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Title: A Little Tour In Ireland
Author: S. Reynolds Hole
Illustrator: John Leech
Release Date: January 30, 2014 [EBook #44805]
Last Updated: February 28, 2018
Language: English
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A LITTLE TOUR IN IRELAND
By S. Reynolds Hole
An Oxonian
(Dean Of Rochester)
With Illustrations By JOHN LEECH
“By suffering worn and weary,
But beautiful as some fair angel yet.”
1892
TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN LEECH
A TRUE ARTIST
A TRUE FRIEND AND A TRUE GENTLEMAN
THIS BOOK
WHICH HE MADE A SUCCESS
IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR
S. REYNOLDS HOLE
PREFACE.
I have been so often and persuasively asked to republish A Little Tour
in Ireland, which I wrote as “an Oxonian,” many years ago, at the
request of my beloved friend and companion, John Leech, and of which only
one edition has been issued, and that long since exhausted; I have been so
severely upbraided for “keeping his splendid illustrations locked up in a
box, and raising the price of the few copies which come into the market,
to thrice the original cost;” I have been so fully certified, not only by
hearsay but by my own eyes, that there is little or no perceptible change
in the scenes, which he drew and I described; and my apprehension, that
the style in which the book is written might be denounced as unbecoming,
has been so completely expelled by the amused remonstrance of my friends,
who insist that gaiety becomes an undergraduate as much as gaiters a Dean;—that
I can make no further resistance, and only ask that the failings of the
author may be condoned by the talent of the artist.
S. Reynolds Hole.
The Deanery,
Rochester: 1892.
CONTENTS
PREFACE.
CHAPTER I. PREFATORY.
CHAPTER II. TO DUBLIN.
CHAPTER III. DUBLIN.
CHAPTER IV. FROM DUBLIN TO GALWAY.
CHAPTER V. THE FAMINE.
CHAPTER VI. FROM GALWAY TO OUGHTERARDE.
CHAPTER VII. CONNAMARA.
CHAPTER VIII. CLIFDEN.
CHAPTER IX. KYLEMORE.
CHAPTER X. FROM KYLEMORE TO GALWAY.
CHAPTER XI. FROM GALLWAY TO LIMERICK
CHAPTER XII. LIMERICK
CHAPTER XIII. KILLARNEY.
CHAPTER XIV. KILLARNEY
CHAPTER XV. KILLARNEY.
CHAPTER XVI. FROM KILLARNEY TO GLENGARRIFF
CHAPTER XVII. GLENGARRIFF.
CHAPTER XVIII. GLENGARRIFF TO CORK
CHAPTER XIX. CORK
CHAPTER XX. BLARNEY
CHAPTER XXI. FROM DUBLIN HOMEWARD
CHAPTER I. PREFATORY.
THERE are two species of Undergraduates, the Fast and the Slow. I am now
of the former persuasion. Originally, having promised my relations that I
would take a Double First-Class and most of the principal prizes, I was
associated with the latter brotherhood, but was soon compelled to secede,
and to sue for a separation, a mensâ et thoro, their tea-table and
early rising, on the plea of incompatibility of temper. One young
gentleman, who described himself as being very elect indeed, candidly told
me that, unless my sentiments with reference to bitter beer and tobacco
underwent a material change, he could give me no hope of final happiness;
and another impeccable party, with a black satin stock and the handiest
legs in Oxford, felt himself solemnly constrained to mention, that he
could not regard horse-exercise as at all consistent with a saving faith.
I spoke of St. George (though I dared not say that I had met him at
Astley's), of St. Denis, and St. Louis, of the Crusaders, and the Red
Cross Knight; but he only replied that I was far gone in idolatry, and he
lent me the biography of the Reverend T. P. Snorker, which, after
describing that gentleman's conversion at a cock-fight, with the sweet
experiences of his immaculate life, and instituting a comparison between
his preaching and that of St. Paul (a trifle in favour of Snorker),
finally declared him to be an angel, and bade all mankind adore, and
reverence, and buy his sermons at seven-and-six. When I returned the
publication, and told him that, though I had been highly entertained, I
liked the Life of George Herbert better, he called me a hagiologist (a
term which struck me as being all the more offensive, inasmuch as I had no
idea of its meaning), 1 and murmured something about “the mark of the
beast,” whereupon, I regret to confess, that I so far lost my temper as to
address him with the unclassical epithet of “a young Skunk,” suggesting
the expediency of his immediate presence at Jericho, and warning him,
that, if he were not civil, “the beast” might leave a “mark” upon him.
That very day, I wrote to the butler at home, to send up my pink and tops,
and “went over to roam” in happier pastures.
1 “Egan, in addressing a jury, having exhausted every
ordinary epithet of abuse, stopt for a word, and then added,
'this naufrageous ruffian.' When afterwards asked the
meaning of the word, he confessed he did not know, but
said; 'he thought it sounded well.'”—Sketches of the Irish
Bar, vol. i. p. 83.
I find them more healthful also. I find that so far from my perception of
right and wrong being destroyed, as the disciples of Snorker prophesied,
by a gallop after the Heythrop hounds, and my appreciation of Thucydides
being expelled by my morning pipe, I have, mentally and bodily, a better
tone; and though my former condiscipuli groan when they meet me coming in
from the chase, as though I were the scarlet lady herself, I still venture
to appear at chapel, and will back myself to construe the funeral oration
of Pericles against the ugliest of the lot.
Oh, that fox-hunting were the worst enemy to me, a student, for I might be
a class man still! But I have contracted a habit desperately antagonistic
to literature,—I am allways falling in love.
The moment I see a pretty face, I feel that sort of emotion which Sydney
Smith used to say the late Bishop of London rejoiced to contemplate in his
clergy, “a kind of drop-down-deadness.” I cannot walk out, or drive out,
or ride, or row out, but I am sure to have an attack. I have had as many,
indeed, as two in one day. With the daughters of Deans and Presidents,
with visitors, with ladies come in from the country to shop, I am
perpetually and passionately in love. I don't like it, because there is
not the most remote probability of my ever exchanging six syllables with
these objects of my devoted affection, not to mention that they are
equally beloved by some three or four hundred rivals; but I am powerless
to oppose; I can't help it. My life is an everlasting “dream of fair
women:” I know it is a dream, but I cannot waken.
Others have roused me, though, and most uncomfortably. I heard a
Devonshire girl, whom I met at a wedding breakfast, and with whom I
thought I was progressing favourably, whispering to her neighbour, “This
tipsy child is becoming a nuisance, and I really must ring for nurse,”
when I was as sober as Father Mathew, and had whiskers of considerable
beauty, if viewed in an advantageous light. Still more sadly and recently,
another “daughter of the gods, divinely fair,” dissipated Love's young
dream, and sent me forth to a foreign land to forget my sorrows, as,
indeed, I immediately did.
The catastrophe, which caused our happy days in Ireland, befel as follows.
“'Twas in the prime of summer time, an evening calm and cool,” that I
found myself wandering among the shrubberies of ————
Castle with a most lovely girl. A large picnic party had been enlivened by
archery and aquatics, and I fancy that the glare of some new targets, and
the sheen of the “shining river,” had not only dazzled my eyes, but
likewise had bewildered my brain. In spite of the cooling beverages, the
cobblers and the cups, I was actuated by an extraordinary liveliness. I
sang songs for the company, not quite reaching the high notes, but with
intense feeling, doing all in my power to indicate to the lovely girl that
she was myAnnie Laurie, and that for her I should consider it a
pleasant gymnastic exercise to expire in a recumbent position. I made
felicitous alterations in the words, such as, “hazel is her e'e” for
“dark-blue;” and in the song of “Constance,” instead of “I lay it
as the rose is laid on some immortal shrine,” I contrived, with
immense difficulty, and by means of a terrific apoggiatura, to
substitute the word stephanotis of which I had that morning given
her a bouquet. But “brevis esse laboro;” we were alone, and I
resolved to propose. I seized her elbow with both hands, a ridiculous
position, but I was very nervous, and was about to ask the momentous
question, when she said with such a tone of gentle pity as took away half
the pain, “Philip, I am engaged to Lord Evelyn. Shall we go back for
coffee?” I seconded the motion, but oh, what an amazing period of time we
seemed to occupy in carrying our proposition out! The first idea which
presented itself to my mind was suicide, but it met with an unfavourable
reception; the second, to enlist immediately, and to secure the earliest
coup-de-soleil possible; the third, to insult Lord Evelyn (the
beast was at Christ Church, and I knew him), and subsequently to shoot him
in Port-Meadow. “What right had he,” I asked myself, “to anticipate me,
and win her heart? I hate these accursed aristocrats, who suck the
life-blood of the people.”
This is the accursed aristocrat who sucks the life-blood of the people!
At last, we rejoined the party, and found them talking the silliest
rubbish conceivable, and apparently enjoying the nastiest coffee I ever
remember to have drunk.
That night, and at the witching hour, when men and women tell each other
everything, (in the strictest confidence), they in their dormitories, and
we in our smoke-rooms, I revealed my misery to my friend Frank C————,
who happened happily to be staying with me. Frank has Irish blood in his
veins, and his first impulse was to have “a crack at the Viscount,” but he
ultimately took a less truculent view of the case, and suggested brandy
and water. From this source, and “from the cool cisterns of the midnight
air,” for we were smoking our cigars out of doors, “our spirits drank
repose,” and we finally resolved “to banish my regret,” and to replenish
our sketch-books, by a fortnight's tour in Ireland.
CHAPTER II. TO DUBLIN.
FORTHWITH, I put myself into active training, and got into splendid
condition for doing “justice to Ireland.” I read Moore's Melodies; I
played Nora Creina upon the flute, not perhaps with that rapidity which is
usual outside the Peepshows, but with much more expression; I discoursed
with reapers; I tried to pronounce Drogheda, till I was nearly black in
the face; I drank whiskey-punch (subsequently discovered to be Hollands);
I ate Irish stew (a dish never heard of in that country) and I bought the
sweetest thing in portmanteaus, with drawers, trays, pockets,
compartments, recesses, straps, and buckles, more than enough to drive
that traveller mad, who should forget where he had placed his razors. Amid
these preparations, I am ashamed to state, that I became disgracefully
oblivious of my little disappointment in the shrubberies, and soon
realised the Chinese maxim, more truthful than genteel,—“the dog
that is idle barks at his fleas, but he that is hunting feels them not.”
Indeed, to make my confession complete, and to descend the staircase of
inconstancy to the lowest depth of humiliation, I must acknowledge that on
the day of our departure I fell violently in love at Crewe Station, whence
my heart was borne away, in the direction of Derby, by the loveliest girl,
that is to say, one of the loveliest girls, that ever beautified an
express train.
I begin to fear that my unhappy tendencies to this kind of fierce, but
fugitive attachment, have not been at all improved by communion with Mr.
Thomas Moore, and I tremble to find myself listening complacently to the
fickle philosophies of Marmontel,—“Quand on na pas ce que ion
aime, il faut aimer ce que l'on a.”
“The Rows” of Chester are very picturesque and quaint, but do not make a
favourable impression upon a giant with a new hat, and, being on the upper
side of six feet, I was glad to leave them for that pleasant, briny,
breezy, railway, which takes one, via Conway, to Bangor, and
thence,—thundering through the Britannia Tube, and just allowing a
glimpse of Telfords triumph, the Bridge of the Menai, grand and graceful,—over
drear Anglesea, 1 to Holyhead. And, oh, how glad we were, to find old
Neptune in his mildest mood, only now and then just raising his shoulders,
as some good-humoured athlete, who should say, “I'm in the jolliest frame
of mind, my lads, but I could pitch the biggest of you into the middle of
next week, any moment, with the most perfect ease.”
1 In the time of the Druids it was called “the Shady
Island,” and, though no longer umbrageous, the name is not
altogether inappropriate.
Pleasant it was to pace the broad, clear deck, with perfectly obedient
legs, and to ask what we could have for dinner, with a real curiosity on
the subject. Frank C————, not distinguished for
deeds of naval daring, began, in the joy of his heart, to sing songs of an
ultra-marine description, alluding to the land with severe disparagement,
and stigmatising that element as “the dull, tame shore.” I must say, that
when I heard him chanting,—
“Give to me the swelling breeze,
And white waves heaving high,”
I trembled to think what a change would take place in the keynote of that
cheery vocalist, and what dismal misereres would ensue, should his rash
petition be conceded. Happily it was not attended to, and we had but one
invalid, a lady (the captain very properly put a young man in irons, for
saying something about no Cyc-lades in these seas); and she, I believe,
only wanted sympathy and sherry from her husband, who was evidently a
recent capture, and who administered both these cordials in due
proportions, first a sip and then a kiss, ever and anon, when he thought
that no one was looking, taking liberal gulps for his own private
refreshment.
It was very beautiful, as the day declined, to watch the vivid
phosphorescence of the sea, myriads of those marine glow-worms, whose
proper names I know not, but who cause this brilliant phenomenon, lighting
up their tiny lamps. Then the light of “Ireland's eye” (bright and clear,
though there must be a sty there), seemed to welcome us, blinking
bonnily; and entering the bay of Dublin, with grateful recollections of
its haddock, we were safely landed upon Kingstown quay. Forty minutes more
on the rail, and we reach the city, some of our fellow-passengers having
only left London that morning, and having travelled from one capital to
the other in little more than twelve hours.
We had our first experience of Ireland proper when, emerging from the
station at Dublin, we called for an “outside car,” and a son of Nimshi,
responding in the distance, charged down upon us through a phalanx of
vehicles, and reached us, I know not how, amid the acrimonious
observations of his brethren. The first feeling, as we sat on the
low-backed car, “travelling edgeways,” as Sir Francis Head designates this
style of transit, was one of extreme insecurity, and though we laughed,
and made believe that we liked it, we were glad enough to hold on by the
iron-work until we arrived at Morrisson's. Our account with the charioteer
was as follows:—
S. D.
To Driver..........................................16
To small boy, seated at drivers feet,
whipping the horse, and exciting him with cries of
“Yap”..............................................06
To man, for holding on our luggage, by
embracing it with extended arms....................10
Total..................................................30
In the next place, we committed the pious fraud of making a hearty supper
under pretence of tea, instructing Mark the waiter, very willing and
active, but with no time for works of supererogation, to brew us a large
vessel of that beverage (which we never touched), as though it gave a
dignity to the proceeding, and justified, by its respectable appearance,
our large potations of Guinness. So we drew on to midnight, and to
(Ay de mi! Won't my friend with the bandy legs denounce “this
wine-bibbing book”?) Irish whiskey. Nevertheless, of Irish whiskey this
must be said, that, when tastefully arranged, it's a drink for dukes; and
he who skilleth not to brew it, more Hibernico, may thank me,
perhaps, for thus instructing him,—Imprimis, to take the
chill off his tumbler (just as he would air his best bed for a beloved
friend) by holding it for a few seconds over the hot water; secondly,
to dissolve three lumps of sugar, medium size, in a small quantity of aqua
calidissima; thirdly, to pour in the whiskey (Kinahans “LL.”)
from one of those delightful little decanters, which would make such
charming adjuncts to a doll's dinner party; fourthly, to fill up
and drink. Frank suggests a soupçon of lemon; and this was the sole
point upon which, throughout our tour, we were not quite unanimous!
CHAPTER III. DUBLIN.
THE next morning found us, with the indomitable pluck of Englishmen, once
more upon an outside car, as doggedly determined as two old Whigs never to
resign our seats. First, we drove to Merrion Square, where we had a call
to make, and where, each side of the square being numbered alike, we spent
a good deal of time in pulling at the wrong bells, and in unnecessarily
evoking several servants, whose easy mission it was to take care of
“number one.” Of this Square and of St. Stephen's Green we thought that,
though as to extent and pleasant situation they were quite equal to
anything in London, the houses themselves were by no means so handsome or
commodious.
The University of Dublin, to us who study among the chapels and the
cloisters of mediaeval Oxford, does not resemble a university at all, but
is more like a series of Government offices, or any other spacious public
buildings.
Why do the porters wear velvet hunting caps? Frank would keep inquiring,
“where the hounds met” (it was a broiling day early in August), “why they
didn't have top boots?” &c., &c., &c. The museum is a very
interesting one; and our cicerone in the cap pointed out the harp of Brian
Boroimhe—that “Bryan the Brave,” who was so devoted to threshing the
Danes and music; the enormous antlers of an Irish elk, which placed upon
wheels would make a glorious outside car, the passengers sitting among the
tines; eagles, and other native birds, galore; and numberless antiquities
and curiosities. There were some awful instruments, which we gazed upon
with intense interest, as being the most cruel shillelaghs we had ever
seen, until the guide happened to mention that they were “weapons of the
South-Sea Islanders.”
The Chapel of Trinity College, like some in our English Universities, is
more suggestive of sleep than supplication, gloomy without being solemn,
and the light dim without being religious. There was a sacrifice of two
inverted hassocks upon the altar, but the idol of the place, a gigantic
pulpit, indignantly turned his back on them, and I was not slow to follow
his example, with a sigh for
“The good old days, when nought of rich or rare.
Of bright or beautiful, was deem'd a gift
Too liberal to Him who giveth all.”
Indeed, I felt much more impressed, and inclined to take off my hat in the
Examination and Dining Halls, as I stood in the pictured presence of Irish
worthies, and thought of them, and of others not there portrayed, in all
their young power and promise. I thought of Archbishop Ussher, who,
a boy of eighteen, contended with Jesuit, Fitz-Symonds, and was designated
by his opponent as “acatholicorum doctissimus.” I thought of Swift,
as well I might, having recently read, for the third time, that most
touching essay on his life and genius from the master hand of Thackeray. 1
I could cry over that lecture any time; there is so much noble sympathy in
it of one great genius with another—such a tender yearning not to
condemn, and, all the while, such a grand, honest resolution to take side
with what is right and true. I thought of Swift, “wild and witty,” in the
happiest days of his unhappy life, getting his degree, “speciali gratia”
(as a most particular favour), and going forth into the world to be a
disappointed, miserable man—to fight against weapons which himself
had welded, a hopeless, maddening fight. All must pity, as Johnson and
Thackeray pity, but who can love? He put on the surplice for mere earthly
views, and it was to him as the shirt of Hercules!
1 The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, three of
whom, Swift, Steele, and Goldsmith, were Irishmen.
And next (could two men differ more?) of Goldsmith. I thought of
him shy and silent (for he was a dull boy, we read, and never learned the
art of conversation), chaffed by his fellow-students, and saluted by them,
doubtless, in the exuberance of their playful wit, as Demosthenes, Cicero,
&c., &c., until he might have felt himself, like his own “Traveller”
“Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,”
had there not been the “eternal sunshine” of genius, and the manifold soft
chimes of poesy, to make his heart glad. “He was chastised by his tutor,
for giving a dance in his room.” (was it a prance à la Spurgeon,
and for gentlemen only, or was there a brighter presence of “sweet
girl-graduates with their golden hair?”) “and took the box on his ear so
much to his heart, that he packed up his all, pawned his books and little
property, and disappeared from college.” 1 Horace Walpole speaks of him as
“an inspired idiot,” and Garrick describes him as one
“for shortness call'd Noll,
Who wrote like an angel, and talk'd like poor Poll:”
but I take leave to think that the “Deserted Village,” a tale told by this
idiot, will be read when Walpole is forgotten; and I believe the author to
have been as deep as Garrick.
1 Thackeray.
Blessed be the art that can immortalise, as Sir Joshua has immortalised,
features so sublime and beautiful, because so bright with noble power and
purpose, as those of Edmund Burke. Scholar, statesman, orator,
author, linguist, lawyer, earnest worshipper of nature and of art, what a
mine of purest gold thy genius! and how the coin stamped with the impress
of thine own true self enriches all the world! “The mind of that man,”
says Dr. Johnson, “was a perennial stream; no one grudges Burke the first
place,” and Sir Archibald Alison speaks of him, as “the greatest political
philosopher, and most far-seeing statesman of modern times.”
What a troublous, impressive sight that must have been, when he and Fox,
both of them in tears, gave up the friendship of five-and-twenty years,
because they loved each other too well to cry “Peace,” where there was no
peace.
Out of all the grand music he wrote and spoke, let me select one air and
leave him. And are not his words on Marie Antoinette, like music, martial
music, “like a glorious roll of drums,” and the sound of a trumpet to
knightly hearts? “I thought,” he says, “ten thousand swords must have
leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look, which threatened her
with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone.”
But no, I cannot leave him, it would not be honest to leave him, without
the confession that there was a flaw in the statue, one note of this grand
instrument out of tune, and that this giant had his weakness. It must be
sorrowfully owned that he had low and unsound views on the subject of the
pursuit of game; he said it was “a trivial object with severe sanctions;”
and his most devoted admirers can never emancipate his memory from the
stern and sad suspicion, that he could not have been a first-rate shot.
I thought of Grattan, who distinguished himself within these walls,—the
brave unswerving patriot, whose fiery eloquence Moore terms “the very
music of freedom” (music, by the way, which would very summarily be
stopped in our day by Mr. Speaker Denison); of Moore
himself, with his head upon his hands, “sapping” at those Latin verses,
which he hated with all his heart, ever and anon disgusted to find the
second syllable of some favourite dactyl long, or the first of some
pet spondee short; finally (as the chroniclers tell), tearing up
the performance, and sending to the Dons some English verse in lieu, for
which, to their glory be it written, they gave him praise and a prize.
Here, too, he commenced his translation of the Odes of Anacreon, (a labour
of Love, if ever there was one); and here, doubtless, oft in the
stilly night, he sang some of those touching melodies, which were so soon
to “witch the world.”
Lastly, I thought (for our jockey in undress was getting rather restive)
of genial, jovial Curran, of whom Dan O'Connell said, “there never
was so honest an Irishman,” and of whom there is one of the most charming
biographies extant in the “Curran and his Contemporaries,” by Mr.
Commissioner Philips.
We could not see the very large and valuable Library, as it is closed
during Vacations; and so having admired the exterior of the New Museum,
and taken a general survey of the college, we made our bow to the Alma
Mater of Ireland.
It must be exquisitely gratifying to a large majority of the inhabitants
to contemplate King William III. riding, gilt and bronzed, upon College
Green, to be kept in constant recollection of the Boyne, and of the
immunities and privileges which resulted from it. Everybody knows that he
was a fine horseman, but the sculptor has not given him a hunting seat;
and I think we could improve him, if we had him at Oxford, by painting him
in a cutaway and buckskins.
There is no fault to be found with the statues of Nelson and of Moore, the
former being very effective, and the latter (though suggestive in the
distance of a gentleman hailing an omnibus) being impressive and pleasing
on a nearer view.
The public buildings which we saw, the Bank of Ireland (once the Houses of
its Lords and Commons), the Four Courts, College of Surgeons, Post Office,
Barracks, &c., are all handsome, chiefly of Grecian architecture, and
interesting to those who fancy this style of sight-seeing.
We were rather disappointed with Sackville-Street. It wants length; and it
wants (Heaven send it soon!) the animation of business and opulence, gay
equipages, and crowded pavements.
The Phoenix Park is delightful, rus in urbe—some 1700 acres
of greensward and trees. We met several regiments, returning from a
review; (the carman told us there were two reviews weekly, and we, of
course, said something brilliant about the Dublin Review being monthly);
and were, consequently, in an admirable frame of mind to appreciate the
monument, grim and granite, in honour of the Iron Duke. What men this
Dublin has given to the world—Swift, Steele, Burke, Grattan, Moore,
Wellington. The names of his great battles are graven on the
obelisk, Waterloo being, of course, omitted. I say “of course,”
because there is something so delightfully Irish in this small oversight,
that it seems quite natural and appropriate; and I should as little dream
of being surprised or vexed by it, as if in an Irish edition of Milton I
could find no “Paradise Lost.”
In the Phoenix Park are the Constabulary Barracks, and the men were at
drill as we drove by. There is no exaggeration in stating, that if a
regiment could be formed from the Irish constables, it would be the finest
regiment in arms See them wherever you may, they are, almost without
exception, handsome, erect, heroic. Picked men, and admirably trained,
they are as smart, and clean, lithe, and soldier-like, as the severest
sergeant could desire. They do credit to him whose name they bear, for
they are still called “Peelers” after their godfather Sir Robert,
who originated the force, when Secretary for Ireland. Fifty of them had
left Dublin for Kilkenny that morning, to expostulate with the bould
pisantry on the impropriety of smashing some reaping-machines recently
introduced among them. The Irishman is not quick to appreciate
agricultural improvements. It required an Act of Parliament to prevent him
from attaching the plough to the tails of his horses; he was very
slow to acknowledge that the plough itself was better, when made of iron
than of wood; he esteemed a bunch of thorns, with a big stone a-top, as
the most efficient harrow going; and he denounced the winnowing-machine,
as a wicked attempt to oppose the decree of a good Providence, which sent
the wind of heaven “to clane the whate and oats.”
A short time afterwards, we were surprised to see in a letter from one of
these constables to The Galway Express, that their pay, after
twenty years' service, is only two shillings per diem; and low as the
remuneration for labour still is in this country, one cannot help but
sympathise with the complainant.
These lions, from whose manes and tails we have ventured to extract a few
memorial hairs, were inspected before luncheon; immediately after that
refection, we set forth per rail, and via Kingston, to Killiney. We
had ample time, as we went, to contemplate the surrounding objects, which
were not “rendered invisible from extreme velocity,” the nine miles
occupying forty-five minutes; but we saw nothing of especial interest
until we had reached the station, and began to ascend the hill. Then we
exulted, eye and heart. The hill itself is worthy of a visit, the massive
blocks of “its cold grey stones” contrasting admirably with the rosy
heaths (I never saw ericas in greenhouse or garden with such a fresh,
vivid brightness, 1) and with the glowing, golden furze. Ah, how poor and
formal are statues, and terraces, and vases, and “ribbon-patterns,” and
geometrical designs, and “bedding out,” when compared with nature's
handiwork! And though, perhaps, never since the days of “the grand old
gardener” has ornate horticulture attained so great a splendour, what true
lover of flowers is really satisfied with our gorgeous modern
gardens? We treat them, for the most part, as a child, with a new box of
paints, his pictures—all the most glaring colours are crowded
together; and the eye, dazzled and bewildered, yearns for that repose and
harmony which, in nature, whether in the few flowerets of some hidden
nook, or in the fiery autumnal grandeur of some mighty forest, diffuse
perpetual peace.
1 This applies throughout Ireland. See “Inglis's Tour,” vol.
ii., p. 42.
There is an extraordinary structure at the top of Killiney Hill, which
could only have been devised by an Irish architect. It is not a tower, nor
a lighthouse, nor a summer-house: nay, the builder himself confesses he
knows not what it is, in the following inscription:—“Last year being
hard with the poor, the walls about these hills, and This, &c. &c.,
erected by John Mapas, Esq., June, 1742.”
