 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
duced to playing an accordion in the Gap of Dunloe,
and they besought charity for him, as the most deserv-
ing case in the gap. And then we came to two men with
a small cannon, which they offered to discharge for
sixpence. And then began a long procession of bare-
footed old women, pretending to offer homeknit wool-
len socks and home-distilled potheen for sale, but really
begging — begging most insistently, running along be-
side the ponies with their poor red feet slopping in the
mud or slipping over the stones; voluble with their
blessings if they got a small coin, and plainly thinking
themselves insulted if they didn't.
Meanwhile, we had mounted into the gap along a
rough and winding bridle-path, and a desolately-im-
pressive place we found it. A little river, the Loe,
runs at the bottom, and close on either side high, frown-
ing, rock-strewn precipices tower steeply upwards.
There is no sign of vegetation — except a patch of
heather maintaining a perilous foothold here and there
on the bare and desolate hills, — the Tomies on one
side and McGillicuddy's Reeks on the other. And
then, at what seemed the most desolate spot, we came
to a substantial, two-storied house, a station of the
Royal Irish Constabulary. What the police could find
to do in such a desert was difficult to imagine; but we
stopped a few minutes to talk with them, and they evi-
dently welcomed the diversion.
Legend has it that the Gap of Dunloe was cleft by
Finn MacCool with a single blow of his great sword,
and that it was here, in the Black Lough into which
the River Loe presently widens, that St. Patrick im-
prisoned the last snake in Ireland, by persuading it to
THE "GRAND TOUR" 185
enter a box on the promise that he would release it
to-morrow. When the morrow came, the too- trusting
serpent reminded the Saint of his promise, and asked
him to open the lid, but Patrick replied that it was not
yet to-morrow, but only to-day, and so the snake is
still there in the box on the bottom of the lake, wait-
ing for to-morrow to come. It makes such a fearful
bubbling sometimes that it scares all the fish away,
so that, while there are fish in plenty in the other
lakes, there is none in this. There is a bridge at one
end of the lake, and if one makes a wish as one crosses
it, the wish will come true.
The road mounts steadily, curving from side to side
of the valley, and one should stop from time to time
and look back, or the full beauty of the place will be
lost. We found the wind rushing along the heights,
as we worked our way upward, and the rain fairly
poured at times, so that the cataracts performed splen-
didly. At least I can vouch for two of them — one
down Betty's nose and the other down mine! But
presently, the clouds blew away, and the rain stopped
just before we came out on the heights above the Black
Valley.
This is undoubtedly the most beautiful point of the
ride. To the right a savage glen runs back into the
very heart of the Reeks, ending in a pocket shut in by
sheer and rugged precipices. Far below lies the val-
ley, with a silver ribbon of a river winding through it,
and to the left shine the blue waters of the upper
lake.
I dismounted at this point, turned my pony over to
the boy, and went down the winding road on foot, for
186 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
I didn't want anything to distract my eyes from this
wonderful view. And presently we were down among
the trees, before a little lodge called for some unknown
reason "Lord Brandon's Cottage," in which sat a man
to whom we had to pay a shilling each before we could
pass to the landing-place at the head of the lake, where
the boats and lunch were waiting. Killarney is about
the only spot in Ireland which is exploited in this
manner, but here you will find fees exacted at every
turn — a petty annoyance which, added to the persist-
ent begging and insistent demands for tips, does much
to interfere with the pleasure of the Killarney trip.
At the landing we found two boats which had rowed
up from Ross Castle during the morning — a small one
with two oarsmen and a larger one with four. The con-
ductor marshalled us into the big one, took his seat
at the stern, got out our lunches, which had been sent
up from the hotel, tucked us in with heavy waterproofs,
drew the tiller-lines across his lap and gave the signal
to start.
The upper lake is much the most beautiful of the
three, with its many islands, and the high hills hem-
ming it in. Near its lower end is Arbutus Island, and
it is worth pausing a moment beside it to look at the
arbutus, that handsomest of shrubs, with ruddy stem
and glossy leaf, which is indigenous all about Killar-
ney, but reaches its height of glory on this little island.
It is impossible to tell where the outlet of the lake is,
until you are right upon it, but it suddenly opens out
between two high rocks, and the boat enters the Long
Range — the winding river some three miles in length
which connects the upper and middle lakes.
THE "GRAND TOUR" 187
The rock on the left is called Colman's Leap, and
the legend is that, once upon a time, this Colman, who
was lord of the upper lake, was chased down the moun-
tain by some supporters of The O'Donaghue, and took
a flying leap across the river, in proof of which you
may still see the print of his feet in the rock where
he landed on the other side. Our guide offered to
show us the foot-prints, if we required any proof of
the story, but we assured him of our unquestioning
belief.
The Reach itself is quite as beautiful as any of the
lakes, for its banks are covered with the most varied
and luxuriant vegetation; and once, as we drifted
quietly along, we saw a red deer browsing among the
bracken. And then we drifted past the foot of a great
precipice, and the channel narrowed, the current quick-
ened, and the boatmen prepared to run the rapids into
the middle lake.
One of the boatmen was a wild-eyed old fellow, very
nervous and fidgety, who had considerable difficulty
in wielding an oar against the husky fellow opposite
him, and more than once the steersman had admonished
him to put more ginger into it. Now, as we drew near
the rapids, his agitation increased, his eyes grew wilder
than ever, and as the current caught us and we shot
under the ancient arch of masonry called the Old Weir
Bridge, he managed to strike his oar on a rock with a
force that nearly broke it. The nose of the boat
swerved alarmingly for an instant, but the steersman
brought her round with a quick jerk, and in a minute
more we were in the quiet waters of the middle lake.
The atmosphere was far from quiet^ however, as the
i88 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
steersman relieved his mind. Let it be added that the
rapids are not very terrible, as will be seen from the
picture opposite this page, and even if the boat struck
a rock and was ripped in two, one could get ashore
without much difficulty.
Just beyond, at the "meeting of the waters," there
is a whirlpool called O'Sullivan's Punchbowl, and
every rock and cave along the shore has its tradition,
many of them manufactured, I suspect, for the con-
sumption of the summer visitor. Most of the tradi-
tions are of The O'Donaghue, Chieftain of the Glens.
A long cave is O'Donaghue's Wine-cellar; a depression
at its mouth is O'Donaghue's Chair; and a tall knoll
beside it is O'Donaghue's Butler, otherwise Jockybwee.
The boat leaves the middle lake under another mass-
ive, high-hipped arch of masonry — Drohid-na-Brickeen,
"The Bridge of the Little Trout," or Brickeen Bridge,
as it is called now — and emerges into Glena Bay, an-
other place of beauty; but, as we were gazing at its
loveliness, the boat suddenly pitched sideways, then
tried to stand on end, and we started round to find
ourselves in the midst of an ugly expanse of white-
capped water. We had never thought of rough water
on Killarney; yet here it was, and mighty rough at
that. The lower lake is five miles long and half as
wide, and when the wind gets a good sweep at it, it
can kick up a sea that is not to be despised.
"Tis just O'Donaghue's white horses out for a
frolic," said the steersman encouragingly, and took a
new grip of his lines. The oarsmen bent to their work,
and we headed out into the lake, for it was necessary
to cross to Ross Island.
OLD WEIR BRIDGE,. KILLARNEY
THE MEETING OF THE WATERS
ROSS CASTLE, KILLARNEY
THE "GRAND TOUR" 189
We said nothing, but held tight, and grinned palely
at each other when the boat made a peculiarly fe-
rocious pitch ; the spray flew in sheets, the wind dashed
the spindrift viciously in our faces, and we would have
been very wet indeed but for the waterproofs. But
after the first few minutes, we began to enjoy it, for
it was evident that the boat was a staunch one, and
even if it went over, it wouldn't sink. I don't suppose
there was really any danger of its going over, though
it hung at an alarming angle on the side of a huge wave,
once or twice ; and at the end of half an hour, we swept
under the lee of Ross Island, and our sweating boat-
men paused to take breath. The excitable one was
trembling so he could scarcely get his pipe between his
teeth.
That night at the hotel, Betty was talking to two
Englishwomen who had hired a boatman to row them
out to Inisfallen Island. The lake hadn't been espe-
cially rough when they went out, and it wasn't until
they got out of the lee of the island on the return trip
that they realised its fury. Their boatman, at the
end of a few moments, found himself unable either to
get ahead or to go back; the most he could do was to
keep the boat's head to the waves, and for nearly an
hour they tossed there, shipping great seas, bailing des-
perately, too frightened to be sea-sick, and finally giv-
ing themselves up for lost, when the wind shifted and
their boatman managed to struggle past the point of
Ross Island. They expressed surprise that their hair
wasn't white, and said that they would consider all
the remainder of their lives sheer gain, because they
felt that, except for a miracle, they would have ended
i9o THE CHARM OF IRELAND
on June 5, 1913. No doubt they exaggerated their
danger, but just the same I would advise any one who
is nervous on the water to be sure that the lower lake
is fairly smooth before attempting to cross it. We
certainly drew a breath of relief when we stepped
ashore in the shadow of the ivy-clad ruins of Ross Cas-
tle.
The castle itself is not of especial interest, for all
that is left of it is the ruin of the old keep, with some
crumbling outworks, not nearly so imposing as Blarney.
About the only reason to visit it is to get the view from
the top, which is very fine. But it has some stirring
associations, for it was the stronghold of the great
O'Donaghue, whose legend dominates the whole dis-
trict. The story goes that, every May morning just
before sunrise, the old warrior, armed cap-a-pie,
emerges from the lake, mounts his white horse, and rides
like the wind across the waters, attended by fairies
who strew his path with flowers.
It was here the Royalist forces made their last stand
against Cromwell, and they thought they were safe,
because the castle was a strong one, and was built on
an island, which made it unusually difficult to attack;
and furthermore there was an old legend which said it
would never be taken until a fleet swam upon the lake.
Ludlow brought an army of four thousand men over
the mountains, and started a siege, but made little
progress ; and then, one morning, as the garrison looked
out over the battlements, they saw a fleet of boats
bearing down upon them across the lake, and they
rubbed their eyes and looked again, only to see the boats
nearer, and now they could discern the pieces of ord-
THE "GRAND TOUR" 191
nance mounted in the bows and the soldiers who
crowded them, and they were so awed by the fulfilment
of the prophecy that they surrendered without more
ado. That was the end of Ross Castle, but nobody
knows certainly to this day how Ludlow got the boats
over the hills from Castlemaine.
A pretty drive along the margin of the middle lake
brought us back to the hotel, where we found all the
fishermen assembled, for the water had been too rough
for fishing. We hurried out of our wet things, and
dinner certainly tasted good; and when we joined the
others about the fire, that evening, we found that we
had qualified for admission to their charmed circle by
going through the gap and crossing the lake on such a
day. We were no longer tenderfeet.
CHAPTER XIII
ROUND ABOUT KILLARNEY
WE had been assured more than once, during our trip
through the Gap of Dunloe, that the Irish rain is a
soft, sweet rain, which does nobody any harm, and we
found that this was true, for we felt splendidly
next morning. The only evidence of our strenuous
experience was a certain redness of visage, which grew
deeper and deeper, as the days went on, until it ap-
proached that rich brick-red, which we had already
noted as a characteristic of Irish fishermen.
The day was bright and warm, and after breakfast
we walked in to the town to take a look at our films.
We found the road even more beautiful in the morn-
ing than it had been in the evening, and, since we knew
how long it was, it did not seem long at all. But we
were rather disappointed in the films. I had not ap-
preciated how much the moisture in the atmosphere
diminished the intensity of the sun, and so most of the
films were under-exposed. Amateur photographers in
Ireland will do well to remember that they must use
an aperture twice as large or an exposure twice as long
as is necessary anywhere else.
We walked on in to the town, and were saunter-
ing along looking in the windows, when some one
touched me on the elbow.
"Hello, comrade," said a voice, and I swung around
to find myself looking into the face of a tall, thin
192
ROUND ABOUT KILLARNEY 193
American whom we had met at Dublin looking at the
Book of Kells in Trinity College Library. We had
fallen into talk upon that occasion, and he had confided
to us that he was from Massachusetts, that he was a
bachelor, that he had started out by himself to see
Europe, and that he was very lonely. He looked lone-
lier than ever, standing on this Killarney street corner,
and he said that he was getting disgusted with Ireland,
that it seemed to be raining all the time, that Killarney
wasn't half as beautiful as he had been led to believe,
and that he had about made up his mind not to go up
the west coast, as he had intended, but to go straight
to the continent. We remarked that we intended go-
ing up the west coast, and I saw his eye light with an-
ticipation, but there are some sacrifices too great for
human nature, and I didn't suggest his coming along.
Perhaps the most interesting show-place in the vi-
cinity of Killarney is Muckross Abbey, and we spent
that afternoon exploring it and its grounds. Muck-
ross is far surpassed in interest by many other Irish
ruins, but it is very beautiful, embowered as it is in
magnificent trees and all but covered with glistening
ivy. It is not very old, as Irish ruins go, for it dates
only from the latter half of the fifteenth century, when
it was founded for the Franciscans. The gem of the
place is undoubtedly the cloister, with its arcade of
graceful arches ranged around a court and lighting a
finely-vaulted ambulatory. In the middle of the court
is a giant yew, many centuries old, which spreads its
branches from wall to wall. It is encircled with
barbed wire, and I don't know whether this is to pro-
194 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
tect it from vandals, or to protect vandals from it —
for the legend is that whoever plucks a spray of this
tree dies within a twelvemonth.
The adjoining graveyard is crowded with interesting
old tombs, and as we were wandering about looking at
them, a funeral arrived. The priest walked in front,
reading the burial service, while his assistant walked
beside him, holding an umbrella over him, for it had
begun to rain. Both of them wore black and white
scarfs draped over one shoulder and strips of black and
white cloth tied about their hats. Behind them came
the coffin, carried on the shoulders of four men, the
pair in front and the pair behind gripping each other
about the waist so as not to be thrown apart by the in-
equalities of the path. Then came the mourners, about
a dozen men, each with a black streamer about his hat.
A number of women came last, their shawls over their
heads.
The coffin was placed on the ground, and every one
knelt in the dripping grass, bareheaded under the
drenching rain, until the service was concluded. One
of the mourners, at the proper moment, produced from
beneath his coat a little black bottle which proved to
contain the holy water, and with this the priest
sprinkled the rude black casket, with little crosses for
the screw-heads. Then the priest and his assistant
went away, and the men hastened to get to their feet
and clap on their hats, and then there was a general
production of black clay cutties, and in a moment a
dozen deep puffs of smoke were floating away before
the breeze.
The women of the party retired behind a corner of
MUCKROSS ABBEY, KILLARNEY
THE CLOISTER AT MUCKROSS ABBEY
ROUND ABOUT KILLARNEY 19$
the abbey to eat a bite of lunch, and the men stood
around talking and smoking; and finally the caretaker
produced four long-handled spades, and there was an
animated discussion as to just where the grave should
be dug. As is usually the case with Irish graveyards,
this one was so crowded that it was no easy matter to
find room for a fresh grave, but at last the spot was
fixed upon, and four of the men fell to with the spades.
When they grew tired, four others took up the work,
and in half an hour the shallow grave was dug, the
coffin placed in it, and the earth heaped back upon it.
There was no keening.
One of the women who was with the party told us
that the funeral procession had come all the way from
the end of the upper lake, more than fourteen miles
away, and that the deceased was a woman of ninety-six.
Fancy the tragedies she must have seen ! For she was
a woman of twenty-six, married, no doubt, with chil-
dren, in the famine of '47. How many of them died,
I wondered, and how had she herself managed to sur-
vive the awful years which followed4? Her home be-
yond the upper lake — I could close my eyes and see it
— the dark little cabin with its thatched roof and dirt
floor and single room; I could picture the rocky field
from which she and her husband had somehow managed
to wring a livelihood ; I could see her running with her
poor bare feet through mud and over stones beside some
laughing tourist in the hope of getting a penny or
two —
But it is too tragic to think about !
The shower passed, after a time, and we went on
along a beautiful walk leading toward the lake — the
196 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Friars' Walk, it is called, and it is bordered by century-
old beeches, yews, pines and limes, the most magnificent
trees that I have ever seen, so glorious and inspiring
that we were lured on and on. We came to the shore
of the lake, at last, where the waves have carved the
rocks into beautiful and fantastic shapes, and we fol-
lowed the shore a long way, stopping at every jutting
headland for a long look out over the grey, wind-swept
water. Then the path turned inland and came out
upon the middle lake, and here we found the fishermen
from our hotel just getting to land, in a very drenched
and disconsolate condition, for the water had been too
rough for good sport.
That evening before the fire, the old Englishman, of
whom I have already spoken, relieved his mind to me
upon the subject of Ireland and the Irish. He said it
was no use to try to help the Irish: in the first place,
they didn't deserve any help; in the second place they
took your help with one hand and bludgeoned you with
the other; and in the third place any attempt to help
them only made matters worse. Take the old age
pensions, for example. They were a farce. Hun-
dreds and hundreds of farmers had given their property
to their children, so that they could go into court and
swear they possessed nothing and claim a pension.
Thousands more who were nowhere near seventy were
drawing pensions because there was no way to prove
just how old they were. And most of the pension
money went for drink. Every pensioner had credit at
the public houses, and his pension was usually drunk
away long before it was received. The only effect of
the act had been to make the Irish worse drunkards
ROUND ABOUT KILLARNEY 197
than ever — and they were already the worst in the
world. That was the cause of their poverty; that was
the reason they lived in filth and wretchedness. They
were without ambition, without pride, without any
sense of manhood or decency — all they wanted was
whiskey, and they would do anything to get it. All
this, I dare say, is the , honest belief of a great many
Englishmen; and there is in it just that small grain
of truth which makes it sting.
But I grew tired of listening, after a time, and went
out to the bar, where a very loquacious Ulsterman
with the broadest of Scotch accents was explaining his
woes to the grinning barmaid. He had just been dis-
missed, it seemed, from some position in the neighbour-
hood because he had "been out with a few friends"
the night before. He was convinced that his late em-
ployer was no gentleman, because a gentleman would
have understood the circumstances and overlooked
them; he pronounced Kerry the most God-forsaken of
counties, and announced his intention of getting back
to Ulster as soon as he could. No doubt his experi-
ence in the south of Ireland made him a more rabid
Orangeman than ever, and I suppose he lost no time in
signing the covenant and enlisting in Ulster's "army."
We had planned to spend our last day at Killarney
walking and driving about the neighbourhood, and we
were delighted, when we came down to breakfast that
Saturday morning, to find the weather all that could
be desired, with the sun shining from a brilliant sky,
and not a cloud upon it, except high, white, fair-
weather ones flying before the wind. So as soon as we
198 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
had eaten, we started away on a car for a drive through
the deer-park of the Earl of Kenmare, a walk along the
"fairy glen" which traverses it, and then another drive
up along the heights to the ruins of Aghadoe.
We met many little carts driving in to Killarney, for
it was market day — the identical type which had al-
ready grown so familiar: a flat cart with a man driv-
ing, his legs hanging down, and his women-folks
crouched behind him under their shawls, with their
knees drawn up to their chins, and the shaggy donkey
which furnished the motive power, trotting briskly and
alertly along. I don't know what the poor Irish would
do without this serviceable little beast, long lived and
useful in so many ways, able to exist on stones and
nettles, and costing only a pound or two. Betty was
so impressed with their usefulness that she wanted to
buy one and send it home, but that speculation fell
through.
As we climbed higher and higher up the heights, the
wind grew cold and cutting, but the view below us over
the lakes to the south opened more and more — a glo-
rious panorama of wood and hill and white-capped
water, with ever-varying light and shade under the
drifting clouds. But what a contrast between this
smiling landscape and the one which met our eyes when
we turned them to the north, where one bleak and
desolate hill towered behind another, away and away
as far as the eye could see, a wilderness of grey boul-
ders and black, fissured crags.
The car stopped at last before some stone steps lead-
ing over a wall, but as we started to mount them, a
woman came running out of a near-by cottage and in-
ROUND ABOUT KILLARNEY 199
sisted on unlocking the gate for us, in the hope, of
course, of getting a tip. She was the caretaker in
charge of the ruins of Aghadoe, and she tried to tell us
something about them, but the visitor who has to rely
on her for information must content himself with very
little.
The story, as I piece it together, is something like
this : About the middle of the seventh century, there
dwelt at Killarney a very holy man named St. Finian
the Leper, and on Inisfallen, the largest of the
Killarney islands, he founded an abbey, whose ruins
may yet be seen there; and here at Aghadoe, the
Field of the Two Yews, he built a church, which be-
came the seat of a bishop. As was often the case, the
original church proved, in time, to be too small, and an
addition was tacked on to it. A round tower was also
built as a protection against the Danes, and a little
farther down the slope, a rude castle was put up as a
residence for the bishop.
There is very little left of the castle and the round
tower, but the walls of the church are still standing.
The early church built by St. Finian forms the western
part, or nave, and is entered by a beautiful round-
headed doorway, of the familiar Celtic type. The rain
of centuries has washed away much of the carving, but
enough remains to show how elaborate it was. The
windows here are also round-headed, but the later por-
tion, or choir, is lighted by narrow lancet windows,
which prove that it was built some time in the thir-
teenth century, after the Normans came. These are
the only things of interest left in the ruins, and the
visit to them is worth making not so much on their
200 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
account, as for the magnificent view over the lakes.
We drove back to Killarney along the border of the
lower lake, through the Kenmare demesne, and past
the many-gabled mansion of the Earl, which has since
been destroyed by fire; and we spent a very pleasant
hour wandering about the village. The main street
at Killarney is unattractive enough, crowded as it is
with shops whose principal stock in trade is post-cards
and photographs and books of views and monstrosities
in bog oak and Connemara marble — souvenirs, in a
word, for Cook tourists to take home. But turn up
any of the narrow lanes which branch off on either side,
and there is authentic Ireland — the Ireland of plas-
tered cottages and thatched roofs and half-naked chil-
dren and gossiping women leaning over their half-
doors.
As it was market day, the lanes were more than usu-
ally crowded, and I explored them one after another,
to an accompaniment of much good-humoured chaffing
from the girls and women, especially when I unlim-
bered my camera. Then we walked out and took a
look at the cathedral, a towering structure, still uncom-
pleted as to its interior and bare and cold, but an im-
pressive proof of the influence of the church which
could raise the money to build so great an edifice in this
poverty-stricken land; and then we stopped at some
of the shops and looked at the Irish homespun, and
spent a little time at an auction-sale, where the bid-
ding was very slow and cautious, and finally we caught
the omnibus back to our hotel.
There was still one place we wished to see. That
ROUND ABOUT KILLARNEY 201
was the Tore cascade, and, after tea, we set out to
walk to it. The road lay for about a mile along the
road skirting Muckross Lake, and then we came to a
gate where a boy was waiting to exact a fee of nine-
pence. Then we mounted a steep path, under mag-
nificent pines, close beside the brawling Owengarriff
River, up and up, with a lovely view of the lakes open-
ing below us; and finally we came to the cascade — a
white welter of water slithering down over the black
rocks, very beautiful and impressive.
We sat there for a long time, looking at it and at
the stately wood which clothed the opposite hillside,
and at the blue water lying far below us, and at the
green hills away beyond, and we both agreed that, next
to the view from the Kenmare road, this was the most
glorious view to be had about Killarney. Subsequent
reflection has not altered this, and, after the trip
through the Gap of Dunloe and across the lakes, I
should certainly place this one to the Tore cascade.
Beside it, the view from Aghadoe is nowhere.
We went on reluctantly, at last, mounting still
higher until we came to a path bearing away to the
left through the woods, and we followed this until
we came to a mountain road which we had been told
was there. It is called the Queen's Drive, and I sup-
pose Victoria passed this way during her visit to the
lakes; and it led us past the reservoir which supplies
Killarney with water, and on down through magnificent
woods whose beauty is marred only by a lot of so-called
"monkey trees" — a monstrosity which had annoyed us
all through Ireland, but to which I have not yet re-
ferred.
202 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
The monkey tree is a sort of evergreen, with long,
thin branches clad with close-growing foliage, and look-
ing not unlike monkeys' arms. In fact, the tree itself
resembles in a grotesque way a lot of monkeys swinging
in midair, and hence its name. It is a hideous thing,
and yet a specimen grows in every dooryard. There
was one in front of our hotel, there were others along
the road; here they had been planted in great numbers
and reached an unprecedented size — but we were glad
to observe that a few were dying. The monkey tree
seems to be to Irish homes what the rubber-plant used
to be to American ones, and it appalled us to see how
many little ones were being started in tiny front yards,
which they would one day overshadow and render
abominable. I can only hope that, in some happy
hour, a wave of reform will sweep over Ireland and
carry these monstrosities before it.
We came out, at last, upon a little huddle of houses
on the hillside above our hotel, and stopped to talk
to some children and their mother, then went on down-
ward, in the gathering dusk, very happy because of a
beautiful and satisfying day. And just as we turned
into the highroad, Betty saw something gleaming on
the ground at her feet, and stooped and picked up a
shilling. From what ragged pocket had it fallen, we
wondered? How great a tragedy would its loss rep-
resent'? We looked up and down the road, but there
was no one in sight. So we decided to keep it for
luck, and we have it yet.
CHAPTER XIV
O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR
THERE was quite a crowd on the platform, that Sunday
morning, of travellers turning their backs on Killar-
ney, and we found ourselves eventually in a compart-
ment with two Americans, man and wife, who were
plainly in no pleasant humour. The man was espe-
cially disgruntled about something, and I judged from
his exclamations that he had got decidedly the worst of
it when it came to settling the bill. It is in some such
mood as this, I fear, that many people leave Killarney.
But the view from the window soon made us for-
get our fellow-passengers. The road runs for a time
close beside the Flesk, one of the prettiest of Irish
rivers, while away to the south rose the beautiful Kil-
larney hills, peak upon peak, with mighty Mangerton
dominating all of them. And then came the Paps, two
conical elevations separated by a deep ravine; and
then the bleak brown slopes of the Muskerry hills, with
a ruined castle of the McCarthys guarding the only
pass into the valley. To the north a boggy plain
stretched away and away, ridged with black pits, like
long earthworks, from which the turf had been cut.
The hills to the south grew gradually less rugged,
and presently we dropped into the beautiful valley of
the Blackwater, with many ruined castles perched on
the crags which overshadow it — castles built by the
McCarthys, the O'Callaghans, and I know not what
203
204 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
other septs, memorials of the old days of raid and
counter-raid, of warring clans and treacherous chief-
tains.
And then we came to Mallow, and had to change
into another carriage, where we found five Ameri-
cans, who were also coming from Killarney, and
who also believed that they had been held up. Their
grievance was against the hotel at which they had
stopped, and they said wildly that it was no better
than a den of thieves. This, of course, was an exag-
geration, and, in any event, I did not pity them much,
for it was soon evident that their visit to Ireland had
been a waste of time. They knew nothing of her his-
tory and traditions; her ruins held no meaning for
them ; her empty valleys told them nothing of her past ;
they had never heard of Cormac, or Finn the Fair, or
Ossian, or Conn the Hundred Fighter, or even of Brian
Boru; they had never heard of that old civilisation
which the Danes swept away, and saw nothing very
wonderful in the Cross of Cong or the Book of Kells.
So to them Ireland had proved a disappointment, just
as she will to every one who visits her in ignorance and
indifference.
We reached Limerick Junction, at last, and changed
thankfully to the branch which runs to Limerick,
twenty miles away. And almost at once we came upon
traces of Patrick Sarsfield, of glorious memory, for a
few miles beyond the Junction, to the left of the line,
are the ruins of a castle, which was held by the Eng-
lish, but which he surprised one night, on one of those
famous raids of his, and captured and blew up. And
then the line mounted the hills which divide the Vale
O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR 205
of Tipperary from the valley of the Shannon, crossed
them, and came out upon a land as beautiful and fer-
tile as any we had seen in Ireland. Such lushness,
such greenness, such calm, quiet loveliness can surely
be matched in few other spots upon this earth.
It was still early afternoon when the train rolled
in to the station at Limerick, and on the platform we
met the actor and his wife whom we had talked with
at Blarney a week before. They had come to Limer-
ick, where their principal was a great favourite, for a
three weeks' engagement. I saw the actor afterwards
on the street, and he told me that the theatre was in
terrible shape, for some misguided enthusiasts had at-
tempted to hold a Unionist meeting there, a few days
previously, and the patriotic Limerickians had nearly
torn the place to pieces.
Limerick is by far the most important town of cen-
tral or western Ireland; in fact it is surpassed in popu-
lation only by Belfast, Dublin and Cork, and it has
many amusing points of resemblance to the two latter.
It is divided into two parts by a branch of the Shan-
non; it has one long, curving principal street leading
to a bridge; the street is known officially as George
Street, after an English king, but to all Irishmen it is
O'Connell Street, in honour of the Liberator whose
statue is its chief adornment; this street is a street of
bright and attractive shops, not in itself interesting,
but cross the bridge to the older part of the town, or
turn up any of the little lanes which lead off from it,
and you will find nothing more picturesque anywhere
— nor more distressful.
We walked along George Street, that afternoon, and
206 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
crossed the bridge to the island on which Limerick
had its birth. The bridge is called Matthew Bridge,
not after the Disciple, but after Ireland's great apostle
of temperance. Beyond the bridge is a maze of nar-
row, crooked streets, and we made our way through
them to the old cathedral, whose tower served as guide.
We got there just as vespers were over, and we found
the verger very willing to show us about.
I do not imagine there are many Protestants at Lim-
erick; at least, a very small portion of this impressive
old church serves the needs of the congregation, and
the rest of it is bare and empty — and imposing.
Rarely indeed have I seen a more sombre interior, for
the walls are very massive, and the windows small,
and there is a surprising number of dark little chapels
— the principal one, of course, being dedicated as a
burial place for the Earls of Limerick. The carved
miserere seats are worth examining, as are also many
of the old tombs which clutter the interior. There
is an elaborate one to the Earl of Thomond in the chan-
cel, and a carved slab covering the grave of Donall
O'Brien, King of Munster, who founded the cathedral
in 1179; but among the quaintest is a slab built into
the wall of the nave with this epitaph cut upon it :
MEMENTO MORY
HERE LIETH LITTELL SAMUEL
BARINGTON THAT GREAT UNDER
TAKER OF FAMOUS CITTIES
CLOCK AND CHIME MAKER
HE MADE HIS ONE TIME GOE
EARLY AND LATTER BUT NOW
HE IS RETURNED TO GOD
HIS CREATOR
O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR 207
THE 29 OF NOVEMBER THEN
HE SCEST AND FOR HIS
MEMORY THIS HERE IS PLEAST
BY HIS SON BEN
1693
We spent a very pleasant half hour in the church,
and then we wandered on through the crooked streets
to the magnificent Norman castle, set up here to de-
fend the passage of the Shannon. Most venerable and
impressive it is, with its great drum towers, and cur-
tains ten feet thick. Just in front of it the Shannon is
spanned by a fine modern bridge, replacing the an-
cient one which was the scene of so many conflicts, and
at the farther end of it, mounted on a pedestal, is the
famous stone on which Sarsfield signed his treaty with
the English in 1691 — the treaty which guaranteed
equal rights to Catholics, but which, as every Catholic
Irishman somewhat too vividly remembers, resulted
only in a more bitter persecution. Irish memory, curi-
ously enough, seems always to grow clearer with the
passing years, and the mists of two centuries accentuate,
rather than obscure, the fame of Limerick as "The City
of the Violated Treaty." The story runneth thus:
The River Shannon, with its wide estuary, its many
lakes, and its mighty current flowing between impass-
able bogs or beetling cliffs, has always been a formi-
dable barrier between east and west Ireland. In the
old days, the only doors in this barrier was the ford
at Athlone, just below Lough Ree, and another all but
impassable one at Killaloe, just below Lough Derg;
but in the ninth century, the Danes sailed up from the
sea, landed on an island at the head of the tideway,
2o8 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
fortified it, and so started the city of Limerick. The
current of the river was divided here, and the invad-
ers managed in time to get a bridge across, and so
opened another door in the Shannon barrier. Brian
Boru drove them out, at last, and then the Normans
came and, after their fashion everywhere, rendered
their hold secure by erecting a great round-towered cas-
tle to guard the bridge. Edward Bruce captured it in
1316, and three centuries later, Hugh O'Neill held it
for six months against Cromwell's great general, Ire-
ton. The Ironsides captured it, finally, and Ireton
died of the plague not long afterwards in a house just
back of the cathedral.
But it was in the war against William of Orange that
Limerick played its most distinguished part. I have
already told how the Irish chose the cause of the Stuarts
against the Parliament; how they proclaimed Charles
II king as soon as his father's head was off, and of the
vengeance Cromwell took. So it was inevitable that
they should espouse the cause of James II against the
Protestant William, whom the English had called over
from the Netherlands to be their king. James came
to Ireland to lead the rebellion, proved himself an
idiot and a coward, and ended by running away and
leaving the Irish to their fate.
William's troops swept the country, took town after
town and castle after castle, until Limerick remained
nearly the last stronghold in Irish hands. So William
marched against it, at the head of 26,000 men, but the
position was a very strong one, and that ablest of Irish
generals, Patrick Sarsfield, was in command of the
town, and William was beaten back. The next year
O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR 209
another great army under General Ginkle marched
against the place, first capturing Athlone, and so getting
across the river. A terrific attack was concentrated on
the fortress guarding the bridge, a breach was made,
the fort stormed, and the garrison put to the sword, only
about a hundred out of eight hundred escaping across
the other branch of the river into Limerick.
Sarsfield still held the town, but his men were dis-
heartened by the loss of the castle. Ginkle, on the
other hand, realised that to take the town would be no
easy task. A truce was proposed, negotiations began,
both sides were eager to end the war, and the result was
that the famous Treaty of Limerick was signed by
Ginkle and Sarsfield on the third day of October, 1691,
on a stone near the County Clare end of the bridge
over the Shannon.
There were twelve articles in the treaty, and some
of them were kept — the one, for instance, permitting
all persons to leave the country who wished to do so,
and to take their families and portable goods along;
but one was not kept, the most important one, perhaps,
which provided that Irish Catholics should enjoy all
the religious rights they possessed under Charles II, and
that all Irish still in arms, who should immediately
submit and take the oath of allegiance, should be se-
cured in the free and undisputed possession of their
estates. In a word, the price of peace was to have been
a. general indemnity and freedom of religious worship.
'i[t was not an excessive price, but it was never paid.
The Protestant colonists in Ireland protested in great
wrath that they had been betrayed, and the Irish Par-
liament, which the colonists controlled, after a bitter
210 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
fight, repudiated the treaty, or, at least, confirmed only
so much of it as "consisted with the safety and welfare
of his Majesty's subjects in Ireland," and passed a
number of new laws aimed at Catholics, disqualifying
them from teaching school, from sending their children
abroad to be educated, from observing any holy day
except those set apart by the Church of Ireland, and
many others of the same sort, some of almost insane
malignity. All this was, of course, quite unjustifiable,
but "King Billy" seems to have been in no way respon-
sible for it. In any event, it happened more than two
centuries ago, all these laws have long since been re-
pealed, and it seems absurd to keep their memory so
fresh and burning.
One word more, and I am done with history. After
the surrender of Limerick, Sarsfield and his men were
given the choice of enlisting in William's army or leav-
ing the country. They chose the latter, and went to
France, where the last Catholic king of England had
sought refuge. He, of course, was unable to maintain
them, so they enlisted under the French king, Louis
XIV, and formed the Irish Brigade, which was after-
wards to become so famous, and in which, during the
next fifty years, nearly half a million Irishmen en-
listed, as the best means of avenging themselves on
England. The part they played at Landen, at Barce-
lona, at Cremona, at Blenheim, at Ramilles, and fi-
nally at Fontenoy — all this is matter of history.
We crossed the bridge again, after a look at the
treaty stone — which, enshrined on its lofty pedestal,
is really a monument to English perfidy — passed the
O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR 211
castle, and plunged into the crooked streets of "Eng-
lish Town," as this oldest part of Limerick is called,
with its tall, foreign-looking, tumbledown houses — as
picturesque a quarter as I have seen anywhere. For
Limerick grew into an important city in the century
following its capture by the English, and many wealthy
people put up handsome town-houses, four or five sto-
ries high, with wide halls and sweeping stairs and beau-
tiful doorways and tall windows framed in sculptured
stone. It is these old houses which shadow the narrow
lanes of "English Town," and they are all tenements
now, for the well-to-do people — such of them as are
left — have moved over to the newer, more fashionable,
more sanitary quarter. No attempt is made to keep
them in repair, and many of them have fallen down,
leaving ragged gaps in the street. Others seem in im-
minent danger of falling, and the distressed look of the
place is further heightened by the great fragments of
the old walls which remain here and there.
This part of Limerick is on the island where the
town started; the part just beyond the bridge which
leads to the mainland is called Irish Town, and it, too,
was once included in the city walls, a long stretch of
which is still standing back of the ancient citadel.
Here too, especially along the quay, are handsome
houses, long since fallen from their high estate, and
now the homes of the poorest of the poor, a family in
every room. It is something of a shock to see these
ragged and distressed people climbing the beautiful
stairways, or sitting in the handsome doorways or lean-
ing out of the carved windows, very much at home in
the place which was once the abode of wealth and
212 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
fashion, while the noisy play of dirty and neglected
children echoes through the rooms which once rang
with gentle laughter and impassioned toast.
Newtown-Pery, the newer part of the town, built on
land reclaimed from the river by the Pery family, the
Earls of Limerick, who still own it, contrasts strongly
with the older part, for its streets are wide and straight
and run regularly at right angles, and it is a bustling
place, but quite without interest to the stranger. The
houses are almost uniformly four stories high, and are
built of a peculiar dark-brown brick, which makes them
look much older than they really are. And down along
the water-front are nearly a mile of quays, with floating
docks and heavy cranes, and towering warehouses look-
ing down upon them.
Time was when Limerick fondly hoped to become
the greatest port in Ireland. She had every advantage
— a noble situation on the broad estuary of the Shan-
non, up which ships from America could sail direct to
her wharves — but in spite of great expenditures to im-
prove her harbour facilities, not only did no new trade
come, but such as she already had withered and
withered, until to-day her tall warehouses are empty,
her quays almost deserted, and in the broad expanse
of the Shannon there are few boats except excursion
steamers and pleasure yachts.
The cause of this decay*? Irishmen assert that there
is only one cause — unjust and discriminating laws
passed by England to protect her own trade by de-
stroying Irish industry. No doubt this is true; but
these laws have been repealed for many years, and there
is little evidence of the healthy revival of these indus-
O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR 213
tries anywhere in Ireland. Such revival as there is has
been carefully fostered by various government agen-
cies; there has been no great spontaneous revival, and
perhaps there never will be. But it is a melancholy
sight — the empty, decaying mills, the idle factories, the
deserted warehouses, the ruined dwellings, which the
traveller sees all up and down the land.
I went out for another stroll about the town, after
tea, for I wanted to see the new Catholic cathedral,
whose tall spire dominates the landscape for many
miles around. And as I went, I could not but no-
tice the impress the English have left on the names
of the streets. The principal street, as I have
said already, is George Street; then there is Cecil Street,
and William Street, and Nelson Street, and Catherine
Street, and George and Charlotte Quays opposite each
other. There is one, however, named after a local celeb-
rity whom all Irishmen should delight to honour —
Gerald Griffin, an authentic poet, whose "Eileen
Aroon" is one of the tenderest and most musical of
lyrics.
Gerald Griffin Street is one of the most important in
Limerick, and it is by it that one gains the cathedral,
an impressive building, especially as to its interior,
dimly lighted through high, narrow lancet windows.
And here again one admires not so much the church
itself, as the indomitable spirit which could undertake
the task of building such an edifice in want-stricken
Ireland.
The Sarsfield monument is in the cathedral square, a
rampageous figure, charging with drawn sword off the
top of a shaft of stone — perhaps the most ridiculous
214 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
tribute to a great soldier and patriot to be seen anywhere
on this earth. I, at least, have never seen any to match
it, unless it be that imperturbable dandy, supposed to
represent Andrew Jackson, who calmly doffs his
chapeau from the back of a rearing horse in front of
our own White House!
I walked on, after that, down toward the quays,
along little lanes of thatched houses, and then back
into the region of the old mansions, with their chatter-
ing women and sprawling children; and then, sud-
denly, I became aware of the girls.
Limerick, like Cork, is supposed to be famous for the
beauty of its women, and the younger generation was
out in force, that Sunday evening, rigged up in its best
clothes, evidently ready for any harmless adventure.
There were some nice-looking girls among them, no
doubt of that, with bright eyes and red lips and glowing
cheeks, and the advent of a stranger in their midst filled
them with the liveliest interest, which they were at no
pains to dissemble. I know nothing about the psy-
chology of Irish girls, for I was not in a position to in-
vestigate or experiment; but while they are shy, at first,
I should judge that most of them are not altogether
averse to mild flirtation. The glance of their eye is
not, perhaps, as fatal as Kate Kearney's, but it is very
taking.
I wish I could say as much for the boys ; but if there
are any witty, invincible Rory O'Mores left in Ire-
land, I didn't see them. The Irish young man seems
very different indeed from the light-hearted, audacious,
philandering scapegrace so dear to Lover and Lever
and scores of lesser poets, and once so familiar upon the
O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR 215
stage. They are not forever breaking into song, they
do not brim with sentiment, they are not, so far as I
could judge, full of heroic emotions and high ambitions.
In fact, they are quite the opposite of all that — matter-
of-fact, humdrum, rather stupid.
Of course there are exceptions, and I was fortunate
enought to meet one that very evening. I stopped in
at a tobacconist's to get a paper, and fell into talk with
the proprietor; and presently there entered a man who
bought a pennyworth of tobacco, filled his pipe, and
then remained for a word, seeing that I was a stranger.
We were talking about Ireland, and in a very few min-
utes the newcomer had the centre of the stage.
O'Connell, journeyman tailor, so he introduced him-
self, and I wish I could paint a picture of him that
would make him live for you as he lives for me. He
was a faded little man, of indeterminate age, with a
straw-coloured moustache and sallow skin, but his eyes
were very bright, and before long his face was glowing
with an infectious enthusiasm. His clothes were worn
and shabby, but one forgot them as he stood there and
talked — indeed they even lent a sort of dignity to his
lean, nervous little figure.
First he told of how Cleeve, the big butter man, was
trying to get the city to close the swing bridge over the
Shannon, so that his heavy trams, which went about
the country collecting milk, could cross it. To close
the bridge would shut off permanently about four hun-
dred yards of quay; but, so Cleeve argued, the quays
were little used, and the town would never need that
stretch above the bridge. But O'Connell did not be-
lieve it.
216 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
" 'Tis true," he said, "that England with her cruel
laws, has killed our trade and brought us all to want ;
'tis true that we have no use for the quay at present.
But all that will be changed when we get Home Rule.
Then, sir, you will see our quays crowded with boats
from end to end; you will see our mills and factories
humming with life, you will see our warehouses piled
with commodities from every quarter of the world.
To shut off part of them, just because this bloated but-
ter-maker wants it, would be a crime against the people
of this town."
"How is all this to be brought about*?" I asked.
" 'Tis you Americans will be doing it, sir. The
Irish in America, our brothers, God bless them, will
rally to the ould land. Her children will come home
to the Shan Van Vocht, once she is free of England.
'Tis them ones will set us on our feet again. They
will be putting their money into our industries, till in
the whole island there will be not an idle wheel or a
smokeless chimney."
I told him I was afraid his dreams were too rosy;
that the American Irish, like all other Americans, would
be governed by dividends, not by sentiment, in the in-
vestment of their money. But nothing could shake his
belief in the good time coming. I asked him what he
thought of Ulster, and he laughed.
"The Protestants have nothing to fear from Home
Rule," he said. " 'Tis them will control this govern-
ment. We Catholics are going to pick the best and
strongest men in this island to man the ship, and there
will be more Protestants than Catholics amongst them.
We will need strong arms at the helm, and what do we
O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR 217
care what their religion may be, if only they're good
men and true? You're a Protestant, I take it, sir?"
"Yes," I said; "I am."
"And does that make me think any the less of you*?
Not a bit of it. 'Tis the same God we look at, only
with different eyes."
"Not even that," I corrected; "with the same eyes —
just from a different angle."
"You've said it, sir. I can't improve on that.
Well then, what is it the Ulster men are afraid of?
They say it's the priests. But how silly that is ! Let
them look back into history, and see what has happened
when the priests interfered with things that did not con-
cern them. In spiritual matters I bow to my priest; in
everything else, I am independent of him. It is so
with all Irishmen, and has always been. Do you re-
member what the great O'Connell said: T would as
soon,' said he, 'take my politics from Stamboul as
from Rome.' Do you remember what happened when
Rome tried to prevent the Catholics of Ireland from
contributing to the testimonial for the greatest patriot
Ireland has ever had, Charles Stewart Parnell? But
of course you don' to I'll just tell you. Why, sir, the
whole country was on fire from end to end. 'Make
Peter's Pence into ParnelPs Pounds' was the battle-
cry, and the money poured in like rain. Mr. ParnelPs
friends had hoped to raise fifteen thousand pounds for
him. When they got the money counted at last, they
had near forty thousand pounds. What do you think
of that now?"
'I think it was fine," I said. "But why is it, then,
Ulster is so frightened?"
218 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
"Ah, Ulster isn't frightened — it's just a lot of talk
from people who live by talkin'. There's many Catho-
lics who are against Home Rule, and there's many
Protestants who are for it. They'll all be for it, after
they've tried it a while. And we won't let the Prot-
estants stay out — we can't afford to — we need them
too much. Why, sir, our leaders have always been
Protestants, and I'm thinking always will be."
"There was O'Connell," I reminded him.
"I have not forgotten him — I quoted him but a mo-
ment since; and 'tis true he was a great man and a
true patriot. But he fell into grievous error when he
chose Catholic emancipation, when he might have got
Home Rule. What did Catholic emancipation mean
to me and thousands like me1? It meant just nothing
at all. It meant that some Catholics of O'Connell's
own class could hold jobs under government — that was
all. The greatest man this island ever produced, sir,
was a Protestant. I have mentioned him already; his
name was Charles Stewart Parnell !"
I wish you could have seen his shining eyes and
heard his quivering voice as he went on to tell me about
Parnell; and how, after the scandal which ruined his
life — a scandal prearranged, so many think, by his
political enemies — he had come to Limerick to address
a meeting, with death in his face and a broken heart
in his eyes ; and there had been some in the crowd that
hissed him and pelted him with mud; and the little
tailor, his chest swelling at the old glorious memory,
told how he had been one of those who rallied around
the stricken leader and beat the crowd back and got him
O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR 219
safe away. There were tears in his eyes before he had
ended.
"Ah, woman," he went on, " 'twas not only Parnell
you ruined then, it was ould Ireland, too! And not
for the first time ! Why, sir, 'twas because of a woman
the British first came to this island. Troy had her
Helen, as Homer tells, and so had Erin. 'Twas the
same story over again. Dervorgilla the lady's name
was, and she was the wife of Tiernan O'Rourke, Prince
of Breffni, who had his fine castle on the beautiful
green banks of Lough Gill. It was there that Dermot
MacMurrough, King of Leinster, saw her, and after
that no other woman would do for him. So he courted
her in odd corners and whispered soft honeyed words
into her ear; and she listened, as women will, and her
head was turned by his flattery. One day her hus-
band, who was a pious man, kissed her good-bye and
started on a pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory in
Lough Derg; and he was there nine days; and when he
came back, what did he find ? Ah, sir, Tom Moore has
told it far better than I can :
'* 'The valley lay smiling before me,
Where lately I left her behind;
Yet I trembled, and something hung o'er me,
That saddened the joy of my mind.
I looked for the lamp which, she told me,
Should shine when her Pilgrim returned;
But, though darkness began to enfold me,
No lamp from the battlements burned!
" 'I flew to her chamber — 'twas lonely,
As if the loved tenant lay dead; —
Ah, would it were death, and death onty;
But no, the young false one had fled.
220 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
And there hung the lute that could soften
My very worst pains into bliss;
While the hand, which had waked it so often,
Now throbbed to a proud rival's kiss.' "
I wish I could convey the tremor of the voice with
which O'Connell, journeyman tailor, recited these silly
lines. I can see him yet, standing there, one hand
against his heart, his eyes straining up to the battle-
ments from which no welcoming light gleamed. I can
see the proprietor of the little shop, as he lounged
against his counter, smiling good-naturedly. I can see
the two or three other men who had drifted in, listen-
ing with all their ears.
And then O'Connell went on to tell how O'Rourke,
finding his wife had fled with MacMurrough, appealed
to his overlord, King Turlough O' Conor, and how the
two of them so harassed MacMurrough that he was
compelled to restore Dervorgilla to her husband and to
flee to England, where he went to Strongbow and
persuaded him to bring his Normans to Ireland
to help him in his feud; and how Strongbow,
once he got a firm grip on the land, refused to loosen
it, and the curse of English rule had been on Ireland
ever since.
I looked this story up, afterwards, and found that
legend tells it much as O'Connell did, and it is probably
true. But, just the same, it is hardly fair to lay the
whole blame for Ireland's woes on Dervorgilla, for the
Normans had been looking longingly across the Irish
Sea years before MacMurrough fled to them, and would
no doubt have crossed it, sooner or later, without an
invitation. The tragic point of the story is that, as
O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR 221
usual, the invader found the Irish divided and so un-
able to resist. We shall see the castle from which
Dervorgilla fled, before our journey is done, and also
the place where she lies buried, at Mellifont, in the
valley of the Boyne.
The quotation from Tom Moore had turned my
little tailor's thoughts toward poetry, and he asked if
I knew this poem and that, and when I didn't, as was
frequently the case, he would quote a few lines, or sing
them, if they had been set to music.
"Of course you know 'To the Dead of Ninety-
eight'?" he asked.
"Yes," I said; "but that is not Johnson's noblest
poem. Do you know his 'Ode to Ireland"?"
"I do not," he answered. "Let us have it, sir."
How sorry I was that I couldn't let them have it, or
didn't have a copy that I could read to them, for it is
a stirring poem; I had to confess that I didn't know
it, but I can't resist quoting one splendid stanza now —
"No swordsmen are the Christians !" Oisin cried :
"O Patrick! thine is but a little race."
Nay, ancient Oisin! they have greatly died
In battle glory and with warrior grace.
Signed with the Cross, they conquered and they fell;
Sons of the Cross, they stand:
The Prince of Peace loves righteous warfare well,
And loves thine armies, O our Holy Land!
The Lord of Hosts is with thee, and thine eyes
Shall see upon thee rise
His glory, and the blessing of His Hand.
"Have you heard Timothy Sullivan's 'Song from the
Backwoods'?" he asked me finally, and when I said I
222 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
never had, he sang it for the assembled company, and
a splendid song I found it. Here it is:
Deep in Canadian woods we've met,
From one bright island flown;
Great is the land we tread, but yet
Our hearts are with our own.
And ere we leave this shanty small,
While fades the Autumn day,
We'll toast Old Ireland!
Dear Old Ireland!
Ireland, boys, hurray!
We've heard her faults a hundred times,
The new ones and the old,
In songs and sermons, rants and rhymes,
Enlarged some fifty-fold.
But take them all, the great and small,
And this we've got to say: —
Here's dear Old Ireland!
Good Old Ireland!
Ireland, boys, hurray!
As he went on with the song, the others in the shop
warmed up to it and joined in the chorus so lustily
that a crowd gathered outside ; and the shopkeeper got
a little nervous, fearing, perhaps, a visit from some
passing constable, and he whispered in O'ConnelPs ear,
when the song was done, and there were no more songs
that evening.
But still we sat and talked and smoked and O'Con-
nell told me something of himself: of the fifteen shil-
lings a week he could earn when he had steady work;
of the three-pence a week he paid out under the in-
surance act, and how, if he was sick, he would draw
O'CONXELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR 223
a benefit of ten shillings a week for six months. He
said bitterly that, if he lived in England, he would
get free medical attendance, too, but that had been
refused to Ireland through the machinations of the
doctors and their friends. He told of the blessing the
old age pension had been to many people he knew, and
he admitted that England had been trying, of late
years, to atone for her old injustices toward Ireland,
and was now, perhaps, spending more money on the
country than she got out of it.
"But there is a saying, sir, as you know," he con-
cluded, rising and knocking out his pipe, "that hell is
paved with good intentions; and however good Eng-
land's intentions may be, she can never govern us well,
because she can never understand us. Besides, it's not
charity we want, it's freedom. Better a crust of bread
and freedom, than luxury and chains! We'll have
some hard fights, but we'll win out. Come back in
ten years, sir, and you'll see a new Ireland. Take my
word for it. It's glad I am that I came in here this
night," he added. "I was feeling downcast and dis-
heartened; but that is all over now. This talk has
been a great pleasure to me. Good-bye, sir; God save
you 1" and he disappeared into the night.
CHAPTER XV
THE RUINS AT ADARE
WE threw back the shutters, next morning, to a cold
and dreary day of misting rain ; and after a look at it,
Betty elected to spend it before a cosy fire in our great,
high-ceilinged room. I have wondered since if our
hotel at Limerick was not one of those handsome eight-
eenth-century mansions, brought by the hard necessi-
ties of time to the use of passing travellers. It is diffi-
cult to explain the gorgeousness of some of its rooms
on any other theory. Ours was a very large one, with
elaborate ceiling-mouldings and panelled walls and a
mantel of carved marble, which Betty inspected long-
ingly. She could see it, I fancy, in her own drawing-
room, and perhaps its beauties had something to do with
her decision to spend the day in front of it.
There were two or three pictures I wanted to take —
one of the old castle and another of the crooked little
lane I had wandered through the night before; so I
set forth to get them, along busy George Street, with its
bright shops, and then across the river to English Town,
and so to the castle front. I found it very hard to get
anything like a satisfactory picture of it, because the
parapet of the new bridge is in the way, and because
the angle of my lens was not wide enough to take in
both the towers. I did the best I could, took a last
look at the treaty stone, but forbore to add to its fame
by photographing it; and then traversed again the
224
THE RUINS AT ADARE 225
quaint old streets, with their ramshackle houses, and
so came to the little lane.
The town, as I came through it, had been full of
market-carts drawn by ragged donkeys and driven by
shawled women, and I loitered about for a time, hop-
ing that one of them would come this way and so add
a touch of human interest to my picture. A painter
was busy giving one of the thatched houses a coat of
white-wash; only it wasn't white-wash, properly
speaking, because a colouring-matter had been added
to it which made it a vivid pink. This pink wash is
very popular in Ireland, and, varied sometimes by a
yellow wash, adds a high note to nearly every land-
scape. I talked with the man awhile, and then, the
rain coming down more heavily, I slipped into a cob-
bler's shop for shelter.
It would be difficult to imagine anything more com-
fortless and primitive than that interior. The shop
occupied one of the two rooms of the family home —
bare little rooms with dirt floors and tiny windows and
no furniture except the most necessary. Somebody
has said that there are two pieces of furniture always
worthy of veneration — the table and the bed; but I
doubt if even that philosopher could have found any-
thing to venerate in the specimens which this house con-
tained. The table was a rude affair of rough boards,
with one corner supported by a box in lieu of a leg,
and the bed was a mere pile of rags on a sort of low
shelf in one corner. What sort of fare was set forth
upon that table, and what sort of rest the bed afforded,
was not difficult to imagine.
The cobbler was tapping away at a pair of shoes,
226 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
trying to mend them, and sadly they needed it. In-
deed, they were such shoes as no self-respecting tramp
would wear in America, and I could not but suspect
that the cobbler had fished them from a garbage heap
somewhere, and was trying, as a sort of speculation, to
make them worth a few pennies. Two or three blocks
of turf smoked and flared in a narrow fire-place, and,
as always, a black pot hung over them, with some sort
of mess bubbling inside it. The cobbler's wife sat on
a stool before the fire contemplating the boiling pot
gloomily, and a dirty child, of undeterminable sex,
played with the scraps of leather on trie floor.
I apologised for my intrusion; but the atmosphere
of the place was not genial. I fancied they resented
my presence, — as I should have done, had our positions
been reversed — and so, as soon as the downpour
slackened a bit, I pressed a penny into the baby's fist
and took myself off. The cobbler, suddenly softened,
followed me outside to see me take the picture, and
perhaps to be in it; but that picture was a failure, all
spotted by the rain.
I intended going to Adare, a little town not far
away, said to possess a most remarkable collection of
ruins, but it was yet an hour till train time, and I
spent it exploring the town back of the railway station.
I found it a most picturesque collection of crooked
streets and quaint houses, and my advent was frankly
treated as a great event by the gossips leaning over
their half-doors. How eager they were to talk; I
should have liked to stop and talk to all of them; but
when I got ready to take a picture of the very crooked-
est street, their interest in my proceedings was so urgent
THE RUINS AT ADARE 227
and humorously-expressed that I lost my head and for-
got to pull the slide — a fact I didn't realise until I had
bade them good-bye and was walking away; and then
I was ashamed to go back and take another.
The train for Adare was waiting beside the platform
when I got to the station, and I carefully selected a
vacant compartment and clambered aboard. And then
a guard came along and laughingly told me I would
have to get out, because that car was reserved for a
"Mothers' Union," which was going to Adare to hold
a meeting. So I got out and waited on the platform
till the Union arrived — some twenty or thirty com-
fortable-looking matrons, in high spirits, which the
miserable weather did not dampen in the least. Irish
meetings are held, I suppose, just the same rain or
shine. It was Simeon Ford who remarked that if the
Scotch knew enough to go in when it rained, they would
never get any outdoor exercise. This is equally true
of the Irish — only in Ireland, one doesn't need to go
in, for sure 'tis a soft rain that does nobody any
harm !
Adare is about ten miles from Limerick and the road
thither runs along the valley of the Shannon, with its
lush meadows and lovely woods, veiled that day in a
pearly mist of rain. As usual, the station is nearly
a mile from the town, and as I started to walk it, I
saw a tall old man coming along behind me, and I
waited for him.
" Tis a bad day," I said.
"It is so," he agreed; "and it's a long walk I have
before me, for my house would be two miles beyont the
yillage."
228 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
"They tell me there are some fine ruins in the vil-
lage."
"There are so;" and then he looked at me more at-
tentively. "You're not a native of these parts?" he
asked, at last.
"No," I said; "I'm from America."
"From America !" he echoed, incredulously.
"Yes; from the state called Ohio."
"Think of that, now!" he cried. "And I can un-
derstand every word you say ! Why, glory be to God,
you speak fairer than the old woman up here along who
has never crossed the road!"
I should have liked to hear more about this remark-
able old woman, but he gave me no chance with his
many questions about America. He had a son in New
Jersey, he said, and the boy was doing well, and sent
a bit of money home at Christmas and such like. It
was a wonderful place, America. Ah, if he were not so
old—
So, talking in this manner, we came to the town, and
he pointed out the inn to me, opposite a picturesque
string of thatched cottages nestling among the trees,
and bade me Godspeed and went on his way; and I
suppose that night before the fire he told of his meeting
with the wanderer from far-off America, and how well
he could understand his language!
I went on to the inn, which was a surprisingly pretty
one, new and clean and well-kept; and I took off my wet
coat and sat down in the cosy bar before a lunch which
tasted as good as any I have ever eaten ; and then I lit
my pipe and drew up before the fire and asked the
pretty maid who served me how to get to the ruins.
THE RUINS AT ADARE 229
They were all, it seemed, inside the demesne of the
Earl of Dunraven, the entrance to which was just
across the road, and it was necessary that I should have
an entrance ticket, which the maid hastened to get for
me from the proprietor of the inn. When she gave it
to me, I asked the price, and was told there was no
charge, as the Earl of Dunraven was always glad for
people to come to see the ruins.
All honour to him for that !
So it was with a very pleasant feeling about the
heart that I presently crossed the road and surrendered
a portion of my ticket to a black-eyed girl at the gate-
house, and she told me how to go to get to the ruins,
and hoped I wouldn't be soaked through. But I didn't
mind the rain ; it only added to the beauty of the park.
Besides, I was thinking of "Silken Thomas."
Have you ever heard of "Silken Thomas," tenth
Earl of Kildare1? Probably not; yet he was a great
man in his day — not so great as his grandfather, that
greatest of the Geraldines, whose trial for treason be-
fore Henry VII is a thing Irishmen love to remember.
"This man burned the cathedral at Cashel," said the
prosecutor, "and we will prove it."
"Spare your evidence," said the Earl. "I admit
that I set fire to the church, but 'twas only because I
thought the archbishop was inside."
"All Ireland cannot rule this man !" cried one of his
opponents.
"Then, by God, this man shall rule all Ireland!"
said the King, and Kildare was made lord lieutenant,
and went back to Dublin in triumph.
It was in the thirteenth century that Adare came into
230 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
possession of this mighty family, and the second Earl
built a great castle here, on the site of an older one
which had belonged to the dispossessed O'Donovans.
The first Earl had already built near by a monastery
for the Augustinians ; and another Earl and his pious
wife built a yet handsomer one for the Franciscans ; so
that here was citadel and sanctuary for them, when
they grew weary of fighting, or when the tide of battle
went against them. It was a Kildare who led the
northern half of Ireland against the southern, at the
great battle of Knocktow, where Irishmen slew each
other by thousands, while the English looked on and
chuckled in their sleeves; and after that, the Kildares
waxed so powerful that Wolsey, the great minister of
the eighth Henry, took alarm at their over-vaulting
ambition, and caused the head of the house, the ninth
Earl, to be summoned to London. He went unwill-
ingly, though he had been given every assurance of
safety; and his misgivings proved well-founded, for
he was at once imprisoned in the Tower.
He left behind him in Ireland his son, "Silken"
Thomas, so-called from the richness of his attire and
retinue, a youth of twenty-one; and when the news
came that the old Earl had been put to death, Silken
Thomas, deeming it credible enough, renounced his
allegiance to England, marched into Dublin, and threw
down his sword of state before the Chancellor and
Archbishop in St. Mary's Abbey, and then rode boldly
forth again, none daring to stop him. But it came to
naught, for a great English force wore him out in a
long campaign, seduced his allies from him, and finally
persuaded him to yield on condition that his life should
THE RUINS AT ADARE 231
be spared. He sailed for England, assured of a par-
don, was arrested as soon as he landed, and was be-
headed, and drawn and quartered on Tower Hill, to-
gether with five of his kinsmen.
So ended the haughty Geraldines. The estate was
confiscated, and the castle, after being besieged by
Desmonds and O'Connells, by Irish and by English,
was finally taken by Cromwell's men and destroyed,
and they also, perhaps, put the finishing touches to the
monasteries.
That was the wild old story I was thinking of as I
made my way along the winding road, over a beautiful
little stream in which I could see the trout lurking, and
then across a golf ground to the ivy-draped ruins of the
old abbey of the Franciscans, built by the Geraldines
in the heyday of their power. It is a beautiful cluster
of buildings, with a graceful square tower rising high
above them; and they are in excellent preservation,
lacking only the roofs and a portion of gable here and
there. Even the window tracery is, for the most part,
intact.
The interior of the church is of unusual richness and
beauty, abounding in delicate detail — recessed altar-
tombs, richly-carved sedilia, arched vaults, graceful
mouldings, and the window traceries are very pure and
lovely. Here, as at Muckross, the cloisters are espe-
cially beautiful, and are perfectly preserved. They
are lighted on two sides by pointed arches arranged in
groups of three, while on the side next the church the
arches are grouped in pairs, and the fourth side is
closed in by a lovely arcade, with double octagonal
columns. Here, also as at Muckross, the friars planted
232 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
a yew tree in the centre of the court, and it is now a
venerable giant. Whether it is as deadly as the
Muckross yew I do not know.
Beyond the cloisters are the refectory and domestic
offices and dormitories, all well-preserved, and repaying
the most careful scrutiny. I don't know when I have
been more ecstatically happy than when, after examin-
ing all this beauty, I sat myself down under an arch
in the very midst of it, and smoked a pipe and gazed
and gazed.
I tore myself away at last, and made my way across
the meadow to the ruins of the castle, which I could
see looming above the trees by the river. Right on
the bank of the river it stands, and at one time there
was a moat all around it which the river fed. One
can see traces of the moat, even yet, with a fosse be-
yond, and there is enough left of the castle to show how
great and strong this citadel of the Geraldines was.
There is a high outer wall, all battlemented, pierced
by a single gate; and then an inner ward, also with
a single gate, flanked by heavy defending towers.
Within this looms the ultimate place of refuge, the
mighty donjon, forty feet square, with walls of tre-
mendous strength, and flanking towers, and every de-
vice for defence, so that one wonders how it was ever
taken.
One can still go up by the narrow stone stair, and
from the top look down upon these walls within walls,
and fancy oneself back in the Middle Ages, with their
pageantries and heroisms and picturesque mummeries;
and one can see, too, how hard and comfortless life
was then, save for the few who held wealth and power
THE CHOIR OF THE ABBEY AT ADARE
THE CASTLE OF THE GERALDINES, ADARE
THE RUINS AT ADARE 233
in their mailed fists. "The good old times!" Not
much! The sad, cruel, gruesome, selfish, treacherous
old times, whose like, thank heaven, will never be
seen again upon this earth !
The rain was pouring down in sheets as I left the
castle, but I could not forbear going back again to
the friary for a last look at it; and then I tramped
happily back along the road to the gate; and the black-
eyed girl was there to welcome me, and to say how
sorry she was that the day was so bad. But I did not
think it bad; I thought it beautiful, and said so;
only I was afraid my photographs wouldn't be worth
reproducing.
And then the girl asked me if I wouldn't come in and
sit by the fire a bit, and we had a little gossip, of
course about America. She had a married sister in
New York, she said, and she hoped some day to join
her. And then she told me that the cottage next door
was where the famous Adare cigarettes were made — an
industry started by the Earl, who grew the tobacco on
his place.
I stopped in to see the factory, and found four girls
rolling the cigarettes and a man blending the tobaccos.
