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THE CHARM OF IRELAND
The Charm of Ireland
By
Burton E. Stevenson
Author of "The Spell of Holland," "The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet," etc.
With many Illustrations from Photographs by the Author
New York
Dodd, Mead and Company 1914
rv*v
COPYRIGHT, 1914 BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
TO
J. I. B. THIS BOOK
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT * . . V ; 1
II LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF AN ANCIENT CAP- ITAL ,. , .. . . ..,.'',«•* ; ^9
III THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN . ; ,; . . 26
IV ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK ... 42 V THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 59
VI DROGHEDA THE DREARY . . . . . . 85
VII HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL OF THE KINGS . . 97
VIII ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY 113
IX CUSHLA MA CHREE ....... 128
X THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE .... 139
XI A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND .... 153
XII THE "GRAND TOUR" . . . . . • . . 177
XIII ROUND ABOUT KILLARNEY 192
XIV O'CoNNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR . . . 203 XV THE RUINS AT ADARE 224
XVI "WHERE THE RIVER SHANNON FLOWS" . . 242
XVII LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE 265
XVIII GAL WAY OF THE TRIBES 292
XIX IAR CONNAUGHT 314
XX JOYCE'S COUNTRY 339
XXI THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM ..... 358
XXII THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR .... 375
XXIII THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS . . . . .398
XXIV THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE .... 415 XXV THE MAIDEN CITY . .. .. .. . .. .,, . 438
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XXVI THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH . . . . . . 458
XXVII THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS . .., . . . 472
XXVIII THE GLENS OF ANTRIM . '.- ... >3 . . 485
XXIX BELFAST . . . . « , • . V ,-. .- . . 503
XXX THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK . . . . .519
XXXI THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE 534
XXXII THE END OF THE PILGRIMAGE .... 559
INDEX 567
ILLUSTRATIONS
Two Tiny Connaught Toilers Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Dublin Castle . ..... . . . . . . 10
O'Connell, alias Sackville, Street, Dublin . •'..'. . 10
Ruins of St. Mary's Abbey Howth . -. . . . . 22
The Evolution of the Jaunting Car . . . . . . 28
The Cross of Cong . . fc . . . . < . ... 40
The Shrine of St. Patrick's Bell ....'... 40
Glendalough and the Ruins of St. Kevin's Churches . . 66
The Road to St. Kevin's Seat . . . .... . 74
The First of St. Kevin's Churches 74
The Round Tower, Clondalkin .... . . . 88
St. Lawrence's Gate, Drogheda 88
Holy Cross Abbey, from the Cloisters . , . . . .100
The Mighty Ruins on the Rock of Cashel 100
Cashel of the Kings 104
Blarney Castle 116
A Cottage at Inchigeelagh 144
The Shrine of St. Fin Barre 144
The Bay of Glengarriff 164
The Upper Lake, Killarney, from the Kenmare Road . 164
Old Weir Bridge, Killarney 188
The Meeting of the Waters 188
Ross Castle, Killarney 188
Muckross Abbey, Killarney 194
The Cloister at Muckross Abbey . . 194
The Choir of the Abbey at Adare . . . . . . 232
The Castle of the Geraldines, Adare . . ; , . . 232
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
The Shannon, near World's End . . V .. ; . . 248 St. Senan's Well . . ... . • *,- '. . . .248
The Bridge at Killaloe . ... .... . .258
The Oratory at Killaloe ......... 258
Entrance to St. Molua's Oratory . . ... . . 262
A Fisherman's Home . 262
The Choir of the Abbey at Athenry 270
A Cottage at Athenry 270
The Goldsmith Rectory at Lissoy 276
The "Three Jolly Pigeons" 276
On the Road to Clonmacnoise 288
St. Kieran's Cathair, Clonmacnoise 288
The Market at Galway 296
"Ould Saftie" 296
The Claddagh, Galway 300
A Claddagh Home 300
A Galway Vista 302
The Memorial of a Spartan Father 302