Hard by, a young Duke of Dorset was thrown and killed, while hunting. It
must have been a very Irish fox that led hound and horse into such a
perilous position, and the only wonder is that any of the riders came down
alive. A monumental pillar perpetuates the sorrowful history, and warns
enthusiastic sportsmen from galloping over the broken ground and hidden
fissures of misty mountain tops.
Apropos of mountain and of mist, we saw a sight which reminded us of Anne
of Geierstein, as she appeared to Arthur Philipson, “perched upon the very
summit of a pyramidical rock.” For among the works executed by the
benevolent behest of Mapas, there is one, hewn in stone, a four-sided
staircase, leading to an apex, intended, doubtless, for a statue. But this
was wanting when we first arrived; for the design, like so many others in
poor old Ireland, had never been completed, and there were no
“statues gracing,
This noble place in.”
But by the goddess Vanus, just as Frank and I were lamenting this sad
omission, the loveliest—at all events one of the loveliest—girls
I ever remember to have seen, tripped lightly up the steps, laughing at a
dear old clerical papa, who pretended to be alarmed, but wasn't; and
something, beating violently under my left brace, told me that my heart
had returned from Crewe, as a traveller comes home for a day or so, to
prepare himself for another tour. It stayed with me four seconds, and then
'twas hers. “Behold,” I said,
“'Car les beaux yeux Sont les deux sceptres de l'amour,'
the enthronement of the Queen of Beauty.” And the sea-breeze forsook the
jealous waves to woo her; the sunlight beamed on her with golden smiles;
and the very swallow, turning from his favourite fly, flew past her,
twittering admiration. Rough sailors out at sea that day caught sight of
this fair vision through the glass, and ceased for half an hour to swear.
There she stood, as
“jocund day Stands tip-toe on the misty mountain top;”
like Byron's Mary, on the hill of Annesley, awaiting that mighty hunter,
the gallant, handsome Musters, when
“on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar, if yet her lover's steed
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.”
Or she might have been “The Gardener's Daughter,” when,
“Half light, half shade,
She stood, a sight to make an old man young.”
But never mind what she might have been, there she was.
“Talk about Helen,
That was a fiction, but this is reality.”
And never shall I forget how painfully drear that pedestal seemed, when
the statue, descending, took her Papa's arm (Oh, that her beloved Governor
were mine also!), and was gone from our gaze, like a beautiful star.
The view from the hill of Killiney is one of the loveliest in this land of
loveliness. Seated among the purple and golden flowers, you look over its
rocks and trees upon the noble Bay of Dublin with its waters “bickering in
the noontide blaze,” and the stately ships gliding to and fro. Below is
Kingstown, opposite the old hill of Howth, and in the centre the
metropolis of Ireland.
I do not think that one ever has such a happy feeling of entire
contentment, as when gazing upon beautiful scenery; and there we sat, in
silent admiration, and took no note of time, until the train by which we
had proposed to return, awoke us from our dreamy bliss, shrieking at us in
derision from below, and steaming off to Dublin. So that, some two hours
later, we found our dinners and ourselves a little overdone at
Morrisson's; and nothing but some very transcendental claret, and the
resilient spirit of roving Englishmen, could have induced us to sally
forth once more for the gardens of Porto-Bello.
Becoming acclimatised to the Outside Car, we began to enter into
conversation with the drivers, and found them, like all Irishmen, quant
and witty, though their humour, perhaps, does not lie so near the surface
as it did before the Famine and Father Mathew.1 Our charioteer this
evening was eloquently invective against a London cab which preceded us,
and which he designated as “a baste of a tub.”
“Sure, gintlemen,” said he, “and I'm for th'ould style intirely—it's
illigant. I tell ye what it is, yer onners,” (and he turned to us in
impressive confidence, and pointed contemptuously with his whip at the
offending vehicle) “I'd lep over the likes o' that with this little mare;”
but we earnestly begged he wouldn't.
We were so fortunate as to reach the Porto-Bello Gardens just in time for
“The Siege and Capture of Delhi.” We had both of us formed most
erroneous impressions on the subject, and it was a grand opportunity for
ascertaining truth. If the representation was correct, and there seems no
reason to mistrust it, as “no expense had been spared,” it is high time
for the English people to be told that the accounts which have appeared in
their newspapers (the graphic, glowing descriptions of Mr. William Russell
inclusive) are wickedly and superlatively false!
1 The priest can scarcely have been a descendant of his
namesake, the General, who, to the manifest delight of an
Irish Parliament, thus spake of potheen:—“The Chancellor
on the woolsack drinks it, the Judge on the bench drinks
it, the Peer in his robes drinks it, the Beggar with his
wallet drinks it, I drink it, every man drinks it.”
The city of Delhi is constructed of painted wood, and does not exceed in
dimensions a respectable modern residence. Before it, there is a pool of
water. The siege commenced with a tune on the key-bugle, and with an
appropriate illumination of Bengal lights, which extended over the
entire scene of war, and was got up, as we supposed, at the joint expense
of the combatants. Then the Anglo-Indian army, which had taken up a
perilous position about four yards from the city, led off with a
Roman-candle, and the rebels promptly replied with a maroon. The
exasperated besiegers now went in, or rather went a long way over, with
rockets,—the Sepoys, with undaunted courage, defying them with blue
lights and crackers. For a time the battle was waged with extraordinary
spirit, steel-filings, &c., &c.; but, finally, the “awful
explosion of the Magazine,” admirably rendered by a “Jack-in-a-box,” threw
the rebels into sad distress, and they came running (all six of them) from
the city, trying the old dodge to give an idea of multitude, by rushing in
at one door and rushing out at another. The British soldiers, conversant
with this manouvre, which they had so often witnessed at Mr. Batty's
Hippodrome, immediately charged into the devoted city, lit a red light,
and all was over. The total silence, which immediately ensued within the
walls, impressively told the annihilation of the vanquished, and the great
fatigue (or, alas! it might be the abject intoxication) of the victors,
reminding one forcibly of the schoolboy's description, in Latin, of the
termination of a siege,—“Dein victores, urbe capta, si cut pisces
bibunt, et, parvula, si ulla, itlis culpa, nullum bestiarum finem ex
seipsis faciunt.”
Frank said it was Delhicious! and to this atrocity, as well as to
His Excellency's absence from Dublin, I attribute the melancholy fact that
the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland never called upon us.
CHAPTER IV. FROM DUBLIN TO GALWAY.
THE next morning at breakfast, a Scotch gentleman, with an amazing accent,
would read the newspaper in such loud tones to his friend, that, not being
monks, nor accustomed to be read to, more monastico, at our meals,
we really could not enjoy our food, and were compelled to toss up which of
us should recite to the other the list of Bankrupts from The Times.
I lost, but had not progressed far in my distinct enunciation of the
unhappy insolvents, when the Caledonian took the hint, and we ate our
mackerel in peace.
Leaving Dublin by the “Midland Great Western Railway,” at 10.30, we
reached Galway at 3.45. The intermediate country is, for the most part,
dreary and uninteresting, at times resembling the bleaker parts of
Derbyshire, and at times Chat Moss. “I am no botanist,” as the
Undergraduate remarked to the Farmer, who expostulated with him for riding
over his wheat; but the agriculture appeared to be feeble, and to show
want of management in its twofold signification. The green crops
looked well everywhere, but the corn was thin, and the pastures by no
means of that emerald hue which we had expected to find. With the
exceptions of peasants, cutting and stacking peat for their winter fuel,
children at the doors of cottages, the railway passengers and officials,
there seemed to us, coming from densely populated England, to be really
“nobody about;” and the contrast between our present route and that which
we had travelled, two days before, through the “Potteries,” was as marked
as contrast well could be. This comparative quietude and silence prevailed
wherever we went, as though we were wandering through the grounds of some
country place, “the family” being abroad, and most of the servants gone
out to tea. Ah, when will the family come back to live at home, to take
delight in this beautiful but neglected garden, weed the walks, turn out
the pig, and look after these indolent and quarrelsome servants?—indolent
and quarrelsome, only because there are none to encourage industry and to
maintain peace.
We passed the station of Maynooth, but did not see the “Royal
College of St. Patrick,” and are therefore unable to vituperate that
establishment, as otherwise it would be our duty to do.
Missing this fashionable Christian exercise, I amused myself by attiring a
portly, closeshaven priest—who sat opposite to me, and who had a
face which would have represented anybody with the aid of a clever costumier—in
all sorts of imaginary head-dresses, dowagers' turbans, Grenadiers' caps,
Gampian bonnets, beadles' hats, &c., and endeavoured to fancy the
feelings of his flock, if they were to see him in reality, as I in
thought.
Passing through county Meath, we were again reminded of Swift, who held
the rectory of Agher, with the vicarages of Laracor and Rathbeggan
therein, and of the beautiful Hester, sacrificed to his vanity, and crying
aloud, in piteous tone, “It is too late! It is too late!”
Nigh to Athlone (of which more hereafter) is the village of Auburn,
formerly called Lissoy, the residence of Parson Goldsmith, and the
early home of the poet. The scenes of his childhood and his youth were
doubtless remembered by him, when he wrote “The Deserted Village,” and
many features of resemblance may still be traced.
AtBallinasloe (everybody has heard of its great horse-fair, and
how the hunters jump over the walls of the “Pound,” in height about eight
feet, Irish) we entered the county of Galway, and tremblingly
anticipated, after all we had heard of its wild, reckless sons, that some
delirious driver would spring upon the engine, with a screech louder than
its own, put on all steam, run us off the line for fun, and cause us to be
challenged by our fellow-passengers, should we escape with our lives, for
not appreciating the sport. But we travelled onwards, demurely and at
peace; and, indeed, throughout our little tour, so far from being provoked
or annoyed, we met with nothing but kindness and courtesy, and a
good-humoured willingness to be pleased and to please.
The Railway Hotel at Galway is the largest that we saw in Ireland,
and contains, as we had been informed, “a power o' beds.” These want
sleepers sadly, and at present the tourist, as he wanders from coffee-room
to dormitory, feels very much
“Like one that treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose guests are fled,” &c.,
and cheers his loneliness with the thought, that should Galway become (as
all who care for Ireland must hope) the port for America, this
solemn stillness shall depress no more. The inn forms one side of the
principal Square, and, the neighbour buildings being comparatively small
and dingy, resembles some grand lady, in all her crinoline, teaching the
third class at a Sunday school. The grass-plat and garden are nicely kept,
but their chief ornaments struck us as being rather incongruous, to wit,
hydrangeas and cannon! The guns were pointed at our bedroom
windows, and it really required some little resolution next morning to
shave ourselves with placidity “at the cannons' mouth.” Having secured
places for the morrow on the Car to Clifden, specially stipulating for
“the Lake side” of the conveyance, we selected a shrewd-looking lad from a
crowd of candidates (the Roman candidati wore white togas in the
market-place, but these young gentlemen did not), and went to see the
sights. We saw a great deal that was very interesting, and a great deal
that was very dirty; we saw the traces of Spanish architecture, in quaint
gateways and quadrangular courts, but were not “reminded of Seville,” our
only association with that city being a passionate love of marmalade; we
saw Lynch's castle, and its grotesque carving is very curious; we saw the
house in Deadman's Lane, where lived that Fitz-Stephen, Warden of Galway,
who, according to the worst authenticated tradition, assisted at the
hanging of his own son; we saw warehouses sans ware; granaries, some
without grain, and others with “the meal-sacks on the whitened floor;” we
saw and greatly admired Queen's College; we saw chapels and nunneries,
whence the Angelus bell sounded as we passed; above all, we saw the Claddagh.
Going thither, our little showman told us of the big trade in wines
between this place and Spain which flourished in the good times of old,
and I foolishly thought to perplex him by the inquiry, “whether much
business was done in the Spanish juice line?”
“And sure,” said he, “your onner must know, that was the thrade
intirely. Divil a taste of anything else did they bring us, but the juist
of their Spanish vines.”
The Englishman who desires a new sensation should pay a visit to the Claddagh.
When we arrived, the men were at sea; but the women, in their bright red
petticoats, descending half-way down the uncovered leg, their cloaks worn
like the Spanish mantilla, and of divers colours, their headkerchiefs and
hoods, were grouped among the old grey ruins where the fish market is
held, and formed a tableau not to be forgotten. Though their garments are
torn, and patched, and discoloured, there is a graceful simple dignity
about them which might teach a lesson to Parisian milliners; and to my
fancy the most becoming dress in all the world is that of a peasant girl
of Connamara. Compare it, reader, with our present mode, and judge. Look
at the two, sculptor, and say which will you carve? Say, when “Santa
Philomena” is graved in marble, shall it be with flounces and hoops?
No, whatever may be the wrongs of Ireland no lover of the picturesque and
beautiful would wish to see her re-dressed (so far as the ladies
are concerned—the gentlemen might be improved); no one would desire
to see her peasant girls in the tawdry bonnets and brass-eyed boots, which
stultify the faces and cripple the feet of the daughters of our English
labourers.
As to the origin of these Claddagh people, I am not sufficiently “up” in
ethnology, to state with analytical exactness the details of their
descent; but I should imagine them to be one-third Irish, one-third
Arabian, and the other Zingaro, or Spanish gypsy. 1 I thought that I
recognised in one old lady an Ojibbeway chief, who frightened me a good
deal in my childhood, but she had lost the expression of ferocity, and I
was, perhaps, mistaken.
The men are all fishermen (very clumsy ones, according to Miss Martineau,
who talks about harpoons as if they were crochet needles, in her
interesting “Letters from Ireland”); but they give up their cargoes to the
women on landing, only stipulating that from the proceeds they may be
supplied with a good store of drink and tobacco, and so get due
compensation on the shore for their unvarying sobriety at sea.
1 Wales is also represented by members of the Jones family.
The original John may have come over with Thomas Joyce, who
was good enough to appropriate “the Joyce Country” to
himself and family, in the reign of Edward the First.
They live (some 1500 souls in all) in a village of miserable cabins, the
walls of mud and stone, and for the most part windowless, the floors damp
and dirty, and the roofs a mass of rotten straw and weeds. The poultry
mania—(and if it is not mania to give ten guineas for a bantam, in
what does insanity consist? l)—must be here at its height, for the
cocks and hens roost in the parlour. But “the swells” of the Claddagh are
its pigs. They really have not only a “landed expression,” as though the
place belonged to them, but a supercilious gait and mien; and with an
autocratic air, as though repeating to themselves the spirited verses of
Mr. A. Selkirk, they go in and out, whenever and wherever they please. I
saw one of them, bold as the beast who upset Giotto, 2 knock over a little
child with his snout; and I have a sad impression that the juvenine was
whipped for interfering with the royal progress. Frank solemnly declared
that he saw one, as portrayed with his back against the lintail of his
home, and smoking his evening pipe.
1 This form of delirium is by no means of modern origin.
Opvi-ôofiavta, a passionate love of rare birds, was known
among the ladies of Athens.
2 We read in Lanzi's History of Painting, that as Giotto
was walking with his friends, one Sunday, in the Via del
Cocomero at Florence, he was overthrown by a pig running
between his legs. Whereupon the painter, albeit he was in
his best clothes, philosophically recognised a just
retribution, “for,” said he, “although I have earned many
thousand crowns with the bristles of these animals, I never
gave to one of them a spoonful of swill in my life!”
I receive this statement cum grano salis (always appropriate to
bacon), as I do Phil Purcel's, that “there was in Ireland an old breed of
swine, which is now nearly extinct, except in some remote parts of the
country, where they are still useful in the hunting season, if dogs
happen to be scarce;” 1 and (with all deference to the lady).
1 Carleton's “Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry.”
Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall's, “an acquaintance of ours taught one to point,
and the animal found game as correctly as a pointer. He gave
tongue, too, after his own fashion, by grunting in a sonorous tone,
and understood when he was to take the field as well as any dog.” 1 But,
however this may be, everything in the Claddagh is done to “please the
pigs:”
“Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
You see them, lords of all around, pass by;”
and Og reigneth once more in Basan. He is precious and he has his
privileges. “I think” (said Phil from the hob) “that nobody has a better
right to the run of the house, whedher up stairs or down stairs, than him
that pays the rint” Such is the great destiny of the Irish pig. He is not
associated in the prospective contemplations of his owner with low views
of pork and sausages; for Paddy says, with Launcelot, “if we grow all to
be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for
money,” and
“As for eating a rasher of what they take pride in,
They'd as soon think of eating the pan it is fryed in. 1
but he represents the generous friend and benefactor, who is about to
render an important service at considerable personal discomfort.
1 In their pleasant volume, “The West and Connamara.”
Goldsmith's “Letter to Lord Clare.”
It was washing-day at one of the cabins, and a great variety of wearing
apparel was hung out to dry. We could not discover a single article which
at all resembled anything known to us, or which a schoolboy would have
accepted for any part of his Faux.
Nevertheless, one likes the people of the Claddagh; they seem to be
honest, industrious, and good-tempered, and they have, at least, one great
virtue—like Lady Godiva, they are “clothed on with chastity.” Sir
Francis Head, who had the best means of getting information from the
police, and used them with his exhaustive energy, could not hear that
there had ever been an illegitimate child born in the Claddagh. They never
intermarry with strangers, and “their marriages are generally preceded
by an elopement” (vide the article on “Galway,” in the Encyclopodia
Britannica, which one is surprised to find discoursing on such festive
pleasantries), “and followed by a boisterous merry-making.”
CHAPTER V. THE FAMINE.
AS schoolboys, to whom “next half” begins to-morrow—sailors on the
eve of a voyage—invalids, expecting a physician, who, they know,
will prescribe an unwelcome diet—yea, even as criminals before
execution,—amplify their meals, and, from their dreary expectations,
educe a keener relish,—so we, awfully anticipating the cuisine
of Connamara, made a mighty dinner at Galway. It was brought to us,
moreover, by a dear old waiter, who evidently had a proud delight in
feeding us, as though he were some affectionate sparrow, and we his callow
young, taking off the covers with a triumphant air, like a conjuror sure
of his trick, and pouring out our Drogheda ale, with quite as much respect
and care as Ganymede could have shown for the Gods.
“Was the salmon caught this morning, waiter?”
“It was, sir. Faith, it's not two hours since that fish was walking round
his estates, wid his hands in his pockets, never draming what a pretty
invitashun he'd have to jine you gintlemen at dinner.”
This was followed by a small saddle of “Arran mutton, y'r onner;” and
“what can mortals wish for more,” except a soupçon of cheese?
Ah, but we felt almost ashamed of being so full and comfortable, when our
conversational attendant began to talk to us about the Great Famine.
“That's right, good gintlemen,” he said, “niver forget, when ye've had yer
males, to thank the Lord as sends them. May ye niver know what it is to
crave for food, and may ye niver see what I have seen, here in the town o'
Galway. I mind the time when I lived yonder” (and he pointed to Kilroy's
Hotel), “and the poor craturs come crawling in from the country with their
faces swollen, and grane, and yaller, along of the arbs they'd been ating.
We gave them bits and scraps, good gintlemen, and did what we could (the
Lord be praised!), but they was mostly too far gone out o' life to want
more than the priest and pity. I've gone out of a morning, gintlemen,”
(his lip quivered as he spoke), “and seen them lying dead in the square,
with the green grass in their mouths.” And he turned away, (God bless his
kind heart!), to hide the tears, which did him so much honour.
Can history or imagination suggest a scene more awfully impressive than
that which Ireland presented in the times of the Great Famine? The sorrows
of that visitation have been recorded by eloquent, earnest men; but they
come home to us with a new and startling influence, when we hear of them
upon Irish ground. Most vividly can we realise the wreck, when he, who
hardly swam ashore and escaped, points to the scene of peril; and while
the storm-clouds still drift in the far horizon, and the broken timbers
float upon the seething wave, describes, with an exactness horrible to
himself, that last amazement and despair.
In the beautiful land of the merry-hearted, “all joy was darkened,—the
mirth of the land was gone.” In the country of song, and dance, and
laughter, there was not heard, wherever that Famine came, one note of
music, nor one cheerful sound,—only the gasp of dying men, and the
mourners' melancholy wail. The green grass of the Emerald Isle grew over a
nation's grave. The crowning plague of Egypt was transcended here, for not
only in some districts, was there in every house “one dead,” but there
were homes in which there was but one living—homes, in which one
little child was found, calling upon father, mother, brothers, and
sisters, to wake from their last, long sleep,—homes, from which the
last survivor fled away, in wild alarm, from those whom living he had
loved so well. Fathers were seen vainly endeavouring (such was their
weakness) to dig a grave for their children, reeling and staggering with
the useless spade in their hands. The poor widow, who had left her home to
beg a coffin for her last, lost child, fell beneath her burden upon the
road and died. 1 The mendicant had now no power to beg The drivers of the
public cars went into cottages, and found all dead, or Rachel weeping for
her children, and praying that die she might. By the seaside, men seeking
shell-fish, fell down upon the sands, and, impotent to rise, were drowned.
First they began to bury corpses, coffinless, then could not bury them at
all.
1 See a most interesting article on the “Famine in the South
of Ireland,” in Fraser's Magazine, for April, 1847, p. 499.
Of indignities and mutilations, which then befell, I will not, for I
cannot, speak.
Indeed, it may be asked, wherefore should we repeat at all these sad,
heart-rending details? Because, the oftener they are had in painful
remembrance, the less likely they are to recur in terrible reality;
because—
“Never did any public misery
Rise of itself; God's plagues still grounded are
On common stains of our humanity;
And to the flame which ruineth mankind
Man gives the matter, or at least the wind; 1
1 Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke.
and because, when we know the cause and the symptoms, we can the more
readily prevent and prescribe.
Everyone knows, of course, the origin of the Irish Famine.
“The blight which fell upon the potato produced a deadly famine, because
the people had cultivated it so exclusively, that when it failed, millions
became as utterly destitute, as if the island were incapable of producing
any other species of sustenance.”2
2 Report of Census Commissioners for Ireland.
They, “who are habitually and entirely fed on potatoes, live upon the
extreme verge of human subsistence, and when they are deprived of their
accustomed food, there is nothing cheaper to which they can resort. They
have already reached the lowest point in the descending scale, and here is
nothing beyond but starvation or beggary.”1
The remedy is just as clear,—to induce the peasantry of Ireland no
longer to depend upon an article of food, which is difficult to
procure, cumbrous to convey, possesses so little nourishment that it must
be consumed in large quantities, 2 creates a strange, unhealthy distaste
for other food, 3 is subject to so many diseases from humidity and frost,
and which has wrought such grievous desolation through the length and
breadth of the land. 4
1 Edinburgh Review, No. 175, p. 233.
2 The evidence taken before the Poor Law Commissioners,
previously to the establishment of the New Poor Law in
Ireland, proves that “ten pounds, twelve pounds, and even
fourteen pounds of potatoes are usually consumed by an Irish
peasant each day.”—Letters on the Condition of the People
of Ireland, by J. Campbell Forster, Esq., the Times'
Commissioner.
3 “When this famine was at the worst in Connamara, the sea
off the coast there teemed with turbot, to such an extent
that the laziest of fishermen could not help catching them
in thousands; but the common people would not touch them.”—
Quarterly Review, vol. lxxxi., p. 435.
4 Cobbett called the potato, that “root of poverty.”
How that remedy is to be applied, let legislators and landlords
tell; meanwhile, my friend, and I, having sorrowfully sipped our pint of
sherry, shall essay to cheer ourselves with a mild cigar, and a farewell
walk to the Claddagh.
The shades of eve were falling fast, as we set forth, and we were just in
time to see the last haul of the nets, and the silver salmon lying on the
bank. Then we revived our spirits by a little conversation with young
Claddagh, (merry and mischievous urchins), and by a distribution of
copper, every halfpenny of which raised such a tumulus of rags as would
have kept a paper mill at work for weeks. Then—
“the sun set,
And all the land was dark.”
CHAPTER VI. FROM GALWAY TO OUGHTERARDE.
WE left Galway for Clifden at 9.30 next morning. The public conveyance is
a large-paper edition of the outside car, with an elevated seat for the
driver. There is one place to be avoided on some of these vehicles, that
nearest to the horses on the off-side, on account of the iron bar of the
drag, which operates from time to time very disagreeably on the back and
shoulders of the contiguous traveller. The scenery gradually increases in
interest. First we have trees, farms, houses, and the quiet aspect of
country life; then, we have delightful views at intervals, of Lough Corrib
and its islands, and the landscape becomes diversified, less under
culture, and more wild in consequence; and, lastly, the sublime and solemn
beauty of the mountains and lakes of Connamara.
Some of the residences amused us greatly. You see a large lodge by the
wayside, and look out, in the distance, for some princely castle, or
baronial hall, at any rate; but there is no need for any such optical
exertion, the mansion being close to you, eighty yards perhaps from the
entrance, and only a size larger, (a small size larger, as they say at the
glove-shops), than the lodge itself.
Some of the gateways, too, would have been very imposing, if most of their
principal ornaments had not been mutilated or missing. Our favourite among
the more perfect specimens, was adorned with a stone pine-apple on one
pillar, and a Swede turnip or pumpkin on the other; and had a rich effect.
Most of the field-gates have massive pillars of stone, and would render
the inclosures most secure, if there were not, now and then, easy
apertures through the turf-dykes, which form the fence hard by, suggesting
the idea of a front door barred and locked against thieves, with one of
the hall-windows wide open!
As to the people, there is little difference, so far as appearance is
concerned, between Paddy in England and Paddy at home; the same flaccidity
of hat; the same amplitude of shirt-collar, which would cut his ears off
if it were severely starched; the same dress coat of frieze; drab breeches
(aisy at the knees), grey-stockings, and brogues. The same in aspect, but
in action how different! In England, he will rise with the sun, reap under
its burning heat until it sets, and dance in the barn at midnight. In
Ireland, he seems to be always either going to his work, or looking at his
work, or resting from his work, or coming away from his work, in brief, to
be doing nothing, cordially assisted by his friends and neighbours. The
potatoes will prevent his famishing from hunger, if the season be
propitious; the peat-stack will keep him from perishing by cold; and His
Royal Highness, the Pig, will pay the landlord his rent.
The women are, for the most part, good-looking, erect, and graceful movers
(for there are no corns in Connaught); and, from the bright colours of
their costume, their red petticoats and blue cloaks, are ever a pleasant
refreshment to the eye, and picturesque addition to the scene. They are
uniformly and painfully shy. Francis, and I, are both of us what may be
termed remarkably handsome men, but they wouldn't look at us; and I shall
never forget the agony of a young housemaid, who, assisting the waiter one
morning with a tub of water to my room, caught sight of my dressing-gown
through the open door, and instantly, though the garment is of a pleasing
pattern, and descends quite to the ground, rushed off, like Dorothea from
Cardenio and his companions, and, I verily believe, is running now.