He told me that the Earl had planted twenty-five acres
with tobacco, and that it did very well ; but it was not
used alone, as it was too dark, but blended with the
lighter Maryland, brought from America. I bought
a packet of the cigarettes in the interests of this narra-
tive, but they did not seem to me in any way extraor-
dinary.
I went on again and stopped in at the parish church,
which was at one time a Trinitarian Friary, or White
234 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Abbey, founded seven hundred years ago. It was fall-
ing into ruins, when the Earl, who seems omnipotent in
these parts, restored it and fitted it up as a church and
turned it over to the Catholics. There is a big school
attached to it now, and as I entered the grounds, a
white-coifed nun who was sitting at a window looking
over some papers, fled hastily. The church itself is
chiefly remarkable for a very beautiful five-lighted
window over the altar. Just outside is a handsome
Celtic cross, surmounting the fountain where the vil-
lagers get their water.
There was a store farther down the street, and I
stopped in to get some postcards. It was the most
crowded store I ever saw, the ceiling hung with tin-
ware, the shelves heaped with merchandise of every
kind, and the floor so crowded with boxes and barrels
that there was scarcely room to squeeze between them.
I remarked to the proprietor that he seemed to carry a
large stock, and he explained that he tried to have
everything anybody would want, for it was foolish to
let any money get away. While we were talking, a
girl came in to sell some eggs. She had them in a
basket, and the man took them out, but instead of
counting them, he weighed them.
I went on back to the station, after that, through the
driving rain, and I was very wet by the time I got
there — wet on the outside, that is, but warm and dry
and happy underneath. And at the station, I found
three men, who were engaged in a heated argument
as to whether a man weighed any more after he had
eaten dinner than he did before. One of the men con-
tended very earnestly that one could eat the heartiest of
THE RUINS AT ADARE 235
meals without gaining an ounce of weight if one only
took the precaution of drinking a mug or two of beer
or porter with the meal, since the drink lightened the
brain and so neutralised the weight of the food in the
stomach. He asserted that he had seen this proved
more than once, and that he was willing to bet on it.
He was also willing to bet that he could put twelve pen-
nies into a brimming glass of stout without causing
it to spill. As the village was a mile away, there was
no place to get a glass of stout and try this interesting
experiment.
And then one of the men, looking at my wet coat
and dripping cap, asked me if I had been fishing.
"No," I said. "I was tramping around through the
demesne looking at the ruins and trying to get some
pictures of them," and I tapped my camera.
He looked at the camera and then he looked at me.
"Where would you be from?" he asked.
"From America."
"From America?" he echoed in surprise. "Ah,
well," he added, after a moment's thought, "that do
seem a long way to come just to get a few photos!"
I couldn't help laughing as I agreed that it did; but
I had never before thought of it in just that way.
And then he told me that he had five brothers in
America, but he himself had been in the army, and was
minded to enlist again. In the army, one got enough
to eat and warm clothes to wear and a tight r6of to
sleep under, which was more than most men were able
to do in Ireland!
The Mothers' Union presently arrived, very wet but
very happy. I was curious to know what they had
236 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
discussed at their meeting, and what conclusions they
had reached, but the train pulled in a moment later,
and I had no time to make any inquiries. If Betty
had been along, I think I should have persuaded her to
attend that meeting; but I found her very warm and
comfortable before her fire back at Limerick, and I con-
fess that I was glad to get out of my wet things and
sit down in front of it.
At 9:25 o'clock that night, when we supposed that
most of Limerick was in bed, we heard the sound of
music and the tramp of many feet in the street below,
and looked out to see a band going past, followed by a
great crowd of men tramping silently along in the
wet. Ordinarily, I would have rushed out to see what
was up ; but I was tired, and the fire felt very good, and
so I sat down again in front of it. I have been sorry
since, for I suspect it was a Home Rule meeting, and
Limerick has a great reputation for shindies. Perhaps
O'Connell, journeyman tailor, made a speech. If he
did, I am sorrier still, for I am sure it was a good one !
There was one thing more at Limerick we wished to
see — the great butter factory of the Messrs. Cleeve, on
the other side of the Shannon. We had already seen,
rumbling through the streets of Limerick, the heavy
steam trams carrying enormous iron tanks, which collect
the milk from the country for miles around — from ten
thousand cows some one told us — and we had seen so
few industries in Ireland that it seemed worth while
to inspect this one. So, next morning, we walked
down to the water-front, past the towering, empty
warehouses, to the swing bridge which Cleeve wants to
THE RUINS AT ADARE 237
close so that his trams can get across the Shannon
without going away around by the castle.
The bridge, a very fine one, was named originally
after Wellesley, but has been re-christened after
Patrick Sarsfield, in whose honour the street which leads
up from it is also named. The swivel which allows
boats to pass and which isn't strong enough to carry
the weight of Cleeve's trams, is on the Limerick side,
and just beyond it is a statue which one naturally
thinks is Sarsfield's, until one reads the inscription at
its base and finds it is a presentment of a certain Lord
Fitzgibbon, who was killed in the charge of the Light
Brigade. Beyond that, the bridge stretches away
across the wide and rapid stream, by far the biggest
river in Ireland.
The butter factory is not far off, and we entered the
office and told the clerk who came forward that we
should like to see the place. He asked for my card,
had me write my American address on it, and then dis-
appeared with it into an inner room. There was a de-
lay of some minutes, and finally one of the Messrs.
Cleeve came out, my card in his hand.
After greeting us quite cordially, he looked at the
camera which I had under my arm, and asked if I ex-
pected to take any pictures of the place.
"Why, no," I said; "I hadn't thought of doing so.
I certainly won't if you don't want me to."
"Are you interested in the butter business?"
"Only as a private consumer."
"Or in the condensed milk business*?"
"No," I said promptly, "neither of us is interested in
that, even as consumers." And then, seeing that he
238 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
still hesitated, I explained that we were just travelling
Americans who had heard about the factory and
thought we should like to see it; but that if it was
against the rules, he had only to say so, and it would
be all right.
"It isn't against the rules," he explained. "In fact,
we welcome visitors ; only we have to be careful. We
have some secret processes, especially with our con-
densed milk, which we wouldn't care to have our com-
petitors know about. But I'm sure you're all right,"
he added, and called a clerk and told him to show us
everything.
Most interesting we found it, for twenty-three mil-
lion gallons of milk are used there every year, and are
converted not only into butter and condensed milk,
but into buttons and cigarette holders and all sorts of
things for which celluloid is commonly used. It was
in this use of one of the by-products of the business,
casein, so our guide explained, that much of the profit
was made, since both the butter and the condensed
milk had to be sold on a very close margin.
The factory is a very complete one, making every-
thing it uses — its own cans and boxes, its own labels,
its own cartons, its containers of every kind and shape,
as well as their contents. And the machinery with
which this is done is very intricate and ingenious.
Our guide said that one of the principal hazards of
the business was the likelihood that some new machine
would be invented at any time to displace the old ones,
and would have to be purchased in order to keep
abreast of competition.
We saw the long troughs into which the milk is
THE RUINS AT ADARE 239
poured and strained and heated to Pasteurize it, and
then run through the separators. In the next room were
the great churns, from which the yellow butter was be-
ing taken; and beyond were the mechanical kneaders,
which worked out the superfluous water and worked in
the salt; and then the butter was put through a machine
which divided it into blocks weighing a pound or two
pounds, and then each of these blocks was carefully
weighed, to be sure that it was full weight, and if it
wasn't a little dab of butter was added before it was
wrapped up and placed in the carton. And during
all these processes it was never touched by any human
finger.
On the floor above were the great copper retorts in
which the milk was being condensed by boiling. We
looked in through a little isinglassed opening, and
could see it seething like a volcano. And still higher
up were the machines which turned the hardened casein,
which would otherwise be wasted, into buttons and
novelties of various kinds. The place seemed very
prosperous and well-managed, and, so our guide as-
sured us, was doing well. We were glad to find one
such place in southern Ireland.
Of course there are many others ; and perhaps the im-
pression I have given of Limerick does the town injus-
tice, for it is a busy place. It is famous for its bacon,
to the making of which ten thousand pigs are sacrificed
weekly. It used also to be famous for its lace, worked
by hand on fine net; but Limerick lace is made almost
everywhere nowadays except at Limerick, although
there is a successful school there, I believe, in one of
the convents.
240 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
The name of the town has also passed into the lan-
guage as that of a distinctive five-line stanza, which
Edward Lear made famous, and of which such distin-
guished poets as Rudyard Kipling, Cosmo Monkhouse,
George du Maurier, Gelett Burgess and Carolyn Wells
have written famous examples. The limerick is said
to have been originally an extempore composition, a lot
of people getting together and composing limericks, in
turn, as a sort of game designed to while away an
evening. Whether this was first done at Limerick I
don't know, but the name came from the chorus which
was sung after every stanza in order to give the next
person time to get his limerick into shape:
Oh, won't you come up, come up, come up,
Oh, won't you come up to Limerick?
Oh, won't you come up, come all the way up,
Come all the way up to Limerick?
At least, that is the way I heard the chorus sung once,
many years ago, without understanding in the least
what it meant. The invitation, of course, is for the
passing ship to enter the wide estuary of the Shannon
and sail up to Limerick's waiting quays. If the first
limerick was composed at Limerick, it must have been
a long time ago, and I doubt if any are produced there
nowadays.
We took a last stroll about the town, after we had
seen the butter-making, and looked at the great artil-
lery barracks, and the big market, and the mammoth
jail and the still more mammoth lunatic asylum, where
the inmates are decked out in bright red bonnets, which
I should think would make them madder still. And
THE RUINS AT ADARE 241
then we walked through an open space called the Peo-
ple's Park, whose principal ornament is a tall column
surmounted by the statue of a man named Spring Rice.
Betty remarked that she had heard of spring wheat, but
never of Spring Rice, and asked who he was; but I
didn't know ; and then we came to the Carnegie Library,
and went inside to see what it was like.
I have seldom seen a drearier place. In the reading-
room a few shabby men were looking over some news-
papers, but the rest of the building was deserted, ex-
cept for one old man, who may have been the librarian.
There were few books, and the names of those the
library had were arranged in a remarkable mechanism
which resembled a lot of miniature post-office boxes;
and when the book was in, the name was turned out to-
ward you, and when it was out, the card was turned
blank-side out. It was the most complicated thing I
ever saw in a public library. I suppose after a while,
when the library gets more books, this bulletin will be
used only for the newer ones ; but I don't imagine there
is a great demand for books in Limerick. At least
mighty few seemed to be in circulation. Where life's
realities are so bitter, where want is always at one's
heels, there is little time for intellectual recreation.
How bitter those realities are we realised, as we had
never done before, on our way back to the station ; for,
on the doorstep of a low, little house, sat a ragged girl
of six or eight, cuddling her doll against her breast
and crooning to it softly. And the doll was just a
block of turf, with a scrap of dirty rag for a dress.
CHAPTER XVI
I HAVE already spoken of the wonders of the River
Shannon, which rises in a bubbling cauldron away
above Lough Allen, and flows down through ten coun-
ties to the sea; widening into lakes twenty miles long,
or draining vast stretches of impassable bog; navigable
for more than two hundred miles ; and, finally, the great
barrier between eastern Ireland, which the Danes and
English over-ran and conquered, and western Ireland,
which has never ceased to be Irish, and where the old
Gaelic is still the language of the people.
The most beautiful portion of the river lies between
Lough Derg, at whose lower end stands the ancient
town of Killaloe, and Limerick, which marks the limit
of the tideway. In this twenty-mile stretch, the river,
for the first and last time in its course, is crowded in
between high hills, and runs swift and deep and strong.
It was this stretch we started out from Limerick,
that day, to explore, and our first stopping-place was
Castleconnell, about halfway to Killaloe. We found
it a perfect gem of a town, situated most romantically
on the left bank of the river, and with one of the nicest,
cleanest, most satisfactory little inns I have ever seen.
It reminded us of our inn at Killarney, for it was a
rambling, two-storied structure, and the resort of fish-
ermen. Castleconnell, as the guide-book puts it, is
the Utopia of Irish anglers. I can well believe it, for
242
".WHERE THE SHANNON FLOWS'* 243
the salmon we saw caught at Killarney were mere
babies beside the ones which are captured here.
We made straight for the river as soon as we had di-
vested ourselves of our luggage, down along the wind-
ing village street, past the ruins of the castle which
was once the seat of the O'Briens, kings of Thomond,
and which Ginkle blew up during the siege of Lim-
erick, thinking it too dangerous a neighbour; and then
we turned upstream, close beside the water's edge, for
two or three miles. The exquisite beauty of every
vista lured us on and on — the wide, rushing river, with
its wooded banks, broken here and there by green
lawns and white villas, lovely, restful-looking homes,
whose owners must find life a succession of pleasant
days. For this portion of the valley of the Shannon
seems to me one of the real garden spots of the world.
The river was in flood, and so not at its best for
fishing, but nevertheless we passed many anglers pa-
tiently whipping the water in the hope that, by some
accident, a passing fish might see the fly and take it.
And at last we came to the end of the river road — a
place called "World's End," where we had expected
to get tea. But the refreshment booth was closed and
there was no sign of any one in the neighbourhood.
We were very hungry therefore, when we got back to
our inn, and our high tea tasted very good indeed,
served in the pleasantest of dining rooms, on a table
with snowy linen and polished dishes and shining
silver, and by a waiter who knew his business so well
that I judged him to be French. What a pleasure that
meal was, after the slovenly service of the house at
Limerick, most of whose customers were commercial
244 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
travellers! Irish commercial travellers, I judge, are
the least fastidious of men !
Just across the street from the inn at Castleconnell
is the place where the famous Enright rods are made,
and after tea we went over to take a look at them. I
know nothing about rods, but any one could appreciate
the beauties of the masterpieces which the man in
charge showed us. And then he asked us if we
wouldn't like to try one of them, and insisted on lend-
ing us his own — hurrying home after it, and stringing
on the line and tying on the flies, and pressing it into
my hand in a very fever of good-nature. I confess
I shrank from taking it. I had a vision of some mighty
fish gobbling down the fly and dashing off with a jerk
that would crumple up the rod in my hands, and I
tried to decline it. But he wouldn't hear of it — be-
sides, there was Betty, her eyes shining at the prospect
of fishing in the Shannon.
So I took the rod at last, and we went down to the
river again, and worked our way slowly down stream,
along a path ablaze with primroses, and cast from place
to place for an hour or more. There were many others
doing the same thing, and they all seemed to think that
the fish would be sure to rise as the twilight deepened.
But they didn't, and I saw no fish caught that day.
This didn't in the least interfere with any one's pleas-
ure, for your true angler delights quite as much in the
mere act of fishing as in actually catching fish. But
it was with a sigh of relief I finally returned the rod
intact to its owner. He said that I was welcome to
it any time I wanted it, but I did not ask for it again.
There were five or six fishermen staying at the hotel,
"WHERE THE SHANNON FLOWS" 24;
and they came in one by one, empty-handed. They
had had no luck that day — the water was too high;
but it was already falling, and they were looking for-
ward to great sport on the morrow.
That morrow was a memorable one for us, also. It
was a perfect day, and we set out, as soon as we had
breakfasted, for the falls of Doonas and St. Senan's
well, one of the most famous of the holy wells of Ire-
land. To get to it, it was necessary to cross the river,
and the only way to get across is by a ferry, which
consists of a flat-bottomed skiff, propelled by a man
armed only with a small paddle. As I looked from
the paddle to the mighty sweep of the river, rushing
headlong past, I had some misgivings, but we clambered
aboard, and the boatman pushed off.
He headed almost directly upstream, and then, when
the current caught us, managed by vigorous and skil-
ful paddling to hold his boat diagonally against it, so
that it swept us swiftly over toward the other bank,
and we touched it exactly opposite our point of de-
parture. It was an exhibition of skill which I shall not
soon forget.
We stepped ashore upon a beautiful meadow roll-
ing up to a stately, wide-flung mansion, and turned our
faces down the river. Already the fishermen were
abroad, some of them casting from the bank, but the
most out in midstream, in flat-bottomed boats like the
one we had crossed in, which two men with paddles
held steady in some miraculous way against the stream.
One was at the bow and the other at the stern, and
they did not seem to be paddling very hard, but the
boat swung slowly and steadily back and forth above
246 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
any spot which looked promising, no matter how swift
the current.
It grew swifter with every moment, for we Were ap-
proaching the rapids, and at last we came out on a
bluff overhanging them. Above the rapids, the river
flows in a broad stream forty feet deep, but here it is
broken into great flurries and whirlpools by the rocky
bed, which rises in dark irregular masses above its sur-
face, and the roar and the dash and the white foam and
flying spray are very picturesque. For nearly a mile
the tumult continues, and then the stream quiets
down again and sweeps on toward Limerick and the
sea.
We followed close beside it to a little inn called the
"Angler's Rest," set back at the edge of a pretty gar-
den, entered through a gate with three steps, on which
were graven the words of the old Irish greeting, "Cead
Mile Failte," a hundred thousand welcomes. We sat
down for a time at the margin of the river and watched
the changing water, and then set off to find St. Senan's
well.
There are really two wells. The first is in a grave-
yard, a few rods away, where a fragment of an old
church is still standing. It is a tangled and neglected
place, with the headstones tumbled every way, and
bushes and weeds running riot, but the path that leads
to the well shows evidence of frequent use. The well
itself is merely a small hollow in an outcropping of
rock — a shallow basin, about a foot in diameter, but
always miraculously full of water. I don't know how
the water gets into it, or whether it is true that the
basin is always full, but it certainly .was that day; and
"WHERE THE SHANNON FLOWS" 247
the legend is that whoever bathes his forehead in that
water will never again be troubled with headache, pro-
vided that he does it reverently, with full belief, and
with the proper prayers. The well is shadowed by a
tall hawthorn bush, and this bush is hung thick with
cheap rosaries and rags and hairpins and bits of string
and other tokens placed there by the true believers who
had tested the wonderful properties of the water. We
tested them, too, of course, and added our tokens to
the rest.
The principal well is a little farther up the road,
set back in a circle of trees and approached by a short
avenue of lindens. It is a far more important well
than the other — is one of the most famous in Ireland,
indeed — and is covered with a little shrine, which you
will find pictured opposite the next page. The shrine
is hung with rosaries and crowded with figurines and
pictures of the Virgin and of various saints, among
which, I suppose, the learned in such matters might
have picked out Saint Senan, who blessed this well
and gave it its miraculous power. The trees which
encircle the glade in which the well stands are also
hung with offerings — sacred pictures, rosaries, small
vessels of gilt, and the crutches of those who came
lame and halting and went away cured. On either side
of the entrance is a bench where one may sit while say-
ing one's prayers, and in front of the shrine is a shal-
low basin, some two feet wide and a yard long, into
which the water from the well trickles, and where one
may sit and wash all infirmities away. The water is
held to be especially efficacious in curing rheumatism
and hip disease and diseases of the joints; and I only
248 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
hope the cripples who left their crutches behind them
never had need of them again.
This whole valley of the Shannon, from Killaloe to
the sea, is dominated by the patron of this well, St.
Senan, a holy man who died in 544, and whose life
resembled that of St. Kevin, whom we have already
encountered at Glendalough. Like Kevin, Senan was
persecuted by the ladies, who, in all ages, have taken
a peculiar delight in pursuing holy men, and he was fi-
nally driven to take refuge on a little island at the
mouth of the Shannon, Scattery Island, where he hoped
to be left in peace. But he was destined to disappoint-
ment, for a lady named Cannera, since sainted, fol-
lowed him and asked permission to remain. This
scene, of course, appealed to Tom Moore, and he en-
shrined it in a poem, of which this is the final stanza :
The Lady's prayer Senanus spurned;
The winds blew fresh, the bark returned ;
But legends hint that had the maid
Till morning's light delayed,
And given the Saint one rosy smile,
She ne'er had left his lonely isle.
I do not know upon what evidence Moore bases this
slander of a holy man; but, at any rate, he stayed on
his island, and built a monastery and collection of
little churches there for the use of the disciples who
soon gathered about him, and their ruins, which much
resemble those at Glendalough, even to a tall round
tower, may be seen to this day. Some antiquarians
hold that St. Senan is merely a personification of the
Shannon; but I don't see how a personification could
THE SHANNON, NEAR WORLD'S END
ST. SENAN'S WELL
"WHERE THE SHANNON FLOWS" 249
build a collection of churches. It is more satisfactory,
anyway, to think of him as a person who once existed,
and lived a picturesque life, and built churches and
blessed holy wells, and died at a ripe age in the odour
of sanctity.
We sat for a long time before his shrine, looking at
the tokens and the crutches, and wishing we had been
there the day they were abandoned. To be made
whole by faith is a wonderful thing, whatever form
the faith may take, and I should like to have seen the
faces of the cripples as they felt the miracle working
within them, here in this obscure place. Unlettered
they no doubt were, unable to read or write perhaps,
believing this flat and stable earth the centre about
which the universe revolves; but they touched heights
that day which such sophisticated and cynically scepti-
cal persons as you and I can never reach.
We left the shrine, at last, and made our way back
to the river, and up along it, past the rapids, to the
ferry. The ferryman was watching for us, and had
us back on the Castleconnell side in short order. He
evidently considered the sixpence I gave him a munif-
icent reward for the double trip.
When we got back up into the village, we found
it in the throes of a great excitement over the arrival
of three itinerant musicians, two of whom played cor-
nets, while the third banged with little sticks upon a
stringed instrument suspended in front of him. The
cornetists paused from time to time, to make short
excursions, cap in hand, in search of pennies, but the
third man never stopped, but kept playing away all
up the street and out of sight. We came across them
250 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
again when we walked over to the station to take the
train for Killaloe; but I judge their harvest was a
slender one, for the people who hung out of gates and
over doors to listen to the music, disappeared promptly
whenever the collectors started on their rounds.
We had a little while to wait at the station, and I
got into talk with the signalman, who told me he had
a brother, a Jesuit priest, in Maryland, and who wanted
to hear about America, whither he hoped to be able to
come some day. That it would be at best a far-off
day I judged from the wistful way in which he said it.
And then he saw that I was interested in the signal-
system by which the trains on his little branch were
managed, and he explained it to me. For each section
of the road there is a hollow iron tube, some two feet
long, with brass rings around it, called a staff. The
engine-driver brings one of these staffs in with him,
and this must be deposited in an automatic device in
the signal-house and another received from the signal-
man before the train can proceed. When the staff is
deposited in the machine, it automatically signals the
next station and releases the staff in the machine there,
ready to be given to the engineer of the approaching
train. No staff, once placed in the machine, can be
got out again until it is released in this way, and as no
train can leave a station until its engineer has received
a staff, it is practically impossible for two trains to
be on the same section of road at the same time. The
system is rather slow, but it is sure; and being auto-
matic, it leaves nothing to chance, or to the vagaries of
either engineer or signalman.
The bell rang, signalling the approach of our train,
"WHERE THE SHANNON FLOWS" 251
the signalman carefully closed the gates across the
highway which ran past the station, and a crowd of
men and boys collected, to whom the arrival of the
train was the most important and interesting event of
the day; and then it puffed slowly in, and we climbed
aboard. Killaloe is only ten miles or so from Castle-
connell, but we had to change at a station called Bird
Hill; and then the line ran close beside the Shannon,
with lofty hills crowding down upon it, and at last we
saw the beautiful bridge which spans the river, and be-
yond it the spires and roofs of the little town.
Not unless one knows one's Irish history will one
realise what a wonderful place Killaloe is ; for Killaloe
is none other than Kincora, a word to stir Irish hearts,
the stronghold of the greatest of Irish kings, Brian
Boru. When that great chieftain fell at Clontarf,
MacLiag, his minstrel, wrote a lament for him in the old
Gaelic, and James Clarence Mangan has rendered it
into an English version, of which this is the first stanza :
O, where, Kincora, is Brian the Great*?
And where is the beauty that once was thine?
O, where are the princes and nobles that sate
At the feast in thy halls, and drank the red wine ?
Where, O, Kincora?
It was by no mere chance that Kincora, the seat of
the Kings of Thomond, was situated just here, for it
was this point which controlled the valley of the lower
Shannon. Limerick marks the head of the tideway
navigable from the sea, then come fifteen miles of rush-
ing torrent, of fall and rapid, which no boat can pass;
and then comes the long stretch of placid lake and river
252 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
over which boats may go as far as the ford of Athlone,
and farther. Between Athlone and the sea, there was
just one ford — a treacherous and hidden one, it is true,
possible only to those who knew every step of it, but
still a ford — and it was here, a little above the present
town of Killaloe, where Lough Derg begins to narrow
between the hills.
Brian was born here in 941. Twenty years before,
the Danes had sailed in force up the Shannon and for-
tified the island at the head of the tideway which is
now the oldest part of Limerick. They set themselves
to ravage the wide and fertile valley, to sack the shrines
of the churches, to exact tribute from every chieftain
— nay, from every family. MacLiag, Brian's bard,
author of that old epic, "The Wars of the Gael with
the Gall," another Homer almost, who told the story
of Danish oppression down to their final defeat at
Clontarf, thus described the burden under which, in
those days, the people of Ireland groaned:
"Such was the oppressiveness of the tribute and the rent
of the foreigners over all Erin, that there was a king from
them over every territory, a chief over every chieftaincy, an
abbot over every church, a steward over every village, and
a soldier in every house, so that no man of Erin had power
to give even the milk of his cow, nor as much as the clutch
of eggs of one hen, in succour or in kindness to an aged man,
or to a friend, but was forced to keep them for the foreign
steward or bailiff or soldier. And though there were but
one milk-giving cow in the house, she durst not be milked
for an infant of one night, nor for a sick person, but must
be kept for the foreigner; and however long he might be
absent from the house, his share or his supply durst not be
lessened."
"WHERE THE SHANNON FLOWS" 253
Brian had an elder brother, Marion, who was king
of South Munster, and dwelt at Cashel, and the two
did what they could against the invaders, killing them
off "in twos and in threes, in fives and in scores"; but
always fresh hordes poured in, and at last Mahon grew
disheartened at the seemingly endless struggle against
these stark, mail-clad warriors; while as for Brian, his
force was reduced to a mere tattered handful, hiding
in the hills. Then it was that he and Mahon met to
discuss the future.
"But where hast thou left thy followers?" Mahon
asked, looking at the men, only a score in number,
standing behind their chief.
"I have left them," answered Brian, "on the field of
battle."
"Ah," said Mahon, sadly. "Is it so? You see how
little we can do against these foreigners."
"Little as it is," said Brian, "it is better than peace."
"But it is folly to keep on fighting," said Mahon.
"We can not conquer these shining warriors, clad in
their polished corselets. The part of wisdom is to
make terms with them, and leave no more of our men
dead upon the field."
"It is natural for men to die," answered Brian
calmly; "but it is neither the nature nor the inheritance
of the Dalcassians to submit to injury and outrage.
And yet I have no wish to lead any unwilling man to
battle. Let the question of war or peace be left to the
whole clan."
So it was done, and "the voice of hundreds as of one
man answered for war."
Mahon abode loyally by this decision, and there
254 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
was a great muster, and a fierce battle near the spot
where Limerick Junction now stands, and the Danes
were routed, "and fled to the ditches, and to the val-
leys, and to the solitudes of that great sweet-flowery
plain," and the Irish pursued them all through the
night, and with the morning, came to Limerick, and
stormed and took the island fortress; plundered it,
and reduced it "to a cloud of smoke and red fire after-
wards."
Then Mahon was murdered by some such treachery
as stains so many pages of Irish history, and Brian be-
came king of all Munster. His first work was to
punish his brother's murderers, which he did with grim
celerity, so that, as the chronicler puts it, they soon
found that he "was not a stone in place of an egg, nor
a wisp in place of a club, but a hero in place of a
hero, and valour in place of valour." After that, with
new energy, he turned against the Danes, and harried
them and was himself harried, defeated them and was
himself defeated, but fought on undaunted year after
year, until the final great victory at Clontarf, where he
himself was slain. And during all the years that he
was king of Munster, he ruled it, not from Cashel, but
from Kincora, his well-beloved castle here at the ford
of the Shannon.
The ford is no longer there, for an elaborate system
of sluice-gates and weirs has been constructed to hold
the water back and regulate the supply to the lower
reaches of the river, and one crosses to the town upon
a beautiful stone bridge of thirteen arches, between
which the water swirls and eddies, forming deep pools,
where great salmon love to lurk. At its other end is
"WHERE THE SHANNON FLOWS" 255
the town, with its houses mounting the steep slope from
the river, and dominated by the square tower of its old
cathedral.
It was to the cathedral we went first, and a venerable
pile we found it, dating from the twelfth century, and
attributed to that same Donall O'Brien, King of Mun-
ster, who built the one at Limerick. But, alas, it is
venerable only from without; as one steps through the
doprway, all illusion of age vanishes, for the interior
has been "improved" to suit the needs of a small Church
of Ireland congregation.
The Protestants in this parish are so few that the
choir of the cathedral is more than ample for them; so
it has been closed off from the rest of the church by a
glass screen with hideous wooden "tracery" — there is
a rose window (think of it!) sawed out of boards; and
beyond this screen an ugly pavement of black and yel-
low tiles has been laid over the beautiful grey flags of
the old pavement, and pews have been installed. One
of the transepts is used as a robing-room; in the other
an elaborate combination of steam-engine, dynamo and
storage-batteries has been placed to furnish heat and
light — and this, mind you, in the church which was
once the royal bury ing-place of the Kings of Mun-
ster!
It seems foolish to maintain a great church like this
for the use of so small a congregation as worships here,
and yet the same thing is done all over Ireland, though
it would seem to be only common sense to give the big
churches to the big congregations, and to provide small
churches for the small ones. But I suppose no one in
Ireland would dare make such a suggestion.
256 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
I am surprised that the energetic vicar of this parish
has not decided that the church is too dark and hired
some workmen to knock out the lancet windows.
These windows are one of its chief beauties, they are
so tall, so narrow, so deeply splayed — the very earliest
form, before the builders gathered courage to cut any
but the smallest openings in their walls. And in the
wall of the nave, blocked up and with use unexplained,
is a magnificent Irish-Romanesque doorway. Tradi-
tion has it that it was the entrance to the tomb of
King Murtough O'Brien, and its date is placed at the
beginning of the twelfth century. The man who built
it was an artist, for nothing could be more graceful
than its four semi-circular arches, rising one beyond
the other and covered with ornamentation — spiral and
leaf work, grotesque animals with tails twined into
the hair of human heads, flowers and lozenges, and the
familiar dog-tooth pattern, of which the Irish were so
fond.
Interesting as the church is, or would be but for the
"improvements," it is far outranked by a tiny stone
structure just outside — the parish church of Brian Boru
himself. It is less than thirty feet long, and the walls
are nearly four feet thick, and the two narrow windows
which light it, one on either side, are loopholes rather
than windows ; and the doorway by which it is entered,
narrower at the top than at the bottom, is a veritable
gem; and the high-pitched roof of fitted blocks of stone
is twice as high as the walls; — and on the stone slabs
of its pavement Brian Boru was wont to kneel in
prayer, five centuries before Columbus sailed out of
Palos!
"WHERE THE SHANNON FLOWS" 257
Of course I wanted a picture of this shrine ; but there
were difficulties, for it stands in a little depression
which conceals part of it, and the high wall around
the churchyard prevented my getting far enough away
to get all of the high-pitched roof on the film. The
caretaker, who was most interested in my manoeuvres,
brought a ladder at last, and I mounted to the top of
the wall, and took the picture opposite the next page ;
but, even then, I didn't get it all.
The graveyard about these churches is a large one,
but it is crowded with tombs; and the north half of
it is mown and orderly, and the south half is almost
impenetrable because of the rank and matted grass and
weeds and nettles. This is the result of an old quarrel,
more foolish than most. For, like Ireland itself, this
graveyard is divided between Protestants and Catholics,
the Protestants to the north and the Catholics to the
south of the church ; and the Protestants consider their
duty done when they have cared for the graves in their
own half; while the Catholics hold that, since the Prot-
estants claim the cathedral, they are bound to look
after its precincts ; and the result is that the visitor to
those precincts is half the time floundering knee-deep
in weeds.
The most interesting tomb in the place is in the midst
of this tangle, therefore a Catholic's. It bears the date
1719, and is most elaborately decorated with carved
figures — one kneeling above the legend, "This is the
way to Blis"; another, a man with crossed arms, in-
quiring, "What am I? What is man?" — two ques-
tions which have posed the greatest of philosophers.
One panel bears this sestet:
258 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
How sweetly rest Christ's saints in love
That in his presence bee.
My dearest friends with Christ above
Thim wil I go and see
And all my friends in Christ below
Will post soon after me.
We left the place, at last, and walked on along the
street, peeping in between the bars of an iron gate at
the beautiful grounds of the Bishop's palace ; and then
up a steep and narrow lane to the little plateau which
is now the town's market-place, but where, in the old
days, Brian's palace of Kincora stood. Not a stone
is left of that palace now, for the wild men of Con-
naught swept down from the mountains, in the twelfth
century, while the English were trying to hold the castle
and so control the destinies of Clare, and drove the
intruders out, and tore the castle stone from stone, and
threw timber and stone alike into the Shannon. Just
beyond the square stands the Catholic church — a barn-
like modern structure, hastily thrown together to shel-
ter the swarming congregation, for which the cathedral
would be none too large.
We went on down the hill, past the canal, with the
roaring river beyond, and the purple vistas of Lough
Derg opening between the hills in the distance, along
an avenue of noble trees, and there before us lay a
great double rath, sloping steeply to the river, built
here to guard the ford. The ford lies there before it —
a ford no longer, since the sluices back up the water;
but in the old days this was the key to County Clare,
this was the path taken by the men of Connaught in
raid and foray; and here it was that Sarsneld, with four
'<JUI*^
THE BRIDGE AT KILLALOE
THE ORATORY AT KILLALOE
"WHERE THE SHANNON FLOWS" 259
hundred men, followed Hogan the rapparee, on that
night expedition which resulted in the destruction of
the English ammunition-train. Aubrey de Vere has
told the story in a spirited little poem, beginning,
Sarsfield went out the Dutch to rout,
And to take and break their cannon;
To Mass went he at half past three,
And at four he crossed the Shannon.
We had hoped to go to Athlone by way of Lough
Derg, but we had already learned that that was not to
be, for we had been told, back at the bridge, that the
passenger service across the lake would not start until
the sixteenth of June. And we were sorry, for, from
the summit of this old rath, the lake, stretching away
into the misty distance, looked very beautiful and in-
viting.
We made our way back to the village and stopped
in at a nice little hotel just below the bridge, and had
tea, served most appetizingly by a clean, bright-eyed
maid; and then, while Betty sat down to rest, I sal-
lied forth to see, if possible, the greatest curiosity of
all about Killaloe — the original church or oratory of
St. Molua, on an island near the left bank of the Shan-
non, about half a mile downstream.
Now to get back to St. Molua, one has to go a long
way indeed, for he died three hundred years before
Brian Boru was born. He was the first bishop of
Killaloe, which is named after him, "cill" meaning
church, and Killaloe being merely a contraction of Cill
Molua, the church of Molua. The little oratory on
the island, to which he retired for contemplation, after
260 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the manner of Irish saints, was built not later than the
year 600.
You will understand, therefore, why I was so eager
to see it, and I went into the bar to consult with the
barmaid as to the best manner of getting to it. I had
been told that it was possible to reach it from the left
bank of the river without the aid of a boat, but the
maid assured me this could be done only when the river
was low, and was out of the question in the present
stage of the water. So she went to the door and called
to a passing boatman, and explained my wishes, and
he at once volunteered to ferry me over to the island.
His house, he said, was just opposite the island, and
his boat was tied up at the landing there ; so we walked
down to it, along the bank of the canal which parallels
the river.
A little way down the canal was a mill, and a boat
was tied up in front of it unloading some grain, and
when I looked into the boat, I saw that the grain was
shelled Indian corn ! It was not from America, how-
ever, but from Russia, and my companion told me that
quite a demand for cornmeal was growing up in the
neighbourhood, and that it was used mixed with flour.
And then he listened, his eyes round with wonder, while
I told him how corn grows. * He had never seen it on
the ear, and did not know the meaning of the word
"cob," except as applied to a horse.
"And of course you have seen bananas growing !" he
said, when I had finished, and I think he scarcely be-
lieved me when I tried to explain that a country warm
enough for corn might still be too cold for bananas.
We finally reached his house — a little hovel built on
"WHERE THE SHANNON FLOWS" 261
a bluff overhanging the river — and went down some
rude stone steps to the water's edge ; and he unchained
his boat, and whistled to his dog, and pushed off. It
was quite an exciting paddle, for the current was very
swift; but we got across to the island at last, after
some hair-raising scrapings against rocks and over sub-
merged reefs. We found the island a tangle of weeds
and briars, but we broke our way through, and after
some searching, found the tiny church, almost hidden
by the bushes about it. They were so thick that I
found it quite impossible to get a picture of the whole
church, but by breaking down some of them, I finally
managed to get a picture of the narrow inclined
doorway, with my guide's dog posing on the thresh-
old.
The oratory is built solidly of stone, with walls three
feet thick, and a steep stone roof. Its inside measure-
ments are ten feet by six ! There is a single window,
with a round head cut out of a block of stone, and in the
wall on either side just below it is a shallow recess.
The ceiling has fallen in, but one can still see the holes
in the walls where the supporting beams rested. Above
it, under the steep roof, was a croft, where perhaps
the saint slept.
Consider, for a moment, what was going on in the
world when this little church was built. It takes us
back to the age of legend — the age of King Arthur and
his knights — to that dim period when the Saxons were
conquering England, and the Frankish kingdom was
falling to pieces, and Mohammed was preaching his
gospel in Arabia. A century and a half would elapse
before Charlemagne was born, and two centuries be-
262 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
fore the first Norse boat, driving westward before the
tempest, touched the New England coast!
There is, of course, a holy well on the island — the
one at which St. Molua drank; and we found it after
a long search, but the river was so high that it was
under two or three feet of water. There were some
rags and other tokens hanging on the neighbouring
bushes, but not many, and I judge that few people ever
come to this historic spot.
At last I was ready to go, and we climbed into the
boat and started for the mainland; and once I thought
we were surely going to capsize, for the boat got out
of control and banged into a rock; but we finally
stemmed the current, and the boatman dropped his
paddle and snatched up a pole, and pushed along so
close to the shore that the overhanging branches slapped
us in the face, and the dog, thinking we were going to
land, made a wild leap for the bank, fell short, and
nearly drowned.
When we were safe again at the landing-place, and
the boat tied up, I asked my companion how much I
owed him for his trouble.
"Not a penny, sir," he said, warmly. "It's glad I
am to oblige a pleasant gentleman like yourself."
"Oh, but look here," I protested, "that won't do,"
and I fished through my pockets and was appalled to
find that I had only nine-pence in change. "Wait till
we get back to the hotel," I said, "and I'll get some
money."
"What is that you have in your hand, sir?'
"Oh, that's only nine-pence."
"That would be far too much, sir," he said ; and when
ENTRANCE TO ST. MOLUA's ORATORY
A FISHERMAN'S HOME
"WHERE THE SHANNON FLOWS" 263
I hesitatingly gave it to him, he as hesitatingly took
it, and I really believe he was in earnest in thinking
it too much.
On our way back to the town, he expounded to me his
theory of life, which was to give faithful service to
one's employer, and help one's fellow-men when pos-
sible, and never bother unduly about the future, which
was never as black as it looked. And I agreed with
him that trouble always came butt-end first, and that,
after it had passed, it frequently dwindled to a pin-
point— the which has been said in verse somewhere, by
Sam Walter Foss I think, but I can't put my hand on
it.
We got back to Castleconnell just as the fishermen
were coming in, and it was far from empty-handed
they were this time. The array of salmon stretched
out on the floor of the bar, when they had all arrived,
was a very noble one. And everybody stood around
and looked at them proudly, and told of the enormous
flies that had been used, and how one monster had
whipped the boat around and towed it right down
through the rapids, and lucky it was that the water
was high or it would infallibly have been ripped
to pieces, but the boatmen kept their heads and man-
aged to get it through, and when the salmon came out
in the quiet river below and found itself still fast, it
gave up and let itself be gaffed without any further
fuss.
And again after dinner, we saw the familiar sight
of the catch being wrapped in straw to be sent by
parcel post back to England, as proof of the anglers'
264 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
prowess ; and I can guess how those battles on Shannon
water were fought over again when the angler got back
to the bosom of his family. As for me, I have only
to close my eyes to see again that noble stream sweep-
ing along between its green, flower-sprinkled banks,
foaming over the weirs, brawling past the rapids, hur-
rying between the quays of Limerick, and widening
into the great estuary where it meets the sea.
Into the West, where, o'er the wide Atlantic,
The lights of sunset gleam,
From its high sources in the heart of Erin
Flows the great stream.
Yet back in stormy cloud or viewless vapour
The wandering waters come,
And faithfully across the trackless heaven
Find their old home.
CHAPTER XVII
LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE
SINCE we could not get to Athlone by water, we must
needs get there by rail ; so, most regretfully, next morn-
ing, we bade good-bye to Castleconnell and took train
for Limerick. Half an hour later, we pulled out of
the Limerick terminus, circled about the town, crossed
the Shannon by a long, low bridge, and were in County
Clare.
Ruins are more numerous here than almost anywhere
else in Ireland, for this western slope of the Shannon
valley, so fertile and coveted, was famous fighting-
ground. There are one or two in sight all the time,
across the beautiful rolling meadows. Near Cratloe
there are three, their great square keeps looming above
the trees, and looking out across the wide Shannon
estuary. A little farther on is the famous seat of the
Earls of Thomond, Bunratty Castle, a fine old for-
tress, with all the approved mediaeval trimmings of
moat, guard-room, banqueting-hall, dungeons and tor-
ture-chamber, and I am sorry we did not get to visit it.
Indeed, there are many places in the neighbourhood
worth a visit — but if one is going to visit every Irish
ruin, he will need ten years for the task. Only it does
cause a pang of the heart to pass any of them by.
We must have passed at least fifty by, that day;
but I found that the train stopped for a while at Ennis,
the chief town of Clare, and I hurried out to see what
265
266 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
I could of it. It is certainly a picturesque place, with
narrow winding streets, and queer little courts, and
houses painted pink or washed with yellow ochre. I
glanced in at the new Catholic cathedral, whose most
impressive feature is a rather good picture of the ascen-
sion over the high altar; and then spent a few minutes
among the ruins of the Franciscan friary, a queer jum-
ble of buildings which I did not have time to untangle.
As usual, the two biggest buildings in the town are
the jail and the lunatic asylum, and I passed them both
on my way back to the station. Some of the lunatics
were languidly hoeing a big potato patch that day,
with five or six guards looking on. I have never looked
up the statistics of lunacy in Ireland, but if all the asy-
lums are full, the rate must be very high.
About half a mile beyond Ennis, the train passes
a most imposing ruin, very close to the railway. It is
the ruin of Clare Abbey, and is dominated by a great
square tower, which must be visible for many miles
around. There is still another ruin, that of Killone
Abbey, only a few miles away, and for a connoisseur
in ruins, Ennis would be an excellent place to spend
a few days.
From Ennis, we turned almost due northward toward
Athenry, and the landscape became the rockiest I have
ever seen. Every little field was surrounded by a high
stone wall, and as these walls did not begin to exhaust
the supply, there were great heaps of rocks in every
available comer — every one of them dug from the shal-
low soil with almost incredible labour. The fact that
any one would try to reclaim such land speaks vol-
umes for the hard necessities of the people who settled
LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE 267
here. I don't suppose they enjoyed the labour, but
they had no choice — at least, their only choice was to
wrest a living from these rocky fields or starve. No
doubt many of them did starve, but the rest kept la-
bouring on, with insect-like industry, reclaiming this
corner and that, adding to the soil of their fields inch
by inch.
There is an old saying that in this district, and in
others like it in Connaught, the first three crops are
stones, and I can well believe it. The green appear-
ance of these hillsides is a delusion and a snare, for it
is nothing but a skin of turf over the rocks, and these
rocks must be dug away to the depth of two feet,
sometimes, before the soil is reached. In any other
part of the world, a man who would attempt to convert
such a hillside into an arable field would be thought
insane; here, in the west of Ireland, it is the usual
thing. Most tragic of all, after it was fit for tillage,
it did not belong to the man whose labour had made it
so, but to his English landlord, who promptly pro-
ceeded to raise the rent!
We ran out of this rocky land, at last, and crossed a
vast bog, scarred with long, black, water-filled ditches,
from which the turf had been taken. There were a
few people here and there cutting it, but a woman who
had got into the compartment with us said that the
continued wet weather had made the work very difficult
and dangerous. All the people hereabouts, she added,
lived by the turf cutting, at which they could earn,
perhaps, ten-pence a day ; but in bad seasons they were
soon close to starvation. I remarked that, with such
wages, they must be close to it all the time, and she
268 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
smiled sadly and said that that was true. Only, of
course, in the bogs the children can work, as well as
the men and women, and that helps. Indeed, we saw
them many times — little boys and girls who should
have been at school or running free, gaining health and
strength for the hard years to come, tugging at the
heavy, water-soaked blocks of peat, and laying them
out in the sun to dry. It takes a month of sun to dry
the peat; in wet weather it won't dry at all, and so isn't
salable. Truly, the lives of the poor Irish hang on
slender threads!
There are ruins of castles and monasteries and raths
and cashels all through this region, and a lot of them
cluster about the dirty little town of Athenry, which
can boast a castle, two monasteries, city walls and an
old gate. Such richness was not to be passed by, and
we left the train, checked our luggage at the parcel
office, fought off a jarvey who was determined to drive
us to the ruins which we could see quite plainly just
across the track, crossed the road by the overhead
bridge, and came out in the streets of the vil-
lage.
Athenry is typically Irish, with streets running every
way, houses built any way, and their inhabitants lean-
ing over the half-doors, or braced against the walls at
the street corners, or going slowly about such business
as they have. Life has stood still here for at least a
century; and yet Athenry was once a royal town —
"The Ford of the Kings" its name signifies — and a
royal court was held here in the great castle, and a
beautiful monastery was built near by at the express
wish of St. Dominick himself, and it became a famous
LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE 269
place of learning, to which scholars flocked from all
over Europe. Alas and alack!
Vanished, those high conceits ! Desolate and forlorn,
We hunger against hope for that lost heritage.
For the red tide of war swept over Athenry more
than once, and left it but smoking ruins. Eleven
thousand Connaughtmen lay piled about the walls one
summer day in 1316, all that was left of the army that
tried to make Edward Bruce king of Ireland ; two cen-
turies later, when the Earls of Clanricarde swept Con-
naught with fire and sword, Athenry fell before them,
and was left in ashes; and when it struggled to its feet
again, it was only to fall before the destroying hand
of Red Hugh O'Donnell, who left scarcely one stone
upon another, and from that blow it never rallied.
One of the old gates still survives, well preserved in
spite of war and weather, and near it is a quaint old
market cross, with the Virgin and Child on one side
and Christ on the other. All that is left of the thir-
teenth century castle is the gabled keep, looming high
on a rock just back of the town, and some fragments
of the battlemented curtains. All the floors have
fallen in, and its four massive walls are open to the
heavens. Red Hugh, when he destroyed it, did his
work well !
The ruins of the abbey nestle in the shadow of the
rock on which the castle stands, and we made our way
down to them, along disordered streets swarming with
geese, ducks, dogs, chickens and children, only to find
the way closed by an iron gate, securely padlocked.
But a passer-by told us that the village blacksmith had
270 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the key, and indicated vaguely the way to his shop,
which we found after some circuitous wanderings. The
smith was a gnarled little man, quite the reverse of
Longfellow's, and as soon as we had made our errand
known, he snatched down the keys and hastened to lead
the way to the ruins, leaving his work without pausing
to remove his apron, and without a backward glance
at his helper, who stood open-mouthed by the forge.
There were three gates to unlock before we reached
the ruins, and then the blacksmith hurried back to his
work, leaving his daughter to keep an eye on us. The
church is all that is left of the monastery, for the do-
mestic buildings, and even the cloisters have been swept
entirely away by the rude hand of time, and the far
ruder ones of the villagers who needed stone for their
houses. The church itself has suffered more than most,
for not only is the roof gone, but the tower and one
transept and most of the window-tracery, and the whole
interior has been swept by a savage storm, the tombs
hacked and hewed, and the carved decorations knocked
to fragments. Doubtless if we had questioned the girl
who stood staring at us, she would have said that
"Crummell did it," and in this case, history would
bear her out, for the Puritan soldiery did do a lot of
damage here. They and the sans-culottes suffered from
the same mania — a sort of vertigo of destructiveness
before memorials of kings or Catholics!
But they couldn't destroy everything, and what is
left in this old church is well worth seeing, for there
are some graceful pointed windows, and six narrow lan-
cets in a lovely row along the north wall of the choir,
and a fine arcade in the north transept, and many de-
THE CHOIR OF THE ABBEY AT ATHENRY
A COTTAGE AT ATHENRY
LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE 271
tails of decoration beautiful in spite of mutilation.
The place is crowded with tombs, for this was the burial
place of the Dalys and the Lynchs and the De Burgos,
and is still in use as such. The tomb of the "noble
family of De Burgh" is in one corner, and there are
many mural tablets, with inscriptions in French and
Latin and Gaelic, as well as English. In fact one of
them announces in French and Latin and English,
presumably so that every one except the Irish might
read, that "here is the antient Sepulchre of the Sept of
the Walls of Droghty late demolished by the Cromel-
lians."
We went back through the town, at last, and while I
was manoeuvring for the picture opposite page 270,
Betty got into talk with a girl who was leaning over a
half-door, and found, marvellous to relate, that she had
once lived in Brookline, Mass. We asked her why she
had come back to Ireland, and after a moment's thought
she said it was because "America wasn't fair." We
thought of aristocratic Brookline, the abode of million-
aires, and then we looked about us — at the ragged
donkey standing across the way, at the pig wandering
down the middle of the dirty street, at the low lit-
tle houses and the shabby people — and perhaps we
smiled, but be sure it was in sympathy, not in deri-
sion.
We crossed over to the railway hotel, finally, and
had lunch, and when we came out, the woman who
managed the place waylaid us at the front door for a
chat. She told us of a woman from the village who
was on the Titanic, but was saved, and discussed vari-
ous scandals in high life, which she had gleaned from
272 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the half-penny press; and then we spoke of the girl we
had met in the village, and she deplored the high-and-
mighty airs which some of the girls who come home
from America give themselves.
"But I once heard one of them put well in her place,"
she added, "when she came back with her hat full of
flowers and her petticoat full of flounces, and walked
about the town as though we were all dirt beneath her
feet. Well, one day an old man. stopped her for a
word, a friend of the family who wished her well, but
she put up her nose at him — and perhaps he was not
very clean — and was for going past. But he put out
his hand and caught her by the arm. 'You're after
bein' a fine lady now/ says he, 'but I mind the time,
and that but a few years since, when I've seen ye
sittin' on your bare-backed ass, with your naked legs
hangin' down — yes, and I can be tellin' ye more than
that, if so be ye wish to hear it !' She didn't stay long
in the village after that," added the speaker, with a
chuckle of relish.
Our train came along, presently, and we were soon
running over as dreary, bleak and miserable a land as
any we had seen in Ireland. Vast boggy plains, bare
rocky hillsides, with scarcely a house to be seen any-
where— only a ruin, now and then, marking the site of
some ancient stronghold; and so, in the first dusk of
the evening, we came to Athlone.
One would have thought that, with so important a
town, the station would have been placed somewhere
near it; but habit was too strong for the builders of
the line, and so they put the station about a mile away,
at the end of a dreary stretch of road, beyond a great
LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE 273
barrack, along the river, past the castle, and over the
bridge.
Athlone has been famous for its widows ever since
the days of Molly Malone, ohone! who
Melted the hearts
Of the swains in them parts;
and we found that the best hotel in the place, which
was not as good as it might have been, was managed
by a widow, who might well have posed for the lovely
Molly. She had not been a widow long, and I judged
would not be if the swains of the town had any voice
in the matter, for the bar was very popular when she
was behind it.
We went out, after dinner, to see the town, and
found it one of the most ugly and depressing we had
yet encountered — a sort of cross between a town and
a village, but with the attractions of neither. The
water-front is its most interesting part, for a fragment
of the old castle which was built to guard the second
of the all-important fords of the Shannon still stands
there. Kincora, you will remember, guarded the other.
But Kincora was three days' march to the southward;
,and for two days' march to the northward there was
no other place where the Shannon could be crossed; and
so here at the ford just below Lough Ree, in the old
days, a franklin named Luan set up a rude little inn,
and the place came to be known as Ath Luan, Luan's
Ford — Athlone. Here in the year 1001, hostages were
sent from all Ireland to meet Brian Boru and proclaim
him High King; and here, a century later, the O'Conors
built a rath and a tower to guard the ford and levy
274 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
tribute upon all who used it. In another hundred
years, the Normans had seized it, and put up the strong,
round-towered castle, parts of which still remain; and
for seven centuries after that, the English power "sat
astride the passage of Connaught," save for the brief
time, after the battle of the Boyne, it was held by the
Irish. But Ginkle captured it, as he was soon to cap-
ture Limerick, and a few years later, most of what was
left of the town was destroyed when the magazine of
the castle blew up during a thunderstorm.
But though there is little in Athlone to delay the
visitor, there are two places in the neighbourhood worth
seeing. Nine miles to the north is Lissoy, made im-
mortal by Goldsmith as
Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain;
and ten miles to the south, on the bank of the Shan-
non, are the ruins of Clonmacnoise, whither, twelve
centuries ago, men in search of knowledge turned their
faces from all the corners of Europe.
It was for Lissoy we started next morning, on a car
for which I had bargained the night before. Our jar-
vey was a loquacious old fellow, who talked unceas-
ingly, but in so broken a brogue that it was only with
the greatest difficulty we could follow him. He had
known some people who had gone down on the Titanic,
and he told us all about them; but most of his talk
was a lament for the hard times, the sorrowful state
of the country, the paucity of tourists, and the vagaries
of the landlady, of whom he spoke in the most mourn-
ful and pessimistic way. She was not, I gathered,
LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE 275
a native of Athlone, but a Dublin woman whose ideas
were new-fangled and highfalutin, and who, I inferred,
did not look kindly upon the careless habits of her
"help."
The road lay through a pleasant, rolling country,
with glimpses of Lough Ree to the left, and on a hill
to the right a tall shaft which our jarvey told us
marked the exact centre of Ireland. When one looks
at the map, one sees that it is at least somewhere near
the centre. But it has been explained to other pass-
ers-by in many ways : as the remains of a round tower,
as a tower which a rich man built in order to mount
to the top of it every day to count his sheep, as a pole
for his tent put up by Finn MacCool, as a wind-mill
in the old days, and as a dozen other things — any-
thing, in fact, that happened to occur to the man who
was asked the question. One answer, you may be sure,
he never made, and that was that he didn't know!
There are some remains of old windmills in the
neighbourhood — we saw one or two on near-by hill-
sides, close enough to recognise them; and if I had
known at the time what a divergence of opinion there
was about that lonely tower in the distance, I would
have driven over to it and investigated it on my own
hook. But our jarvey's answer was so positive that
it left no room for doubt, so we drove on through a vil-
lage of tiny thatched houses, with the smoke of the
turf giving a pleasant tang to the air; then up a long
hill, to the left at a cross-roads, and at last our jarvey
drew up before a five-barred gate. We looked at him
questioningly, for there was no village in sight.
" 'Tis here it was, sir," he said, "sweet Auburn, the
276 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
loveliest village of the plain. 'Twas up that path
yonder the village preacher's modest mansion rose,
though there is little enough left of it now; and over
yonder, behind that wall with the yellow furze atop
it, unprofitably gay, was where the village master
taught his little school, and there is nothing at all left
of that; and a little furder on is the 'Three Jolly
Pigeons,' where news much older than the ale went
round."
I looked at him wonderingly.
"Where did you pick up all that patter?' I asked.
He snickered.
"Ah, you would not be the first gintleman I have
driven out here, sir," he explained; "and many of them
would be speakin' parts of the poem."
"I suppose ale is still to be obtained at the 'Three
Jolly Pigeons'?"
"It is, sir, if so be your honour would be wantin'
some. And they have one of the big stones of the old
mill for a doorstep," he added, as an extra induce-
ment not to pass it by.
We got down from our seats, went through the gate,
and up the path which Goldsmith and his father trod
so many times; for, whether or not Lissoy was really
Auburn, there can be no doubt that the elder Gold-
smith was really vicar here, and that he lived in the
house, the rectory of Kilkenny West, of which only a
fragment of the front wall remains, and that Oliver
was a boy here. The ash trees which shadowed the
path have disappeared, but there are still plenty of
gabbling geese around, and a file of them went past as
I took a picture of the remnant of the rectory. A shed
THE GOLDSMITH RECTORY AT LISSOY
THE "THREE JOLLY PIGEONS"
LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE 277
with a hideous roof of corrugated iron has been built
behind it, and near by is a two-storied house where the
present tenant lives. We found an old woman, for
all the world like Goldsmith's "widowed, solitary
thing," carding wool in an outhouse, and she showed us
the old well, deep in the ground, walled around and
approached by a steep flight of steps.
There was nothing more to see, so we went back to
the gate, escorted by three friendly pigs, and clambered
up to our seats again, and looked out over the valley.
There is nothing in that valley but gently-rolling pas-
tures, and nothing lives there now but sheep and cat-
tle. And it sends a chill up the spine to realise that
once a village stood there, and that it has melted away
into the earth. Not a stone is left of its houses, not a
sod of its walls, not a flower of its gardens.
But that village was Lissoy, not Auburn. No such
village as Auburn ever existed in Ireland, where the
young folks sported on the village green, and the swain
responsive to the milkmaid sung, and the village mas-
ter taught his school during the day, and argued with
the preacher in the evening, and a jolly crowd gath-
ered every night at the inn to drink the nut-brown
ale. There is not a single Irish detail in that picture;
it is all English, just as Goldsmith intended it should
be, for it was of "England's griefs" he was writing,
not of Ireland's. In that day, few people here in West-
meath spoke anything but Irish; the village children
knew nothing of schools, except hedge-row ones, taught
by some fugitive priest; the "honest rustics" had no
"decent churches," but only hidden caves in dark val-
leys, where Mass was said secretly and at the risk of
278 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
life; and, rest assured, when any inhabitant of this
valley had money to spend for drink, he wasted it on
no such futile beverage as nut-brown ale !
I am sure that little of it is sold to-day at the "Three
Jolly Pigeons," where we presently arrived, a low way-
side tavern with thatched roof and plastered wall, kept
by John Nally, who welcomed us most kindly, and grew
enthusiastic when I proposed to take a picture. There
was a rickety donkey-cart standing by the door, and
its owner came out to be in the picture, too — raggeder
even than his donkey, disreputable, dirty, gin-soaked,
and with only a jagged tooth or two in his expansive
mouth, but carefree and full of mirth.
Betty, who had been admiring the supreme ragged-
ness of the donkey, asked its name.
"Top o' the Mornin', miss," answered the man, with
a shout of laughter, and I am sure the name was the
inspiration of the moment.
And then, while our jarvey drank his whiskey, I had
a talk with Mr. Nally, who, of course, for reasons of
trade perhaps, is firmly of the belief that Auburn is
Lissoy and no other. And he told me of another poet
who was born down on the banks of the Inny, a mile
or two away, and who, in the old days, spent many an
evening at the Pigeons — Johnny Casey he called him,
and it turned out to be that same John Keegan Casey,
who wrote "The Rising of the Moon," and "Maire
my Girl," and "Grade og Machree," and "Donal
Kenny," — Irish subjects all, and most of them local
ones, as well. Donal Kenny, for instance, was a bold
blade, a clever hand with the snare and the net, who
turned the heads of all the girls, in the neighbourhood,
LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE 279
and broke those of most of the boys, until it was glad
they were when he went off with himself to America.
I have looked up the poem since, and I fear that Casey
enveloped the parting scene with exaggerated senti-
ment; yet the verses have a swing to them:
Come, piper, play the "Shaskan Reel,"
Or else the "Lasses on the Heather,"
And, Mary, lay aside your wheel
Until we dance once more together.
At fair and pattern oft before
Of reels and jigs we've tripped full many;
But ne'er again this loved oPd floor
Will feel the foot of Donal Kenny.
We tore ourselves away, at last, taking a road which
ran along the border of the lake — a beautiful sheet of
bluest water, dotted with greenest islands, with the
rolling plains of Roscommon rising beyond. And then,
from the top of a long hill, we saw below us the spires
of Athlone, and soon we were rattling down into the
town.
That morning, while looking through our guide-book,
we had encountered a sentence which piqued our curi-
osity. It was this :
"Some of the walls of St. Peter's Abbey remain, in which
can be seen one of those curious figures called 'Sheela-na-
gig-' "
I remembered dimly that, back at Cashel, John
Minogue had called our attention to a grotesque figure
with twisted legs and distorted visage carved on a
stone, and had called it something that sounded like
280 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Sheela-na-gig; but I wasn't sure, and so we started
out blithely to find this one.
Right at the start, we met with unexpected difficul-
ties, for nobody at the hotel, not even the ancient jar-
vey, had ever heard of the Sheela-na-gig. The bar-
maid, however, said that St. Peter's Abbey was on
the other side of the river, past the castle, so we went
over there, and found that part of the town much more
dilapidated and picturesque than the more modern por-
tion on the Westmeath side. We wandered around for
quite a while, asking the way of this person and that,
and finally we wound up at St. Peter's church, a new
structure and one singularly uninteresting. It was
evident that there was no Sheela-na-gig there; and at
this point Betty surrendered, and went back to the
hotel to write some letters.
But I had started out on the quest of the Sheela-
na-gig, and I was determined to find it. I thought pos-
sibly it might be somewhere among the ruins of the
Franciscan Abbey, which stand close to the other side
of the river, so I crossed the river again, and after
walking about a mile along a high wall through a
dirty lane, reached a gate, only to find it locked.
There was a man inside, raking a gravelled walk, but
he said nobody was admitted to the ruins, and anyway
he was quite positive that there was no such thing as
a Sheela-na-gig among them. He added that a por-
tion of the ruins had been torn down to make room for
an extension of the Athlone Woolen Mills, and perhaps
they had the Sheela-na-gig there.
I had no faith in this suggestion, but for want of
something better to do, I turned in at the office of the
LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE 281
mills, and was warmly welcomed by the manager, who
invited me to inspect the place. It is an exceedingly
rambling and haphazard structure, but it gives em-
ployment to hundreds of people, mostly girls and
women, whose pale faces and drooping figures bore
testimony to the wearing nature of the work. The mill
gets the wool in the raw state, straight from the grower,
and the processes by which it is cleaned and carded and
spun into thread, and dyed, and woven into cloth, and
inspected, and weighed, and finally rolled up ready for
the market, are many and intricate. The manager
told me that the mill turned out thirty thousand yards
of tweed a week, and he hoped to turn out even more,
as soon as a reduction of the tariff permitted him to
get into the American market. Even with a duty of
forty-five per cent., he could compete with American
tweeds, and with a lower duty he could undersell them.
It needed only a glance at the shabby, toil-worn men
and women working in his factory to understand why
this was true. I didn't ask him what wages his women
earned, but I did ask as to their hours of labour. They
go to work at 6 130 in the morning and work till six in
the evening, with a three-quarter hour interval for
breakfast and the same for lunch. I saw groups of
them, afterwards, strolling about the streets in the twi-
light, and sad and poor and spiritless they looked.
Yet they are eager for the work, for at least it keeps
them alive, and one can scarcely blame the manager
for sticking to the market price, and so doing his best
to meet a remorseless competition. I confess that such
economic problems as this are too stiff for me.
As I was about to leave, I casually mentioned my
282 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
search for the Sheela-na-gig — and he knew where it
was ! It was over on the other bank, it seemed, not far
from the river-front, and he directed me with great de-
tail how to get to it; but, alas, in such a town of
crooked streets, definite direction was impossible.
However, with hope springing eternal, I crossed the
bridge a third time, turned up-stream close beside the
river, wandered into a board-yard, extricated myself,
got into a blind alley that ended in a high wall and had
to retrace my steps; asked man after man, who only
stared vacantly and shook their heads; and finally
found a boy who knew, and who eagerly left his work
to conduct me to the spot.
Imagine with what a feeling of triumph I stood at
last before the Sheela-na-gig !
It is carved over the wide arch of the entrance to
what was once an abbey, but what I think is now a
laundry — an impish, leering figure, clasping its knees
up under its chin, and peering down to see who passes.
Underneath the imp are the words "St. Peter's Port,"
and underneath the words is a grotesque head. On
either side of the arch is a sculptured plaque, that to
the left bearing the words "May Satan never enter,"
and that to the right, "Wilo Wisp & Jack the Printer,"
— the two, of course, forming a couplet.
While I was staring at these remarkable inscriptions
and trying to puzzle out some meaning for them, an
old woman, who had been watching me with interest
from the door of her house, came out and tried to tell
me the history of the gate. But she spoke so inco-
herently that I could make nothing of it beyond the
fact that the inscriptions originated in two men's ri-
LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE 283
valry for possession of the property; so somebody else
will have to untangle that legend.
A little way up the street there was a shop which,
among other things, had post-cards displayed for sale,
and I stopped in, thinking I might get a picture of the
gate and perhaps learn something more of its story.
But when I asked for such a card, the proprietor stared
at me in amazement.
"There is no such gate hereabouts," he said.
"But there is," I protested; "right there at the end
of the street. Do you mean to say you have never
seen the Sheela-na-gig, nor read that line about Wilo
Wisp and Jack the Printer?"
He rubbed his head dazedly.
"I have not," he admitted. "Look at that, now,"
he went on; "here have I been going past that gate for
years, and you come all the way from America and see
more in one minute than I have seen in me whole life !"
Then he asked me if I had been up on top the castle,
which was just opposite his shop, and I replied that I
had not.
"Nor have I," he said; "but I am told there is a
grand view from up there."