The Connemara Marble Quarry 322
A Connemara Home 322
In "Joyce's Country" 344
On the Shore of Lough Mask 344
The Cloister at Cong Abbey 348
The Monks' Fishing-house, Cong Abbey .... 348
The Turf-Cutters 356
A Girl of "Joyce's Country" 356
Cromlechs at Carrowmore 392
Sligo Abbey from the Cloister 400
The Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis 400
A Ruin on the Shore of Lough Gill . . . . . . 402
The Last Fragment of an Ancient Stronghold . . . 402
A Cashel near Dromahair 408
St. Patrick's Holy Well .* 408
The Coast at Bundoran 416
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
The Home of "Colleen Bawn" 416
Birthplace of William Allingham 430
Castle Donegal . . . ;. ;.. . . . . ;' .'»• . . 430
The Walls of Deny , ." „ . ^^ t . . . 466 The Grainan of Aileach .*.... » . . 466
The "Giant's Head," near Portrush . . •* . . . 480 The Ruins of Dunluce Castle . . . >V . . . . 480
The Giant's Causeway . 482
The Cliffs beyond the Causeway . . ... . . . 482
The Grave of Ossian 4s » * . . 496
An Antrim Landscape . . » , . ...;.,, . . . 496
A Humble Home in Antrim . . . . . . . . 498
The Old Jail at Cushendall . . . . . . . .498
The City Hall, Belfast . ....:... . . .516
High Street, Belfast . ... . . . . . . 516
The Grave of Patrick, Brigid and Columba .... 522
The Old Cross at Downpatrick 522
The Great Rath at Downpatrick 526
The Inner and Outer Circles 526
The Central Mound 526
The Eye Well at Struell 528
The Well of Sins at Struell 528
The Birthplace of John Boyle O'Reilly 540
Entrance to Dowth Tumulus 540
Entrance to Newgrange 546
The Ruins of Mellifont . 546
The Round Tower, Monasterboice 554
The High Cross, Monasterboice 554
Muiredach's Cross, Monasterboice . 556
THE CHARM OF IRELAND
CHAPTER I
DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT
TWILIGHT was at hand when the little steamer, slender as a greyhound, cast loose from the pier at Holyhead, made its way cautiously out past the breakwater, and then, gathering speed, headed away across the Irish Sea, straight toward the setting sun.
The boat showed many evidences that the Irish Sea can be savage when it chooses. Everything movable about the decks was carefully lashed down; there were railings and knotted ropes everywhere to cling to; and in the saloon the table-racks were set ready at hand, as though they had just been used, and might be needed again at any moment. But, on this Saturday evening in late May, the sea was in a pleasant, even a jovial, mood, with just enough swell to send a thin shower of spray across the deck from time to time, and lend exhilaration to the rush of the fleet little turbine.
There were many boats in sight — small ones, for the most part, rolling and pitching apparently much worse than we; and then the gathering darkness obscured them one by one, and presently all that was left of them were the bobbing white lights at their mastheads. A biting chill crept into the air, and Betty finally sought refuge from it in the saloon, while I made my way back to the smoking-room, hoping for a friendly pipe with some one.
I was attracted at once by a rosy-faced old priest,
2 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
sitting at one of the corner tables. He was smoking a black, well-seasoned briar, and he bade me a cheery good-evening as I dropped into the seat beside him.
"You would be from America," he said, watching me as I filled up.
"Yes," I answered. "From Ohio."
"Ah, I know Ohio well," and he looked at me with new interest, "though for many years I have been in Illinois."
"But you were born in Ireland?"
"I was so; near Tuam. I am going back now for a visit."
"Have you been away long4?"
"More than thirty years," he said, and took a few reflective puffs.
"No doubt you will find many changes," I ven- tured.
But he shook his head. "I am thinking I shall find Tuam much as I left it," he said. "There are not many changes in Ireland, even in thirty years. JTis not like America. I am afraid I shall have to give up smoking while I am there," he added, with a little sigh.
"Give up smoking?" I echoed. "But why?"