As regards children,—there are crosses in Ireland, which are saluted
by wives, who would be mothers also; and these crosses, or something
equally efficacious, appear to be universally embraced. Every cottage sent
forth a running accompaniment (allegro) to the car, healthful,
cheery children, and would be beautiful, in spite of their wretched homes,
and meagre diet, and rags, if their mothers could be induced to recognise
the utility of soap and a comb. Their raiment is very scant and curious.
Ould Larry's coat, with the tails cut off, makes young Larry “an entire
juvenile suit,” and the inexpressibles of Phelim père form a noble
panoply for Phelim fils, with his little arms thrust through the
pocket-holes. These tatterdemalions beg as they run by the car, but seem
indifferent as to the result, enjoying their “constitutional,” and parting
from us with a pleasant smile whether we gave to them or not. Some of a
literary turn of mind asked rather urgently for “penny buy book,” but the
imposition was a little too patent, so very far from a bookseller's shop,
and we recommended them to quench their thirst for knowledge in the only
volumes to be perused (and that gratuitously) in the neighbourhood, the
“books in the running brooks.”
A few professional beggars come round, when there is a change of horses
(excellent horses they are), but are neither so frequent nor so
importunate, as we had been led to expect. One old lady had evidently got
the last new thing in begging, a letter to her “poor darlint boy as was
gone to Merrikey, and would ye bestow a thrifle, good gintlemen, to pay
the bit o' postage, God bless yer bewtifle young faces.” Of course, we
would, every mother's son of us. What an affectionate, exemplary parent!
When we returned, a few days afterwards, she was again in correspondence
with her beloved son, far away from her yearning tenderness, beyond the
broad Atlantic; and, indeed, I have reason to believe from information
which I gathered from the driver and our fellow-passengers, that this
disconsolate mother writes to her exile child every day, except Sundays.
The miserable huts of the peasantry, seen by the feeble light which comes
through the doorway and smoke-hole (to talk about chimneys would be an
insult to architecture) give one the idea, not so much that the pigs have
got into the parlour, but that the family have migrated to the sty. An
unpaved clay floor below, a roof of straw and weeds, dank, soaked, and
rotting, overhead, a miserable bed in the corner, an iron pot over a peat
fire, are the principal items of the property. Before the door is a sink,
black and filthy, for the refuse. And yet the inmates look hale and happy
beyond what one would hope to see, and the thought at once suggests
itself, how much might be accomplished by such a people, awaking to assert
its dignity, and to discharge its duty. Here and there are roofless
cottages, gravestones, on which is written, as on Albert Dürer's, “Emigravit”
he has gone to seek over the wide seas the comforts which here he could
not, or would not, win; or he has gone “to the land, which is very far
off,” to hunger and thirst no more,—
“There fell upon the house a sudden gloom,
A shadow on those features fair and thin;
And softly, from that hushed and darkened room,
Two angels issued, where but one went in.”
It is sad indeed to see these monuments, “where memory” (as an Irish poet
1 sings) “sits by the altar she has raised to woe,” monuments of suffering
and dearth, amid scenes of surpassing beauty, and fields which might stand
thick with corn, but where, from the shameful indolence of His creatures,
“In vain ,with lavish kindness, the gifts of God are strewn.”
1 Curran.
There is no town between Galway and Clifden, unless we
compliment with that title the large village of Oughterarde,
pleasantly situated hard by Lough Corrib, with its picturesque
bridge, marvellously transparent stream, handsome constables, and
(comparatively speaking) magnificent church. The Roman Catholic churches
are, for the most part, so very plain and poor, having little but the
Cross, and a melancholy imitation of Gothic mullions in wood, to denote
their consecration, that the building of Oughterarde has quite an
imposing effect, and we went up the hill to see it. The leisure and
liberty allowed to passengers by car are amusingly refreshing in these
days of steam; and I thought, as we sauntered towards Sainte Terre,
how astonished the guard of an express train would be, to behold his
fellow-travellers quietly strolling off to inspect the cathedral, at Peterborough,
York, or Lincoln.
We found little to admire, as to architecture without, or ornament within;
but a priest, who went with us from the car, said it was “beautiful,” and
looked as if to him it was so indeed, as he knelt with others reverently
praying there. I thought of our grand old churches at home, locked and
barred, most of them, except for a few hours on Sunday (as though the soul
should be treated, like a boa-constrictor, with six days sleep, and then a
rabbit); and I envied that poor pilgrim through a prayerless world his
privilege and opportunity.
CHAPTER VII. CONNAMARA.
OUGHTERARDE is termed the entrance to Connamara, but the boundaries
seem somewhat undefined, like the sensations induced by the wildly
beautiful scenery,
“The vague emotion of delight
While climbing up some Alpine height.”
Measured and mapped Connamara may be, but painted or described it
never can. Those sublime landscapes of mountain, moor, and mere, are
photographed on the memory for ever, but cannot be reproduced on canvas;
and a great master of art, a Michael Angelo (Tilmarsh) throws down
his brush, with the wise confession, “all that we can do is to cry,
Beautiful!” Who shall take it up, and paint? Not mine, a prentice hand, to
daub a caricature (about as like the original, as a pastile to Vesuvius,
or a “cinder-tip” to the Himalayas) of those glorious Irish Alps, of the
Maum-Turk mountains, or of Bina Beola, rising, in solemn
majesty, amid a sea of golden and roseate flowers. It requires a
confidence which I do not feel, to attempt the Hallelujah Chorus on my
penny trumpet, or, where Phidias distrusts his chisel, to commence a
Colossus with my knife and fork. But I shall never forget our silent
happiness, a happiness like childhood's, so complete and pure, as, mile
after mile, we watched the sunlight and the shadows, sweeping over hill,
and lake, and plain, (so swiftly that every minute the whole view seemed
to change), and saw the snow-white goats among the purple heath, and the
kine, jet-black and glowing red, knee-deep in the silver waters.
But there are minds no scenery can delight or awe. I remember, how,
travelling by rail, one glorious morning in December, the trees all hoar
with frost, and glittering against a sky blue as the turquoise, I met a
Cockney gent, who condescendingly surveyed the scene, and said that “it
reminded him of Storr and Mortimers! The water was very like those
plate-glass things, which were used to set off the silver, and the trees a
good deal resembled the candelabra clustered above.” And he smiled as one
who was pleased to approve the article which Nature humbly submitted to
his inspection, and seemed, out of his overflowing goodness, to pat
Creation's head. And now, seated upon the box, a “party” from Sheffield
insulted that pure delicious atmosphere with very villainous “shag,” and
talked as flippantly and without restraint, as though he were in the Chair
at “The Cutler's Arms,” presiding over a Free-and-Easy. No sooner did he
ascertain from the driver that the grand Highlands before us were known as
“The Twelve Pins” than he desired the company to inform him, “what
degree of relationship existed between them and the Needles off the
Isle of Wight?” a genealogical problem, which would have been received
with a due and dignified silence, but for his own unrestrained applause
and laughter. Then he favoured us with an enigma, “Why have them pins no
pints? Because they're principally composed of quartz!” His
geology he had got from a guidebook, out of which he treated us to various
extracts, appending commentaries of his own. “Miss Martineau says the hair
'ere” (of course he transplanted every h) “is very like breathing cream.
Wonder whether the old gal meant cream of the valley, or milk-punch—ha!
ha! ha!”
From this subject he passed very naturally to mountain dew, and the
illegal manufacture of whiskey, shouting at the top of his voice, “I
cannot help loving thee, Still;” and then singing, “Still, I
love thee, Still, I love thee,”—“Fare thee well, and
if for ever, Still, for ever fare thee well” (the music by Mr. Joseph
Miller), until, happily for us, his pipe went out, and playfully wondering
“how he should obtain a light, when all around was matchless,” he
collapsed into a state of quiet suction, like a gold fish in a vase.
Incidents, in a country unreclaimed and almost uninhabited, must
necessarily be small and infrequent, like the currants on an Irish cake.
We had a change of horses at the Half-way House (half-way between
Oughterarde and Ballinahinch), and this rapid flight of
horsemanship was performed something under the half-hour. I took advantage
of the interval to recline on the green sward hard by, and commenced, in
dreamy enjoyment, a silent oration to the scenes around. “O Connamara,”
I began, “non amarat sed amcena! let me hear and heed thy sermons
in stones, though thine own sons be deaf to them.”
Alas! for the sad contrast, where every prospect pleases, and only man is
vile! 1 Why should not fields of golden corn, and orchards heavy with
fruit, bring plenty from thy fertile plains? Why should rank weeds,
rag-wort, and loose strife, (evil signs and sounds!) usurp thy untilled
soil, a 'soyle most fertile,' as old Spenser saith, 'fit to yielde all
kinde of fruit that shall be committed thereunto?'” And the answer which I
heard, “awaking with a start” from my reverie, was a surly grunt close to
my ear, and a loud laugh from Frank, who thus perpetuated the tableau
vivant:
1 Lord Chesterfield spoke of Ireland as “that country for
which God has done so much, and man so little.”
We lunched at “The Recess,” a pleasant little inn (with a cheerful
landlady and civil waitress), but somewhat damp withal; for Ireland is
“the Niobe of nations,” 1 and, as the beautiful bride of the Atlantic,
ofttimes weeps in her western home, when her husband is at low water, or
subject to lunar influence. But there is no time for metaphor or
meteorology, the cutler having already scooped the interior from the heads
of both the lobsters, and it being quite necessary to propose some saving
clause to this sweeping Act of shellfishness. “I am no gastronomer,” as
the old lady observed, when they asked her to go out and see the comet,
but I do acknowledge, in unison with the majority of my fellowmen, the
powerful fascinations of lobster; and I shall not shrink from the
confession, that our feelings, as we witnessed this gross monopoly, were
hot and acid as the pepper and the vinegar, which was almost all he left
us.
1 “If,” writes Mr. Young, in his Tour in Ireland, “as much
rain fell upon the clays of England as upon the rocks of the
sister country, they could not be cultivated.” I should
doubt this, taking into account our modern improvements as to
drainage; but, at all events, it is evident that “the
humidity of the climate renders Ireland decidedly better
fitted for a grazing than for an agricultural country.”—
See M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire,
ed. 2, vol. ii., p. 367.
At the same time, it may be said, in mitigation of his ill-taste and our
ill-temper, that the love of the lobster has ere now troubled the
equanimity of greater and better men; and I have seen a noble Duke scowl
malignantly at an unconscious Earl, whose plate preceded his own. But all
ended well, for our greedy knife-grinder having finished his lobster, two
bottles of Guinness, one ditto Bass, and a go of whiskey “for luck,” had
scarcely ascended the box, and favoured us with that assurance of
plethory, which the Chinese expect as a compliment from all well-bred (and
well-fed) guests, than his head began slowly to fall and rise, like a
large float, lazily influenced by some undecided fish; and he only
intruded himself upon our silent admiration of that magnificent scenery
with occasional imitations of swine asleep.
There was a time when the Martins ruled in Connamara, and Ballinahinch,
which we now pass, was the palace of Richardus Rex; when Lord Lieutenants
were told plainly, that the excellent claret they were drinking had done
its duty, without discharging it; and gaugers, bailiffs, writ-servers, and
the like, were as rare upon the mountains as the Irish elk. The estate
extended to Oughterarde, some six and twenty miles away, and “Martins
Gate-house” is shown there still; but extravagance and neglect brought
all to the hammer at last, and the very name of Martin will soon only
survive, in its association with the humane Act for the prevention of
cruelty to animals, which was originated by the Lord of Ballinahinch.
The Law Life Insurance Company are now the owners of this property, and
are making, we were informed, very great improvements. There can scarcely
be an estate more capable thereof. The immense extent of bog-land presents
an excellent “fall” for the drainer; and a large quantity of it, lying
upon limestone, would grow any amount of pasture or of cereal produce.
(The monosyllable corn would be equally expressive, but it looks
“mean and poky,” as Martha Penny said of the Protestant religion, when
compared with “cereal produce”) Then there is abundance of manure
close by, in the sea-weed and coral-sand; and under the soil lie rich
veins of marble, rose-colour, and yellow, and, white, and green; and of
which you may purchase specimens from the little merchants who come round
the car. But where, it may well be asked, are the hands to ply the mattock
and pick? For famine, and ejection, and the Exodus, have swept away the
working men; and though it is evident, from the number of children, that
great efforts are being made to repopulate the country, there seems to be
no staff on the spot for any large undertakings. 1 But men are to be found
when they are wanted by master-minds; and the Irish and English labourers,
instead of deserting for America and Australia a land so full of promise,
2 would readily be induced, by leaders of energy and capital, to
appropriate advantages nearer home. The sale of encumbered estates (one of
the cleverest, cleanest cuts, that surgeon ever made, to save his patient
from mortification) amply justifies the healthful hope that English and
Scotch farmers 3 will soon be numerous upon Irish soil, not to become,
like the Norman visitors of yore, “ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores,” but
to inoculate Paddy with their own activity and earnestness, and to
persuade him, just for once and by way of a change, to work in his own
land, as he can and will in any other.
1 According to the Report of the Registrar-General, the
population has decreased to the number of half a million
since the Census of 1851.
2 See Letters from The Times' Commissioner, ed. 2, p. 271,
and The Saxon in Ireland, chapter x.
3 “Why are there so many more Scotch than English? It
appears that there are 756 'Britishers' agriculturally
settled in Ireland, and of these 660 are natives of
Scotland.”—Agricultural and Social State of Ireland in
1858, by Thomas Miller.
The Saxon says that the Celt (how one despises those malicious nicknames,
stereotyping hate, and perpetuating a lie, as if there were a true Celt or
Saxon extant!) that the Celt will shoot him; and, perhaps, he may if
nothing is done to conciliate, but everything to offend his prejudices.
Those prejudices are the growth of ages, and will not vanish before slang
and compulsion, but only before goodness, teaching by example a better and
a happier way. If I wish to propitiate a high-spirited unbroken steed, not
warranted free from vice, and can do so by checking him sharply with the
curb, and by sticking in both spurs, without ruining the horse, and
finding myself in a position to take an uninterrupted view of the
firmament, Mr. Rarey and reason plead in vain. John Bull is a magnificent
fellow, but his mere repetition of “curse the Pope” will do no more to
evangelise mankind than Grip the Raven's “I'm a Protestant kettle;” nor
can we specify any signal blessings as likely to accrue to the human race,
when “Sawney, with his Calvinistic creed in the one hand, and allaying
irritation with the other,” denounces smiling on Sunday as a deadly sin,
or goes
“Bellowing, and breathing fire and smoke,
At crippled Papistry to butt and poke,
Exactly as a skittish Scottish bull
Hunts an old woman in a scarlet cloak.”
Were I desirous to impress upon the people of Connaught the advantages of
protecting their feet with leather, I should scarcely proceed to
demonstrate my proposition by kicking them with hobnailed boots; and
although bread as an article of food is vastly superior to potatoes, few
men would essay to enforce this argument by pelting the peasantry with
quartern loaves.
The Saxon says that the Celt will shoot him; and nothing can be more vile
and despicable than those cowardly murders which disgrace Ireland. But we
must not forget, in our righteous horror, that our own capital convictions
are thrice as numerous, according to population, as those in the
sister-country; and, though this does not denote the exact proportion of
crime, because conviction in Ireland is far more difficult than with us,
it may still suggest a wholesome restraint, when we are minded to sit in
judgment upon others.
CHAPTER VIII. CLIFDEN.
WE arrived at Carrs Hotel, in Clifden, between 5 and 6 p.m.,
and strolled down the main street before dinner. The whitewashed houses
are much less miserable than the cottages we had seen in the country, but
we can give no more than negative praise, the general aspect of the town
being dreary enough. There are happy associations, nevertheless, connected
with it, for the whole place arose from a benevolent attempt of Mr.
D'Arcy, once the owner of Clifden Castle, to improve the condition
and evoke the energies of his neighbours; and though the estate has passed
into other hands, a D'Arcy still maintains, as pastor of the people, an
honoured name for charity and zeal. After dinner we had a most delightful
ramble on the cliffs, which overlook the bay; for Clifden is built
at the centre of one of those numerous indentations in the land,
“Where weary waves retire to gleam at rest,”
and which give the name Connamara, i.e., “the bays of the sea.”
It was one of those evenings, sunlit and serene, which whisper gratitude
and peace. There seemed to be a glad smile on land and sea, as the golden
light fell in soft splendour on the purple hills, and the pleasant breeze
awoke upon the waters [Greek passage] 1
1 Thus prettily transferred by the Irish poet, Moore:—
“Like any fair lake that the breeze is upon,
While it breaks into dimples, and laughs in the sun.”
(Yes, good critic, I know it is only a school-boy's quotation, but it is
too beautiful to be ever quite used-up, and is at all events, excusable in
an undergraduate, “taking up,” among other books for his Degree, the
sublime tragedy of Prometheus Bound.) There was no sound except the
curlew's note, when suddenly we heard, far down from the sea below us, the
loud splash of water, and voices singing, amid merry laughter, strange
songs in an unknown tongue.
Gracious Heavens, what were we to see! We were on Irish ground; the
stillness and the solitude, so wildly broken, encouraged all our
superstitious fancies; and everything we had read or heard of Bogies,
Banshees, Kelpies, and Co., came back to our astonised souls. Were we,
really, to witness something supernatural at last, something, which, when
we got home, should make the teeth of our neighbours chatter, and cause
the hair to stand up on our relations' heads?
Perhaps, we were to contemplate the merman bold, playing—
“With the mermaids, in and out of the rocks,
Dressing their hair with the white sea-flower,
And holding them back by their flowing locks.”
With beating hearts and bated breath, we crawled to the edge of the
precipice, and there saw, to our intense delight, four of the jolliest
constables in the world, swimming, diving, floating, spluttering,
shouting, and singing, until one longed to run back a few yards, plunge
in, like Cassius, without undressing, and join in their jolly gymnastics.
Really, they are glorious fellows! Were I to undertake any distant or
dangerous expedition (and indeed, Frank and I have been so much gratified
by our sailor-like deportment, between Holyhead and Kingstown, that we
think seriously of going round the world in a yacht), I should vastly like
to take half a dozen of them with me; and I should not be the first who
had so thought and acted.
Walking on, we came in sight of Clifden Castle, a good-looking
modern residence, lying low in the valley, and well screened by timber
from the rough sea-wind. Here the view is beautiful exceedingly, and we
sat among the heather, and gazed upon it,
“till the sun
Grew broader toward his death, and fell; and all
The rosy heights came out above the lawns.”
Then we returned to the hotel, and there found our friend the cutler
considerably advanced in liquor, making a most disconnected oration to a
select audience, in which, among many other statements unhappily
forgotten, he informed us:—“That he was hopen to show pigeons,
either Turbits, Pouters, or Short-faced Mottles, against any man in
Hengland, bar two; that Ireland was nothing but a big bog, and he should
rather expect as ow no party, as wasn't a snipe, would ever come there
twice; that he would play hany gent, as was agreeable so to do, either at
quoits or skittles, for the valley of a new 'at;” (being rather a dab with
the discus, I was about to accept his challenge, when the darkness of the
night and absence of the implements struck me as being “staggerers” not to
be surmounted, and therefore I held my peace); “that, has no party seem'd
hup to nothing, he should beg to propose 'ealth and prosperity to the firm
of Messrs. Strop and Blades (I'm Blades); and should conclude by
hexpressing his ope, that the cock-eyed gent in the corner would henliven
the meeting with a comic song.” The proprietor of the insurbordinate eye
having very briefly expressed himself to the effect, that he would see the
company consigned to perdition, rather than indulge it with mirthful
music, Mr. Blades commenced a concert on his own account; and we ventured
to go to bed, in spite of the singer's solemn warning that any person
retiring, in a state of sobriety, to his couch, would “fall as the leaves
do, fall as the leaves do, fall as the leaves do, that die in October.”
Nemesis was the daughter of Nox; and poor Blades looked miserably ill,
when he came down next morning to breakfast—no, not to break fast,
but only to wish he could. At daybreak, we had heard sounds of soda-water,
but Schweppe had striven in vain. The fact is, that whiskey, like love,
can “brook no rival near its throne,” and Kinahan, and Bass, and Guinness
were at war all over Blades. We scarcely knew him again, as he sat in
rueful contemplation of an egg, which he had accepted, hoping against
hope, but had now no strength to crack:—
“For his heart was hot and restless,
And his life was full of care;
And the burden laid upon him
Seemed greater than he could bear.”
Had he been Tyndarus, and the egg before him one of Leda's, he could not
have looked at it with a more fixed and mystified expression; or he might
have been reflecting sorrowfully upon that fatal goose egg, which, long
before the Norman Conquest, had wrought such woes on Ireland. I will
venture, at all events, to repeat the legend. Domhnall, the king, having
invited Congal, his foster-son, together with the principal swells of his
court, to a grand banquet (though he had been warned by Maelcobba, a
celebrated monk and fortune-teller, to do nothing of the kind), sent out
his purveyors to procure a supply of delicacies in general, and of goose
eggs in particular. Now there lived, in the county of Meath, a Bishop Ere
of Slaine, who spent his days in the river Boyne, immersed up to his
arm-pits, and reading his psalter, which lay upon the bank. Whether he
entertained hopes of being translated to the see of Bath and Wells, and
was under a course of preparatory training, or whether he had a prescient
belief in the water-cure, or whatever his motives may have been, thus he
passed his mornings (to the immense edification of his diocese, and with
nothing on but his mitre), and then went home to dine. One evening he had
hurried to his hermitage, a little ruffled in temper, having been very
disrespectfully accosted during the day by some boatmen, who had hit him
in the eye with a decayed pear, but consoling himself with the prospect of
his favourite dinner, namely, “a goose egg and a half, and three sprigs of
watercresses,” when he was dismayed to find his establishment (which
consisted of an elderly charwoman) in tears, and to hear that the king's
purveyors had been, and poached his eggs for him. Then (the chroniclers
proceed to tell) the Bishop he “cussed, and eke swore hee, verrye
bewtifulle.” He excommunicated the auxiliary gander and put the goose
under a perpetual pip, “bekase,” said he, “if they'd niver layed them, and
she (the charwoman) had only popped them under the bedclothes, he'd bet
six to four they'd niver been found.” But he was grandest of all, when he
cursed the eggs, shell, white, and yolk, solemnly imploring complete and
speedy suffocation upon any party who should stick a spoon in them. And
his anathemas, we read, were so far fruitful, that on the night of the
King's banquet, Congal's goose egg changed, as he was gloating over it,
into a common hen egg, whereupon he was so greatly exasperated, that he
felt himself under the necessity of slashing at his neighbours
indiscriminately with a drawn sword; a general battle ensued; and “Ireland
was not for one night thenceforward in the enjoyment of peace or
tranquillity.”1
1 From The Banquet of Dun na-gedh, and the Battle of Magh
Rath. Translated from the original Irish by John O'Donovan.
Printed for the Irish Archaeological Society.
Blades, I say, might have been meditating mournfully on this accursed egg,
but, whether or no, there he sat; and Melancholy marked him for her own.
Quantum mutatus! The remains of a fire balloon, soaked and rusting
in some long damp grass, not less resemble the gaudy globe, which went up
yesternight; and never can I obliviate the agony of his expression, as the
waiter presented a large dish of bacon in close proximity to his nose.
“A moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts was traced,
And then,” with a groan, which won all our sympathy, “abiit,
excessif, evasit, erupi, Anglicé, poor Blades, he bolted!
We also, having contributed to Mr. Carr's Album autographs, which will, no
doubt, be ultimately sold at sixty guineas a-piece, (say pounds, if you
take the pair) proceeded by the car to Kylemore.
CHAPTER IX. KYLEMORE.
THE scenery on leaving Clifden is for a time bleak and monotonous,
but soon becomes varied and beautiful. You pass, by Streamstown and
Ballinakill, through the pleasant village with its pretty cottages,
fuchsia-hedges, and general look of neatness and comfort, which it owes to
Mr. Ellis, an English resident, and who, (so it was told to me, as our
friend Herodotus hath it) is much respected, although a Quaker, by the
Roman Catholics around. Between this place and Kylemore, you enter
upon one of the grandest scenes, to my taste, to be found in all Connamara,
a kind of mountain pass, with the rocks rising to a great height, in huge
blocks and broken masses, piled one above another, and sometimes jutting
over the road in fearful contiguity, densely timbered from base to summit,
the gray stone contrasting beautifully with the bright green foliage of
the trees. Here the eagles build, and had become so numerous, (so our
driver said), that the owner had had recourse to poison. It sounded
awfully in our ears, like trapping a fox or shooting an albatross; and,
surely, if the king of birds must be slain (and I cannot deny that his
majesty's conduct, in perpetually flying off with lambs, is open to some
criticism) he might fall more nobly to the rifle of the sportsman.
We reached the solitary inn by Kylemore Lake for luncheon; and I
purposely make these memoranda about meals, and take my time from the
kitchen clock, because the delightful air of Connamara very
speedily induces that vacuum, which nature and the tourist yearn to fill.
So Frank and I danced in triumph around our undisputed lobster, Blades
languishing at Clifden, and a fellow passenger, who had stopped at
Kylemore, and whom, being almost hairless, we distinguished as
“Balder the Beautiful,” having previously lunched, as we came along, upon
the largest biscuit I ever met with, and which, when he first produced it,
we both of us mistook for a Fox-and-Goose board. Contemplating the shell
and other débris, in a state of placid plethora, and reflecting, in a
spirit of tooth-pick philosophy, what a glorious economy it would be for
us undergraduates, and what a grim despair for the tailors, if we, like
the lobster, could annually cast our clothing, and reappear, as he does,
in customary suit of solemn black, without any pecuniary investment,—I
was startled by the wild conduct of Francis, who, suddenly springing from
his chair, and favouring me with a slap upon the back, which immediately
induced a determination of bitter beer to the head, exclaimed, at the very
apex of his voice, “And now, old cock, for a salmon!” Forthwith he
entered into solemn consultation with our worthy host, Mr. Duncan, and
produced for his inspection a small library of Fly-books. Alas, the
inspector looked grave and shook his head, as an examiner surveying infirm
Latin. “One or two might raise a fish;” but this was said in a
tone, which quite convinced me, that, unless Frank should come across a
salmon, which happened to be helplessly drunk, his entomological specimens
would be treated with most profound contempt. What was to be done? Mr.