"Why not go up with me now?" I suggested.
"I might," he agreed; and then he looked at the tall
keep of the castle and shook his head. " 'Tis not to-
day I can be doing it; you see, I must stay with the
shop."
So I left him there, and essayed the heights of the
castle by myself. Only for a little way, however, was
I by myself, for some families connected with the gar-
rison live there, and they are all prolific; so I soon
284 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
found myself surrounded by a horde of ragged chil-
dren, who begged for ha'pennies in the queer bated voice
which seems to go with begging in Ireland. I distrib-
uted a few, but that was a mistake; for when they
found I not only had some ha'pennies but was actually
willing to part with them, they grew almost ferocious ;
I said "Oppenheimer !" in vain, and I was only saved
at last by a husky woman who issued forth from one of
the towers and swept down upon them, vi et armis, and
drove them headlong out of sight. She was red-headed
and curious, and she stopped for a bit of talk. (I
pass over the part about America.)
"How do you like living in the old castle?" I asked
her, finally.
"Sure, 'tis a grand place, sir."
"Do you ever see any ghosts'?"
"Ghosts? Niver a one, sir."
"Nor hear any banshees'?"
"Banshees is it? Sure, they niver come to this place,
sir, 'tis that healthy, bein' so high."
And it must, indeed, be healthier than the narrow,
gloomy, squalid streets below. I could look down into
them from the top of the tower, to which I presently
mounted, and see their swarming life — men and women
idling about, a girl drawing water from the public
pump, a boy skinning some eels at the corner, small
children playing in the gutters. On the other side lay
the river, empty save for a few small launches, and
beyond it the roofs of the newer part of the town, and
beyond the town the beautiful Westmeath hills.
Just at my feet was the bridge across the Shannon,
connecting east and west Ireland. It is a modern one,
LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE 285
but it stands on the site of the old one, built while
Elizabeth was queen, and the scene of a desperate
conflict when Ginkle stormed the town. Of the castle
itself, only the keep is old. The drum-towers, which
frown down upon the river, are of later date, though
one would never suspect it to look at them; but when
one gets to the top of them, one finds embrasures for
artillery, and the approach is up a graded way along
which the guns can be taken. The old drawbridge and
portcullis which guarded the entrance to the keep are
still in place, but there is little else of interest.
The ruins of the ancient abbey of Clonmacnoise lie
close beside the Shannon, some ten miles below Athlone,
and the road thither winds through a rolling country
down to the broad river, which here flows lazily be-
tween flat banks. One would expect so noble a stretch
of water to be crowded with commerce, but it was quite
empty that morning, save for an occasional rude, flat-
bottomed punt, loaded high with turf, which a man
and a boy would be poling slowly upstream toward
Athlone.
It was a desolate scene; and Clonmacnoise looked
desolate, too, with its gaunt grey towers, and huddle of
little buildings, and cluttered graveyard. It seemed
incredible that this obscure corner of the world was
once a centre of learning toward which scholars turned
their faces from the far ends of Europe, to which
Charlemagne sent gifts, and within whose walls princes
and nobles were reared in wisdom and piety. Yet such
it was — the nearest to being a national university
among all the abbeys, for it was not identified with any
286 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
class or province, but chose its abbots from all Ireland,
and welcomed its students from all the world.
The abbey was founded by St. Kieran in 548. St.
Kieran belonged to what is known as the Second Order
of Irish Saints, founders of monasteries and of great
co-operative communities, as distinguished from the
First Order — St. Patrick and his immediate successors
— who were bishops and missionaries and founders of
churches, and the Third Order, who were hermits,
dwelling in desert places, often in small stone cells, just
as St. Molua did in his little cell near Killaloe. St.
Kieran had already started an abbey on an island in
Lough Ree, but grew dissatisfied with it, for some rea-
son, and he and eight companions got on board a boat
and floated down the river, rejecting this place and that
as not suited to their purpose, and finally reaching this
sloping meadow, where their leader bade them stop.
"Let us remain here," he said, "for many souls will
ascend to heaven from this spot."
So the abbey was started, and, though Kieran him-
self died in the following year, it grew rapidly in im-
portance. Let me try to picture the place as it was
then. The students lived in small huts crowded about
the precincts; the classes were held in the open air;
only for purposes of worship were permanent buildings
built. Here, as at Glendalough, there was not one
large church, but seven small ones; and the students
seem to have attended divine service in the groups in
which they studied. It was a self-supporting com-
munity, tilling its own lands, spinning its own wool,
weaving its own cloth, and building its own churches;
and its life, while not austere, was of the simplest.
LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE 287
The students, at times, numbered as many as three
thousand. The teaching was free, but from every stu-
dent a certain amount of service was required in the
interest of the community. The principal study, of
course, was that of religion, but from the very first
the heathen classics and the Irish language, arithmetic,
rhetoric, astronomy and natural science were taught
side by side with theology.
The life at Clonmacnoise was typical of that at all
the other monastic schools with which Ireland was then
so thickly dotted ; and it is the more interesting because
the whole continent of Europe, at that time, was grop-
ing through the very darkest period of the Middle
Ages. Culture there was at its lowest ebb — knowledge
of Greek, for instance, had so nearly vanished that any
one who knew Greek was assumed at once to have
come from Ireland, where it was taught in all the
schools. Those schools sent forth swarms of mission-
aries, "the most fearless spiritual knights the world has
known," to spread the light over Europe; they estab-
lished centres at Cambrai, at Rheims, at Soissons, at
Laon, at Liege; they founded the great monastery at
Ratisbon; they built others at Wurzburg, at Nurem-
berg, at Constanz, at Vienna — and then came the Vi-
kings, and put an end to Irish learning. For the Vi-
kings were Pagans, and the shrines of the churches, the
treasuries of the monasteries and schools, were the first
objects of onslaught.
For two centuries, the Danes made of Ireland "spoil-
land and sword-land and conquered land, ravaged her
chieftaincies and her privileged churches and her sanc-
tuaries, and rent her shrines and her reliquaries and
288 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
her books, and demolished her beautiful ornamented
temples — in a word, though there were an hundred
sharp and ready tongues in each head, and an hundred
loud, unceasing voices from each tongue, they could
never enumerate all the Gael suffered, both men and
women, laity and clergy, noble and ignoble, from these
wrathful, valiant, purely-pagan people." The Danes
aimed to destroy all learning, which they hated and
distrusted, and they very nearly succeeded.
I have already told how, under Brian Boru, the Irish
drew together, and finally managed to defeat the Danes
at Clontarf ; and for a century and a half after that,
ancient Erin seemed rising from her ashes. The books
destroyed by the Danes were re-written, churches and
monasteries rebuilt, schools re-opened — and then came
Strongbow at the head of his Normans, and that dream
was ended. There was civilisation in Ireland after
that, but it was a civilisation dominated by England;
there was education, but not for the native Irish ; there
were great monasteries, but they were built by French
or Norman monks — by Franciscans or Cistercians or
Augustinians ; and finally even these were swept away
with the coming of the Established Church.
I shall not attempt to describe the ruins of the seven
churches of Clonmacnoise, except to say that, though
they are all small, they are crowded with interesting
detail ; and there are two round towers, somewhat squat
and rude, as a witness to the danger of Danish raiders ;
but the glory of the place is the magnificent sculptured
cross, erected a thousand years ago over the grave of
Flann, High King of Erin, and still standing as a
ON THE ROAD TO CLONMACNOISE
ST. KIERAN'S CATHAIR, CLONMACNOISE
LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE 289
witness to Irish craftsmanship. It is ten feet high, cut
from a single block of stone, and elaborately carved
from top to bottom, and its date is fixed by an Irish
inscription which can still be deciphered: "A prayer
for Colman who made this cross on the King Flann."
It was Flann who built the largest of the stone churches,
near which the cross stands, about 909, and at that time
Colman was Abbot of Clonmacnoise. Flann died five
years later, and Colman honoured his memory with this
magnificent tribute.
Its maker's name is lost, but there can be no doubt
he was a great artist. On one side he has represented
scenes from the founding of Clonmacnoise, and on the
other scenes from the Passion of the Saviour. The
crucifixion, as usual, is depicted at the intersection,
while hell and heaven are shown on the arms them-
selves, crowded with the damned or the blessed, as the
case may be. There is another cross in the graveyard
scarcely less interesting, though no one knows on whose
grave it stands, and there is the shaft of a third. And
all about them are crowded the lichened tombstones
marking the graves of the fortunate ones who won
sepulture in St. Kieran's cathair, and who, on the last
day, will be borne straight to heaven with him.
For this enclosure was once the very holiest in Ire-
land. It was here that Kieran was laid, and then his
prophecy was remembered that many souls would
ascend to heaven from this spot; and the belief grad-
ually grew that no one interred "in the graveyard
of noble Kieran" would ever be adjudged to damna-
tion. In consequence, so many people wanted to be
buried there that there wasn't room for all of them,
290 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
and in the end, even powerful kings and princes were
forced to contend with great gifts for a place of sepul-
ture. Here Flann was laid; and hither was borne the
body of Rory O'Conor, the last who claimed the king-
ship of all Ireland, after his death at Cong. The great
abbey at Cong served well enough as the retreat for his
declining years, but it was only at Clonmacnoise, in
the sacred cathair of Kieran, that he would be buried.
And, as I closed the chapter on the Shannon with some
verses of one of Ireland's truest poets, I cannot do bet-
ter than close this one with his lovely rendering of the
lament which Enock O'Gillan wrote many centuries
ago for
THE DEAD AT CLONMACNOISE
In a quiet-watered land, a land of roses,
Stands St. Kieran's city fair,
And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations
Slumber there.
There beneath the dewy hillside sleep the noblest
Of the clan of Conn,
Each below his stone with name in branching Ogham
And the sacred knot thereon.
There they laid to rest the seven kings of Tara,
There the sons of Cairbre sleep —
Battle-banners of the Gael that in Kieran's plain of crosses
Now their final hosting keep.
And in Clonmacnoise they laid the men of Teffia,
And right many a lord of Bregh;
Deep the sod above Clan Creide and Clan Conaill,
Kind in hall and fierce in fray.
LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE 291
Many and many a son of Conn the Hundred-fighter
In the red earth lies at rest ;
Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers,
Many a swan-white breast.
CHAPTER XVIII
GALWAY OF THE TRIBES
IT was in the dusk of early evening that our train
started westward from Athlone, and we soon found
ourselves traversing again the dreary bogs which we had
crossed on our way from Athenry. I have seldom seen
a more beautiful sunset than the one that evening, and
we watched the changing sky and the flaming west for
long hours; and then, just as darkness came, the great
reaches of Gal way Bay opened before us, and we were
at our journey's end — -Gal way of the Tribes, the beau-
tiful old town which is the gateway to Connemara.
There is a good hotel connected with the railway,
and we had dinner there, and then went forth to see
the town. We were struck at once by its picturesque-
ness, its foreign air. The narrow curving streets do
not somehow look like Irish streets, nor do the houses
look like. Irish houses; rather might one fancy oneself in
some old town of France or Belgium. We were fas-
cinated by it, and wandered about for a long time,
along dim lanes, into dark courts, looking at the
shawled women and listening to the soft talk of the
strolling girls.
Nobody knows certainly how Galway got its name.
Some say it was because a woman named Galva was
drowned in the river; others maintain that the name
was derived from the Gallseci of Spain, who used to
292
GALWAY OF THE TRIBES 293
trade here; and still others think that it came from
the Gaels, who eventually occupied it in the course
of their conquest of Ireland. Whatever the origin of
the name, the town was but a poor place, a mere trad-
ing village of little importance, until the English came.
Richard de Burgo was granted the county of Con-
naught by the English king in 1226, and six years
later he entered Galway, rebuilt and enlarged the cas-
tle which had been put up by the Connaught men, threw
a wall around the town, and so established another of
those centres of Norman power, which were soon to
overshadow the whole of Ireland. It was a very Eng-
lish colony, at first, with a deep-seated contempt for
the wild Irish. Over the west gate, which looked to-
ward Connemara, was the inscription,
FROM THE FURY OF THE ©'FLAHERTIES
GOOD LORD DELIVER US.
and one of the by-laws of the town was that no citizen
should receive into his house at Christmas or on any
other feast day any of the Burkes, MacWilliamses, or
Kelleys, and that "neither O' nor Mac shalle strutte
ne swaggere thro the streetes of Gallway."
The years wore away this animosity, as they have a
fashion of doing in Ireland, and by Cromwell's time,
the citizens of the town had become so Irish that they
were contemptuously called "the tribes of Galway" by
the Puritan soldiers. But, as was the case of the Beg-
gars in Holland, a name given in contempt was adopted
as a badge of honour, and the "Tribes of Galway" be-
came a mark of distinction for men who had suffered
and fought and had never been conquered. There were
294 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
thirteen of these tribes; and the Blakes and Lynches
and Joyces and Martins who still form the greater part
of the old town's population are their descendants — but
how fallen from their high estate !
For many years, Galway had a practical monopoly
of the trade with Spain, there was always a large Span-
ish colony here, and it is to this long-continued inter-
course that many persons attribute the foreign air of
the town. I have even seen it asserted that the people
are of a decided Spanish type; but we were unable to
discern it, and I am inclined to think the Spanish influ-
ence has been much exaggerated. Its period of pros-
perity ended with the coming of the Parliamentary
army, which took the place and plundered it; and the
final blow was struck forty years later, when the army
of William of Orange, fresh from its victories to the
east, laid siege to it and captured it in two days. The
old families found themselves ruined, trade utterly
ceased, the great warehouses fell to decay, and the man-
sions of the aristocracy, no longer able to maintain
them, were given over to use as tenements. There is
to-day about Galway an air of ruin and decay such
as I have seen equalled in few other Irish towns;
but there are also some signs of reawakening, and
it may be that, after three centuries, the tide has
turned.
We found the streets crowded, next morning, with
the most picturesque people we had seen anywhere in
Ireland, for it was Saturday and so market day, and the
country-folk had gathered in from many miles around.
The men were for the most part buttoned up in cut-
GALWAY OF THE TRIBES 295
aways of stiff frieze, nearly as hard and unyielding as
iron; and the women, almost without exception, wore
bright red skirts, made of fuzzy homespun flannel,
which they had themselves woven from wool dyed with
the rich crimson of madder. The shaggier the flannel,
the more it is esteemed, and some of the skirts we saw
had a nap half an inch deep. They are made very full
and short, somewhat after the fashion of the Dutch;
but the resemblance ended there, for most of these
women were barefooted, and strode about with a dis-
regard of cobbles and sharp paving-stones which proved
the toughness of their soles.
Gal way, as well as most other Irish towns, boasts a
number of millinery stores, with windows full of be-
f eathered and beribboned hats ; but one wonders where
their customers come from, for hats are a luxury un-
known to most Irish women, who habitually go either
bareheaded, or with the head muffled in a shawl. All
the women here in Galway were shawled, and beauti-
ful shawls they were, of a delicate fawn-colour, and
very soft and thick.
We went at once to the market, and found the coun-
try women ranged along the curb, with great baskets
in front of them containing eggs and butter and other
products of the farm. How far they had walked, that
morning, carrying these heavy burdens, I did not like
to guess, but we met one later who had eight miles to
go before she would be home again. A few had carts
drawn by little grey donkeys; and the old woman in
one of these was so typical that I wanted to get her
picture. She was sitting there watching the crowd with
her elbows on her knees, and a chicken in her hands,
296 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
but when she saw me unlimbering my camera, she
shook her head menacingly.
There was a constable in the crowd, and he offered
to clear the bystanders away, so that I could get a good
picture of her. I remarked that she seemed to object,
and he said that he didn't see why that made any
difference, and that it wouldn't do her any harm. But
I preferred diplomacy to force, and finally I asked a
quaint-looking old man standing by if I might take
his picture.
"Ye may, and welcome," was the prompt response.
So I stood him up in front of the cart and got my
focus.
"Will ye be seein' the ould saftie !" cried the woman.
"Look at the ould saftie standin' there to get his picter
took." And she went on to say other, and presumably
much less complimentary things, in Irish; but my sub-
ject only grinned pleasantly and paid no heed. If you
will look at the picture opposite this page, you can al-
most see the scornful invectives issuing from her lips.
My subject was very proud indeed when I promised him
a print; and I hope it reached him safely.
Eggs are sold by the score in Galway, and the price
that day was one shilling twopence, or about twenty-
eight cents — which is not as cheap as one would ex-
pect them to be in a country where wages are so low.
But perhaps it is only labour that is cheap in Ireland !
One row of women were offering for sale a kind
of seaweed, whose Celtic name, as they pronounced it,
I could not catch, but which in English they called
dillisk; a red weed which they assured us they had gath-
ered from the rocks along the beach that very morning,
THE MARKET AT GALWAY
"OULD SAFTIE"
GALWAY OF THE TRIBES 297
and which many people were buying and stuffing into
their mouths and chewing with the greatest relish. It
did not look especially inviting, but the women insisted,
with much laughter, that we sample it, and we finally
did, somewhat gingerly. The only taste I detected in
it was that of the salt-water in which it had been
soaked ; but it is supposed to be very healthy, and to be
especially efficacious in straightening out a man who
has had a drop too much. No matter how tangled
his legs may be, so the women assured us, a few mouth-
fuls of dillisk will set him right again; and no man
with a pocketful of dillisk was ever known to go astray
or spend the night in a ditch. I regret that we were
not able to experiment with this interesting plant; but
if it really possesses this remarkable property, it de-
serves a wider popularity than it now enjoys.
While I was talking to the women and the constable
— who was a Dublin man and very lonesome among
these Irish-speaking people, who regarded him with
scorn and derision — Betty had been exploring the junk-
shops of the neighbourhood, and presently came back
with the news that she had discovered a Dutch master-
piece. Now we are both very fond of Dutch art, so I
hastened to look at the picture; and, indeed, it may
have been an Ostade, for it was a small panel showing
two boors drinking, and it seemed to me excellently
painted; but when the keeper of the shop saw that we
were interested, he named a price out of all reason, and
I was not certain enough of my own judgment to back
it to that extent. I intended to go back later on and
do a little bargaining; but I didn't; and the first con-
noisseur who goes to Galway should take a look at
298 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the picture — it is in a little shop just a few doors from
the cathedral — and he may pick up a bargain.
We went on down the street, and crossed the Cor-
rib River to the Claddagh — a picturesque huddle of
thatched and whitewashed cottages, the homes of fish-
ermen and their families, Irish of the Irish, who, from
time immemorial have formed a unique community, al-
most a race apart. Galway, within its walls on the
other side of the river, was very, very English; here on
this strip of land next to the bay, the despised Irish
built their cabins, and formed a colony which made its
own laws, which was always ruled by one of its own
members, where no strangers were permitted to dwell,
and whose people always intermarried with each other.
That old semi-feudal condition is, of course, no longer
strictly maintained ; but the Claddagh people still keep
to themselves, the men follow the sea for a living just
as they have always done, and the women peddle the
catch about the streets of Galway, as has been their
custom ever since the English settled there. They
wear a quaint and distinctive costume, one feature of
which is the red petticoat I have already described, and
common to all Connemara women. But in addition
to this is a blue mantle, and a white kerchief bound
tightly round the head, and then over this, if the woman
is unusually well-to-do, a fawn-coloured shawl. The
feet are usually bare, and so are the sturdy legs, some
inches of which, very red and rough from exposure to
every weather, are visible below the short skirts.
The houses of the Claddagh have been built where-
ever fancy dictated, and in consequence form a most
confusing jumble, for one man's back door usually
GALWAY OF THE TRIBES 299
opens into another man's front yard. How a man gets
home from the tavern on a dark night I don't know,
but I suspect that the consumption of dillisk is large.
We stopped to talk to a woman leaning over a half-
door; and her children, who had been playing in the
dirt, gathered around, and there is a picture of her
quaint little house opposite the next page. Then while
I foraged for more pictures, Betty sat down on a stone,
and a perfect horde of children soon assembled to stare
at her. They were very shy at first and perfectly well-
behaved; but gradually they grew bolder, and finally,
under careful encouragement, their tongues loosened,
until they were chattering away like magpies.
The people of the Claddagh are said to be a very
moral and religious race, who never go to sea or even
away from home on any Sunday or religious holiday;
and these dirty, unkempt, neglected, but chubby and
red-cheeked children were capital illustrations of Kip-
ling's lines:
By a moon they all can play with — grubby and grimed and
unshod —
Very happy together, and very near to God.
They were certainly happy enough; and, whether they
were near to God or not, they had all evidently
been taught their catechism with great care, for when
Betty took from one of them a little picture of the
Madonna and asked who it was, they answered in
chorus, without an instant's hesitation, "The blessed
Virgin, miss."
The Claddagh people are dark as a rule, though here
and there one sees a genuine Titian blond, and Spanish
300
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
blood has been ascribed to them; but they probably
date much farther back than the Spaniards — back, in-
deed, to that ancient, original Irish race, "men of the
leathern wallet," antedating the Milesians or Gaels
who now form the bulk of the Irish people. The older
race took refuge in the bleak Connemara hills before
the stronger invaders, to come creeping down again and
found their colony here at the mouth of the Corrib
when the invaders had swept on eastward to the kind-
lier and more fertile country there. Their whole life
is bound up in this topsy-turvy little settlement, where
they live just as they have lived for centuries, undis-
turbed by the march of civilisation.
We tore ourselves away, at last, from this primeval
place, and recrossed the river to the turf market, with
its familiar little carts piled high with the dark fuel.
"The bogs are very wet this year, are they not1?" I
asked an old man.
"They are, sir, God save ye," he replied, his wrinkled
face lighting up at the chance to talk to a stranger.
"There never was such a year for rain. I'm sixty
year, God bless ye, and I've never seen such another."
And then he went on to relate the story of his life, with
a "God save ye" to every clause. A hearty old fellow
he was, in spite of his sixty years; and he had driven
his cart of turf down ten miles out of the mountains,
that morning, and would drive ten miles back that
night; and if he was lucky he would get half a crown —
sixty cents — for the load of turf which had taken a
hard day's labour to cut, and numerous turnings during
a month to dry.
We went on past some fragments of the old walls,
THE CLADDAGH, GALWAY
A CLADDAGH HOME
GALWAY OF THE TRIBES 301
with a most romantic arched gateway, and through the
fish market, over which the red-skirted women from the
Claddagh presided — great strapping creatures, with
broad hips and straight backs and shining, good-
humoured faces. Most of them were selling an ugly,
big-mouthed, unappetising-looking fish, whose name I
couldn't catch; but they told us it was a fish for poor
people, not for the likes of us, God bless ye — full of
bones and scarcely worth the trouble of eating, but
plentiful and therefore cheap.
The principal street of Galway is called Shop Street
— a name so singularly lacking in imagination that it
would prove the English origin of the town at once,
were any proof needed — and about midway of this
stands a beautiful four-storied building, known as
Lynch's Castle, once a fine mansion but now a
chandler's shop. The walls are ornamented with
carved medallions, and there is a row of sculptured sup-
ports for a vanished balcony sticking out like gargoyles
all around the top ; and over the door there is the stone
figure of a monkey holding a child, commemorating the
saving of one of the Lynch children from a fire, by a
favourite monkey, some centuries ago.
The Lynches were great people in old Galway, and
another memorial of them exists just around the corner
— a fragment of wall, with a doorway below and a
mullioned window above, and it was from this window,
so legend says, that James Lynch Fitzstephen, sometime
mayor of Galway, hanged his son with his own hands.
The principal inscription reads :
This memorial of the stern and unbending justice of the
chief magistrate of this city, James Lynch Fitzstephen,
302 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
elected mayor A. D. 1493, who condemned and executed his
own guilty son, Walter, on this spot, has been restored to its
ancient site A. D. 1854, with the approval of the Town Com-
missioners, by their Chairman, Very Rev. Peter Daly, P. P.,
and Vicar of St. Nicholas.
Below the window is a skull and crossbones, with a
much more interesting inscription :
1524
REMEMBER DEATHE VANITI OF VANITI
AND AL IS BUT VANITI
The story of the very upright Fitzstephen runs in
this wise: He was a merchant, prominent in the
Spanish trade, and fortunate in everything except in
his only son, Walter, who was as bad a nut as was to
be found anywhere. But he had shown some fondness
for a Galway lady of good family, and it was hoped
she might reform him; when, unhappily, she looked,
or was thought to look, too favourably upon a hand-
some young hidalgo, who had come from Spain as the
guest of the elder Fitzstephen. So young Walter
waited for him one night at a dark corner, thrust a
knife into his heart, and then gave himself up to his
father, as the town's chief magistrate.
Walter, as is often the way with rake-hellies, was a
great favourite in the town, and everybody interceded
for his pardon, but his father condemned him to death.
Whereupon a number of young bloods organised a res-
cue party, but just as they were breaking into the house,
the inexorable parent put a noose about his son's neck,
and hanged him from the window mullion above the
crowd's head — the same mullion, I suppose, which you
A GALWAY VISTA
THE MEMORIAL OF A SPARTAN FATHER
GALWAY OF THE TRIBES 303
can see in the picture opposite the preceding page.
Just behind the reminder of this fifteenth-century
Brutus, stands the fourteenth-century church of St.
Nicholas, a venerable and beautiful structure, with
good windows and splendid doorways, and containing
some interesting tombs — one of them in honour of
Mayor Lynch, the hero of the tragedy I have just
related. On the south wall is a large tablet to "Jane
Eyre, relict of Edward Eyre," (I wonder if Charlotte
Bronte ever heard of her), who died in 1760, aged 88.
At the bottom of the slab the fact is commemorated that
"The sum of 3ooL was given by the Widow Jane
Eyre to the Corporation of Galway for the yearly sum
of 24L to be distributed in bread to 36 poor objects,
on every Sunday forever." The sexton told us that the
yearly income from this bequest was now thirty-six
pounds, but that the weekly distribution of bread had
occasioned so much disturbance that it had been dis-
continued, and the income of the bequest was now
divided equally among twelve deserving families.
As we stood there, the peal of bells in the tower
began to ring for service, but their musical invitation
went quite unheeded by the crowd in the market-place
outside, all of whom, of course, were Catholics. One
woman, clad in black, slipped into a pew just before
the curate began to read the lesson. We waited a
while to see if any one else would come, but no one did,
and at last we quietly took ourselves off.
There was one other sight in Galway we wanted to
see — the most famous of its kind in Ireland — and that
was the salmon making their way up the Corrib River
from the sea to spawn in the lake above; and the place
304
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
to see them is from the bridge which leads from the
courthouse on the east bank of the river to the great
walled jail on the west bank. Just above the bridge
is the weir which backs up the water from Lough Corrib
to afford power for some dozen mills — though all the
mills, so far as I could see, are decayed and ruined and
empty. But below this weir the salmon gather in such
numbers that sometimes they lie side by side solidly
clear across the bed of the stream.
A number of fishermen were flogging the water, and
we sat down under the trees on the eastern bank to
watch them for a while before going out on the bridge.
Two or three of them were stationed on a narrow plank
platform built out over the water just in front of us,
and the others were on the farther bank, in the shadow
of the grey wall of the jail. This is supposed to be
the very best place in all Ireland to catch salmon, and,
in the season, more anglers than the short stretch of
shore can accommodate are eager to pay the fifteen shil-
lings, which is the fee for a day's fishing there. They
fish quite close together, which is somewhat awkward,
but has its advantages occasionally ; as, for instance, on
that day, not very long ago, when one enthusiast, hav-
ing hooked a noble fish, dropped dead in the act of
playing it. The long account of this sad event which
the Galway paper published, concluded with the fol-
lowing paragraph :
Our readers will be glad to learn that the rod which Mr.
Doyle dropped was immediately taken up by our esteemed
townsman, Mr. Martin, who found the fish still on, and after
ten minutes' play, succeeded in landing it — a fine clean-run
salmon of fifteen pounds.
GALWAY OF THE TRIBES 305
One cannot but admire the quick wit of Mr. Martin,
who, seeing at a glance that his fellow-townsman was
past all human aid, realised that the only thing to do
was to save the fish, and saved it !
But no fish were caught while we were .there. We
had rather expected to see one hooked every minute,
but we watched for half an hour, and there was not
even a rise; so at last we walked out on the bridge to
see if there were really any fish in the stream.
The bridge has a high parapet, worn glassy-smooth
by the coat-sleeves of countless lookers-on, and there
are convenient places to rest the feet, so we leaned over
and looked down. The water was quite clear, and we
could see the stones on the bottom plainly — but no
fish.
"Look, there's one," said a voice at my elbow, and
following the pointing finger, I saw a great salmon, his
greenish back almost exactly the colour of the water,
poised in the stream, swaying slowly from side to side,
exerting himself just enough to hold his place against
the current. Then the finger pointed to another and
another, and we saw that the river was alive with fish
— and then I looked around to see whose finger it was,
and found myself gazing into the smiling eyes of a
young priest — not exactly young, either, for his hair
was sprinkled with grey; but his face was fresh and
youthful.
"Of course you're from America," he said. "One
can see that." And when I nodded assent, he added,
"Well, you Americans brag like hell, but you have good
reason to."
I glanced at him again, thinking perhaps I had mis-
306 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
taken his vocation; but there was no mistaking his
rabat.
"I have been to America," he went on. "I went
there as a beggar for a church here ; and after my mis-
sion was done, I rested and enjoyed myself; and I want
to say that there is no country like America."
The words were said with an earnestness that warmed
my heart; and of course I agreed with him; and then,
when he learned we were from Ohio, he told us how
he had crossed our State on his way to San Francisco,
and that seemed to establish a kind of relationship;
and when we were satisfied with looking at the fish, he
insisted on taking us through the marble works, just
across the river, where some great columns of Conne-
mara marble were being polished. It comes from a
quarry high on Lissoughter, which we were soon to
visit — though we didn't know it then! — and it is
very beautiful indeed, usually a deep green, but
sometimes a warm brown, and always gorgeously
veined.
And then he asked us if we wouldn't like to see
Queen's College, the Gal way branch of the National
University of Ireland ; and of course we said we would,
and so we started for it, he pushing his wheel before
him; and on the way, we met a handsome old man, who
stopped when he saw us, and smilingly asked for an
introduction. It proved to be Bishop O'Dee, and even
in the short chat we had with him, it was easy to see
that he deserved his reputation for culture and scholar-
ship. He has two pet aversions, so our guide told us,
as we went on together, bribery and drunkenness. I
don't imagine there is much bribery in Connaught, but
GALWAY OF THE TRIBES 307
I fear the Bishop has a formidable antagonist in John
Barleycorn.
We came to the college presently — a fine Gothic
building, with a good quadrangle, and we went through
its somewhat heterogeneous museum and looked in at
some of the halls. There are now about a hundred
and forty pupils, so our guide said, and the new semi-
nary, which drew students from all the west of Ireland,
and which was just getting nicely started, was cer-
tain to increase this number greatly.
The National University of Ireland was established
in 1908, as I understand it, for the purpose of afford-
ing Catholic youth an opportunity for higher educa-
tion. The act provides that "no test whatever of re-
ligious belief shall be imposed on any person as a con-
dition of his becoming or continuing to be a professor,
lecturer, fellow, scholar or student" of the college;
nevertheless it is well understood that its spirit and at-
mosphere are Catholic, and such Protestant youth as
desire higher education usually enter Trinity College,
Dublin, or Queen's College, Belfast. There are three
colleges in the National University of Ireland — Uni-
versity College, Dublin, which is the parent institution,
Queen's College, Cork, and Queen's College, Galway.
All of them are maintained by state grants.
I am not- quite clear as to the maintenance of the new
seminary, to which our guide next conducted us; but
it is a mammoth building, with queer squat towers,
giving it an aspect quite oriental. Our guide said that
the architecture was Irish-Romanesque, but it reminded
me of nothing so much as of the pictures I had seen of
the temples of ancient Syria and Egypt. The semi-
3o8 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
nary is really an intermediate school, and is planned on
a very extensive scale. Its promoters are hoping great
things for it, which I trust will come to pass. We
mounted to the top of the main tower, and looked out
over the bay and the hills, and talked of America and
of Ireland, and of many other things, and then our
guide asked us if we wouldn't come and have tea with
him.
"Ah, I hope you will come," he urged, seeing that we
hesitated. "When I was in America, the welcome I
got was so warm and open-hearted, that I feel I am
forever indebted to all Americans, and it is a great
pleasure to me when I am able to repay a little of that
kindness. It's few opportunities I have, and I hope
you won't refuse me this one."
So we accepted the invitation, telling him how kind
we thought it, and started back through the streets,
with the women and children courtesying to our guide
as we passed, and he never failing to give them a
pleasant word.
' 'Tis not to my own quarters I'll be taking you,"
he explained, "but to those of a brother priest, who
will be proud to have them put to this use," and he
stopped in front of a row of little houses, called St.
Joseph's Terrace, and opened the door of one of them,
and ushered us in, and called the old servant, and bade
her get us tea.
It was served in a bare little dining-room — with
bread and butter and jam and cake — and very good it
tasted, though the tea was far too strong for us, and
we had to ask for some hot water with which to weaken
it. Our host laughed at us ; he drank his straight, with-
GALWAY OF THE TRIBES 309
out milk or sugar, and he told us about the first time
he ordered tea in New York. When he started to pour
it, he thought the cook had forgot to put any tea in
the pot, so he called the waiter and sent it back; and
the waiter, who was Irish and understood, laughed and
took the pot back and put some more tea in.
"It was still far too weak," went on our host; "but
I was ashamed to say anything more, so I drank it,
though I might as well have been drinking hot water.
Indeed, I got no good tea in America. And I nearly
burnt my mouth off me once, trying to eat ice-cream.
I took a great spoonful, without knowing what it
would be like, and I thought it would be the death
of me. And I shall never forget the first time they
served Indian corn. It was in great long ears, such as
I had never seen before ; and I had no idea how to eat
it, so I said it didn't agree with me; and then I was
astonished to see the other people at the table — edu-
cated, cultured people they were, too — pick it up in
their fingers and gnaw it off just as an animal would !
Ah, that was a strange sight!"
I do not know when I have spent a pleasanter half-
hour ; but he had to bid us good-bye, at last, for he was
due at some service; and he wrung our hands and
wished us Godspeed, and sprang on his bicycle and
pedalled off down the road, turning at the corner to
wave his hat to us. And I am sure his heart was
light at thought of the good deed he had done that day !
Galway possesses a tram-line, which starts at the
head of Shop Street and runs out to a suburb called
Salthill ; and as this happens to pass St. Joseph's Ter-
310
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
race, we walked slowly on until a tram should come
along. And in a moment a woman stopped us — a
woman so ragged and forlorn and with such a tale of
woe that, in spite of my dislike for beggars and sus-
picion of them, I gave her sixpence; and she fairly
broke down and wept at sight of that bit of silver, and
we walked on followed by her blessings and thinking
sadly of the want and misery of Ireland's people.
We had another instance of it, before long, for after
we had got on the tram, an old man stopped it and
tried to clamber aboard, but the conductor put him
off, after a short sharp altercation, and he followed us
along the sidewalk, shaking his stick and, I suppose,
hurling curses after us. The conductor explained that
the old fellow had no money to pay for a ticket, but
had proposed to pay for it after he had collected some
money which was due him in Galway. This he no
doubt considered an entirely reasonable proposition,
and he was justly incensed when the conductor refused
to extend the small necessary credit.
"Them ones gave us trouble enough at first," the
conductor added. "They thought because the trams
were owned by the town that they should all ride free,
and that only strangers should be made to pay. Even
yet, they think it downright savage of us to put them
off just because they haven't the price of a ticket. It
costs us no more, they say, to take them than to leave
them, and so, out of kindness and charity, we ought
to take them. Och, but they're a thick-headed peo-
ple !" he concluded, and retired to the rear platform to
ruminate upon the trials of his position.
We got down at the head of Shop Street, and Betty
GALWAY OF THE TRIBES 311
went on to the hotel to rest, while I spent a pleasant
half -hour wandering about the streets and through the
calf -market. There were numbers of little red calves,
cooped up in tiny pens, and groups of countrymen
standing about looking at them, their hands under their
coat-tails and their faces quite destitute of expression.
At long intervals there would be a little bargaining;
which, if the would-be purchaser was in earnest, grew
sharper and sharper, sometimes ending in mutual re-
criminations, and sometimes in an agreement, in which
case buyer and seller struck hands on it. Then the
calf in question would be caught and his legs tied
together, and a piece of gunny-sack wrapped about him,
and he would be carried away by his new owner. Or
perhaps he might be sent somewhere by parcel-post.
Calves tied up in gunny-sacks with their heads stick-
ing out form a considerable portion of the Irish mail —
how often have I seen the postmen lifting them on and
off the cars or lugging them away to the parcel-room !
Betty rejoined me, after a time, and we got on the
tram to ride out to Salthill. Curiously enough, when
we had climbed to the top of it, we found sitting there
the old man whom we had seen put off earlier in the
afternoon. I don't know whether he recognised us;
but he at once proceeded to relate to us the story of
that misadventure, with great warmth and in minutest
detail — just as he would relate it, no doubt, to every
listener for a month to come.
"Why, God bless ye, sir, I told the felly he should
have his penny," he explained, with the utmost earnest-
ness. "There was a man in the town would be owin'
me eight shillin's, and he had promised to pay me this
312
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
very evenin' — but it was no use ; he put me off into the
road, bad cess to him, and it was in my mind to lay
my stick across his head. But he can't put me off
now," he added triumphantly, and held up his ticket
for us to see.
And then he told us how he had five miles to walk
beyond the end of the tram-line before he would be
home; but he seemed to think nothing of having had
to walk ten or twelve miles to collect his wages. In-
deed, most Irish regard such a walk as not worth think-
ing of; which is as well, since many children have to
walk four or five miles to school, and men and women
alike will trudge twice that distance in going from one
tiny field to another to do a bit of cultivating. Our
new-found friend seemed quite taken with us, for when
the tram came to a stop, he asked us if we wouldn't
have a drink with him ; and when we declined, bade us
a warm good-bye, with many kind wishes, and then
shambled over to the public-house for a last drink by
himself. Twenty minutes later, we saw him go past
along the road, his face to the west, on the long walk
to his tiny home among the hills.
Salthill is a popular summer resort, and has a pic-
turesque beach. The view out over Galway Bay is
very beautiful, and the wide stretch of water seems to
offer a perfect harbour; but there were no ships riding
at anchor there. Time was when the people of the
town fancied their bay was to become a world-famous
port because of its nearness to America, and a steam-
ship company was formed, and the government was
persuaded to build a great breakwater and half a mile
of quays and a floating dock five acres in extent. But
GALWAY OF THE TRIBES 313
the company's life was a short one, for one of its
boats sank and another burned, and the other com-
panies all preferred to go on to Liverpool or London
or Southampton, and the docks and quays and harbour
of Galway were left deserted, save for the little hookers
of the Claddagh fishermen.
CHAPTER XIX
IAR CONNAUGHT
WE were ready to say good-bye to Galway and to fare
westward into far Connaught, most primitive of Irish
provinces; but on Sunday there is only a single train
each way, and the westbound one leaves Galway at six
in the morning. We managed to catch it, somewhat to
our surprise, crossed the Corrib River on a long bridge
and viaduct, and were at once in lar Connaught — West
Connaught, the domain of the wild O' Flaherties, from
whom the dwellers in Galway every Sunday besought
the Lord to deliver them.
The train skirts the shore of Lough Corrib, and one
has beautiful glimpses of the lake and the hills beyond;
and then it plunges into a wild and desolate country,
strewn with great glacial boulders, some of them poised
so precariously on hill-side and cliff-edge that it seems
the rattle of every passing train would bring them
crashing down.
And then we came out upon wide moors, crossed by
innumerable little streams, and then ahead of us the
great Connemara mountains began to loom against the
sky — gigantic masses of grey granite, bare of vegeta-
tion, even of the skin of turf which can find foothold
almost anywhere, but which is powerless against these
masses of solid rock. The Maamturk Mountains are
the first to be seen, rugged giants two thousand feet
high, and the road mounts toward them over a pass,
.314
IAR CONNAUGHT 315
and then dips rapidly to the station at Recess, which
was our stopping-point.
It was still so early that there was nobody about,
and when we got to the hotel we found it locked; but
the porter hastened to open the door in answer to our
ring, and we found ourselves in one of the nicest hotels
we had encountered anywhere in Ireland. We had al-
ready made up our minds to spend that Sunday climb-
ing Lissoughter, a mountain just back of the hotel,
famous for the view from its top ; and so, as soon as we
had disposed of our luggage and eaten a most appetis-
ing breakfast, we inquired how to get to it. And Sheila
was summoned to tell us — Sheila with a complexion
like peach-bloom, and the brightest of blue eyes, and
the fluffiest of brown hair, fit to pose as the prototype
of Sweet Peggy, or Kathleen Bawn, or Kitty Neil, or
any other of the lovely girls the Irish poets delighted
to sing. Not the least of the attractions of this hotel
at Recess are the girls who work there — as bright and
blooming a lot of Irish lasses as one could wish to see
— and Sheila, I think, was the flower of them all. She
told us how to go, and we set off happily through the
soft, bright air of the morning.
Our road, at first, lay along the margin of a placid
lake, then turned off sharply to the right, and the climb
began. It was an easy climb, with beautiful views over
bogs and lakes and mountains opening at every step.
There was a wet bog on either side the road, and at a
place where the peat was being cut, we walked out to
take a closer look at it. And as we stood there gazing
down into the black excavation, we felt the ground
trembling beneath our feet; and when we looked up,
316 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
there was a man striding upward toward us, two hun-
dred feet away, but at every stride shaking the bog so
that we could feel the tremor distinctly. The bog
shook more and more as he approached and passed us ;
and then the tremor grew fainter and fainter as
he went on his way. Unless I had felt it, I would
never have believed that the footsteps of a single man
could have created so wide a disturbance, and I under-
stood how serious were the difficulties the railways had
to face in getting across the bogs of central Ireland.
Half a mile farther on, we came to a cluster of little
cabins clinging to the hillside, and we paused to ask the
way of a man who was pottering about them; and,
after a moment, we found that we were talking to Mr.
Rafferty, who with his brother, both bachelors, own
the only quarry in the world which produces Conne-
mara marble; and when he offered to show it to us,
you may well believe we assented.
From the very first moment, I had perceived an air
about Mr. Rafferty which puzzled me. He was un-
doubtedly Irish, and yet his manner of speaking was
not precisely the Irish manner I had grown accustomed
to ; his intonation was not precisely the Irish intonation,
his choice of words and acquaintance with slang was
surprisingly wide for a man born and reared in Conne-
mara, and there was a certain alertness about him
which was not Irish at all. And then, when he started
to tell us his story, I understood, for he had been born
in New York and spent the first fifteen or twenty years
of his life there. Not until then did I realise in how
many subtle, scarcely recognisable ways does the Ameri-
can Irishman differ from the Irish Irishman.
IAR CONNAUGHT 317
His father was a Connemara man who had gone to
America in the decade following the great famine and
settled in New York, where the son who was talking
to us was born. The father had come back to Conne-
mara, again, for some reason, and had settled at Recess,
and, by mere accident, one day discovered the vein of
marble high on the side of Lissoughter. There was
no railroad in the valley then, and nobody supposed
the vein would ever be of any value, so he managed to
get control of it, and his sons came back from America
to help him work it. Its development was very slow
and difficult, for the only way of getting the marble
to market was to haul it along the mountain roads
to Galway, forty miles distant.
But since the coming of the railroad, all that is
changed. Some primitive machinery has been in-
stalled, larger blocks can be handled, and already
more than one office building in New York has its
vestibule embellished with the beautiful green stone.
Even the fragments are carefully saved and worked up
into small ornaments and novelties to sell to tourists —
round towers and Celtic crosses and such things.
We were at the entrance to the quarry by this time,
and he took us through and explained its workings to
us. It is a surface vein, as you will see from the
photograph opposite page 322, which I took next day,
and no one knows its depth or its extent. Enough has
been uncovered to last for many years, at the present
rate of quarrying. Of course if it was in America, a
great company would be formed to exploit it, and
modern machinery installed, and it would be yanked
out by the thousands of tons a day; but since it is in
3i8 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Ireland, I doubt if the rate of production will ever be
largely increased.
We bade Mr. Rafferty good-bye at last, and took
up the climb again toward the summit of the mountain
which loomed before us ; up and up, with the view open-
ing more and more. Away at the bottom of the valley
ran the white ribbon of a road, with a cluster of
thatched roofs huddled near it, here and there; and
beyond the valley towered the granite sides of the
Twelve Pins of Bunnabeola, the loftiest and most
picturesque mountains in these western highlands.
We came to a cabin, presently, away up there by
itself on the mountain side, and we stopped long enough
to leave the specimens of marble which Mr. Rafferty
had given us, for they threatened to become embar-
rassingly heavy before the climb was ended. The
family who lived there came out to show us the best
way up the hill, and stood watching us as we climbed
on. The path for a time lay along the bottom of a
brook; then we came out upon the bare hillside, with an
outcrop of granite here and there and dripping bog be-
tween, and no living thing in sight except agile, black-
faced sheep, who peered down at us curiously from
every crag. The way grew steeper and steeper and
the stretches of bog more wet and treacherous; but al-
ways the view was more magnificent, especially to the
west, where the Twelve Pins were, and to the south,
where the plain stretched away, gleaming with innum-
erable little lakes. I never saw so many lakes at one
time as I saw that day — there must have been two or
three hundred of them between us and the far horizon,
each of them gleaming in the sun like a polished mirror.
IAR CONNAUGHT 319
After an hour of this steep and slippery work, Betty
declared that she had had enough; but the last grey
escarpment of the mountain loomed just over our heads,
and I hated to give up with the goal so near. She said
she would wait for me while I went up alone, so, leav-
ing her cosily seated in a niche in the cliff, I scrambled
on, along the granite wall, on hands and knees some-
times; and at last I came out upon the very summit,
with one of the most beautiful views in all Ireland at
my feet.
Lissoughter stands exactly at the end of a great
transverse valley, with the Maamturk Mountains on
one side and the Twelve Pins on the other, and at the
bottom of this valley gleam the waters of Inagh and
Derryclare ; and the granite hills stretch away as far as
the eye can see, one behind the other, rugged and bleak,
without a sign of vegetation — far more impressive than
the green-clad hills about Killarney. The day was
gloriously clear, and I sat there for a long time, gazing
first this way and then that, and I can shut my eyes
now and see again that glorious landscape. The top
of Lissoughter is a ring of granite, with a bog in the
depression in the centre; and on the highest point of
this ring some one had heaped up a little cairn of
stones. Feeling something like Peary at the north pole,
I tore a leaf from my note-book, wrote my name and
address upon it, with greetings to the next comer, and
placed it under the topmost stone of this cairn. I did
not suppose that it would ever be discovered, but when
I got home, I found a postal awaiting me from an Irish
girl, who had climbed Lissoughter with a party a week
later, and found my note where I had left it.
320 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
When we got down again to the cottage where we
had left our marble, we found the man of the house
out in front, and stopped for a chat with him. Yes, it
was a fine day; very wet it had been, but a few more
such days as this would do the potatoes a world of
good, and one could get into the bogs again to cut the
winter fuel. As we talked, children gathered from
various directions, until there were ten standing about
staring at us, and Betty asked him if they were the
neighbours' children.
"They are not, miss," he answered, grinning.
"They're all mine."
"All yours !" echoed Betty, and counted them again.
The man turned to the eldest girl.
"Mary Agnes, go bring the baby," he said; and
Mary Agnes disappeared indoors, and came out pres-
ently with number eleven.
How they manage to live I don't know; but they do
live, and, so far at least as the children are concerned,
even grow fat. Their bright eyes and red cheeks spoke
of anything but undernourishment, and it must take a
large pot to hold enough to satisfy that family ! How
the pot is filled is the mystery.
Their home was typical of Connaught — and of the
poorer part of all Ireland, indeed: a low cabin, built
of stones and whitewashed, with two rooms, a dirt
floor, a few pieces of rude furniture, a pile of straw and
rags for a bed, and hardly enough clothes to go around.
In fact, below the age of ten or twelve, it was im-
possible to tell the boys from the girls, for they were all
dressed alike in a single garment, a sort of shift made
of homespun flannel, and usually, I judge, cut out of
IAR CONNAUGHT 321
the mother's old red petticoats; and boys and girls
alike have their hair cropped close. All through
Connemara we saw this fashion — a single rudely-made
garment of wool, worn by the children of both sexes
all the year round, without undergarment of any kind,
without shoes or stockings. The flannel the garments
are made of is practically indestructible, and I fancy
they are taken off only when outgrown and passed on
to the next youngest member of the family. When a
boy outgrows it and is privileged to put on trousers,
it is a proud day for him, for he ceases to be a mere
petticoated "malrach" and becomes a "gossure."
Mary Agnes, the oldest member of this particular
family, was a girl of sixteen, who was soon to leave
for America to try her fortune; I don't know by what
miracles of self-denial the money for her passage had
been scraped together ! She was an ugly girl, with bad
teeth and stupid expression, and I am afraid she will
find life no bed of roses, even here in America. The
rest of the children went to school; and the nearest
schoolhouse was five Irish miles away !
We went on at last, down past the other cabins,
which are occupied by the men employed in the quarry.
They were all faithful replicas of the one I have de-
scribed, and they were all swarming with children. I
never ceased to be astonished at these children, for
though they were dirty and half-naked, they all seemed
plump and healthy. Potatoes, I suppose, is the main
article of their diet, for every cabin had its deep-
trenched patch, won by back-breaking toil from the
rocks of the hillside. That leisurely walk down into
the green valley is unforgettable, the day was so
322 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
bright, the air so fresh and sweet, the view so lovely.
We spent the remainder of the afternoon playing
clock golf, and exploring the beautiful garden attached
to the hotel ; and that night we sat in front of a great
open fire-place where a wood fire crackled, and luxuri-
ated in the pleasant fatigue of a well-spent day. If I
had known as much then as I do now, we would have
spent other evenings there, for Recess is as good a point
as any from which to explore Connaught, and the hotel
there is immeasurably superior to any other in that sec-
tion of Ireland — clean and bright and comfortable and
well-managed, with food that was a pleasant variant
from the unimaginative dishes we had grown so weary
of. It has been built by the railroad company to en-
courage tourist traffic, and I don't see how it can pay;
but, for the sake of travellers in that part of Ireland,
I hope it will never be closed.
I said something of this, that evening, to the manager
and to Sheila; and added to the latter that if she would
tell me the secret of her complexion, I would make a
fortune for both of us.
' 'Tis just the air," she laughed. "Send your lady
friends out here to us, and we'll soon have them bloom-
ing like roses."
So there is another reason for a stay at Recess.
I clambered back up to the quarry, next morning,
for I wanted some pictures of it, and of the quaint
cabins along the way. I found Mr. Rafferty there,
and a gang of men busy loading some blocks of marble
upon a cart, preparatory to taking them down the
mountain. Just back of the quarry, two red-skirted
THE CONNEMARA MARBLE QUARRY
A CONNEMARA HOME
IAR CONNAUGHT 323
women were digging in a potato patch, and they looked
so picturesque and Millet-like that I asked them if I
might take their picture. They held a quick consulta-
tion, and then said I might provided I paid them two
shillings first!
But I did want a picture of one of those poor little
mountain cabins, and on my way back, I saw a woman
standing at the door of one of them, and she passed the
time of day so amiably that I stopped to talk. The
year had been very hard, she said— as what year is not,
in such a place! — and her husband was even then at
Oughterard, trying to find work. Meanwhile, she was
left with the children, to do the best she could, and
what they found to live on I don't know; but she was
glad for me to take a picture of her little place, with
herself and the children and the dog standing in front
of it, and I am sure the coin I slipped into the baby's
fist was very welcome. That picture is opposite page
322, and it gives a better idea than any mere descrip-
tion could of these damp, dark, comfortless mountain
homes, with their low walls, and tiny windows, and
leaky, grass-grown thatch, tied on with ropes. Both
the boys in the picture wear the red flannel garment
common to all Connemara children. The girl has just
outgrown it.
Farther on, I came upon a woman and her daughter,
a girl of about sixteen, working in a potato patch; and
the girl was really pretty, although at the moment she
was engaged in spreading manure with her hands about
the roots of the plants. Her skirt was kilted high,
revealing her graceful and rounded legs, and when she
smiled her teeth were very white. That was the finish-
324 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
ing touch, for teeth are bad in Ireland, and most pretty
girls need only smile to disillusion one. So, after
some talk about the weather, and about America, I
asked the mother if I might not take the girl's picture ;
and the girl was willing enough, for she hastily let
down her skirt, blushing with pleasure; but her mother
shook her head.
"You are not the first one to be askin' that," she
said; "but I have said no to all of them, for I would
not have her growing vain."
"She has a right to be vain," I pointed out, "for she
is very pretty; and it wouldn't hurt her to have her
picture taken."
"Handsome is as handsome does," said her mother;
"and she is not as good as she looks."
No doubt with a little more blarney I could have
won her consent; but in my heart of hearts I knew she
was right, and I didn't try to persuade her. It was not
the first time I realised I was not cut out for a photog-
rapher! She said the girl would be going to America
before long, and I advised her to take care of her teeth,
and bade them good-bye and went on my way. I
have regretted since that I didn't try the blarney, for
that picture would certainly have embellished the pages
of this book !
I had thought that the fine weather would bring out
the turf cutters in force, and I had hoped to get a
picture of them at work; but the cuttings were all
empty, for some reason, and at last, after a final long
look at the beautiful valley, I made my way back to
the hotel, and an hour later we were faring westward
toward Clifden.
IAR CONNAUGHT 32$
The road ran for many miles with the granite masses
of the Twelve Pins towering on the right, springing
sheer two thousand feet from the bogs around them —
great cones rising one behind the other, their summits
gleaming so white in the sun that they seemed crowned
with snow. We ran away from them, at last, across a
dreary moor, down to the sea, and so to Clifden.
Clifden is a little modern town with a single wide
street overlooking the bay; but we had time for only
a glance at it, for the motor-bus was waiting which was
to take us to Leenane, — which is pronounced to rhyme
with "fan," as though it had no final "e" — and we
were soon climbing out of the town, with a beautiful
view of the bay to the left, and on a cliff close to the
shore the great masts of the Marconi station, which is
in touch with the coast of Newfoundland. No con-
trast could have been more complete — this latest and
greatest of the achievements of science, set down in a
country where nothing has altered for five centuries;
a country to which the description penned by Rory
O'Flaherty, more than a century before our Revolu-
tion, applies as closely and completely as it did when
it was written. Another contrast, just as great, is that
between the handsome young Italian who set those
masts here and the men who live in the little cottages
along the sea under them. And yet Marconi himself
is half Irish — for his mother was Irish, and he has
married an Irish girl; and I fancy he is glad that one
of the greatest of his stations should be here on the Irish
coast.
We mounted steadily along a winding road, and at
every turn the scenery grew more superb — great sweeps
326 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
of rugged landscape, of bog and rocky field and granite
mountain, rousing the soul like a blare of martial music.
Beyond Letterfrank, the road dips into the lovely Pass
of Kylemore; and again, as back at Glengarriff, it was
bordered with fuchsia hedges, gay with scarlet flowers.
And presently we were running close beside Kylemore
Lake, with the white towers of the castle gleaming
above the trees on the other side — a magnificent struc-
ture, now owned by the Duke of Manchester — financed
by his Cincinnati father-in-law !
And then we came out upon a wide moor, and the
road climbed up and up — and all at once, we came to
the top of the pass, and there, far below us lay Killary
Bay, a narrow arm of the Atlantic running back into
the very heart of the Connemara mountains, which
press upon it so closely that there is barely room
for the road between rock and water. We dropped
down toward it, passed a tiny mountain village, came
out upon the shore, and sped along at the very edge of
the water, until, far ahead, we saw the cluster of houses
which is Leenane; and in another moment we had
stopped before the rambling building which is Mc-
Keown's Hotel.
McKeown himself is a bearded giant of a man,
with bronzed face and the sunniest of smiles, and his
hotel is a sort of paradise for fishermen. To others it
is not so attractive ; but in surroundings it could hardly
be surpassed. Right at its door stretches Killary Bay;
back of it tower the steep hills, and across the inlet
grey and purple giants spring two thousand feet into
the air, right up from the water's edge.
A few looms have been set up by Mr. McKeown in a
IAR CONNAUGHT 327
building adjoining the hotel, and tweeds are woven
there from yarn spun in the neighbourhood, forming a
small industry which gives employment to a number of
persons; and a few yards farther down the road is a
station of the constabulary, and it looked so bright and
inviting that I stopped in for a chat with the men.
I have already spoken of the Royal Irish Constabu-
lary— the force which polices the country; slim,
soldierly men, governed from Dublin Castle, and really
constituting an army, eleven thousand strong, armed
with carbines, sword bayonets and revolvers, and ready
to be concentrated instantly wherever there is trouble.
They are nearly all Irishmen, so it is not a foreign army,
but they are seldom assigned to the districts where they
were born and reared ; and the men who command them
from Dublin Castle are English army officers, who are
in no way responsible to the public. All, in fact, that
Ireland has to do with the Royal Irish Constabulary is
to foot the bills.
Because of this fact, because in the old days they
were called out to assist at every eviction and at every
political or religious arrest, because their services are
still required at every trial and mass-meeting and fair
and market, and finally because their demeanour is some-
times rather top-lofty, the Irish generally regard them
with a suspicion and dislike which seem to me unde-
served. So far as I came into contact with them, I
found them courteous and kindly men, and apparently
as good Irishmen as any one could desire. But there
is one cause for complaint which has a real basis, and
that is that, in a country which is as free of crime as
Ireland now is, a police force should be maintained
328 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
which averages one to every 394 of the population, and
which costs annually about $7,500,000. In the old
days of evictions and coercion acts and political and
religious strife, some such force may have been neces-
sary; but that need has passed. Crime is to-day
much less frequent and serious in Ireland than in
England, yet in Ireland the per capita cost of the
police is $1.64, while in England it is only fifty-six
cents.
But the members of the constabulary are not to
blame for this, and one grows accustomed to seeing
them everywhere — at the Dublin crossings, at the street
corners of every little village, walking briskly in pairs
along the loneliest of mountain roads, stationed in the
wilds of the hills or amid the desolation of the bogs,
often with no house in sight except the barrack in
which they live.
I certainly got a warm welcome, that day, from the
sergeant in charge of the Leenane barrack, and from
the one constable who happened to be on duty there.
They showed me all through the place, clean and bare
and Spartan-like, with their kits along the wall, ready
to be caught up at a moment's notice, for a call to duty
may come at any time, and there must be no delay.
It was a real barrack, too, with heavy bars across the
windows, and a door that would resist any mob.
And then they showed me their equipment. To the
belt which they all wear a leather case is suspended for
the baton, and a square leather pouch which contains
a pair of handcuffs. At the back is the ammunition
pouch, and on the side opposite the baton hangs the
sword-bayonet, which can also be used as a knife or
IAR CONNAUGHT 329
dagger. The small carbine they carry weighs only six
and a half pounds, but is wonderfully compact and
efficient, with a six-shot magazine, and a graduated
sight up to two thousand yards. No man in this
station had ever had occasion to use his rifle, and they
all said earnestly that they hoped they never would.
They have a beat of twelve miles along the moun-
tain roads, and they cover it twice every day and once
every night. I asked them the reason for so much
vigilance, for I could not imagine any serious crime
back in these hills among this simple and kindly peo-
ple; and they said that there was really very little
crime ; but a sheep would be missing now and then, or
a bit of poaching would be done, or perhaps a quarrel
would arise between some farmer and his labourers and
a horse would be lamed — it was such things as those
they had to be on the lookout for. The position of
constable is a good one — for Ireland; and I imagine
that most of those who enter the service stay in it till
retired, for it carries an increase of pay every five
years, with a pension after twenty-five years' service, or
in case of disability.
We sat and talked for a long time about America
and Ireland, and intelligent fellows I found them,
though perhaps with a little of the soldier's contempt
for the shiftless civilian. And then I walked on to
the village which nestles at the head of the bay, a single
street of slated houses. Everybody wanted to talk,
and I remember one old granny, with face incredibly
wrinkled, who sat in front of her door knitting a stock-
ing without once glancing at it, and who told me she
was eighty-five and had nine children in America.
330 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
And I met the girl who, with her brother, teaches the
village school, and she asked me if I wouldn't come in,
before I left, and see the school, and I promised her I
would.
Then I noticed that one of the little shops had the
name "Gaynor" over the door, and I stopped in to ask
the proprietor if he knew that was also the name of the
mayor of New York. He did — indeed, he knew as
much about Mayor Gaynor as I did. There were two
other men sitting there, and they asked me to sit down.
One of them was a mail carrier, and he told me some-
thing of his trips back up into the hills, and how almost
all the letters he delivered were from America, each
with a bit of money in it.
"When there is bad times in America," he went on,
"and when men are out of work there, it pinches us
here just as hard as it pinches them there — harder,
maybe, for if the money don't come, there is nothing
for it but the work-house. A man can't make a liv-
ing on these poor hill farms, no matter how hard he
tries, and there is no work to be had about here, save a
little car driving and such like in the summer for
visitors like yourself."
"Why do they stay here4?" I asked. "Why don't
they go away*?"
"Where would they go? There's no place for them
to go in Ireland — America is the only place, and every
one that can raise the money does go there, you may be
sure. Them that's left behind are too poor or too old
to cross the sea; and then, however bad it is, there is
some that will not leave the little home they was born
in, so long as they can stay there and keep the
IAR CONNAUGHT 331
soul in their body. There be some so wrongheaded
that they won't even move down into the valley farms
which they might be getting from the Congested Dis-
tricts Board."
I have been fighting shy of the Congested Districts
Board ever since I left Cork; but here, in the very heart
of the worst of the congested districts, I may as well
explain what the words mean.
No one, travelling from Galway to Clifden and then
on to Leenane, as we had done, would have thought of
the district as "congested," for, while the little huddles
of thatched roofs which mark a village are fairly fre-
quent, they are scarcely noticeable in the great stretches
of hill and bog and rocky meadow among which they
nestle. And, indeed, "congested," in this sense, does
not mean crowded with people ; it means exceptionally
poor; and there is no district of Ireland poorer than
Connaught, that land of bog and granite, where every
inch of ground must be either elaborately drained or
wrested from the rock, and where, even after years of
labour, the fields are still either so wet that a little extra
rain ruins them, or so full of stones that the reaping
must be done with the hook. In Connaught, even
the poorest man has a right to be proud of his home,
because, however small and mean it may be, it repre-
sents infinite toil.
But how does it come that any one lives in these
hills, where life is such a constant and heartrending
struggle1? The answer is that Connaught is the Irish
pale. After Cromwell had subdued Ireland, the Puri-
tan Parliament announced that it was "Not their inten-
332 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
tion to extirpate the whole nation," as many people had
been led, not unreasonably, to believe ; and a year later,
they proved their humanitarian intentions by enacting
that such Irish as survived should be permitted to live
thereafter between the Atlantic and the Shannon, cer-
tain portions of which were set aside, as the Parliament
said in unintentional rhyme,
"For the habitation
of the Irish nation."
It was stipulated, however, that they should not
settle within four miles of the sea, within four miles
of a town, nor within two miles of the Shannon; they
were given until the first of May, 1654, to get into
their new homes, after which date, any found outside
of Connaught were to be treated as outlaws and killed
out of hand. The misery and sufferings of the little
bands of terror-stricken people, wandering in the depth
of winter westward along unknown roads to an un-
known, inhospitable country, will not bear thinking of
— or, thinking of it, one can understand something
of Irish hate for Cromwell's memory. As a matter of
fact, the edict sounds worse than it was, as such edicts
usually do, for it was impossible for it to be literally
carried out. All the Irish were not banished to
Connaught, for many of them preferred to face death
where they had always lived rather than among the
Connemara hills; and they were not murdered out of
hand, but given work, for the new landlords were glad
to employ them at menial labour, since no other
labourers were to be had. But from that time on, it
was usually the Protestant Englishman who lived in
IAR CONNAUGHT 333
the mansion house, and the Irish Catholic whose home
was roofed with thatch and floored with dirt.
Let us be careful not to grow sentimental over the
wrongs of Ireland, nor to magnify them. They are
not unique, for they have been paralleled many times
in history. We should be careful, too, not to judge
a seventeenth-century Parliament by twentieth-century
ideals. There is this to be said for it: that its only
hope of existence lay in stamping out rebellion, and
the only way, apparently, to stamp out rebellion in
Ireland was to kill the rebels. That the Parliament
chose to banish them rather than kill them is so much
to its credit, and I doubt not that, after the vote had
been taken, many of those old Puritans went home with
the feeling that they had done a merciful and Christian
deed. Nor should we forget that the wars of religion
were as bitter on one side as on the other : St. Barthol-
omew was far more bloody than Drogheda, and the re-
moval of the Irish to Connaught was matched by the
banishment of the Huguenots from France, thirty years
later. It did not seem possible, in that day, that Prot-
estant and Catholic could ever live side by side in peace
and friendship, and that narrow bigotry alone would
strive to keep alive the memory of those mistaken, cen-
turies-old feuds and persecutions.
The best portions of Connaught were already fully
settled, as the fugitive Irish found when they got there ;
furthermore, although the broad Shannon formed a
natural moat which would hold safely the Irish who
had crossed it, it was further strengthened by giving
to Cromwell's soldiers all the broad belt of fertile land
along the river, as well as the rich valleys running back
334
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
into the hills. All that was left for the newcomers
were the bleak moors and rocky mountain-sides, where
no one else would live; and since these, for the most
part, were quite unfit to be cultivated, there was every
reason to believe that the people condemned to live
among them would soon cease from troubling.
But they didn't — at least, all of them didn't. They
built rude shelters of rock for their families, and the
cabins one sees to-day throughout Connemara are the
direct descendants of those early ones, with scarcely
an altered feature. They set to work to reclaim the
hillsides, and though, every year, the spade turned up
a new crop of stones, the fields slowly grew capable of
producing a little food. Before that time, of course,
many of the people had starved, but those that were
left were all the better off, and it looked, for a while,
as though they might some day be able to open the
door without seeing the wolf there.