D.'s own flies had been stolen, during a recent illness, by his visitors;
and, indeed, as they were kept, with true Irish liberality, in the hall of
the inn, one can scarcely wonder at the felonious fact. But he was
determined, the weather being most propitious, and the lake full of
“fish,” (not to mention the white trout, of which there is abundance) that
Frank should not be disappointed, and forthwith commenced the operation,
most interesting to me who had never seen it, of “tying a fly.” He began
with a bare hook, a piece of fishing gut, and a few bits of silk and
feathers; and lo, in about three minutes, there issued from his consummate
manipulation a gorgeous fly, so beautiful, and, withal, so plump and
appetising, that for a salmon to see it was to look and die. Then armed
with a gaff, which would have landed a sturgeon, or made a glorious
pastoral staff for His Grace the Archbishop of Brobdingnag, and which was
borne before him, as the crozier of Saint Grellen was carried before the
tribes of Hy-Many, when, ages ago, they conquered here in Connaught, away
went Frank to his boat; and I, rodless, to wander, wondering, among the
great mountains and to cull a bouquet of ferns and flowers. This I had
just arranged satisfactorily, and was thinking how admirably that little
wayside rush (epiphorum), with its snow-white silky flag, would
serve for some Lilliputian clerk of the course to drop before a ruck of
fairy jocks, and start them for a Queen Mab's Plate, when a ringing shout
in the distance, which might have been emitted by a triumphant fox-hunter,
or by an Indian scalping his foe, drew my attention to the lake, and I
could see dear old Frank standing in the boat, and holding up a glorious
salmon, with its silver scales glittering in the sun.
Hurrying back, I was just in time to meet the conquering hero as he came
ashore; and I am quite sure that neither Julius Cæsar, nor any other human
being, ever landed with greater dignity. Had he been coming to weigh after
winning “the Liverpool,” or into the Pavilion at Lords' after an innings
of five hundred, he could not have looked more happy and glorious, and I
felt it a privilege to strew the path he trod upon with three bits of
heather and my pocket-handkerchief.
There was an amusing little dialogue, as he left his bark:—
“Boatman!” quoth the illustrious fisherman, “how much is the boat?”
“Sure, your onour, the boat'll be in the bill. Your onour'll give the
boatman what you please.”
“But what is generally given!”
“Well, your 'onour, some'll give two shillings, and some eighteen pince.
A tailor'd be for giving eighteen pince.”
How much Frank gave, I know not; but from the expression of satisfaction,
which brightened the faces of his aquatic friends, I infer that he
exceeded in munificence a whole street of tailors. And, indeed, he was
bound so to do, since, in our eyes, “was never salmon yet that shone so
fair,” as we bore it in triumph to our inn; and I sang, in the joy of my
heart, to the
They may rail at this land, they may slander and slang it,
But we've found it a land to admire and enjoy;
And until they convince us au contraire, why, hang it,
We will speak as we find, won't we, Frank, my dear boy?
Air “They may rail at this Life.”
So long as Kylemore has such lakes and such fishing,
As from Duncan's Hotel at this moment we see,
And of salmon for dinner we bring such a dish in,—
Connamara's the planet for you, Frank, and me!
So we carried it to the kitchen, where it cost my friend no little effort
to transfer his captive to the cook; and I am quite convinced, that could
he have escaped ridicule, he would have preferred to take that fish to bed
with him. I am glad he did not; for a firmer, flakier, curdier salmon
never gladdened a table d'hôte, and there were “lashings and
lavings” for our party of eight, when we met at dinner that evening.
After the banquet, Frank caused us to be rowed in triumph over the scene
of his victory, sitting in the stern with an enormous regalia, and
surveying the waters with a grand complacency, which made me feel myself
quite contemptible. Very different would my sensations have been, had I
been then acquainted with the fact, which my friend subsequently revealed
to me, that he had hooked and lost two much finer fish than that on
which we dined.
The boatmen—one of whom, from his sapient and solemn manner, had the
sobriquet of Lord Bacon; and the other, a fine, cheery young fellow,
wearing his rightful appellation of Johnny Joyce—joined us in our
tobacco and talk, “turning to mirth all things of earth, as only” Irishmen
can. When two of the visitors came out of the inn, lingered a few seconds
in conversation at the gate, and then started for their evening walk, in
opposite directions, as Englishmen are wont,—“Bedad,” said my Lord
Bacon, “the gentlemen have quarrelled, more's the pity. Sure, one of 'em
has been ating the biggest dinner, and made the other jealous. That's
the jealous one,” he continued, pointing to our friend Balder the
Beautiful, “there's something in the set of his back, which says
that he is disappointed.” And there really was a misanthropic expression,
to be observed upon the shoulders in question, which we might not
otherwise have noticed, but which was immediately patent to an Irishman,
who detects more quickly, and ridicules more cleverly, though he cannot
despise more heartily than we do, any exposition of a sulky temperament. I
remember going to a horse-fair with Paddy O'Hara, of Merton, and that we
overtook on the road an agriculturist of a staid and sullen deportment. He
was riding by a rustic groom who led a handsome, but somewhat
heavy-looking horse, too good for harness, but scarcely good enough for
hunting, though the farmer evidently regarded him as quite the animal for
High Leicestershire. Well, we pulled up the tandem, that we might examine
the tit (thinking ourselves amazingly knowing in horse-flesh, as
undergraduates do), and O'Hara led off with a “Good morning!”
“Good morning,” replied Agricola, but very sternly.
“It's lonely your horse is looking this morning, sir,” continued Pat, as
serious as a mute.
“Don't know what you mean,” said the farmer.
“Oh, sure,” replied O'Hara, with an expression of intense grief, as though
his heart bled for the poor quadruped, “it's desolate, and melancholy, and
beraved he's looking, and very, very lonely—without the plough!”
And he blew such a blast upon our long horn, as made the welkin ring; and
the big horse, he pranced and reared, and the farmer and his man they
blasphemed in unison, as we sped merrily onwards.
As we had some thoughts of spending a day at a place in this neighbourhood
called Coolna Carton, we asked Johnny Joyce if there was much to
see there. And the answer which we got was “Divil a taste!”
“But surely,” we remonstrated, “there is wild mountain and lake scenery?”
“Oh, faith,” said Johnny, “there's mountains and sthrames, if it's the
likes o' them that ye're wanting;” and he looked at us, as though he
would have added, “but you, surely, cannot be such fools!”
Ah, Johnny Joyce! there's a homily for us all in that “divil a taste!”
The beautiful, so close to us, over head, under foot, we prize not; the
great hills are voiceless to the mountaineer; and the lowlander sees no
loveliness in valleys thick with corn. Ashore, we sigh for the wild
magnificence of ocean; and, at sea, our unquiet spirit yearns for the
landscape's rest and peace. Let us ask for eyes to read, and loving hearts
to understand, the declarations of wisdom and of goodness God-written
everywhere!
We spent a pleasant evening in the common-room of our inn. There was,
among others, a landscape-painter, who, manfully confessing that he “could
do nothing with Connamara,” showed us, nevertheless, some very
interesting sketches; and there was a clever, merry, young graduate, of
our sister university at Dublin, as full of good sense as good humour. He
told us, as we sipped our punch, how that whiskey derived its name from
the Irish uiske, the water; “the only water,” quoth he, “that's
good for a gentleman to drink;” how that usquebaugh meant “water of
life,”asaqua vitae in Latin, and eau de vie in French; and
how this reminded him that the Phoenix Park in Dublin, derived its
name from Finniske, or Fionuisge, fair-water, and was so
called from a spring in the neighbourhood, once much resorted to as a
chalybeate spa.
As we became confidential, I asked him what he thought of Ireland's
prospects?
“Well,” he said, after a long, reflective pull at his little, black, dudeen,
“I am not so sanguine as some with regard to the prosperity of Ireland.
That which Pope said of man in general, seems to me to be especially true
with regard to an Irishman in particular, he 'never is, but always to be,
blessed.' Every history, or book of travels, written no matter when or by
whom, always has the same moral,—Ireland is emerging from a state of
misery and degradation—followed by some fine, old-crusted quotations
with regard to our capabilities, and the wonderful results which might be
achieved, 'if only the hand of man did join with the hand of nature.'”1
1 Lord Bacon, the original, not the boatman.
“Pity,” I thought, “that the hand of man should be unhappily preoccupied—with
a blunderbuss!”
“No,” he continued, “physicians, Danish, Saxon, and Norman, have
prescribed for us (generally a course of bleeding and depletion) with so
little success; the grand panacea, Protestantism, has been administered to
us,—as gently as a ball to some restive horse, with a twitch upon
our national nose, and a thrust down our national throat,—with so
few favourable results, that I begin to fear our malady is chronic, and
that affliction must be regarded as our normal.
“I have heard before,” I remarked, “that Ireland has not been considered
by her medical advisers to be a very good subject.”
“I see,” he answered, “but we are more loyal, perhaps, than you are
inclined to suppose, and quite as much so as you have a right to expect.
Some people seem surprised that we Irish do not set up statues of
Turgesius, the Norwegian gentleman, who favoured us with a tax called Nosestate.
Money, by which he merely meant, that, if we declined to pay, he
should remove the facial adjunct alluded to; that we do not paint memorial
pictures of Prince John and his Normans ridiculing our Irish Chiefs, when
they came to welcome them at Waterford, and chaffing them about their long
hair and their short yellow shirts, which, I grant, must have been rather
funny; that we exhibit no restlessness for the canonisation of Cromwell,
and make no pious pilgrimages to the tomb of Dutch William. Now, I by no
means say, with Junius, that 'Ireland has been uniformly plundered and
oppressed,' but I do say that the bride which Pope Adrian, himself an
Englishman, gave, with a gay marriage-ring of emeralds, to your second
Henry, has not been very lovingly dealt with.”
“The wedding,” I said, “has not been, as yet, productive of much
happiness; but you must remember, that if the husband has been harsh at
times, and disagreeable, the conduct of the lady has been very aggravating
and suspicious. Hath she not flirted with Monsieur and Jonathan?
Hath she not decked herself with ribbons of obnoxious hue, and gone after
strange priests, whom John Bull honoureth not? Could he have foreseen the
troublous consequences of the union, he might have wished to imitate the
example of Jupiter, who, having considered the subject in all its
bearings, devoured Metis, his wife, lest she should produce an offspring
wiser than himself.”
“Pergite Pierides! Go it, Lemprière!” here broke in that boisterous
Frank, who, I regret to say, has an ubiquitous ear, and a consequent power
of joining the conversation from any distance, and when you least expect
him. “What are you two mythological bloaters driving at?”
“Francis,” I replied, reprovingly, “your mind, a feeble one at best, is
unhinged by success and whiskey. Calm yourself, and go to bed.”
But he only crowed like a cock.
“The fact is,” resumed my Irish friend, “we are too near a great country
ever to be great ourselves, and are too proud, unhappily, to perform on
violin No. 2.”
“You won't be angry with me,” I said, “if I doubt your ability, under the
most favourable circumstances, ever to play a first fiddle in the Monster
Concert of Nations. You may let me say so, for I love the Irish. I should
be disloyal to friendships, which I value dearly, forgetful of a thousand
merry-makings enhanced by Irish humour, and of many a sorrow relieved by
Irish sympathy, if I did not speak well of Irishmen, to say nothing of the
interesting fact, that, on several delightful occasions, I have been in
love with your sweet Irish girls. But if I have read your history aright,
you have never, nationally, shown any ambition or aptitude to hold a
prominent place.”
“Confound your impudence,” he answered, “did you never read in that
self-same history, that Ireland was once 'the school of Europe,' 'Insula
Sanctorum,' and I don't know what, before those Danish ruffians destroyed
the monasteries,—from the purest and most pious motives, doubtless,
like your own dear Henry VIII.!”
“I have read,” I rejoined, “that a Scotch gentleman (for 'Saint Patrick
was a gentleman,' if ever there was one) preached Druidism out of this
country, and gave you, in its place, the blessings of a heaven-sent faith;
and I know, furthermore, that Irishmen, such as Sedulius, your poet, and
your Saints, Columbkill, and Aidan, and Finian, and Cuthbert, names known
and beloved through Christendom, have been ever esteemed and honoured
among the champions of our holy religion; but I am speaking of Ireland
politically, and maintain, that, even in the brighter epoch, of which you
treat, say from the fifth to the ninth century, Ireland, socially and
generally, was in a state of trouble and disquietude. Indeed it would seem
from your history that until a recent period, which (I say it with all
reverent earnestness) may God prolong, you have either been repelling
invaders, or fighting among yourselves, or both, ever since Partholan, the
sixth in descent from Magog, Noah's second son, took Ireland, with his
thousand men. Why, even in what you would consider a period of profound
peace, you have been about as orderly as a lot of schoolboys, when the
master is absent, or a pack of young hounds, who have got away from their
huntsman; and suggest in every phase of your existence, the stern remark
of your greatest Irishman,1 'Ireland is to be governed only by an army.'
L'Empire, c'est l'Epée!”2
1 Wellington.
2 Punch's version of Louis Napoleon's words, “L'Empire,
c'est la Paix”
“You seem to think,” he said, “with another illustrious countryman of
mine, Mr. John Cade, that 'then are we in order, when most out of order,'
and that Ireland, like the lady in the farce, 1 only 'glories in her
topsy-turvy-tude;' but when you speak of the schoolmaster being abroad, do
you not in great measure account for eccentricities, repeating that grand
enigma, 'What makes treason reason, and Ireland wretched?' and answering,
'absent T.' Collisions and explosions may be looked for on the Rail, when
they, who should be its Directors, never come near the line; and in my
opinion the best thing that could happen to Ireland would be the revival
of the Act against non-residence which was made in 1379.”2
1The King's Gardener.
2 Moore's History of Ireland, vol. iii., p. 113.
“Would it not,” I asked, “be a wiser and more agreeable inducement, if you
could assure the returning landlord that his plans of improvement would
not be disturbed by an injection of lead into his brain? At all events, I
think, we shall see shortly what resident men can do. The estates, which
absenteeism, as much as anything, has encumbered and finally estranged,
will be occupied, to a great extent, by their new owners:—will these
ever make Paddy industrious?”
“Sure,” he answered, “we'll be the grandest nation upon earth, the moment
we get a taste of encouragement. Meanwhile I'll concede, that we're a
trifle awkward to manage, and, when we're not famished by dearth of food,
nor depressed by a drought of whiskey, that we're mighty fond of a
scrimmage. And you'll allow, I take it, that no men fight in a gentaler
form than we do: your Irish regiments have done you good service on the
battle-field, to say nothing of our having supplied you with the grandest
warrior of your history. And long may we fight, side by side, and keep out
of all hot water, but this,” and he touched my glass with his own,
and sang with a voice so pliable and mellow, that even the knight of the
surly shoulders,—whom we also named Thersites, described by Homer as
“the ugliest chap of all who came to Troy,”—smiled and nodded in
accompaniment,—
“O quam bonum est!
O quam jucundum est!
Poculis fraternis gaudere!”
And so we became, as Dennis O'Shaughnessy 1 bids, the “sextons to
animosity and care;” and having buried them decently, were going to bed,
when dulcet notes from a musical instrument, which the performer thereupon
alluded to as his “feelute,” and which was joyously warbling an Irish jig,
attracted us to the kitchen. And what mortal man “that hadn't wooden
legs,” could see blushing Biddy Joyce footing it merrily, and not feel
himself as irresistibly disposed to dance, as a nigger when he hears a
fiddle? In thirty seconds Frank and I were involved in a series of such
swift, untiring saltations, as the world hath not seen, since Mevelava,
the Dervish, danced for four days to the flute of Hamsa!
When we awoke the next morning (Sunday), “the richest cloudland in
Europe,” as Kohl terms Ireland, was investing such abundance of its
surplus capital in the lakes and mountains of Connamara, that it
was impossible to leave our inn; and as difference of creed unhappily
prevented a common service, every man became his own priest, and every
bed-room an oratory. My friend, the Irish graduate, played some most
solemn and impressive music, including the “Cujus Animam,” from the Stabat
Mater, upon a Concertina, which now breathed forth notes sweet and
clear, like a flute, and anon was grand and organ-like. At a later period,
a perfume, which, at first, I supposed to be incense, issued from his
dormitory; but it ultimately resolved itself into Latakia.
At last, the clouds began to break, and the grand old mountains to emerge
from the mist, like the scenery in a dissolving view; the sunlight seemed
to reach one's heart; and we sallied forth for a walk, the Irishman,
Frank, and I, as happy as bees on the first warm day of spring, or as the
gallant Kane, when, after a long Arctic winter, he saw the sun
shine once more, and felt “as though he were bathing in perfumed waters.”
The conversation, as we strolled towards Letter-Frack, was theological and
brisk. Paddy said that “our Church resembled a branch broken from
the Vine, withering and moribund from inanition;” and we affirmed that “his
Church was like a tree unpruned, all leaves, and no fruit.” Then he
pretended to have heard that Mr. Spurgeon had refused the See of
Canterbury, and that Lord Shaftesbury was bringing in a Bill to abolish
the Apostles' Creed. “You miscellaneous Christians,” he said, “will
shortly have nothing to believe in common, unless it be—Dr.
Cumming!”
“And you, magnificent Christians,” I rejoined, “who, by the way, have had
your rival Popes, and still have divisions among you, you have already got
more to believe than Scripture, tradition, or common sense
acknowledge. As to our being 'miscellaneous,' we churchmen have no
communion with the sects, though you delight to identify us with them, and
though some disloyal teachers among us may 'apply the call of dissent to
their own lost sheep, and tinkle back their old women by sounding the
brass of the Methodists,' 1 our Church, unswerving, still maintains the
old, catholic faith, and earnestly entreats deliverance from all false
doctrine, heresy, and schism.”
1 Horace Walpole.
And so we went on, strophe, and antistrophe, with an occasional epode from
Frank (who kindly applauded both parties, encouraging us, more liberally
than respectfully, with “Bravo Babylon!” “Now heretic!” and the
like), and only arrived at unanimity, when it was proposed that we should
return and dine.
Our host, Mr. Duncan, told us this evening, with other very interesting
details, concerning the Famine of 1847, how that, at a public meeting in
the neighbourhood, he had said, somewhat incautiously, that rather than
the people should starve, they might take his sheep from the hills; and
how that, when want and hunger increased, they kept in remembrance his
generous words, and, taking advantage, like Macbeth, of “the unguarded
Duncan,” turned ninety of his sheep into mutton.
CHAPTER X. FROM KYLEMORE TO GALWAY.
WE left Kyle-more next morning about 8.30,—the Irishman
calling to us from his window, “to give his love to the Bishop of London,
and to ask him what he fancied for the Chester Cup,”—travelling on
an outside car,—the most pleasant mode of conveyance for two
persons, as you are thus perfectly independent, can stop when and where
you please, have plenty of room, and can converse agreeably. Frank looked
wistfully back at the lake, like the pointer sent home at luncheon, or the
hunter you have ridden as your hack to the “meet,” or (a resemblance much
more to his taste), a belle, reluctantly leaving the ball-room, on
the arm of her drowsy but determined Pa.
Now we pass through the severe and solemn scenery of the Killeries,
compared by Inglis, Barrow, and Miss Martineau, to a Norwegian Fiord, with
its lakes so still, and cold, and black, and its mountains so bleak and
stern, that even the sea-fowl seemed to have deserted it with the
exception of a single cormorant, who looked as though he had committed
himself in some disreputable way, and had been banished here for solitary
confinement.
But the dreariness of the scene was soon delightfully relieved by numbers
of the peasantry, on their way to the Fair, or Pattern as it is
called, being held on the festival of some Patron Saint, at Leenane;
and the striking colours of their picturesque costume, red, white, and
blue, came out most effectively against the sombre darkness of the
back-ground. Boats, too, were crossing the water; and a soldier in
uniform, coming over in one of them, glowed on the gloomy lake, like a bed
of scarlet geraniums in the middle of a fallow field. Some were on foot;
but more on horseback, almost every steed carrying double—husbands
and wives, mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, and for aught I know,
“one lovely arm was stretched for,”—nothing in particular, “and one
was round her lover.” The bare feet hung gracefully down, and the eyelids,
as we passed, hung gracefully down also, and hid those bright Irish eyes.
Well, “there is a shame, which is glory and grace,” the most beautiful
ornament that woman wears, and nowhere worn with a more becoming, but
unaffected, dignity, than here by the maidens of Connamara.
Saddles did not seem to be known, and the bridles, chiefly, were of rope
or twisted hay. As to the Fair itself, I imagine that the meeting partook
more of a social than of a commercial character, a few sheep being the
principal live-stock which we saw exposed for sale. Several stalls
exhibited, for the refreshment of visitors, large cakes or bannocks, with
currants at an incredible distance from each other (the white bread, per
se, being, doubtless, a sufficient novelty and treat to many), and any
amount of apples. Indeed Paddy seems almost as fond of pommes d'arbre
as he is of pommes de terre; and in Stations, Steamers, and
Streets, they have all but a monopoly of the market.
The landlord of the neat-looking inn at Leenane, a fine, tall,
manly fellow, reminding us that we had now entered into the country of
“big Joyce,” came forth and welcomed us cheerily, as we stopped to change
our horse, and almost induced us to stay and see the fun of the fair,
together with “the hundred and fifty couple, which would stand up in the
afternoon for a jig.” But we had no time to lose, having to meet the Clifden
Car, at the Cross Roads, en route to Galway; and as we
saw, shortly afterwards, two waggons loaded with constables, who were
going to preserve order, we did not regret our departure, nor fail to
congratulate each other on the unbroken soundness of our Saxon skulls.
We took with us a new driver from Leenane, who seemed somewhat
depressed at leaving the Fair, and was the least sociable Irishman I ever
met. But one does not desire conversation amid this impressive scenery;
and as the only information which he volunteered was this, that “Hens
Castle,” near the Mauwt Hotel, was built in one night by a cock
and hen grouse,—a statement which he appeared to believe implicitly,—I
don't suppose that we lost much from his taciturnity. The misfortune was,
that, though his tongue was tied, his hat was not,—an eccentric,
light-hearted “wide-awake,” which would keep skimming past us, and
hurrying back to Leenane, always starting off with a fresh impetus, as the
owner stooped to secure it. As time was precious, Frank offered to fasten
the article to his head, with a large, gold breast-pin, by way of nail,
and a heavy stone, which he picked up by the wayside (during a little walk
of some two miles up hill), as hammer; but he was repulsed with
considerable asperity. At last, to our great delectation, the offensive
head-gear was drawn out of a boggy pool, in such a limp and unpleasant
condition, that the proprietor, after a brief survey, indignantly sat upon
it during the remainder of our journey, vesting his cranium in a
pocket-handkerchief, which was, indeed, a sight to see. With a large bunch
of heather, which, I regret to confess, we could not refrain from
inserting in the collar of his coat, and
“dulce est tomfoolere in loco?
he presented an appearance “well worthy of hob-servation,” (as they say at
the wax-work), and which would have raised an immediate mob in any street
of London.
We arrived at the cross roads, in spite of the Fabian policy
pursued by the volatile hat, in good time for the Galway car, and
soon found ourselves leaning over the pretty bridge at Oughterarde,
and bidding farewell to Connamara. It has been, indeed, a privilege
and refreshment to wander amid these glorious scenes, where
“Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise,”
and where nature, with a calm, majestic dignity, which must impress, and
ought to improve, claims at once our reverence and love, awes us with her
grandeur, but charms us more with her smile.
The tourist readily foregoes and forgets the temporary loss of little
comforts to which he has been accustomed. There is but one really great
deprivation to which he is subject,—the want of ladies' society.
English ladies can go, do go, and will go everywhere; but, generally
speaking, they are unwilling, wisely unwilling, to encounter a wet day on
an Irish car, or the carpetless, comfortless rooms of the Connaviara
inns.
Indeed, the fine gentleman, who chiefly loves the tips of his moustaches,
the sleeve-links of his shirt, and the toes of his gleaming boots,—the
dandy, [Greek word], who can't live without his still champagne, by Jove,
his soups and sauces, and golden plovers, his Nesselrode pudding, and petit
verre en suite,—will find sad discomfiture in Connamara.
Neither Apicius Coelius nor Lady Clutterbuck have prepared the way for his
daintyship, and when the bacon, which accompanies the breastless fowls,
shall display its prismatic hues, his forlorn spirit shall sigh in vain
for the pleasant hams of Piccadilly, while, in vain, he imprecates on the
unskilful cook the fate of Mr. Richard Rouse. 1
1 A cook, who, in the year 1530, attempted to poison Fisher,
Bishop of Rochester, and was boiled to death—out of
compliment to his profession. See Froude's History of
England, vol. i., p. 288. A writer in the Athenaum (Jan. 13,
1844,) remarks, in a very amusing article on the Irish
Census, “There is no cookery in Ireland, because there is
nothing to cook. We occasionally, to be sure, throw them a
bone of contention, and they make a broil of it. Their
cookery goes no further.”
At morn, moreover, lazily turning in his bed to ring for valet or waiter,
how shall his superb dignity be perturbed to find, that there exists no belle
alliance between the upper and lower house, and that his highness must
go to the stair top, and hallo, for whatever his emergencies require. No
marble bath awaits him now, with its tepidly congenial joys; but there
stands at his door a little tub, which he contemplates as ruefully as the
stork of the fable the shallow dish of the fox, and which just contains a
sufficiency of water to perplex a rat of irresolute mind, whether he
should walk or swim. The accommodation is, in fact, so limited, that
Frank, in attempting some daring flight of ablution, broke his tiny bath
to pieces, and away streamed the water to announce the fact down stairs.
Up came the astonished waiter, and surveying the wreck with a sorrowful
countenance, exclaimed, “By the powers, your onner, its Meary's
looking-glass you've been and ruinated intirely!—and how will she
kape herself nate and daysint?” subsequently explaining to us, that this
vessel, filled with clear spring water, had served, prior to its
dissolution, as the mirror of the pretty housemaid. I had my doubts as to
the tale of a tub; but Frank, at all events, thought it his duty to have
an interview with the bereaved Meary, and returned therefrom with one of
his ears considerably enriched in colouring.
I strongly recommend the tourist to make himself a C.B., by procuring a
portable bath of waterproof material, such as is now made for travellers.
He will then have no difficulty to contend with beyond a slight
indisposition on the part of the waiters to supply him liberally with the
element required. “Bedad,” said one of them to me, “if the rain's to be
presarved, and carried up stairs, and trated in this fashion, I'm thinking
it'ill get so mighty fond of our attintions, that it'll never lave us at
all, at all!”
Again, the fine gentleman may be disconcerted to find that windows very
generally decline to be opened, or, being open, prefer to keep so, except
in case of his looking out of them, when they are down upon his neck, like
a guillotine. His looking-glass, too, just as it is brought to a
convenient focus, may perhaps, dash madly round, as though urged by an
anxiety, which it could not repress, to assure him, in white chalk, that
it really cost three and sixpence!
But what are these trivial inconveniences, which amuse, more than they
annoy, to “a man as calls himself a man,” and when he has such active,
cheerful, untiring servants, ever ready to do all in their power to please
him? The cuisine is certainly a little queer, but he who, with a Connamara
appetite, cannot enjoy Connamara fare, salmon, fresh from its
lakes, eggs newly laid, excellent bread and butter, the maliest of
potatoes (“laughing at you, and with their coats unbuttoned from the
heat,” but perhaps a trifle underboiled for our taste, until we learn to
like them “with a bone in them”), together with the best of whiskey, and
our Burton beer; he who cannot sleep in a clean Connamara bed,
after a day among its mountains and lakes, nor say with Bellarius,
“Come; our stomach
Will make what's homely savoury; weariness
Can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth
Finds the down pillow hard,—
why he's not the man for Galway, and had better keep away from it.
CHAPTER XI. FROM GALLWAY TO LIMERICK
WE witnessed at the railway station, on our arrival at Galway, a
most painful and touching scene,—the departure of some emigrants,
and their last separation, here on earth, from dear relations and friends.
The train was about to start, and the platform was crowded with men,
women, and children, pressing round to take a last fond look. Ever and anon,
a mother or a sister would force a way into the carriages, flinging her
arms around her beloved, only to be separated by a superior strength, and
parting from them with such looks of misery as disturbed the soul with
pity. And then, for the first time, we heard the wild Irish “cry,”
beginning with a low, plaintive wail, and gradually rising in its tone of
intense sorrow, until
“Lamentis, gemituque et fæmineo ululatu Tecta fremunt.”
Nor was this great grief simulated, as by hired keeners at a wake,
the mulieres proficae of the Irish Feralia, but came gushing
with its waters of bitterness from the full fountain of those loving
hearts. There were faces there no actor could assume—faces which
would have immortalised the painter who could have traced them truly, but
were beyond the compass of art. Two, especially, I shall never forget. A
youth of eighteen or nineteen, who had a cheerful word and pleasant smile
for all, though you could see the while, in his white cheek and quivering
lip, how grief was gnawing his brave Spartan heart (Ah,
“What a noble thing it is To suffer and be strong!”)
and the other, an elderly man, who stood somewhat aloof from the rest,
with his arms folded, and his head bent, motionless, speechless, with a
face on which despair had written, I shall smile no more until I
welcome death!
I thought of those beautiful lines which begin,
“Thank God, bless God, all ye who suffer not
More grief than ye can weep for. That is well;” 1
1 Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
and I thought, also, what great hearts beat under coats of frieze, and how
bounden we are, with all our might, to avert from them these overwhelming
sorrows, or, at the least, and if fall they must, to prove our sympathy as
best we can.
Many of the emigrants had bunches of wild flowers and heather, and one of
them a shamrock in a broken flowerpot, as memorials of dear ould Ireland.
Nor does this fond love of home and kindred decline in a distant land; no
less a sum than 7,520,000 L. having been sent from America to Ireland, in
the years 1848 to 1854, inclusive, according to the statement of the
Emigration Commissioners.
It was a strange recollection during this scene of sorrow, (and how
strangely our thoughts will sometimes set themselves at variance with what
is passing before us!) that, all the while, the Great Jig was going on at
Leenane, and the fiddlers fiddling, and the hundred and fifty
couple footing it, right merrily! Well,
“Let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play;
For some must laugh,
And some must weep—
So runs the world away!”
And I, accordingly, having sorrowed, and that heartily, with the poor
emigrants and their friends, shall venture to refresh myself, and, I hope,
my readers, with a small historical incident, suggested to my memory by
the wild Irish cry. When Richard de Clare, surnamed Strongbow,
invaded Ireland in 1171, one of his sons was so exceedingly astonished at
the awful howlings, which the enemy raised, by way of overture to
the fight, that he became prematurely “tired of war's alarms,” and set
forth without loss of time in search of more peaceful scenes;—colloquially
speaking, he cut and run. But hearing, soon afterwards, that the Governor
had silenced these disagreeable vocalists, and that the conquerors were
having no end of fun, Master Strongbow returned to the bosom of his family—where
he must have been inexpressibly surprised and disgusted at the abrupt and
ungentlemanly behaviour of Papa, who no sooner caught sight of him, than
he rushed at him, and—cut him in two. 1
1 Moore's History of Ireland, vol. ii., p. 290.
We left Galway at four p.m., and reached Athlone in a couple of
hours. If the Widow Malone, och hone, still lives in the town of Athlone,
och hone, I do not admire her choice of residence, for its aspect is cold
and cheerless. So at least it appeared, as we saw it, on a day that was
dark, and dull, and dreary, with rain. We read in “Wanleys Wonders”(one
of the most carefully-collated and painstaking books of lies extant) that
the inhabitants of Catona were wont to make their king swear, at
his coronation, that it should not rain immoderately, in any part of his
dominions, so long as he remained on the throne; and one sighs for a
similar dynasty in Ireland, (if the promise was really fulfilled), where
that ancient monarch, “King O'Neill, of the Showers,” seems still
perpetually to reign.
So the streets were looking their narrowest and dingiest, and the Castle
and Barracks their greyest and grimmest, as we saw them from under our
umbrellas; and we were glad to return to Mr. Rourke's comfortable hotel,
where papered walls and carpeted floors, and practicable windows, and
duplicate towels, again welcomed us to the lap of luxury. But I felt
little disposition to sit down in it, mourning for Connamara, gazing sadly
through the windows of our coffee-room, and esteeming the Post-office
opposite but a poor substitute for the great hills of Bina Beola, and the
lakes to be very feebly represented by Mr. Pym's establishment for the
diffusion of Dublin ales. Nor did sweet solace come, until we beheld once
more—a real beef-steak. Frank's eyes, in their normal state of a
mild, benevolent blue, glowed with a fiery greed; and I do not suppose
that six Van Amburghs could have taken away our food with hot irons.
After dinner we communicated to each other the little we knew with regard
to the old town of Athlone:—how that—the Shannon, which
flows through it, being here fordable,—it had always been a place of
great military importance; how that William III. had, in the first
instance, failed to take it,—or rather to receive it, 1 as he
would have said, with the exquisite humour, for which he was remarkable,—and
lost for a time that amiability of temper, which, according to the
historian, 2 was so conspicuous in time of war; how that Ginkel,
his General, (why does not history salute him by his more euphonious
designation as first Earl of Athlone?) had much better luck next
time, to wit, on the 1st of July, 1691, when, differing in opinion with
the supercilious Frenchman, St. Ruth, who declared the thing to be
impossible, even after it was done, he boldly crossed the river, attacked,
and took the place.
1 His motto was, “Recepi non rapui,” which Swift happily
translated, “the receiver is as bad as the thief.”
2 Smollett, who says, “His conversation was dry, and his
manners disgusting, except in battle!”—Hume Continued,
vol. i., p. 442.
Here, feebly murmuring something about “the new bridge, which spans the
noble stream, being a handsome structure,” we came to a decided check,
Frank making a cast by ringing the bell, and requesting the waiter to
“bring in a large dish of startling incidents, connected with the history
of Athlone,”—an order, which seemed to amuse three
good-looking priests, (en route for a Consecration at Ballinasloe, to be
presided over by Cardinal Wiseman), and who were discussing, (and why not?—I'm
not the man, at all events, to write and tell the Pope,) a small decanter
of whiskey.
The Shannon is a glorious river, broad and deep, and brimming over,
extending, from source to sea, a distance of two hundred miles, and
“making its waves a blessing as they flow” to ten Irish counties. I should
think that hay for the universe might be grown upon its teeming banks, and
we saw a goodly quantity studding the fields with those (to us)
quaint-looking tumuli, which, like the “hobbledehoy, neither man nor boy,”
are too large for haycocks, and too small for stacks. Six miles from Athlone,
we pass the Seven Churches of Clonmacnoise, (once, as its name
signifies, the Eton of Ireland, “the school of the sons of the
nobles,”) by whom despoiled and desecrated we English need not pause to
inquire; and close to these a brace of those famous Round Towers, which
have so perplexed the archaeological world, and which, according to Frank,
were, “most probably Lighthouses, which had come ashore at night for a
spree, and had forgotten the way back again.” The scenery, which at first
is flat and uninteresting, except to an agricultural eye, increases in
attraction, as you progress towards Limerick, and is exceedingly
beautiful about Lough Derg. There are delightful residences on
either side, of which we admired particularly Portumna, my Lord
Clanricarde's 1 and a place called Derry. The view from the
upper windows of this latter home must be “a sight to make an old man
young.” The mountains, inclosed and cultivated, have a tame unnatural
look, as though they had been brought here from Connamara, and been broken
to carry corn; and they wear a strange uncomfortable aspect, like some
Cherokee Chief in the silk stockings and elegant attire of our Court.
1 Would that his motto were the watchword of every
Irishmen:—“Un g foy, ung roy, ung loy!”
Here and there, in mid-stream, are beacons of an original pattern. The
cormorants flew heavily away before us, but the heron moved not from the
sighing sedge,—still and grey as the stone on which he stood,—nor
seemed to note the seething waters, which swelled around him as the
steamer passed.
Ay, and how touchingly that silent bird, with his keen gaze, steadfastly
fixed, and his every thought concentrated, upon one object reminded
me (if, for a moment, I may assimilate the Queen of my soul to a gudgeon)
of myself; for alas, I was again in love! As soon as ever I set
foot on the steamer, I knew it was all over, though she was a long way
off.
“It would have been well,” writes Mr. Froude, “for Henry VIII. if he could
have lived in a world, in which women could have been dispensed with;” and
it would be better no doubt for the susceptible tourist, if there were
fewer pretty girls in Ireland. In vain, I groaned
“O intermissa, Venus, diu,
Rursus bella moves!
Parce, precor, precor!”
for she wouldn't parce at any price; and by the time we arrived at
Clonmacnoise, I was in a state of most abject infatuation. Frank proposed
to bleed me with a large fishing-knife, and would keep feeling my pulse,
with his watch in his hand, in an exceedingly frivolous manner. But I
suffered severely, in spite of frequent beer, until a late period of the
evening, when my wounded spirit, in the smoke-room at Limerick, at
last found relief in song.
THE BELLE OF THE SHANNON. 1
1 The title and metre are suggested by Mahony's most musical
verses in praise of The Bells of Shandon.
I.
With swate sensashuns,
And palpitashuns,
And suspirashuns,
Which thrill me through!
Here in Limerick, city Of maidens pretty,
A tender ditty I'll chant to you.
II.
With maid and man on,
A stamer ran on,
Where silver Shannon In glory glames!
Shure, all big rivers He bates to shivers,
Rowling majestic,
This King o' Strames!
III.
There, blandly baming,
As we went staming,
Och, was I draming?
I first did note,
Such a swate fairy,
As super mare,
No, nor yet in aere,
Did iver float!
IV.
Her very bonnet
Desarves a sonnet,
And I'd write one on it,
If I'd the time.
But something fairer,
And dear, and rarer,
In coorse, the wearer,
Shall have my rhyme.
V.
With eyes like mayteors,
And parfect phaytures,
Which aisy bate yours,
Great Vanus, fair!
I'll ne'er forget her,
As first I met her,
On (what place betther?)
The cabin stair!
VI.
Her darlint face is
Beyond all praises,
And thin for graces,
There's not her like.
All other lasses
She just surpasses,
As wine molasses,
Or salmon pike!
VII.
Her hair's the brightest,
Her hand the whitest,
Her step the lightest,—
Ah me, those fate!
You need not tell a—bout
Cinderella,
For hers excel a-
ny boots you'll mate!
VIII.
With look the purest,
That ever tourist,
From eyes azurest,
Saw anywhere,
I met her blushing,
As I went rushing,
For bitter beer, down
The cabin stair.
IX.
Then she sat and smiled, where,
On luggage piled there, 1
She me beguiled,—ne'er
A smile like that!
And I began to Compose a canto
On Frank's portmanteau,
Whereon she sat.
X.
I've read in story,
What dades of glory,
Knights grand and gory,
For love have wrought.
But ne'er was duel,
Nor torture cruel,
I'd shun, my jewel,
If you besought!
XI.
For her voice is swatest,
Her shape the natest,
And she complatest
Of womankind.
And while that river,
In sunlight quiver,
Oh, sure, he'll niver
Her aqual find
XII.
Troth, since we've parted,
I've felt down-hearted,
And disconsarted,—
A cup too low!
And so I think, boys,
We'd better drink, boys,
Her health in whiskey,
Before we go.
1 This luggage included a long narrow box, and, from an
aperture at the top there emerged from time to time a
peacock's head, exhibiting (despite the presence of Juno) an
expression of sublime misery. I doubt whether that bird will
ever take heart to spread his tail again!
“He'll forget her to-morrow morning,” said Frank to his neighbour, in a
pretended whisper, which all could hear, “and it's better so, poor fellow,
for the girl's ridiculously fond of me, and I've got no end of her hair in
my pocket.”
Of course, there were plenty of fools to giggle; but I never could see any
wit in lies. I am quite positive, that, when we parted, she returned my
regretful gaze, and
“Phyllida amo ante alias; nam me discedere flevit.”
CHAPTER XII. LIMERICK
UNDOUBTEDLY, there is solace for the forlorn in the pleasant city of Limerick.
Justly celebrated for its Hooks, it is far more to be admired for its
Eyes, for, although the former are the best in all the world, the latter
are much more killing! No sooner did we emerge from Mr. Cruise's very
excellent and extensive hotel, than we were attacked and surrounded by the
lace-girls, in their blue cloaks, drooping gracefully, with heads
uncovered, or rather most becomingly covered with thick and glossy hair.
At first, we recklessly resolved to cut a way through with our umbrellas,
or perish in the attempt, but the utter hopelessness of such a fearful
step induced us finally to capitulate, the Siege of Limerick was
raised, and commercial relations peacefully established between the
besiegers and besieged. I did just venture to inquire what use I could
possibly make of four superficial inches of fine linen, surrounded by very
delicate openwork, not less than a foot in width, and was immediately
answered, “And shure, yer honner'll be for buying the handkercher, to dry
up the tares of the swate young lady, as is waping for ye over the says.”
We would have it, of course, and the “splendid pair o' slaves,” and a
miscellaneous assortment, which created an immense sensation on our return
home, and were declared to be both pretty and cheap; for, “when maidens
sue, men give like gods,” or geese, as the case may be; and such winning
looks of tender entreaty came from under those long dark eye-lashes, that
I really believe their owners could have persuaded us to purchase a
complete collection of poisonous reptiles, or a copy of “The Converted
Bargee.” They were not so successful with a morose old gentleman, who
could see no beauty in their “darlint collars;” and they quite failed in
an attempt, evidently persisted in for their own amusement, to dispose of
some beautiful little babies'-caps, to a waspish old girl of sixty-five!
Limerick is divided into three parts, the Irish town, the English
town, and Newtown Perry (so called after Mr. Sexton Perry,
who commenced it); and these are connected by bridges, of which the old
Thomond, hard by King Johns Castle, and the new Wellesley, said to have
cost 85,000 L., are interesting. The eccentricities of the workmen must
have added materially to the costliness of the latter structure, inasmuch
as they seem to have been Odd Fellows as well as very Free Masons, who,
instead of cementing stones and friendships, only turned the former into
stumbling blocks for the latter, by throwing them at each other's heads.
Every day an animated faction-fight, between the boys of Clare and
the boys of Limerick, was got up (instead of the bridge), until at
length it was found necessary to bring out an armed force, to keep order
on this Pons Asinorum.
The main street of Newtown Perry, in which is Cruise's Hotel, is a
long and handsome one; and what's more, you may buy some good cigars in
it, a rare refreshment in Ireland.
We went to see the Cathedral (partly out of compliment to the memory of
good Bishop Jebb); but its iron gates were scrupulously locked. Perhaps,
had they been open, we should not have ventured within, for the building
had a grim, uninviting look, and seemed as though it despised us
thoroughly for daring to come when it wasn't service-time. I should not
have been at all surprised, if “a variety of humbugs in cocked-hats” had
sallied forth to disperse us.
One of the lace-girls, for they had followed us, with reduced prices and a
fresh supply of their pretty work, told us, as we turned from the gate,
that “during the grate sage o' Limerick there was a mighty big gun
on the top of that church, that kept firing away, day and night.”
Whereupon Frank said, that the interesting fact was highly creditable to
the Dean and Chapter, who generally deputed any hard work to one of the minor
canons.
In which of the sieges did the great gun thunder? Was it that of 1651,
when Ireton (whose character one never can identify with that beautiful
portrait engraved by Houbraken, for how could such a noble presence belong
to a man “melancholick and reserved,” 1 and so wanting in personal
courage, as to allow Mr. Holies to pull him by the nose? 2) died before
the walls from the plague? Or did it some forty years later send forth its
sulphurous and tormenting flames, against “bould Giniral Ginkil,” and help
to expedite that Famous Treaty of Limerick, honourable alike to
all?
1 Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, vol. iii., p. 362.
2 Birch's Lives of Illustrious Persons, p. 96.
We did not see nor hear anything of the great Pig-Factory, whereat one
million porkers are said to be annually slain. A stern Hebrew, of a
truculent taste, might possibly venture to settle in the vicinity; but the
music must be too high by several octaves for Christians of the ordinary
stamp.
I wonder whether the lady still lives in Limerick, who had the
passage of arms, or rather of legs, with General Sir Charles Napier.
Being, in the complimentary diction of her friends, “a remarkably fine
woman,” or, in the vulgar verbiage of irreverent youth “a regular
slogger,” she was wont to despise those of her fellow-creatures, who did
not weigh sixteen stone; and when the little soldier broke his leg, she
remarked contemptuously, “that she supposed some fly had kicked his poor
spindle-shanks!” It so happened that, just as he recovered, the large lady
met with a similar accident, breaking her leg. Napier was at no loss to improve
the occasion. “Going to her house,” he says, “I told the servant, how
sorry I was to hear that a bullock had kicked his mistress, and injured
its leg very much; and that I had called, in consequence, to inquire
whether her leg was at all hurt!”
We left Limerick for Killarney by the mail train, at 11.30
a.m., entering the main line of the Great Southern and Western Railway
after an hour's travelling, progressing thereon as far as Mallow
(the town upon the banks of the Blackwater, with its church, and
trees, and picturesque bridge, is a sweet little “study,” and looked as
though the sun shone there always); and thence by a branch line to Killarney,
which we reached at 4 p.m. We passed through a country (including part of
the Golden Vale of Limerick1) varied, fertile, and
well-cultivated, although two young officers (who looked at us, when we
entered their carriage at Mallow, as though I were at the crisis of
small-pox, and my friend a ticket-of-leave man) declared, as they woke up
just opposite an embankment, that the scenery was “beastly plain.”
1 “It extends from Charleville to Tipperary by Kilfinnan
nearly thirty miles, and again across from Ardpatrick to
within a short distance of Limerick city, sixteen miles.”—
Saxon in Ireland, p. 101.
CHAPTER XIII. KILLARNEY.
THERE are words which, although unnoticed in the delightful treatises of
the Dean of Westminster 1 (may his fame increase!) have a strange power
upon the heart,—words which can ring for us, listening by the
brookside, and in arbours and meadow-haunts once more, the joy-bells of a
former mirth, or toll above past sorrows and buried hopes their muffled
and mournful peal. Breathes there, for instance, a man with soul so dead,
who can hear of a primrose bank, or a cowslip-ball, or a roly-poly
pudding, or a sillabub, or a soap bubble, or a pantomime, or of Robinson
Crusoe, and not feel himself, though it be but for a moment, a happy
child again? And do we not realise, on the other hand, in all their brief
intensity, our earliest sorrows, when memory suggests to us those solemn
sounds of woe, measles, big-brother, ghosts, dentists, castor-oil?
1 Dr. Trench, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin.
And who (to pass on to boyhood) can ever hear of foot-ball,
especially if Tom Brown speak, without longing for a kick to goal? Who can
be reminded of the river, and not remember those summer days, when,
nude and jubilant, we took first a preliminary canter among the haycocks,
and then “a header” into the deep, cold stream? or, again, those merry
days of winter, when, from our slippery skates we took—well,
anything but “aheader” upon its glibly frozen surface? On the
other hand, who does not felicitate himself that he has arrived at man's
estate, when he recalls those awful impositions which he still
believes have softened his brain, or when his memory (not to
particularise) is tingling at the idea of birch, and contemplating
a “Visitation of Arms and Seats” long anterior to Mr. Bernard
Burke's?
Chiefly, perhaps, when we come to shave, or, more wisely, to cherish
instead of destroying (with many a grimace and groan), those healthful
adjuncts to manly beauty, “quas Natura sud sponte suggerit” is felt
this great influence of words. I have seen the cheek of a pallid friend
suddenly to assume the hues of a peony, the rich crimson tint of
dining-room curtains, at mention of the name of “Rose;” and I
remember how a Brasenose man, whose fresh ruddy countenance was much more
suggestive of Burton-upon-Trent than it was of Burton upon Melancholy, and
whom we called Chief Mourner, because he was always first after the bier,
would become colourless, and “pale his ineffectual fire,” at the very
sound of Blanche. Nor do I see any discredit in confessing my own
inability to hear certain sweet Christian-Names (sixteen in all, but nine
in particular), without emotions of a troublous, but delightful,
character.
And as at this era, just as in the two preceding it, there are special
words which bring joy and animation to man (let me briefly instance gone-away,
mark-woodcock, sillery, deux-temps), so there are terms of terror
(e.g. jilt, tailor, Little-Go, lurit-server, poacher, vulpicide),
of potent and cruel import.
I might amplify for my readers this etymological treat. I might expatiate
on the different effects produced by. the same word upon different minds,
videlicet, by the word Tally-ho, as heard at the covert-side
by sportsman or by muff, by the man who rides with hounds, or the skirting
path-finder who rides without them; but I have already travelled by a too
circuitous route to my conclusion,—that it is sweet to hear the mere
names of those things, which are pleasant and lovable in themselves, and
that to those who have seen the Irish lakes, the word Killarney is
“a joy for ever.”
Coming so immediately from the wild grandeur of Connamara to these scenes
of tranquil beauty, I think that our first view of the Lakes, as we left
the Victoria Hotel, was rather a disappointment. The landscape (or
waterscape?) was so calm and still, that it had somewhat of a dioramic
effect, and one almost expected to see it move slowly onwards to an
accompaniment of organ music. But as the olive lends a zest to generous
wine, even so this tiny discontentment served but to enhance our
subsequent and full fruition. For, once upon the waters, you become
forthwith convinced, not only how impossible it is to exaggerate the
beauties of Killarney (as well might a painter essay to flatter or
improve a sunset), but for pen or pencil to do them justice.
There is such infinite variety, from the white and golden lilies, (which,
close to land, look like miniature canoes, from which fairy watermen have
just sprung lightly ashore), to the towering heights and aeries; such
diversity of tint and outline in the mountains, tree-clothed from crown to
base; in those “islets so freshly fair;” and in those dancing waters,
which raise their smiling waves to kiss the flowers and ferns; such
contrasts, and yet such a perfect whole, of wood and water, “harmoniously
confused;” such transformations, wrought by cloud and breeze, yet always
such complete repose; that the eye can never weary.
We hired a boat, and set forth for Innisfallen, just at that
delightful time between sunset and moonrise,
“When in the crimson cloud of even
The lingering light decays,
And Hesper, on the front of Heaven,
His glittering gem displays.”
Presently, the moon came up above those lofty hills, 1 and as bugle music
from the returning boats was wafted over the shining waters, and lost
itself among the mountains, we turned to each other, Frank and I, at the
same moment, with those thrilling lines,
“O hark! O hear! how thin and clear;
And thinner, clearer, farther going.
O, sweet and far, from cliff and scar,
The horns of Elf-land faintly blowing.
Blow! let us hear the purple glens replying.
Blow, bugle; answer echoes, dying, dying, dying!”
1 In a Trip to Ireland, by a Cambridge M. A. (1858), there
is written, gravely written, at page 18, the following most
original simile: “Just over yon steep acclivity hangs a
crescent moon, like a silver knocker on the star-studded
gate of heaven, and one can almost fancy some angel-warder
will, ere long, break the silence with the gracious
invitation, 'Come up hither.'”
Indeed, you would suppose that Tennyson must have written this
heart-stirring song at Killarney, did not the engraving prefixed to
it, represent so different and dismally inferior a scene. To look and
listen, as we rowed slowly onwards, seemed to be more happiness than we,
undeserving, could at once enjoy; and it required a contemplation of
meaner things, to convince us that the whole scene was not, in the words
of Ireland's poet, writing at Killarney, and of it,—
“One of those dreams, that by music are brought,
Like a light summer-haze, o'er the poet's warm thought.”
So we lit our pipes, and then the boatmen, whose colloquial powers we
generally evoked, as we tendered the calumet, or rather the tobacco-pouch,
of friendship, began to tell us, how, once upon a time, it was all dry
land about here; how some indiscreet, but anonymous individual had removed
the lid from an enchanted well; and how the enchanted well had set to
work, in consequence, and had flooded the valley in which stood the palace
of King O'Donoghue, so suddenly, that a facetious sentinel had only just
time to shout “All's Well!” at the top of his voice, when the waters,
rising above his chin, and entering his vocal orifice, put a stop to
further elocution.
It does not appear, as ordinary minds might have expected, that the
prospects or spirits of the Donoghue were at all damped by this
proceeding; and though his property seemed to be hopelessly “dipped,” and
his capital to be sunk beyond all recovery, he contrived not only to get
his head above water, but even to ride the high horse afterwards. For the
boatmen say, that the royal edifice still remains, with all its inmates,
unaltered and unalterable, at the bottom of the lake, and there the king
entertains his court, with fish-dinners and aquatic fêtes on an
unprecedented scale of magnificence, save when requiring air and exercise,
he rides over the waters on a snowy steed, and turns the whole locality
into an Irish “Vale of White Horse.”
“And there's plinty as has seen him, your 'onnour,” (so said the bow-oar
historian), “and will take their swear of it—glowry to God!” Very
little glowry, thought I, from the perjury of these delectable witnesses,
who must have seen this quaint display of horsemanship through a “summer
haze” of whiskey, and been very deliriously drunk. But our boat touches Innisfallen.
Everyone falls in love with this sweet little island. It has such grand,
old, giant trees, such charming glades and undulations, “green and of mild
declivity,” that here, childhood might play, manhood make love, and old
age meditate, unwearied, from morn to night. Mr. Grieve would, in spite of
his name, be joyful, to wander through its vistas and alleys green, and
find fresh scenes for his canvas. What dear little glens, what “banks and
braes” for the fairies. Can this be Titania coming towards us over the
moonlit sward, and leaning upon the arm of Oberon? No; it is a couple of
nuptial neophytes, looking so happy, that, as they pass, I could take off
my hat and cheer. Ah, if fair lnnisfallen is so beautiful to us
poor bachelors by ordinary moonlight, what must it be to Benedict, to the
man in the moon of honey? What must be the happiness of my Lord
Castlerosse, the eldest son of the Lord of the Isles of Killarney, who has
just brought home his bride? 1
1 August, 1858.
Were I ever constrained to be a monk and celibate, I should wish my
monastery to be at lnnisfallen, and I admire the taste of St.