But the end was not yet. It should be remembered
that these mountain farms did not belong to the peo-
ple who had created them, and who laboured con-
stantly to improve them, but were part of the "planta-
tion" of some court favourite or adventurer, so that rent
must be paid for them ; and as the farm improved the
rent was raised, although the improvement resulted
from the labour of the man who paid the rent, so that,
in the end, it was not the tenant who was richer, but
the landlord. If the rent was raised to a point where
the tenant couldn't pay it, or if the landlord wanted
the land, the tenant was evicted with absolutely no
compensation for the improvements he had made.
Then it was a question either of going to America, or,
IAR CONNAUGHT 335
if there wasn't money enough for that, as was usually
the case, of taking up some other stretch of rocky hill-
side, and beginning the weary struggle all over again.
The craze for grazing, which started some forty or
fifty years ago, resulted in the eviction of many thou-
sands from farms their own industry had made, and
to-day, as one drives through Connaught, one sees great
stretches of land given over to sheep which were once
part of such farms, and one can tell it is so by the faint
ridges which mark the old tillage.
So evolution proceeded, but for the Irish peasantry
it was devolution, for every step was a step down-
ward; and millions of them left the land in despair,
and millions of those that remained were unable to
make enough to live on; and the workhouses kept get-
ting bigger and bigger, and the people poorer and
poorer; until finally, a few English statesmen, with a
somewhat broader outlook than the average, saw that
something had to be done, and set about doing it.
There is no need for me to enumerate the steps that
were taken — some of them wise, many of them foolish ;
but the greatest of all was the enactment of legislation
permitting and assisting tenants to become the owners
of the land on which they lived.
This was in 1891, when the Congested Districts
Board was established, with wide powers, which have
since been made wider still ; but the kernel of it all is
this : in the west of Ireland, where the need is greatest,
the board has power to condemn and purchase at a fair
valuation the fertile land of the great land-owners,
except the demesne, which is the park about the man-
sion house, and can then re-sell this land to small
336 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
farmers, giving them about sixty years to pay for it,
the payments being figured on the basis of the cost
price, plus interest at the rate of four per cent. Such
condemnation and re-selling is necessarily slow, but it
is going steadily forward, and must in the end, change
the whole face of western Ireland. Indeed, there are
some who think it has already done so.
The Congested Districts Board has done much more
than buy and re-sell land; it has aided and developed
agriculture, improved the breeding of stock, encour-
aged the establishment of industries, developed the
fisheries along the western coast, established technical
schools — in short, it has assumed a sort of paternal
oversight of the districts committed to its care.
All of the "congested districts" aren't in the west of
Ireland — there are districts in the east and south where
the holdings are "uneconomic" — that is, where the in-
come possible to be derived from them is not enough
to support a family — sometimes not enough even to
pay the rent. But conditions are worst in Connaught,
and remain worst, in spite of the work of the board.
It is here that life has sunk to its lowest terms, where
the usual home is a hovel unfit for habitation, sheltering
not only the family, but the chickens and the pigs and
the donkey; it is here that manure is piled habitually
just outside the door, and where fearful epidemics
sweep the countryside. At the time we were at
Leenane, there was an outbreak of typhus a few miles
back in the mountains. It had been announced with
hysterical scare-heads by the Dublin papers, but the
people of the neighbourhood thought little of it —
they had seen typhus so often !
IAR CONNAUGHT 337
Which brings me back to Gaynor's general store, and
the mail-carrier who was telling me about the letters
from America.
"Yes," Gaynor put in, "and about the only letters
that go out from here are for America — and well I
know what is inside them ! There was a time when I
sold stamps to the poor people, or gave credit to them
when they couldn't pay, and the only stamps I ever
thought of buying was the tuppence-ha'penny ones,
which we used to have to put on American letters.
And many is the letter I have written for poor starving
people praying for a little help from the son or daugh-
ter who had gone to the States, and who was maybe
forgetting how hard life is back here in Connaught."
"Not many of them do be forgetting," said the mail-
carrier, puffing his pipe slowly; "I will say that for
them. There be many away from here now," he went
on, "just for the summer — gone to England or Scot-
land to help with the harvest. It is a hard life, but
they make eighteen shillings a week there, and the
money they bring back with them will help many a
family through the winter. There be thousands and
thousands here in Connaught who could not live but
for the money they make every year in this way/'
He stopped to watch Gaynor weigh out a shilling's
worth of flour — American flour! — for a girl who had
come in with a dingy basket, into which the flour was
dumped; and then he went on to tell me something
about his trips up over the hills — for no house in Ire-
land is too poor or too remote for the mail-carrier to
reach. Talk about rural delivery! With us, a man
must have his mail-box down by the highroad, where
338 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the carrier can reach it easily; in Ireland, the carrier
climbs to every man's very door, and puts the letter
into his hand — and I can imagine the joy that it brings.
Irish mail-carriers play Santa Claus all the year round !
I tore myself away, at last, from this absorbing con-
versation, and started back to the hotel. The sun had
not yet set; but suddenly the thought came to me
that it must be very late, and I snatched out my watch
and looked at it. It was half-past eight — an hour
after the hotel's dinner time! However, in a fishing
hotel, they are accustomed to the vagaries of their
guests ; and I found that dinner had been kept hot for
me.
An hour later, as we sat on the balcony in front of
our room, gazing out across the moonlit water, we
heard the tread of quick feet along the road, and, look-
ing down, saw pass two constables, starting out upon
their night patrol. And whenever I think of Leenane,
I see those two slim, erect figures marching vigorously
away into the darkness along the lonely road.
CHAPTER XX
JOYCE'S COUNTRY
TWENTY-FIVE miles away to the eastward from Lee-
nane, across a wild stretch of hill and bog known as
Joyce's Country, are the ruins of the old abbey of
Cong, and thither we set out, next morning, behind a
little black mare who would need all her staying pow-
ers for the trip that day, and on a car driven, as was
fitting, by a man named Joyce — as perhaps half the
men are who live in this neighbourhood. "Jyce" is
the local pronunciation; and the Joyces are one of
the handsomest and fiercest breeds of mountaineers to
be met with anywhere — fit companions for those of
Kentucky and Tennessee.
The original Joyces were Welshmen, so it is said,
who came to Ireland about 1300, and, with the permis-
sion of the all-powerful O'Flaherties, settled in this
country between Lough Mask and the sea. Why they
should have chosen so inhospitable a region I don't
know — perhaps because no one else wanted it. Cer-
tainly the O'Flaherties didn't; for they preferred to
live along the sea, where fish was plentiful. But the
Joyces were an agricultural people; they turned as
much of the hillside as they could into arable land,
cultivated with the spade to this day and reaped with
the hook. On the rest of it, they grazed their flocks,
and they still graze them there.
It was a beautiful, warm day, with fleecy clouds in
339
340 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the sky and a blue haze about the hills, and everybody
was out enjoying the sunshine as we drove through the
village and turned up along the shoulder of the Devil's
Mother Mountain. The fine weather had brought the
men and women out to work in the potato fields — such
of the men, that is, as hadn't yet left for England or
Scotland to spend the summer in the fields there. Usu-
ally there were five or six women to one man, each of
them armed with a spade or a fork, and it was pitiful
to see the poor little patches in which they were work-
ing. Almost always they were on a steep hillside —
there isn't much else but hillside hereabouts which can
be cultivated, for even where there happens to be a
little level land in the valley, it is almost always wet
bog in which nothing can be grown. The patches
were very, very small, and each of them was surrounded
by a high wall built of the stones which had been dug
from the ground ; and at the bottom of every slope was
a pile of surplus stones which had been rolled there out
of the way.
The potatoes were planted in drills about two feet
wide, and then between the drills a deep trench was dug
to carry off the water, for even on the hillsides the
ground is very wet; and these trenches must be kept
clear of weeds so that the water will run off freely, and
of course the drills must be kept clear of weeds too;
and the ground is so poor that manure must be freely
used, and the only way to get it where it is needed
is to place it there by hand. And almost every time
the spade is driven into the ground, it brings up more
stones which must be carried away, until it sometimes
becomes quite a problem what to do with them.
JOYCE'S COUNTRY 341
As many as possible are built into the fences; and
the dominant feature of every Connemara landscape is
the zig-zag tapestry of stone walls which covers it.
They run in every direction — up the sides of hills so
steep that it seems a miracle they don't slide off, around
fields so small that the ground can't be seen above the
fence, along the tops of high ridges where they form
grotesque patterns against the sky which shines through
every chink, in places where there seems to be no need
whatever for a wall and yet to which the stones have
been carried with prodigious labour.
But do not suppose that, even with all this toil, the
fields are cleared of stones. Everywhere there are out-
croppings of solid rock which the tiller of the field
has been unable to dislodge, and around which he must
sow and reap. In consequence, there are practically no
fields in which it would be possible to drive a plow,
and few indeed in which it is possible to swing a
scythe. The fields themselves are so small that one
wonders anybody should trouble to cultivate them at
all. I have seen scores and scores not more than fifty
feet square, each surrounded with its high wall ; I have
seen many less than that, with just space enough for
a two-roomed hovel, where the family must take the
stock into the house with them, because there is no place
for an out-building, and where the manure must be
heaped against the wall, because to throw it a foot away
would be to put it on land belonging to some one else.
The land which the family itself cultivated might lie
in twenty different places, miles away.
This complication, which is unparalleled elsewhere
in the world, arose in this way: Half a century ago a
342 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
man would lease some acres of ground and by terrific
labour convert it into tillable land. As his sons grew
up and his daughters married, he would sub-let to each
of his sons and sons-in-law small portions of his hold-
ing, and their other relatives would do the same, so
that, while each of them might be the tenant of four or
five acres, they would be scattered in a dozen different
places. A second generation further complicated
things. An acre field would be split up between ten
different tenants, each with his stone wall around his
portion; and one of the biggest jobs the Congested
Districts Board has had to tackle is that of so redis-
tributing the land that each tenant shall have a compact
portion.
Imagine the small farmers of any neighbourhood
called together for the purpose of redistribution, each
of them suspicious and jealous of all the others, each
of them believing that his scattered bits of land are
quite exceptionally valuable, each of them remember-
ing the bitter labour by which he reclaimed each rood;
and then imagine the patience and tact which are needed
to convince them that they are not being cheated, and
to persuade them to agree to the proposed re-allotment.
Talk about the labours of Hercules ! Why they were
child's play compared with this !
We drove on, that morning, down a wide valley, past
these tiny walled fields and thatched houses, now and
then passing one of the neat little slated cottages which
the County Council builds where it can, but which are
distressingly few and far between; and then we came
out into the grazing country, with stone walls running
JOYCE'S COUNTRY 343
right up the thousand-foot hillsides to the very top,
and the white sheep dotted over the green turf; and
then we turned off along a side-road, which speedily
mounted through a narrow pass, across a wide bog, and
so to the head of a deep gorge where, far below us,
stretched the blue waters of Lough Nafooey, lying in
a deep cup of granite mountains.
I have never seen a steeper road than that which
zig-zags down into this valley, and I was very glad
indeed to get off and walk, not only because of the
steepness, but also because on foot I could stop when-
ever I chose and look at the beautiful scene below —
the long, narrow lake, crowded in on the south by steep,
bare mountains, and with a white ribbon of road run-
ning along its northern edge, past a cluster of houses
built close beside it, and with the furrowed fields be-*
hind them mounting steeply upwards. The whole
village was out at work in the fields, and the red pet-
ticoats of the women gave the scene just that added
touch of colour it needed.
The mountains on the southern shore grew less rugged
presently, and as soon as the ground grew level enough
for tillage, it presented such a complicated pattern of
stone walls as must be unique, even here in this be-
wailed district. For more than a mile we drove along
opposite them ; and then we reached the end of the lake,
and struck off along another valley toward Lough
Mask. We were soon on another desolate moor,
dotted with the black stumps of bog oak; and then the
road sank into a pass, as the hills closed in on either
side, and skirted a dancing brook, and then before us
opened the lower part of Lough Mask.
344
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
I have said that these Irish mountaineers are fierce,
and I must explain now what I meant by that, for a
kindlier people, one more eager to bid you welcome or
help you on your way, you will find nowhere. The
same is true of the Kentucky mountaineers; and yet
they do not hesitate to put a bullet through any man
they regard as an enemy. So with the Joyces and the
O'Malleys. It was here among these hills that the "In-
vincibles" and the "Moonlighters" ranged in the days
of the Land League; their notions of right and wrong
were, and still are, the old primitive ones. They be-
lieve in the Mosaic law of an eye for an eye; murder
after murder has been done here, and no one disap-
proved; and yet a man with a purse filled with gold,
or a woman with no protection save her chastity, might
walk these roads unharmed and unafraid on the dark-
est night.
Just before one reaches the bridge over the narrow
stream through which the upper lake flows into the
lower, the road passes close to a cluster of houses, and
it was in one of them that two bailiffs of Lord Ardilaun
were beaten to death, and their bodies placed in sacks
weighted with stones ; and then they were carried down
to the lake, and every one along the road was made to
lend a hand to carrying them. That was but one
tragedy of many such — outbreaks of the feud which
started six centuries ago, and which only within the
past decade has shown any sign of being outlived and
forgotten.
I do not know when I have been more impressed and
astonished than when I stood on the bridge over the
river below Lough Mask, and gazed out upon that
IN "JOYCE'S COUNTRY"
ON THE SHORE OF LOUGH MASK
JOYCE'S COUNTRY 345
noble sheet of water, stretching away to the north like
an inland sea. It was dotted with beautiful islands,
but no farther shore was visible, not even when we
mounted a bold crag overhanging the water in order
to get a wider view. We went on again, with the lake
at our left, and then the road turned away between
high stone walls — only these walls were solidly built
of dressed stones laid in mortar, and were surmounted
with broken glass set in cement. There was a gate here
and there, through which we could catch glimpses of
wild and unkempt woods, a-riot with a luxuriant vege-
tation bearing witness to the richness of the soil.
The wall must have been ten feet high, and after we
had gone on for half an hour with no sign of it coming
to an end, we asked the driver what it was, and he
told us that it was the wall surrounding part of the
estate of Lord Ardilaun, which stretches clear on to
Cong, a distance of six or eight miles — the very choic-
est land of the whole district. Some of it is let to
tenants, so our driver said, at rents which are almost
prohibitive ; but the most part is walled in, with many
notices against trespassing posted about it — a preserve
for woodcock.
We dropped through the little town of Rosshill, once
the seat of the Earl of Lei trim (but now owned by
Lord Ardilaun), and then into Clonbur (also owned
by Lord Ardilaun), where the wall stopped for a while
to make room for the houses, but began again as
soon as the village ended; and then we passed a curious
collection of cairns on a plateau at the side of the road,
some of them surmounted by weather-blackened wooden
crosses ; and then on a hill to the right we saw another
346 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
great cairn; and then we suddenly realised that we
were on the battlefield of Moytura, which raged for
five days over this peninsula between Lough Corrib
and Lough Mask, so long ago that nobody knows ex-
actly when it was, though it has been roughly dated at
two thousand years before Christ.
The contestants in that battle were the Firbolgs, the
men of the leathern wallets, who had come from the
south to Ireland five days before the flood, and the De
Dananns, a tall, fair, blue-eyed race of magicians from
the north, who had "settled on the Connemara moun-
tains in the likeness of a blue mist." The De Dananns
were the victors, and the cairns we saw that day were
the monuments they raised over the burial places of
their dead warriors.
There was another famous battle on this same penin-
sula, not so many years ago, for over there on the
shore of Lough Mask lived Captain Boycott, whose
name has passed into the language as that of the silent
and effective weapon which the peasantry forged
against him, in Land League days.
Half a mile farther, and a sharp turn of the road
brought us into the village of Cong, a single street of
drab houses, whose principal attraction is the ruins of
the abbey where the Cross of Cong was fashioned ; but
the long drive had made us hungry, and so first of all
we stopped at a clean little inn and had tea, and
it was set forth in a service of old silver lustre which
Betty marvelled over so warmly that she almost for-
got to eat. And then we started for the abbey, which,
of course, like everything else hereabouts, belongs to
Lord Ardilaun.
JOYCE'S COUNTRY 347
From the road, all that one can see of it is a portion
of the wall of the church, so overgrown with ivy that
even the windows are covered; but we managed to
rout out a boy, who took us around to the cloister side,
which is very beautiful indeed, with its lovely broken
arcades, its rounded arches, its clustered pillars, and
round-headed windows — some glimpse of which will
be found in the photograph opposite page 346. There
is not much of interest left in the church, but in one
corner is a small, dark, stone-roofed charnel house, still
heaped high with the whitened skulls of the monks who
were entombed there.
The abbey stands close to the bank of that wonderful
white river which, coming underground from Lough
Mask, bursts from the earth in a deep chasm a mile
above Cong, and sweeps, deep and rapid, down into
Lough Corrib. And the monks at Cong were more
ingenious than most, for there, on a little island in the
middle of the river, stand the ruins of their fishing-
house, constructed over a narrow channel into which
the nets were dropped, and they were so arranged
that when a fish was captured, its struggles rang a
bell back at the abbey, and some one would hasten to
secure it. We made our way through an orchard of
beautiful old apple trees bearded with lichen, waist-
deep in grass, to the very edge of the stream, that I
might get the picture of this labour-saving edifice,
which you will find opposite the preceding page.
Then the boy asked us if we would care to see Ash-
ford House, the seat of Lord Ardilaun; and for the
benefit of those of my readers who are wondering from
what ancient family Lord Ardilaun is descended, I may
348 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
as well state here that he is none other than Guinness,
of Guinness's Stout, and takes his title of Baron Ardi-
laun from a little island out in Lough Corrib. We
said, of course, that we should like to see Ashford
House, and we walked for half a mile through the
beautiful woods of the demesne, up to the great man-
sion of limestone and granite, set at the edge of a
terrace sloping down to the lake. The entrance to it
is under a square tower with drawbridge and port-
cullised gateway, and the house itself is a mammoth
affair, with turrets and battlements and towers and
machicolations and other medisevalities, quite useless
and meaningless on a modern residence, and there are
acres and acres of elaborately-planted grounds, with
sunken gardens and fountains and long shady avenues
stretching away into dim distance.
But nobody lives here except a few caretakers, for
Lord Ardilaun, an old man of seventy-three, prefers the
south of France, so that Ashford House is deserted
from year's end to year's end, except for a few days
now and then when a shooting-party of more than
usual importance comes to kill the woodcock. For the
ordinary party, another mansion, farther down the lake
on Doon Hill, suffices; but when the king comes, as he
did in 1905, of course the great house has to be opened.
One reads in Murray, which is a very British guide-
book, how, on that occasion, the king and his party
killed ninety brace of woodcock in a single day; and
how, five years later, 587 brace were bagged in five
days; but it will be quite impossible for you to under-
stand, unless you are also British, the peculiar venera-
tion with which such coverts as these are regarded by
THE CLOISTER AT CONG ABBEY
III I. MONKS' FISHING-HOUSE, CONG ABBEY
JOYCE'S COUNTRY 349
British sportsmen, and the peculiar cast of mind
which deems it right and proper that thousands of fer-
tile acres should be maintained as game preserves in a
land where most of the people are forced to wring their
livelihood from the rocky hillsides.
It is only for such great parties that Lord Ardilaun
returns to do the honours ; and he hastens away again,
as soon as the parties are over. He knows nothing of
his tenants; he leaves the collection of his rents to a
factor, and the preservation of his coverts to a force
of gamekeepers, and any one caught inside the wall may
expect to be prosecuted to the limit of the law.
Now I have no quarrel with Lord Ardilaun. The
stout he sells is honest stout, and he got possession of
this estate by honest purchase, which is more than can
be said for most great estates in Ireland. But he
presents an example of that absentee landlordism which
has been the chief and peculiar curse of this unfortu-
nate country. With landlords who lived on their es-
tates and looked after their properties and got ac-
quainted with their tenants and took some human in-
terest in their welfare, the tenants themselves seldom
had any quarrel. It was the landlords who lived in
England or on the continent, who entrusted the col-
lection of rents to agents, and whose only interest in
their Irish estates was to get the largest possible returns
from them — it was these men who kept the country in
an uproar of eviction and persecution.
Indeed, I believe that if all Irish landlords were res-
ident landlords, the Irish labourer would be better off
without the land purchase act; for there are no more
grasping and exacting masters in the world than the
350 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
small farmers to whom the great estates are passing.
The old owners might be despotic, but they were not
mean; and where they lived among their people and
came to know them, their despotism was usually a
benevolent despotism, tempered with mercy. The rule
of the small farmer will be a despotism, too, but there
will be no mercy about it. Joyce, our driver, voiced
all this in a sentence, as we were driving back.
"Land purchase, is it*?" he said, puffing his short
pipe, and staring out across the hills. "Yes, I have
heard much of it; but I'm thinking it will be a cruel
time for the poor."
The neighbourhood of Cong is remarkable for its
natural curiosities, for the ground to the north toward
Lough Mask is honeycombed with caves, made by the
water working its way through to Lough Corrib.
Geologists explain it learnedly, and doubtless to their
own satisfaction, by saying that the peninsula is com-
posed of carboniferous limestone which has been per-
forated and undermined by the solvent action of the
free carbonic acid in the river water; but I prefer to
believe, with the residents of the neighbourhood, that it
was the work of the Little People.
The lofty tunnel through which the sunken river
flows is accessible in several places, and one of these,
called the Pigeon Hole, is not far from the village and
is worth visiting. It is in the centre of a field, and is
a perpendicular hole some sixty feet deep, clothed with
ferns and moss and very damp indeed, and the steps by
which one goes down are very slippery, so that some
caution is necessary; but there at the bottom is a
JOYCE'S COUNTRY 351
vaulted cavern through which the river sweeps. The
girl who has come along, carrying a wisp of straw,
lights it and walks away into the depths of the cavern,
but the effect is not especially dazzling and the smoke
from the straw is most offensive. They order these
things better in France — at the Grotto of Han, for in-
stance !
Another curiosity of the peninsula is not a natural
but an artificial one — a canal dug during famine times
with government money to connect Lough Corrib with
Lough Mask. This was expected to be a great bless-
ing to the west of Ireland, extending navigation from
Galway clear up across Lough Mask and Lough Conn
to Ballina; but, alas, when it was finished, it was
found that the canal wouldn't hold water, for the rock
through which it was cut was so porous that the water
ran through it like a sieve, and left the canal as dry as
a bone. So there it remains to this day, and one may
walk from end to end of it dryshod and ponder on the
marvels of English rule in Ireland!
One thing more at Cong is worth inspecting, and that
is the old cross which stands at the intersection of the
street with the road to the abbey. It was erected cen-
turies ago to the memory of two abbots, Nicol and
Gilbert O' Duffy, whose names may yet be read on its
base; and it is a cross that can work miracles. Here
is one of them:
There was a boy here at Cong, once, who was stupid
and could learn nothing, but spent all his time wander-
ing along the river or climbing the hills or lying in the
fields staring up at the sky. Everybody said he would
come to a bad end; but one day he sat down on the
352
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
base of this cross, and fell asleep with his head against
it; and that night, when he went home, he took up the
newspaper which his father was reading and read aloud
every word that was on it; and they took him to the
priest, thinking a spell was on him, and there was not
a book the priest had, in Latin or Irish or any language
whatever, but the boy he could read it at a glance;
and they sent him down to Cork to the college there,
but there was nothing his masters could teach him
that he did not know already; and the fame of him
became so great that when Queen Victoria was looking
about her for a man to put at the head of the new col-
lege at Galway, she hit upon him, and so he was given
charge of Queen's College, and his name was O'Brien
Crowe, and he made that college a great college, and
he taught things there that no other man in Ireland had
ever so much as dreamed of !
I am sorry I had not heard this tale when I was at
Galway; I should have liked to ask Bishop O'Dee how
much of it is true.
We returned to Leenane by a different road, which
lay for some miles close beside the shore of Lough
Corrib, white-capped now under a stiff wind which had
arisen, and studded with lovely green islands. It is
undoubtedly one of the most beautiful of the Irish
lakes, but even here the shadow of Land League days
still lingers, for close by the shore is Ebor Hall, which
was the residence of Lord Mountmorris, who was
beaten to death near by; and as we drove on, our jarvey
pointed out the scenes of similar if less famous trage-
dies, whose details I have forgotten. But all that was
JOYCE'S COUNTRY 353
thirty years ago; the problem which the Land League
tried to solve has been solved in another fashion; the
peasantry of Ireland have won the fight for fair rent,
fixed hold, and free sale, and can afford to forget the
past.
Just beyond the Doon peninsula, the road opens up
the long expanse of the narrow arm of the lake which
runs back many miles into the mountains, and on an
island a little distance from the shore, towers the keep
of a ruined castle — Caislean-na-Circe, or Hen Castle in
the prosaic vernacular. Islands, as you will have re-
marked before this, were a favourite place in Ireland
for castles and monasteries, and the deeper the water
about them the better, for it was a welcome defence in
the days when midnight raids were the favourite pas-
time of every chief, and no sport was so popular with
the English as that of hunting the Irish "wolves."
There are many legends to explain the name of
this castle in Lough Corrib. One is that the castle
was built in a single night by an old witch and her hen,
and she gave it and the hen to The O' Flaherty, telling
him that, if the castle was ever besieged, he need not
worry about provisions, since the hen would lay eggs
enough to keep the garrison from want. It was not
long before a force of O'Malleys ferried over from the
mainland and camped down about the walls, and
O' Flaherty, forgetting the witch's words, killed the
hen and was soon starved out. Another legend is that
the castle was held during a long siege by the formi-
dable Grainne, wife of Donell O'Flaherty, and that her
husband was so proud of her that he named the place
Hen Castle in her honour. Still another is that the
354 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Joyces were holding it against the O'Flaherties, but
were about to surrender, when the famous Grace
O'Malley marched a party of her clansmen over the
mountains from the sea and drove the O'Flaherties off,
and so it was named after her. These are examples
of what the Irish imagination can do when it turns
itself loose; for the fact is that the castle, at least as
it stands now, was built by Richard de Burgo, that first
old doughty Norman ruler of Connaught, to hold the
pass from the isthmus of Cong into the wilds of Con-
nemara. The keep is plainly Anglo-Norman, flanked
by great square towers of cut limestone.
A few miles farther on is the village of Maam, set
in the midst of magnificent scenery at the intersection
of two valleys, one running to the west and one to the
south, closed in by the wildest, bleakest, ruggedest of
mountains. Our driver drew up here to water and
wind the horse, and I wandered about the village for
a while, and stopped at last at the open door of a little
cottage where an old woman and some children were
sitting before a flaring fire of turf, and a hen was hov-
ering some chickens in a basket in one corner. Three
or four others were wandering about the dirt floor, look-
ing for crumbs as a matter of habit, though they must
have known perfectly well that there were no crumbs
there.
I was welcomed heartily and invited to sit down
before the fire, with that instinctive courtesy and open-
heartedness which is characteristic of the Irish peas-
antry. Let the traveller take shelter anywhere, pause
before any door, and he will be greeted warmly. There
is an old Irish riddle which runs something like this :
JOYCE'S COUNTRY 355
From house to house it goes,
A wanderer frail and slight,
And whether it rains or snows,
It bides outside in the night.
It is the footpath the Irish mean; and if they could
bring it in out of the rain and the snow, I am sure they
would, just as they bring their chickens and cats and
dogs and pigs and donkeys in, to share the warmth of
the fire.
So in this little cottage a stool was at once vacated
for me and set in a good place, and a ring of smiling
faces closed around me, and the rain of eager questions
began as to whence I came and whither I was go-
ing. I wish I could give you some idea of the tangle
of trash that littered the single room of that hovel —
old clothes, old boards, broken baskets, a pile of turf
in one corner but scattered all about where the chickens
had been scratching at it, a low shelf piled with rags
and straw for a bed, a rude dresser displaying some
chipped dishes — but I despair of picturing it. And
the dirty, ragged children, with their bright eyes and
red cheeks; and the old woman, wrinkled and toil-
worn, but obviously thinking life not so bad, after
all ...
A whistle from Joyce told me that he was ready to
start, and we were soon climbing out of the valley,
emerging at last upon a vast moor, with great moun-
tain masses away to the south, their summits veiled in
mist. We could see groups of people working in the
bog here and there, and at last we came upon two men
and two boys cutting turf close to the road. I asked
them if I might take their picture, and they laughed
356 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
and agreed, and it is opposite this page, but the sun
was setting and the light was not good enough to give
me a sharp negative. Still one can see the man at the
bottom of the ditch cutting the peat with a sharp-
edged instrument like a narrow spade and throwing
the water-soaked bricks out on the edge, where the boys
picked them up and laid them out at a little distance
to dry.
"There's one would make a picture," said Joyce,
about ten minutes later, and I turned to see him point-
ing with his whip at a little girl unloading turf from
the panniers of a donkey by the side of the road.
Needless to say, I was out of my seat in an instant,
and Betty, scarcely less excited, was asking the girl if
I might not take her picture; and then Joyce said
something to her in the Irish, and then from across the
bog came her mother's voice telling her, also in Irish,
to hold still and do as the gentleman wished.
She was a child of eight or ten, with dark hair and
eyes, and slighter and frailer than the average Irish
child; and she wore the characteristic garment fash-
ioned from red flannel which all the poor children in
Connemara wear; and she was bare-headed and bare-
footed; and her task was to drive the ragged little
donkey out into the bog and fill the panniers with the
bricks, and drive it back again to the side of the road,
and pile the turf there, ready for the cart which would
take it away. From the place where the turf was be-
ing cut to the roadside was at least a quarter of a mile,
and how often that child had travelled that road that
day I did not like to think. From the pile of turf that
THE TURF-CUTTERS
A GIRL OF "JOYCE'S COUNTRY"
JOYCE'S COUNTRY 357
lay at the side of the road, it was evident she had not
idled!
She was not without her vanity, for she had her skirt
kilted up, and let it quickly down as soon as she realised
what I wanted; and then she let me pose her as I
wished. You should have seen her astonishment when
I pressed a small coin into her hand, as some slight
recompense for the trouble I had given her; you should
have seen her shining eyes and trembling lips . . .
Up we went and up, with the mists of evening deep-
ening about us; and at last we reached the summit of
the pass, and dropped rapidly down toward Leenane.
Half an hour later, we trotted briskly up to the hotel,
the little mare apparently as fresh as ever, in spite of
the fifty miles, up hill and down, she had covered that
day.
CHAPTER XXI
THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM
IT was well we went to Cong when we did, for the
next day was cold and rainy, with a clammy mist in
the air which settled into the valleys and soaked every-
thing it touched. I walked over to the village, after
breakfast, to keep my promise to the school-teacher.
The school is a dingy frame building with two rooms
and two teachers, a man for the older pupils and a
woman for the younger ones. They are brother and
sister, and from their poor clothes and half-fed appear-
ance, I judge that teachers are even worse paid in Ire-
land than elsewhere. But they both welcomed me
warmly, and the man hastened to set out for me the
only chair in the place, carefully dusting it beforehand.
He called the roll, and it was delightful to hear the
soft, childish voices answer "Prisent, sorr," "Prisent,
sorr." Then he counted heads to be sure, I suppose,
that some child hadn't answered twice, once for himself
and once for some absent friend. There were about
thirty children present, ranging in age from six to fif-
teen; and they were all barefoot, of course, and such
clothing as they had was very worn and ragged, and
most of them had walked four or five miles, that
morning, down out of the hills. The teacher said
sadly that the attendance should be twice as large, but
there was no way of enforcing the compulsory educa-
tion law, though the priest did what he could.
358
THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM 359
I wish I could paint you a picture of that school,
so that you could see it, as I can, when I close
my eyes. In the larger room there was a little furni-
ture— a chair and cheap desk for the teacher, some rude
forms for the children, and a small blackboard; but
the other room was absolutely bare, and the children
sat around on the floor in a circle, with their legs stick-
ing out in front of them, red with cold, while the
teacher stood in their midst to hear them recite. Each
of them had over his shoulder a cheap little satchel,
usually tied together with string; and in this he carried
his two or three books — thin, paper-covered affairs,
which cost a penny each; and all the children, large
and small, had to carry their books about with them all
the time they were in school because there was no place
to put them.
The reading lesson had just started when I entered
the room where the smaller children were, and it was
about the advantages of an education. It brought
tears to the eyes to hear them, in their soft voices and
sweet dialect, read aloud with intense earnestness what
a great help education is in the battle of life and in
how many ways it is useful. When the reading was
done, the teacher asked them the meaning of the longest
words, and had them tell again in their own way what
the lesson had said, to be certain that they understood
it.
Poor kiddies! As I looked at them, I could see in
my mind's eye our schoolhouses back home, heated and
ventilated by the best systems — there was ventilation
enough here, heaven knows, for the door was wide open,
but no heat, though the day was very raw and chilly,
360 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
and the children were shivering — equipped with ex-
pensive furniture and the latest devices of charts and
maps; and I could see the well-fed, well-clothed chil-
dren, with their beautiful costly books which make
teachers almost unnecessary, languidly reading some
such lesson as was being read here in Connaught, on
the advantages of an education! It would not have
been read so earnestly, be sure of that, nor with such
poignant meaning.
And in that moment, I thrilled with a realisation of
Ireland's greatest and truest need. It is not land pur-
chase, or reform of the franchise, or temperance, or
home rule, though these needs are great enough; it is
education. It is education only that can solve her
industrial problems and her labour problems; and,
however she may prosper under the favouring laws of
a new political regime, it is only by education, by the
banishment of ignorance and illiteracy, that she can
hope to take her place among the nations of the world.
It was a sort of vision I had, standing there in that
bare little room, of a new Ireland, dotted with schools
and colleges, as she was a thousand years ago, illumined
with the white light of knowledge; but here, mean-
while, were these eager, bright-eyed, ragged little chil-
dren, stumbling along the path of knowledge as well
as they could; but a rocky path they find it, and how
deserving of help they are! I wish you could have
seen those soiled, thumbed little readers, which cost,
as I have said, only a penny each, and which, if they
had cost more, would have been beyond the reach of
the average Connaught family.
I bought a few of them, afterwards, to bring home
THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM 361
with me, and when I looked through them, I found
them very primitive indeed. Here, for instance, is
Lesson Six in the primer:
Pat has a cat.
It is fat. It is on the mat.
The cat ran at the rat.
It bit the fat cat.
Pat hit the rat.
The rat ran. The cat ran at it.
The rat bit the fat cat.
Cats and rats used, I remember, to be favourite sub-
jects in the readers of my own early school days; and
so were dogs. It is still so in Ireland, as Lesson Eight
will show:
Is it a dog ?
It is a fox.
Was the fox in a box?
The dog was in the box.
He was in the mud.
Rub the mud off the dog.
He ran at the fox in the mud.
The dog ran at the fox and bit it.
My principal objection to this is that it is nonsense:
how, for example, if the dog was in the box, could it
have been also in the mud4? These questions occur
to children even more readily than to adults, and to
teach them nonsense is wrong and unjust. Also these
lessons tell no story; they have no continuity; they
ask questions without answering them ; they change the
subject almost as often as the dictionary. Here, for
instance, is the first lesson of the second term :
362 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Tom put the best fish in a dish.
The cat sat near it on a rug.
Let the hen rest in her nest.
Frank rode a mile on an ass.
He went so fast he sent up the dust.
The last sentence shows it was an Irishman made this
book ; but why, in this lesson, did he not continue with
the story of the fish in the dish, which the cat was
plainly watching from the rug with malicious intent,
instead of branching off to a wholly irrelevant remark
about a hen, and then to an account of Frank's adven-
ture with an ass ? Perhaps the first step to be made in
educational reform in Ireland is the adoption of better
school-books, and there is no reason why this step should
be delayed.
I went back, presently, to the other room where the
larger boys and girls were reciting in small sections,
standing shrinkingly before the shrivelled little teacher,
whose fierceness, I am sure, was assumed for the occa-
sion, and he got out for me a sheaf of compositions
which the boys and girls had written on the subject,
"My Home," and of which he was evidently very
proud. They were written in the round, laborious
penmanship of the copy-book, and the homes which
they described were, for the most part, those poor lit-
tle cabins clinging to the rocky hillsides, which I have
tried to picture ; but here the picture was drawn sharply
and simply, with few strokes, without any suspicion
that it was a tragic one. For instance, this is John
Kerrigan's picture of
My Home.
My home is in County Galway and is placed in Gana-
THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM 363
ginula. It is built on a height near the roadside. The
length of it is eighteen feet and the breadth is six feet. It
is about ten feet high. The covering is timber and
thatch. It is built with stones and mortar. There are
four windows, two in the kitchen and two in the room.
The floor is made of sand and gravel.
That was all that John Kerrigan found to describe
about his home, and I dare say there wasn't much
more; but it is easy to picture it standing there on the
bleak hillside, with its low walls of rubble and its roof
of thatch, and its two little rooms, nine feet by six,
with dirt floor and tiny windows. And at one end
of the kitchen there would be an open fireplace, with
some blocks of turf smoking in it, and above the turf
there would be hanging a black pot, where the po-
tatoes are boiling which is all John will have for sup-
per ...
I put the compositions aside, for a lesson in Gaelic
had begun. The teacher wrote on the little blackboard
some sentences composed of the strangest-looking
words imaginable, and the pronunciation of them was
stranger still. But the lesson proceeded rapidly, and
it was evident that most of the children understood
Gaelic quite as well as they did English. That, of
course, is not saying very much ; and I fancy that about
all these children can be expected to learn is to read
and write. Indeed, it is a wonder that they learn
even that, for the odds against them are almost over-
whelming.
I bade them good-bye at last, and returned pen-
sively to the hotel, and there I found the district phy-
sician making some repairs to his motor-cycle. Jt
364 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
probably needs them often, for the roads up into the
hills are trying for anything on wheels; but he said it
was surprising where it would go and how much knock-
ing about it would stand. And then, naturally enough,
we fell into talk about his work.
Every poor person in Ireland is, as I understand it,
entitled to free medical attendance. The country is
divided into districts, in each of which a doctor is sta-
tioned, paid partially by the government and depend-
ing for the remainder of his income on his private
practice. Before a person is entitled to free attend-
ance, he must secure a ticket from one of the poor-law
guardians, who have the management of the charities
in each district; and no physician is compelled to give
free attendance, unless the person asking for it can
produce one of these tickets.
"Even then," continued the doctor at Leenane, who
was explaining all this to me, "I don't put myself out,
if I think the person presenting the ticket can afford
to pay. I look him over, of course, and give him some
medicine, with instructions how to take it— the law
compels me to do that; but I don't bother myself to
see whether the instructions are carried out. And if
he's really sick, he soon realises that if he wants me to
be interested, he's got to pay for it, and he manages
to find a guinea or so. This sounds hard-hearted, per-
haps; but it's astonishing how many beggars there
are in this country, and how the poor-law guardians
let themselves be imposed on. Why, people come
to me with cards and try to get free attendance who
could buy and sell me ten times over! I don't bite
my tongue telling them what I think of them, you may
THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM 365
well believe. The trouble is, the poor-law guardians
are natives of the district and they all have some axe
to grind; so the doctor, who is a stranger for whom
they care nothing, gets the worst of it. This is about
the worst district in Ireland, anyway, so big and poor
and full of hills. A man has to work himself to death
to make three hundred pounds a year out of it."
Various reflections occurred to me while he was talk-
ing. One was that three hundred pounds a year is
many, many times the income of the average dweller in
Connaught; and another was that, to leave any discre-
tion to the physician in regard to the treatment of char-
ity patients is not without its dangers; and still a
third was that, in any sudden emergency, such as might
occur at any time, many valuable minutes would be lost
if the poor-law guardians had to be hunted up and a
card obtained before the doctor could be summoned. I
suppose, in such cases, the doctor is summoned first, and
the card secured when there is time to do so.
It is probably only in cases of dire need that the dis-
trict doctor is summoned at all. The fact that he is
a stranger and a government appointee is enough to
make a large section of the Irish peasantry distrust him.
This one told me that he is never called for confinement
cases, because every old Irish woman considers herself
competent to handle them, and usually is; and that
other cases are treated with "home remedies" or visits
to holy wells, until they get so bad that the doctor is
turned to as a last resort.
"The ignorance of the people is past all belief," he
went on. "They haven't any idea of what causes
disease; they never heard of germs; they don't know it
366 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
is unhealthy to have a stinking heap of manure and
human excrement under the window or in front of the
door; they don't believe there is any reason why a per-
son dying with consumption shouldn't sleep in the same
bed with other people, and eat out of the same dishes,
and spit all about the place. And so we have typhus,
and tuberculosis — you Americans are partially respon-
sible for that."
"In what way*?" I asked.
"The people born and reared in these western high-
lands, with lungs adapted through long generations to
this soft, moist climate, can't stand the American at-
mosphere. When they are poor and live crowded to-
gether in your towns, consumption gets them; and then,
when they're too far gone to work, they come back
home to cough their lives out and poison all their
friends. They lie in these dark cabins without a win-
dow, which soon become perfect plague-spots; and
the children, playing on the filthy, infected floor, get
the infection in their lungs; or perhaps they cut their
knees and rub it into the sore. Ugh ! it makes one sick
to think about it. There ought to be a law preventing
any such infected person landing in Ireland — you won't
let such a one land in America."
I had to admit that that would be one way of deal-
ing with the mischief; and I suggested that another
way would be to try to educate the people to some
knowledge of the simpler facts of hygiene. But the
doctor snorted.
"Educate them!" he echoed. "You can't educate
them ! Why, you haven't any conception of the depths
of their ignorance. And they're superstitious, too; they
THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM 367
don't believe in science; they think it's something ir-
religious, something against their faith. If prayers to
the Virgin won't cure them, or a visit to some holy well
or other, why nothing will. If I do cure them, I don't
get the credit — they simply believe they've got on the
good side of one of their saints. What is a man to do
against such ignorance as that4? The only reason they
don't all die is because this country is so full of little
streams that the running water carries off most of their
filth, and the turf smoke which fills their houses helps
to disinfect them."
I agreed that his was a hard task; and left him still
tinkering with his motor-cycle, and went over to smoke
a pipe with the men at the stables. Joyce, our driver
of the day before, was there, and he smiled as he pointed
his pipe-stem toward the doctor, with whom he had
seen me talking.
"He's a hard one, he is," he said. "Not a word of
advice nor a sup of medicine do you get out of that one,
if he thinks you've got a shillin' about you. He thinks
we're all liars and thieves, which is natural enough, for
he's an Englishman — and I'm not say in' but what it
may be true of some of us," and he grinned around at
his companions.
"Tell the gintleman about the other one," one of
them suggested.
"Ah, Mister O'Beirn, that was," said Joyce; "a Gal-
way man, born to the Irish. How he got the app'int-
ment, I don't know; but he did stir this district up —
went about givin' long talks, he did, about how we're
made and why we get sick, and such like ; and he went
into the houses and made the women wash the childer
368 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
and set things to rights, and they bore with him be-
cause they knew he meant them no harm. He wore
himself to a bone, he did, and we were all fond of him;
but I'm not sayin' it wasn't a relief when he was moved
to another district, and we could make ourselves com-
fortable again."
"No doubt the children are glad, too," I ventured.
"They are, sir; and why should one bother washin'
them when they get dirty again right away"? Sure the
women have enough to do without that !"
But it would be a mistake to suppose that the lives of
the women and girls are all work and no play. Betty
chanced to remark to the girl who waited on our table
at the hotel that she must find the winters very lone-
some.
"Oh, not at all, miss," she protested. "We have a
very good time in the winter with a dance every week ;
and at Christmas Mr. McKeowrx do be givin' us a big
party here at the hotel. Then there will be maybe two
or three weddings, and as many christenings, and some
of the girls who have been to America will come home
for a visit and there will be dances for them, so there
is always plenty to do."
So Leenane has its social season, just the same as
New York and Paris and London; and I suppose the
same is true of every Irish village. The Irish are said
to be great dancers, but we were never fortunate
enough to see them at it.
You may perhaps have noticed that in such Irish
conversations as I have given in these pages, I have con-
tented myself with trying to indicate the idiom, with-
out attempting to imitate the brogue; and this is be-
THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM 369
cause it is impossible to imitate it with any degree of
accuracy. Such imitation would be either a burlesque
or would be unreadable. For example, while we were
talking to the waitress at Leenane, Betty asked her
.what a very delicious jam which she served with our
tea was made of.
"Black torn, miss," she answered — at least, that is
what it sounded like.
"Black torn?" repeated Betty. "What is it? A
berry or a fruit*?"
The girl tried to describe it, but not recognisably.
"Can you spell it?" asked Betty at last.
"I can, miss; b-1-a-c-k, black, c-u-r-r-a-n-t, torn," an-
swered the girl.
We bade good-bye to Leenane, that afternoon, tak-
ing the motor-bus for Westport, and my friends of the
constabulary were out to see me off and shake hands,
and Gaynor sent a "God speed ye" after us from the
door of his little shop, and the schoolmaster and his
sister waved to us from the door of the school. It was
almost like leaving old friends; and indeed, I often
think of them as such, and of that drab little town
crouching at the head of Killary, and of how serious
a thing life is to those who dwell there. We looked
back for a last glimpse of it, as we turned up the road
out of the valley — the row of dingy houses, the grey
mountains rising steeply behind them, the broad sheet
of blue water in front — how plainly I recall that pic-
ture!
There were three other passengers on the bus — an
elderly man and woman, rather obese and grumpy,
370 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
and a younger man with clean-shaven eager face; and
we were puzzled for a time to determine their relation-
ship, for the younger man was most assiduous in at-
tending to the wants of his companions and pointing
out the places of interest along the road. And then, fi-
nally, it dawned upon us — here was a personally con-
ducted party ; a man and wife who had brought a guide
along to see them safely through the wilds of Ire-
land!
The road from Leenane to Westport is not nearly
so picturesque as that from Clifden, for we soon ran
out of the hills, and for miles and miles sped across a
wild bog, without a sign of life except a few sheep
grazing here and there. We met a flock of them upon
the road, and the way the shepherd's dog, at a sharp
whistle from him, herded his charges to one side out of
the way was beautiful to see.
Then at last, far below us, at the bottom of a valley,
we -saw the roofs of Westport, and we started down the
road into it — a steep and dangerous road, for we came
within an ace of running down a loaded cart that was
labouring up; and when we came to the foot of the
hill, we were startled by a remarkable monument loom-
ing high in the middle of the principal street — a
tall, fluted shaft, with two seated women at its base,
rising from an octagonal pedestal, and surmounted by
a heroic figure in knee breeches and trailing robe —
without question the very ugliest monument I ever
saw. It was so extraordinarily ugly that we came back
next day to look at it, and discovered the following
inscription :
THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM 371
To the Memory of
GEORGE GLENDINING
Born in Westport 1770
Died in Westport 1845
If the deceased had any other claim to fame except that
he was born in Westport, and also ended his days there,
it does not appear upon his monument.
Westport has only one hotel, and it is probably the
worst in Ireland. When we had been ushered along
its dark and dirty corridors, into a room as dingy as
can be imagined, and had found that it was the best
room to be had, and that there was nothing to do but
grin and bear it, we sat down and looked at each other,
and I could see in Betty's disgusted face some such
thought as Touchstone voiced: "So here I am in
Arden. The more fool I. When I was at home, I
was in a better place."
" 'Travellers must be content,' " I said. "Let's get
out of here and look at the town."
Betty agreed with alacrity; but we soon found that
it is a dull and uninteresting place, offering no di-
version except a stroll through Lord Sligo's demesne.
The gate was open, so we entered and plodded along a
sticky road, past the square, unimpressive mansion-
house, out to the head of Clew Bay. We walked on,
past the longest line of deserted quays and empty ware-
houses we had encountered in Ireland. There must be
half a mile of quays, and the warehouses are tower-
ing, four-storied structures, with vast interiors given
over to rats and spiders; and all along that dreary
372
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
vista, there was just one boat — a small one, unloading
lumber.
It was government money, I suppose, which built
the quay, and a government board which authorised
it; and looking at it, one realises where Canon Hannay
got the local colour for the descriptions of the activities
of government boards which are scattered through his
Irish stories. For Canon Hannay, whose pen name
is George A. Birmingham, lives here at Westport; and
the bay which faces it is the scene of most of his tales.
It is a beautiful bay, dotted with the greenest of
islands; and it was among those islands that the irre-
pressible Meldon sailed in quest of Spanish gold; it
was there the Major's niece had her surprising adven-
tures ; and I have wondered since if the grotesque statue
back in the town may not have suggested that of the
mythical General John Regan.
And there, in the distance, towering above the bay,
is Croagh Patrick, the great hill, falling steeply into
the water from a height of 2500 feet, down which
Saint Patrick one fine morning drove all the snakes and
toads and poisonous creatures in Ireland, to their death
in the sea below. Indeed, the marks of their passage
are still plainly to be seen, for the precipice down which
they fell is furrowed and scraped in the most convinc-
ing manner:
The Wicklow hills are very high,
And so's the Hill of Howth, sir;
But there's a hill much bigger still,
Much higher nor them both, sir;
'Twas on the top of this high hill
St. Patrick preached his sarmint
THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM 373
That drove the frogs into the bogs
And banished all the varmint.
The legend is that St. Patrick, who had spent forty
days on the mountain in fasting and prayer, stood at
the edge of the precipice and rang his little bell — the
same bell we have seen in the museum at Dublin — and
all the snakes and toads in Ireland, attracted by the
sound, plunged over the cliff and so down into the sea.
From a distance, Croagh Patrick seems to end in a
sharp point; but there is really a little plateau up there,
some half-acre in extent, and a small church has been
built there, and on the last Sunday in July, pilgrims
gather from all over Ireland and proceed to the moun-
tain on foot and toil up its rugged sides and attend
Mass on the summit and then make the rounds of the
stations on their knees, just as has been done from time
immemorial. For Croagh Patrick is a very holy place,
since Ireland's great apostle prayed and fasted there,
and those who pray and fast there likewise shall not
go unrewarded.
I heard the click of a typewriter, as I went up the
walk to the rectory, that evening, to spend a few hours
with Canon Hannay, and it must be only by improving
every minute that he gets through the immense amount
of work he manages to accomplish. He had just ar-
ranged for an American lecture tour in the following
October, and both he and his wife were pleasantly ex-
cited at the prospect of encountering American sleep-
ing-cars and soft-shelled crabs and corn on the cob,
and other such novelties, some of which they had heard
were very dreadful. I reassured them as well as I
374 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
could ; and then we talked awhile about George Moore's
inimitable reminiscences, and Canon Hannay's own
books; but the gist of the evening was the discussion
of Ireland and Irish problems which occupied the
greater part of it. It was very late indeed when I
arose to say good-night.
CHAPTER XXII
THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR
WE took a last look about the town, next morning, not
forgetting the Glendining monument, which has the
fascination supreme ugliness sometimes possesses; and
then we walked on down to the station, where a loqua-
cious old woman accosted Betty with a tale of woe
which culminated in an appeal for aid ; and it was sud-
denly borne in on me that not once in the whole of
Connaught had we encountered a beggar. Not even a
child had held out its hand or indicated in any way that
it desired or expected alms. And I do not know that I
can pay any greater compliment to the people of that
distressful province than by setting down this fact.
We were in Mayo now — and Mayo is different !
The first town out of Westport is Castlebar, which,
as Murray puts it, "has all the buildings usual in a
county town, viz. Asylum, Gaol, Court-house and Bar-
racks," and they can be seen looming up above the
other buildings as the train passes, some half mile away.
Beyond Castlebar, the line crosses the so-called plains
of Mayo, a vast expanse of naked limestone rock, very
ugly and sinister; and then to the left is a village dom-
inated by a round tower ; and finally we came to Clare-
morris, where we were to change cars.
Claremorris, no doubt, also has an asylum, a jail,
a court-house and a barracks; but we didn't go out to
see, for nobody seemed to know just when our train
375
376 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
might be expected, and we were afraid to run any risks.
So we sat down on the platform, and Betty fell into
talk with a clean, nice-looking old man, who was care-
fully gathering up all the dodgers and posters and old
newspapers that were lying around, and folding them
up and putting them in his pocket, I suppose to read at
leisure after he got home. And he told about where
he lived, and how many children he had, and described
the disposition of each of them; and then he questioned
Betty about her condition in life, and age, and size of
family, and all the time he was looking intently at her
mouth.
"Tell me, miss," he said, at last, "is them your own
teeth you've got?"
"Indeed they are," laughed Betty, and clashed them
to prove it.
"I would hardly believe it," he went on, and looked
closer. "I niver saw any like them."
"They're strong as iron," and Betty clashed them
again.
"And white as snow. I wish my daughter was here,
for she will not believe me when I tell her."
Good teeth, as I have remarked before, are the ex-
ception in Ireland; and most of those that appear good
at first glance, turn out, at second glance, to be fabri-
cations of the dentist. Perhaps it has always been so.
Irish poets are fond of dwelling on the glories of Irish
hair, and it is still glorious; they tell over and over
again of the brightness of Irish eyes, and they are still
bright; they describe how many times the beauty of
Irish complexions, and there is none to match them any-
where else in the world; but I do not remember that
THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR 377
any of them refer to Irish teeth. It is a pity, for many
a pretty face is ruined by the ugly teeth a smile dis-
closes.
We got away from Claremorris, finally, after nar-
rowly escaping being carried back to Westport, and
proceeded northward over a new line which has been
built across the plains of County Mayo. There were
few passengers, and we had a compartment to ourselves,
except for two priests who rode with us for a short dis-
tance, and who wanted to know all about President
Wilson, of whom they had heard many splendid things.
Just where we crossed into County Sligo I don't know ;
but we were in it at Collooney, a village more prosper-
ous than most, with a number of mills; and then we
came to Ballysadare, where there are some famous
salmon fisheries.
As we ran on past Ballysadare, a hill like a truncated
cone loomed up on the left, and in the centre of the level
top was something that looked like a huge bump, and
as we drew nearer, we saw that it was a great cairn
of loose stones piled on top of each other. The hill
was Knocknarea, and the cairn, which is six hundred
feet around and thirty-five feet high, is said to have
been piled over the body of Meave, Queen of Con-
naught, by her tribesmen, in the first century after
Christ. Meave was killed while bathing in Lough
Ree by Conal Carnach, who, angry at her share in the
death of the mighty Cuchulain, put a stone into a sling
and cast it at her with such sure aim that he inflicted
a mortal wound. There is some dispute as to whether
she was really borne to the top of Knocknarea for
burial; but the cairn is called "Miscan Meave," or
378 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
"Meave's Heap," and if it does not actually cover her
body, it probably commemorates her death. She lived
so long ago that her name has passed into folk-lore —
in England as Queen Mab.
Knocknarea, with its strange shape, dominates the
whole landscape, and is in sight all the way to Sligo,
for the train describes a half-circle around it. Sligo
itself is a considerable town, with more bustle about
its streets than is usual in western Ireland, and the
proprietor of its principal hotel is a canny individual
who follows the precept, once so popular with American
railroads, of charging all the traffic will bear. When
I asked the price of a double room, he looked me over,
and then he said ten shillings the night.
"Ten shillings a night !" I echoed, in some surprise,
for I had not expected to encounter rates so metropoli-
tan on the west coast of Ireland; and then I asked to see
the room, thinking it might be something palatial.
But it was quite an ordinary room; clean and airy
and comfortable enough; but I judged the usual charge
for it was about five shillings. There are few things
I detest more than being overcharged. "Come along,"
I said to Betty. "There's another hotel in this town;
we'll have a look at it."
The proprietor was waiting nervously in the lobby.
"What's the matter*?" he asked, as we came down.
"Isn't the room all right?"
"Oh, it's right enough," I said; "but I'm not going
to pay two prices for it."
"But this is the best hotel in Sligo," he protested.
"There's an American millionaire and his wife staying
here right now."
THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR 379
"Well, I'm not a millionaire," I said; "and even if
I were, I wouldn't pay ten shillings for that room/'
and I started to walk out, for I didn't want to argue
about it.
But he followed me to the door.
"What would you pay, now?" he asked, ingratiat-
ingly.
I looked at him in surprise, for I hadn't had any idea
of fixing his rates for him.
"Five shillings," I said.
"You may have it for six," he countered.
I hesitated. I didn't like the man; but it was a
nice room, and the dining-room looked clean. Prob-
ably we should fare worse if we went farther.
"All right," I agreed finally; and I am bound to
admit that he never showed any malice, but treated us
as nicely as possible during all our stay in Sligo. Per-
haps he is a retired jarvey, and this is just his way of
doing business.
Sligo, with its well-built houses and bustling streets,
has every appearance of being prosperous, and I have
been told that it is one of the few towns in Ireland
which is growing in population. It has had its share
of battles and sieges, for Red Hugh O'Donnell cap-
tured it from the English, and then the English cap-
tured it from Red Hugh, and camped in the monastery
and did what they could to destroy it; but enough of it
remains to make a most interesting ruin, and we set out
at once to see it.
It is a Norman foundation, dating from 1252, but
a good deal of the existing structure is later than that.
380 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
The most interesting feature, to my mind, is the row of
eight narrow lancet windows lighting the choir of the
church. I like these early lancets, and I am inclined
to question whether the wide windows and elaborate
tracery of later Gothic are as dignified and severely
beautiful. There is a grace and simplicity about these
tall, narrow openings, with their pointed arches, which
cannot be surpassed.
There are some interesting monuments, too, in the
choir, notably a most elaborate one to O'Conor Sligo
against the south wall. O'Conor and his wife, life-
size, kneel facing each other in two niches, over and
below and on either side of which are sculptured cher-
ubs and saints and skulls and swords and drums and
spades and hooks and hour-glasses, together with the
arms of the family and an appropriate motto or two.
From the choir, a low door gives access to the charnel-
house, and beyond that is the graveyard; while from
the nave there is an entrance to the cloisters, three sides
of which are very well preserved, though the level of
the ground almost touches the base of the pillars.
It is, I should say, at least four feet higher than it
was when the cloisters were built, and this accretion is
mostly human dust, for the graveyard has been in
active use for a good many centuries. Burials grew
so excessive, at last, that before one body could be
placed in the ground, another had to be dug out of it;
and gruesome stories are told of the ruthless way in
which old skeletons were torn from the graves and
thrown out upon the ground and allowed to lie there,
a scandal to the whole county. All that has changed
now, and there wasn't a bone in sight the day we visited
THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR 381
the place. Indeed, the old caretaker waxed very in-
dignant about the way he had been wronged.
" 'Tis in that book you have in your hand the slan-
der is," he said, and nodded toward my red-bound
Murray, and I read the sentence aloud :
"The exposure of human remains, and the general neg-
lect here and in other church ruins, are a scandal to the
local authorities."
"Now, I ask ye to look around, sir," continued the
caretaker, excitedly, "and tell me if ye see anywhere
aught to warrant such words as them ones. Human
remains, indeed! Ye see, sir, it was like this. The
day the felly was here who wrote that book, I had just
picked up a bone which had got uncovered on me, and
slipped it under a tomb temporary like, till I could find
time to bury it decent; and then he come by, and saw
it, and that was what he writ. The bones do be
workin' up to the surface all the time — and how can
that be helped, I should like to know"? But I put
them under again as soon as I see them. As for neglect
— look about ye and tell me if ye see neglect."
I assured him that everything seemed to be in good
shape, for the grass had just been cut and everything
was very tidy. And then he told me that he and his
helper had been working on the place for a week past,
because, in a few days, the Irish Antiquarian Society
was to meet at Sligo, and its members would be poking
their noses about everywhere. From which I inferred
that, perhaps, at ordinary times, the place may be
rather ragged, and that an occasional bone may escape
the guardian's watchful eye.
382 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
When we got back to the hotel and entered the din-
ing-room for dinner, we were amused to find that the
American millionaire and wife, of whom the proprietor
had boasted, were no other than the personally-con-
ducted couple who had come with us on the coach from
Leenane to Westport. They were eating grumpily,
while their guide, who ate with them, was doing his
best to impart an air of cheerfulness to the meal by
chattering away about the country. The head-waiter
hovered near in a tremor of anxiety, and almost
jumped out of his skin whenever the guide raised his
finger.
I went into the smoking-room, later on, to write
some letters; and presently the door opened, and the
guide slipped in, and closed the door carefully, and sat
down with a sigh, and got out a pipe and filled and
lighted it, and rang for a whiskey and soda. And
then I caught his eye, and I couldn't help smiling at its
expression, and in a minute we were talking. He was
a special Cook guide, he told me, and the two people
with him were from Chicago.
"I fancied," he went on, "when I took this engage-
ment, that I was going to have an easy time of it with
just two people, but I have never worked so hard in
my life. The man is all right; but all the woman
wants to do is to keep moving on. You know Glen-
garriff? Well, then you know what a jolly place it
is, and what a splendid trip it is over the hills from
Macroom. Would you believe me, that woman would
not even turn her head to look at that view. I would
say to her, 'Now, Mrs. Blank, isn't that superb !' and
she would just bat her eyelids; and when we got to
THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR 383
Glengarriff, she raised a most awful row because we
had to stay there over night, and because there was
no light but candles in the bedrooms.
"I don't know why such people travel at all," he
went on wearily. "Yes I do, too — she travels just to
buy post-cards and send them back home. She buys a
hundred at every stop, and as soon as she gets them ad-
dressed and posted, she is ready to start on. Ruins'?
Why she won't look at ruins. She wouldn't even get
out of the carriage at Muckross Abbey — but she thinks
that new Catholic cathedral at Killarney a marvel of
beauty. It is the only thing she has grown enthusias-
tic about since she has been in Ireland. We had
planned to stay at Killarney four days, but she wanted
to go on before she had been there four hours. I tell
you, sir, it's disheartening."
I asked him how long he had been conducting for
Cook, and he said only for a short time, for he was an
actor by profession, and hoped to return to the stage
some day. But by a run of bad luck, he had been in-
volved in three or four failures, and had been driven to
Cook's to make a living. He had been to America,
and he told me with what company, but I have for-
gotten, and then he was going on to tell me what roles
he had played and which of them had been his great-
est successes, and the worn, harassed look left his face
— and just then the door opened and the Chicagoan
stuck his head in, and frowned when he saw us talking
and laughing together; and my companion grew sud-
denly sober, and went out to see what was wanted, and
I didn't see him again. I suppose they were on their
way at daybreak.
384 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Sligo is the centre of one of the most interesting dis-
tricts in Ireland for the antiquarian. There is that
great cairn on the top of Knocknarea, and on the plain
of Carrowmore near the mountain's foot is such a col-
lection of megalithic remains as exists nowhere else in
the British Isles, while on the summit of a hill over-
shadowing Lough Gill is a remarkable enclosure, re-
sembling Stonehenge, but far more extensive.
It was for Carrowmore we set off on foot, next morn-
ing, determined to spend the day, which was beauti-
fully bright and warm, in a leisurely ramble over the
plain, which, four thousand years ago, was the scene
of a great battle, in which the De Dananns were again
the victors, as they were at Moytura, below Lough
Mask. This battle is known as Northern Moytura,
and here the De Dananns met and conquered Balor of
the Evil Eye and his Formorians, and after that they
were undisputed masters of Erin for a thousand years,
until the Milesians, or Gaels, sailing from south-west-
ern Europe, beached their boats upon the shore of Ken-
mare Bay. It was to mark the graves of the warriors
who fell in that dim-distant fray that the circles and
cromlechs which dot its site were probably erected;
but the Irish have another theory, which we shall hear
presently.
I shall not soon forget that walk, at first through
the busy streets of the town, past solid, well-built
houses of brick, with bright shops on the lower floor
and living-rooms above; then into the poorer and
quainter quarter, where the houses are all one-storied,
built of rubble, roofed with straw, and, as we could
see through the open doors, stuffed with trash, as all
THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR 385
these little Irish houses seem to be; and finally out
along the country road, between fragrant hedges, occa-
sionally passing a pretty villa, set in the midst of hand-
some grounds — and then we came to a place where
the road branched, and we stopped.
Our guide-book gave no definite directions as to how
to get to Carrowmore. "On Carrowmore," it says,
with magnificent vagueness, "within three miles
south-west of Sligo, is a large and most interesting
series of megalithic remains" ; nor does it tell how far
the remains are apart, or how to find them. If it
had been Baedeker, now, we would not have stood there
hesitant at the cross-roads, because he would not only
have told us which way to turn, but would have pro-
vided a diagram, and led us step by step from one
cromlech to the other. There is no Baedeker for Ire-
land, which is a pity, for I have never yet found a
guide to equal that painstaking German.
There was no one to ask, so we took the road which
led toward Knocknarea ; but after we had gone some dis-
tance, a telegraph-boy came by on his wheel, and told
us that we should have taken the other road; so we
walked back to the branch and turned up it. The road
mounted steadily, and after about a mile of up-hill
work, we came to a cluster of thatched houses, and I
went up to one of them to ask the way of a woman who
was leaning over her half-door.
I think I have already said somewhere that Irish
directions are the vaguest in the world — perhaps this
is the reason Murray is so vague, since it is written
by an Irishman! — and the conversation on this occa-
sion ran something like this:
386 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
"Good morning," I began. "It is a fine day, isn't
it?"
"It is so, glory be to God."
"Can you tell me how to get to the cromlechs'?"
"The cromlechs? What might that be?"
"The big stone monuments that are back here in the
fields somewhere."
"Ah — so it is the big stones you would be after?"
"Yes. Can you tell me how to get to them?"
"I might," said the woman cautiously. She had
been looking at me all this time with the brightest of
eyes, and then she looked at Betty, who had remained
behind at the gate. "Is yon one your wife?" she asked,
with a nod in Betty's direction.
"Yes."
"You would be from America."
"Yes."
"Have you people hereabouts?"
"Oh, no; we haven't any relatives in Ireland."
"And would you be comin' all this way just to see
the big stones?"
"We want to see everything," I explained. "The
stones are near here, aren't they?"
"They are so. Just a step up yonder lane, and you
are right among them."