Finian (an ancestor, I presume, of Mr. Finn, our estimable host at the
Victoria Hotel), who, some thirteen hundred years ago, selected this
island for his retreat. The picturesque ruins of an ancient abbey still
attest, that long after his time, men sought, in this sylvan solitude,
that peace which they found not in the world.
Sweet Innisfallen! “thy praise is hymned by loftier harps than
mine,” so lofty indeed, that my obtuse understanding is unable to read
some of their music, as, for instance, where Moore sings,
“The steadiest light the sun e'er threw
Is lifeless to one gleam of thine.”
And, therefore, in plain prose, but with a full heart, Good night!
CHAPTER XIV. KILLARNEY
A car and guide, as per order, were waiting for us, when we had
breakfasted next morning, and we set forth for the Gap of Dunloe.
Entering upon the main road, we seemed to be in a drying-ground of immense
proportions, with its perpetual posts and endless clothes-lines, extending
along the wayside for miles. But it proved to be a continuation of that
faithless messenger, the Atlantic telegraph, on its way between Valencia
and the rail. Passing the ruins of Aghadoe, church, castle, and
tower, and shortly afterwards those of Killaloe, we cross the river
Latme, over a charming old bridge, and get views of the great Tomies
Mountain, and also of Macgillicuddy's Reeks. Miles, our guide,
a most intelligent and civil one, here told us the story, or rather one of
the stories, concerning the latter mountains.
It seems that Mr. Macgillicuddy, a gentleman of extensive estates in this
neighbourhood, went to visit some friends in England, and took with him an
Irish servant, more prone to patriotism than truth. Whatever he saw among
the Saxons was just nothing at all, at all, to what might be seen in
Ireland. In short, he would have been a most appropriate attendant upon
that Hibernian, who, being asked why he wept at sight of Greenwich
Hospital, replied with sorrowful emotion, “Ah, sure, the buildings there
remind me of mee dear father's stables!”
Now it befel that the English gentleman, possessing a large extent of rich
meadow land, took especial delight in his hay-stacks, and his valet,
sympathising with his master's vanity (as all good valets should), soon
led the Irishman to look at the stack-yard, expecting to see him mightily
astonished; but Paddy, having gazed around with the most sublime
indifference, coolly said, “It's a nice bit o' grass you've brought home
here for present use; now let us have a peep at the ricks.”
“Ricks!” exclaimed the Englishman, “why these be they.”
“Well, then,” says Paddy, “I'll just tell ye: there's about enough hay in
this stack-yard to make the bands for thatching my master's ricks. Happen”
(this he added as though he wished to be liberal, and to pay his companion
a compliment), “there might be a couple of yards or so to spare.”
You may imagine that when, in the following year, the English valet came
with his master to return the visit at Killarney, he was not long before
he requested his Irish friend to favour him with a view of the haystacks.
To be sure he would, with all the pleasure in life, and sorry he was to be
prevented by circumstances (over which, he might have added, he had every
control) from making the inspection before evening. Accordingly, in the
dusk and gloom of twilight, he took the Englishman forth, and showed him,
dim in the distance, this lofty mountain range. “There are our
ricks,” said he.
In that belief the astonished stranger slept; and ever since that time men
call these hills Macgillicuddy s Reeks!
Mr. Miles, in the next place, made our fingers to itch, eyes to strain,
and mouths to water, as he told of red deer among the mountains, and of
woodcocks in their season, twenty couple to be bagged per diem.
Thus conversing, we drew near to the Gap, and to the cottage of
Mrs. Moriarty, née Kearney, and grand-daughter of the beautiful
Kate. But it is by no means a case of
“O matre pulchrâ Filia pulchrior!”
and we did not hesitate to decline the proffered draught of goat's milk
and whiskey, although we implicitly believed Mrs. M.'s assertion, that, if
we drank it, we should want nothing more throughout the remainder of the
day.
Here, too, we overtook a car from Tralee, laden with pretty girls
and a few young men (how we hated the latter for being in such high
spirits, thought them vulgar snobs when they laughed, and coarsely
familiar whenever they spoke!)—not from any rapidity of pace on our
part, but because the Tralee horses judiciously jibbed at anything like a
rise in the road; and then off jumped the pretty girls, like doves from
eave to earth, but being, in their peculiar grace and pleasant coo,
immeasurably superior to pigeons.
At the entrance to the Gap, the scene was a most lively and
attractive one. Here the cars are sent back, as the journey through the
Pass must be made on ponies or afoot, and there was quite a merry little
congress of visitors, guides, cars, and steeds. At length, the procession
started, and a very picturesque one,—voici!
The Gap of Dunloe is a wild ravine, a defile through the mountains
(on the right are the Reeks, and on the left the Tomies, Glena,
and the Purple Mountain), which, rising on either side, dark, stern,
and sterile, with no great interval between, impart a solemn grandeur to
the Pass. The river Loe flows beneath the huge blocks of stone
which have fallen from the rocks above—heard, but not seen, except
in the small lakes which occur at intervals, and which, still and gloomy,
add much to this impressive scene. One of these is called the Serpent's
Lake, because St. Patrick, having caught the last snake in Ireland,
put it into a big box (for reasons best known to himself), and flung it
into this pool.
The most striking thing we saw as we went through the Gap were some
snow-white goats on the lofty summit of the Purple Mountain; for
the latter really is of a distinct purple tint (not from heather, but from
the colour of the stone); and the contrast in the sunlight was very
beautiful.
Frank insisted upon seeing an eagle, and continually pointed to the
precipices above, believing that he descried the king of birds. Miles did
condescend to say that one of the objects to which Frank drew our
attention was not so very unlike at a distance, but that the resemblance
was lost as you approached the reality—a piece of rock not less than
twenty feet high. At last we actually beheld a very large bird soaring
towards us with considerable dignity. Frank was delighted; and when Miles
uttered the dissyllable “raven,” I certainly thought he would have hit
him. There are eagles in this neighbourhood beyond a doubt (though Frank
surveyed it with an incredulous and sarcastic air); but they are not very
likely to be much at home when bugles are playing and cannons roaring from
morn to dewy eve.
Emerging from the Gap, we were “to save a mile, and see the best of
the scenery,” and to effect this, we were taken over a country, which is,
I dare say, a pleasant one for Mrs. Moriarty's goats, but to bipeds in
boots (and one must be neat, you know, with so many pretty girls about),
is by no means of an agreeable character. To derive consolation from the
calamities of others is humiliating, but natural; “il y a toujours
quelque chose,” says the French cynic, “qui nous ne déplait point
dans les malheurs d'autrui;” and I found, I am ashamed to say,
considerable refreshment in surveying the distress of a portly old
gentleman, who, impinging a good deal on the craggiest parts, “larded the
lean earth as he walked along,”
“and panted hard,
As one who feels a nightmare in his bed,
When all the house is mute.”
I saw from the knolls and undulations, which diversified the surface of
his enormous shoes, that his Pilgrims Progress had a good deal to
do with Bunyan's, although his adjurations were not of that pious
kind, which would have issued from the lips of the “preaching tinker,” and
the deities, to whom he referred in his affliction, were, principally, Zounds
and Jingo.
But we soon found a truer solace in the view of Coom Dhuv, the
Black Valley, and in listening to the roar of its mountain streams, which,
rising and falling upon the breeze, sounded as though some monster train
bore giants over the hills, at express speed, with Gog and Magog for Guard
and Stoker!
Lo! the dark valley darkens, and its foaming waterfalls seem to whiten
beneath the low black clouds; and we stay not to visit the Logan Stone,
which a child may move, but nothing under an earthquake could dislodge;
but hasten, by Lord Brandons Cottage, to the Upper Lake,
where, a boat awaiting us, we embark for Roknaines Island.
Here, before a glowing fire, a fresh-caught salmon, cut into steaks, was
broiling on arbutus skivers; and the founder of the feast, an Irish
gentleman, whom we brought from the shore in our boat, hospitably invited
us to postpone our luncheon until his guests arrived. Hungry, and anxious
to proceed, we declined his courteous offer; but we should not have done
so, had we been aware that he was awaiting the delightful party from Tralee.
Alas, just as we had commenced our repast, and the boat so preciously
freighted was descried in the distance, our pluvial fears were realised,
“And, in the scowl of heaven, each face
Grew dark as we were speaking.”
It was piteous to see those girls come ashore, with the gentlemen's
overcoats enveloping their fairy forms, and protecting their best bonnets;
and I never experienced so strong a desire in my life to be transformed
into a gig-umbrella.
Suddenly the weather brightened, but not so the prospects of the pretty
pic-nic. There was a brief colloquy between master and men, sounds of
surprise and disappointment, not loud but deep, and then a general
laughter, but dismally artificial; for the knives, and the plates, and the
wine, and the bread, everything, in fact, except the salmon, just ready in
its hot perfection, had been sent to the wrong Island!
Thither, to our grim despair, went forth the Belles from Tralee; and, by
the bones of St. Lumbago of Sciatica, I could have plunged into the flood,
and followed in their lee, had I not been cognisant of a certain “alacrity
in sinking,” which prevents the simultaneous removal of both my legs from
the bottom. What would I not have given, to have changed places with the
coxswain! I should have felt proud and happy as he who steered the
immortal Seven at Henley, or as Edgar the Peaceable, when, keeping his
court at Chester, and having a mind to go by water to the monastery of St.
John Baptist, he was rowed down the Dee in a barge by eight Kings, himself
sitting at the helm. 1
We mourned awhile, but the spirit of youth endures not to sorrow long. It
bends low, but it will not break. It rises again in all its freshness
after a glass of bitter beer, or just a mouthful of whiskey; and we soon
looked our affliction in the face like men, and played the nightingale
upon our empty bottles. I have studied somewhat sedulously to imitate,
with a moistened cork upon glass, “de nightingirl, de lark, de trush” (as
the ever-to-be-retained Von Joel hath it), and the performance was so
successful, that two finches perched, attentively, within a yard of our
heads, while the boatmen listened as admiringly as the Australian Diggers
to the English lark; 2 and a newly-mar-ried couple, deliciously embowered
above us, conversed as they sat on the green, and said, that “they had
never quite believed the assertion that Ireland had no nightingales.” But
Frank, unhappily, dispelled all these allusions, by trying his unpractised
hand, and by educing such irregular and feeble chirpings, as would have
disgraced a superannuated sparrow, or a tom-tit, hopelessly wrestling with
an aggravated form of diphtheria.
1 Rapin, vol. i. p. 106.
2 See the exquisite description in It is Never too Lute to
Mend, p. 359.
The trees, beneath whose melancholy boughs we had our meal and music, had
been disgracefully hacked! and more foul copies of “the Initials”
were to be found here (with woodcuts, calf, lettered) than in all Mr.
Mudie's Library. If I had my will, I would teach those trenchant snobs,
who, wherever they go, dishonour England, to sing their “Through the
Wood, Laddie,” to a much more doleful tune, made fast for a few hours
in the stocks; or I would endeavour so far to revive in their breasts (if
they have any breasts), that Druidical veneration for Baal, which once
prevailed in Ireland, and which would induce them to cut themselves
with their knives, and to worship the trees instead of whittling them. Or,
in illustration of another Druidical tenet, metempsychosis, it would be
gratifying to see their transmigration into woodpeckers, condemned for
ever, like the bird in the fable, to seek their food between bark and
bole.
We would fain have lingered among these pleasant isles, green with their
abundant foliage, and contrasting admirably with the stern hills, towering
over them, and so encircling this Upper Lake, that you see no place
of egress, until you are close upon it. As for comparing it with the other
lakes, or with Derwent-Water, as the fashion is,1 it ever appears to me
the most ungrateful folly, to depreciate or to extol one scene of beauty
by commending or condemning another; and when a man begins with, “Ah, but
you should see so-and-so,” or “I assure you, my dear fellow, this is
dreadfully inferior to what-d'ye-call-it,” I always most heartily wish him
at the locality which he affects to admire. What nasty, niggardly,
uncomfortable minds there are in this bilious world! How many men, who,
forgetting that excellent round-hand copy, “Comparisons are odious,” are
never happy but in detecting infelicities, and only strong when carping at
weaknesses. Show them a pretty girl,—“she wants animation,” or “she
wants repose,”—“she is overdressed,” or “her clothes, poor thing,
must have been made in the village, and put on with a fork.”
1 Any one who takes delight in such comparisons may consult
Forbes's Ireland, vol. i., p. 229, or Mr. Curwen, whose
conclusion is, “Killarney for a landscape, Windermere for a
home.”
“You should see the youngest Miss Thingembob.” Tell them of a good day's
covert-shooting you have had in my Lord's preserves,—out comes a
note from their friend the Duke, who has beaten you by sixteen woodcocks.
Trot out your new hunter, and “Oh, yes, he's a nice little horse, but will
never carry you with those forelegs. You must come over and look at
an animal I've just got down from Tattersall's, by Snarler out of a Humbug
mare, and well up to twenty stone, sir.”
It would perplex even these censorious gentlemen to find any fault with the
Long Range (which has nothing to do with Sir William Armstrong's Guns,—except
that the Cannon Rock at the entrance and the Gun Rock by
Brickeen Island have some resemblance to artillery)—that beautiful
river, which leads from the Upper to the Middle and Lower Lakes. To float
between its banks of dark grey stone, from which the green trees droop
their glossy foliage, though, like the Alpine tannen,
“Rooted in barrenness, where nought below
Of soil supports them;”
and the purple heath and the Royal Osmund, “half fountain and half tree,”
lean over the brimming waters, to greet the lily and the pale lobelia, was
a dream of happiness such as the Laureate dreamed, when—
“Anight his shallop, rustling thro'
The low and bloomed foliage, drove
The fragrant glistening deeps, and clove
The citron-shadows in the blue.”
You enter the Long RangeatColmans Eye, and shortly
afterwards come to Colmans Leap. This Colman, once upon a time, was
the lord of the Upper Lake, and, instead of following the example
of his namesake, who, as a saint and peacemaker, assisted St. Patrick in
converting Ireland to Christianity, spent most of his time in quarrelling
with the O'Donoghue, and in provoking him to single combat. Being in a
minority at one of these divisions, it appeared to him a prudential course
to “hook it,” and, closely pursued by his adversary, he took this
celebrated jump over the river, which goes by the name of Colmans Leap.
The guides show you his footprints on the rock, and they narrate,
moreover, that the O'Donoghue, being a little out of condition (dropsical,
perhaps, from his long residence under water), came up to the stream a
good deal blown, and would not have it at any price.
Now we pass by the mountain of the Eagles Nest, a glorious throne
for the royal bird, and listen, at the Station of Audience, to the
marvellous, manifold echoes of the bugler's music, as he wakes the soul
and the scene with his “tender strokes of Art,”—now wild and
spirit-stirring, as though kings hunted in some distant forest, and now
dying, so sweetly, so softly, that we know not when they cease, but listen
“pensively,
As one that from a casement leans his head,
When midnight bells cease ringing suddenly,
And the old year is dead.”
Then our boat, swiftly as an arrow, shoots the rapids of the Old Weir
Bridge, and, having lingered awhile, in the pool beyond, to admire and
sketch, we leave the Middle Lake (reserved for our morrow's excursion) on
the right, and pass by the Islands of Dinish and Brie keen
to the entrance of the Lower Lake.
I have said nothing, and can say nothing worthily, of the trees, which
grow by the waters of Killarney,—oak, yew, birch, hazel
holly, the wild apple, and the mountain-ash, with its berries of vivid
red, growing confusedly one into the other, but en masse of
faultless unity. And among them, brightest and greenest of them all, the
arbutus! Wherever you see it, it gleams amid the duller tints, refreshing
as a child's laugh on a rainy day, or (as Frank suggested) a view-halloo
in the coverts of a vulpicide, or the ace of trumps in a bad hand at
whist. Like Xerxes, we fell in love with the arbutus (Herodotus and Ælian
say that it was “a plane tree of remarkable beauty,” but this assertion is
self-contradictory, and, if it were not so, I am not, I hope, so bereft of
the spirit of the nineteenth century, as to care for historical facts);
and though we could not pour wine in honour of our idol, as the Romans
were wont to do, we drank our pale ale admiringly beneath its branches,
and made a libation (principally of froth) to its roots.
And now by the lovely bay of Glena, we enter the Lower Lake. In
front of Lord Kenmare's Cottage, to which visitors have access, 1 numerous
boats are moored; and the bright green sward about this pretty rustic
retreat, contrasts remarkably with the under-robes of brilliant scarlet,
which are sweeping slowly over it, while, from the walks above, gay little
bonnets flash among the trees, and the cock-pheasants and other
ornithological specimens, now worn in the hats of Englishwomen, seem to
rejoice, reanimate, in their leafy homes.
1 The public are greatly indebted to Lord Kenmare and Mr.
Herbert for their indulgent liberality.
Here again, opposite the sublime mountains of Glena, so fairly dight from
crown to foot in their summer garb of green, we awake and listen to the
echoes, until “the big rain comes dancing to the” lake, and we row hastily
homeward, changing places half way with the boatmen, and astonishing them
considerably with an Oxford “spirt.”
It was pleasant, when we reached the Victoria, and had “cleaned ourselves”
(as housemaids term a restoration of the toilette), to find letters from
England, to hear that the good wheat was shorn and stacked, and the mowers
“in among the bearded barley.” There was still a short interval, when
these letters were answered, to elapse before dinner, and this I occupied
in perusing the account of “the Prince of Wales's visit to Killarney”
in April, 1858.
Now Heaven preserve our dear young Prince from that excessive loyalty,
which loves to “chronicle small beer.” The historian told how “alighting
from his vehicle, the Prince, who seems passionately fond of walking,
proceeded on foot for a mile or two, with gun in hand, firing from time to
time at bird, leaf, or fissure in the rock, in the exuberance of those
animal spirits, which belong to his time of life,” but which must be
somewhat perilous to those of his Royal Mother's liege subjects, who may
be wandering in the immediate vicinity. Then we are informed, how that, “His
Royal Highness and party drove on to the Victoria Hotel, with rather keen
appetites;” how he visited “the tomb of O' Sullivan, and inspected
it with much gravity of demeanour,” as though to ordinary minds there
was something in sepulchres irresistibly comic; how “having drunk in
all the glories of this wondrous scene,” (the view from Mangerton) “the
Prince amused himself for some time in rolling large stones into the
Devil's Punch Bowl” for the satisfaction, doubtless, of hearing them
“go flop;” how when he went to Church on Sunday, “the Venerable
Archdeacon read prayers, and seemed, as it were, reinvigorated by his
presence,” which suggests the idea of a subsequent jig with the clerk
in the vestry, or of an Irish chassez down the centre aisle; and how, to
make a final extract, Mr. Carroll, the tailor, presented His Royal
Highness with “a whole suit of Irish tweed, admirably calculated for
mountain excursions, and with the texture of which, as well as the fit,—which
Mr. Carrolls eye hit off to a nicety”—does this mean that Mr. C.
“took a shot” at the royal dimensions?—“the Prince was much
pleased.”
I remember nothing of the table d'hôte that evening, except that a
Cambridge man, who sat next to me, remarked of some miserable carving hard
by, that “the gentleman seemed well up in Comic Sections;” and that
a boy of seventeen, with a violent shooting-coat, and a few red bristles
in the vicinity of his mouth, officiating as “Vice,” and looking it,
mumbled three hurried words as grace after meat, in the presence of four
English clergymen, and two Roman Catholic priests.
CHAPTER XV. KILLARNEY.
HAPPY and expectant, as two young cricketers, who, having made no “end of
a score” in their first innings, go forth a-gain to the wicket, we started
next morning in the currus militarius, or Car of Miles, for another
joyous day at Killarney. Stopping at the entrance of the town, we
went into the Cathedral (R.C.), a very handsome edifice of beautiful
proportions, in the severe, Early-English style. The carving in stone over
the high altar, in the Chapel of the Sacrament, and especially in the
exquisite symmetry of the figures in the arches of the doorways, is
exceedingly chaste and clear, and some Connamara marble about one of the
lesser altars has a very pleasing effect. Not so the numerous
confessionals, which, with their new wood and bright drapery, are somewhat
suggestive of wardrobes, and detract, as novelties always do, from the
ecclesiastical aspect of the interior.
Hard by, upon the hill, stands the spacious Asylum for the Insane, sadly
reminding us of poor Pugin, who designed the Cathedral; and, less
painfully, of Swift's last act of penitent charity, the bequest of
£12,000, nearly all he had to bequeath, for the erection of a similar
institution.
Egans Bog-oak and Arbutus warehouse well deserves a visit. Here you
learn from a ledger, opening, as ledgers will, at a brilliant galaxy of
noble names, which makes a commoner's eyes wink, how the Right Honourable
the Earl of Cash bought an elaborate table for my Lady's boudoir, and how
Rear-Admiral Sir Bowline Bluff made purchase of a Backgammon board,
marvellously inlaid, over which I venture to surmise, he has ere this
discoursed in stormy language, when the gout and the dice have been
against him. Let us tread, softly and at a distance, in these illustrious
footprints, and buy our meek memorials of Killarney.
Hence onward to the Tore Cascade, descending its silver staircase
amid green trees and graceful ferns,—the latter including, as we
were told, the rare Trichomanes speciosum. Here there is a lovely
landscape of the Middle and Lower Lakes, and there were seats
wherefrom to enjoy it, until those despicable snobs, who had mutilated the
trees in Rohnaines Island, threw them (sweet gentlemen!) down the
waterfall. And it's O for a tête-à-tête with the principal
performer, in the unbroken seclusion of a twenty-four foot ring!
But we must think more wisely, as we approach the solemn ruins of Mucross,
than of punching our fellow-creatures' heads, though even here upon the
very tombs, the miscreants have been at work,—disporting themselves,
like filthy ghouls and vampires—and scrabbling upon the stones, as
madmen will.
So much remains, both of Church and Abbye, that imagination readily
supplies what is gone. Here in the Choir, where that ill-tempered looking
tourist is reprimanding his wife for giving a beggar twopence, the
brothers of St. Francis of Assisi were wont to sing holy psalms; and there
in the Cloisters, where those two gaily-dressed French girls are admiring
the gigantic yew-tree, and wondering what has become of “ce cher Jules,”
(whom I apprehend to be a lover, but who comes round the corner, a poodle,
dreadful to contemplate!) there
“Ever-musing melancholy dwelt,”
and there paced the pale Franciscan, in the sombre habit of his order, and
girded with his hempencord.
Laugh on, sweet Stephanie, joyous Josephine (I heard their names from
Mamma in search); but be not cruel with your charms, for Love, unloved,
can still change men to monks,—forlorn and wretched, though in
crowded streets, as he, of whom Percy sang:
“Within these holy cloysters long
He languisht, and he dyed
Lamenting of a lady's love,
And 'playning of her pride.”
There are some beautiful ferns among and about these ruins, but being a
very poor Polypodian, or Scolopendrian (or whatever may be the scientific
title of a Fernist), I only recognised the Hart's-tongue,—with its
fructification arranged like a miniature plan of ships in order of battle,—and
of this I gathered some very fine fronds, and put them in my hat, as will
appear hereafter.
Passing through Mr. Herberts beautiful demesne, by his pleasant home (note
the St. John's-wort by the wayside), his offices, and yards, wherein the
newest agricultural implements cause one to sigh more than ever for
landlords, resident and liberal as he,—by the copper-mine, rich and
productive until the envious waters interfered, we reach the Middle Lake,
and our boat, waiting for us, thereupon.
Tourists, who have written about the Irish Lakes have made but little
mention of this Middle, Mucross, or Tore Lake. Like the youngest of
three fair sisters, she is kept in the background by their proximity and
prior claims, being, moreover, an unobtrusive, gentle beauty, of a subdued
and retiring air, not demanding the admiration she deserves. But were
there such a scene of tranquil loveliness six miles from any of our great
manufacturing towns, it would be a refreshment, and a blessing evermore,
to thousands of our weary artisans, just as “the Pool,” by Sutton
Coldfield, (one of the prettiest spots in England) is the holiday resort
and resting-place of the working men of Birmingham.
Leaving this sweet seclusion, and rowing under the picturesque bridge
which connects the islands of Dinisk and Brickeen, we come once more into
the bay of Glena, and the “cottage near a wood.” Here, climbing the hill,
and choosing a position which commanded a most delightful view, we enjoyed
the sandwich and scene. Descending, we were horrified to hear that
“whetstone of the teeth,” the bagpipes, droning away close to our boat,
and abominable to both of us as a dialogue between connubial cats, or a
class of schoolboys pointing slate pencils. But “Ars longa,” art is
long-headed; and so we tossed up which of us, preceding the other, should
go down, pay the piper, and keep him in conversation until his friend had
reached the boat. This service of conspicuous gallantry fell to me, and if
ever man deserved the Victoria Cross, I won it there and then.
They say, but I don't believe it, that the red-deer, who inhabit these
mountains, admire this infernal machine; and, in proof thereof, the Rev.
Mr. Wright, in his Guide to Killarney, quotes the following anecdote from
Playford's History of Music:—
“As I travelled some years ago near Royston, I met a herd of stags, about
twenty, on the road, following a bagpipe and violin, which when the music
played they went forward, when it ceased they all stood still, and in this
manner they were brought out of Yorkshire to Hampton Court.” Next we rowed
to O'Sullivans Cascade, foaming down its triple falls; and here
finding some shamrock, and feeling very Irish, we liberally adorned our
coats and hats with it. To our surprise and disappointment, upon our
return, the boatmen appeared to be perfectly indifferent to this
enthusiastic display of their national emblem; and it subsequently
transpired, to our very severe discomfort, that we had ornamented our
persons with some vulgar trefoil, which did not resemble the shamrock at
all, at all. 1 It vexed one's vanity to have performed unconsciously both
a Guy and a Jack-in-the-Green; and the effect produced reminded me of the
answer of a Nottinghamshire labourer, in reply to my inquiries concerning
his friend, “To tell you the truth, Sir, Bill's been and married his
mestur, and it's gloppened him a good-ish bit!”
1 “We believe it to be an ascertained fact, that the
shamrock of the old Irish was not a trefoil at all, but the
wood-sorrel, Oxalis acetosella”—Gardener? Chronicle, 7th
August, 1858.
Leaving to our right the numerous islets of the Lower Lake (there are
thirty-three of them in all), and the ruins of Ross Castle, once the home
of the O'Donoghues, we pass by fair Innisfallen, and, reaching our
landing-place, separate awhile; Frank starting afresh to fish, and I
returning to the inn.
In a cozy corner of the coffee-room, I began now to transcribe a little
poem of a sentimental kind, which had suggested itself to my thoughts
during our excursion. Looking up from time to time, as Poets (like
poultry) will, when drinking at the Pierian stream, I was much offended to
see several persons in different parts of the room, evidently amusing
themselves at my expense. A joke loses its festive character, when it
falls upon one's own head, especially when that head is profusely crowned,
as I soon discovered mine to be, with fronds of the Hart's-tongue Fern,—collected
at Mucross, but entirely forgotten, until, bending lower than usual, I saw—
“frondes volitare caducas.”
I am afraid that I did not wear my chaplet so gracefully as Dante his, in
that beautiful picture by Scheffer: on the contrary, I felt quite as ill
at ease and uncomfortable as an Oxford friend, who, having won a
steeple-chase last winter in France, was sent for by the Préfêt of the
place, and crowned with a laurel wreath! What a pleasing harmony
there must have been between his Bays and his dirty Boots!
Completing my manuscript, and leaving it in our joint-stock writing-case,
I took a walk to the Post-Office at Killarney; and I do not think that it
was at all gentlemanly in Francis to tamper with my poetry, on his return
from fishing; erasing the alternate lines, and substituting rubbish of his
own, as follows:—
KILLARNEY.
When the pale moon streaks
My Macgillicuddy's 1 cheeks,
And the day-god shoots
Through the shutters, oped by Boots;
1 He persisted in addressing me by this extraordinary
appellative throughout our sojourn at Killarney.
And from sweet lnnisfallen,—
Jolly place to walk with gal in!
Which so lovely, and so lone, is,—
Why, it ain't, its full of conies, 1
Hark! a voice comes o'er the wave,
Now, old Buffer, up and shave!
As I watch the Heron's wing,—
More fool you, you'll cut your chin!
Sailing stately, slowly flapping,—
Better work away with Mappin!
Ah, sweet morning's face is fair,—
Not so yours, soap'd like that ere!
And she dons her summer garment,—
Get on yours, you lazy varmint!
Jubilant in all her graces,
As if going to Hampton races,
Smiling, proud in all her riches,—
Where's that fellow put my-?
This good news to man narrating—
“Plaze, your 'onour, breakfast's waiting,
&c. &c. &c.
1 Or if it isn't, “Rabbit Island,” which is close to, ought
to be. See remarks by the Aurora Borealis in the Christmas
number of the Edinburgh Review; Mrs. Hemans, Racing
Calendar, vol. 408; and Bendigo, passim.—Frank C.
But Frank is one of those men with whom it is impossible to be angry; and
if he were standing in his thickest shooting-boots, on your most
susceptible corn, he would smile in your face with such exceeding suavity,
that you would almost consider the proceeding funny. So we sat down to
discuss, in affectionate unison, the delicious trout which he had caught
(how could I eat his fish and be sulky?), amplifying our ordinary
allowance of sherry, in honour of the Naiads and Dryads in general, and of
the Naiads, who look after the trout, in particular.
These libations, assisted by potheen and pipe, make us very cheery in the
smoke-room. Frank declared that I talked for two hours about Absenteeism
to a Lincolnshire farmer, who was fast asleep; and I certainly heard him
discoursing, with a mimetic brogue, upon the state of Ireland, as though
he had lived in the country all his life. So, desirous to keep ourselves
“within the limits of becoming mirth,” and not to induce that metaphysical
state, “quand celui qui parle n'entend rien, et celui qu'écouté
n'entend plus,” we judiciously retired to roost.
“That very night, ere gentle sleep,” with “slumber's chain had bound me,”
and “as I lay a-thinking,” I composed a little drama, for the benefit of
Frank; and, rising early next morning, brought out upon the stage, or
rather upon the passage,—
THE BOOTS AT THE EAGLE.
AN EXTRAVAGANZA, IN TWO ACTS. DRAMATIS PERSONAL
Frank and the Boots.
ACT I.
The scene, like the hero, is laid in bed. The room is strewed with
wearing apparel in great disorder. The appearance of the candle suggests
the probability of its having been extinguished by a blow from a
clothes-brush. Soft music from the Somnambula which changes to “Who's dat
Knocking at the Door?”
Frank, (awaking) Who's there?
Boots. Sure, your 'onour, it's Boots.
Frank. Well, what do you want?
Boots. Plaze, yer 'onour, man's brought yer a hagle.
Frank. Who sent him? How much does he want for it? Boots.
Miles, yer 'onour, Miles the guide. The man'll take tin shillings, yer
'onour; and he's an illigant hagle, with a power o' bake.
Frank. Tell him I'll have it, and let him wait till I come down.
Boots. I will, yer 'onour.
Curtain
(Pulled aside by Frank, to facilitate conversation)
Falls.
Interval of half an hour, during which I go to bed in high spirits, and
Frank dreams that the Zoological Society have offered him a hundred for
his new purchase.
ACT II.
Scene, as before.
Frank, (aroused by renewed knocking) Now then! what the deuce is
up?
Boots. There's another man, yer 'onour, wants to sell you a hagle.
Frank. Oh, hang it! Tell him I've got one, and ask the gentleman in
Number Twenty whether he would like to buy it.
Boots. I will, yer 'onour.
Boots. (Returning after a putative intervieiv with No. 20.) Plaze,
yer 'onour, the gintleman's bin and bought him, and I was to give his best
love to yer 'onour, and his hagle's waiting in the passage, to fight yer
'onour's hagle for a new hat.
During this latter sentence, my voice, I regret to say, went back to its
ordinary tone; Frank was out of bed in an instant; and I had only just
time to regain No. 20, when a heavy boot went by with great velocity,
falling, as Frank afterwards told me, at the feet of an astonished elderly
clergyman, who, coming out of his room at that instant, and seeing my
friend in his cuttysark, evidently inferred an escape from the asylum, and
bolted immediately, self and door.
But sure enough, when we came down to breakfast, there was a veritable
eagle at the door of the hotel, wild with anger, in an iron cage, and the
property of a small tourist, who was starting for Connamara with this
delectable companion, a large Arbutus table, ditto case of Killarney
ferns, and a hillock of general luggage. With these impedi-menta,
his estates appeared to be sufficiently in-cumbered, and I was not
surprised that he declined to purchase a shillelagh, 1 with a head about
the size of his own, although solemnly assured that “it had been cut in
the dark moon”—an inestimable advantage doubtless, though to me the
meaning of the sentence is as obscure as the luminary in question.
Alas, alas! our own luggage is now brought down, and we are awaiting our
bill somewhat curiously, after the recent revival in the Times 2 of
complaints, commenced by Arthur Young in 1776, and repeated by Mr. Wright
in 1822, on the subject of Killarney charges. But we both spoke in
favour of the bill, and it was carried through the house (viâ the
lobby, to the bar) without any division, except that of the sum total
between Frank and myself. You cannot have guides, and horses, and boats,
and buglers (especially where the demand is temporary and irregular),
without paying highly for them; but these expenses are fairly stated
before they are incurred, and decrease materially if you prolong your stay
(as we would fain have done), and begin to find your own amusement, afoot,
or in a boat.
1 Shillelagh is, or was, a famous wood in Wicklow, from
which the timber was brought for the roof of Westminster
Hall.
2 In the autumn of 1858.
Farewell, Killarney!—How often, far away from thy scenes of
beauty, have I, leaning back with closed eyes, beheld thee, pictured by
memory, and engraved by fond imagination! How often have I essayed to
realize thee in the subtle semblances of Art!—How often, in the
clouds of sunset (and here most happily), have I rejoiced to trace thy
tranquil waters and thy tree-clad hills!—and still, as some lover,
clasping with a sigh the likeness of his darling, yearns for her living
self, so long I for that happy hour when I shall return to thee, gladly,
as thine eagles soaring homeward, and see thee face to face.
CHAPTER XVI. FROM KILLARNEY TO GLENGARRIFF
THE omnibus took us to the town of Killarney, and there we mounted the
Glengarriff Car. People do not look particularly wise when seated, in a
public street, upon a vehicle to which no horses are attached; but we were
anxious to secure our places on “the Lake side,” and being surrounded by
the pretty dealers in arbutus-ware (there were two, who, I am convinced,
could have persuaded St. Senanus to buy a set of blue-bottle studs
in bog-oak), we did not feel at all uncomfortable. But even Irish cars
must fulfil their mission; and we started at last, bristling with paper
knives.
Halting awhile, to take up passengers at the Mucross Hotel, we were again
besieged by another bevy of these fancy timber merchants; and here a
little scene occurred, which, however trivial it may appear from my feeble
account of it, was very touching in reality. A woman, who had been, you
could see, as pretty in her prime as the prettiest of her younger
companions, but whose beauty was fast fading away, came and offered her
basket to a coarse specimen of the genus “Gent,” who was seated on
our side of the car, and who very abruptly, and thoughtlessly I dare say,—
“But evil is wrought for want of thought,
As well as want of heart,”—
repulsed her, saying, “that he should buy from the young uns if he bought
at all.” I saw a look of intense pain pass over her face, as though she
were hurt at heart; and, although the others made way for her, with sweet
sisterly kindness, when Frank called her to him, and though he bought her
most elaborate bracelets, and I a box of cunning workmanship, designed, I
believe, for gloves, but subsequently used by a small niece of mine as a
bed for her youngest doll, the sliding lid, drawn up to the sleeper's
chin, forming a counterpane of unrivalled splendour; although, I say, we
did all in our power to comfort, the storm-clouds, when we left, hung
heavily over her, and the first rain-drops glistened in her pale-blue
eyes.
Take heed, ye maidens beautiful (I feel a little saturnine this morning,
and shall put no more lemon in my punch, whatever Francis may say), be ye
Belles of the Park or the Pattern, to this extremity ye must come at last!
You, Lady Constance Plantagenet, who promised to waltz with me at the
County Ball, and pretended to have forgotten (though it was written upon
those gem-studded tablets), when Lord Hanwell (he has at least three
slates off his roof, and always went, when in the Artillery, by the sobriquet
of “Lincoln and Bennett,” being notoriously as mad as two hatters),
was pleased to invite you to the dance! And you, Susan Holmes, beauty of
our village, looking coldly now at Will Strong, the keeper, the hardest
hitter in “our Eleven,” and the handsomest fellow in the parish, because
the young squire's friend, with the big moustache (Will wanted to know
whether he came from Skye), made a fool of you at the Servants'
Ball! You, Lady Constance, ignoring your engagements, and you, Susan
Holmes, oblivious of the fact that your papa is only a blacksmith; be
assured, both of you, that the light will fade from those flashing eyes,
and the roses will be blanched on those glowing cheeks, and that—
“Violets pluckt, the sweetest showers
Will ne'er make grow again.”
What moral deduction can I draw but this:—Marry, marry, ye damsels
beautiful, the men whom ye love at heart; and so perpetuate your
loveliness, and live again in your daughters!
The cold salmon, on which we lunched at Kenmare, was so especially
delicious, that when I turned to Frank, an hour afterwards, on the car,
and asked him what o'clock it was, not perceiving that he was asleep, he
murmured something about “a slice of the thin;” and the tourist in Ireland
finds this fish so good and abundant, that he almost begins to apprehend
“a favourable eruption” of scales, and feels disposed to snap at the
larger flies which come within the prehensiveness of his dental powers.
The little town of Kenmare is very pleasantly and healthfully
placed. Mr. Frazer says that the bay, by which it stands, is the most
beautiful in all Ireland, but we did not see enough of it to corroborate
this grand eulogium. With the exception of the handsome Suspension Bridge,
neat Church, and National Schools, the buildings are mean and miserable.
To judge from the size of the Post-Office and “Bridewell,” there is very
little correspondence or crime. At the broken windows of “the Female
Industrial School,” we saw two young girls, of such industrious habits,
that they had not had time to wash themselves. “The Dispensary,” I
presume, had cured everybody, for we saw no signs of surgeon, surgery, or
patients,—only a dingy old hen in the passage, who, probably, had
overlayed herself, or had contracted that prevailing malady, “the Gapes,”
the name whereof makes one yawn in writing it. Undoubtedly, the edifice
which pleased us the most, was a narrow, tumble-down hut of two small
stories, and one of these securely shuttered, which announced itself to
the world as “Michael Brenan's Tea and Coffee Rooms, with Lodging and
Stabling.
Leaving Kenmare (and is not that a sweet little cottage, on the
right as you rise the hill, with the hydrangea glowing amid the dark
evergreens, like hope in seasons of sorrow?), we met some scores of the
peasantry, grave and decorous, on their way, the driver told us, to a
funeral. Whence did they come? Between Kenmare and Glen-garriff we saw
very few habitations, yet troops of children came running after the car as
heretofore, amply demonstrating that the Irish Paterfamilias knows more of
Addition and Multiplication than of the Frenchman's Rule-of-Three (“two
boys and a girl are a family for a king”), and ever finds himself in a
satisfactory position to converse with his enemies in the gate. The stern
Lycurgus, who, according to Plutarch, was so very severe upon the
unmarried Spartans, that he made them walk in procession, more scantily'
draped than their statues, though the promenade took place in winter, and
compelled them to sing songs derisive of celibacy, chaffing themselves to
music, as they walked along,—would be gratified indeed, if he could
revisit the earth, and see what Ireland is doing with a grand fecundity,
for the Census of 1861.
The vestments of these juveniles again attracted our notice, reminding us—
“Of love, that never found its earthly close?”
for some of them must have been about as cool as Cupid, and suggesting
that impatience, with regard to apparel, which characterised of old even
the Kings of Ireland.
Henry Castide, selected on account of his knowledge of the language
to teach and Anglicise four Irish Kings, who had sworn allegiance to
Richard, relates in a conversation with Froissart, that these royal
personages “had another custom, which I knew to be common in this country,
which was the not wearing breeches. I had, in consequence, plenty of
breeches made of linen and cloth, which I gave to the Kings and their
attendants, and accustomed them to wear them. I took away many rude
articles as well in their dress as other things, and had great difficulty
at the first to induce them to wear robes of silken-cloth, trimmed with
squirrel-skin, or minever, for the Kings only wrapped themselves up in an
Irish cloak.”1
This cloak, no doubt, very much resembled the garment worn by that Irish
chieftain, of whom Sir Walter Scott, when in Ireland, related an
anecdote, very highly-seasoned, to the Squireen, and who, during one of
the rebellions against Queen Elizabeth, was honoured by a visit
from a French Envoy. “This comforter of the rebels was a Bishop, and his
union of civil and religious dignity secured for him all possible respect
and attention. The Chief, receiving him in state, was clad in a yellow
mantle ('to wit, a dirty blanket,' interposes the Squireen), but this he
dropt in the interior, and sat upon it, mother-naked, in the midst of his
family and guests by the fire.” 2 After this aristocratic pattern was
fashioned, I suppose, the mantle of Thady Quirk, of which he tells
us (in “Castle Rackrent”), “it holds on by a single button round my
throat, cloak fashion,” so that Thady could as promptly prepare
himself for repose, as that heroine of whom the poet sings,—
“One single pin at night let loose
The robes which veiled her beauty.”
There is magnificent mountain scenery, naked as the chieftain, but much
more interesting, between Kenmare and Glengarriff, so wild and stern, and
desolate exceedingly, a solitude so complete and drear, that, were Prometheus
bound upon these craggy rocks, he would be relieved to see the cruel
vulture hungrily stooping for his foie-gras. Honour and thanks to
the genius which designed, and to the patient energy which perfected, a
way over these rugged Alps. Ireland must acknowledge her obligation to the
stranger, for a Scotchman, Nimmo, made her most difficult roads,
and an Italian, Bianconi, carries us over them.
1Froissart's Chronicles, book iv., chap. 64.
2 Lockhart's Life of Scott, vol. iii., chap. xv.
Reaching the summit, we pass through a tunnel, hewn in the solid
rock (why do we use this adjective always, as though rocks were ordinarily
in a state of fusion?), and leave county Kerry for Cork.
CHAPTER XVII. GLENGARRIFF.
GRADUATES and undergraduates (O my brothers, how gladly shall I meet you
once again, when the long vacation is past!), did you ever dine, as I have
dined, with an elderly Don, severe in deportment and of boundless lore,
who happened to be at once the author of a great treatise on “the Verbs
in [Greek],” and (strange antithesis!) of a pretty daughter? If so,
you will remember that hour of solemn converse, before the coffee was
announced, when the grave Professor, broad of brow, took you, as it were,
by the hand up the solemn heights of Olympus, and showed to you,
awfully admiring, the grand sublimities of Longinus, the sombre
valleys of Parnassus, and Philosophy's everlasting hills. And
memory will suggest to you, more happily, more vividly, how, summoned by
the butler, you at length came down from those amazing steeps, entered the
drawing-room, found the pretty daughter; and, while papa chuckled in the
distance, over a play of Aristophanes, easy to his apprehension as
Buckstone to ours, discoursed to her of the Commemoration Ball, and
forgot Minerva in the sunnier presence of Aphrodiet.
And you, my general readers, you, who, with that refinement of taste for
which you are remarkable above all other readers, go to Concerts at the
Hanover Square Rooms in the season, and, out of it, to dingy County Halls,
whenever the Italians sing,—you, too, must help me with an analogy,
and say,—can you not recall how, amid all that severe and stately
music, some plaintive ballad, quaint madrigal, or hearty glee, refreshed
your weary spirit, and won the sole encore? It was so, at all events, when
last I went to an Operatic Meeting in the Halls of Crystal; and Alboni
sang; and Giuglini sang; and of Inis and Icos good store; and we beat
time, and “wasn't it delicious?”; but no song went home to our English
hearts, roused us from our lethargic and drear gentility, and made us clap
our English hands, save the song of “The Hardy Norsemen.”
Some such pleasant refreshment, and cheerful change, it is, coming away
from those barren rocks of Kerry, those dark, cold lakes (numerous, it is
said, as days in the year), to gaze upon the sunlit Bay of Bantry,
and the freshness and the beauty of green Glengarriff! Glengarriff
is, indeed,
“A miniature of loveliness, all grace
Summed up, and closed in little.”
A miniature bay, miniature mountains, miniature waterfall, a glen, to
which, as Moore writes of it, the
“ocean comes,
To 'scape the wild wind's rancour.”
Yes, to the eye all was peace, but not so to the ear, for, when we went in
to dinner, the noise made by a couple of waiters was something to exceed
belief. One of them, it was evident, had been suddenly evoked from the
stables, and had been garnished with an enormous white neckerchief, under
the idea apparently that this threw a kind of glory over his costume of
corduroy, and effectually hid the ostler in the accomplished domestic
footman. His hair was arranged (with a curry-comb, I fancy) to imitate a
cockatoo, and we were, naturally, jocose about Peveril of the Peak, and
Ricquet with the Tuft, &c. To hear him and his superior coming
down the boarded passage with the dinner, was like “the march of the
Cameron men;” and they ran against each other, from time to time, with
such a clattering of plates, and dish-covers, and knives, and jugs, and
crockery in general, as would have done honour to the Druids on a Walpurgis
Night.
But the Irish waiter is, notwithstanding, a capital fellow, good-tempered,
prompt, colloquial, large-hearted. I say “large-hearted” because he will
undertake to serve any conceivable number of persons, and “colloquial,”
remembering that, when a neighbour, at a table d'hôte, mildly
expressed his conviction, that one waiter was insufficient to satisfy the
emergencies of seventeen persons, the individual referred to immediately
exclaimed from the other end of the apartment, but with all good humour
and civility, “Shure, thin, and every gintleman will be having his fair
turn.”
Well, I prefer this scant attendance, with all its good humour and
elasticity, to the solemn dreariness of our English waiter, who has
nothing to say but “Yezzur,” and knows not how to smile. If the Irishman
cannot come to you, he will at all events recognise your summons, and
favour you with a grin on account, whereas the Englishman hath an
unpleasant habit of affecting not to hear you, and of rushing off in a
contrary direction.
We remained a Sunday at Glengarriff (there is an air of rest and peace
about the place, as of a perpetual Sabbath), and went up to the little
edifice upon the hill, half cottage and half church. Indeed, the inhabited
part has the more ecclesiastical aspect, and I was surprised on entering
it, uncovered, and with obeisance, to confront an old woman washing
potatoes!
The clergyman, having duties elsewhere, was somewhat late for matins, and
it sounded strangely to be speaking of “the beginning of this day,” an
hour and a half after the meridian. But that sacred service is ever
seasonable, and we were glad, after an earnest sermon, to drop our
thankful alms into the Offertory basin, though it was but a cheese plate
of the willow pattern.
In the afternoon, we climbed the high hills which overlook Glengarriff
and, after losing our way, and meeting with an apparition, which alarmed
us fearfully, we reached the highest point, and surveyed, with wonder and
gladness, the glorious view beneath us.
CHAPTER XVIII. GLENGARRIFF TO CORK
MOUNTED on the Cork car next morning, we passed the estuaries of Bantry
Bay, where, the tide being out, the heron stood, lone and
aristocratic, and the curlew ran nimbly among the dank seaweed. By the
roadside, the goats, tied in pairs, and cruelly hoppled, tumbled over the
embankments as we passed. We went by the picturesque old ruins of Carriginass,
and by various sights and scenes, until we reached the Pass of
Keimaneigh, a defile through the mountains, the appropriate refuge of
the Rockites, in 1822, and an elegant situation for a still. Burns,
that poetical gauger, might have been happy here, so long as, dreamily
wandering among the heath-clad steeps, he had confined his attentions to
the beauties of nature, and ignored the paraphernalia of art; but a more
practical man, intent on business, would have had but an uncomfortable
home of it, until a bullet put an end to his dreary quest, and
“The de'il flew away with the exciseman.”
The driver pulled up his horses by a way-side cottage, and inquired
whether we wished to see Gougane-barra. It was only a mile or so
out of our route, Patrick there would take us in his car, and he would
wait for us with all the pleasure in life. So, making this little
deflection, we reached, as speedily as a good pony could take us over bad
roads, the gloomy lake and mountains. Here we were received by a troop of
juvenile guides, led on by an old man, who with a long white beard, and
staff, intended, I believe, to give us the idea of a venerable and pious
pilgrim, to remind us probably of St. Fion Bar, the “Saint of the
Silver Locks,” who founded a monastery here; but roguery so twinkled in
his eye, and imposition so quavered in his voice, that I have no
hesitation in speaking with regard to him, as the Edinburgh Review
spake of Edgar Poe:—“He was a blackguard of undeniable mark.”
The Irish poet Callanan sings,
“There is a green island in lone Gougane-barra,
Where Allua of songs rushes forth as an arrow.”
We visited the “green island,” reaching it by an overland route (a method
of access which I do not remember to have noticed out of Ireland); and the
“Allua of Songs” was represented by a discordant din in Anglo-Irish, from
the illustrious humbug in the beard, and his satellites, which would have
interested us in a greater degree, had we understood only a twentieth part
of it.
Ultimately, we caught a small boy, intelligent and intelligible, and he
told us how the great Saint had here made himself deliciously miserable,
feasting upon the idea of his fasts; contemplating his macerations in the
lake, as complacently as a cornet his new uniform, or his sister her first
ball-dress, in the glass; whipping himself as industriously as a schoolboy
his top; hugging himself in his hair shirt, and nestling cosily as a child
in its crib, in a bed composed of ashes and broken glass.
These and other austerities by which the Reverend Mr. Bar so signally
extinguished himself, have made Gougane-barra, even to this day, a great
resort for pilgrims; you see “the Stations,” and you see graven upon a
stone, which was formerly an altar-stone, the list of prayers to be said
there; and you hear of many wonderful cures, which have been performed (I
always like that story of the priest, who was overheard, while telling his
friend, that he must be so good as to excuse his absence, as he was
engaged “to rehearse a miracle at two 0 clock!”) at the Holy
Well hard by,—the very well, it may be, to which Larry O'Toole
took Sheelah, his wife, and Phelim (as they thought) was “the consekins of
that manoover.”
These pilgrims, some fifty years ago, used to drink diligently as soon as
they had finished their prayers, laying aside the staff for the
shillelagh, and kicking off their sandals for a jig on the green. Having
paid off the old score, they began a new account like gentlemen, just as
an undergraduate, having advanced ten pounds to his tailor, immediately
orders clothes to the amount of twenty.
Regaining the car and main road, we pass by small silvery lakes from which
the trout are leaping, “bekase,” says our driver, “the wather's
so full o' fish that whinever they want to turn round they must jist jump
out and do it in the air,” through a country prettily diversified with
“Woods and corn-fields, and the abode of men,
Scatter'd at intervals, and wreathing smoke,
Arising from such rustic roofs”
as are only to be seen in Ireland, and so come to Inchigeela.
À propos of cornfields, I must not forget a striking example of
scientific ingenuity, which we saw in this neighbourhood. A small
cornstack had been raised, so grievously out of the perpendicular, that
the tower of Pisa would have looked severely straight by it. But
the builder saw his error, before it was too late, and had gloriously
saved his cereal structure, by erecting another, opposite to and abutting
towards it, until they supported each other, like the commencement of
those card houses, which we built in early youth, a chevron in heraldry,
or two drunken sots “seeing each other home.”
AtInchigeela's clean and comfortable inn, we had a capital
luncheon for ninepence, and then “lionised” the village. The first object
of interest was a pig, asleep under a tree by the brookside.
“Pinguem, nitidumque Bene curatâ cute.”
(I may add bene curandâ, as the bacon that is to be cannot possibly
hear), and so serenely dignified in its complete repose, so “mildly
majestical,” that one almost expected to see a point-lace nightcap, and
fair girls fanning away the flies! He looked as happy as Gryllus,
that companion of Ulysses, who, being transformed into a pig by Circe,
and, being subsequently offered redintegration, preferred the swinish
estate; huge and handsome as the famous boar, who ate the Reverend Mr.
Haydn, after the victory of the rebels at Enniscorihy; 1 obese
and sleepy, as Silenus, when found by the shepherds, Chromis and
Mnasylus; 2 refreshed and comfortable, like that great O'Neill,
who (Camden says so) was wont to plunge himself into the mire, as a
cooler and restorative, after great excess.
1 Sir Jonah Barrington's Personal Sketches, vol. iii., p. 422.
2 Virgil. Edogue vi. 13.
Progressing, we come to the Constabulary Barracks, where a couple of
constables, with such moustaches as would make a young Cornet groan, are
polishing up their carbines. Our London police are well-favoured in
appearance, but if the Irish constables were to take their place, there
would not be a single female-servant, to be “warranted heart-whole,” in
the great Metropolis, and the very name of Meat-safe would become a
by-word and a laughing-stock.
In the river hard by, a girl, standing ankle-deep, from time to time, like
the young lady in “the Soldiers Tear” held aloft a snowy—never
mind what; and, having plunged it into the stream, and placed it upon a
stone, belaboured it (as though it were a drunken husband) with an
implement of wood, which much resembled a villager's clumsy cricket-bat.
Two Schools, and one actually at work! real pupils, making the pace
too severe to last (when they saw us looking at them), with real
slate-pencils over real slates! I wonder whether they were doing the “Irish
Arithmetic,” of which O'Hara declares the following to be a faithful
specimen:—
“Twice 5 is 6;
The 9s in 4 you can't;
So dot 3, and carry 1;
And let the rest walk!”