She was preparing to ask further questions ; but this
direction seemed definite enough, so I thanked her
and fled, and Betty and I proceeded to take a step up
the lane. We took many steps without seeing any
stones; and finally we turned up a narrow by-lane, and
came to a tiny cottage, hidden in the trees. We were
greeted by a noisy barking, and then a man hurried out
THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR 387
of the cottage and quieted the dog and told us not to
be alarmed. We told him we were looking for the
stones.
"There be some just a small step from here," he
said; "but you would never find them by yourselves,
so I will go with you. You are from America, I'm
thinking?"
"Yes," I admitted, wondering, with sinking heart, if
it was going to begin all over again.
"I have four brothers in America, and all doing well,
glory be to God, though seldom it is that I hear from
them."
"How did you happen to stay in Ireland*?" I asked.
"One must stay with the mother," he explained
simply. "I was the oldest, so that was for me to do."
He was a nice-looking man of middle age, with a
kindly, intelligent face, and eyes very bright; and
while his clothes were old and worn, they were clean.
"She is dead now, God rest her soul," he added, with
a little convulsion of the face I didn't understand till
later, "and I am alone here."
"What," I said; "not married?"
"No," he answered, with a smile, "there's just
Tricker and me."
"Tricker?"
"Sure that's the dog, and a great help he is to me.
Come here, Tricker, and show the lady and gentleman
what you can do." The shaggy black dog came and
sat down in front of him, looking up at him with shin-
ing eyes. "You would hardly believe it, miss, but
Tricker gathers all my eggs for me, and he can tell a
duck egg from a hen egg. If I do be having a bit
388 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
of company, I will tell Tricker to go out and bring in
some duck eggs, and I have never known him to make
a mistake. Or perhaps I will be wanting some water
from the spring, and I just give Tricker the bucket and
send him for it. Or perhaps I will be wanting some
coal, and then I just tell Tricker to fetch it."
There was a little pile of coal lying in one corner of
the yard, and I had noticed it with some surprise, for
we had seen nothing but turf in the west of Ireland;
but our host told us that the coal came from Donegal
and that it was better than turf and even cheaper in
the long run.
"Tricker," he said, "take in some coal !"
Tricker ran to the coal and picked up a lump in his
jaws and trotted through the open door of the house
and laid the lump down on the hearth inside; then he
came back and took in another lump, and then a third,
and finally his master stopped him.
"He would be taking it all in if I left him to him-
self," he said. "He is not very well, for he was kicked
by the mare the other day, and I thought for a time he
was going to die on me. But he did not, glory be to
God, and I think he will soon be well again. And
now, if you will come this way, I will be showing you
the stones."
He led the way across a field, which he said was his,
and then over a stone wall into another; and in the
middle of it was a depressed tomb with slabbed sides,
in which, I suppose, at some far-off time, the body of
some chieftain had been laid; and then our guide
showed us the path which we must follow to get to the
cromlechs ; and then I put my hand in my pocket.
THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR 389
"Ah, no," he protested, drawing back.
"For Tricker," I said; "to get him some dainty, be-
cause he's ill."
His face softened.
"Ah, well, sir," he said, "if you put it like that, I'll
take it, and Tricker and I both thank ye kindly; and
you, miss. God speed ye," and he stood watching us
for quite a while, as we made our way up toward the
road which ran along the edge of the ridge above us.
As soon as we gained it, we saw the first of the
cromlechs ; and then, in a farther field, we saw another
— great stones, standing upright in a circle of smaller
ones, with a mighty covering slab on top, grey and
lichened, and most impressive. They are supposed, as
I have said, to mark the graves of warriors who fell
in battle four thousand years ago; but the Irish peas-
antry explain them in a more romantic way, as the
beds which Diarmuid prepared nightly for his mis-
tress, Grainne, during the year they fled together up
and down Ireland to escape the wrath of her husband,
the mighty Finn MacCool.
Grainne, you will remember, was the daughter of
King Cormac, and she it was who won that race up
Slievenamon for the honour of Finn's hand. There
was a splendid wedding at Tara; but as Grainne sat
at the feast, she looked at the man she had just married,
and saw that the weight of years was on him ; and then
she looked about the board and noticed a "freckled,
sweet-worded man, who had the curling, dusky black
hair, and cheeks berry-red," and she asked who he was,
and she was told that he was Diarmuid, "the white-
toothed, of lightsome countenance, the best lover of
390 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
women and of maidens that was in the whole world."
And Grainne looked on him again, and her heart melted
in her bosom ; and she mixed a drink and sent it about
the board, until there came upon all the company "a
stupor of sleep and deep slumber."
Then she arose from her seat and went straight to
Diarmuid, and laid a bond upon him that he should
take her away; and Diarmuid, who was leal to Finn,
asked his comrades what he should do, and they all
said he must bide by the bond she had laid on him, for
he was bound to refuse no woman, though his death
should come of it.
"Is that the counsel of you all to me?" asked Diar-
muid.
"It is," said Ossian and Oscar and all -the rest; and
then Diarmuid rose from his place, and his eyes were
wet with tears, and he said farewell to his comrades,
for he knew that from that day he was no longer a
member of the goodly company of the Fianna, but only
a hunted man.
And he and Grainne fled from Tara to Athlone, and
crossed the Shannon by the ford there, with Finn's
trackers close behind them; and for a year and a day
they travelled through the length and breadth of Ire-
land; and every night Diarmuid built for his love a
chamber of mighty stones, and carpeted it with sweet
grass, and crept softly in beside her and held her
in his arms till morning, so that no hurt might come
to her. And there the chambers remain to this day,
366 of them, to prove the story true.
I wish I could tell the remainder of the legend, but
there is no space here; besides you will find it and
THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR 391
many others like it very beautifully told in one of the
most fascinating Irish books I know — Stephen
Gwynne's "Fair Hills of Ireland" ; a book which I have
pillaged remorselessly, and which I recommend to every
one planning to visit the Island of the Saints.
There are really more than 366 of the cromlechs,
though nobody knows the exact number; and they are
the most venerable monuments reared by man in Ire-
land. The growth of peat around certain of them
proves that they have stood where they now stand for
at least four thousand years. How the huge covering
stones, sometimes weighing hundreds of tons, were
lifted into place, no one knows, just as no one knows
how the Egyptians raised their great monoliths from
the quarry.
There are two most impressive cromlechs at Carrow-
more, quite close together, and my pictures of them are
opposite the next page. The first one we came to
stands near the road in a pasture, and it was merely a
question of clambering over a wall to get to it; but to
reach the other, it was necessary to cross a newly-culti-
vated field ; and as there were some men working in it,
I asked permission to do so.
"Ah," said one of them, "so it is the big stones you
have come to see. You're very welcome. I only wish
you could take them with you."
"So do I," I said. "We haven't anything like them
in America. Everybody would want to see them."
"That is just the trouble here. There are always
people coming to see them, and they tramp about over
my field, with no thought of the damage they will be
doing, and without asking my leave, as you have done.
392 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
And then it is at least half an acre of good land that
the stones make good for naught, and good land is not
that plentiful in Ireland that we can afford to waste
any of it. And then there's the trouble of ploughing
around them."
The farmer was right, in a way, for a half acre of
good land would have been of far more value to
him than this beautiful cromlech in the midst of its
circle of stones; but how happy I would have been to
give it half an acre, if I could have wafted it home to
America ! The circle is considerably more than a hun-
dred feet in diameter, and the stones which compose
it are great boulders, four or five feet high, set on end.
The cromlech itself is very imposing, with massive
side supports, six or seven feet high, and a mighty
covering stone, flat on the under side. It is like a
giant bestriding the landscape; and Betty remarked
that it reminded her of the legs of Uncle Pumblechook,
with several miles of open country showing between
them. My picture of it has Knocknarea in the back-
ground, and if you look closely, you will see the little
bump in the middle of its summit which is the cairn
of Queen Meave.
The hill was only a mile or so away, and I proposed
going over to it, but Betty vetoed that, for it meant
some stiff climbing, and we had already walked a good
many miles; so we started back slowly along the road
to Sligo, and a beautiful road it was, with the purple
hills in the distance, and the green rolling fields on
either side, and the whitewashed cottages gathered
close beside it. And the doors of all of them were
wide open, and the people who lived in them, hearing
CROMLECHS AT CARROWMORE
THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR 393
our footsteps, came out to pass the time of day and
make some comment on the weather; and one old
woman, who had been hoeing her potatoes, was so
eager to talk that we stopped and sat down on the low
wall in front of her cottage, and stayed for half an
hour.
She began with the usual questions — where we were
from, if we were married, how old we were, and so
on ; and then she started to tell us about herself, omit-
ting no detail, however intimate.
"I have been to America," she said; "for seven years
I lived there, and a grand place it is; and you will be
wondering why I ever came back to County Sligo.
'Twas because of this bit of land, which would be
mine, and this houseen, which is a poor one, but I was
born there, and I will die there, glory be to God. I
would ask you in, but it is that dirty, I am ashamed of
it. There is so much to be done in the field that I have
had no time for the house; besides, I am getting old
and my legs are very bad. I got a bottle from the
doctor, and I do be taking a sip of it now and then,
but it does me no good. I am thinking there is noth-
ing will cure me.
"We were not always down in the world like this,"
she rattled on. "There was a time when we were
well off. That was before my man was hurted. He
was a county councillor, then, and as handsome a
man as you would be seeing in a day's walk; and
many's the time he has gone to Dublin with a flower in
his button-hole, and me looking after him with pride,
for he was always a good head to me. But a horse
kicked him, and broke his leg and his arm, and he has
394
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
not had the right use of either since ; and so we started
going down; and when one starts doing that, there's
no stopping.
"That's himself going there," she added, indicating
an unkempt figure limping painfully along the road
with the help of a heavy cane. "He's ashamed for
you to see him, he's that dirty;" but curiosity proved
stronger than pride, in the end, and he finally came
hobbling up to us, a wreck of a man with dirty clothes
and unkempt hair and unshaven face and battered
derby hat — and yet one could see that he had been a
handsome fellow once.
We mentioned our stopping at the" house of the
bachelor who owned Tricker, and both our companions
grew serious.
"Ah, poor boy," said the woman, "he does be havin'
a hard time. There was no one but his mother — all
the others had gone to America; and he looked after
her as careful as a daughter could; but she was very
feeble, and he come home from the field one day to
find her dead on the hearth. She had fallen in the
fire and burned, bein' too weak to get up. It was a
great shock to him, her dyin' in a way so painful and
without a priest; and we all felt for him, though he
was to blame for not marryin' some girl who could
have looked after the old woman. He is well off, but
there's no girl could put the comether on him, though
many have tried, — nice girls, too, as nice as ever put
a shawl across their heads."
I remarked that we had been surprised at the number
of bachelors in Ireland; we had supposed that all Irish-
men married and had "long families," but it was not
THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR 395
so at all. Some were too poor to marry, and that we
could understand; but many that were not poor pre-
ferred to stay single. There were the Rafferty
brothers, owners of the Connemara marble quarry;
there was the proprietor of the hotel at Castleconnell ;
and now here was this man.
"It is so," the old woman agreed. "There be many
bachelors hereabouts — men too who could well afford
to take a wife. The priest gets very warm over it.
Not long ago, he said some words about it in the church
— he said if it was left to him, he would be puttin' all
these bachelors in a boat with a rotten bottom, and
sendin' them out to sea, and sink or swim, small loss it
would be whatever happened. For he said they were
poor creatures, who thought of nothing but their own
pleasure, who wasted their money in Dublin, instead
of raising a family with it, and who would come to no
good end. And I'm thinking that was nothing to what
he had been saying to them in private. For of course,
before he said anything in public, he had been after
them to let him speak to the fathers of some of the
nice girls there be about here."
Among the Irish, especially the Irish peasantry, mar-
riage is still largely a matter of arrangement between
the families of the young people; though I doubt if
it is ever quite so carelessly done as in one of Lever's
books, where, after the bargain has been made, the
father of three daughters asks the suitor which one it
is he wants, and the suitor has them all brought in so
that he may inspect them before he makes up his mind.
It is always a solemn occasion, however, with the
suitor's relatives ranged along one side of a table, and
396 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the bride's relatives along the other — male relatives, be
it understood, for it is not lucky for a woman to take
part in a match-making; and the bargaining is very
shrewd and quite without sentiment; but the mar-
riages thus arranged usually turn out well. For, if
they are without romance, they are also without illu-
sion. The woman knows beforehand what will be ex-
pected of her as wife and mother; the man is quite
aware that matrimony has its rough side; and so there
is no rude awakening for either. It is really a part-
nership, in which both are equal, and which both work
equally hard to make successful.
But I suspect that, in Ireland as elsewhere, mar-
riage is not the inevitable thing it once was, especially
for the men. It may be, as the priest said, that they
have grown selfish and think only of their own com-
fort; or it may be that their needs have become more
complex and their ideals harder to satisfy. Whatever
the cause, Ireland certainly has her full share of
bachelors.
We went to a picture-show at Sligo, that night, and
I have never seen a livelier audience. There was, of
course, a cowboy film which was received with the keen-
est pleasure; and there was a lurid melodrama, which
culminated in the hero flinging the villain over a high
cliff, at which those present rose to their feet and
stamped and cheered; and then King George was
shown reviewing the Life Guards, and the crowd
watched in moody silence — a silence that was painful
and threatening. As the troops marched past, gallant
and glittering, a sight to stir the blood, there was not
THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR 397
the suspicion of a cheer or hand-clap — just a strange,
breathless silence. We were to witness the same thing
thereafter in "loyal" Derry — the most convincing evi-
dence imaginable of the feeling toward England which
every Irishman, Protestant or Catholic, carries deep
in his heart.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS
WE wanted to drive around Lough Gill, a distance of
about twenty-five miles, and I had mentioned this
project to our landlord the day before, and asked the
price of a car. He said it was a long trip and a trying
one on a horse, and that the price would be twenty
shillings, and I saw the same glitter in his eye which
had been there when he named the price of a room.
That afternoon, I happened to see a sign over a shop
announcing that posting was done in all its branches.
Remembering the glitter in the landlord's eye, I stopped
in and asked the woman in charge if a car could be
had for the trip around Lough Gill. She said it might,
and the price would be twelve shillings, including the
driver. I closed with her on the spot, and told her to
have the car ready at nine o'clock next morning; and
somewhat to my surprise it was; and we set forth on
what was to prove one of the most beautiful and ad-
venturous excursions we had had in Ireland.
It was a bright, warm day, and our jarvey, a pic-
turesque old fellow, was quite certain it would not
rain ; but we put our rain-coats and all our other water-
proof paraphernalia in the well of the car, so as to be
prepared for the worst; and we elected to go out by
the northern shore and come back by the southern one.
For a mile or two our road lay through beautiful fra-
grant woods, and then we came out high above the lake.
THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS 399
There is no prettier lake in Ireland than Lough
Gill, with its green islands, and its blue water reflect-
ing the blue sky and the fleecy clouds, and its banks
covered with a vegetation almost as varied and luxuri-
ant as that about Killarney, and the purple mountains
crowding down upon it — only it is hardly fair to call
them purple, for they are of many colours — the grey
granite of their towering escarpments gleaming in the
sun, the wide stretches of heather just showing a flush
of lavender, the clumps of dark woodland clothing the
glens, the broad spread of green pastures along their
lower slopes, all combining in a picture not soon for-
gotten. For two or three miles we trotted on with this
fairy scene stretched before us, and then we turned back
into the hills, for we wanted to see the Leacht-Con-Mic-
Ruis, the Stone of Conn the Son of Rush, set up on a
neighbouring hilltop as a warning and a sign.
At least, Murray calls it the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis,
but our driver had never heard of it, though he pro-
tested that he knew every foot of the neighbourhood.
Perhaps he did not recognise the words as I pronounced
them, and as he could not read, it did no good for me to
show them to him in the book. So I described it to
him as well as I was able, never having seen it myself
and having only the vaguest idea what it looked like,
as a collection of great standing stones on top of a hill
not far away ; and still he had never heard of it. He
was inclined to turn back to the lake, but I persisted;
and finally he stopped a man who was driving a cart
in to Sligo, and they talked together awhile in Irish,
and then our driver turned up another road, not very
hopefully.
400 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
It was a very hilly road, and our horse developed an
alarming propensity to gallop — a propensity which the
driver encouraged rather than strove to check, so that
we felt, a good part of the time, as though we were
riding to a fire at break-neck speed. The jaunting-car,
it should be remembered, is a two-wheeled vehicle, and
when the animal between the shafts takes it into his
head to gallop, it describes violent arcs through the air.
But we hung grimly on, and finally our driver drew up
at a house near the roadside.
" 'Tis here," he said.
We got down and looked around, but saw nothing
that resembled the Leach t-Con-Mic-Ruis ; and then a
woman came out of the house, and we asked her if she
knew where it was, and, wonder of wonders! she did.
Most wonderful of all, she had been to see it herself,
so she knew where it was not vaguely but precisely,
and she told us just how to go. It was on the hill
back of the house, and she showed us the path which
we must follow, and told us to look out for the rabbit-
warrens, or we might sprain an ankle; and we set off
through knee-deep heather up over the hill. It was
quite a climb, and when we got to the top we saw
no standing stones, and I wondered if we were going to
miss them, after all; but we pressed on, and then, as
we topped the next rise, my heart gave a leap — for
there before us was the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis — the
most remarkable stone enclosure I have seen anywhere,
with the exception of Stonehenge — and Stonehenge is
more remarkable only because its stones are larger.
In every other way — in extent and in complexity —
this enclosure far outranks Stonehenge. Great upright
SLIGO ABBEY FROM THE CLOISTER
THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS
THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS 401
rocks, lichened and weatherbeaten by the rains and
winds of forty centuries, form a rude oblong, about a
hundred and fifty feet in length by fifty feet across. It
stretches east and west, and at the western end is a
square projection like a vestibule, divided into two
chambers; while at the eastern end are two smaller
oblongs some ten or twelve feet square, and their door-
ways are two trilithons — that is to say, two great rocks
set on end with another rock laid across them, just as
at Stonehenge. I despair of trying to picture it in
words, but I took two photographs, one of which is op-
posite the preceding page, and gives some idea of the
appearance of this remarkable monument — at least of
the trilithons. But it gives no idea of its shape or its
extent. There was no vantage point from which I
could get a photograph that would do that.
Its effect, here on this bleak hilltop, with other bleak
hills all around as far as the eye could see, was tre-
mendously impressive. Nobody knows who built it,
nor when it was built, nor why. That it was a shrine
of some sort, a holy place, seems evident; and to me
it seemed also evident that the holy of holies were those
two little chambers back of the trilithic doorways;
and it seemed to me also significant that they should
be at the east end, nearest the sunrise, just as the al-
tars in Gothic churches are, and that there should be
a vestibule or entrance at the west end. Surely it was
built with some reference to the sun; and I tried to
picture the horde of panting men, who had, with in-
credible labour, hacked out these giant stones from
some quarry now unknown, and pulled them up the
steep hillside and somehow manoeuvred them into
402 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
place. Some powerful motive must have actuated
them, and I can think of none powerful enough except
the motive of religion — the motive of building a great
temple to the God they worshipped, in the hope of
pleasing Him and winning His favour.
What strange rites, I wondered, had these old stones
witnessed; what pageantries, what sacrifices, what in-
cantations? Of all that ancient people there remains
on earth not a single trace, except in such silent monu-
ments of stone as this, so mighty the passing centuries
have been powerless to destroy them, more mysterious,
more inscrutable than the Sphinx.
We tore ourselves away, at last, and went silently
down through the heather, which was fairly swarming
with rabbits ; and we mounted our car and headed back
toward the lake. We came out presently close beside
the shore, and followed it around its upper end. Just
there, out at the end of a point of land, stands the
fragment of a tower, and our jarvey told us it was all
that was left of the castle from which Dervorgilla
eloped with Dermot MacMurrough — a tale already
told by the little tailor of Limerick.
Of course I wanted a picture of it, and after much
manoeuvring, I managed to get the one opposite this
page, which I include only because of the beautiful
Japanesy branch across one corner; for this wasn't
Breffni's castle at all, as we were presently to find. A
little farther on, and quite near the road, was an-
other ruin, and a most imposing one, with drum towers
at the four corners, and a dilapidated cottage hugging
its wall; and I took a peep within the square enclosure,
used now as a kind of barnyard. There were little
A RUIN ON THE SHORE OF LOUGH GILL
THE LAST FRAGMENT OF AN ANCIENT STRONGHOLD
THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS 403
turrets looking out over the lake, and a spiral stair in
one corner, and mullioned windows and tall chimneys
and yawning fireplaces; and it looked a most impor-
tant place, but I have not been able to discover anything
of its history. Then we went on again, with beautiful
views of the lake at our right, and high on our left the
flat-topped mountain called O'Rourke's Table, where,
once upon a time, as told by the old ballad,
"O'Rourke's Noble Feast" was spread:
O'Rourke's noble fare will ne'er be forgot
By those who were there, or those who were not.
His revels to keep, we sup and we dine
On seven score sheep, fat bullocks and swine,
and so on. It is, indeed, a table fit for such a celebra-
tion— a rock plateau with sheer escarpments of grey
granite dropping away from it, and a close cover of
purple heather for a cloth.
The road curved on along the lake; then turned away
from it through a beautiful ravine; and then a spark-
ling river was dashing along at our right, and beyond
it loomed the grey walls of a most extensive ruin ; and
then we dropped steeply down into the town of Droma-
hair, and stopped at a pretty inn to bait the horse.
I wanted to get closer to the ruins, and I asked if
there was a bridge across tne river, and was told that
there was, just behind the hotel. So I made my way
down to it, to find that the "bridge" was a slender
plank, without handrail or guard, spanning some ugly-
looking rapids. I looked at the plank, and I looked at
the swirling water, and I looked at the grey ruins on
the farther shore, and I hesitated for a long time; but
404 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
I wasn't equal to it; and I turned away at last and
made my way back to the village in the hope of finding
some more stable bridge there.
The dominating feature of the village is not the
workhouse or lunatic asylum, but an enormous mill,
five stories high, built of black stone as hard as flint,
to endure for all eternity, but forlorn and deserted;
and while I was gazing at it and wondering where the
money had come from to build it, a man came out of
the house attached to it and spoke to me. He was an
Englishman, he said, who was spending his vacation
at Dromahair. I asked him if there was any other
bridge across the river except the slender plank, and he
said there was not; and that it was characteristic of
the Irish that there should not be, for a more careless,
shiftless, happy-go-lucky race did not exist anywhere
on earth.
I asked him about the mill, and he said that it was
just another example of Irish inefficiency and wrong-
headedness; that it had been erected at great expense
and equipped with the most costly machinery to grind
American grain, which was to be brought up Sligo Bay
from the sea, and up the river and across the lake ; and
then, when all was ready, there was no grain to grind
— or none, at least, which could be brought to the
mill without prohibitive expense. Furthermore, the
power was so poor and costly that it would have been
impossible to operate the mill profitably even if there
had been plenty of grain. But the owner of the mill,
with some sort of dim faith in the power of Home
Rule to produce the grain, was preparing to install a
turbine to run the machinery, and had already started
THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS 405
to build a big aqueduct to bring the water in from above
the rapids.
The rapids are just above the mill, and are quite im-
posing; and there, just beyond them, is the abbey. I
was near enough to see it fairly well, though not, of
course, in detail as I should have liked to do; but I
comforted myself with the thought that it is a com-
paratively modern one, dating from the sixteenth cen-
tury, when Margaret, the wife of another O'Rourke,
having, perhaps, like Dervorgilla, done something she
regretted, built it for the Franciscans.
I had another comfort, too ; for I asked the English-
man if he had seen the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis ; and he
said that he had been hunting for it for a week, but
hadn't been able to find it, as none of the people there-
abouts seemed to know where it was; and he was as-
tonished when I told him that we had found it, and
commented with envy upon the energy of Americans.
He asked me where it was, and I told him as nearly as
I could; and then he wanted me to come in and have
tea, and was for sending up to the hotel for Betty;
but I had to decline that invitation. I think he was
lonely and glad to find some one to talk to, for he
was unusually expansive for an Englishman; and he
said he would send his car in to Sligo after us, if we
would come out next day; but I told him we were go-
ing on to Bundoran.
And then I left him and went back up the hill to
the ivy-covered ruin which was really the castle of
Tiernan O'Rourke. It stands on the edge of the hill
overlooking the valley — the same valley which lay
smiling before him that evening he came back from his
406 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
pilgrimage to Lough Derg; and up there was the bat-
tlement from which no light burned. It was battered
down in the sixteenth century, in some obscure fight,
and all that is left of the castle now is the shell of its
walls.
I am afraid Tom Moore, as well as O'Connell, jour-
neyman tailor, has invested the story with a glamour
which did not belong to it; for Tiernan O'Rourke was
a one-eyed bandit who had sacked the abbey of Clonard
a few years before, and who certainly had need of pil-
grimages to shrive him from his sins ; and Dervorgilla,
so far from being a "young false one," was forty-two
years old ; and MacMurrough took care to carry off, not
only the lady's person, but all her movable property,
and most of her husband's, as well.
The clouds were gathering in the west as we set out
from Dromahair, and presently the rain began to slant
down, slowly and softly at first, and then in a regular
torrent. I do not know when I have seen it rain
harder; but we were soon fixed for it and didn't mind.
Dromahair is about twelve miles from Sligo, and they
are hilly miles, so we knew that we had at least three
hours of this wet work ahead of us; but the people
working in the fields or plodding along the road paid
no attention to the rain, so why should we1? In fact,
most of them, though without any sort of protection,
seemed to be quite unconscious that it was raining at
all.
And then, just when the rain was hardest, I saw to
the left a circle of stones crowning a little hill, and I
knew it was a cashel. A cashel, as I have explained
THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS 407
already, is a fort made of stones, just as a rath is a
fort made of earth, both being in the form of a circle ;
and I knew I could get pictures of raths without much
difficulty, but I didn't know when I would see another
cashel; so I made the driver stop, and got my camera
out of the well, and started off through a field to get
a picture of this one, not heeding Betty's anxious in-
quiry if I had suddenly gone mad.
That field into which I plunged was thigh-deep with
dripping grass, and I didn't realise how wet it was un-
til I was well into it, and then there was nothing to do
but go on. So I scrambled up the hill and took two
pictures, shielding my lens, as well as I could, against
the driving rain; and I hadn't any idea that the pictures
would be good ones, but they were, and one of them is
opposite the next page.
There was no vantage point from which I could take
a picture which would show the circular shape of the
cashel; but it had been built in a perfect circle about
sixty feet in diameter. It was on top of a steep hil-
lock, of which it occupied nearly the whole summit.
The walls, pierced only by a single narrow entrance,
were about six feet high, and four or five feet thick,
and the lower stones were very massive, as the picture
shows. They had been roughly dressed and laid with-
out mortar — the ancient Irish knew nothing of mortar,
apparently, for all these old stone circles are un-
cemented ; but they had been so nicely fitted that they
were still in place after many centuries, though the
clambering ivy was doing its best to pull them
down.
Right in the middle of the circle was a great stone
4o8 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
slab, flush with the ground. The only use I could im-
agine for it was as a base for a shrine or altar; but as
I went down to the road again, an old man came out
of a little house to talk, and he said that some anti-
quarians from Sligo, who believed the slab covered the
entrance to a secret passage, had taken it up and found
beneath it, not a passage, but a beautifully fitted pave-
ment; and that the parish priest, investigating on his
own account, had dug up some wood ashes, and so
decided that this was the place where the fire was
built.
"But no one knows," my informant rambled on.
"Maybe some day some wise man like yourself will be
able to tell us what it was for."
I remarked that the man who did so would have to
be far wiser than I; but he protested that he knew a
wise man when he saw one ; and I suspect that there is
a blarney stone in some of these ruins, which the gen-
eral public doesn't know about.
I was sorry it was raining, for there was another
cashel on a hill to the right, and a great rath a little
farther off, and I should have liked to explore both of
them; but really the weather was too bad, so I went
back reluctantly to the car, which our jarvey had driven
close under a clump of trees for shelter, and we were
soon jogging contentedly on again.
The valley which slopes down here to Lough Gill
seems very fertile, and the little farms have a more
prosperous look than is usual in Ireland. This is
partly due to the fact that a number of neat labourers'
cottages have been built to replace the usual tumble-
down hovels, and still more are going up.
A CASHEL NEAR DROMAHAIR
ST. PATRICK'S HOLY WELL
THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS 409
This erection of labourers' cottages, which is going
on to-day all over Ireland, seems to me almost as im-
portant as land purchase. If there is any class of Irish
more deserving of pity than another, it is the agricul-
tural labourer. He is worse off than the tenants; he
has no land, however poor, to cultivate, except perhaps
a tiny patch in front of his door; he has no means of
livelihood except the unskilled labour of his hands; if
he can manage to earn ten shillings a week he is un-
usually fortunate. In most cases, his average income
throughout the year will be scarcely half that. So
naturally the labourers and their families live in the
most wretched of all the wretched hovels, in want, dis-
comfort and peril of disease.
It is for the relief of these unfortunate people that
the new houses are being built. They are very plain ;
but they have large windows which can be opened,
and stone floors which can be cleaned, and tight slate
roofs, and sanitary outbuildings ; and each of them has
a half acre or so of garden, where vegetables enough
to support the family can be raised during the summer ;
and they rent for from two to three shillings a week
— just enough to pay interest on the amount invested
in the house, with a small sinking fund for upkeep and
repairs. The money needed is borrowed from the
government by the county council, and the council has
control of the houses, decides where they shall be
built, what rent shall be asked for them, and exer-
cises a general supervision over the tenants.
The same thing is being done in the towns, where the
insanitary dwellings of the poorer artisans are being
replaced by comfortable houses, rented at a very low
4io THE CHARM OF IRELAND
rate. Nearly a hundred thousand of these cottages
have been built within the past ten years, replacing
as many insanitary shacks, which, for the most part,
have been torn down. The shacks were much more
picturesque, but nobody regrets them. And the se-
verely utilitarian aspect of the new dwellings will no
doubt soon be masked with vines and climbing roses.
It was such cottages as this, then, that gave the val-
ley sloping down to Lough Gill an unusually pros-
perous appearance, and many more were in course of
erection throughout the neighbourhood. We padded
past them, along the road above the lake, between
beautiful hedgerows, gay with climbing roses; and then
we turned away through a luxuriant wood, where the
bracken was almost waist-high and the trees were
draped with moss and ferns, just as we had seen them
along the southern coast. And then we passed through
a gate and jolted down a very rough and narrow lane;
and finally our driver stopped at the edge of a wood,
and pointed to a path running away under the trees.
" Tis the path to St. Patrick's holy well," he said;
and we clambered down, and made our way under the
trees and up the hillside, and there before us was the
well.
It is a lively spring, which bubbles up from the
ground in considerable volume, fills a deep basin, and
then sparkles away down into the valley. A wall has
been built around it, with an opening on one side, and
steps by which one may descend and drink of the magic
water. Just above it on the hillside is a shrine, some-
thing like the one we had seen at St. Senan's well —
THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS 411
really an altar, where, I suppose, Mass may be cele-
brated; and it was crowded with figurines of the Vir-
gin and small crucifixes and rosaries and sacred pic-
tures, and the bushes all about were tied with rags and
strings and other tokens which the pilgrims to the
shrine had left behind.
This well is a very famous one, and the number of
pilgrims who come to it prove how general is the be-
lief in its powers. It is really a belief in the power
of prayer, for prayer is always necessary. I tried to
get a picture of the well and the shrine above it, but
it was very dark under the trees, and there was no
place where I could rest my camera for a time expo-
sure; but the photograph opposite page 408, is better
than I had any reason to expect.
We found that the rain had ceased when we came
out from under the trees, and we jogged happily back
to the highroad and on towards Sligo; and presently
far ahead the bay opened out, rimmed by romantic
hills, green nearly to the summit, and then culminat-
ing in steep escarpments of grey rock; and beneath us
in the valley lay the roofs and spires of the town, and
we were soon rattling through its streets.
We went back to the hotel to change out of our wet
things and get a cup of hot chocolate; and then we
took a last stroll about the streets, and stopped to see
the church of St. John, said to be older than the abbey,
but recently restored and now used by a Church of Ire-
land congregation. The graveyard about it is full of
interesting tombs, and the street it fronts is one of the
most romantic in the town. Indeed, the whole town
4i2 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
is interesting; its greatest drawback for the visitor
being the beggars who infest it, and who are nearly as
pertinacious as those at Killarney.
We went back to the hotel, at last, and told the
proprietor that we were going to Bundoran by the four
o'clock train.
"You will make a great mistake," he protested, "to
leave Sligo without going around Lough Gill."
It was then I had my revenge.
"We have been around Lough Gill," I explained
sweetly. "That's where we were this morning."
It is no easy task to travel along the west coast of
Ireland. The great bays which indent it, running far
inland; and the mountain ranges which tower one be-
hind the other, make it impossible to follow anything
like a straight line. The only thing to do is to zig-
zag around them. Our journe)^ that afternoon, was
a striking example of this. Bundoran lies twenty-
two miles north along the coast from Sligo; but to get
there by rail, it was necessary to travel ninety-two —
forty-eight miles north-eastward to Enniskillen, and
then forty-four miles westward to the coast again.
The road to Enniskillen parallels Lough Gill, though
it is so hemmed in by hills that we caught no glimpse
of the water; and then proceeds across a dreary bog,
climbing up and up with a wide valley opening to the
south ; and then runs into woodland and even orchards
— the first, I think, that we had seen in Ireland; and
then drops down toward Enniskillen, whose name lives
in English history as that of one of the most famous
of its regiments. It is said to be a pretty town, nestling
THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS 413
between two lakes and entirely water-girt; but we did
not stop to see it.
We changed instead to the Bundoran line, which runs
along the northern shore of Lough Erne ; and we found
the train crowded with people, on their way to spend
the week-end at that famous resort; at least so we
supposed, but when we got to Pettigoe, there was a
crowd on the platform, waving flags and shouting, and
as the train stopped somebody set off a series of bombs ;
and most of the passengers piled out of the train to
take part in the celebration; and then we saw a man
and woman standing rather sheepishly in front of
another man, who was evidently delivering an address
of welcome. We asked the guard what it was all
about, and he said that the citizens of Pettigoe were
welcoming home a fellow-townsman who had gone to
Australia and won a fortune and also a wife — or per-
haps I should put it the other way around — and had
come back to Pettigoe to live.
I was half-inclined to get off there myself, in order
to visit St. Patrick's Purgatory, a famous place of pil-
grimage on an island in Lough Derg, five miles away;
but from the map it looked as though it would be
possible to drive over from Donegal, which would be
much more convenient. I found out afterwards that
there is a mountain range between Donegal and Lough
Derg, and no direct road over it; so we did not get to
visit the island where, so legend says, St. Patrick had a
vision of purgatory, and which became so celebrated
that pilgrims flocked to it from all over Europe. The
time prescribed for the ceremonies is from the first of
June to the middle of August, and the island is often
414 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
so crowded with penitents performing the rounds that
visitors are not permitted to land.
Our train moved on, after the address of welcome
was concluded, and we could see the blue waters of
Lough Erne stretching away to the south, while west-
ward the sun was setting in a glory of crimson clouds ;
and presently the broad estuary of the Erne opened be-
low us, hemmed in with high banks of yellow sand;
and then we were at Bundoran — a bathing resort, con-
sisting of a single street of boarding-houses facing the
sea; and a little farther on, a great hotel, built on a
projecting point of the cliffs. As we paused at its door
to look about us, we realised that we had come very
far indeed from primitive Connemara, for the first
thing which met our eyes was a huge sign :
BEWARE OF GOLF BALLS!
CHAPTER XXIV
THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE
THE weather god was certainly good to us in Ireland.
The occasional showers and two or three heavy down-
pours were merely short interludes, and by no means
unpleasant ones, in the long succession of sweetly
beautiful days which I remember when I run my mind
back over those delightful weeks. That day at Bun-
doran was one of them, soft and fragrant and alto-
gether perfect.
There is nothing Irish about Bundoran except its
climate — not, at least, if one stays at the hotel which
has been built there by the Great Northern Railroad,
and which is one of the most satisfactory hotels I was
ever in. And perhaps it would be as well to say a
word here about Irish hotels.
The small, friendly inn, which is one of the delights
of European travel, does not exist in Ireland; or, if it
does, it is so carelessly managed that it is not en-
durable. Commercial hotels are also apt to be in-
ferior. The only hotels that are sure to be pleasant and
satisfactory are the large ones which cater to tourist
traffic. In the more important towns, of course, there
is never any difficulty in finding a good hotel; in the
smaller towns, the only safe rule is to go to the best in
the place, and if there is one managed by the railway,
that is usually the one to choose.
Some years ago, the Irish railways realised that
415
416 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the surest way to encourage tourist traffic in the west
and south was to provide attractive hotel accommoda-
tions, and they set about doing this with the result that
the traveller in Ireland is now well provided for.
Such hotels as those at Bundoran, Recess and Park-
nasilla — and there are many others like them, hand-
some buildings, splendidly equipped, set in the midst
of beautiful surroundings — leave nothing to be desired.
Nor are their rates excessive, considering the excellent
service they offer, averaging a little over three dollars a
day. In the smaller towns, the tariff is considerably
less than this, though the service is almost as good. In
places where the railroad does not itself own or manage
a hotel, it usually sees to it that at least one under
private management is kept up to a satisfactory stand-
ard. So no one wishing to explore Ireland need hes-
itate on account/ of the hotels. They will be found,
with a few excep^ons, surprisingly good.
The hotel at Bundoran is set close to the edge of
the scarred and weather-beaten cliffs, which look right
out over the Atlantic toward America. It was along
the top of these cliffs that we set out, that Sunday
morning, and below us lay the strand where three gal-
leons of the Spanish Armada went to pieces, as they
were staggering homewards from the battle in the Chan-
nel. From time to time, an effort is made to find these
"treasure ships," but, though cannon and anchors and
such-like gear have been recovered, no one as yet has
found any treasure.
The great waves which roll right in from the Atlan-
tic, and which proved too much for the galleons, have
worn the cliffs into the most fantastic shapes; and a
•BB
THE COAST AT BUNDORAN
THE HOME OF "COLLEEN BAWNT"
THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE 417
little way above the hotel there is a natural arch, called
the Fairy Bridge, some twenty-five feet wide, which
the water has cut in the rocks. When the tide comes
in, it may be seen boiling and bubbling below the
bridge, as in a witch's cauldron. Most beautiful of
all is a wide yellow strand, a little farther on, with
the rollers breaking far out and sweeping in, in white-
topped majesty. We sat for a long time watching
them, rolling in in long lines one behind the other;
and then we scrambled down to the beach through the
bare and shifting dunes. Seen thus from below, the
black cliffs are most impressive.
We went on again, at last, over the upland toward
a wide-flung camp, where the Fourth Inniskillens were
getting their summer practice; and one of the men di-
rected us how to find a cromlech and a cairn, which we
knew were there somewhere, but which we were unable
to see amid the innumerable ridges. From the cairn,
which crowns a little eminence overlooking the Erne es-
tuary, there was supposed to be, so our acquaintance
said, an underground passage to the other side of the
river, where stands the old castle of the Ffolliotts ; but
as the estuary is at least a mile wide, I doubt if this ever
existed except in the imagination of the country-side.
The castle is there, however, — we could see its towers
looming above the trees; but there was no way to get
to it, that day, for the river lay between. I was de-
termined to see it closer before we left the neighbour-
hood, because it was from that castle that the fair Col-
leen Bawn eloped with Willy Reilly.
Farther down the stream, a two-masted schooner
lay wrecked beside a sand-bank, and across from us
4i8 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
some soldiers were fishing in tiny boats, while a com-
pany was going through some manoeuvres on the shore,
so far away they looked like a company of ants de-
ploying this way and that. For a long time we
watched them ; then we bade our companion good-bye,
and went slowly back through the bracken, where Betty
picked a great bouquet of primroses and violets and
blue-bells ; and we stumbled upon another ancient bur-
ial-place; and stopped at the ruins of an old church;
and got back finally to the hotel to find the golf-links
full of industrious players.
Betty got into talk with the owner of a shaggy Eng-
lish sheep-dog — shaggy clear to its feet, and looking
for all the world like Nana, the accomplished nurse
of the Darling children; and I went on down to the
beach to watch the tide come in. It was swirling
threateningly about the black rocks; and out at the
farthest point of them I found a man sitting. He in-
vited me to sit down beside him, and we fell into talk.
He was a handsome old fellow, a barrister from Dub-
lin, who had come clear across Ireland (which isn't
as far as it sounds) to get a breath of sea air. There
was no air like the Bundoran air, he said, and two or
three days of it did him a world of good. And then
we began to talk about Ireland; and I was guilty of
the somewhat banal remark that, before Ireland could
make any real progress, life there would have to be
made attractive enough to keep her young people at
home, for she could never hope to get ahead as long
as her best blood was drained away from her.
He pooh-poohed the idea.
"The best advice you can give any Irish man or Irish
THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE 41$
girl," he said, "is to leave the country the first chance
they get; and that will always be good advice, because
there will never be anything here for them to do. All
this talk about the revival of industry is foolish. You
can't revive what's dead; and industry here has been
dead for three hundred years. Besides this is an agri-
cultural country, and it will never- be anything else;
and over wide stretches of it, grazing pays better than
tillage will ever do, so grazing there will be. Home
Rule will make no difference — how can it? I sup-
pose we're going to get it, and I'll be glad to see it
come, if only to stop this ceaseless agitation ; but as for
its reviving any industries, or increasing wages, or
making Ireland a place for ambitious young people to
live in — I don't believe it."
"You don't foresee a roseate future, then?"
"Not for Ireland. All these schemes for land pur-
chase and new cottages and pensions and so on may
make life here a little more comfortable than it has
been; but this country has been in a lethargy for cen-
turies, and it will never be shaken off. The Irish have
no ambition; they just live along from day to day
without any thought for the future; and they will al-
ways be like that. It's their nature."
He would doubtless have said more to the same ef-
fect, for he was very much in earnest, but the rising
tide drove us in, and I did not see him again.
The picturesque old town of Ballyshannon is only a
few miles from Bundoran, and we took train for it
next morning, after a last stroll along the cliffs and a
look at the "rock-pool," a treasure-house of fossils and
420 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
marine growths of every kind. First of all, we wanted
to see the Colleen Bawn castle, so we got a car at the
station, and set out.
Ballyshannon, after the fashion of Irish towns, is
built on the side of a hill, and no horse unaccustomed
to mountaineering could have got up the street which
leads from the river; but our horse had been reared
in the town, so he managed to scramble up; and then
we turned to the left and followed along the river to
the falls — a dashing mass of spray, where the whole
body of water which rushes down from Lough Erne
sweeps roaring over a cliff some thirty feet high. Two
or three miles along country roads brought us to a
gate; and here our driver, looking a little anxious,
had a short conference with a woman who lived in a
neat labourer's cottage near by; and finally he opened
the gate and drove through.
Half a mile along this lane brought us to another
gate; and there our driver stopped, and showed us the
castle just ahead, and said that was all the farther he
could go, and that we would have to walk the rest of
the way. There was a certain constraint in his manner
which I did not understand till afterwards.
We went on through the gate, and across what had
once been the demesne, but had been swept bare of
trees, and was now divided between a meadow and a
stable-yard, and in a few minutes we stood before the
castle which was the scene of a romance very dear to
Irish hearts. It is not really a castle, but merely a tall
and ugly house, with three bays and a low terrace in
front, and it is not very old, since it dates only from
,1739, when it was built as the home of the Ffolliotts,
THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE 421
a powerful English family into whose hands this whole
neighbourhood had fallen. The Ffolliotts, of course,
were Protestants, and Willy Reilly was a Catholic ; but
Helen Ffolliott was so ill-advised as to fall in love
with him, and one night packed up her jewels and
eloped. A hue and cry was raised after them, and they
were soon captured, and Reilly was thrown into Sligo
jail, and it looked for a while as though he might be
"stretched," for all this happened about 1745, when
the penal laws against Catholics were most severe.
But the fair Helen came to the rescue, and swore at
the trial that she had been the leader in the affair, not
Reilly, and so he escaped with a sentence of banish-
ment. What happened thereafter history does not
state; but Will Carleton, who wove a poor romance
about the affair, manages to reunite the lovers in the
end.
It is not to be wondered at that Reilly became a
popular hero. Here was a young and handsome Cath-
olic, who, in the most daring way, had captured the
heart of a great Protestant heiress, the daughter of a
persecutor of Catholics, and, in addition, a girl so
lovely that she was the toast of the whole country-
side. The ballad which celebrated the affair had an
immense vogue. It is a real ballad, rough and halting,
but rudely eloquent. You remember how it starts :
"Oh! rise up, Willy Reilly, and come alongst with me,
I mean for to go with you and leave this countrie,
To leave my father's dwelling, his houses and fine lands ;"
And away goes Willy Reilly and his dear Colleen Bawn.
In the ballad, the family is called Folliard, which
422 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
is the way the name is still pronounced in the neigh-
bourhood; but the old mansion is now occupied by a
tenant. And pretty soon we understood our jarvey's
uneasiness, for first a man came to the front door and
looked at us, and then went quickly in again; and then
an old woman opened the side door, and glared at us,
and when we asked if we might have a glimpse of
the interior, slammed the door in our faces. I must
give her credit, however, for restraining a particu-
larly savage-looking dog eager to be at us. But it was
evident we weren't wanted there, for even the turkey
gobbler resented our visit, and strutted fiercely about
us, trying to scare us out. So we went back to the car,
and our jarvey breathed a sigh of relief when he saw
us.
"Sure, I didn't know whether you'd come back alive
or not," he said. "The master is away from home the
day, and the woman that does work for him wouldn't
be above settin' the dog on you. But it's all right,
glory be to God," and he climbed up to his box and
drove us back to Ballyshannon.
We left our luggage at the station of the Donegal
narrow-gauge railway, and then walked down into the
town. We found it a quaint place, with the friendliest
of people; and we were fortunate in discovering a
clean inn on the main street, where we had the nicest
of lunches, after which we set off to see the abbey.
The road to the abbey lies through a deep, romantic
dell, at the bottom of which we found a grain mill
working, its great wheel turned by the brook which
rushes through the glen; and a little farther on were
four or five other mills, all fallen to decay, their wheels
THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE 423
mere skeletons, and their machinery red with rust.
Just beyond, a little higher up the hill, stands all that
is left of the abbey, a few shattered fragments of the
old walls. Yet the abbey was, in its day, a great foun-
dation, patronised by the mighty Prince of Tyrconnell,
and taking its name of Assaroe from the falls in the
river — Eas Aedha Ruaidh, the Waterfall of Red Hugh,
who was High King of Erin about three centuries be-
fore Christ, and who was swept over the falls and
drowned while trying to cross the ford above them. A
boy who played about the ruins described them, when
he grew to manhood, in a musical stanza :
Grey, grey is Abbey Assaroe, by Ballyshanny town,
It has neither door nor window, the walls are broken down;
The carven stones lie scattered in briars and nettle-bed;
The only feet are those that come at burial of the dead.
A little rocky rivulet runs murmuring to the tide,
Singing a song of ancient days, in sorrow, not in pride;
The bore-tree and the lightsome ash across the portal grow,
And heaven itself is now the roof of Abbey Assaroe.
We had heard certain legends of underground pas-
sages, which could still be explored, and we asked an old
man who was cutting grass in the graveyard if he knew
anything about them, and he said that he did not. We
remarked that it was a hard task cutting the grass
around the gravestones; and he said it was so, and
would not be worth doing but that the grass was given
to him for the cutting; but the guardians were un-
reasonable men who wanted it cut long before it was
ready — it ought really to stand a week longer, now,
but them ones would not wait!
We went back past the mill, and met a man in flour-
424 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
besprinkled clothes, who bade us good-day and stopped
to talk; and it proved to be the miller. He invited
us in to see the mill, which was grinding Russian corn,
very red and hard, into yellow meal which was used
for feeding cattle. We tried to tell him something of
the delights of corn-bread and griddle-cakes, but he
was plainly sceptical.
He was an Ulster man, and had been running the
mill for three years, but he said it was a hard struggle
to make both ends meet. If it was not that his power
cost him nothing, he would have had to give it up long
ago. Power apart, I could imagine no poorer place
for a mill, for it was at least two miles from the rail-
way, and the road into the hollow was so steep that it
must be a terrific struggle to get a loaded wagon into
or out of it. There had been a number of mills in the
neighbourhood at one time, but they had all given up
the struggle long ago, except one flour mill, which had
somehow managed to survive.
We told him that we had seen the ruins of some of
them as we went to the abbey.
"Have you been to the abbey?" he asked. "Did
you see the underground passages'?"
"Are there really some*?"
"Come along, and I'll show you."
We protested that we didn't want him to leave his
work, but he said the mill could take care of itself for
awhile; and we started off together up the hill, through
a gate to the right, and then knee-deep through the
grass to the brook which ran at the bottom of the ra-
vine, under the walls of the monastery. And there,
sure enough, was the mouth of a passage cut in the solid
THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE 425
rock of the bank. It was about six feet high by three
wide, and ran in about a hundred feet, for all the world
like the entrance to a mine. How much farther it ex-
tended I don't know, for an iron gate had been put
across it to keep out explorers ; but there can be no doubt
that, at one time, it connected with the abbey itself, and
formed a secret means of ingress and egress, which was
no doubt often very convenient.
And then our guide showed us something else, which
was far more interesting. In the penal days, Catholic
priests were forbidden to celebate Mass under the se-
verest penalties ; but nevertheless they managed to hold
a service now and then in some out of the way place,
carefully concealed, with sentries posted all about to
guard against surprise. A short distance down stream
from the entrance to the secret passage was a shallow
cave in the cliff, so overhung with ivy that it could
scarcely be seen, and here, many times, the Catholics of
the neighbourhood had gathered at word that a priest
would celebrate Mass. On the heights all about look-
outs would be placed, and then the men and women
would kneel before the mouth of the little cave and
take part in the sacrament.
At the back of the cave, the shelf of rock which
served as the altar still remains, and at one side of it
is a rude piscina — a basin hollowed in the rock, with a
small hole in the bottom to drain it; and it was here
the vessels used in the celebration of the Mass were
washed, after the service was over. I wanted mightily
to get a picture of this cave, but it had started to
shower, and though I got under the umbrella and made
an exposure, the picture was a failure.
426 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
We bade our guide good-bye, with many thanks for
his kindness, and went slowly back along the highroad
toward Ballyshannon ; and presently from a tiny cot-
tage beside the road two old women issued and greeted
us with great cordiality. They were clean and neatly
dressed, and the younger one, who did most of the
talking, seeme'd to be quite unusually interested in our
private history and solicitous for our welfare, and the
blarney with which her tongue plastered us was the
most finished I have ever listened to. We thanked
her for her good wishes, and were about to go on, much
pleased at this new demonstration of Irish cordiality,
when we had a rude awakening.
"Ah, your honour," she said, "would you not be giv-
ing me something for my poor sister here1? You see
she is all twisted with rheumatism, and can scarcely
walk, and the medicine do be costing so much that she
often must go without it. Just a small coin, God bless
ye."
I didn't want to give her anything, for I suspected
that she made a practice of waylaying passers-by and
begging from them; and then I looked at the older
woman, who was standing by with her hands crossed
before her, and I saw how the fingers were twisted and
withered and how the face was drawn with pain — so I
compromised by dropping sixpence into the outstretched
hand.
"If your honour would only be makin' it eightpence
now," the woman said quickly; "we can get three bot-
tles of castor-oil for eightpence — "
But the other woman stopped her.
THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE 427
"No, no," she protested; "take shame to yourself
for askin' the kind gentleman for more. We thank
your honour, and God bless ye, and may He bring ye
safe home."
And the other woman joined in the blessings too,
and they continued to bless us, considerably to our
embarrassment, until we were out of ear-shot.
Betty had had enough of Ballyshannon; besides, the
showers were coming with increasing force and fre-
quency; so she elected to go back to the railway sta-
tion and rest, while I wandered about for a last look
at the town. And now, I suppose, I shall have to
say a word about its history.
All this country to the north of Lough Erne is
Tyrone — Tir Owen, the Province of Owen — and was
once a great principality, which stretched eastward
clear to the shore of the Channel about Belfast.
Northwest of it, answering roughly to the present
county of Donegal, was Tyrconnell — Tir Connell, the
Province of Connell; and Connell and Owen were
brothers, sons of Nial of the Nine Hostages, who was
King of Ireland from 379 to 405, and whose eight sons
cut Ireland up between them into the principalities
which were, in time, by their own internecine warfare,
to make Ireland incapable of defending herself against
the invader. Saint Patrick, about 450, found Connell
in his castle on Lough Erne and baptised him; and
then he journeyed north to Owen's great fortress, which
we shall see before long on a hill overlooking Lough
Swilly, and baptised him.
Five centuries later, when Brian Boru had brought
428 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
all Ireland to acknowledge his kingship, he decreed
that every family should take a surname from some dis-
tinguished ancestor, and so began the era of the O's
and the Macs. The two great clans of Tyrone and
Tyrconnell chose the names of O'Neill and O'Donnell,
and the river Erne was the frontier of the O'Donnell
domain. There was a ford here at Ballyshannon, and
so, of course, a castle to guard it, and many were the
herds of lifted cattle which the O'Donnells, sallying
south into Sligo, drove back before them into Donegal.
Cattle was the principal form of property in those old
days — about the only kind, at least, that could be stolen
— and so it was always cattle that the raiders went
after.
The English brought a great force against the place
in 1597, and for three days besieged the castle and tried
unavailingly to carry it by assault; and then the
O'Donnell clans poured down from the hills, and the
English, seeing themselves trapped, tried to cross the
river at the ford just above the falls; and the strong-
est managed to get across, but the women and the
wounded and the weak were swept away.
There is no trace remaining of the castle, but just
below the graceful bridge of stone which crosses the
river is the ford over which the English poured that
day, and an ugly ford it is, for the water runs deep and
strong, quickening at its lower -edge into the rapids
above the falls. From the centre of this bridge, some
twenty-five years ago, the ashes of one of Ireland's
truest poets were scattered on the swift, smooth-run-
ning water and carried down to the sea, and a tablet
marks the spot:
THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE 429
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
A Native of This Town
Born 1824; died 1889.
Here once he roved, a happy boy,
Along the winding banks of Erne,
And now, please God, with finer joy,
A fairer world his eyes discern.
It is certainly a halting quatrain, quite unworthy the
immortality of marble. A couplet from Allingham's
own poem in praise of his birthplace would have been
far more fitting; but I suppose that the lines on the
tablet were composed by some local dignitary, and that
nobody dared tell him how bad they were. I know
of no more graceful tribute to any town than Ailing-
ham paid to Ballyshannon in his "Winding Banks of
Erne." The first stanza gives a savour of its qual-
ity:
Adieu to Ballyshanny, where I was bred and born;
Go where I may, I'll think of you, as sure as night and morn :
The kindly spot, the friendly town, where everyone is known,
And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own ;
There's not a house or window, there's not a field or hill,
But east or west, in foreign lands, I'll recollect them still ;
I leave my warm heart with you, though my back I'm forced
to turn —
Adieu to Ballyshanny, and the winding banks of Erne.
You will note that the savour is the same as that of
the lines I have already quoted describing Abbey As-
saroe, and of course the same hand wrote them. I
wish I could quote the whole poem to Ballyshannon,
for it is worth quoting, but one more stanza must suf-
fice, the last one :
43o THE CHARM OF IRELAND
If ever I'm a moneyed man, I mean, please God, to cast
My golden anchor in the place where youthful years were
passed ;
Though heads that now are black or brown must meanwhile
gather grey,
New faces rise by every hearth, and old ones drop away —
Yet dearer still that Irish hill than all the world beside ;
It's home, sweet home, where'er I roam, through lands and
waters wide.
And if the Lord allows me, I surely will return
To my native Ballyshanny, and the winding banks of Erne.
His birthplace is not far away — one of a row of
plain old stone houses standing in the Mall, with a
tablet :
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
Poet
Born in This House
19th March, 1824
I walked on past it, down to the river below the falls,
where, close to the water's edge, a seat has been placed
under a rustic canopy, and I sat there for a long time
and watched the foaming water rushing over the cliff,
with a crash and roar which, as Allingham says, is the
voice of the town, "solemn, persistent, humming
through the air day and night, summer and winter.
Whenever I think of that town, I seem to hear the
voice. The river which makes it, runs over rocky
ledges into the tide. Before, spreads a great ocean
in sunshine or storm; behind stretches a many-islanded
lake. On the south runs a wavy line of blue moun-
tains; and on the north, over green, rocky hills, rise
peaks of a more distant range."
BIRTHPLACE OF WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
CASTLE DONEGAL
THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE 431
It is up from the ocean the salmon come in the spring,
seeking a place to spawn, and before they can get into
the "many-islanded lake," they have to pass the falls.
It is a ten-foot leap, even at flood-tide; but they take
it, and a beautiful sight it must be to see them do it.
But I saw none that day. Just below the falls is a
little island, Inis-Saimer, said to be the spot where the
Firbolgs, the earliest inhabitants of Ireland, first
touched foot to Irish soil. It is given over now to
some small buildings connected with the fishery, which
is very valuable. There were a number of boats out,
that day, with fishermen in them patiently whipping
the water, but I did not see any fish caught.
Ballyshannon is not, I judge, so prosperous as it once
was, for across the river from where I sat were a num-
ber of tall mills and warehouses, empty and evidently
dropping to decay. But it is more bustling than many
other towns in Ireland, and has perhaps not sunk quite
so deeply into the Slough of Despond. And then
again, as the towering mass of the Belfast Bank in the
main street warned me as I walked back through the
village, we were getting nearer to the hustling north !
The little train we were to take for Donegal backed
up to the platform soon after I reached the station.
It is a narrow-gauge road, and the coaches are miniature
affairs, scarcely high enough to stand up in, as we
found when we entered. And just then the heavens
opened, and the rain poured down in sheets. We
closed door and windows, and congratulated ourselves
that we were snug and dry — and then the other pas-
sengers began to arrive, soaked through and dripping
wet; and as the train consisted of only two coaches, our
432 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
compartment was soon invaded by two women and
two girls, whose gowns were fairly plastered to them.
They dried themselves as well as they could, but little
streams of water continued to trickle off of them for
half an hour.
The road runs through a bare, bleak valley for the
first part of the way, clinging perilously to the hillside,
and then climbs steeply over the watershed into the
valley of the Ballintra, which is green and smiling and
apparently prosperous; and at last winds down along
the shore of Donegal Bay, through a district of orchards
and lush meadows and beautiful hedges and comfort*
able houses, and so into the picturesque town — Dun-
na-Gall, the Fort of the Strangers — the ancient seat of
the O'Donnells; but to me Donegal, town and county,
has one connotation which overshadows all others, and
that is with Father O'Flynn. Just where he lived I
don't know, but the tribute which Alfred Perceval
Graves paid him is the most eloquent ever paid in
rhyme to any priest — and, as a comment upon the
efforts of selfish politicians to fan the flame of religious
bigotry in Ireland, it is worth remembering that it was
written by a Protestant! Do you know the poem?
Well, if you do, you will be glad to read it again, and
if you do not, you will have every reason to thank me
for introducing you to it; so, just to give myself the
pleasure of writing it, I am going to quote it entire, for
it would be a crime to leave out a line of it.
FATHER O'FLYNN
Of priests we can offer a charmm' variety,
Far renowned for larnin' and piety;
Still, I'd advance ye widout impropriety,
THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE 433
Father O'Flynn as the flower of them all.
Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn,
Slainte and slainte and sldinte agin;
Powerfulest preacher, and
Tinderest teacher, and
Kindliest creature in ould Donegal.
Don't talk of your Provost and Fellows of Trinity,
Famous forever at Greek and Latinity,
Faix! and the divels and all at Divinity —
Father O'Flynn 'd make hares of them all!
Come, I vinture to give ye my word,
Niver the likes of his logic was heard,
Down from mythology
Into thayology,
Troth ! and conchology if he'd the call.
Och! Father O'Flynn, you've the wonderful way wid you,
All ould sinners are wishful to pray wid you,
All the young childer are wild for to play wid you,
You've such a way wid you, Father avick!
Still, for all you've so gentle a soul,
Gad, you've your flock in the grandest control,
Checking the crazy ones,
Coaxin' onaisy ones,
Liftin' the lazy ones on wid the stick.
And, though quite avoidin* all foolish frivolity,
Still, at all seasons of innocent jollity,
Where was the play-boy could claim an equality
At comicality, Father, wid you?
Once the Bishop looked grave at your jest,
Till this remark set him off wid the rest:
"Is it lave gaiety
All to the laity?
Cannot the clargy be Irishmen too?"
There is a quaint old inn in Donegal, with dining
434 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
and sitting rooms crowded with "curiosities" gathered
from the four quarters of the globe by the proprietor,
who was once a soldier; and his daughter looks after
the comfort of the guests ; and we had there that night
a most satisfying dinner. And then, as it was still
quite light, I filled my pipe and started out to stroll
about the town; but I hadn't gone far when I heard a
bell being rung with great violence, and when I looked
again, I saw the small boy who was ringing it; and
when he passed me, I asked him what the matter was,
and he handed me a poster, printed most gorgeously in
red and black, and these were the first lines of it :
TOWN HALL, DONEGAL
Monday Evg., June 23rd, 1913
MONSTER ATTRACTION
Powerful Performance!
For the Benefit of Mr. Joe Cullen,
The Donegal Old Favourite
On which occasion the ladies and
gentlemen of the Donegal Amateur
Dramatic and Variety Club will
Appear.
Then followed the programme. There were to be
four scenes from "The Ever Popular Play Entitled
Robert Emmet," also "The Laughable Sketch Entitled
The Cottage by the Sea," also "The Irish Farce, Miss
Muldowedy from Ireland," the whole to be interspersed
with variety turns by members of the club, as well as
Mr. Cullen. "Don't Miss This Treat," the poster
concluded. "Motto, 'Fun without Vulgarity.' "
Blessing the chance which had brought us to Donegal
THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE 435
upon this day, I hastened back to the hotel, showed the
poster to Betty, and three minutes later, we were sally-
ing forth in quest of the town-hall, whose entrance
proved to be up a little court just across the street.
The prices of admission, so the bill announced, were
"2s., is. and 6d.," and I consulted with the abashed
young man at the door as to which seats we should take.
He advised the shilling ones, and we thereupon paid
and entered. I wondered afterwards where the two
shilling seats were, for the shilling ones were the best
in the house.
Although it was nearly time for the performance to
begin, we were almost the first arrivals; but we soon
heard heavy feet mounting the stair, and quite a crowd
of men and boys began to file into the sixpenny seats
at the rear. A few girls and women came forward into
the shilling seats; but from the look of them, I sus-
pected that they were deadheads, and I fear that Mr.
Cullen did not reap a great fortune from that benefit !
There was a tiny stage at one end of the hall, and the
stage-manager, after the habit of all such, was having
his troubles, for he could not get the footlights — a
strip of gas-pipe with holes in it — to work. We
thought for a while that he was going to blow himself
up, and the whole house along with him; but he gave
up the struggle, at last; the pianist played an over-
ture, and the curtain rose.
I have never seen the whole of "Robert Emmet,"
but from what I saw of it that night, I judge that it
must have been written for a star, for nobody does
much talking except Emmet himself. He, however,
does a lot; and it was fortunate that, in this instance,
436 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
he was impersonated by Mr. Cullen, for I am sure none
of the other actors could have learned the part. Mr.
Cullen proved to be a hatchet-faced old gentleman
without any teeth; but he had a pleasing voice, and
Emmet's grandiloquent speech from the dock was
greeted with applause.
Of the two farces I will say nothing, except that they
were really not so bad as one would expect, once the
actors had recovered from their embarrassment when
they perceived two strangers present ; but the feature of
the evening was the songs, which were many and various
and well-rendered. I remember only one of them,
which we then heard for the first time, but which we
were to hear many times thereafter, a lilting, catchy
air, in which the audience assisted with the chorus,
which ran something like this:
It's a long way to Tipperary,
It's a long way to go ;
It's a long way to Tipperary,
The sweetest land I know.
Good-bye, Piccadilly,
Farewell, Leicester Square;
It's a long, long way to Tipperary,
But my heart is there.
It is the old, old theme of the Irish exile longing for
home ; the theme of I know not how many poems, from
the time of St. Columba, banished overseas and "think-
ing long" of
Derry mine, my own oak grove,
Little cell, my home, my love;
down through Father Bollard's lilting "Song of the
Little Villages":
THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE 437
The pleasant little villages that grace the Irish glynns
Down among the wheat-fields — up amid the whins ;
The little white-walled villages, crowding close together,
Clinging to the Old Sod in spite of wind and weather :
Ballytarsney, Ballymore, Ballyboden, Boyle,
Ballingarry, Ballymagorry by the Banks of Foyle,
Ballylaneen, Ballyporeen, Bansha, Ballysadare,
Ballybrack, Ballinalack, Barna, Ballyclare,
to the tender verses by Stephen Gwynne with which I
will close this already, perhaps, too-poetical chapter:
Ireland, oh, Ireland! centre of my longings,
Country of my fathers, home of my heart,
Overseas you call me, "Why an exile from me?
Wherefore sea-severed, long leagues apart4?"
As the shining salmon, homeless in the sea-depths,
Hears the river call him, scents out the land,
Leaps and rejoices in the meeting of the waters,
Breasts weir and torrent, nests him in the sand ;
Lives there and loves ; yet with the year's returning,
Rusting in his river, pines for the sea;
Sweeps down again to the ripple of the tideway,
Roamer of the ocean, vagabond and free.
Wanderer am I, like the salmon of thy rivers ;
London is my ocean, murmurous and deep,
Tossing and vast; yet through the roar of London
Reaches me thy summons, calls me in sleep.
Pearly are the skies in the country of my fathers,
Purple are thy mountains, home of my heart :
Mother of my yearning, love of all my longings,
Keep me in remembrance, long leagues apart.
CHAPTER XXV
THE MAIDEN CITY
As far back as its history goes, Donegal was the seat of
the O'Donnells, that powerful clan of which the choic-
est flowers were Hugh Roe and Red Hugh, and here
they had their castle, on a small bluff overlooking the
waters of the River Eask. It still stands there, re-
markably well-preserved considering its vicissitudes,
one of the handsomest semi-fortified buildings in exist-
ence anywhere. It is by far the most interesting thing
to be seen in the town of Donegal, and we set out for
it immediately after breakfast next morning.
Donegal we found by daylight to be a pleasant little
town, with a single street of two-storied houses curv-
ing down over the hill toward the river, and a few nar-
row lanes branching off from it, after the traditional
fashion of the Irish village. The castle is nestled in
a bend of the river, which defends it on two sides,
and there is still a trace of the moat which used to
defend the other two. The best view of it is from the
bridge crossing the river, and surprisingly beautiful
it is, with its gabled towers and square bartizan turrets
and mullioned windows. The picture opposite this
page shows how the castle looks from the land side,
with one of the square turrets, perfectly preserved ; but
the mullioned windows are the most striking feature
of this side of the building, which was the domestic
438
THE MAIDEN CITY 439
side, ami so had larger openings than the one overlook-
ing the river, which was more open to attack.
Just when the castle was built no one knows, but it
was thoroughly restored and largely added to by Sir
Basil Brooke, to whom it was granted after the con-
fiscation in 1610, when the power of the O'Donnells
was finally broken. Red Hugh was really the last
of the line, and his short life of twenty-eight years was
more crowded with adventure than that of most heroes
of romance.
He was the son of Hugh O'Donnell, head of the
clan, and of a high-spirited daughter of the Lord of the
Isles, Innen Dhu Mac Donnell, whom Hugh of the Red
Hair resembled in more ways than one. He was kid-
napped by the English when only thirteen, and taken
to Dublin and imprisoned in the castle there, as a
hostage for his father's good behaviour. A year later,
he managed to escape; was recaptured, escaped again;
and, by remarkable cunning and daring, eluded the
pursuers who were close after him, and got through to
Donegal.
He arrived there to find a great force of English
camped about the place; but, half dead with exposure
as he was, he mustered a force of his clansmen, marched
on the English and put them to rout — a good begin-
ning for a boy of fourteen. From that time forward,
he was the firebrand which kept all Ireland alight
against the invaders; but at last, as has happened so
frequently in Irish history, a traitor in his own camp
overthrew him — his cousin and brother-in-law, Nial
Garv the Fierce, who, being older than Hugh, thought
that he should have had the O'Donnellship and been
440 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
crowned at the Rock of Doon, and so grew jealous of
the red haired lad, and ended by going over to the
English.
There was red battle between them after that, and
the English were treated to the pleasant spectacle of
Irishmen slaying each other; but Hugh was called
away to Kinsale to join the Spaniards, stopping at
Holy Cross on the way, as we have seen, for the Ab-
bot's blessing, and then going on to a ruinous defeat.
He went to Spain, after that, to plead for more help,
and died there, of poison it is said, at the age of twenty-
eight, and lies buried at Valladolid.
His brother, Rory O'Donnell, was recognised by the
English and made Earl of Tyrconnell, but at the end
of a year or two he found himself so surrounded with
intrigue that, in fear for his life, he gathered up such of
his belongings as he could and fled the country.
O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, fled with him, and this "flight
of the earls" was the end of Irish power in the north
of Ireland, for their estates were declared forfeit, and-
divided among adherents of the English court. Nial
Garv, who had contributed so much to the O'Donnells'
overthrow, put in a claim for their estates, but was
arrested and sent to the Tower of London and left to
rot there till he died. Such was the end of Donegal
as the seat of a Celtic Princedom, for the new prince
was an Englishman, Sir Basil Brooke.
It is his imprint you will see upon the castle as it
exists to-day — particularly in the great sculptured
chimney-piece which stands in what was once the ban-
queting hall, and which is a marvel of elaborate,
THE MAIDEN CITY 441
though not very finished, carving. Brooke was a
Catholic and a royalist, a supporter of Charles I, and
after the fall of that unlucky monarch, was impris-
oned in the Tower and his estate declared forfeited to
the Parliament. The old castle, now the property of
the Earl of Arran, fell gradually to ruin, until to-day
only the shell remains.
Next to the chimney-piece, the most interesting fea-
ture of the interior is the vaulting of the lower rooms,
which are lighted only by narrow slits like loopholes.
This vaulting is made of flat stones, an inch or two in
thickness, set on edge, and though rough enough, is as
firm to-day as the day it was put in place.
As we came out of the grounds, we were accosted
by an old man with a flowing white beard, who sug-
gested that we visit his tweed depot, just across the
street, and see for ourselves what Donegal tweeds really
were. He was so pleasant about it that we couldn't
refuse; and to say that we were astonished when we
stepped inside his shop would be putting it mildly, for
there, in that village of twelve hundred people, was
the largest stock of tweeds and other Irish weaves that
I have ever seen. The place was fairly jammed with
great rolls of cloth ; and when we said we weren't espe-
cially interested in tweeds, but might be in a steamer-
rug, he led us up to a wide balcony and produced rug
after rug; beautiful rugs, soft and thick, pure wool in
ever fibre. Of course we succumbed !
Mr. Timony, for such was the old man's name, was
very proud of his shop, as he had a right to be, and of
his American custom. He told us that President
442 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Woodrow Wilson and William Randolph Hearst had
both been among his visitors, and he evidently consid-
ered them equally distinguished!
It had begun to shower again by the time we tore
ourselves away from Mr. Timony, and Betty elected to
return to the hotel ; but I wanted to see the ruins of the
old abbey, a little way down the river, and walked out
to it. There is scarcely more left of it than there is
of Assaroe — just some fragments of ivy -clad wall
standing in the midst of a graveyard, as may be seen
from the picture opposite page 438. The graveyard is
still used, and when I got there, I found three men try-
ing to decide on the site for a grave, while the diggers
stood by, with their long-handled spades, waiting the
word to begin. They had a hard time finding a place,
for the graveyard is crowded, like most Irish ones, and
they wandered about from place to place for quite a
while.
That so little is left of the abbey is due to the fact
that in 1601, Nial Garv took possession of the place,
and Red Hugh besieged him there, and in some way
Garv's store of gunpowder exploded and tore the build-
ings to pieces. All of which is told in that priceless
volume of Irish history which was written here, the
"Annals of the Four Masters," a book of eleven hun-
dred quarto pages, which, by some miracle of luck, has
been preserved. The "four masters" were four monks
of the abbey, and it is largely to their labours we owe
what history we have of the times in which they lived.
There are a few arches of the cloisters still standing,
and they resemble those at Sligo not only in shape and
character, but also in the fact that repeated burials
THE MAIDEN CITY 443
have raised the ground about them many feet above
its ancient level, so that what was once a lofty arched
doorway can now be passed only by stooping low.
Hugh Roe O'Donnell and his wife, Fingalla, who
founded the monastery for the Franciscans in 1474,
are said to be buried here, but I did not find their
graves. There is also a legend that castle and abbey
were at one time connected by a secret passage, but I
scarcely believe it, for they are a long way apart.
The rain was sheeting down in earnest when I
finally left the place, but the gravediggers were bend-
ing to their task, quite oblivious of the downpour.
We bade good-bye to Donegal that afternoon, and
took -train for Londonderry and the "Black North."
And it was not long before we realised that we had
turned our backs upon the Ireland of the Irish and en-
tered the Ireland of the English and the Scotch — a very
different country!
Just outside of Donegal, we witnessed one of those
leave-takings, which have occurred a million times in
Ireland during the past fifty years. As the train
stopped at a little station, we saw that the platform was
crowded, and then we perceived the cause. A boy and
two girls, some seventeen or eighteen years old, were
setting out for Derry to take ship for America, and
their relatives and friends had come down to see them
off. There were tears in every eye, and if blessings
have any virtue, enough were showered on that trio
that afternoon to see them safely through life.
The guard came along presently, and hustled them
into the compartment ahead of ours — he had seen such
444
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
scenes a hundred times, I suppose, and had long since
ceased to be impressed by them — and then the three
children hung out of the door and took a last look at
their people; and then the engine whistled and the
train started slowly, and one man, his face working
convulsively, began to run along beside it, then sud-
denly recollected himself, and stopped with a jerk.
The whole country-side must have known that the
three were going, for every house for miles had a group
of men and women out to wave at them as the train
passed; and the exiles waved and waved back, and
leaned out and gazed at the country they were leaving,
as though to impress its every feature on their minds.
And indeed it is a beautiful country, for the road
follows the valley of the Eask, and presently Lough
Eask opened before us, lying in a deep basin at the
foot of lofty hills — such hills as cover the whole of
Donegal and make it one of the most picturesque of
Irish counties. Beyond the lake, the line traverses one
of the wildest valleys we had seen in Ireland, the Gap
of Barnesmore — a bleak, rock-strewn defile, with a
little stream running at the bottom and the post-road
following its windings; but the railway line has been
laid, most perilously it seemed, right along the face of
the mountain. There were evidences of land-slips here
and there, and it was plain that great boulders were al-
ways rolling down, so I should fancy that a sharp watch
has to be kept on those five miles of road-bed. But we
got across without accident, and the views out over the
valley and the Donegal mountains were superb — I
only wish we had had time to explore them more thor-
oughly.
THE MAIDEN CITY 445
Just beyond the gap, the line passes Lough Mourne,
a melancholy little lake set in a framework of bleak
hills, and then runs on across a still bleaker moor; but
gradually, as the hills are left behind, the character of
the country changes, the houses become more numer-
ous, the fields larger and less stony, one sees an orchard
here and there — and then, quite suddenly, the whole
landscape becomes prosperous and pastoral, and we
caught our first glimpse of wide fields covered with a
light and vivid green, which we knew was the green of
flax. After that, there was no time, until we left
Ireland, that this new and lovely tint was not among
the other tints of whatever landscape we might be
looking at.
We paused for a moment at the prosperous little
town of Stranorlar, and then went on northwards, past
one village after another, along the valley of the Finn,
to Strabane — like Leenane, pronounced to rhyme with
"fan." We had an hour or two to wait here, so we
walked up into the town, and had lunch at a pleasant
inn, and then took a look about the place ; and I think
it was then we began to realise that the picturesque
part of Ireland was behind us. Certainly there is noth-
ing picturesque about Strabane, although it resembles
most other Irish towns in having a huge workhouse
and jail. But it has also some large shirt-factories,
whence came the whirr of machinery, and where we
could see the girls and women in long rows bending to
their tasks; and it has great ware-houses, not falling to
ruin like those of Galway and Westport and Bally-
shannon, but filled with merchandise and busy with
men and drays. We were so unaccustomed to such a
446 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
sight that we stopped and looked at it for quite a while.
It is a fifteen mile run from Strabane to Deny, for
the most part along the bank of the Foyle, through a
beautiful and prosperous country, with many villages
clustered among the trees ; and at six o'clock we reached
the "Maiden City," — by far the busiest town we had
seen since Dublin. In fact, as we turned up past the
old walls and came to the centre of the town, the bustle
of business and roar of traffic seemed to me to surpass
Dublin; and more than once, when we were settled in
our room, the unaccustomed noise drew us to the win-
dow to see what was going on. We went out, pres-
ently, to see that portion of the town which stands
within the ancient walls; but before I describe that
excursion, I shall have to tell something of what those
walls stand for.
Fourteen hundred years ago — in 546, to be exact —
Columba, greatest of Irish saints after Patrick and
Brigid, passed this way, and stopping in the oak grove
which clothed the hill on which the town now stands,
was so impressed with the lovely situation, that he
founded an abbey there, which was known as Daire-
Columbkille — Columba's Oak-grove.
There was another reason, perhaps, besides the beauty
of the spot, which persuaded the Saint to choose this
site for his monastery, and that was the nearness of
the great fort on Elagh mountain, the stronghold of
the Lord of Tyrone. He doubtless hoped that, in the
shadow of that mighty cashel, his abbey would be safe
from spoliation; but in this he was disappointed, for its
position on a navigable river, so close to the sea, made
it easy prey to the Danes and the Saxons, and they
THE MAIDEN CITY 447
sailed up to it time and again and laid it waste. But
it grew in importance in spite of repeated burnings,
and it held off the English longer than most, for,
though it was plundered by Strongbow's men in 1195,
and included in the grant to Richard de Burgo, the Red
Earl of Ulster, in 1311, it was not until 1609, two
years after that "flight of the earls" which left Tyrone
and Tyrconnell confiscated to the English, that it was
really conquered.
In confiscating this vast domain, as in all previous
and subsequent confiscations in Ireland, the English
crown proceeded upon the theory that all the land a
chief ruled over belonged to that chief; but in Ireland
this was not at all the case, for there the land belonged,
and always had belonged, not to the chief but to his
people. This, however, was not allowed to interfere
in any way with its re-apportionment among court
favourites and companies of adventurers; and Derry,
together with a vast tract of land about it, was granted
to the Corporation of London, which thereupon pro-
ceeded to re-name it Londonderry, in token of its sub-
serviency. Three years later, the Irish Society for the
New Plantation in Ulster was formed, and to it was
granted the towns of Coleraine and Londonderry, with
seven thousand acres of land and the fisheries of the
Foyle and the Bann. The society was pledged to en-
close Derry with walls, and these were laid out and
built in 1617. They were strong and serviceable, as
may be seen to this day, and so wide that a carriage and
four could drive along the top of them.
The new colonists were mostly Protestants, and in
the war which soon followed between King Charles
448 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
and the Parliament naturally chose the Republican
side, so that Deny quickly became the centre of resist-
ance to royalty in Ulster. The town prospered under
the Commonwealth, but the ups and downs of Irish
politics after the Restoration kept it in a perpetual tur-
moil.
I have already told how, after the fall of Charles I,
Cromwell's army conquered Ireland, drove the Irish
to the hills west of the Shannon, and divided the fertile
land among the Puritan soldiers and the adherents of
the Parliament. When Charles II was restored to the
throne, part of the price exacted from him for that res-
toration was the so-called Act of Settlement, in which
this division of the land among its Protestant con-
querors was confirmed. That the Irish should protest
against the injustice of this was natural enough; and
that, once seated on the throne, the king should give
ear to the protestations was natural too, since the Irish
had been his father's allies and had lost their lands
in fighting his battles for him. So, while Irish
Catholic Ireland brought heavy pressure to bear on the
king, English Protestant Ireland was on pins and
needles through fear of what might happen. Finally
the Cromwellians agreed to surrender a third of the
estates in their possession, and on this basis peace of a
sort was patched up.
That was in 1665, and it looked for a while as
though Protestant and Catholic would thereafter be
able to live together in amity, for there was a general
revival of industry which resulted in a prosperity the
country had seldom known, and a consequent abate-
ment of religious discord. But Charles died, and his
THE MAIDEN CITY 449
brother, James II, at once proceeded to remodel the
Irish army upon a Catholic basis, even going so far as
partially to disarm the Protestants, who of course im-
mediately concluded that they were all going to be
massacred in revenge for Drogheda.
But James soon found himself facing a rebellion in
England, and in 1688 a large force of Irish troops were
transported to England to help him hold his throne.
Among these troops was the regiment which had been
stationed at Derry ; and when, alarmed at the attitude
of the town, the king attempted to throw another
garrison into it, rebellion flamed up swift and fierce,
and some apprentice boys seized the keys of the city
gates and closed and locked them in the face of the
royal army. Enniskillen followed suit, and every-
where throughout the north of Ireland, the Protestants
began to form town companies and to arm and drill
for their own defence. Thus was organised the first
"army of Ulster" ! It was soon to be needed — as I
hope and believe the latest one will never be !
Certain English leaders, determined to get rid of
James at any cost, had invited William Prince of
Orange to bring an army to England to restore liberty
and rescue Protestantism from the destruction which
seemed to threaten it. William, it should be remem-
bered, stood very near the English throne, for his
mother was the eldest daughter of Charles I, and his
wife was his own cousin, the eldest daughter of
Charles's son, James II. William, who had been ex-
pecting such an invitation, at once gathered a great
army together and landed in England in November.
James, finding himself detested and deserted by all
450 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
parties, fled to France; and William and Mary were
proclaimed King and Queen of Great Britain and Ire-
land.
Ireland, of course, was still in rebellion. There is
no more pathetic page of Irish history than that which
tells of Irish loyalty to the Stuarts; for the Stuarts
cared nothing for Ireland, but only for themselves,
and used the Irish merely as pawns in their selfish
struggle for power. The poor Irish stood firm for
James, and got a great army together ; and James came
over from France with a small French force, and to-
gether they marched against Derry, which the Prot-
estants still held, but which James expected to capture
with little difficulty. The commander at Derry was
a man named Robert Lundy, a Protestant and soldier
of some experience, but he seems to have been a Jaco-
bite at heart for, after one skirmish near Strabane, he
held a council of war, recommended immediate sur-
render, ordered that there should be no firing, and
sent word to James that the city was ready to submit.
But he had reckoned without Derry' s militant spirit;
for when news of his decision got abroad, the people
sprang to arms, and Lundy escaped with his life only
by fleeing in disguise.
Meanwhile, the Rev. George Walker and Major
Henry Baker and Captain Adam Murray, three mili-
tants to the backbone, took charge of affairs and put
Derry in the best state of defence possible; but the out-
look was not bright. Military opinion was agreed that
the town could not hold out against such an army as
James was bringing against it; it seemed likely that
to defend it would be to invite another Drogheda;
THE MAIDEN CITY 451
and while the debate in the town council was still
raging, James appeared under the walls expecting an
immediate surrender.
Negotiations were begun ; but the sight of the Catho-
lic army was the last thing needed to inflame the towns-
men. A group of them managed to get a cannon
pointed in the king's direction and touched it off.
The ball is said to have passed so close to him that the
wind of it blew off his hat; at any rate, the negotia-
tions ended then and there, and with a shout of "No
surrender!" Derry prepared for the struggle.
That was the eighteenth day of April, 1689, and
for fifteen weeks the town held out against a strict
siege, which nothing could break. There were assaults
and sallies, a bombardment which killed many people
— all the accompaniments of a siege, with the final
accompaniment of famine. It was the old story of
horseflesh, mice and rats and even salted hides being
greedily devoured; of a garrison thinning wofully
from death and disease; but though there seemed to
be no choice except starvation or surrender, nobody
thought of surrender. And then, on Sunday, July
28th, a relief fleet which had been hovering uncer-
tainly at the mouth of the harbour for some weeks, ran
the batteries, broke the boom across the river, swept up
to the city, and the siege was ended.
Such was the siege of Derry. A thousand incidents,
impossible to set down here, are treasured in the minds
of every inhabitant; and, lest the great event should
ever be forgotten, two anniversaries connected with it
are celebrated every year, on December i8th the Clos-
ing of the Gates against the King's Army, and on
452 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
August 12th the Raising of the Siege. There are pro-
cessions and meetings and speeches of a very Protestant
character, and at the December festival the effigy of
the perfidious Lundy is hanged and burnt — not without
some little rioting, for rather more than half the popu-
lation of Derry is Catholic and Nationalist. One of
the popular airs upon these occasions is, of course,
"Boyne Water," and another is about Derry herself.
It is called
THE MAIDEN CITY
Where Foyle his swelling waters rolls northward to the main,
Here, Queen of Erin's daughters, fair Derry fixed her reign;
A holy temple crowned her, and commerce graced her street,
A rampart wall was round her, the river at her feet;
And here she sat alone, boys, and, looking from the hill,
Vowed the Maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden
still.
From Antrim crossing over, in famous eighty-eight,
A plumed and belted lover came to the Ferry Gate :
She summoned to defend her our sires — a beardless race —
They shouted "No Surrender !" and slammed it in his face.
Then, in a quiet tone, boys, they told him 'twas their will
That the Maiden on her throne, boys, should be a Maiden
still.
Next, crushing all before him, a kingly wooer came
(The royal banner o'er him blushed crimson deep for shame) ;
He showed the Pope's commission, nor dreamed to be refused ;
She pitied his condition, but begged to stand excused.
In short, the fact is known, boys, she chased him from the hill,
For the Maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.
On our peaceful sires descending, 'twas then the tempest broke,
Their peaceful dwellings rending, 'mid blood and flame and
smoke.
THE MAIDEN CITY 453
That hallowed graveyard yonder swells with the slaughtered
dead—
O brothers ! pause and ponder — it was for us they bled ;
And while their gift we own, boys — the fane that tops our
hill—
Oh ! the Maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still !
Nor wily tongue shall move us, nor tyrant arm affright,
We'll took to One above us who ne'er forsook the right;
Who will, may crouch and tender the birthright of the free,
But, brothers, "No Surrender !" no compromise for me !
We want no barrier stone, boys, no gates to guard the hill,
Yet the Maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still !
There is a good marching song, if there ever was
one — a song to make the heart leap and the spirit sing,
when a thousand voices roar it in unison; and it very
fairly represents the spirit of Derry and of the whole of
Protestant Ulster — a spirit which is admirable, though
often mistaken, and sometimes made use of for base and
selfish ends. The song was written by a woman, a
native of Derry, of course, Charlotte Tonna, some
sixty years ago; and it is a song of which Ireland,
north and south, should be proud.
Let me tell here, as briefly as may be, the rest of the
story of that ill-fated rebellion, of which Derry wrote
one terrific chapter, for unless we know it, it will be
impossible for us to understand Ulster.
The relief of the Maiden City was followed by the
complete defeat of the royal army before Enniskillen,
and no further attempt was made to subjugate the
north of Ireland. James took up headquarters at Dub-
lin, and every nerve was strained to recruit an army
capable of withstanding the one which William was
454 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
certain to bring into Ireland. The king of France
sent seven thousand veterans, with a park of artillery
and large stores of arms and ammunition, every device
of religious and racial hatred was employed to per-
suade Irishmen to enlist; so that when, on June 30,
1690, the Protestant and Catholic armies stood facing
each other on either side Boyne River, a few miles
above Drogheda, the Protestants had no very great
numerical advantage. In discipline and general effi-
ciency, however, their advantage was immense, and the
odds against James were so great that it was folly for
him to risk a battle ; but he could not make up his mind
what to do, and in consequence, when William threw
his troops across the river, he caught the Irish unpre-
pared, and defeated them after a brisk engagement.
James was the first to gallop from the field. He
reached Dublin that night, snatched a few hours' rest,
and then pressed on to Waterford, where he took ship
for France. Deprived of their cowardly leader, and
perhaps with some comprehension of how they had been
betrayed, the Irish would have been glad to lay down
their arms on terms of a general amnesty, which Wil-
liam, for his part, was willing to grant. But the
English settlers intervened. They had been compelled
to restore to the Irish a third of the estates which the
Commonwealth had confiscated; there were thousands
of other fertile acres which the settlers coveted; and,
as a result of their influence, the amnesty, when finally
published, was confined to the tenant and the land-
less man. In consequence, the Irish army was held
together by Tyrconnell and Sarsfield, and the rebel-
lion did not end until Athlone, Cork, Kinsale, Limerick,
THE MAIDEN CITY 455
and finally Galway had been captured by the English.
The Irish troops were permitted to go to France and
enlist in the king's army, as has been told already;
and so ended the hope of placing a Catholic monarch
on the English throne. So ended, too, for more than
two centuries, Catholic liberty in Ireland.
It is this Protestant triumph which is so dear to
Ulster, and which the walls of Derry have been pre-
served to commemorate. Their preservation is a great
inconvenience to the inhabitants of that town, but
any one who proposed to remove them would be treated
as a traitor. They circle the steep hill upon which the
oldest part of the town is built, and when one wishes
to enter it, one must go around to one of the gates.
There are seven gates, now, instead of the original
four; but it takes quite a walk, sometimes, to get to
one, for the walls are something over a mile around.
But no patriotic resident would think of objecting to
this — indeed, the walk gives him time to meditate upon
his city's glory and to thank the Lord that he was born
there. I suspect that the Catholics of Derry are just
as proud of the walls as the Protestants are.
It so happened that there was a gate not far from
our hotel, so we passed through it, and found ourselves
confronted by one of the steepest streets I have ever
seen. The hill on which the old citadel was built
slopes very abruptly on this side toward the river,
and no attempt has been made to cut it down. We
managed to climb it, and came out upon the so-called
Diamond — the square at the centre of the town where
the old town hall once stood, but which has now, to
quote Murray, "been converted into a pleasant garden
456 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
by the London Companies." For it should be remem-
bered that the grant made to the London Companies
three hundred years ago is still in force.
The Diamond is the heart of the town, and from it
four arteries radiate, running to the four original gates ;
other smaller streets zig-zag away in various directions,
and everywhere is the vigorous flow of life and trade.
The shops are bright and attractive, and that evening
crowds of girls, freed from the day's labour in the
factories, were loitering past them, arm in arm, staring
in at the windows and chattering among themselves.
They were distinctly livelier than the factory girls of
Athlone, and I judge that life is easier for them and
that they are better paid.
We walked about for a long time, and then, for
want of something better to do, went to a moving-
picture show. I have forgotten all the pictures but
two- — a meeting of the Knights of the Garter at Wind-
sor and a review of a body of English cavalry. In the
former, King George and Queen Mary twice passed
slowly before the audience; in the latter, the king, on
a spirited horse, cantered down the field and then took
his station in the foreground while his troops galloped
past. It was a stirring scene ; but the audience watched
it in stony, almost breathless silence, without the
shadow of applause — and this in "loyal Deny" ! I
am inclined to think that, with reference to England,
the north of Ireland and the south of Ireland are
"sisters under their skins."
We had been wondering, during the final reel, how
we were going to find our way back to the hotel through
the dark and unfamiliar streets, for it was nearly ten
THE MAIDEN CITY 457
o'clock; and we came out into them with a start of
astonishment, for it was still quite light, with the
street lights not yet on. So we loitered about for half
an hour longer; and then, from the balcony in front
of our window, sat watching for an hour more the
fascinating life flowing past below us.
One feature of it was a boy quartette, — one of the
boys with a clear, high soprano voice, — which sang
very sweetly, "It's a long way to Tipperary" ; and then,
just as we began to think everybody had gone to bed,
there came a blast of martial music down the street,
and the tramp of feet, and a company of men swung
past, going heaven knows where ; but the fife-and-drum
corps which marched at their head was making the
windows rattle with
"The Maiden on her throne, boys, shall
be a Maiden still!"
It was the first of many such processions we were
to see during our remaining weeks in Ireland.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH
DERRY has a charm — the charm of the hive — for it is
a busy town, and a cheerful one. It is only on mooted
anniversaries, I fancy, or when some fire-brand politi-
cian comes to town, that the Protestants and Catholics
amuse themselves by breaking each other's heads. At
other times they must work amicably side by side. At
least, I saw nobody idle ; and Catholics and Protestants
alike were plainly infected by the same spirit of hustle.
The cause of the difference between the north and
south of Ireland has been hotly debated for a hundred
jears. Why is the north energetic and prosperous, while
the south is lazy and poverty-stricken4? Some say it is
the difference in climate, others the difference in reli-
gion. I could perceive no great difference in the cli-
mate, and as for religion — strange as it may seem to
those who think of Ulster only in the light of Orange
manifestoes — there are almost as many Catholics as
Protestants in the north of Ireland. My own opinion is
that the Celt is easy-going in the south and industrious
in the north because of the environment. "Canny" is
undoubtedly the best of all adjectives to apply to the
Scotch — they are congenitally thrifty and industrious.
The Celt, on the other hand, is congenitally easy-going
and unambitious. Left to himself, among his own
people, weighted with centuries of repression, he falls
into a lethargy from which it is impossible to awaken
458
THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH 459
him — from which, I sometimes think, he will never be
awakened. But put him in another environment, and
he soon catches its spirit. At least, his children catch
it, and their children are confirmed in it — and there
you are. Put them back in the old environment, and
in another generation or two they will have slipped
back into the old habits of carelessness and improvi-
dence. This, it seems to me, is the Irishman's history
not only in the north of Ireland, but here in America.
He is adaptable, impressionable, and plastic.
It would be absurd for any one to go to Derry with-
out making a circuit of the walls, and this we proceeded
to do next morning. We mounted them at the New
Gate, where they are at least twenty-five feet high.
There is a promenade on top about fifteen feet wide, and
along the outer edge the old cannon given by the Lon-
don companies still frown down through the embrasures
of the battlement. Outside the wall there was origin-
ally a moat, but this has disappeared, and so have many
of the old bastions. A few of them still remain — the
double bastion where the fruitful gallows stood, and
from which the noisy old gun, affectionately christened
"Roaring Meg," still points out over the town. And
back of the cathedral, the old wall stands as it stood
during the siege, with its high protecting parapet,
crowned with little loop-holed turrets.
The cathedral itself is a quaint, squat structure, with
pinnacled tower, standing in the midst of a crowded
graveyard, the most prominent object in which is an
obelisk erected over the bodies of those who fell in
the siege. The inscription, as is fitting, is long and
46o THE CHARM OF IRELAND
eloquent. The church itself is comparatively modern
and uninteresting, but it is filled with trophies of the
siege — a bomb-shell containing a summons to surren-
der which fell in the cathedral yard, the flags taken
from the French during a sally, memorials of the Rev.
Mr. Walker, and so on. It is still called after St.
Columba, although the abbey built by the Saint stood
outside the present walls.
A little distance past the cathedral is another bastion
which has been turned into a foundation for the great
monument to Walker — a fluted column ninety feet
high, surmounted by a statue of the hero, his Bible in
one hand. Time was when he held a sword in the
other, but legend has it that the sword fell with a
crash on the day that O'Connell won Catholic emanci-
pation for Ireland.
A fierce controversy has raged about the part Walker
really played in the siege; and it is probable that he
at least shared the honours with Murray and Baker.
However that may be, he must have been an inspiring
figure, as he walked about the walls, with his white
hair and impassioned face and commanding vigour — a
vigour which his seventy-two years seem nowise to have
impaired; and his end was inspiring, too, for he did not
rest quietly at home, content with his laurels, as most
men would have done. Instead, he joined William's
army, was in the forefront at the Battle of the Boyne,
and managed to get killed there while exhorting the
troops to do their duty.
The town of Deny has long since outgrown the old
walls, but there is little else worth seeing there, unless
THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH 4161
one is interested in a busy port, or in humming facto-
ries, or rumbling mills, or clattering foundries. Of
these there is full store. But a few miles to the west,
on the summit of a hill looking down upon Lough
Swilly, is the cashel which was once the stronghold of
the Kings of Ulster, and for it I set out that afternoon.
Murray, with that vagueness delightful in the Irish
but exasperating in a guide-book, remarks that "it can
be reached from Bridge End Station on the Buncrana
line," so I proceeded to the station of the Buncrana
line on the outskirts of the town, and bought a ticket
to Bridge End Station. The ticket seller had appar-
ently never heard of the Grainan of Aileach, as the
cashel is called, and seemed rather to doubt if such a
thing existed at all; but I determined to trust to luck,
and took my seat in the little train which presently
backed in along the platform.
The Buncrana line is, I judge, a small affair; at any
rate, the train was very primitive, and the two men
who shared the compartment with me complained bit-
terly of the poor service the railroads give the people
of Ireland. They said it was a shame and a disgrace,
and that no free people would put up with the insults
and ignominy which the railroads heap upon the Irish,
and much more to the same effect. I had heard this
complaint before and have read it in more than one
book; but I never had any real cause of complaint
myself. Beyond a tendency to let the passengers look
out for themselves, the guards are as courteous as
guards anywhere; and only once, on the occasion of
the race-meeting at Charleville, did we suffer from
crowdingc This was not because we travelled first,
462 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
because we didn't — we travelled second; and when I
was alone, I always travelled third, as I would advise
any one to do who wishes really to meet the people.
Bridge End Station is only a few minutes' run from
Derry, and when I got off there, I asked the man who
took my ticket if he could direct me to the cashel.
"I can," he said; "but it is a long way from here,
and a stiff climb. Do you see that hill yonder*?" and
he pointed to a lofty peak some miles away. "It is
there you will find the fort, right on the very top."
"Have you ever been there*?" I asked.
"I have not, though I'm thinking I will go some day,
for them that have seen it tell me it is a wonderful
sight. But 'tis a long walk."
"Well, I'm going to try for it," I said, and hitched
my camera under my arm. "How do I start?"
"By that road yonder; and turn to your right at the
village. Good luck to you, sir."
I could see he didn't really believe I would get to
the cashel ; but I set off happily along the road, between
high hedges; and presently I passed a village, and
turned to the right, as he had told me; and then two
barefooted children caught up with me, on their way
home from school. They knew the way to the cashel
very well, though they had never been there either;
and presently they left me and struck off across the
fields; and then I came to a place where the road
forked, and stopped to ask a man who was wheeling
manure from a big stable which way to go. He too
was astonished that any one should start off so care-
lessly on such an expedition ; but he directed me up a
narrow by-way, which soon began to climb steeply;
THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH 463
and then the valley beneath me opened more and more,
and finally I saw to my right the summit I was aiming
for, and struck boldly toward it along a boggy path.
The path led me to the rear of a thatched cottage,
where two men were stacking hay. They assured me
that I was on the right road, and I pushed on again for
the summit, past another little house, from which a
man suddenly emerged and hailed me.
"Where be you going*?" he demanded.
"To the fort," I said. "It's up this way, isn't it?"
"It might be."
"Am I trespassing*?" I asked, for there seemed to be
an unfriendly air about him.
"You are so," he answered.
"I'm sorry," I stammered; "if there's another
way — "
"There is no other way."
"Well, then, I'll have to go this way," I said. "I'll
not do any harm."
"That's as may be. You must pay three-pence if
you wish to pass."
I paid the three-pence rather than waste time in
argument, which, of course, wouldn't have done any-
good; and his countenance became distinctly more
pleasant when the pennies were in his hand, and he
directed me how to go; and I started up again, over
springy heather now, along a high wall of stones gath-
ered from the field ; and then the ground grew wet and
boggy, just as it is on the mountains of Connemara,
and I had to make a detour — the man who directed me,
probably thought nothing of a little bog ! A plough-
man in a neighbouring field stopped work to watch me
464 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
with interest until I passed from sight, and two red
calves also came close to investigate the stranger; and
then I crested the last ridge and saw towering before
me the stronghold where Owen, son of Nial the Great,
established himself to rule over his province, Tyrone.
For a moment I was fairly startled at the huge ap-
parition, grey and solitary and impressive, for I had ex-
pected no such monster edifice — a cyclopean circle of
stone, looking like the handiwork of some race of giants,
three hundred feet around and eighteen feet high, with
a wall fourteen feet in thickness!
The outer face of the wall is inclined slightly in-
wards, and is very smooih and regular. It is made
of flat, hammer-dressed stones of various sizes, care-
fully fitted together, but uncemented, as with all these
old forts. The stones are for the most part quite
small, very different from the great blocks used in the
other cashels I had seen. There is a single entrance,
a doorway some five feet high by two wide, slightly
inclined inward toward the top, and looking very tiny
indeed in that great stretch of wall ; and then my heart
stood still with dismay, for there was an iron gate
across the entrance, and I thought for a moment that
it was locked. With a sigh of relief I found that the
padlock which held it was not snapped shut, and I
opened it and entered.
It was as though I had stepped into some old Roman
amphitheatre, for the terraces which run around it
from top to bottom have the appearance of tiers of
seats. They mount one above the other to the narrow
platform at the top, which is guarded by a low parapet.
Two flights of steps run up the slope, but an active
THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH 465
man would have no need of them. On either side of
the entrance door a gallery runs away in the thickness
of the wall, opening some distance away on the in-
terior, and designed, I suppose, to enable an extra force
to defend the entrance.
Of the castle which once stood within that stone
circle not a trace remains, and the circle itself, as it
stands to-day, is largely a restoration, for Murtagh
O'Brien captured it in 1 101 and did his best to destroy
it, and the storms of the centuries that followed beat
it down stone by stone. But these fragments have all
been gathered up and put back into place, so that the
great fort stands to-day much as it did in the days of its
glory, except that the outworks of earth and stone
which formed the first lines of defence, have disap-
peared. The cashel was to this great fortification what
the donjon tower was to the later Norman castle — the
ultimate place of refuge for the garrison.
"Grainan" means a royal seat, and "Aileach," so
say the Four Masters of Donegal, was a Scotch prin-
cess, "modest and blooming," who lost her heart to
Owen of the Hy-Nial, and followed him back to Erin.
After the division of the north of Ireland with his
brother Connell, he set up his palace here — ConnelFs
you will remember was at Donegal — and so this became
the royal seat of the rulers of Tyrone. Hither came
St. Patrick to baptise Owen and his family; hither
came St. Columba before his exile to lona; hither cap-
tive Danes were dragged in triumph. But at last
Murtagh O'Brien, King of Munster, led a great raid to
the north, and defeated the army of Tyrone and cap-
tured the mighty fortress, and made each of his sol-
466 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
diers carry away a stone of it in token of his triumph.
That ended its earthly glory, but it remains glori-
ous in legend; for it is beneath its old grey walls that
the Knights of the Gael stand deathless and untiring,
each beside his steed with his hand upon the saddle-
bow, waiting the trumpet-call that shall break the
charm that binds them, and release them to win back
their heritage in Erin. In the caves within the hill
the knights stand waiting — great vaulted chambers
whose entrance no man knows. Nor does any man
know when their release will come, whether to-morrow
or not till centuries hence, for 'tis Kathaleen Ny-
Houlahan herself who must choose the day and hour.
Sore disgrace it is to see the Arbitress of thrones
Vassal to a Saxoneen of cold and sapless bones!
Bitter anguish wrings our souls ; with heavy sighs and groans
We wait the Young Deliverer of Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan.
Glorious is the view from the top of those old walls.
To the right is Lough Foyle, to the left Lough Swilly,
with the hills of Donegal, draped in silver mist, beyond
— wild, grey crags, rising one behind the other; and
away to the north, beyond the wide valley, are the hills
of Inishowen — Owen's Island, if you know your Irish.
I have never gazed upon a more superb picture of al-
ternating lake and hill and meadow, of flashing moun-
tain-top and dark green valley.
But if I was to get back to Derry that night, I had
need to hasten; so I clambered down, after one long
last look. I had still my picture to take, and made two
exposures, but they give only a faint idea of the maj-
esty of this great fort, standing here on this wild,
THE WALLS OF DERRY
TIE GRAINAN OF AILEACH
THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH 467
deserted hilltop; and then I started downwards, with
long steps, past the cottages, with the beautiful valley
before me, back to the highway, down and down among
the trees, past the village and so to the station. The
guard was waiting there.
"Well," he said, as I sat down mopping my face,
for I had covered three miles in half an hour, "did you
see the fort?"
"I did so," I answered, for I had long since fallen
naturally into the Irish idiom; and I told him what
it was like ; but I think he was unconvinced.
"Was there a man stopped you1?" he asked.
"There was — a man at the end of the lane right un-
der the fort, who made me pay three-pence before he
would let me pass."
"Ah, that would be O'Donnell," said the guard,
convinced at last. "He has been given the key to
keep. Did he give you the key?"
"He did not. But the iron gate was unlocked."
"That was by accident, I'm thinking," said the
guard. "He is not caring whether one can enter or
not, so long as he has his three-pence."
So I would advise all wayfarers to the Grainan of
Aileach to make sure that the gate of it is unlocked, or
to demand the key, before surrendering their three-
pence to O'Donnell.
When I got into the train again, I found as a fellow-
passenger one of the men who had come out from
Derry with me, and after I had described the cashel to
him — for he had never seen it — we got to talking about
Home Rule. In spite of its militant Protestantism,
Derry has a very large Catholic population, and my
468 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
companion said that opinion in the town was about
equally divided for and against Home Rule.
"The result is," he went on, "that whenever we have
a meeting, no matter which side it's on, there's sure to
be a shindy, and the police has their hands full. Most
of the fellys who do the fighting don't care a rap about
Home Rule, but they just take pleasure in layin' a
stick against somebody's head. It's all done in a
friendly spirit, and next day they will be workin' side
by side the same as ever. The only ones who are
really fighting Home Rule are the big landlords and
manufacturers, who imagine they'll get the worst of
it in the matter of taxation at the hands of a Catholic
parliament, and they do everything they can to keep
their people stirred up. That has always been their
policy; and the big Catholic employers in the south
— what few of them there are — aren't a whit better.
They're all afraid that if the Catholic workingmen and
the Protestant workingmen once get together they'll
fix up some kind of a union, and demand better wages.
As long as they can be kept fighting each other, there's
no danger of that; and the poor idiots haven't sense
enough to see how they're being made fools of. But
they'll see it some day, and then look out!"
"How about this army of Ulster the papers are so
full of?"
My companion laughed.
"There isn't any army around here, unless you can
call a few hundred devil-may-care boys an army. I
did hear something about some drill going on, but as
far as fighting goes that's all nonsense. The boys are
ready enough to crack a head with a stick, but they're
THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH 469
the first to run when the police arrive, and they'll
think a long time before they try to stand up against
the British army. I'll not say that they're not more
in earnest over Belfast way; but even there, a few poli-
ticians have stirred up most of the talk — Sir Edward
Carson and the likes of him. It's all a political game,
that's how I look at it."
I walked around Derry for a time that afternoon,
and so far as public buildings go, Catholicism and
Protestantism seem about equally represented — and
with the strangest contrasts. Across the road from St.
Columb's College are the Nazareth Homes; around
the corner from St. Augustine's Church is the Appren-
tice Boys' Hall; a few steps farther on is a Presbyte-
rian church, and the Freemasons' Hall, and then St.
Columb's Temperance Hall, and then a convent; and
if you walk back again to the Diamond and make some
inquiries, you will find that one of the radiating streets
is the home of militant Catholics, and the next the
home of militant Orangemen, and you will be accom-
modated with a fight at any time if you go into the
latter and shout "To hell with King Billy," or into
the former and shout "To hell with the Pope !" And
if you buy one of the two papers which the town sup-
ports, you will read denunciations of Home Rule and
contemptuous references to "croppies," while, if you
buy the other, you will read denunciations just as fierce
of Orange plots against Ireland.
I have wondered since how much of this agitation is
subsidised and how much is real. I have heard both
Catholics and Protestants complain that it is kept alive
in great part by professional agitators, working in very
470 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
diverse interests but to a common selfish end — and that
end, as my friend of the morning pointed out, the con-
tinuance and, if possible, the deepening of the rift be-
tween the two religions. On the other hand, there can
be no doubt that Protestants and Catholics alike take
a fierce joy in an occasional fight, as lending a real in-
terest to life. But I am convinced that religion has
really little to do with this — that it is just the peg upon
which the quarrels are hung. If it wasn't that, it
would probably be something else, for Irishmen have
been fighting each other ever since history began. The
fights at Donnybrook were as fierce as any, though
there wasn't a Protestant in the crowd!
The Orange Societies, of course, with their parades
and taunting songs and flaunting banners and praise
of Cromwell and "King Billy," do not make for peace.
Usually, on such occasions, blows are exchanged; and
so the name of Orangeman has come to be associated
with riots. But, as another writer has pointed out,
in considering these things, "you should not forget the
common pugnacity. Only an Irishman can appreciate
the fierce joy of shouting 'To hell with the Pope!'
Many a man who had no claim to belong to the Orange
Society has known the delight of breaking Catholic
heads or of going down in a lost battle, outnumbered
but damaging his foes to the last. And many who are
slow to attend Mass, are quick to seize their cudgels
when they hear the Orange bands play the tune of
Boyne Water. Like the Crusaders, the Protestant and
Catholic champions alike feel that by their battles they
make amends for the errors and shortcomings of peace."
So it is a mistake to take these rows too seriously.
THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH 471
To an Irishman they are never serious ; they are rather
the innocent and natural diversions of a holiday, small
events which add to the savour of existence; and, in-
deed, they are far less numerous and far less deadly
than they once were. In time, if the people are let
alone and old sores are allowed quietly to heal, they
will probably cease altogether.
It is a mistake, too, I think to take the Orangemen
too seriously. They have such a habit of hyperbole
that most Irishmen smile at their hysterics and threats
of civil war as at sheer fudge. In fact, the Ulster
controversy is so full of comic opera elements that it
is difficult to keep from smiling at it. For instance,
Sir Edward Carson's elder son is a member of the
United Irish League because he believes in a united
Ireland, while John Redmond's nephew and adopted
son is enrolled among the Ulster Volunteers because
he is opposed to coercion ! Gilbert and Sullivan never
invented anything more fantastic.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS
THERE is no busier place in Deny than the stretch
of quays along the river, and one may see ships there
not only from England and Belgium and France, but
from Australia and Argentina and India and Brazil.
The river is wide and deep, with the channel carefully
marked by a line of buoys extending clear out into
Lough Foyle ; but there are no better facilities here for
shipping than at any one of half a dozen ports along
the western coast, all of which are silent and deserted.
For a port is of no use unless there is something to ship
out of it in exchange for the things which are shipped
in, or money to pay for them — and there is neither in
the west of Ireland.
And, just as there is no more dismal sight than a
line of deserted quays, so there is no more interesting
sight than a line of busy ones, and we loitered for a
long time, next morning, along those of Derry, on our
way to the Midland station, on the other side of the
river. There is a big iron bridge across the river just
above the quays, but that seemed a long way around,
so when we came to a sign-board announcing a ferry
we stopped. My first thought was that the ferry-
boat was on the other side; then I perceived a small
motor-propelled skiff moored beside the quay, and one
of the two men in it asked me if we were looking for
the ferry, and I said yes, and he said that that was it.
472
THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS 473
So we clambered down into the boat and started off;
and I scarcely think that that trip paid, for we were
the only passengers, and the river is wide, and gaso-
lene is expensive, and somebody had to pay the men
their wages — and the fare is only a penny.
The part of the town which lies east of the river is
industrial and unattractive. There are some big dis-
tilleries there, and a lot of mills and a fish-market, and
row upon row of dingy dwellings ; but the biggest build-
ing of all is the workhouse — one point, at least, in
which the towns of the north resemble those of the
south. There is another point, too — the jail, without
which no Irish town is complete. Deny has one of
which it is very proud — the latest word in jails, in
fact — a great, circular affair, with the cells arranged
in so-called "panoptic" galleries, that is in such a fash-
ion that the guards stationed in the centre of the jail-
yard can see into all of them.
But we had crossed the river not to see the town
which lay beyond it, but to take train for Portrush, and
we were soon rolling northward close beside the bank
of the river, with a splendid view of "The Maiden on
her hill, boys," on the opposite shore, dominated by the
cathedral tower and Walker's white monument. Just
before the river begins to widen into the lough, the
train passes the ruins of an old castle of the O'Doh-
ertys, standing on a point which juts out into the
water — a castle which saw rather more than its share
of siege and sally; for this is Culmore, which was al-
ways the first point of attack when any expedition
advanced against Derry.
Beyond it the water widens, and on the farther shore,
474
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
which is Inishowen, there are pretty villas, standing
in luxuriant woods — the homes of some of Derry's
wealthy citizens. Then the train turned inland across
a stretch of country so flat and carefully cultivated that
it might have been Holland; and then the hills began
to crowd closer and closer to the shore, until the train
was running along its very edge, under precipitous
crags, past grotesque pinnacles of white chalk or black
basalt, and fantastic caverns, worn in the cliffs by the
century-long action of the waves. For that stretch of
blue water stretching away to the north, so calm and
beautiful, was the Atlantic, and it thunders in upon
this coast, sometimes, with a fury even the rocks can-
not withstand.
We turned away from it, at last, up the wide estuary
of the River Bann, and so we came to Coleraine, chiefly
connected in my mind with that beautiful Kitty, who,
while tripping home from the fair one morning with a
pitcher of buttermilk, looked at Barney MacCleary
instead of at the path, and stumbled and let the pitcher
drop; but, instead of crying over the spilt milk, ac-
cepted philosophically the kiss which Barney gave her ;
with the result that
"very soon after poor Kitty's disaster
The divil a pitcher was whole in Coleraine."
Among the innumerable other laws for which Lloyd-
George is responsible, there is one requiring all the
shop-keepers of the United Kingdoms to close their
places of business one afternoon every week in order
to give their employes a short vacation; and in every
town the shop-keepers get together and decide which
THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS 475
afternoon it shall be; and if you arrive in the town on
that afternoon, you will find every shop closed tight,
often to your great inconvenience. It was Thursday
afternoon when we reached Coleraine, and Thursday is
closing day there; and we found that not only were
the shops closed, but the train schedule was so altered
that we had a long wait ahead of us.
But we were richly compensated for the delay, for,
as we started out to explore the town, we saw written
in chalk on a wall just outside the station,
To hell with the pope!
and under it in another hand,
To hell with King Billy!
and then a third hand had added,
God save King Will ! No more pope !
I had heard, of course, that the accepted retort for
Catholics to make, when the Pope was insulted, was to
consign William of Orange to the infernal regions;
but such a retort seemed so weak and ineffective that
I could hardly believe in its reality. Yet here it was,
and some Orangeman had paused long enough to add
what is probably the usual third article of the contro-
versy. What the fourth article is I can't guess; per-
haps it is at this point that the cudgels rise and the
rocks begin to fly. And it seems to me characteristic
of Ireland that the Catholic in this case, instead of eras-
ing the offending sentence, should have let it stand and
answered it in kind.
Cheered and heartened by this encounter, we walked
on to look at Coleraine, but found it an uninteresting
476 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
manufacturing town, with nothing in it of historical
importance, for it is one of the plantations made by
the London Companies, some time after 1613. It was
closed as tightly, that afternoon, as on a Sunday, and
we soon wearied of looking at ugly houses and silent
factories, and made our way back to the station, med-
itating upon that black day for the Irish when this
whole county, having been duly confiscated, was made
over by royal edict to the hundred London adventurers,
whose heirs or assigns still own it. Yet the conquest
had one advantage: the O'Dohertys and the O'Cahans
knew only the arts of war; the newcomers brought with
them the arts of peace. One of them was distilling,
and the Irish had never drunk such whiskey as the
"Coleraine" which was produced here in the succeed-
ing years. There is no more popular story in this re-
gion than that of the priest who was preaching a tem-
perance sermon, and, after pointing out the evils of
over-indulgence, continued with great earnestness,
"And, me boys, 'tis the bad stuff you be takin' that
does the worst of the mischief. I niver touch a drop
meself — but the best Coleraine!"
We got away from Coleraine, at last, and ran north-
ward toward the sea again, across uneven sand-drifts,
past Port Stewart, where Charles Lever was once a dis-
pensary doctor and occupied his leisure hours, which
were many, in setting down the adventures of Harry
Lorrequer; and then the road ran on close beside the
sea to Portrush, with its pleasant beach and rock-bound
bathing-pool, which was full of people on this holiday.
But Portrush is a place of summer hotels, so we did
not linger there, but transferred quickly to the electric
THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS 477
line which runs on to the Giant's Causeway, fourteen
miles away.
This line was established in 1883, and so is the old-
est electric road in the world; and I judge that it is
still using the cars it started out with. At least, the
two which composed the train that day were exceed-
ingly primitive ; one was open and the other was closed,
and you took your choice. We chose the open one, of
course, on the side overlooking the sea; and presently
we started through the town, a man ringing a bell with
one hand and waving a flag with the other, preceding
us to make certain the track was clear. The bell, I
suppose, is for blind people and the flag for deaf
people, and the fact that the man is armed with both
proves how thorough the Irish can be when they really
put their minds to it.
Although the line has been in operation for thirty
years, it is still evidently regarded with fear and won-
der by the people who live along it. Time was when
the power was conveyed by means of the "third rail," so
common in the United States. With us, however, the
rail is only used along a guarded right-of-way. Here it
was exposed close up by the fence at the roadside, and
though it was well out of the way, it was nevertheless
stumbled over by many men and beasts, with the usual
result. There were many protests, and in the course
of fifteen or twenty years, the Board of Trade was
moved to investigate.
The evidence at the hearing was most conflicting.
The people of the neighbourhood asserted that their
lives were in constant danger. The company, on the
other hand, claimed that no sober man would ever step
478 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
on the rail, since to get to it he had to cross the tracks.
The people of the neighbourhood protested indignantly
against this reflection upon their habits, and asked tri-
umphantly if the horses and cows and other poor beasts
that were killed were also drunk. The company re-
torted that, so far as the horses and cows were con-
cerned, it was the practice of the natives, for miles
around, whenever they had an animal about to die, to
lead or, if it was unable to walk, to haul it to the rail-
way, and prop it against the fence with a foot on the
rail, and then to demand compensation for its death.
There was, perhaps, a grain of truth in this; but the
board, nevertheless, ordered the company to take up the
rail and substitute an overhead wire for it, and this has
been done.
The only way the natives can get damages now is
to inveigle a car to run into them, and this is well-
nigh impossible, for the cars are run very slowly and
carefully, and at every curve there is a signal cabin,
where a watchful guard, armed with a red flag and a
white one, keeps careful eyes upon the track.
We were just gathering speed outside the town, when
we saw in a near-by field an aggregation whose bills
had attracted our attention, more than once, in our
journeyings about Ireland. It was "Buff Bill's Cir-
cus," and the picturesqueness of its lithographs had
made us most anxious to see it. Here it was, at last,
and it consisted of three tiny tents and one van and
three or four horses, and five or six people, who at this
moment were eating their midday meal, seated on
the ground about a sheet-iron stove, while the young-
sters of the neighbourhood looked on. I am sorry we
THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS 479
did not get to see the show, for I am sure we should
have enjoyed it.
Then the road mounted to a terrace high above the
sea, and the views over coast and water were superb.
The effects of erosion are especially fantastic, and the
line passes fretted spires, and yawning caverns, and
deep gullies and mighty arches, all worn in the chalk
and basalt cliffs by the ceaseless action of the waves;
and at one place there is a grotesque formation which
does indeed, as may be seen from the picture opposite
the next page, resemble a "Giant's Head."
And there is one most picturesque ruin, for, ten miles
out from Portrush, all that is left of Dunluce castle
overhangs the sea from the summit of a precipitous
rock, separated from the mainland by a deep chasm.
The chasm is twenty feet wide, and in days of old
there was a drawbridge over it; but the bridge has dis-
appeared, and now there is just an arch of masonry
about two feet wide and without protection of any
sort. It takes a steady head to cross it, but the
Irish are fond of just such breakneck bridges. The
castle itself, with its roofless gables and jagged walls,
seems a part of the rock on which it is built. It is
said to possess a banshee, and one can well believe it !
Dunluce is interesting because it was once a strong-
hold of the Scotch invaders who succeeded in conquer-
ing all this northeast coast of Ireland from here around
to Carlingford Lough, away below Belfast. Scotland
is only a few miles away across the North Channel —
one can see its coast on a clear day from the cliffs above
Benmore; and it was natural enough that there should
be sailing back and forth. Owen, first lord of Tyrone,
480 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
brought a wife from Scotland — that Aileach, after
whom he named his fortress ; and they had many chil-
dren, one of whom went back to Scotland and became
the head of that princedom whose chief afterwards
called himself "Lord of the Isles." In Ireland, the
family was O'Donnell ; but in Scotland the members of
Clandonnell were not Os but Macs. Angus MacDon-
nell married a daughter of the great house of O'Cahan,
and by this means and by that, the Scotch gradually
won a foothold on the Irish coast and built castles up
and down it; and finally, in a pitched battle, defeated
the Irish who held the land about Dunluce and had
built this castle here.
It was besieged and captured after that, once by the
Irish under Shane O'Neill, and once by the English
under Sir John Perrot; and during the troubled times
of the Commonwealth and Restoration fell into ruins
and was never restored — partly, no doubt, because it
was no longer safe; for one night in 1639, there was a
great party in the castle, and a storm arose, and the
waves dashed against the rock below it, and suddenly
part of the rock gave way and carried the kitchen and
eight servants down into the abyss.
Just beyond the castle, the road rounds a point and
runs down into the valley of the Bush River, where
stands the little town of Bushmills, known all over
the world because of the whiskey which is made there ;
and then it passes a great house on a cliff overlooking
the sea, Runkerry Castle; and then high up on the
slope ahead loom two big hotels, and the tram stops,-
for this is the Causeway.
Both the hotels at the Causeway are owned by the
THE GIANT S HEAD, NEAR PORTRUSH
THE RUINS OF DUNLUCE CASTLE
THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS 481
same man, but each maintains its runner, and each
runner makes a lively bid for your custom; and then,
when you have made your choice and started toward
it, you will suddenly be conscious of a rough voice
speaking over your shoulder, and you will turn to find
a man striding at your heels, a man unshaven and clad
in nondescript clothes; and if you listen very atten-
tively you will presently understand that he is offering
to guide you about the Causeway.
Everybody in the vicinity of the Causeway makes
his living off the people who visit it, and the favourite
profession is that of guide. Now a guide is wholly
unnecessary, for a broad road leads directly to the
Causeway, and once there it is simply a question of
using one's eyes. But from the persistence of the
guides, one would think there was great danger of get-
ting lost, or of falling overboard, or of experiencing
some other horrible misfortune, if one ventured there
unattended. Every guide carries also in his waistcoat
pocket one or more fossils, which he found himself
and prizes very highly, but is willing to sell for a small
sum, as a personal favour. When his supply is ex-
hausted, he goes and buys some more from the syndicate
which ships them in in quantity.
For it should be remembered that the Causeway is
as strictly organised for profit and as carefully ex-
ploited as is Killarney.
As soon as we had arranged for our room, we set off
for the Causeway, running the gauntlet of guides
posted on both sides of the road. Then a man
with a pony-cart wanted to drive us to our destination,
and one would have thought, from the way he spoke,
482 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
that it was a long and trying journey; then we refused
three or four offers of fossils and postcards ; and finally
we found ourselves alone on a road which swept round
the edge of a great amphitheatre of cliff; and the face
of that cliff is worth examining, for it is formed of the
lava flow from some long-extinct crater, and the suc-
cessive flows, separated by the so-called ochre beds, or
strata of dark-red volcanic ash, can be plainly dis-
tinguished. The road gradually drops, until it is quite
near the sea; and then it passes a number of shanties,
from which old women issue to waylay the passer-by
with offers of fossils and post-cards and various curios ;
and then the visitor is confronted by a high wire fence,
beyond which, if he looks closely, he will see a little
neck of land running out into the water — and that is
the celebrated Giant's Causeway.
It is so small and so seemingly insignificant that
Betty and I stared at it through the fence with a dis-
tinct shock of disappointment ; then we went on to the
gate, paid the sixpence which is extorted from every
visitor, registered ourselves on the turnstile, and en-
tered.
The misfortune of the Causeway is that its fame is
too great. The visitor, expecting to see something
magnificent and grandiose, is rather dashed at first to
find how small it is ; but after a few minutes' wander-
ing over the queer columns of basalt, this feeling passes,
and one begins to realise that it is really one of the
wonders of the world. I am not going to describe it
— every one has seen photographs of it, or if any one
hasn't, he will find some opposite this page; and the
photographs picture it much better than I can.
THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY
THE CLIFFS BEYOND THE CAUSEWAY
THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS 483
There are some forty thousand of the pillars, the
guide-book says; five-sided or six-sided for the most
part, averaging, I should say, about fifteen inches in
diameter, and so close together that a lead pencil is
too thick to be thrust between them. The pillars are
divided into regular, worm-like segments, some six or
eight inches thick, and there are quite a lot of segments
lying about, broken off from the columns. The whole
bed is said by geologists to be nothing but a lava-flow,
which broke up into these columnar shapes when it
cooled and contracted.
The native Irish have a far better explanation than
that. In the old days, the mighty Finn MacCool, an-
noyed at the boasting of a Caledonian rival on the hills
across the channel, invited him to step over and see
which was the better man. And the giant said he
would be glad to come over and show Finn a thing or
two, if it wasn't for wetting his feet. So Finn, in a
rage, built a causeway right over to Scotland, and the
Scotch giant came across on it; and of course Finn
beat him well (for this is an Irish legend); but with
that generosity which has always been characteristic
of Irishmen after they have whipped their opponents,
he permitted his humbled rival to choose a wife from
the many fair girls of the neighbourhood, and to build
him a house and settle down; which the Scotch giant
was very glad to do; for every one knows that the
Scotch women are rough and hard-bitten, also that
Scotland is a land of mist and snow, not fair like Ire-
land, which has always been the loveliest country in
the world. And presently, since the causeway wasn't
needed any more and impeded navigation, Finn gave
4&4 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
it a kick with the foot of him and sunk it in the sea,
all but this little end against the Irish coast. And
there it stands unto this day to witness if I lie.
Whatever you think of the Causeway, you will cer-
tainly be impressed when you pass out between the clus-
tered columns of the Giant's Gateway, and start on
the walk under the beetling cliffs beyond. The narrow
path mounts up and up, under overhanging masses of
columnar stone, which all too evidently crashes down
from time to time, for there are great piles of debris
below, and the path is either swept away in places or
recently repaired ; so most visitors hurry past with one
eye upward, and the other contemplating the beauty of
the scene below.
At least we did; and then we came out at Chimney
Point, crowned with its chimney-like columns — a mass
of basalt on top of a red ochre bed. And here there
was a seat where we sat down to contemplate one of
the most impressive views in Ireland — a combination
of blue sea and white surf and black crag and columned
cliff not soon to be forgotten.
We went on, at last, around the point of the cliff,
where the path overhangs the depths below and is
guarded by an iron railing; on and on, past clusters of
columns named looms or organ pipes, or whatever Irish
fancy may have suggested ; and at last we turned slowly
back, and spent another half hour at the Causeway,
hunting out the wishing-chair, and the giant's cannon,
and Lord Antrim's parlour — all of which may easily be
found; and then we took a drink from the giant's well.
a spring of pure, cold water, bubbling up from among
the rocks; and so back to the hotel and to dinner.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE GLENS OF ANTRIM
THERE are some caves at the Causeway which are said
to be well worth visiting, but we found, next morning,
that a stiff wind during the night had kicked up such
a sea that it was impossible to get to them. So we
spent the morning walking down to a beautiful beach
some distance below the hotel, and building a drift-
wood fire there, and watching the waves roll in. Then,
while Betty went in to read some just-arrived letters
from home, I went on along the top of the cliffs above
the Causeway.
There is a path which follows the edge of the cliff
closely, and a more magnificent view I have never seen.
At Chimney Point the rollers were breaking in especial
violence over the black rocks, on which one of the gal-
leons of the Armada went to pieces. Her name was
the Gerona, and some of her guns were rescued from
the surf and added to the armament of Dunluce castle.
Legend has it that she brought her disaster upon her-
self by running in too near the coast to fire at the
chimney rocks, which she mistook for the towers of
Dunluce. The bay where the bodies of her crew were
washed ashore has been called Port-na-Spania ever
since.
A little farther on is the uttermost point of all,
Pleaskin, where the view reaches its greatest grandeur,
for one is here four hundred feet above the sea, and on
485
486 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
that bright, clear, wind-swept morning, I could see the
purple peaks of the Donegal coast stretching far to the
west, while to the northeast loomed the misty outline
of the Scottish hills, scarcely discernible against the
sky. And all between stretched the white-capped wat-
ers of the North Channel, with a tossing boat here and
there, and at my feet were the last black basalt outposts
of Erin, with the rollers curling over them in regular,
heavy rhythm. If Ireland has anything to show more
fair I did not see it.
I went slowly back, at last, along the path, over
the springy heather; and an hour later we had said
good-bye to the Causeway, and were rattling away
along a pleasant road toward Ballycastle. We were
the only voyagers, that day, so instead of the heavy
bus, a side-car had been placed at our disposal. It
was the first car we had mounted since our ride around
Lough Gill ; and how good it felt to settle back again
into the corner of the seat, and swing along mile after
mile!
Our jarvey was an old fellow who was loquacious
enough, at first, and who stopped to show us, in a ra-
vine not far from the Causeway, a crevice in the rock
which he said was used as a pulpit by the first Presby-
terian preacher in Ulster — for it should be remembered
that for many years the Presbyterians and other non-
conformists were treated as harshly by the established
church as the Catholics were. And then we came to a
little village where the children were gathering for
school, and our jarvey stopped to water the horse, which
gave us the opportunity to have a word with the chil-
dren.
THE GLENS OF ANTRIM 487
And fairly surprised we were when they began to
talk, for they spoke a Scotch as broad as any to be heard
in the Highlands. Their names were Scotch, too —
Fergus and Angus ; and the only thing we encountered
on that drive which astonished us more were the sign-
posts at the cross-roads, the directions on which are all
in Gaelic. We had seen Gaelic sign-posts before, in
the west, but they always had the direction in English,
too. Here there was no English. It is a riddle that
I have never unravelled, for I heard no Gaelic spoken
here. Of course it is spoken; but so many wayfarers
along this road speak only English that I cannot un-
derstand the contempt for them which the sign-boards
indicate.
I have referred already to the Irishman's love for
breakneck bridges, and the prize one of all is at the
village of Ballintoy, into which the road drops down
the steepest of hills. A little distance away along
the cliffs is an isolated rock some sixty feet from the
shore, and spanning the abyss between cliff and rock
is the craziest bridge ever devised by man. Two rings,
about eighteen inches apart, have been embedded in
the rock on either side, and between these rings two
ropes have been stretched. These are lashed together at
intervals by transverse cords, and to these cords short
lengths of narrow plank have been tied side by side.
For a handrail, a slender rope has been stretched be-
tween two rings some three feet higher than the others
— and there you are. It is hardly correct to say that
any of the ropes have been "stretched," for they hang
in a long curve, and in the wind that was blowing that
morning the bridge swung to and fro in the dizziest
488 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
fashion. There was a crowd of small boys at its land
end, who offered to negotiate the passage for a penny
each, but we refused to pay for the privilege of seeing
them risk their lives.