Returning, after a prolonged and pleasant stroll, we found the horses in
the car, and the driver seated on his box. Now, an English coachman would
have yelled at us, and English passengers would have scowled on us, for
detaining them; but the Irishman gave us a pleasant smile of recognition,
as though it was very kind of us to come back at all, and did not start
for full five minutes, to assure us that we had caused no inconvenience.
Certainly, it was one of those warm, still, delicious summer days on which
nobody wants to start, satisfied with the calm enjoyment of the
present, and so absorbed and occupied in doing nothing, that it seems to
be quite a triumphal effort to rouse one's-self and light a cigar! At
length, our charioteer speaks to his horses, whose drooping heads
acknowledge the soporific influence of the day; and, awaking from their
favourite night-mares, they bear us on our road to Cork.
Now we pass the tower, antique and ivy-clad, of Carrigadrohid,
(nice name for a naughty pointer, requiring frequent reprimands on a
broiling day in September!); a handsome residence on the hill beyond, with
the pleasant waters of the river Lee, which accompanies us from its
source at Gougatie-BarratoCork, winding below it; and
change horses at Dripsey. Between this latter place and Cork, the
signs of civilisation became so painfully prominent, and the scenery so
excruciatingly English, that, having secured ourselves by our rug-straps,
to the iron bar behind us, our “custom always of an afternoon,” when we
felt inclined for a siesta, we closed our eyes in sadness, and tried to
dream of Connamara and Killarney. But sights, too dreadful for
description, scared sleep away. Carts, whereupon was gaudily emblazoned
“Albert Bakery,” and “Collard and Collard” fascinated our unwilling gaze;
and we shortly found ourselves among the suburbs disgustingly neat, and
the houses offensively comfortable, of “that beautiful city called Cork.”
On the right and left, as you approach, are two very imposing and
extensive structures, Queen's College, and (“great wit to madness
nearly is allied”) the Lunatic Asylum,—the latter so large,
that it might have been erected to accommodate those numerous patients who
have lost their reason in vain attempts to understand Mr. Bradshaw's
Railway Guide.
Cork is, indeed, a “beautiful city,” delightfully situated, handsomely
built, and having more the appearance of energy, prosperity, and comfort,
than any other city we saw in Ireland. To my fancy the old prophecy is
fulfilled,—
“Limerick was, Dublin is, and Cork shall be
The finest city of the three.”
The river Lee, dividing here, flows round the island on which principally
the city stands; and upon the wooded hills above, the richer part of the
community have their pleasant, healthful homes.
Now, although I have deplored our transition from the wild scenery of
Connamara and Kerry to the formalities of cultivation and refinement, I am
not so bigoted as to deny that civilisation has its advantages; and, among
them, I would specially include “the Imperial Hotel” in Pembroke Street.
An excellent dinner, in pleasant society (the exception being a vulgar,
garrulous old female, who ate with her knife, and told us how, in one of
the foreign churches, she had “tried very 'ard to convert an aconite,
quite a genteel young man,”) followed by some irreproachable claret,
“with beaded bubbles, winking at the brim,”
disposed us to criticise very leniently the defects and inferiorities of
art; and we left our inn to see the fireworks in the Mardyke Gardens, not
only consoled, but cheery. All Cork appeared to be going in procession up
that long avenue of fine old trees; and as the subsequent exhibition
appeared to be quite satisfactory, I can pay “all Cork” the compliment of
saying, that it is very easily pleased. To us, as we stood in the long,
damp grass, and the varnish was retiring from our favourite boots,
intervals of twenty minutes between the pyrotechnic performances soon
began to be rather tedious; and we longed to repeat an experiment,
originally introduced at the Henley Regatta, when a dozen of us combining,
applied our cigars to all the “fixed pieces” at once, and the grand
design, which was to crown the whole, anticipated its glories by a couple
of hours, and wished the bewildered spectators “Good Night” (in glittering
letters two feet long) almost as soon as they had paid for their
admission!
CHAPTER XIX. CORK
I was dreaming that I met Lord Evelyn, at sunrise, in the Gap of Dunloe;
that he put into my hand, with a graceful bow and striking amenity, the
largest horse-pistol I ever saw, constructed, as he said, upon novel
principles, by which it loaded itself, and would continue to go off until
three o'clock, with appropriate airs from a musical box in the handle;
that, leaving me with a kind of Pas de Basque, which I thought very
inappropriate at such a crisis, and taking up a position twelve paces from
me, he produced a weapon, similar to mine, and requested me to “blaze
away;” that I was making frantic, but futile efforts to get my deadly
instrument on full cock, and that my Lord, disdaining to take any
advantage, was pinking the eagles, as they flew overhead; when the loud
ringing of a contiguous bell recalled me to the realities of life. There
is ever in these large hotels some unhappy inmate, who is unable to put
himself into communication with Boots, who rings his bell with an
ever-increasing energy, until he performs, at last, in his wild fury, such
a continuous peal, as must bring up somebody, or bring down the rope. It
is interesting to listen to these bells. First they suggest, then they
entreat, then they remonstrate, then they insist, and then they curse and
swear! Like the music of the Overture to Guillaume Tell, they begin
pleasantly and peacefully, then they grow grand and warlike, crescendo-ing,
from andante pianissimo, until they arrive at allegro fortissimo;
and reminding me of a village dame, whom I heard calling from her cottage
door to a child, playing in the distance, and hearing but not heeding its
mother:
“Lizzie, luv!”
“Liz—a—buth!”
“E—LIZ—ER—BUTH!”
“BESS, YOU YOUNG ———!”
epithet too suggestive of the kennel for readers of polite literature.
Of course we went to see the old Cove of Cork, who, in a spirit of
loyalty, but to the great disappointment of facetious visitors, has
changed his name to Queenstown. We travelled by rail to Passage,
and thence by steamer. What shall I say of this glorious haven, “Statio
bene fida carinis,” twelve miles from city to sea? What a refreshment
and gladness must it be to the weary sailor, to come from his lone voyage
on “the sad sea waves,” to this safe home and refuge, to listen to the
summer breeze, softly sighing in those upland groves, instead of to the
tempest, as it bends the creaking mast, and to look down upon those calm
and glittering waters, with the gay craft of Peace and Pleasure gliding
gracefully to and fro.
Should it ever be my happy lot to revisit the city and haven of Cork, I
shall most certainly decline to land at Queenstown. The gentleman who took
a Census of the smells at Cologne, and said,
“At Colne, a town of monks and bones,
And pavements, fanged with murderous stones,
And rags and jags, and hideous wenches,
I counted four-and-seventy stenches,
All well-defined and separate stinks!”
might, perhaps, be interested in this locality, and would find an ample
field for his nasal arithmetic. The heat was intense, the tide low; and,
though I have no doubt that, further from the sea, the place is sweet and
healthy enough, I never remember to have inhaled so offensive an
atmosphere as that which prevailed, upon St. Bartholomew's Day, in the
year 1858, and in the front street of the Queenstown. As an Irishman,
Chief Baron Woulfe, once wrote of Paris, “the air is so loaded with
stenches of every kind, as to be quite irrespirable;” and turning to my
friend, I said, “O Francis, it is written, in this 'Handbook to the
Harbour and City of Cora,' that 'Queenstown is celebrated, and justly so,
for the equality, mildness, and salubrity of its temperature,' and that
'many medical men prefer it to the climate of Madeira;' but take
thy kerchief from thy nose brief while, and answer me, my Francis, terse
and true, doth not this statement seem to thee, in boyhood's phrase, 'a
Corker!'”
He replied, that “as the stinks were not quite sufficiently defined to
sketch, he should hire a boat and bathe;” and, having purchased a couple
of oyster-cloths, the nearest approximation he could find to towels, so
indeed he did, leaving me (incapable of natation), to contemplate the
Garrison, an extensive pile with a very military and practical look, Spike
Island, once the residence of Mr. Mitchell, and now occupied by some 2000
malefactors of less illustrious name, and Rocky and Hawlbowline
Islands, which are used as ammunition stores.
The heat and the incense (how I envied the white gulls, flying lazily over
the waters, and ever and anon dipping, as one thought, to cool
themselves!) were so oppressive and irritating, that when a small boy,
buying apples, would keep dropping them on the ground, in a vain attempt
to thrust more into his pocket than the cavity could possibly accommodate,
I almost thirsted for his blood, and like the stern old Governor in Don
Juan, I could have seen him
“thrown
Into the deep without a tear or groan.”
Yea, should have esteemed it to be Hari-kari, which is Japanese,
you know, for “happy dispatch.”1
1 “The Hari-kari, or 'Happy Dispatch,' is still practised
by the Japanese. This consists in ripping open their own
bowels with two cuts, in the form of a cross.... Princes,
and the high classes, receive permission to rip themselves
up, as a special favour, when under sentence of death.”—
Japan, and her People, by A Steinmitz.
In expiation of these sanguinary thoughts, I subsequently presented a
fourpenny piece, as conscience money, to a miserable-looking beggar, who
“had not tasted food,” &c. &c. &c. &c., and who only asked
for “a halfpenny, to buy a piece of bread.” But he had scarcely left me
(having previously requested all the saints to pay me particular
attention), when I heard one of two men, who were leaning against the
wall, on which I sat smell-bound, say to his neighbour that “the jintleman
must have more brass than brains, to go and give his money to a drunken
shoemaker, who'd been out three days on the spree.” Yes, my groat was gone
to buy alcohol for this impostor, this Cork Leg; and I felt as though I
very closely resembled that bird which the French call “Le Bruant Fou,”
and we “The Foolish Bunting,” because it is so easily ensnared.
It was, indeed, a joyous departure from humbug, dead fish, and sewers, to
the waves, that were dancing in a pleasant breeze (which prudently
declined to venture ashore); and we were as glad to make an escape as our
great sailor, Sir Francis, when, outnumbered by the Spaniards, he
came, crowding all sail, into Cork Harbour, and hid himself securely in “Drakes
Pool.”
Lovely as the scene around her, there sat upon the deck, as we returned to
Passage, a winsome Irish bride, fondly gazed upon by her happy
husband, and less ostensibly by ourselves, and about a dozen officers, who
were bound for Cork, from the Garrison and Club house at Queenstown. Was
it that mysterious talent of beauty, which without words can say, “I
recognise your homage, and it does not displease me;” or was it only our
own enormous vanity which caused each of us to imagine, as I feel
convinced we did, that, could she only have foreknown our peculiar
fascinations, she would have laughed to scorn the inferior animal, who was
now grinning by her side?
We returned to the Imperial for luncheon (and I am unacquainted with any
midday refreshment more interesting than prawns, fresh and full-grown,
with bread and butter à discrétion, and the golden ales of Burton),
and then took car for Blarney. Our horse was evidently as fond of
his home as that enthusiastic citizen who, with a charming indifference to
anachronisms, declared that Athens was called “the Cork of Greece,” and
would keep perpetually turning round to gaze upon the beautiful city. In
vain the driver inquired satirically whether he had dropped his umbrella,
or forgotten to order dinner, or whether there was anything on his mind;
in vain he addressed him vituperatively, called him an old clothes-horse,
and threatened to take him to the asylum; in vain, trying the persuasive,
he assured him that we had come all the way from England to see him,
having heard so much of his speed and beauty, and that, if he would keep
up his character, and be a gentleman, he should have such a feed of old
beans that day, as would cause him to neigh for joy. All in vain! from
time to time round went this uncomfortable horse, until at last, as some
fond lover takes one more look at his beloved, and then rushes wildly
away, where duty calls or glory waits him, our eccentric quadruped
suddenly started off at full trot, and during the remainder of our journey
comported himself with great propriety.
CHAPTER XX. BLARNEY
THE old Castle of Blarney, like the castle of Macbeth, by
Inverness,
“hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentler senses;”
and it commands a fine view “over the water and over the Lee” over lake
and meadow, and over “the Groves of Blarney,” renowned in song. The
landscape rewards your exertions, when you have ascended the narrow
staircase of the sole remaining tower, and this somewhat resembles (“magna
componere”) an excellent “Stilton,” which has gone the way of all good
cheeses, and is now a hollow ruin—a ruin on which some sentimental
mouse might sit, like Marins at Carthage, and bitterly recall the past.
Looking down this cavity, made gloomier by the dark ivy and wild myrtle,
which grow from floor to battlement, one feels that fainty thrill and
chilliness which is equally unpleasant and indescribable, and gladly
divert our attention, first to the stone displaced by a cannon shot, in
the days of the incomparable Lady Jeffreys, when
“Oliver Cromwell, he did her pummell,
And broke a breach all in her battlement,”
and then to another stone lower down in the tower, and bearing the
inscription, “Cormac Macarthy Fort is Me Fieri Fecit, a.d. 1446,”
which may be translated liberally,
“Cormac Macarthy, bould as bricks,
Made me in Fourteen Forty-six.”
This is said to be the original Blarney Stone, but as no man could
possibly kiss it, unless (as Sir Boyle Roche observed) he happened to be a
bird, or an acrobat, twelve feet long, and suspending himself by his feet
from the summit of the Tower, we were content to believe in the
conventional granite, which now bears the name, and which, being situated
at the top of one of the turrets, is very accessible for osculation.
Of this lapideous phenomenon, the author of “The Groves of Blarney” sings,
“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-an-outer, to be let alone:
Don't hope to hinder him, or to bewilder him,
Sure he's a pilgrim from the Blarney Stone!”
Now it is my conviction, primarily suggested by my own sensations, and
subsequently confirmed by what I noticed in others, as I lingered on that
ancient tower, that the majority of those who kiss the Blarney Stone, do
wish and try to believe in it. We English have so scanty a stock of
superstitions, and some of these so wanting in refinement and dignity, as,
for instance, the “crossing out” of an isolated magpie, the ejection of
spilt salt over the left shoulder, deviations into the gutter to avoid a
ladder, the mastication of pancakes upon Shrove Tuesday, and the like,
that we are glad of any pretext for gratifying that innate love of the
marvellous, which exists, more or less, in us all,—ay, and will
exist, until John Bright is Premier of England, and our Fairy Tales and
Arabian Nights, and all our books of pleasant fiction are solemnly burnt
at Oxford, before a Synod of costive Quakers.
And then it is so gratifying for Mammas to fancy, as they bend to kiss the
magic stone, that assuredly they “stoop to conquer,” henceforth, by a new
and dulcet eloquence, those little idiosyncrasies of “dear Papa,” which
have thwarted their happiest schemes, such as his insuperable apathy on
the subject of that new Conservatory, although “you know, darling, both
Mr. Nesfield and Mr. Thomas declared it to be indispensable.”
Pleasant, too, for their charming daughter of nineteen, to think that she
hereafter shall not ask in vain for that tour in Switzerland, that ball at
home, those boxes, varying in shape and size; small, from the stores of
Howell and of James; medium, from Messieurs Hill and Piver; and large,
very large, from “the infallible Mrs. Murray,” and Jane Clark, in the
Street of the Regent.
Enlivening, moreover, for that Eton boy to believe, as he salutes the
Blarney Stone, that now he has only to give the Governor a hint, and “that
clipping little horse of young Farmer Smith's” will be purchased
forthwith, and presented to him, to carry him next season with the Belvoir
hunt.
Miserable Father, how shall he meet this irresistible incursion upon his
purse and peace. Well may he look coldly on the Blarney Stone! Well may he
express, from heart and hope, his belief that it's “all humbug.” And yet,
methinks, remembering that last Election, that distressingly effete
experiment to nominate Sir John Golumpus, that fearful silence, when he
came to grief, that vulgar gibe “go 'ome, and tak' a pill,” he too must
sigh for this gift of Blarney, and long to kiss the Stone.
See, they are leaving the battlements,—first the Etonian, then his
sister, and then Mamma. O, wily Paterfamilias! Suddenly remembering that
he “has left his stick” (he has, and purposely), he steps briskly back,
and, stooping for his cane,—salutes the rock! He, at all events,
won't “kiss, and tell!”
But everybody kisses it. The noisy old girl, whom we met yesterday at the
table d'hôte, and who preferred steel to silver, as a medium for
the transmission of food, reached the summit of the tower very short of
wind, but resumed, as soon as ever she could speak, a severe sermon upon
the errors of “Room,” and its superstitions in particular. And yet,
ultimately (affecting to do it in ridicule,—let us be charitable,
and hope that, in her heart of hearts, she had in view the conversion of
her “genteel Aconite”), she kissed the Stone; and we were glad to have
already done so.
We saw the kitchen, where beeves were cooked in the merry old times, and
the banquet-hall wherein they were carved. The latter was appropriated to
a miscellaneous collection of rickety old farming implements,—rust,
and dust, and decay, where brave knights laughed over the winecup,—
“And tapers shone, and music breath'd,
And beauty led the ball.”
Shall we re-ascend the tower, and preach, from that old stone pulpit, on “pulvis
et umbra sumus?” Perhaps, as there is no congregation, and a Lunatic
Asylum mighty convanient, we may as well postpone our sermon, and turn our
steps to the gardens and groves of Blarney.
If the poet had not told us that “they are so charming,” I should scarcely
have discovered the fact for myself, as they are but feebly ornamented
with flowers, and—
“The gravel walks there, for speculation,
And conversation, in sweet solitude,”
are damply suggestive of a cold in the head. At the same time, from their
pleasant position and varied surface, these grounds have a charm about
them; and I should much like to wander in them, by moonlight, with—(I
must decline, like the Standard Bearer, to communicate the young lady's
name), just to see whether I had derived any benefit from my salutation of
the Blarney Stone; whether I could say mavourneen with a sweeter
tenderness, and discourse more fluently those “sugared glosses,” which are
called by the sentimental “heart music,” and by the unsentimental “bosh.”
In these grounds the portly old gardener showed us one of those Cromlechs,
which were used by the Druids for sacrificial or sepulchral purposes, and
in which, I am ashamed to say, we professed an all-absorbing interest,
though, on my asking Frank, as we left the gardens, “what a Cromlech was?”
he replied that, prior to inspection, his idea had always been that it was
a species of antediluvian buffalo!
Then we saw the lake
“That is stored with perches,
And comely eels in the verdant mud;
Besides the leeches, and groves of beeches,
All standing in order for to guard the flood.”
They say that, from this lake enchanted cows, snow-white and of wondrous
beauty, come forth in the summer mornings, and wander among the dewy
meads, to the intense astonishment and admiration, doubtless, of the
celebrated Irish Bulls. 1
1 The only lapsus linguar, resembling a bull, which I heard
during our tour, was from a fellow-passenger, in Connamara,
who was repeating a conversation, of which he declared
himself to have been an eye-witness.
And they say, moreover, that beneath these waters (which we ventured to
designate Cowesharbour, in allusion to the mysterious kine), lies
the plate-chest of the Macarthys, about the size of a gasometer, and never
to be raised until once again a Macarthy shall be lord of Blarney. It will
be a busy day for the butler, and a happy one for those who deal in
plate-powder, whenever this restoration shall occur.
Our driver gave us, as we returned, a taste of his autobiography. I wish
that I could repeat it verbatim, for Irish humour loses its bloom
if it is not faithfully rendered; but my memory only retains the
incidents, and, here and there, a phrase of his story.
He was in England several years ago, at the time of harvest, travelling,
sickle in hand, with a dozen of “the boys,” and looking out for employment
in the neighbourhood of, or, as he termed it, “contagious to th'ould
castle of Newark-upon-Trent.” A hot wind blew the dust along the road, for
“the good people were a-going their journeys;” 1 and they were resting
awhile, and looking at a fine crop of wheat, by the wayside, when two
young men on horseback stopped, and asked them “whether they wanted work?”
1 “The Irish have a superstition, that when the dust is
caught up and blown about by the wind, it is a sign that the
fairies are travelling.”—Tales and Novels by Maria
Edgeworth, vol. iv. p. 72.
Now, it seems, that there lived in these parts, at the period of our
history, one of those unhappy malcontents whose counsel, like Moloch's, is
for open war with everything and everybody about them; who can believe no
good of their neighbours, because they find none in themselves; who murmur
at the rich, and are mean and merciless to the poor; who go to meeting
house to spite the parson, and to church to vex the preacher; who attend
parish-meetings to stir up quarrels, and to set one class against another;
who poison foxes, and put their great ugly boots into partridge-nests; and
sedulously devote themselves in every way to promote the misery of
mankind.
A bear of this calibre, calling himself a farmer, was tenant of the field
on which the Irishman gazed; and a plan occurred to the merry young
gentlemen by which they might amuse themselves, occupy the reapers, and
annoy “that mangy old hunks.” Accordingly, they at once retained our
friend the car-driver, and his company, to cut the crop before them,
giving them particular directions to get it down as quickly as they could,
and agreeing to pay them liberally by the acre, as “their father was
anxious to get it stacked, and would not mind their doing the work a bit
slovenly, if only they lost no time.” And then, having warned them “not to
take any notice of a poor half-witted fellow, who lived near, and who,
fancying that all the land about was his own, might possibly try to
interrupt their proceedings,” the horsemen wished them “good-day.”
They had been at work for nearly an hour, and had left behind them, in
their anxious haste, such an untidy example of sheaf and stubble as would
have broken Mr. Mechi's heart, when a loud bellowing in the distance
announced the arrival of the unhappy lunatic! He came on, roaring and
raving, shaking his fist, and foaming at the mouth. He actually danced
with rage among the sickles, until the reapers, fearing the excision of
his legs, forcibly removed him, and with twisted strawbands, secured him
to his own gate! There, trussed and pinioned, he sent forth such howlings
through “the alarmed air,” as scared every crow from the parish, and very
speedily attracted the surprised attention of the British public
travelling upon the Great North Road.
The reapers, eventually, found it expedient to retire with considerable
agility, much disgusted and discomfited, at being “sich a distance on the
wrong side of the wage, bedad,” until they were met by their delighted
employers, who not only presented them with a couple of sovereigns, but
introduced them, with the anecdote, to a jolly old gentleman, hard by,
from whom they had employment until the end of harvest.
In allusion to the subject of Irishmen in England, I asked the car man,
when he had concluded his story, whether he was aware that there were as
many of his countrymen living in London as in the city of Dublin itself? 1
And his reply, to the effect, that I had “brought away a dale o' vartue
from th' ouldstone a top o Blarney,” reminded me of an observation
made, when I was at school, by our French master, to a boy named Drake.
“Monsieur Canard, I shall not call you a liar but I do not believe von
vord of vot you say!”
1 See an interesting account of the Irish in London, in The
Million-peopled City, by the Rev. J. Garwood, p. 246.
We had a fine view, as we returned, of the beautiful city and its
environs, and re-entering by another route, we passed the ornate chapel,
commenced by Father Mathew, at the date and with the design, so charmingly
recorded by the poet,
“The first beginning of this new chapel
Was in eighteen hundred and thirty-three;
It will soon be finish'd by the subscribers,
And then all tyrants away must flee.”
Next morning, having purchased, as we were commissioned and as we
recommend other tourists to do, a good stock of highly finished but
low-priced gloves from Mollard, in the street of St. Patrick, we started
by rail for Dublin.
CHAPTER XXI. FROM DUBLIN HOMEWARD
THERE are objects, I doubt not, in the well-cultivated country which lies
between Cork and Dublin, well worthy of special notice, but we did not
pause to observe them, passing once more the pretty town of Mallow, and
the Limerick Junction, reminded at Thurles of the famous Synod, and
longing, as we passed the Curragh (Ireland's Newmarket), for a gallop over
its green, elastic sward.
The latest intelligence, which we obtained from Mark, on our arrival at
Morrisson's was that Cardinal Wiseman had arrived in Dublin, and the Fair
in Donnybrook. To the latter we went, as soon as we had dined, but did not
meet with His Eminence, wiser in his maturity than Wolsey in his youth,
for Wolsey not only went to the fair, but got there so particularly drunk,
that he was put into the stocks by Sir Amyas Paulett,—if you doubt
it, ask “Notes and Queries.”
The glories of Donnybrook have declined dismally since those more
happy days, when Paddy
“'Slipp'd into a tent, just to spend half-a-crown,
Slipp'd out, met a friend, and for joy knock'd him down,
With his sprig of shillelagh, and shamrock so green!”
The showmen shouted, and the drums rumbled, and the cymbals clanged, and
the fiddlers fiddled, but the dancing was limp and feeble, and the general
effect was dreary. We visited Mr. Batty's Menagerie, and were offered a
mount upon a young elephant, at the low charge of one penny. And I am glad
that we declined; because the quadruped in question, having gone round the
show, until it was tired of doing so, suddenly dropped upon its stern, and
discharged its jockeys into the sawdust, as though they were a load of
coals!
Then we visited the Theatre of Ferguson, and there a Prima Donna appeared
to us, from the arrangement of her mouth, to be singing with remarkable
energy; but we had no further means of verifying the supposition, as the
whole House, incited by her example, was chanting at the top of its voice.
And I must say that, although I stood, most uncomfortably and insecurely,
on a narrow plank at the top of “the Boxes,” I never enjoyed a concert
more; and I very much doubt whether the Pope himself could have resisted
joining in the Chorus.
We saw nothing at all suggestive of a shindy until (to our great joy) we
met a couple of our college friends, Hoare, the stroke of our boat, tall
among the tallest, as Arba among the Anakims, arm in arm with little
Dibdin, the coxswain (they have been sworn friends, ever since Hoare took
him by the collar, and dropped him into the Isis, for some mistake in
steering); and these gentlemen were armed with shillelaghs, and anxious,
as the old lady in the captured city, to know when the fun would begin.
“For now I see,” said Hoare,—
“The true old times are gone,
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.”
“And every knight,” I said, as a supplement,
“brought home a broken head.”
Let us haste to Kelvin Grove—I mean, let us return to Morrisson's!”
We steamed away next morning from Kingston Quay. Looking back upon that
lovely bay, I thought of the poor Irishman's most touching words, as he
gazed for the last time on his native land, “Ah, Dublin, sweet Jasus
be with you!” and from my heart I breathed an earnest prayer for the good
weal of beautiful Ireland!
And now our “Little Tour” is over; and its story must go forth,
like some small boy to a public school, to find its true place and level.
It may, perhaps, receive more pedal indignities than donations of a
pecuniary kind; vulgarly speaking, more kicks than halfpence; but as no
severities can deprive the boy of his pleasant memories of the past, nor
chase the smile from his tear-stained and inky cheek, as he sleeps to
dream of home; so no criticism, however caustic, can ever mar my glad
remembrance of our happy days in Ireland.
And in mine adversity, should such befall, I shall have yet another
solace. Hooted, like some bad actor, from the stage, I can hide myself
behind scenery, which has a charm for all, and which, like Phyllis the
fair, “never fails to please.”
Cheered or condemned, whether “the Duke shall say, Let him roar again,” or
the poor player shall hear
“On all sides, from innumerable tongues,
An universal hiss,”
the drama is over, and the curtain falls.
FINIS.
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