And yet, probably, it would not have been risking
them, for they were used to the bridge and thought
nothing of crossing it. Nay, more, the men of the
neighbourhood cross it carrying heavy burdens, for
they are fishermen and keep all their ropes and nets and
even their boats out on the rock, round which, at cer-
tain stages of the tide, the salmon circle, so that they
can be caught by nets shot out from the rock. There
is no harbour for the boats, so they have to be hoisted
up to a terrace in the rock some twenty feet above the
water by means of a windlass ; and then, having made
everything snug, the fishermen cross back over the
bridge with the catch on their shoulders. It need
scarcely be added that I, who had balked at the far
more substantial bridges at Dromahair and Dunluce,
never for an instant thought of crossing this one.
We climbed out to the top of the cliffs again, and
jogged along with the beautiful sea to our left, and
the beautiful rolling country to our right, its meadows
brilliant with the lush green of the young flax; and
then we turned back inland between high hedgerows;
and the bright sun and the soft air proved too much
for our jarvey, who dropped gently to sleep — a fact
we didn't notice until the horse, after a backward
glance, stopped to take a few bites from the hedge.
The driver woke with a start and jerked the horse
angrily back into the middle of the road, and then
glanced guiltily at us, but we were gazing far away into
THE GLENS OF ANTRIM 489
the distance ; and then he dropped off again, and again
the horse, feeling the slackened reins, stopped for a
bite ; and then, for fear that a motor-cycle or something
might run into us, I filled my pipe and offered my
pouch to the driver, and he filled up thankfully, and
that kept him awake until we dropped down into the
beautiful old town of Ballycastle, nestling under the
high hills of Antrim. "Bally," which figures in so
many Irish place-names, is from the Gaelic "baile,"
meaning town or village, and so Ballycastle is merely
the Irish form of what in English would be prosaic
Castletown.
We had tea at a clean and pleasant inn, and then
spent an hour wandering about the place — to the site
of the old abbey, near a sweet little river, and then
down to the shore, which has been desecrated with golf-
links; but the green slopes of Rathlin Island, just off
the coast, are very lovely, and just outside the bay the
cliffs culminate in a mighty bluff called Fairhead ; and
then back to the town along an avenue of beautiful
trees, for a visit to the "Home Industry Depot," a
room crowded with fantastic toys and some good wood-
carving, all done in the neighbourhood — about the only
industry of any kind, so the keeper of the shop said,
now carried on in Ballycastle.
Time was when Ballycastle fancied it was destined
for greatness, for a seam of coal was discovered in the
hill above the town, and an enterprising Scotchman
named Hugh Boyd leased the right to work it from
the Earl of Antrim, and built foundries and tanneries
and breweries to consume it ; but unfortunately the seam
turned down instead of up, Boyd died, and nobody
490 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
was found with sufficient energy to contend against so
many difficulties ; so the whole enterprise dropped dead.
I don't know how the inhabitants came to turn to toy-
making and wood-carving; perhaps some expatriated
Swiss settled here, — that shop certainly did remind us
of Lucerne!
There are far older memories which cluster around
Ballycastle ; for the stream which ripples past the abbey
was in the old days called the Margy, and it was here,
according to the most ancient of Irish legends, that
the children of Lir, King of the Isle of Man, sought
shelter after they had been turned into four white swans
by their step-mother. I should like to tell that story,
but there is no space here — besides, it has already been
most nobly told by Mr. Rolleston. It will be found,
with many others, in his "High Deeds of Finn," a book
I most heartily recommend.
We were not yet at the end of our day's journey, for
we had still to go on to Cushendall, sixteen miles away,
and so we went back to the hotel, to find a long inside-
car waiting. There were two other passengers, women
of the neighbourhood, who had come in to town to do
some shopping; and their gossip was most entertaining;
but we dropped them before long, and then the road
mounted up and up along the valley of a little river,
which we could see gleaming far below us; and at last
we came out upon a bog as wild and desolate as any in
Connemara. There were again the familiar black
cuttings, the piles of turf, and here and there a group
of men and women labouring at the wet, back-breaking
work. This bog, so our driver said, supplied the fuel
THE GLENS OF ANTRIM 491
for the whole district, and nobody hereabouts ever
thought of burning coal.
The road was quite deserted, save for a cart now
and then, loaded high with turf, lumbering heavily
down toward the town ; and presently even these ceased,
and there was no single sign of life as far as the eye
could reach — only the silent bog, desolate, vast, im-
pressive, rolling away into the distance with a beauty
all its own — a beauty difficult to express, but very
poignant.
How high we were upon that moor we did not realise
until we came to the verge of one of the beautiful
Glens of Antrim and saw, nestling away below us, the
spires and roofs of Cushendall. They were perhaps
half a mile away, but we travelled at least three miles
to get down to them, winding back and forth along
the side of the glen, crossing a great viaduct eighty feet
high, past picturesque thatched houses, past the fairy
thorn which no man in the village would touch for
love or money, past a fragment of ruin which was once
the castle where the MacDonnells stood off the Eng-
lish; and then we turned away to the right and began
to climb again; and presently we had climbed out of
Glendun into Glenaan, and I should hate to have to
decide which is the more lovely.
We emerged, at last, into more open country, with
high hills at our right pierced by shadowy valleys ; and
then the houses became more frequent, and we could
see the people gathering down from the fields for the
night. Twilight was at hand ; but, though it must have
been nearly nine o'clock, we were amused to see that
492 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the ducks and chickens were still pecking cheerfully
about the door-steps, apparently with no thought of
retiring. Poultry, in Ireland, leads a strenuous life,
for in summer the sun rises at three and does not set
till nine. Perhaps it is these long hours which give
Irish chickens an indolent air, and which explain the
frequent naps one sees them taking on the family door-
step.
The houses grew more and more frequent, until we
were rattling down a wide street of them, under an
avenue of lofty trees, and knew we were at Cushendall.
Some three miles west of the town, on the top of a
bare and windy hill looking down over the Glenaan
valley, is a circle of stones placed there, so legend
asserts, to mark the grave of Ossian, son of Finn Mac-
Cool, and sweet singer of the Fianna of Erin; and it
was to find this spot I set out next morning, through
fine, windy weather. I knew where the valley of the
Glenaan was, for we had passed its mouth the evening
before, but as to the position of the grave itself I knew
nothing. The guide-book devoted only a vague line
to it; but I have a firm belief in my luck, and I knew
I should find it somehow.
For a mile or more my road lay back over the way
we had come, mounting steadily toward the entrance
to the Glenaan Valley; and I met many little carts
coming in to market, for it was Saturday; and every
one who wasn't going into town was taking advantage
of the fine day by working in the fields, or putting new
coats of dazzling whitewash upon their houses, or dig-
ging in the little flower-gardens in front of them. And
THE GLENS OF ANTRIM 493
everybody was in cheerful humour and passed the time
of day with the heartiest good will.
And then I came to the entrance of the valley, and
turned westward along the road which traverses it.
The mountains soon began to close in on either hand,
and the houses strung along the road or perched on
narrow plateaus grew smaller and smaller; slate gave
way to thatch, stone floors gave way to dirt ones, and
the windows shrank to a single immovable sash of four
small panes. In a word, as the land grew poorer, the
people grew poorer, too; and the conditions of life
seemed not so very different from those in far Con-
naught. Indeed it may very well be that this is one
of those "congested districts" which are scattered over
the east of Ireland.
I stopped, at last, and asked an old man in a blue
flannel smock if he could tell me the way to Ossian's
grave; and he told me to fare straight on till I came
to some stepping-stones, and to cross the stones and
push right up the hill. So I went on happily, for the
air was very sweet, and the sun just warm enough, and
the great wind was driving white clouds before it
across the sky, and the sunshine in the faces of the peo-
ple I met added to the beauty of the day ; and at last I
came to a cluster of thatched cottages where the little
river turned in close to the road and rippled between
a row of stepping-stones ; and I asked a pleasant-faced
woman if that was the way to Ossian's grave, and she
said it was ; to cross the stones and go right up the hill,
and I would find a house there where I could get fur-
ther directions.
The road beyond the stones ran up the hill and into
494 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the yard of a farm-house ; and in the yard there was a
dog with a very savage bark; but there was also a blue-
eyed girl who quieted him, while she stared at me curi-
ously. I asked her the way to the grave, and she
pointed up the hill, with a little motion of her hand
toward the right, and I set off again. The road had
dwindled to the merest mountain path, with a wall on
either side of earth and stones, crested with prickly
gorse ; but I came to a break in it, at last, opening to
the right, and scrambled through; and then, a minute
later, in the midst of a heather-carpeted field on the
very summit of the hill, I saw the grave.
It is formed of standing stones, covered with lichen
and crumbling under the storms of centuries, and the
vestibule, so to speak, is a semi-circle some twenty feet
in diameter opening toward the east. Back of this are
two chambers, one behind the other, divided by two
large uprights, and I suppose it was in one of these that
the body of the bard was laid — if it was laid here at
all. My own guess would be that these weather-beaten
stones, like those others on the hill beside Lough Gill,
antedate Ossian by at least two thousand years. But
that is an unimportant detail ; and it may be, indeed,
that when the great singer died, his comrades could
think of no more fitting place to lay him than within
the guardian circle of this monument of an older race,
looking down across the valley and out toward the sea.
Fact and fancy have been so mingled in the Ossianic
legend that it is impossible to disentangle them, nor is
it profitable to try. It is fairly certain that he was
born somewhere about the middle of the third century
after Christ, and legend has it that he spent two hun-
THE GLENS OF ANTRIM 495
dred years in the Land of Youth with Niam of the
Golden-hair. When, homesick for Erin, he returned
to it, it was to find his father's courts overgrown with
grass and St. Patrick preaching there, and his disputes
with Patrick are recorded at great length in the tales
of the Fenian cycle; for Ossian bewailed the vanished
days of those mighty fighters, and wished for nothing
better than to join them, in whatever world they might
be, while Patrick laboured to convert him from such
heathen fancies and to save his soul. It is to this
story reference is made in the stanza from Lionel John-
son's "Ode to Ireland," which I quoted on page 221.
Up there on the bleak hill-top the wind was roaring;
but I found a nook between two of the great stones
where it could not reach me, and I lighted my pipe and
sat there and looked down over the valley and thought
of the old days, and so spent a sweet half hour. The
valley had changed but little, I fancied, with the roll-
ing centuries; there were tiny, high-walled fields and
low thatched houses on the lower slopes; but above
them sprang the primal hills, clothed with heather,
their bones of granite gleaming here and there, back
and back over the Glens of Antrim, through which
the red tide of tribal warfare had poured so many
times. And over eastward lay Cushendall, nestling
among its trees, with the gaunt, truncated mass of
Lurigethan hill overshadowing it, and beyond that,
faint and far and scarcely distinguishable from the blue
sky, lay the blue sea.
That valley and those hills belong to the Earl of An-
trim— his estate includes some thirty-five thousand
acres of Irish soil, around which he may build walls
496 THE CHARM OE IRELAND
and post notices and set guards ; and as I sat there gaz-
ing out at them, I realised far more keenly than I had
ever done the absurdity of the idea that any portion of
this earth's surface can rightfully belong to any man.
Trace any title back, for a hundred years, or a thousand
years, or two thousand years, and one finds that it
started in a theft — theft on the part of an individual
from the tribe which held the land in common ; and the
solemn farce of sale and transfer and inheritance after
that was merely the passing on of stolen goods. Per-
haps some day we may win through to the ideal of an
earth belonging equally to all men, with private right
only in the things man's industry creates.
I knocked out my pipe, at last, reluctantly enough,
and took the picture of the stones which is opposite
this page, but which gives a poor idea of them; and
then I started downward, through the break in the
hedge, through the farmyard, going warily for fear of
the dog, and so to the stepping-stones; and when I
looked at them, I saw what a perfect picture they made,
with the stream rippling through, and the thatched cot-
tages beyond, with the smoke whipped from their chim-
neys, and a single tree bending before the wind. That
picture in miniature is opposite this page; but I could
not snare with my camera the tang of the turf, the soft-
ness of the air, the glory of the sun, nor the murmur of
the water. Those you will have to evoke for yourself,
as best you can.
In the road beyond I found a mail-carrier, who had
completed his morning-round among the hillside dwell-
ings, and who was turning back to Cushendall; and
we went on together. He was a tall, lithe lad, as he
THE GRAVE OF OSSIAN
AN ANTRIM LANDSCAPE
THE GLENS OF ANTRIM 497
had need to be to get over his daily route among these
hills; and, like every one else, he hoped some day to
win his way to America. He knew many of its towns
from the postmarks on the letters he carried. In the
last month, he said, there had been fully a hundred
from America, and welcome letters they were, for nearly
all of them contained a bit of money. Many of the
dwellers in these hills — like thousands more all over
Ireland — would find life outside the work-house im-
possible but for the help from their sons and daugh-
ters in America; and it gives one a good feeling at the
heart to think of those devoted boys and girls putting
by every month a portion of the money which was
hard to win and harder still to save, to send to the old
people who were left at home.
By the side of the road, as we walked along, I saw
a hovel more primitive and comfortless than most —
just a tiny hut of a single room, dark and cold and bare ;
but against one end of it grew a great fuchsia bush,
clothing it with glory. A wrinkled old woman, clad
in filthy clothes, was standing in the doorway, and
my companion passed the time of day with her, while
I unslung my camera, for I wanted a picture of the tiny
house and the great bush. I would have liked a picture
of the old woman, too ; but she said she was too dirty,
and went in until the picture was taken which is op-
posite the next page. Then she came out and asked if
I would send her one. It was the first time, she said,
that any one had thought her houseen worth a picture ;
so I promised she should have one, and she gave me her
name, and the postman promised it should reach her.
We went on together, after that, and I asked him
498 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
what the people of the neighbourhood thought about
Home Rule.
"The truth is, sir," he answered, "that we don't know
what to think, what with this man telling us one thing
and that man another; but most of the poor people
about here would be glad to see it, for they can't be
worse off than they are, and a change might better
them. Drilling and arming? Ah, there's none of
that around here; there's no army of Ulster in these
parts. That's just talk."
He left me at the crossroads, for he had still a letter
or two to deliver farther down the road, and I went on
by myself toward the town. There were more white-
washers out, and they were splashing the lime about in
the most reckless fashion, besprinkling the hedges and
the shrubbery and even the road, somewhat to the dan-
ger of the passers-by; and at the first houses of the
town I met Betty. She had been talking to the care-
taker of the churchyard about the true shamrock; and
he said that it did not grow wild thereabouts, but that
he had some in a pot at home and would be glad to
bring her a spray; and he told her of a ruined church
and an old Celtic cross out along the road above the
cliffs, very near, he said — not over eight minutes' walk
at the most.
So we determined to take a look at it; but first we
walked about the town a little, and found it quite an
ordinary town, except for a great square tower at the
intersection of the principal streets — a tower erected,
so the tablet on it says, "as a place of confinement for
rioters and idlers." I suppose the town has a modern
jail now — perhaps even with panoptic galleries! At
A HUMBLE HOME IN ANTRIM
THE OLD JAIL AT CUSHENDALL
THE GLENS OF ANTRIM 499
any rate, the tower is no longer used. I took a pic-
ture of it, and if you will look at the picture closely,
you will see a girl drawing water from the town pump
just below the tower.
We started off finally for the ruins, first to the cliffs
along the sea, and then on along the path which runs
at their very edge. The view was very lovely, and
we didn't notice how the time was flying; but I looked
at my watch presently and found that we had been
walking twenty minutes, with no ruins in sight. We
pushed on ten minutes longer, and had about given
them up, when some children directed us which way to
go, and we finally found the few remaining fragments
of Layd Church, so overgrown with ivy and embowered
in trees that they were scarcely recognisable as ruins
at all. The cross proved to be a very modern one;
and the graveyard is sadly neglected, with the grass
knee-deep among the tombs, which have fallen into
sorry disarray. Most of them cover some long-dead
MacDonnell — they were all MacDonnells, in the old
days, who lived in the Glens of Antrim.
The "eight minute walk" had taken more than half
an hour, and we had need to hasten if we were to get
back to the hotel in time for lunch, for the car which
was to take us to Larne was to start at two; but we
made it, and when the car drove up, we found it was a
long outside-car with room for five people on each side.
We chose the forward end of the side next the sea; and
then the car proceeded to another hotel in the town,
where five or six more people were waiting; and the
two women who were condemned to the landward
side complained bitterly. They were making the trip.
500 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
they said, just to see the sea, and here they would be
compelled to sit the whole way facing the blank cliff.
"Sure, there's nothing I can do, miss," said the jar-
vey, who had listened sympathetically; CCI can't make
the car any longer, now can Is? Maybe you might be
glancin' over your shoulder from time to time; any-
way I'm thinkin' you'll be seem' enough of the sea be-
fore you're home again."
And with that they had to be consoled.
The road runs inland for about a mile beyond
Cushendall, and then turns down close to the shore of
Red Bay, a vast amphitheatre of red sandstone cliffs,
in whose face the road is cut. At the deepest point of
the circle, where the Vale of Glenariff opens up into
the mountains, is clustered a little village of white
houses; and then the road runs on round the base of
towering precipices; and suddenly the red sandstone
changes to chalk, and the water washing against the
shore, which has been a lovely green, turns milky white,
with outstanding pinnacles of chalk, worn to fantastic
shapes, keeping guard above it.
We had noticed an increasing crowd upon the road,
all walking or riding southwards; and presently two
barefooted boys jumped up on the footboard and asked
if they might ride a little way; and they told us that
there was a circus at Carnlough to which every one was
going; and they each had the tuppence necessary for
admission gripped in a grimy fist, and were very ex-
cited indeed. Carnlough, as we soon found, is a small
town consisting principally of a curving beach, where a
few people were bathing; and the white tent of Duffy's
Circus — a much larger affair than Buff Bill's — was
THE GLENS OF ANTRIM 501
pitched close beside the road. The urchins dropped
off and made for the entrance; and as we passed, we
caught a strain of "The Stars and Stripes Forever,"
painfully rendered by the circus band.
We rolled on around another wide bay, and came to
Glenarm, where we paused to change horses ; and then
on again, under the white cliffs, past quarries where flint
and chalk are mined for the Belfast market; and always
at our feet lay the Irish Sea, stretching away to the dim
horizon, its colour changing with every passing cloud.
In and out the road circled, following the long curves
of the coast; past the ruins of a castle which O'Hal-
loran, a famous outlaw, built for himself on the top
of a small rock with the sea washing round it; past
another amphitheatre where the rocks change back
from chalk to basalt; through a short tunnel and so to
Lame.
The most interesting thing about Larne is its hand-
some new harbour built for the express steamers which
cross several times daily to Stranrear, the shortest
of the routes to Scotland. Edward Bruce chose this
route when he came over with an army of six
thousand men to help the Irish drive the Eng-
lish from Ireland, as his brother Robert had driven
them from Scotland the year before at Bannockburn.
It was in May, 1315, that the Scotch drew up in battle
array along this strand; and a year later Bruce was
crowned King of Ireland; but though at first he drove
the Normans before him, his own army was gradually
worn down by privation and disease, and he himself
was killed at the battle of Faughart. So ended one
more Irish dream!
502
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
We changed at Lame from road to rail, and were
soon rolling southward, still close beside the water,
past a string of seaside resorts, each of which added
its quota of passengers — perspiring men and women and
tired but happy children; and so we came to the old
town of Carrickfergus, with its magnificent castle over-
looking Belfast Lough. Its great square keep, ninety
feet high, looked most imposing in the gathering twi-
light— how many assaults had it withstood in the seven
centuries of its existence ! Bruce captured it, but the
MacDonnells failed. Schomberg, William's general,
had better luck, and it was on the quay below it that
the great Orangeman first set foot in. Ireland. It has
some American associations, too; for John Paul Jones
sailed his good ship Ranger under its walls in 1778,
and captured the British ship-of-war Drake. Murray,
good British guide-book that it is, refers to the founder
of the American navy as "the pirate Paul Jones." But
we can afford to smile at that !
Carrickfergus is doubtless worth a visit, though the
castle is used as an ordnance depot now, and visitors
are admitted only to the outer court. But even that
would be worth seeing; and the town possesses an old
church, and some fragments of its old walls, and doubt-
less many interesting old houses. I am sorry we did
not spend a day there.
But our train rolled on, close beside the border of
Belfast Lough, and presently, far ahead, we saw the
gleaming spires and clustered roofs of the citadel of
Ulster.
CHAPTER XXIX
BELFAST
IT had been on a Saturday evening that we first saw
Dublin, and it was on a Saturday evening that we
reached Belfast ; and we had thought the streets of Dub-
lin crowded, but compared with those of Belfast, they
were nowhere. Even in our first ride up from the
station, along York Street and Royal Avenue, it was
evident that here was a town where life was strenuous
and eager ; there was no mistaking its air of alert pros-
perity; and when, after dinner, we sallied forth on
foot to see more of it, we found the sidewalks so
crowded that it was possible to move along them only
as the crowd moved.
It was a better-dressed crowd than the Dublin one,
but I fancied its cheeks were paler and its bodies less
robust. Indeed, I am inclined to think the average stat-
ure in Belfast an inch or so under the average else-
where. Great numbers of the men and women we saw
on the streets that night were obviously undersized. I
am by no means tall; five feet eight inches is, here in
America, about the average ; but when I walked among
that Belfast crowd, I overtopped it by half a head.
It was this strange sensation — the sensation of being
a tall man, which I had never before experienced —
which first drew my attention to the stature of the
crowd.
There must be several regiments of British troops
503
504
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
stationed at Belfast, for soldiers were much in evidence
that evening, and in a great diversity of uniform.
They, too, for the most part, seemed undersized, in
spite of their erect carriage; and they were, as is the
way with soldiers everywhere, much interested in the
girls; and the girls, after the fashion of girls every-
where, were much interested in the soldiers — and there
was a great deal of flirting and coquetting and glanc-
ing over shoulders and stopping to talk, and walking
about with clasped hands.
Next to the crowd, the most interesting feature of
Belfast is the shops, which are very bright and at-
tractive. The Scotch have a genius for fancy breads
and cakes, and the bakers' shops here were ex-
tremely alluring. There seemed to be also an epidemic
of auction sales and closing out sales and cut price
sales, announced by great placards pasted all over the
windows ; but there were so many of them that I fancy
most of them were fakes.
One notices also in Belfast the multiplicity of bands.
It seemed to me that night that a band, playing dog-
gedly away, was passing all the time. Sometimes the
band would be followed by a body of marching men,
sometimes by men and women together, sometimes it
would be just playing itself along without any one
behind it. Nobody in the crowd paid much attention,
not even when a big company of boy scouts marched
past, looking very clever in their broad hats with the
little chin-straps, and grey flannel shirts and flapping
short trousers showing their bare knees.
What I am setting down here are merely my first
impressions of Belfast. I do not allege that' they were
BELFAST 505
correct impressions, or that they fairly describe the
town, but, as we were fresh from many weeks in the
south and west of Ireland, the sense of contrast we ex-
perienced that first evening is not without significance.
We went back to the hotel, finally, for we had had
a strenuous day; but for long and long we could hear
the bands passing in the street below; and then the
martial rattle of drums and scream of fifes brought us
to the window, and we saw a great crowd of children
march past, with banners waving and tin buckets and
shovels rattling. It was a Sunday School picnic, just
back from a day at the seashore ; and the air which the
fifes and drums were playing with a vigour that made
the windows rattle was "Work, for the Night is Com-
ing!" I had never before realised what a splendid
marching tune it is !
I am sorry we did not go to church, next morning,
for the pulpits of Belfast were thundering against
Home Rule, as we saw by the Monday papers. In-
stead, we walked down to the river, for a look at the
harbour and custom house, and then about the streets
to the city hall, with its dome and corner towers oddly
reminiscent of St. Paul's Cathedral ; and then we took
a tram to the Botanical Gardens. The tram ran along
a tree-embowered street, lined on either side with villas
set in the midst of grounds so beautiful that any of
them might have been the gardens; but when we
reached the end of the line, we found we had come too
far. The conductor was greatly chagrined that he had
forgot to tell us where to get off, and sternly refused
to accept any fare for the return trip.
5o6 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
The gardens, which we finally reached, are very at-
tractively laid out, but far more interesting than the
flowers and the shrubs was the crowd which was coming
home from church. There seems to be a church on
every square in Belfast, and I judge they were all full
that day — as they no doubt are every Sunday, for
church-going is still fashionable in the British Isles;
and the crowd which poured along the walks of the
gardens was as well-dressed and handsome as could be
seen anywhere. It was a crowd made up of people evi-
dently and consciously well-to-do, and one distinctive
characteristic was a certain severity of aspect, a cer-
tain prevalence of that black-coated, side-whiskered,
stern-lipped type which was much more common in
America thirty years ago than it is now. Our type
has changed — has softened and grown more urbane;
but I should judge that the cold steel of Calvinism is
as sharp and merciless as ever in Belfast.
The men walked slowly along in twos and threes,
talking over the sermons they had just listened to;
and the sermons, judging from the newspapers, were
all cast in the same mould; and that mould gives so
clearly the Orange attitude toward Home Rule, that I
shall try to outline it here, quoting literally from the
newspaper accounts.
Home Rule, then, according to the Belfast preachers,
is a Papal-inspired movement, whose object is "to
thrust out of their birthright over one million enterpris-
ing, industrious, and peaceable citizens, whose only
crime was their loyalty to Crown and Constitution, and
to put them under that Papal yoke from which their
sires had purchased their liberty. Their beloved island
BELFAST 507
home had never been more prosperous. They were
grateful and they were satisfied, but their Roman
Catholic fellow countrymen seemed to have no sense
of satisfaction or gratitude. The Irish Nationalists
had entered into a movement to sacrifice Protestantism
upon the altar of Home Rule, but Orangemen and
Protestants had entered into a covenant the object of
which was the maintenance of their rightful heritage
of. British citizenship, of their commercial and indus-
trial progress, and of their freedom. In the same spirit
of patriotic Protestantism as was displayed at the siege
of Derry, they would go forth to combat the onslaughts
of Rome, and they would show that the same spirit
lived in them as in their illustrious sires." Some of the
services concluded with singing a new version of the
National Anthem:
Ulster will never yield;
God is our strength and shield,
On Him we lean.
Free, loyal, true and brave,
Our liberties we'll saye.
Home Rule we'll never have.
God save the King.
That last line is so perfunctory that it provokes a
smile.
I am anxious to state the case against Home Rule as
fairly as I can, the more so because, as the readers of
this book must have suspected before this, I have little
sympathy with the die-hard Unionists. I do not be-
lieve that they represent Ulster in any such absolute
sense as they claim to do, for in the first place they
hold only sixteen out of the thirty-three Ulster seats
508 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
in Parliament, and in the second place, even in the
four counties which are largely Protestant, there is
a very strong Nationalist sentiment. My own con-
viction is that the Orange Societies are being be-fooled
by a clique of politicians and aristocrats whose quarrel
is not with Home Rule but with the Liberal party.
Nobody denies that the funds for the organisation and
equipment of the Orange army have been supplied by
the Conservative party, whose campaign chest has been
sadly depleted by the immense sums needed to keep the
agitation going. Certain leaders of that party have
done their utmost to foment religious and racial hatred,
not because of any religious convictions of their own,
nor because of any special sympathy for Ulster, but
in the hope of overthrowing the government and
stopping the march of social reform. They might just
as well try to stop the march of time — and some day,
perhaps, they will realise it!
And yet —
These fighting preachers, these uncompromising,
wrong-headed, upright old Calvinists, are undoubtedly
in earnest. The congregations which sat in grim-faced
silence that day listening to this oratory, were in ear-
nest, too. But I cannot believe that, in their inmost
heart of hearts, they really dread the subversion of
Protestantism. What they dread is, in the first place,
some diminution of their supremacy in Irish politics,
and, in the second place, some diminution of their con-
trol of Irish industry. In other words, the attack they
really fear is against their pocket-books, not against
their creed. And it is not impossible that their
pocket-books may suffer; indeed, I think it probable
BELFAST 509
that when the Home Rule Parliament has made its
final adjustments of revenue, Ulster will be found to
be bearing somewhat more of the burden than she now
does, though perhaps not more than her just share.
But this doesn't make the situation any the less serious,
for ever since the world began it has been proved over
and over again that the very surest way to drive men
to frenzied resistance is to attack their pocket-books.
As for the religious bogy, I personally believe most sin-
cerely that it is a bogy. Such danger to Protestantism
as exists comes, not from the Irish Catholics, but from
the politicians who are using it as a football.
There was a sentence in one of the sermons, preached
that day to the effect that Irish Protestants laboured
to help Irish Catholics to civil and religious liberty,
when Irish Catholics were unable to help themselves,
and this is a fact which I am sure Irish Catholics will
be the last to forget. A century ago, Ulster was as
fiercely Nationalist as she is fiercely Unionist to-day;
it was in Belfast that the Society of United Irishmen
was organised, and its leader was Theobald Wolfe
Tone, a Protestant, and its first members were Presby-
terians, and one of its objects was Catholic Emancipa-
tion. And, as a close to these disconnected remarks, I
cannot do better than repeat an anecdote I saw the
other day in the Nineteenth Century. Some sympa-
thetic neighbours called upon the mother of Sir David
Baird to condole with her over her son's misfortunes,
and they told her, with bated voices, how he had been
captured by Tippoo Sultan, and chained to a soldier
and thrust into a dungeon. Baird's mother listened
silently, and then a little smile flitted across her lips.
5io THE CHARM OF IRELAND
"God help the laddie that's chained to my Davie !"
she said softly.
And anybody that's chained to Ulster will un-
doubtedly have a strenuous time !
The News-Letter is the great Belfast daily, and
while I was looking through it, Monday, for fear I
had missed some of the pulpit and platform fulmina-
tions, I chanced upon another article which interested
me deeply, as showing the Protestant attitude toward
control of the schools. The article in question was a
long account of the awarding of prizes at one of the
big Belfast National schools, as a result of the re-
ligious education examination, and it was most il-
luminating.
The chairman began his remarks by saying that
"nothing is pleasanter than to hear a pupil repeat
faultlessly the answers to the one hundred and seven
questions in the Shorter Catechism, without a stumble,
placing the emphasis where it is due, and attending to
the stops," and he went on to report that these one
hundred and seven questions had been asked orally of
each of 396 children, that there was not a single failure,
and that practically all the children were in the first
honour list — that is, had answered faultlessly the whole
one hundred and seven.
And then another speaker, a clergyman, of course,
like the first, told impressively of the meaning of edu-
cation. It was, he said, the duty of every child to
store his mind with all manner of knowledge and to
seek diligently to gain information from day to day.
But religion was the sum and complement of all educa-
BELFAST 51*
tion. Without it, all other acquirements would be
little better than the beautiful flush upon the con-
sumptive's cheek, the precursor of sure death and decay.
He reminded them that even the very youngest there
was guilty in the sight of God, for that awful word
sinner described them all.
Then a third speaker remarked that while the staff
of the school was doing a fine work in teaching the
boys and girls to read and write and cast up accounts,
that that wasn't nearly so fine as teaching them the
catechism and encouraging them to study their Bibles.
And then a fourth speaker emphasised this; and then
there was a vote of thanks to all the speakers, and the
prize Bibles were distributed, and everybody went away
happy — at least, the adults were all happy, and I can
only hope the children were.
From all which it is evident that the Presbyterians
will fight for their schools as hard, if not harder, than
the Catholics will for theirs. But to me, the thought
of those poor children being drilled and drilled in the
proper answers to the 107 questions of the Catechism,
until they could answer them all glibly and without
stopping to think, is a painful and depressing one. I
suppose that is the way good Orangemen are made;
but the Catechism has always seemed to me a rickety
ladder to climb to heaven by.
I was fortunate enough to witness another peculiar
symptom of Belfast's temper, that afternoon, when I
went down to the Custom House, which stands near the
river. It is a large building occupying a full block,
and there is a wide esplanade all around it; and this
5i2 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
esplanade has, from time immemorial, been the plat-
form which any speaker, who could find room upon it,
was privileged to mount, and where he might promul-
gate any doctrine he could get the crowd to listen to.
There was a great throng of people about the place,
that afternoon, and a liberal sprinkling of policemen
scattered through it; and then I perceived that it
wasn't one big crowd but a lot of smaller crowds, each
listening to a different orator, whose voices met and
clashed in the air in a most confusing manner. And
I wish solemnly to assert that the list which follows
is a true list in every detail.
At the corner of the building, a reformed drunkard,
with one of those faces which are always in need of
shaving, stood, Bible in hand, recounting his experi-
ences. At least, he said he had reformed ; but the pic-
tures he painted of the awful depravity of his past had
a lurid tinge which held his auditors spell-bound, and
it was evident from the way he smacked his lips over
them that he was proud of having been such a devil
of a fellow.
Next to him a smartly-dressed negro was selling
bottles of medicine, which, so far as I could judge from
what I heard, was guaranteed to cure all the ills that
flesh is heir to. The formula for this wonderful prep-
aration, he asserted, had been handed down through his
family from his great-great-grandmother, who had been
a famous African voodoo doctor, and it could be pro-
cured nowhere else. The open-mouthed Belfasters
listened to all this with a deference and patience which
no American audience would have shown, and the
fakir took hi many shillings.
BELFAST 513
Next to him, a company of the Salvation Army was
holding a meeting after the explosive fashion familiar
all the world over; and at the farther corner, a white-
bearded little fellow was describing the horrors of hell
with an unction and exactitude far surpassing Dante.
I don't know what his formula was for avoiding these
horrors, for I didn't wait to hear his peroration.
Just around the corner, two blind men were singing
dolefully, with a tin cup on the pavement before them,
and straining their ears for the rattle of a copper that
never came; and farther along, a sharp-faced Irishman
was delivering a speech, which I judged to be political,
but it was so interspersed with anecdote and invective
and personal reminiscence, that, though I listened a
long time, I couldn't make out who he was talking
against, or which side he was on. His audience seemed
to follow him without difficulty, however, and laughed
and applauded; and then a little fellow with a black
moustache advised the crowd, in a loud voice, not to
listen to him, for he was a jail-bird. I saw the con-
stables edge in a little closer; but the speaker took the
taunt in good part, admitted that he had done twelve
months for some offence, and thanked the crowd with
tears in his voice because they had raised two pounds
a week, during that time, for the support of his family.
The crowd cheered, and the fellow who had tried to
start trouble hastened to take himself off. Thinking
over all which, now, it occurs to me that the speech
may have been a labour speech, and not a political one
at all.
I gave it up, at last, and moved on to where a man
was making an impassioned plea for contributions for
514 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
an orphan asylum. He had a number of sample
orphans of both sexes ranged about him, and he painted
a lively picture of the good his institution was doing;
but how he hoped to extract donations from a crowd so
evidently down at heel I don't see. Next to him, a
frightful cripple, who could stand erect only by leaning
heavily upon two canes, was telling the crowd how
exceedingly difficult it was for a rich man to get into
heaven. Next to him, a lot of women were holding
some sort of missionary meeting; and just around the
last corner, a roughly-dressed man, with coarse, red-
bearded face, whose canvas placard described him as
a "Medical Herbalist," was selling medicines of his
own concoction.
He had no panacea, but a separate remedy for every
ill ; and I listened to his patter for a long time, though
obviously he didn't welcome my presence. He proved
that slippery-elm was harmless by eating some of it, and
argued that plantain, "which ignorant people regarded
as a weed, made the best medicine a man could put into
his inside," and he proved this proposition by saying
that it must be so because plantain had no other known
use, and it was inconceivable that the Lord would have
taken the trouble to create it without some purpose.
He also proved that he was a capable doctor because he
was not a doctor at all, but a working-man, and it was
the working-man who made the world go round. In-
conceivable as it may seem, this ignorant and maudlin
talk was listened to seriously and even respectfully,
and he sold a lot of his medicines. Medicine seems
to be one of the dissipations of the Belfast folk.
The largest crowd of all was gathered before a man
BELFAST 515
who held the centre of the fourth side of the esplanade,
and who was talking, or rather shouting, against Home
Rule. He was garbed as a clergyman, and he wore an
Orange badge, and he was listened to with religious
attention as he painted the iniquity of the Catholic
church and the horrible dangers of Catholic domination.
His references to King Billy and the Boyne and the
walls of Derry were many and frequent, and he had
all sorts of newspaper clippings in his pockets, from
which he read freely, and though he was very hoarse
and bathed in perspiration, he showed no sign of stop-
ping. He intimated that, once Home Rule was es-
tablished, the revival of the inquisition would be but
a matter of a short time, that no Protestant would be
allowed to own property, that no Protestant labourer
could expect employment anywhere until he had ab-
jured his religion, that their children would be taken
away from them and reared in Catholic schools, and he
called upon them to arm and stand firm, to offer their
lives upon the altar of their country, and not retreat
a step before the aggressions of the Scarlet Woman.
I don't know how much of this farrago his audience
believed, but their faces were intent and serious, and I
fear they believed much more than was good for them.
I happened upon a song of Chesterton's the other day
which brought those strained and intent faces vividly
before me:
The folks that live in black Belfast, their heart is in their
mouth ;
They see us making murders in the meadows of the South ;
They think a plow's a rack, they do, and cattle-calls are creeds,
And they think we're burnin' witches, when we're only burnin*
weeds.
516 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Those lines are scarcely an exaggeration; and after
I had stood there listening for half an hour, I began
to feel uneasily that perhaps, after all, there is in
Ulster a dour fanaticism which may lead to an ugly
conflict. Those political adventurers who have
preached armed resistance so savagely, without really
meaning a word of it, may have raised a Frankenstein
which they will find themselves unable to control.
As I turned away, at last, sick at heart that such
things should be, I passed close by a little group of
men who were standing on the sidewalk opposite, listen-
ing to the denunciations of Rome with flushed faces
and clenched hands.
"Let's have a go at him !" said one of them hoarsely;
and then he caught my eye, as I lingered to see what
would happen. "What do you think of that, any-
way, sir1?" he asked.
"I think it's outrageous," I said. "But I wouldn't
raise a row, if I were you boys; you'll just be playing
into his hands if you do."
Their leader considered this for a moment.
"I guess you're right, sir," he agreed, at last. "Come
on, boys," and they slouched away around the comer.
But perhaps, afterwards, when they had got a few
more drinks, they came back again. It is a peculiarity
of Belfast that the public houses are allowed to open
at two o'clock Sunday afternoon, and they are crammed
from that time forward with a thirsty crowd.
There is nothing of antiquarian interest at Belfast,
and^its public buildings, though many and various,
are in no way noteworthy. The sycophancy of the
THE CITY HALL, BELFAST
HIGH STREET, BELFAST
BELFAST 517
town is evidenced by a tall memorial to Prince Albert,
not quite so ugly however, as the one at London;
while in front of the city hall stands a heroic figure of
Victoria. There is a statue to the Marquis of Duf-
ferin, and one to Harland the ship-builder, and one
to Sir James Haslett; and many militant divines,
in flowing robes, are immortalised in marble. But
search the streets as you may, you will find no statue
to any Irish patriot or Irish poet.
Nor will you find a street named after one — yes,
there is Patrick Street, but it is a very short and unim-
portant street, and may easily escape notice. The
shadow of the Victorian Age lies deeply over the place.
The greatest quay is Albert Quay, and the ship chan-
nel is Victoria Channel, and the square at the custom
house is Albert Square, and a little farther along is
Victoria Square, and just around the corner is Arthur
Square, and the principal avenue is Royal Avenue, and
the broad street which leads into it is York Street, and
the street next to it is Queen Street, and leading off of
that is Kent Street, and a little distance away is Al-
bert Street leading up to Great Victoria Street, and I
am sure that somewhere in the town there is a Prince
Consort Street, though I didn't happen upon it!
The churches are all modern and uninteresting,
though, strangely enough, the Catholic ones are as large
and ornate as any. You wouldn't think it from the
way Ulster talks, but about a fourth of the population
of Belfast is Catholic. There are two small museums,
neither of which is worth visting; in a word, the whole
interest of Belfast is in its shops, its factories and its
commerce.
518 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
The shops are wonderfully attractive, especially, of
course, in objects made of linen. For Belfast is the
world-centre of the linen trade, whose foundations were
laid by the Huguenots who found a refuge here after
Louis XIV banished them from France. It was the
one Irish industry which England did not interfere
with, because England produced no linen; and conse-
quently it prospered enormously, until to-day there
are single factories at Belfast where four thousand
people bend over a thousand looms or watch ten thou-
sand spindles, and the annual value of the trade is
more than sixty million dollars. There are great
tobacco factories, too, covering acres of ground; and
the biggest rope-walk in the world; and a distillery
which covers nineteen acres and — but the list is in-
terminable.
The most interesting and spectacular of all these
mighty industries will be found along the river banks,
where the great ship-building yards are ranged, where
such monsters as the Olympic and the fated Titanic
were built and launched, and where the rattle and
clangour of steel upon steel tells of the labour of
twenty thousand men. And surely the clang and
clatter of honest toil which rises from Belfast on week
days must be more pleasing to the Almighty than the
clang and clatter which rises from it on Sunday! I
should think He would be especially disgusted with the
noises which emanate from about the Custom House !
CHAPTER XXX
THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK
THE shops of Belfast, with their embroidered linens
(duty, forty-five per cent!), proved a magnet too great
for Betty to resist, but I hied me away, next day, into
County Down, on a pilgrimage to the grave which is
said to hold the three great apostles of Erin — Saint
Brigid and Saint Patrick and Saint Columba. It is in
the churchyard of the village of Downpatrick that the
grave lies, and the thirty mile run thither from Belfast
is through a green and fertile country covered with
broad fields of flax. There are raths and tumuli here
and there, and a few ruins topping the neighbouring
slopes, but it is not until one reaches Downpatrick that
one comes upon a really impressive memorial of the
old days.
The cathedral is visible long before the train reaches
the town, standing on the edge of a high bluff over-
looking the valley of the Quoile, and it was to it I
made my way from the station, up a very steep street,
for Downpatrick, following the fashion of Irish towns,
is built on the side of a hill — and also follows the
fashion in having an Irish Street and an English
Street and even a Scotch Street, the surviving names,
I suppose, of the quarters where the people of those
various nations once lived close together for mutual
protection.
The cathedral was locked, as Protestant churches
519
520 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
have a way of being; but the caretaker lives near by
and came running when his wife told him that there
was a strange gentleman wished to see the church. He
was a very Scotch Irishman, and as he took me
around the bare, white interior, he said proudly:
"There's not much high church about this. Not a bit
of flummery will we have here — no candles or vest-
ments or anything of that sort. Our people wouldn't
stand it — it savours too much of Romanism."
"And yet," I said, "it was Saint Patrick who
founded this very church, and you have him and
Saint Brigid and Saint Columba buried in your church-
yard."
"Yes, and we're proud to have them," he retorted
quickly, "for they weren't Romanists — they were just
Christians, and good ones, too. The Protestants of
Ireland can honour Patrick and Brigid just as much
as the Catholics do. It wasn't till long after their
day that the Irish church made submission to Rome."
There is a modicum of truth in this, for, though it is
probable that St. Patrick was regularly ordained a
bishop and is even sometimes asserted to have been
sent on his mission by Pope Celestine himself, the ties
which bound Irish Catholics to Rome were for many
centuries very slight indeed, and it was not until after
the Norman conquest that the authority of Rome was
fully acknowledged; and this independence has per-
sisted, in a way, even to the present day; for while
Irish Catholics, of course, acknowledge absolutely the
supremacy of the Holy See in all spiritual affairs, they
have always been quick to resent its interference in
things temporal, and their tolerance toward other re-
THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK 521
ligions than their own stands almost unique in history.
It is, perhaps, a racial characteristic, for the Pagan
Irish, during all the years of Patrick's mission among
them, never seriously persecuted him and never slew
a Christian.
Here at the spot where that mission began it is fit-
ting that I should say a word of it. Of Saint Patrick
himself very little is certainly known, for he was a man
of deeds and not of words, and left no record of his
life; but there seems no valid reason to doubt the tra-
ditional account of him; that he was born at Kilpatrick,
in Scotland, somewhere about 390 ; that his father was
a Roman citizen and a Christian ; that, when about six-
teen years of age, he was captured by a band of raid-
ing Irish, carried back to Ireland as a slave, sold to an
Ulster chief named Milcho, and for six years tended
his master's flocks on the slopes of Slemish, one of the
Antrim hills. In the end he escaped and made his
way back to his home in Britain; but once there his
thoughts turned back to Erin, and in his dreams he
heard the cries of the Pagan Irish imploring him to
return, bearing the torch of Christianity.
The voices grew too strong to be resisted, and in
432 he was back on the Irish coast again, having in
the meantime been ordained a bishop of the Catholic
Church ; and he sailed along the coast until he came to
Strangford Lough, where he turned in and landed.
His purpose was to go back to Slemish and ransom him-
self from the master from whom he had escaped, but he
paused at a large sabhall, or barn, and said his first
Mass on Irish soil. It was to that spot he afterwards
returned, when the hand of death was upon him, to
522 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
end his days ; and the little village that stands there is
Sabhall, or Saul, to this day. He went on, after that,
to the great dun, or fort, of the kings of Ulster, which
we ourselves shall visit presently, and from which
Downpatrick takes its name. Then, finding his old
master dead, he began his life-work. His success was
so extraordinary that at the end of thirty years, the
conversion of the Irish was complete.
At last, feeling his end near, he made his way back
to the sanctuary at Saul, died there, and was brought
for burial to this bluff overlooking the great rath be-
low. Legend has it that Saint Brigid wove his winding-
sheet. She herself, when she died, was buried before
the high altar of her church at Kildare ; and there are
two stories of why her body was removed to St. Pat-
rick's grave. One is that, in 878, her followers, fear-
ing that her grave would be desecrated by the Danes,
removed her body to Downpatrick, and buried it in
the grave with the great apostle, where the remains of
St. Columba had been brought from lona and placed
nearly two centuries before for the same reason. The
other story is that the bones of St. Brigid and St.
Columba both were brought here in 1 1 85 by John de
Courcy, to whom Ulster had been granted by the Eng-
lish king, — and who had surprised and captured Down-
patrick eight years previously, — in the hope of conciliat-
ing the people he had conquered. Either story may be
true; but all that need concern us now is that there
seems to be no question that the three great apostles of
Ireland really do lie at rest within this grave.
De Courcy enlarged the cathedral, which, before
that, had been a poor affair, dedicated it to Saint Pat-
THE GRAVE OF PATRICK, BRIGID AND COLUMBA
THE OLD CROSS AT DOWNPATRICK
THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK 523
rick, and caused effigies of the three saints to be placed
above the east window with a Latin couplet over them :
Hi tres in duno, tumulo tumulantur in uno
Brigida, Patritius, atque Columba pius.
The stone which marks the grave is in the yard just
outside the church — a great, irregular monolith of
Mourne granite, weatherworn and untouched by human
hand, except for an incised Celtic cross and the word
"Patric" in rude Celtic letters — one monument, at
least, in Ireland which is wholly dignified and worthy.
One other thing of antiquarian interest there is near
by, and that is an ancient cross, said to have stood or-
iginally on the fort of the King of Ulster, but removed
by De Courcy and set up in front of his castle in the
centre of the town, as a sign of his sovereignty, where
it was knocked to pieces when the castle was. The
fragments have been put together, and battered and
worn as it is, the carvings can still be dimly seen — the
crucifixion in the centre, with stiff representations of
Bible scenes below. It is ruder than most, as may be
seen from the photograph opposite page 522, for the
circle which surrounds the cross is merely indicated and
not cut through. There has been much controversy
as to the origin of this circle, which is the distinctive
feature of the Celtic cross; but I have never yet seen
any theory which seemed anything more than a guess
— and not a particularly good guess, either.
Of the first church which was built here not a trace
remains, and even of the structure of 1 137 there is lit-
tle left. For Downpatrick, with the priories and
monasteries and hospitals and convents and other re-
524 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
ligious establishments which had grown up around the
sacred grave of the saints, was one of the first objects
of attack when Henry VIII began his suppression of
the religious houses. Lord Grey marched hither at the
head of a regiment of soldiers and plundered the place
and set fire to it, so that only an empty shell was left.
The crumbling and blackened ruin stood undisturbed
for more than two hundred years, and when its restora-
tion was finally undertaken, it was found that only five
arches of the nave were solid enough to be retained.
So the present structure is only about a century old,
except for that one stretch of wall and a recessed door-
way under the east window. The old effigies of Brigid
and Patrick and Columba, which Grey pulled down
and knocked to pieces, have been replaced in the niches
above the window, but they are sadly mutilated. In
the vestry is a portrait of Jeremy Taylor, who was
Bishop of Down for nearly seventy years, but there is
little else of interest in the church. The most impos-
ing thing about it is its position at the edge of the high
bluff, looking out across the valley of the Quoire to the
Mourne mountains.
Just to the north of this bluff and almost in its
shadow, close to the bank of a little stream, still stands
the enormous rath built two thousand years ago by
Celtchair, one of the heroes of the Red Branch of
Ulster, and here he and the chiefs who came after him
had their stronghold. So great was its fame that
Ptolemy, in far off Egypt, heard of it, and it was grad-
ually enlarged and strengthened until there were few
in Ireland to equal it. The sea helped to guard it, for
at high tide the water flowed up over the flats along the
THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK 525
Quoile and lapped against it ; but the erection of sluice-
gates farther down the stream has shut away the tide,
and it stands now in the midst of a marsh.
To get to it, one passes along the wall of the jail —
one of the largest I had seen anywhere in Ireland, and
which Murray proudly says cost $315,000 — and scram-
bles down into the marsh, and there before one is the
rath. My picture of it, the top one opposite the next
page, was taken from close beside the jail, many hun-
dreds of yards away, and gives no idea of its size, ex-
cept for the thread-like path which you may perceive
running up one end, which is two or three feet wide,
and fully seventy feet long.
The rath is an immense circular rampart of earth,
nearly three quarters of a mile in circumference, fifty
feet high, and so steep that I had great difficulty in
getting up it, even by the path. Around it runs a fosse
or ditch some forty feet wide and nine or ten feet
deep. This, of course, was deeper in the old days, and
would remain filled with water even when the tide was
out. Inside the circular rampart, the ground drops
some twenty feet into a large enclosure, near the centre
of which a great mound, surrounded by a ditch ten feet
deep, towers sixty feet into the air.
The central mound corresponds to the keep or donjon
tower of more modern forts, the last place of refuge
and defence when the outer ramparts had been forced ;
and it was on this mound that the dwellings of the
chiefs stood, rude enough, no doubt, though they were
the palaces of kings. The tribal huts clustered in the
enclosure about the foot of the mound; and so per-
fectly is the whole place preserved — though of course
526 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
there is now no trace of hut or palace — that one has
little difficulty in picturing the busy life which went
on there — the throngs of men and women and children,
the tribal council gathered on the summit of the great
mound to listen to the chief, the departure of expedi-
tions for war or for the chase, the arrival of envoys
from some other chieftain or perhaps of some minstrel,
his harp slung across his shoulder. . . .
I tore myself away, at last, for there was another
place I wished to visit, and it was three miles distant
—the Holy Wells of Struell. The caretaker at the
cathedral had pointed out the route, so I climbed back
past the prison, and went down through the town and
up Irish Street beyond, and over Gallows Hill, where
some unfortunate Irishmen were hanged during the
rebellion of '98. The road beyond ran between high
hedge-rows and under arching trees, whose shade was
very grateful, for the day was the hottest I had ex-
perienced in Ireland; and then it crossed the white
high-road and ran close under a long stretch of wall
which surrounded an enormous and ornate building.
I asked a passer-by what it was, and he answered that
it was a madhouse, and big as it was, was none too big.
Murray supplies the information that it cost half a
million.
There is a workhouse in the town which, from the
look of it, must have cost $300,000 — or say a million
dollars for the three together, the jail, the workhouse
and the asylum, every cent of it, of course, raised by
taxation from the poorest people in the world ! Sadly
pondering this, I went on along the lane, and the heat
made the way seem very long. But a girl I met as-
THE GREAT RATH AT DOWNPATRICK
THE INNER AND OUTER CIRCLES
THE CENTRAL MOUND
THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK 527
sured me that I had not much farther to go — only past
the farm at the foot of the hill ; and presently I came to
the farm, a handsome one, with the dwelling-house
surrounded by well-built barns and stables, and a man
there directed me to the wells, down a little by-road.
Five minutes later, I had reached the rude stone huts
which cover the Holy Wells of Struell.
Down the middle of a pretty valley, a small stream
leaps from rock to rock, pausing here and there in little
pools, and these pools are the "wells." Each of them
is protected by a stone-walled, stone-roofed cell, built
in the old days when the wells were in their glory, and
now falling to decay. Just beyond the wells is a group
of thatched cottages, and a girl of eight or nine, seeing
my approach, hurried out from one of them and
volunteered to act as guide, scenting, of course, the
chance to earn a penny. And she took me first to what
she said was the drinking-well, a little grass-grown
pool in a fence-corner, and though she seemed to ex-
pect me to drink, I didn't, for the water looked stale and
scummy.
Then we climbed a wall, and walked over to a stone
cubicle, which stood in the middle of a potato patch.
This is the eye-well, and the cell over it is just large
enough to permit a person to enter and kneel down
above the water and bathe the affected parts. I took
a picture of it which you will find opposite the next
page. Then she led me to the largest well of all, the
body well, or well of sins, where it is necessary to un-
dress and immerse the whole body.
The stone building over the body well is divided into
two parts by a solid wall, and one part is for men and
528 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the other for women. The disrobing is done in the
outer chamber, which has a low stone bench running
around three sides, and then the penitent enters a small
inner chamber, descends some six or seven steps into the
pool of water, and, I suppose, places himself below the
stream which falls into the pool from the end of a
pipe. As its name indicates, this well was supposed
to have the power of washing away all disease, both
physical and moral, and time was when it was very
popular. The effect of the cold bath was so exhilarat-
ing, and the sudden sense of freedom from sin and dis-
ease so uplifting, that the penitents would sometimes
rush forth to proclaim their blessed state without paus-
ing to resume their garments. Naturally a lot of
impious Orangemen would gather to see the fun; and
finally both the secular authorities and the Catholic
clergy set their faces against the practices, with the
result that they gradually fell into disuse. Only single
pilgrims, or small companies, at most, come now to
bathe in the magic waters, and their behaviour is most
circumspect. The cells, themselves, are well-nigh in
ruins. A chapel to Saint Patrick, from whom these
waters derive their efficacy, was begun during the day
of their popularity, but was never finished, and now
only a fragment of it remains.
While I was manoeuvring for a photograph of the
well of sins, a middle-aged woman came out of a
near-by cottage to advise me where to stand. She had
seen many pictures taken of the well, she said, and
the place that made the best picture was on top of the
wall around her garden, and I climbed up, on it, and
found that she was right.
THE EYE WELL AT STRUELL
THE WELL OF SINS AT STRUELL
THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK 529
" 'Tis a warm day," she went on, when I descended,
"and your honour must be tired with the long walk.
Will you not come in and sit a spell?"
"Thank you," I said; "I'll be glad to — it is hot,"
and I followed her into a lovely old kitchen, with
floor of flags, and whitewashed walls gleaming with
pots and pans, and with a tall dresser in one corner
glittering with a brave array of china. In here it was
quite cool, so that after the first moment, the open
grate of glowing coals, with the usual bubbling pot
above it and the usual kettle on the hob, felt very
pleasant.
I expressed surprise that she was burning coal, and
she said the landlords of the neighbourhood had shut
up the peat-bogs, in order to make every one buy Eng-
lish coal ; and it was very hard indeed on the poor peo-
ple, who had always been used to getting their fuel for
the labour of cutting it, besides shutting them off from
earning a little money by selling the turf to the people
in the town, who would rather have it than coal. But
the landlords were always doing things like that, and
it did no good to complain. She had two brothers in
America, she said, and lived here at Struell and kept
house for a third. She and her brother were both un-
married, and would probably always remain so. Then,
of course, she wanted to know about my condition in
life, and I described it as freely as she had described
her own. And then she asked me if I wouldn't like a
glass of milk, and when I said I would, she hastened
to get it from the milk-house, through which a clear
little stream trickled, and very sweet and cool it was.
And then we got to talking about Ulster's attitude
530
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
toward Home Rule. County Down, you should re-
member, is one of the nine counties which form the
Province of Ulster, and is the most strongly Protestant
of all of them outside of Belfast and Antrim, for only
about one third of its 200,000 people are Catholic.
"God knows what will happen," said my hostess,
very seriously. "I have been hearing a lot of wild
talk, but paid no heed to it, for these Orangemen are
always talkin' about this or that, and their talk means
nothing. But I've come to think it may be more than
just talk this time. I heard a few days since that all
the Orangemen hereabouts have been getting together
three evenings every week in a meadow over beyont,
and an officer of the army comes there and drills them
till it is too dark to see. And they say, too, that there
is a gun ready for each of them, with plenty of powder
and lead to put into it; and they've sleuthered a lot
of poor boys into joinin' with them who have not the
courage to say no. But I'm hoping it will pass by, and
that no trouble will come of it. I am a Catholic my-
self, but we have never had any trouble with the Prot-
estants. We get along very well together, and why
shouldn't we? Some of my best friends are Prot-
estants, and I know they wish us no harm. No, no,
we are well-placed here, though them ones in the south
do be calling us the black north."
I told her something of the destitution and misery
I had seen in the south and west; but she showed no
great sympathy— rather a contempt, I fancied, for peo-
ple who could be so easy-going and unambitious. She
herself seemed of a very different breed; and the shin-
ing kitchen, as clean as a new pin, proved what a de-
THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK 531
light and pride she took in her home and how energetic
a housewife she was. Personally she was just as clean
and tidy as her kitchen, with hair neatly brushed and
a bit of white about her throat; and the apron she had
on was a fresh one, newly-ironed — something I never
saw upon any peasant woman of the south. She
brought out an album of photographs, presently — pho-
tographs of herself and of her brother, and various
photographs of the wells, and I promised to send her
a print of mine, if it proved to be a good one. And
then I bade her good-bye and started back the way I
came; but I can still see her shrewd and kindly face,
with the little wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, and
the cool, sweet-smelling kitchen where I spent that
pleasant hour.
I walked about the steep streets of Downpatrick
quite a while, after I reached the town, and found them
unusually quaint. Like so many other towns in Ire-
land, this one is all too evidently on the down grade.
The tall houses, which were once the residences of the
well-to-do, have been turned into tenements, and while
they are not so dirty and repulsive as those of Dublin
and Limerick, they are still bad enough. Others of
the houses are empty and falling into ruin. One curi-
ous thing about the place is that from any quarter of
it the town-hall is visible, standing in the hollow at
the bottom of the hill, for the five principal streets
start from it — Irish Street and English Street and
Scotch Street and two others whose names I have for-
gotten, but which were, perhaps, the neutral ground of
trade.
I made my way down to the station, at last, and as
532 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the train started, a young fellow in the same compart-
ment with me bade a tearful farewell to the relatives
and friends who had gathered to see him off, and sat for
some time thereafter weeping unaffectedly into his
handkerchief. When he was a little calmer, I asked
him if he was going to America. He said no; he
was going only to Belfast, but that was a long way!
It is really only about thirty miles ; but thirty miles
is a great journey to the average Irishman. For the
Irishman is no traveller; he is quite content to spend
his life within the circle of one small horizon, and
never so happy as when sitting at his own fireside.
Indeed, he is apt to regard with suspicion those who
have nothing better to do than wander about the world.
Mayo tinkers have always had a bad name in Ireland,
not because they do anything especially to deserve it,
but merely because they make their living in an un-
natural fashion by roaming from place to place.
Surely there must be something wrong with a man who
does that!
That night, at Belfast, we went to a variety show.
The Wild West film seems as popular here as in the rest
of Ireland, for a particularly sensational one, where the
heroine escaped from the Indians by going hand over
hand along a rope above a deep ravine, into which the
Indians were precipitated by the hero, who cut the
rope when they started to cross by it, was received with
great enthusiasm. There were also some scattered
cheers when a conjuror, with carefully calculated effect,
produced portraits of the King and Queen from some-
THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK 533
where and waved them before the audience. But the
cheers were thin and forced, and by far the most of
those present sat grimly silent and stared at the pictures
with set faces.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE
I HAD one other trip to make in Ireland. That was
to the scene of the battle of the Boyne, to the tombs
of the kings at Dowth and Newgrange, and to the
ruins near-by of two of the most famous and beautiful
of the old abbeys, Mellifont and Monasterboice.
Readers of this book will remember that, early in the
narrative, Betty and I had journeyed up from Dublin
to Drogheda for the purpose of visiting these historic
places, but had been prevented by a combination of un-
foreseen circumstances.
It was, then, for Drogheda that I set out next morn-
ing, Betty having voted for another day in the Bel-
fast shops; and by a singular coincidence it was the
first day of July, the anniversary of that other day
in 1690 when the army of William of Orange defeated
the battalions of Irishmen who had rallied around
James — and surely never had braver men a poorer
leader! But it was not really the anniversary, for
the change in the calendar has shifted the date to July
12th, and it is on that day the Orangemen celebrate.
It is an eighty mile run from Belfast to Drogheda,
and one of the most picturesque and interesting in the
east of Ireland; and the weather god was kind to the
last, for a brighter, sweeter day it would be impossible
to imagine. As the train leaves the city, there are
glimpses to the right of the purple hills of Antrim;
534
THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE 535
and then the train pauses at the busy town of Lisbun,
and continues on over the Ulster canal, past the battle-
field of Moira, past the beautiful woods of Lurgan,
and then through a prosperous and fertile country,
with broad fields of grain and flax, and pretty villages,
and so into Portadown, once the stronghold of the
McCahans.
I was travelling third that day, as always when
alone, and the compartment had four or five people in
it; and I had noticed that one of them, a man poorly
clad and with a kit of tools in a little bag, had been
looking anxiously from the window for some time.
Finally he leaned over and touched me on the knee.
"Can you tell me, sir, if this is the train to Deny*?"
he asked.
"No; it's going to Dublin," I said; and just then it
rumbled to a stop, and he opened the door and slipped
hastily out.
What happened to him I don't know, but he was in
no way to blame for the mistake, which was due to the
abominable custom they have in Ireland of starting
trains for different places from the same platform,
within a minute or two of each other. That morning,
at Belfast, there had been a long line of coaches be-
side one of the platforms; no engines were as yet at-
tached to them, but the front part of the line was
destined for Dublin, and the rear portion for Derry,
but there was no way to tell where one train ended and
the other began, and no examination was made of the
passengers' tickets before the trains started.
I was wary, for I had been caught in exactly the
same way once before, at Claremorris Junction, and
536 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
had escaped being carried back to Westport only by
stopping the train, amid great excitement, after it had
started. So, that morning at Belfast, I had assured
myself by repeated inquiry of various officials that the
carriage I was in was going the way I wanted to go; but
any traveller unwary or unaccustomed to the vagaries
of Irish roads, such as this poor fellow, might easily
have been caught napping. Where it is necessary to
start two trains close together from the same platform,
it would seem to be only ordinary precaution to ex-
amine the passengers' tickets before locking the doors.
From Portadown, the road runs along the valley of
the Bann, past the ruins of the old fortress of Redmond
O'Hanlon, an outlaw almost as famous in Irish history
as Robin Hood is in English ; and then it passes Scarva,
with a mighty cairn marking the grave of Fergus
Fogha, who fell in battle here sixteen centuries ago.
Here, too, are the ruins of one of General Monk's old
castles, and on a neighbouring slope the grass-green
walls of a great rath, the stronghold of some more
ancient chieftain. Indeed, there are raths and cashels
and ivy-draped ruins all about, the work of Irish and
Dane and Norman and later English, for here was a
pass across the bog from Down into Armagh, and so a
chosen spot for defence and the exacting of tribute.
Then the train is carried by a viaduct half a mile
long over the deep and wild ravine of Craigmore,
leaves Newry on the left and climbs steadily, with
beautiful views of the Mourne mountains to the right,
plunges at last through a deep cutting, and comes out
under the shadow of the Forkhill mountains, with the
mighty mass of Slieve Gullion overtopping them. Just
THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE 537
beyond is Mowry Pass, the only pass between north
and south, except round by the coast, and so, of course,
the scene of many a desperate conflict.
From this point on, for many miles, the scenery is
very wild and beautiful, and every foot of it has been
a battle-ground. Just before the train reaches Dun-
dalk, it passes close to the hill of Faughart, topped by
a great earthwork, and it was here that Edward Bruce
was slain in battle a year after he had been crowned
king of Ireland; and farther on is another rath, the
Dun of Dealgan, where dwelt Cuchulain, chief of the
Red Branch Knights, and one of the great heroes of
Irish legend. It was from Dun Dealgan that Dundalk
took its name, and Dundalk was for centuries the key to
the road to Ulster and the northern limit of the English
pale, which had Dublin for its centre. Merely to
enumerate the battles which have been fought here
would fill a page ; but the train rumbles on, past a little
church which uses the fragment of a round tower for a
belfry, past the modern castle of the Bellinghams, built
from the proceeds of a famous brewery, past a wayside
Calvary, and so at last into Drogheda. And when I
arrived there, I had completed the circuit of Ireland.
The car which was to make the round of the Boyne
valley was waiting outside the station, at the top of
that long, ugly street which looked so familiar now that
I saw it again; and after waiting awhile for other
passengers and finding there was none, we drove down
into the town, where another passenger was waiting —
a clergyman with grey hair and blue eyes and white
refined face, Church of England by his garb, and, as
I found out afterwards, Oxford by residence.
538 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
And here again it looked for a moment as though I
was to be balked a second time of seeing Mellifont and
Monasterboice, for it was Tuesday, and on Tuesday,
it seemed, the round was by way of Slane; but the
driver left the choice of routes to his passengers, and
the clergyman said he didn't care where we went so
we saw the Boyne battlefield; and with that we set off
westward along the pleasant road, and soon, far ahead,
we saw the top of the great obelisk opposite the place
where Schomberg fell. The road dips steeply into
King William's Glen, along which the centre of the
Protestant army advanced to the river, and then we
were on the spot where the cause of Protestant ascend-
ency in Ireland triumphed finally and irrevocably and
where the Cromwellian settlements were sealed past
overthrow.
William, with his English and his Dutch, had
marched down from Dundalk, and James, with his
Irish and his French, had marched up from Dublin,
and here on either side of this placid little river, where
the hills slope down to the Oldbridge ford, the armies
took their station; and here, a little after ten o'clock
in the morning, brave old Schomberg, whose tomb, you
will remember, we saw in St. Patrick's at Dublin (how
long ago that seems!), led his Dutch guards and his
regiment of Huguenots into the water, across the ford,
and up the bank on the other side. There, for a mo-
ment, his troops fell into disorder before the fierce at-
tack of the Irish, and as he tried to rally them, a band
of Irish horse rushed upon him, circled round him
and left him dead upon the ground. Almost at the
same moment, the white-haired Walker, who had ex-
THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE 539
horted the defenders of Deny never to surrender, was
shot dead while urging on the men of Ulster. But
though the Irish were able to hold their ground at first,
and even to drive their assailants back into the river,
a long flanking movement which William had set on
foot earlier in the day, caught them unprepared, and
they gave way, at last, before superior numbers and
superior discipline.
Long before that, King James had fled the field,
and, without stopping, spurred on to Dublin, thirty
miles away. He reached that city at ten o'clock that
night, tired, hungry, and complaining bitterly to Lady
Tyrconnell that the Irish had run faster than he had
ever seen men do before. Lady Tyrconnell was an
Irishwoman, and her eyes blazed. "In that, as in all
other things," she said, "it is evident that Your Majesty
surpasses them"; and Patrick Sarsfield, who had been
placed that day in command of the king's bodyguard,
and so had got nowhere near the fighting, sent back
to the Protestants his famous challenge, "Change kings,
and we will fight it over again!"
Well, all that was more than two centuries ago;
there is no more placidly beautiful spot in Ireland
than this green valley, with the silver stream rippling
past; but the staunch Protestants of the north still
baptise their babies with water dipped from the river
below the obelisk. And they are not altogether wrong,
for that river is the river of their deliverance ; and per-
haps, in some distant day, when new justice has wiped
out the memory of ancient wrong, Irish Catholics will
agree with Irish Protestants that it was better William
should have won that day than James.
540 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
My clerical companion, guide-book in hand, had
carefully noted every detail of the field, and it was
evident from his shining eyes how his soul was stirred
by the thought of that old victory. But our driver
sat humped on his box, smoking silently, his face very
grim. This job of driving Protestant clergymen to
Boyne battlefield must be a trying one for the followers
of Brigid and Patrick! But at last my companion
had seen enough, and closed his book with a little sigh
of happiness and satisfaction ; and our driver whistled
to his horse, and we climbed slowly out of the valley.
We had about a mile of hedge-lined road, after that,
and, looking down from it, we caught glimpses of
wooded demesnes across the river, with the chimneys
of handsome houses showing above the trees — and they,
too, are the symbols of William's victory, for they are
the homes of the conquerors, the visible signs of that
social order which Boyne battle established, and which
still endures.
And then our driver, who had recovered his good-
humour, pointed out to us a great mound in the midst
of a level field — a circular mound, with steep sides and
flat top, and a. certain artificial appearance, though it
seemed too big to be artificial. And yet it is, for it
was built about two thousand years ago as a sepulchre
for the mighty dead.
For all this left bank of the river was the so-called
Brugh-na-Boinne, the burying-ground of the old
Milesian kings of Tara; and two great tumuli are left
to show that the kings of Erin, like the kings of an-
cient Egypt and the kings of the still more ancient
Moundbuilders, were given sepulchres worthy of their
THE BIRTHPLACE OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
ENTRANCE TO DOWTH TUMULUS
THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE 541
greatness. Yet there is a difference. The tombs of
the Moundbuilders were mere earthen tumuli heaped
above the dead; the pyramids of the Egyptians were
carefully wrought in stone. The tumuli of the ancient
Irish stand midway between the two. First great
slabs were placed on end, and other slabs laid across
the uprights ; and in this vaulted chamber the ashes of
the dead were laid ; and then loose stones were heaped
above it until it was completely covered. Sometimes
a passage would be left, but that would be a secret
known to few, and when the tomb was done it would
seem to be nothing more than a great circular mound of
stones. As the years passed, the stones would be cov-
ered gradually with earth, and then with grass and
bushes, and trees would grow upon it, until there would
be nothing left to distinguish it from any other hill.
Only within the last half century have the tumuli been
explored, and then it was to find that the Danes had
spared not even these sanctuaries, but had entered
them and despoiled the inner chambers. Neverthe-
less, they remain among the most impressive human
monuments to be found anywhere.
This first tumulus we came to is the tumulus of
Dowth, and a woman met us at the gate opening into
the field where it stands, gave us each a lighted candle,
and led the way to the top of an iron ladder which
ran straight down into the bowels of the earth. We
descended some twenty feet into a cavity as cold as ice ;
then, following the light of the woman's candle, we
squeezed along a narrow passage made of great stones
tilted together at the top, so low in places that we had
to bend double, so close together in others that we had
542
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
to advance sideways blessing our slimness; and finally
we came to the great central chamber where the dead
were placed.
It is about ten feet square, and its walls, like those of
the passage, are formed by huge blocks of stone set on
end. Then other slabs were laid a-top them, and then
on one another, each slab overlapping by eight or ten
inches the one below, until a last great stone closed
the central aperture and the roof was done. In the
centre the chamber is about twelve feet high. Many
of the stones are carved with spirals and concentric
circles and wheel-crosses and Ogham writing — yes, and
with the initials of hundreds of vandals !
In the centre of the floor is a shallow stone basin,
about four feet square, used perhaps for some ceremony
in connection with the burials — sacrifice naturally sug-
gests itself, such as tradition connects with Druid wor-
ship; and opening from the chamber are three recesses,
about six feet deep, also constructed of gigantic stones,
and in these, it is surmised, the ashes of the dead were
laid. From one of these recesses a passage, whose
floor is a single cyclopean stone eight feet long, leads
to another recess, smaller than the first ones. When
the tomb was first entered, little heaps of burned bones
were found, many of them human — for it should be re-
membered that the ancient Irish burned their dead be-
fore enclosing them in cists or burying them in tumuli.
There were also unburned bones of pigs and deer and
birds, and glass and amber beads, and copper pins and
rings; and before the Danes despoiled it, there were
doubtless torques of gold, and brooches set with jewels
— but the robbers left nothing of that sort behind them.
THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE 543
Nobody knows when this mound was built; but the
men who cut the spirals and circles — and in one place
a leaf, not incised, but standing out in bold relief —
must have had tools of iron or bronze to work with;
so the date of the mound's erection can be fixed ap-
proximately at about the beginning of the Christian era.
For the rest, all is legend. But as one stands there in
that cyclopean chamber, the wonder of the thing, its
uncanniness, its mystery, grow more and more over-
whelming, until one peers around nervously, in the dim
and wavering candle-light, expecting to see I know not
what. With me, that sensation passed ; for I happened
suddenly to remember how George Moore and A. E.
made a pilgrimage to this spot, one day, and sat in
this dark chamber, cross-legged like Yogin, trying to
evoke the spirits of the Druids, and just when they
were about to succeed, or so it seemed, the vision was
shattered by the arrival of two portly Presbyterian
preachers.
There is another entrance to the tumulus, about half
way up, which opens into smaller and probably more
recent chambers ; and after a glance at them, we clam-
bered to the top. Far off to the west, we could see the
hill of Tara, where the old kings who are buried here
held their court and gave great banquets in a hall seven
hundred feet long, of which scarce a trace remains ; and
a little nearer, to the north, is the hill of Slane, where,
on that Easter eve sixteen centuries ago, St. Patrick
lighted his first Paschal fire in Ireland, in defiance of a
Druidic law which decreed that in this season of the
Festival of Spring, no man should kindle a fire in
Meath until the sacred beacon blazed from Tara. You
544
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
may guess the consternation of the priests when,
through the gathering twilight, they first glimpsed that
little flame which Patrick had kindled on the summit
of Slane, just across the valley. That, I think, is
easily the most breathless and dramatic moment in
Irish history. The king sent his warriors to see what
this defiance meant, and Patrick was brought to Tara,
and he came into the assembly chanting a verse of
Scripture : "Some in chariots and some on horses, but
we in the name of the Lord our God." And so his
mission began.
On the other side of the mound, across a field and
beyond a wall, I could see what seemed to be an ivy-
draped ruin, and I asked our guide what it might be,
and she said it was the birthplace of John Boyle
O'Reilly. It was but a short walk, and my companion
said he would wait for me; so I hastened down the
mound and across the field and over the wall, and found
that what I had seen was indeed a tall old house, draped
with ivy and falling into ruin. Just back of it is a
church, also in ruins, and again its wall is a granite
monument to O'Reilly, more remarkable for its size
than for any other quality. There is a bust of the
poet at the top, and on either side a weeping female
figure, and a long inscription in Gaelic, which of course
I couldn't read; and which may have been very elo-
quent. But if it had been for me to write his epitaph,
I would have chosen a single verse of his as all-suffi-
cient :
Kindness is the Word.
Then, as I was wading out through the meadow to
get a picture of the house, I met with a misadventure,
THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE 545
for, disturbed by my passage, a bee started up out of
the grass, struck me on the end of the nose, clung
wildly there an instant, and then stung viciously. It
was with tears of anguish streaming down my cheeks
that I snapped the picture opposite the preceding page.
Dowth Castle is not the ancestral home of the
O'Reillys; that stood on Tullymongan, above the town
of Cavan, of which they were lords for perhaps a
thousand years. Dowth Castle, on the other hand,
was built by Hugh de Lacy, as an outpost of the Eng-
lish pale; but it came at last into the hands of an
eccentric Irishman who, about a century ago, be-
queathed it and some of the land about it as a school
for orphans and a refuge for widows. The Netter-
ville Institution, as it was called, came to comprise
also a National school, and of this school John Boyle
O'Reilly's father, William David O'Reilly, was master
for thirty-five years. He and his wife lived in the
castle, here in 1844 the poet was born, and here he
spent the first eleven years of his life. What fate
finally overtook the castle I don't know, but only
the ivy-draped outer walls remain. The trim
modern buildings of the Institution cluster in its
shadow*
I made my way back to the car, where my compan-
ion, who was not interested in O'Reilly, was awaiting
me somewhat impatiently, and I think he regarded the
bee which had stung me as an agent of Providence.
But we set off again, and the car climbed up and up
to the summit of the ridge which overlooks the river;
and presently we were rolling along a narrow road
bordered with lofty elms, and then, in a broad pasture
546 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
to our right, we saw another mound, far larger than
the first, and knew that it was Newgrange.
Four mighty stones stand like sentinels before it.
The largest of them is eight or nine feet high above
the ground and at least twenty in girth; and they are
all that are left of a ring of thirty-five similar mon-
sters which once guarded the great cairn with a circle a
quarter of a mile around. Like the tumulus of Dowth,
this of Newgrange is girdled by a ring of great stone
blocks, averaging eight or ten feet in length, and laid
closely end to end ; and on top of them is a wall of un-
cemented stones three or four feet high. Behind the
wall rises the cairn, overgrown with grass and bushes
and even trees; but below the skin of earth is the pile
of stones, heaped above the chambers of the dead.
The entrance here is a few feet above the level of
the ground, and is the true original entrance, which
the one at Dowth is not, for the level of the ground
there has risen. This little door consists of two up-
right slabs and a transverse one. Below it is placed
a great stone, covered with a rich design of that spiral
ornamentation peculiar to the ancient Irish — emblem-
atic, it is said, of eternity, without beginning and with-
out end. The stone above the door is also carved, and
my photograph, opposite this page, gives a very fair
idea of how the entrance looks.
We found a woman waiting for us — she had heard
the rattle of our wheels far down the road, and had
hastened from her house near by to earn sixpence by
providing us with candles; and she led the way through
the entrance into the passage beyond. As at Dowth,
it is formed of huge slabs inclined against each other,
ENTRANCE TO NEWGRANGE
THE RUINS OF MELLIFONT
THE YALLEY OF THE BOYNE 547
but here they have given way under the great weight
heaped upon them, and the passage grew lower and
lower, until the woman in front of us was crawling on
her hands and knees. The clergyman, who was behind
her, examined the low passage by the light of his
candle, and then said he didn't think he'd try it.
"Oh, come along, sir/' urged the woman's voice.
" 'Tis only a few yards, and then you can stand again.
If you was a heavy man, now, I wouldn't be advisin'
it; I've seen more than one who had to be pulled out
by his feet; but for a slim man the likes of you sure it
is nothing."
He still held back, so I squeezed past him, and went
down on hands and knees, and crawled slowly forward
in three-legged fashion holding my candle in one hand,
over the strip of carpet which had been laid on the
stones to protect the clothing of visitors. As our
guide had said, the passage soon opened up so that it
was possible to stand upright again. I called back
encouragement to my companion, and he finally crawled
through too ; and then, as I held my candle aloft, I saw,
that we had come out into a great vaulted chamber at
least twenty feet high. Here, as at Dowth, the sides
are formed of mammoth slabs, and the vault of other
slabs laid one upon the other, each row projecting be-
yond the row below until the centre is reached. Here
too there are three recesses; but everything is on a
grander scale than at Dowth, and the ornamentation is
much more elaborate. It consists of intricate and beau-
tifully formed spirals, coils, lozenges and chevrons; and
here, also, the vandal had been at work, scratching his
initials, sometimes even his detested name, upon these
548 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
sacred stones. There was one especially glaring set of
initials right opposite the entrance, deeply and evi-
dently freshly cut, and I asked the woman how such
a thing could happen.
"Ah, sir," she said, "that was done by a young man
who you would never think would be doing such a
thing. He come here one day, not long since, and with
him was a young woman, and they were very quiet and
nice-appearing, so after I had brought them in, I left
them to theirselves, for I had me work to do; but when
I came in later, with another party, that was what I
saw. And I made the vow then that never again would
I be leaving any one alone here, no matter how re-
spectable they might look."
We commended her wisdom, and turned back to an
inspection of the carvings. It was noticeable that
there was no attempt at any general scheme of decora-
tion, for the spirals and coils were scattered here
and there without any reference to each other, some
of them in inaccessible corners which proved they had
been made before the stones were placed in position.
Evidently they had been carved wherever the whim of
the sculptor suggested; and so, in spite of their deli-
cacy and beauty, they are in a way supremely child-
ish.
But there is nothing childish about the tomb itself.
Nobody knows from what forgotten quarry these great
slabs were cut. Wherever it was, they had to be lifted
out and dragged to the top of this hill and set in po-
sition— and many of them weigh more than a hundred
tons. The passage from the central chamber to the
edge of the mound is sixty-two feet long; the mound
THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE 549
itself is eight hundred feet around and fifty high, and
some one has estimated that the stones which compose
it weigh more than a hundred thousand tons.
For whom was it built? Perhaps for Conn, the
Hundred Fighter, for tradition records that he was
buried here, and he was worthy of such a tomb. If it
was for Conn — and of course that is only a guess —
it dates from about 200 A. D., for tradition has it that
it was in 212 that Conn was treacherously slain at
Tara, while preparing for the great festival of the
Druids. Conn's son, Art, was the last of the Pagan
kings to be buried in the Druid fashion, for Art's great
son, Cormac, who came to the throne in 254, chose an-
other sepulchre. He seems to have got some inkling of
Christianity, perhaps from traders from other lands
who visited his court. At any rate, he turned away
from the Druids, and they put a curse upon him and
caused a devil to attack him while at table, so that the
bone of a salmon stuck in his throat and he died. But
with his last breath he forbade his followers to bury
him at Brugh-na-Boinne, in the tumulus with Conn and
the rest, because that was a grave of idolaters ; he wor-
shipped another God who had come out of the East;
and he commanded them to bury him on the hill called
Rosnaree, with his face to the sunrise. They disre-
garded his command, and tried to carry his body across
the Boyne to the tumulus; but the water rose and
snatched the body from them, and carried it to Ros-
naree; and so there it was buried. From Newgrange,
one can see the slope of Rosnaree, just across the river;
but there is nothing to mark the grave of the greatest
of the early kings of Erin.
550 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Round Cormac spring renews her buds ;
In march perpetual by his side,
Down come the earth-fresh April floods,
And up the sea-fresh salmon glide.
And life and time rejoicing run
From age to age their wonted way;
But still he waits the risen Sun,
For still 'tis only dawning Day.
The road to the ruins of the abbey of Mellifont runs
back from the river, up over the hills, past picturesque
villages, through a portion of the Balfour estate, and
then dips down into the valley of the Mattock, on
whose banks a company of Cistercians, who had come
from Clairvaux at the invitation of the Archbishop of
Armagh, chose to build their monastery. They called
it Mellifont — "Honey Fountain" — and the buildings
which they put up were a revelation to the Irish build-
ers, who had been contented with small and unambi-
tious churches, divided only into nave and chancel.
Here at Mellifont was erected a great cruciform church,
with a semi-circular chapel in each transept, as at Clair-
vaux; and to this were added cloister and chapter-
house and refectory, and a most beautiful octagonal
building which was used as a lavatory. It marked, in
a word, the introduction of continental elaborations
and refinements and luxuries into a land where, there-
tofore, austerity had been the ruling influence.
That was in 1 142, and there is not much left now of
that mighty edifice — a portion of the old gate-tower,
some fragments of the church, and a little more than
half of the octagonal lavatory. Five of its eight sides
THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE 551
remain, and they show how beautiful it must once have
been — as you may see from the photograph opposite
page 546. Another thing may be seen in that photo-
graph— the corner of a huge, empty, decaying mill, such
as dot all Ireland, symbols of her ruined industry !
A clean, pleasant-faced old woman, who opened the
gate for us, intimated that we could get lunch at her
cottage, which overlooked the ruins ; but my companion
had brought his lunch in his pocket and presently sat
down to eat it, while I made my way alone up to the
cottage. There was a long table spread in one room,
and while the tea was drawing, I told my hostess and
her daughter about my encounter with the bee, and
asked if I might have some hot water with which to
bathe the sting. They hastened to get me a basin of
steaming water and a clean towel, and then they talked
together a moment in low tones, and then the old
woman came hesitatingly forward.
"If you please, sir," she said, "I have often been
told that with a sting or bite or anything of the sort a
little blueing in the water works wonders, and indeed
I have tried it myself, and have found it very good.
Would your honour be trying it, now, if I would get
my blueing bag*?"
"Why of course I would !" I cried; "and thank you a
thousand times for thinking of it !"
Whereupon, her face beaming, she snatched the blue-
ing bag from her daughter, who had it ready, and gave
it to me, and I sloshed it around in the basin until the
water was quite blue, and bathed my face in it; and
whether it was the heat of the water or the blueing I
552 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
don't know, but the sting bothered me very little after
that, except for the swelling, and that was not so bad
as I had feared it would be.
I sat down finally to a delightful lunch of tea and
bread and butter and cold meat and jam; and then I
got out my pipe and joined my hostess on the bench in
front of the house, and her daughter stood in the door
and listened, and we had a long talk. As usual, it was
first about herself, and then about myself. Her hus-
band was dead and she suffered a great deal from rheu-
matism, which seems to be the bane of the Irish; but
she had her little place, glory be to God, and she picked
up a good many shillings in the summer time from visi-
tors to the ruins, though many that came to see them
cared nothing for them nor understood them. Indeed,
many just came and looked at them over the gate, and
then went away again.
And just then I witnessed a remarkable confirmation
of this; for a motor-car, with two men and two or
three women in it, whirled up the road below and
stopped at the gate outside the ruins. My hostess
caught up her keys and started hastily down to open
it, but before she had taken a dozen steps, the man on
the front seat spoke to the chauffeur, and he spun the
car around and in another moment it had disappeared
down the road in a cloud of dust. I confess that I was
hot with anger when my hostess, with a sad little smile,
came back and sat down again beside me, for I felt
somehow as though she had been affronted.
I went back to the ruins presently, and my new friend
came along, finding I was interested, and we spent half
an hour wandering about them, while she pointed out
THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE 553
various details which I might otherwise have missed.
Next to the lavatory, the most interesting feature of
the place is a beautiful pavement of decorated tiles
which is preserved in St. Bernard's chapel. The whole
church was at one time floored with these tiles, and a
few detached ones may still be seen at the base of the
pillars. There also remain many details of sculpture
which show the loving labour lavished on the place
when it was built— the individual work of the artisan,
embodying something of his own soul, which gives
these old churches a life and beauty sadly wanting in
most new ones.
The cemetery is near the bank of the river; but po-
tatoes are raised there now, in a soil made fertile by
royal as well as sacred dust; for here Dervorgilla, the
false wife of Tiernan O'Rourke, chose to be laid to rest,
in the hope, perhaps, that in the crowd of holy abbots
and monks which would rise from this place, she might
slip into heaven unobserved.
Three miles away from Mellifont stand the ruins of
another abbey, centuries older and incomparably greater
in its day — an abbey absolutely Irish, with rude, small
buildings, but with a giant round-tower and two of the
loveliest sculptured crosses in existence on this earth.
Monasterboice it is called — Mainister Buithe, the abbey
of Boetius — and the way thither lies along a pleasant
road, through a wooded valley — which, fertile as it
is, is not without its traces of desolation, for we passed
more than one vast empty mill, falling to decay.
Then, on the slope of a hillside away ahead, we saw
the round tower, or what is left of it, for the top of it
is broken off, struck by lightning, perhaps. But the
554 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
fragment that remains is 1 10 feet high ! And seeing it
thus, across the valley, with the low little church nest-
ling at its base, one is inclined to think that Father
Dempsey was not altogether wrong when he said he
cared nothing about the theories of antiquarians con-
cerning the round towers, for he knew what they were
— the forefingers of the early church pointing us all to
God.
My companion and I were discussing these theories,
when our jarvey saw the opportunity to spring a joke,
which I have since discovered to be a time-honoured
one.
"Your honours are all wrong," ^he said, "if you will
excuse my sayin' so. It has been proved that the round
towers was built by the government."
"Built by the government4?" repeated my compan-
ion. "How can you prove that*?"
"Easy enough, your honour. Seein' they're no man-
ner of use and cost a lot of money, who else could have
built them4?"
And this, I take it, was his revenge for the Boyne
battlefield.
We stopped presently beside a stile leading over the
stone wall at the side of the road, and here there was
waiting another old woman, to unlock the entrance to
the tower. We clambered over the stile and made our
way up through the grass-grown, unkempt graveyard,
first to the tower — one of the mightiest of these monu-
ments of ancient Erin, for it is seventeen yards around
at the base, and tapers gradually toward the top, and
the only entrance is a small doorway six feet above
the ground ; and it takes no great effort of imagination
THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE 555
to fancy the monks clambering wildly up to it, clutch-
ing the treasures of the monastery to their bosoms,
whenever word came that the raiding Danes were in
the neighbourhood. Ladders have been fixed so that
one can climb to the top, but we did not essay them.
No trace remains of the monastic buildings which
clustered at the tower foot; for, unlike those at Melli-
font and in England and on the continent, these were
not wrought of stone, but were mere shacks, as in every
truly Irish abbey, scarcely strong enough to screen from
wind and weather the groups of scholars who gathered
to study here. They lived a strait and austere life,
and the only permanent structures they built were the
churches. Here, as usual, they were small, the largest
one being only forty feet in length ; and the walls that
remain prove how bare and mean they must have looked
beside the carved and columned splendours of Melli-
font.
But Monasterboice has one glory, or rather two,
beside which those that remain at Mellifont are as
nothing ; and these are the huge Celtic crosses, the most
perfect and beautiful in the land. One of them is tall
and slender and the other is short and sturdy, and both
are absolute masterpieces.
The high cross, as the tall one is called, stands near
the tower-foot and close beside the crumbling wall of
one of the old churches. It is twenty-seven feet high,
and is composed of three stones, the shaft, the cross
with its binding circle, and the cap. The shaft, which
is about two feet square and eighteen feet high, is di-
vided into seven compartments on either face, and in
each of them is an elaborately-sculptured representa-
556 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
tion of some Bible scene, usually with three figures.
Although much worn, it is still possible easily to de-
cipher some of them, for there is Eve accepting the
apple from the serpent while Adam looks mildly on,
and here they are fleeing from Paradise before the angel
with the flaming sword, and next Cain is hitting Abel
on the head with a club while a third unidentified per-
son watches the scene without* offering to interfere. At
the crossing there is a splendid crucifixion, with the
usual crowded heaven and hell to left and right; the
binding circle is beautifully ornamented with an inter-
lacing design; and the cap-stone represents one of those
high-pitched cells or churches, such as we saw at Kil-
laloe and Glendalough.
Beautiful as this cross is, it is surpassed by the other
one, Muiredach's Cross, from the inscription about its
base: "A prayer for Muiredach for whom this cross
was made." That inscription gives us its date, at least
within a century, for two Muiredachs were abbots here.
One of them died in 844 and the other in 924, and as
the latter was the richer and more distinguished, it is
presumed that the cross is his. That would make its
age almost exactly ten centuries.
And yet, in spite of those ten centuries, the sculptures
which enrich it from top to bottom are as beautiful
to-day as they ever were. Look at the picture opposite
this page — it is not my picture, though I took one, but
there is an iron fence about the cross now which spoils
every recent photograph — and you will see what a
wonderful thing it is. It is a monolith — one single
stone, fifteen feet high and six feet across the arms —
and every inch of it is covered with ornamentation.
MUIREDACH'S CROSS, MONASTERBOICE
THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE 557
It is the western face the picture shows, with the cruci-
fixion occupying its usual position. Below it are three
panels of extraordinary interest, for they show Irish
warriors and clerics in the costumes of the period, all
of them wearing fierce mustachios. In the upper
panel are three clerics in flowing robes, the central one
giving a book to one of his companions and a staff to the
other; in the central panel are three ecclesiastics each
holding a book; and in the lower panel a cleric in a long
cloak, caught together at the throat with a brooch,
stands staff in hand between two soldiers armed with
Danish swords. At the foot of the shaft two dogs lie
head to head.
On the other side, the central panel shows Christ
sitting in judgment, with a joyous devil kicking a
damned soul into an already-crowded hell. The
method of separating the blessed from the damned is
shown just below, where a figure is carefully weighing
souls in a pair of scales — a subject familiar to every one
who has visited the Gothic cathedrals of France, where
almost invariably a devil is trying to cheat by crouching
below the scales and pulling down one side. The lower
panels in the cross represent the usual Scriptural sub-
jects— the fall of man, the expulsion from Eden, the
adoration of the magi, and so on ; and again at the base
there are two dogs, only this time they are playing, and
one is holding the other by the ear. All of this sculp-
ture is done with spirit, with taste and with fine artistry;
and another glory of the cross is the elaborate tracery
of the side panels, and of the front, back, inside and
outside of the circle. Of this, the photograph gives a
better notion than any description could.
558 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Who was he? Was he sad or glad
Who knew to carve in such a fashion?
Those questions we may never answer. All we can
say certainly is that he was a great artist; and his is the
artist's reward:
But he is dust ; we may not know
His happy or unhappy story:
Nameless, and dead these centuries,
His work outlives him, — there's his glory!
We tore ourselves away at last from the contempla-
tion of this consummate masterpiece, and drove slowly
back to Drogheda, through a beautiful and fertile coun-
try, which, save for the thatched cottages, and gorse-
crowned walls and hedges, did not differ greatly in ap-
pearance from my own. And I was very happy, for
it had been a perfect day. Nowhere else in Ireland is
it possible to crowd so much of loveliness and interest
into so short a space. All unwittingly, I had saved the
best for the last.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE END OF THE PILGRIMAGE
I CAN imagine no greater contrast to the quiet and
peaceful valley of the Boyne than was Belfast that
night. The Orangemen had already begun to cele-
brate King Billy's victory, and were practising for
the great demonstration of the twelfth, when England
was to be shown, once for all and in a manner unmis-
takable, that Ulster was in earnest.
As I came up on the tram from the station, we ran
into a mob of people, marching along in the middle of
the street and yelling at the tops of their voices, and we
had to wait until they had passed. I asked a fellow-
passenger what was going on, and he answered with a
little smile that the Orange societies had all been given
new banners that night and were flinging them to the
breeze for the first time. I asked him who had given
the banners, and he said he didn't know.
At the hotel, I found that Betty had sought the
sanctuary of our room, and was watching the tumult
from the window. She said it reminded her of the
French Revolution, and the comparison was natural
enough. The especial scene she had in mind, I think,
was that draggled procession of shrieking fishwives
which escorted the king and his family in from Ver-
sailles.
I do not know how many Orange societies there are
at Belfast, but we saw at least a dozen march past
559
560 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
that night, each of them headed by a band or drum-
corps, and each with a bright new Orange banner
flaunting proudly in the breeze. Each banner bore a
painted representation of some Orange victory; King
Billy on his white horse fording the Boyne being a
favourite subject; and the banners were very large and
fringed with gold lace and most expensive-looking;
and before them and beside them and behind them
trailed a mob of shrieking girls and women and raga-
muffin boys, locked arm and arm half across the street,
breaking into a clumsy dance now and then, or shout-
ing the lines of some Orange ditty. There were many
men in line, marching along more or less soberly; but
these bacchantes outnumbered them two to one. They
blocked the street from side to side, stopped traffic,
and conducted themselves as though they had suddenly
gone mad.
Presently all the societies, which had been collect-
ing at some rendezvous, marched back together, with
the mob augmented a hundred-fold, so that, looking
down from our window, we could see nothing but a
mass of heads filling the street from side to side —
thousands and thousands of women and girls and boys,
all vociferous with a frenzied intoxication — and in the
midst of them the thin stream of Orangemen trudging
along behind their banners.
I went down into the street to view this demonstra-
tion more closely, for it was evident that here at last
was the spirit of Ulster unveiled for all to see; but at
close quarters much of its impressiveness vanished, for
the mob was composed largely of boys and girls out
for a good time, and rejoicing in the unaccustomed
THE END OF THE PILGRIMAGE 561
privilege of yelling and hooting to their hearts' con-
tent. A few policemen would have been quite capable
of dealing with that portion of it. But the men
marching grimly along behind their banners were of
different stuff; they were ready, apparently, for any
emergency, ready for a holy war; and I wondered if
their leaders, who had sown the wind so blithely as
part of the game of politics, were quite prepared to
reap the whirlwind which might follow.
A man with whom I fell into talk said there would
be a procession like this every evening until the twelfth;
but I should think the drummers would be exhausted
long before that. I have described the contortions of
the Dublin drummers, but they are nowhere as com-
pared with the drummers of Belfast. And, though
about a fourth of Belfast's population is Catholic, you
would never have suspected it that night, for there
was no disorder of any kind, except the wild disorder
of the Orangemen and their adherents. I suspect that,
in Belfast, wise Catholics spend the early evenings of
July at home.
We went out, next morning, to Ardoyne village, to
see one of the few establishments where linen is still
woven by hand. A beautiful old factory it is, with
the work-rooms grouped around an open court which
reminded us of the Plantin-Moretus at Antwerp; and
the Scotchman in charge of it took us through from
top to bottom. I have forgotten how many looms there
are — some thirty or forty; and it was most interesting
to watch the weavers as they shot the shuttle swiftly
back and forth with one hand and worked the heavy
562 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
beam with the other, while with their feet they con-
trolled the pattern. Nearly all the weaveis were old
men, and our guide told us it was growing more and
more difficult to replace them, because hand-weaving
had been so largely displaced by machine-work that it
was rapidly becoming a lost art. Few young men were
willing to undertake the long apprenticeship which was
necessary before they could become expert weavers, and
he foresaw the time when hand-weaving would cease
altogether.
Then we went upstairs, where the pattern mechan-
ism is mounted above each loom; and though I under-
stood it, in a way, after long and careful explanation,
I am quite incapable of explaining it to anybody else,
except to say that the threads which run down to the
loom below are governed by a lot of stiff cards laced
together into a long roll, and cut with many perfora-
tions, so that the roll looks something like the music-
rolls used in mechanical piano-players.
Last of all we were shown some of the finished
product, and very beautiful it was, strong as iron —
far stronger than machine-woven linen, for the shuttle
can be thrown by hand more often to the inch than is
possible by machine; and some of the patterns, too,
were very lovely; one, in especial, from the Book of
Kells, the interwoven Celtic ornamentation, the symbol
of eternity.
Of course we talked about Home Rule, and our
Scotch host, who was evidently a devoted Orangeman,,
was very certain Ulster would fight before she would
acquiesce. If the fight went against her, he prophesied
that no Protestant industry which could get out of
THE END OF THE PILGRIMAGE 563
Ireland would stay to be taxed out of existence by a
Dublin Parliament, and he said that many of the great
factories had already secured options on English sites,
and were prepared to move at any time.
I remarked that it seemed to me the wiser plan
would be to wait and see how Home Rule worked be-
fore plunging into revolution; then, if it was found
that Ulster was really oppressed, it would be time
enough for her army to take the field. And I told him
something of what I had seen and heard in the south
and west of Ireland — that, among all the people I had
talked with, not one had expressed himself with any
bitterness toward Ulster, and that many had said
frankly that the leaders of the Irish people would be
largely Protestant in the future, just as they had been
in the past. But he was unconvinced, and very gloomy
over the outlook.
We came away finally, and took a last look about
Belfast — at the busy streets, the bright shops, the hum-
ming factories, the clattering foundries; and then the
hour of departure came. The jarvey who drove us to
the boat was a jovial, loquacious son of the Church,
with good-natured laughter for Orange excesses.
"Why should we Catholics interfere wid them?" he
asked. "We'd only be gettin' our heads broke, and
all the papers would be full of the riots in Ulster.
Sure, haven't I seen them before this treatin' a small
fight at the corner as though it was a revolution"? No,
no; we'll just stay quiet and let them have their fun.
It does good to them and no harm to us. They'll set-
tle down again when the Home Rule bill is passed,
and then we'll be Irishmen all, please God!"
564 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
From the bottom of my heart I said I hoped so. In-
deed, I can think of no better watch-word to replace
"No Surrender!" and curses on King Billy and the
Pope than "Irishmen All!"
There are few busier ports than Belfast, and we
made our way down to the quay through a tangle of
drays that would have done no discredit to the New
York water-front; and at last we found our boat and
got aboard. And presently the ropes were cast off,
and we steamed slowly down the river, between long
lines of lofty scaffolding shrouding the hulls of scores
of mighty ships, one day to play their part in the com-
merce of the world.
And then we were in Belfast Lough, with the grim
keep of Carrickfergus looming on the western shore;
and then the bay widened, the shores dropped away,
and we headed out across the white-capped waters of
the Irish Sea. For long and long in the distance, we
could see the purple masses of the Antrim hills, grow-
ing fainter and ever fainter, until at last they merged
into the purple of the western sky. And so we looked
our last upon the Island of the Saints.
THE END
INDEX
INDEX
Abbeys, 21-22, 99-102, 108-109,
110-112, 193-196, 199, 229-233,
266, 269-271, 280, 285-291, 346-
347, 379-382, 405, 422-423, 442-
443, 550-558
Adare, 226-236
Aghadoe, 180, 198-200, 201
Aideen, 23
Aileach, 465, 480
Allen, Hilfof, 93
Allen, Lough, 242
Allingham, William, 428-430
Allua, Lough, 141, 144
America, Irish Idea of, 24, 170-
174
Annals of the Four Masters,
The, 442, 465
Antrim, County, 489, 521, 530,
534, 564
Antrim, Earl of, 489, 495-496
Antrim, Glens of, 491, 495, 499
Arbutus Island, 186
Archdeckan, John, 136
Architecture, see Irish Archi-
tecture
Ardilaun, Lord, see Guinness
Ardoyne, 561-563
Armada, The, 416, 485
Armagh, 103, 536, 550
Arran, Earl of, 441
Art, see Irish Art
Ashford House, 347-348
Assaroe, Abbey, 422-423, 429
Asylums, 180, 240, 266, 375, 526
Athenry, 266, 268-272, 292
Athlone, 207, 209, 252, 259, 265,
272-285, 292, 390, 454, 456
Auburn, see Lissoy
Avoca, Vale of, 61
Avonbeg, The, 60
Avonmore, The, 59, 60
Baedeker, Karl, 385
Baird, Sir David, 509-510
Baker, Henry, 450, 460
Balbriggan, 85
Ballina, 351
Ballintoy, 487
Ballintra, The, 432
Ballycastle, 486, 489-490
Ballysadare, 377
Ballyshannon, 419-431, 445
Balqr of the Evil Eye, 384
Banishment to Connaught, The,
331-333
Bank of Ireland, 13
Bann, The, 447, 474, 536
Bantry Bay, 139, 151, 159
Barnesmore, Gap of, 444
Beggars, loo-uo, 144, 173-174,
183-184, 186, 283-284, 310, 364,
375, 412, 426-427
Belfast, 89, 205, 427, 469, 479,
501, 502, 503-519, 530, 532-533,
534, 535, 536, 559-564
Belfast Lough, 502, 564
Bird Hill, 251
Birmingham, George A, see
Hannay, J. A.
Black Lough, 184
Black Valley, The, 185
Blackrock, 100
Blackwater, The, 138, 164, 203
Blarney Castle, 115-127, 190,
205
Bogs, 93, 267-268, 315-316, 370,
490-491
Book of Kells, see Kells
Boru, Brian, see Brian Boru
Boycott, Captain Charles C, 346
Boyd, Hugh, 489-490
Boyne, The, 85, 221, 454, 537,
567
538-540, 549, 559
Boyne, Battle of the, 31, 85,
453-454, 460, 534, 538-540
Bray, 59
274,
INDEX
Breffni, Prince of, see O'Rourke,
Tiernan
Brian Boru, 18-20, 34, 41, 100,
103, 107, 204, 208, 251-259, 273,
288, 427
Bridge End, 461, 462
Brigid, see St. Brigid
Brooke, Sir Basil, 439-441
Brown Valley, The, 165
Bruce, Edward, 208, 269, 501,
502, 537
Brugh-na-Boinne, 540-550
Bundoran, 405, 412-419
Burgo, Richard de, 271, 293, 354,
447
Burial, Ancient Irish, 38, 540-
Bushmills, 480
Cairns, 345-346, 377-378, 384,
392, 417, 536, .540-550
Callanan, Jeremiah, 149
Cannera, 248
Cape Clear, 161
Cappoquin, 138
Car, see Jaunting-car
Carleton, Will, 421
Carlingford, 21, 479
Carnach, Conal, 377
Carnlough, 500-501
Carrick-a-Rede, 487-488
Carrickfergus, 502, 564
Carrowmore, 384, 385
Carson, Sir Edward, 469, 471
Casey, John Keegan, 278-279
Cashel, Rock of, 49, 94, 102-112,
148, 178, 229, 253, 254, 279
Cashels, 103, 406-408, 461, 462-
467, 536
Castlebar, 375
Castleconnell, 242-251, 263-264
Castlemaine, 191
Castles, 116-125, 207, 230-234,
243, 265, 268-269, 283-285, 353-
3*4, 402-403, 438-441, 479-480
Catholic Emancipation, 218, 460
Cavan, 545
Celbridge, 92
Celtchair, 524
Celtic Crosses, see Crosses
Charapneys, Arthur, no
Charles I, 86, 441, 447, 449
Charles II, 86, 210, 448
Charleville, 113-114, 461
Children, 32, 98, 106, 109-110,
320-321, 358-360
Church of Ireland, 30, 75, 411
Churches, 21-22, 30-32, 34-37,
87, 131-132, 138, 200, 206, 213,
233-234, 255-257, 303, 459-460,
519-524
Garan, see St. Kieran
Civilization, Ancient Irish, see
Irish Civilization, Ancient
Claddagh, The, 298-300
Clandonnell, see MacDonnell
Clanricarde, Earls of, 269
Clara, Vale of, 60
Clare, Abbey, 266
Clare, Richard de, see Strong-
bow
Clare, County, 209, 258, 265-266
Claremorris, 375-377, 535
Cleeve, The Messrs., 215, 236-
239
Clew Bay, 371-372
Clifden, 324-325, 331, 370
Climate, 28, 60, 128, 161-162, 179,
358, 398, 415
Clonard, 406
Clonbur, 345
Clondalkin, 42-57, 67, 75, 92
Clonmacnoise, 274, 285-291
Clonmell, Lord, 16
Clontarf, 18-20, 107, 251, 252,
254, 288
Cloyne, 138
Coleraine, 447, 474-476
Colleen Bawn, 417, 420-422
Collooney, 377
Colman, Abbot, 289
Colman's Leap, 187
Columba, see St. Columba
Cong, 339, 345, 350-352, 354, 358
Cong, Abbey of, 39, 290, 346-
348
Cong, Cross of, 26, 37, 39-40,
100, 204, 346
Congested Districts Board, 331-
336
Conn the Hundred Fighter, 204,
^,291, 549
Conn, Lough, 351
INDEX
569
Connaught, 17, 19, 27, 178, 258,
267, 269, 274, 293, 306, 314-369,
Connell of the Hy-Nial, 427-
428,465
Connemara, 200, 292, 293, 300,
3H-336, 346, 414, 463. 490
Connemara Marble, 306, 316-318
Constabulary, see Royal Irish
Constabulary
Convent Schools, 133-134, 163
Cook's Tours, 177-178, 182, 382-
383
Cork, 114-116, 128-138, 139,
147, 149, 151, 174, 205, 214,
331, 352, 454
Cork, County, 19, 162
Cork, Earl of, 32
Cormac, see MacArt or Mac-
Carthy
Cormac's Chapel, 107-108, 148
Cor rib, Lough, 39, 304, 314, 346,
347, 348, 350, 3Si, 352-354
Corrib, River, 298, 300, 303, 314,
347
Cottages, 88, 141-144, 181, 195,
225-226, 320-321, 354-355, 362-
363, 384-385, 497
Craigmore, 536
Cratloe, 265
Crime, 55-56, 327-328, 344
Croagh Patrick, 372-373
Cromlechs, 23, 384, 385, 386, 388-
392, 417
Cromwell, Oliver, 76, 86-87, 105,
116, 118, 190, 208, 231, 270,
293, 331-332, 448, 470, 538
Cross of Cong, see Cong, Cross
of
Crosses, Celtic, 37, 288-289, 351-
352, 523, 553-558
Crowe, O'Brien, 351-352
Cuchulain, 377, 537
Cullen, Joe, 434-436
Culmore, 473
Curran, John Philpot, 134
Cushendall, 490, 492, 495, 496,
498-500
Cushendun, 491
Dalcassians, 253
Danes, The 17, 18-20, 22, 33, 34,
44, 50, 65, 66, 130, 147, 199,
204, 207, 242, 252-254, 287-
288, 446-447, 465, 522, 536, 541,
542, 555
Dargle, The, 59
Dark Rosaleen, 14-15
Darrow, Book of, 41
Day, Length of Irish, 23, 338,
456-457, 491-492
De Courcy, John, 522-523
De Dananns, The, 346, 384
De Lacy, Hugh, 545
De Vere, Aubrey, 259
Derg, Lough, 207, 219, 242, 252,
258-259, 406, 413
Derry, 76, 397, 443, 446-461, 466,
467-474, 535, 539
Derryclare, 319
Dervorgilla, 35, 219-221, 402,
405-406, 553
Devil's Bit, The, 94, 106
Devil's Mother Mountain, 340
Diarmuid, 389-391
Dillisk, 296-297, 299
Dollard, James B., 436
Donegal, 413, 431, 432-443, 465
Donegal, County, 388, 427, 428,
440, 444, 466, 486
Donnybrook, 470
Doon, Rock of, 440
Doonas, Falls of, 245-246
Down, County, 519, 530, 536
Downpatrick, 519-532
Dowth, 85, 534, 540-544, 546, 547
Dowth Castle, 544-545
Drogheda, 85-89, 449, 450, 454,
534, 537, 558
Dromahair, 403-406, 488
Druids, The, 44, 542, 543-544,
549
Drummers, 24-25, 561
Dublin, 4-41, 56, 58, 59, 85, 86,
89, 92, 102, 104, 114, 115, 128,
137, 173, 174, 193, 205, 229, 230,
418, 439, 446, 453, 454, 5O3, 53 1,
534, 535, 537, 538, 539, 561
Dublin Bay, 17-18, 21
Dublin Castle, 18, 32, 33-34, 74,
327
Dundalk, 537, 538
570
INDEX
Dunleary, 137
Dunloe, Gap of, 165, 177, 181-
186, 192, 201
Dunluce Castle, 479-48o, 485,
488
Dunraven, Earl of, 229, 233-234
Eask, Lough, 444
Eask, River, 438, 444
Education, see Schools
Emigration, 131, 138, 33<>33i,
418-419- 443-444
Ennis, 265-266
Enniskillen, 412-413, 449, 453
Episcopal Church, see Church of
Ireland
Erne, Lough, 413, 414, 420, 427
Erne, River, 414, 417-418, 420,
428-431
Established Church, see Church
of Ireland
Eugenius, see St. Eugenius
Eyre, Jane, 303
Famine, 93, i?i, 195, 351
Faughart, 501, 537
Ffolliotts, The, 417, 420-422
Fianna, The, 23, 106, 390, 492
Fin Barre, see St. Fin Barre
Fingalla, 443
Finn MacCool, 106-107, 184, 204,
275, 389-391, 483-484, 492
Firbolgs, The, 299-300, 346, 431
Fishing, 169, 178-179, 191, 242-
245, 263-264, 303-306, 326, 431
Fitzgibbon, Lord, 237
Fitzstephen, James Lynch, 301-
303
Flann, High King of Erin, 288-
289, 290
Flax, 445, 488, 519, 535
Flesk, The, 167, 203
Flight of the Earls, The, 440,
447
Flowers, 43, 57, 60, 152, 154, 164-
165, 418
Fogha, Fergus, 536
Formorians, The, 384
Foyle, Lough, 466, 472
Foyle, River, 446, 447
Fuchsias, 152-153, 326, 497
Funerals, 194-195
Gaelic, 161, 242, 363, 487, 489
Gaels, The, 293, 300, 384, 466,
540-544
Galtees, The, 106, 113
Galway, 102, 292-313, 314, 317,
331, 3Si, 352, 445, 455
Game Preserves, 61, 345, 348-
349
George II, 14, 105
George IV, 137
George V, 396, 456
Geraldines, see Kildare, Earls of
Giant's Causeway, The, 477, 480-
486
Gill, Lough, 219-220, 384, 398-
412, 486, 494
Ginkle, Gen. Godert de, 209, 243,
274, 285
Glenaan, 491, 492-496
Glenariff, Vale of, 500
Glenarm, 501
Glendalough, 59, 62-84, 133, 248,
286, 556
Glendining Monument, The, 370-
371, 372, 375
Glendun, 491
Glenealy, 62
Glengarriff, 139, 152-162, 174,
326, 382
Goldsmith, Oliver, 274-279
Goold's Cross, 105, 113
Gougane Barra, 139, 145-149
Government, The, 34, 54-55, 74,
79, 104, 327-3.28, 351, 372
Grainan of Aileach, The, 461,
462-467
Grainne, 107, 389-391
Grattan, Henry, n
Graves, Alfred Perceval, 432-
,,433.
Grazing, 90-91, 93, 335, 419
Griffin, Gerald, 213
Guinness, Sir Benjamin, 30, 344,
345, 346, 347-349
Gwynne, Stephen, no, 391, 437
Hannay, J. A., 170, 372, 373-374
Heather, 60, 399, 400, 402
Hen Castle, 353-354
Henry II, 33
Henry VII, 229
Henry VIII, 30, 230, 524
INDEX
Hill of Howth, see Howth
Hinkson, Katherine Tynan, 57
Holy Cross Abbey, 98-102, 178,
440
Holy Wells, 147-148, 245-249,
262, 365, 410-411, 526-531
Home Rule, 12, 20, 56, 77, 82,
83, 89-91, 155-157, 216-218, 236,
404, 419, 467-469, 498, 505-5IO.
514-516, 529-530, 559-564
Hore Abbey, 110-112
Hospitality, 41, 45-46, 50-57, 95"
96, no, 154-155, 244, 305-309,
354-355, 551-552
Howth, 4, 16-18, 20-23
Howth, Lord, 22-23
Hy Many. 19
Hy-Nial, see Nial, Council,
Owen
Idioms, 46, 66-67, 368-369
Inagh, 319
Inchigeelagh, 141-144
Indian Corn, I54-J55, 260, 309
Industrial Depression, 54-55, 212-
213, 215-216, 371-372, 404-405,
419, 422-424, 489-490
Inebriety, 5-6, 33, 114, 196-197,
306-307
Inisfallen, 189, 199
Inishowen, 466, 474
Inis-Saimer, 431
Inns, 66-67, 94-98, 164-166, 174-
175, 224, 228-229, 242-244, 315,
322, 326, 346, 37i, 378-379, 415-
416, 433-434, 480-481
Inny, The, 278
Insurance, Workman's, 52, 84,
222-223
Ireland's Eye, 21
Ireton, Gen. Henry, 208
Irish Architecture, 21-22, 101,
103, 107-108, ni-112, 193-196,
199, 231-233, 255-257, 261, 270-
271, 285-290, 307-308
Irish Art, 26, 37-41, 288-289, 543,
547-548, 555-558
Irish Brigade, The, 2IO
Irish Character, 3, 37, 98, 114,
159-161, 196-197, 214-215, 386-
389, 393-396, 404, 458-459, 470-
47i, 475, 532
Irish' Civilization, Ancient, 18,
J9, 38, 99-100, 204, 286-290,
525-526
Irish Girls, 41, 115, 124, 163-164,
, 214-215, 315, 323-324
Irish Sea, i, 21, 35, 59, 220, 495,
500, 501, 564
Jails, 55-56, 240, 266, 375, 473,
James II, 36, 208, 210, 449-455,
T 534, 538-540
Jarvey, The, 29-30, 88, 129, 168,
274-275, 398, 399, 486, 488-489,
Soo, 563
Jaunting-Car, The, 8, 26-30, 60,
88, 98, 128-130, 400, 486
Johnson, Mrs. Hester, 30-31
Johnson, Lionel, 221, 495
Jones, John Paul, 502
Joyce's Country, 79, 339-357
Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan, 466
Kearney, Kate, 181-182
Keimaneigh, Pass of, 150-151
Kells, Book of, 26, 37, 40-41, 193,
204
Kenmare, 163, 200
Kenmare, Earl of, 198
Kenmare, River, 164, 384
Kenny, Donal, 278-279
Kerry, County, 19, 162, 197
Kevin, see St. Kevin
Kieran, see St. Kieran
Kilcrea Abbey, 140
Kildare, 522
Kildare, Curragh of, 89, 92-93
Kildare, Earls of, 229-231
Killaloe, 207, 242, 248, 250 251-
263, 286, 556
Killarney, 138, 139, 165-203, 242,
319, 412, 481
Killary Bay, 326, 369
Killone Abbey, 266
Kilpatrick, 521
Kincora, 251-263, 273
Kingstown, 4, 21
Kinsale, 102, 440, 454
Knocknarea, 377-378, 384, 385,
392
Knocktow, 230
Kylemore, Pass of, 326
572
INDEX
Labour Problem, 23-25, 54-55,
61-62, 83-84, 90-91, 281, 330-
331, 332-333, 349-350, 468
Labourers' Cottages, 342, 408-
410
Lace-making, 133-134, 163, 239
Land League, The, 344, 346, 352,
Land Problem, 90-91, 266-267,
330-336, 340-342, 348-350, 353
Landlords, 332-333, 334-336, 345,
349-350, 529
Larne, 499, SGI, 502
Layd Church, 499
Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis, The, 384,
398-402, 405
Leane, Lough, 165
Lee, The, 130, 132, 140, 141, 144,
146
Leenane, 325, 326-338, 339, 352,
357, 358-369, 445
Legends, 48-49, 62-65, 68-69, 7O-
71, 92-93, 94, 106-107, 117, 120,
126, 136, 146-147, 159-162, 184-
185, 187, 188, 190, 194, 199,
219-221, 246-247, 248-249, 275,
286-291, 292-293, 301-303, 346,
351-352, 353-354, 372-373, 377-
378, 389-391, 413, 465-466, 483-
484, 485, 490, 494-495, 521-522,
549
Leinster, Province, 19
Letterfrank, 326
Lever, Charles, 214, 395, 476
Liffey, The, 5, 18, 33, 59
Limerick, 76, 106, 204-227, 236-
242, 243, 251, 252, 254, 264, 265,
274, 402, 454, 531
Limerick, Treaty of, 208-210
Limerick Junction, 113, 204, 254
Limericks, 240
Linen, 518, 519, 561-563
Lir, Children of, 490
Lisbun, 535
Lissoughter, 306, 315-320
Lissov, 274-279
Lloyd-George, David, 158-159,
474
Loe, The, 184
Londonderry, see Derry
Lord of the Isles, The, 439, 480
Loughs, see name of each
Lover, Samuel, 214
Loyalty, 396-397, 456, 532-533
Ludlow, Gen. Edmund, 190-191
Lundy, Robert, 450, 452
Lurgan, 535
Lynch, James, 301-303
Lyons Hill, 92
Mac Art, Cormac, 106-108, 389,
549-550
MacCarthy, Cormac, 103, 116-
117, 126, 204
McCarthy, Denis A., 94
McCarthy, D«rmot, 117
MacCool or MacCumhal, Finn,
see Finn MacCool
MacDonnell, Angus, 480
MacDonnell, Innen Dhu, 439
MacDonnells, The, 491, 499, 502
Macgillicuddy's Reeks, 165, 184,
185
McKepwn, R. H., 326-327, 368
MacLiag, 251-252
MacMurrough, Dermot, 35, 219-
221, 402
MacNatfraich, ^Engus, 49, 107
Maam, 354-355
Maamturk Mountains, 314, 319
Macroom, 139, 140, 382
Magrath, Milar, 104
Mahon, King of Munster, 253-
254
Mahony, Francis Sylvester
(Father Prout), 118, 132, 136
Mail, 330, 337-338, 496-497
Mallow, 204
Mangan, James Clarence, 14-15,
251
Marconi, Guglielmo, 325
Margy, The, 490
Markets, 98, 200, 294-297, 311
Marriage Contract, 54, 395-396
Mask, Lough, 339, 343-345, 346,
347, 350, .IS i, 384
Matthew, Father, 206
Mattock, The, 550
Maynooth, 3
Mayo, County, 375, 377
Meath, 19, 543
Meave, 377-378, 392
Meeting of the Waters, The, 60-
61
INDEX
573
Mellifont, 85, 178, 221, 534, 538,
_ 550-553
Milcho, 521
Milesians, The, see Gaels
Milliken, Richard, 116, 118
Minogue, John, 105-111, 173, 279
Moira, 535
Molua, see St. Molua
Monasterboice, 37, 85, 88, 178,
534, 538, 553-558
Monasteries, 18, 19, 21-22, 65-66,
99-102, 103, 108-109, 110-112,
230-234, 268-271, 285-291, 379-
382
Monastic Schools, 19, 38, 104,
268-269, 285-291
Monk, Gen. George, 536
Monkey Trees, 201-202
Monkstown, 136
Moore, George, 374, 543
Moore, Thomas, 14, 19, 60-61,
63-64, 219-220, 221, 248, 406
Mount Melleray, 138
Mountmorris, Lord, 352
Mourne, Lough, 445
Mourne Mountains, 524, 536
Moytura, 346, 384
Moytura, Northern, 384
Muckross Abbey, 193-196,231-232
Muckross Lake, 165, 201
Muiredach, 556
Munster, 19, 20, 103, 107, 116,
253, 254, 465
Murray, Adam, 450, 460
Murray's Guidebook, 348, 375,
381, 385, 399, 455-456, 461, 502,
525, 526
Nafooey, Lough, 343
Nally, John, 278
National Education Board, The,
74-82
National Gallery of Ireland,
The, 15-16
National Museum of Science
and Art, The, 15, 37-40, 373
National Schools, see Schools
National University of Ireland,
The, 306-307
Nationalists, see Home Rule
Nelson, Horatio, 6, 8, 12, 16
Netterville Institution, The, 545
Newgrange, 85, 534, 546-55O
. Newry, 536
Nial Gary, 439-440, 442
Nial of the Nine Hostages, 427,
464
Normans, The, 22-23, 33, 35, 3§,
65, 130, 199, 207, 20)8, 220-221,
274, 288, 293, 354, 379-382, 501,
520, 536
O'Brien, Donall, 206, 255
O'Brien, Murtagh, 256, 465
O'Brien, Smith, n
O'Cahans, The, 476, 480
O'Connell, Daniel, 10, 12, 20, 92,
115, 205, 217, 218, 460
O'Conor, Rory, 39, 290
O'Conor, Turlough, 39, 40, 220
O'Dee, Bishop, 306-307, 352
O'Dohertys, The, 473, 476
O'Donaghue, The, 187, 188, 190
O'Donnell, Hugh, 439
O'Donnell, Hugh Roe, 438, 443
O'Donnell, Red Hugh, 102, 269,
379, 438-440, 442
O'Donnell, Rory, 440
O'Donnells, The, 428, 432, 438-
439, 480
O'Duffy, Gilbert and Nicol, 351
O'Echon, Maelisu MacBraddan,
40
O'Flaherty, Rory, 325
O'Flaherty, The, 293, 314, 339,
353-354
O'Gillan, Enoch, 290
O'Hanlon, Redmond, 536
O'Hurley, Dermot, 104
O'Malleys, The, 79, 344, 353-354
O'Neill, Hugh, 208
O'Neill, Owen Roe, 86
O'Neill, Shane, 480
O'Neills, The, 428, 440
O'Reilly, John Boyle, 544-S41?
O'Reilly, William DavidT545
O'Rourke, Tiernan, 35, 219-221,
405-406, 553
O'Rourke's Table, 403
O'Sullivan's Punchbowl, 188
Old Age Pensions, see Pensions
Ormonde, Earl of, 100
Orangemen, 197, 458, 469, 470-
574
INDEX
471, 475, 506-508, 5", 5H-5I6,
528, 530, 534, 559-504
Oscar, 23, 390
Ossian, 23, 106, 204, 221, 390,
492-495
Oughterard, 323
Owen of the Hy-Nial, 427-428,
464, 465-466, 479-48o
Owengarriff, The, 201
Parades, 23-24, 457, 504, 5O5, 559-
560
Parknasilla, 164, 416
Parnell, Charles Stewart, 12, 60,
217-219
Patrick, see St. Patrick
Peat, see Turf
Pembroke, Earl of, see Strong-
bow
Pensions, 52-54, 196-197, 223
Perrot, Sir John, 480
Pettigoe, 413
Plantation of Ulster, The, 447-
448, 476
Pleaskin, 485-486
Poor Relief, 363-368
Portadown, 535, 536
Portrush, 473, 476-477
Port Stewart, 476
Potheen, 181-182, 184
Presbyterians, 75, 486, 506-509,
510-511
Price, Archbishop, 104-105
Priests, 1-3, 56-57, 74-75, 77, 89,
155-161, 217, 305-309, 395
Prout, Father, see Mahony,
Francis Sylvester
Queen's College, Galway, 306-
307, 352
Queenstown, 115, 136, 137, 138
Quoile, The, 519, 524 525
Race-meetings, 113-114
Rafferty, Mr., 316-318
Railroads, 42-43, 59, 88-89, 250,
272-273, 415-416, 461-462, 535-
5.36
Rain, 28, 66-67, 73, m, 161-162,
179, 180-183, 185, 192, 224, 227,
' 38, 431-432
, Sir Walter, 16
Rathdrum, 59, 60, 84
Rathlin Island, 489
Raths, 103, 258, 407, 519, 522,
524-526
Recess, 315-325, 416
Red Bay, 500
Red Branch Knights, 524, 537
Red Hugh, 423
Redmond, John, 471
Ree, Lough, 207, 273, 275, 279,
286, 377
Reilly, Willy, 180-181, 417, 420-
422
Religion, 75-77, 208-210, 216-217,
257-258, 332-333- 447-455, 458-
459, 467-471, 475, 506-509, sio-
51 1, 520-521, 539
Repartee, 58, 68, 278, 500, 539,
Roads, 28, 61-62, 158-159
Rock of Cashel, see Cashel
Roe, Henry, 35
Rolleston, T. W., 490
Roman Catholic Church, The,
30, 74-75, 155, 508-509, 520-521
Roscommon, 279
Rosnaree, 549-550
Ross Castle, 177, 186, 190-191
Rosshill, 345
Ross Island, 188-189
Round Towers, 42, 43-45, 65, 83,
103, 109, 109, 288, 553-555
Royal Irish Constabulary, The,
7, 10, 17, 88, 157, 184, 327-329
Ruins, 21-22, 65, 73, 76, 83, 99-
112, 115-125, 193-196, 198-200,
229-234, 265-266, 268-271, 285-
290, 346-347, 353-354, 379-382,
402-403, 422-423, 438-441, 442-
443, 479-48o, 499, 536, 550-558
St. Anne Shandon, 131-132
St. Brigid, 92-93, 108, 446, 519,
520, 522, 540
St. Columba, 436, 446, 460, 465,
5 19, -520, 522
St. Eugemus, 62
St. Fin Barre, 130, 139, 145-149
St. Finian the Leper, 199
St. Kevin, 62-84, 119, 248
St. Kieran, 286-291
INDEX
575.
St. Mary's Abbey, Howth, 21-22,
230
St. Molua, 259-262, 286
St. Patrick, 30, 34, 38, 39, 48-49,
02, 103, 107, 108, 115, 146, 150,
184, 221, 286, 372, 410, 427, 446,
465, 495, Si9, 520-522, 528, 540,
543"544
St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin,
26, 30-32, 35
St. Patrick's Purgatory, 219, 413
414
St. Petroc, 62
St. Senan, 245-249, 410
Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 12
Salthill, 309, 311-313
Sarsfield, Patrick, 204, 207, 208-
210, 213-214, 237, 258-259, 454, J
539 *«
Saul, 521-522
Scarva, 536
Scattery Island, 248-249
Scenery, 42, 43, 59, 60^62, 65-66,
92-94, 99, 106-107, 113, 116,
145-146, 150-152, 162-166, 183-
187, 195-196, 243, 266-267, 3H-
322, 325-326, 343-345, 354, 398-
399, 417, 444-445, 466-467, 479,
482-486, 490-492, 535-537
Schpmberg, Gen. Frederick Her-
man, 31-32, 502, 538
Schoolbooks, 359, 360-362
Schools, 46-47, 74-82, 358-363
Scotch-Irish, The, 458-459, 479-
480, 487, 520, 562-563
Shamrock, The, 46, 47-50, 67,
103, 107, 498
Shannon, The, 106, 205, 207-208,
212-213, 215, 227, 236-237, 240,
242-265, 273, 284, 285, 332, 333,
390, 448
Sheela-na-gig, The, 279-283
Sheen, The, 162
Shrines, see Holy Wells
Side-car, see Jaunting-car
Silken Thomas, see Kildare,
Earls of
Slane, 538, 543-544
Slemish, 521
Slievenamon, 94, 106-107, 389
Sligo, 378-385, 392, 396, 406, 411-
412, 421, 442
Sligo, County, 377, 428
Sligo, O'Conor, 380
Slums, 9, 32-33, 132, 210-214
Smoking, 2-3, 194-195
Snakes, ill, 146, 184-185, 372-
373
Statues, 10, 15, 35-36, 213-214
Stella, see Johnson, Mrs. Hester
Stone Circles, 384, 389, 392, 406-
408, 492, 494-495, 546
Strabane, 445-446, 450
Strangford, Lough, 521
Stranorlar, 445
Stranrear, 501
Strongbow, 26, 33, 34, 35-36, 220-
221, 288, 447
Struell, 526-531
Suir, The, 99
Sullivan, Timothy, 221-222
Swift, Jonathan, 26, 30-32, 34,
92
Swilly, Lough, 427, 461, 466
Tara, 41, 107, 389, 390, 540, 543-
544, 549
Taylor, Jeremy, 524
Tenements, 9, 13, 33, 210-214
Thomond, 251
Thomond, Earl of, 206, 265
Thurles, 94-99, 174
Tillage, 140, 266-267, 340-342
Timony, John, 441-442
Tipperary, Vale of, 90, 93-94,
103, 106, 113, 204
Tomies, The, 184
Tone, Theobald Wolfe, 509
Tonna, Charlotte, 453
Tore Cascade, 201-202
Trams, 16, 17, 28, 309-310
Trinity College, 10, 14, 40-41,
193. 307
Tristram, Sir Almencus, 22-23
Tuam, 2
Tullymongan, 545
Turf, 98, 142, 267-268, 300-301,
355-357, 3.88, 490-491, 529
Twelve Pins of Bunnabeola,
The, 318, 319, 325
Tyrconnell, Earl of, 423, 440, 454
Tyrconnell, Lady, 539
576
INDEX
Tyrconnel, Province, 427-428,
447
Tyrone, 427-428, 446, 447, 464,
465, 479
Ulster, 36, 86, 87, 155, 157, 107,
216-217, 424, 448, 449, 453, 455,
458-459, 461, 468-469, 486, 498,
502, 506-518, 521, 522, 529-530,
537, 539, 559-564
Union, Act of, 13, 35
Unionists, see Home Rule
Vanessa, 92
Victoria, Queen, 137, 166, 201,
352, 517
Wages, 6 1, 84, 90-91, 98, 143 ',
222, 267-268, 281, 337, 409, 419
Walker, Rev. G«orge, 450-451,
460, 538-539
Warbeck, Perkin, 131
Water ford, 454
Weather, see Climate and Rain
Westmeath, 277, 280, 284
Westport, 369, 370-375, 377, 382,
445, 536
Wicklow, 18, 21, 59, 62
Wild West Films, 24, 396, 532
William III of Orange, 12, 76,
208-210, 294, 449-450, 453-455,
460, 470, 475, 502, 534, 538-540,
Wilson, Woodrow, 377, 441-442
Workhouses, 54-56, 84, 87, 143-
144, 180, 375, 473
Workman's Insurance, see In-
surance
Wyatt, Henry, 16
lYoughal, 138
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