"They do not like their priests to smoke in Ireland."
I was astonished. I had no suspicion that Irish priests were criticised for little things like that. In fact, I had somewhere received the impression that they were above criticism of every kind — dictators, in short, no act of whose was questioned. My compan- ion laughed when I told him this.
"That is not so at all," he said. "Every priest, of
DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT 3
course, has authority in spiritual matters; but if he has any authority outside of that, it is because his people trust him. And before they'll trust him, he must deserve it. There is no people in the world so critical, so suspicious, or so sharp-sighted as the Irish. Take this matter of smoking, now. All Irishmen smoke, and yet there is a feeling that it is not the right thing for a priest. For myself, I see no harm in it. My pipe is a fine companion in the long evenings, when I am often lonely. But of course I can't do any- thing that would be making the people think less of me," and he knocked his pipe out tenderly and put it sadly in his pocket, refusing my proffered pouch.
"You will have to take a few whiffs up the chimney occasionally," I suggested.
His faded blue eyes lit up with laughter.
"Ah, I have done that same before this," he said, with a little chuckle. "That would be while I was a student at Maynooth, and a wild lot we were. There was a hole high up in the wall where the stove-pipe used to go, and we boys would draw a table under it, and stand on the table, and smoke up the chimney, turn and turn about," and he went on to tell me of those far-off days at Maynooth, which is the great Catholic college of Ireland, and of his first visit to America, and his first sight of Niagara Falls, and of how he had finally decided to enter the priesthood after long uncertainty; and then presently some one came to the door and said the lights of the Irish coast could be seen ahead, and we went out to look at them.
Far away, a little to the right, a strong level shaft of light told of a lighthouse. It was the famous Bailey
4 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
light, at the foot of the Hill of Howth, so one of the deckhands said; and then, still farther off, another light began to wink and wink, and then a third that swept its level beam across the sea, stared one full in the eye for an instant, and then swept on; and then more lights and more — the green and red ones marking the entrance to the harbour; and finally the lights of Kingstown itself stretched away to the left like a string of golden beads. And then we were in the harbour; and then we were beside the pier; and then Betty and I and the "chocolate-drop" — as we had named the brown English wrap-up which had done such yeoman service in Holland that we had vowed never to travel without it, — went down the gang-plank, and were in Ireland !
There is always a certain excitement, a certain exhil- aration, in setting foot for the first time in any coun- try; but when that country is Ireland, the Island of the Saints, the home of heroic legend and history more heroic still, the land with a frenzy for freedom yet never free — well, it was with a mist of happiness be- fore our eyes that we crossed the pier and sought seats in the boat-train.
It is only five or six miles from Kingstown to Dub- lin, so that at the end of a very few minutes our train stopped in the Westland Row station, where a fevered mob of porters and hotel runners was in waiting; and then, after most of the passengers and luggage had been disgorged, and a guard had come around and col- lected twopence from me for some obscure reason I did not attempt to fathom, went on again, along a viaduct above gleaming streets murmurous with people, and
DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT 5
across the shining Liffey, to the station at Amiens Street, which was our destination.
Our hotel, I knew, was only two or three blocks away, and the prospect of traversing on foot the crowded streets which we had glimpsed from the train was not to be resisted; so I told the guard we wanted a man to carry our bags, and he promptly yelled at a ragamuffin, who was drifting past along the platform.
"Here!" he called. "Take the bags for the gintle- man. Look sharrup, now !"
But there was no need to tell him to look sharp, for he sprang toward me eagerly, his face alight with joy at the prospect of earning a few pennies — maybe six- pence— perhaps even a shilling!
"Where is it you'd be wantin' to go, sir?" he asked, and touched his cap.
I named the hotel.
"It's in Sackville Street," I added. "That's not far, is it?"
'Tis just a step, sir," he protested, and picked up the bags and was off, we after him.
It was long past eleven o'clock, but when we got down to the street, we found it thronged with a crowd for which the sidewalks were much too narrow, and which eddied back and forth and in and out of the shops like waves of the sea. We looked into their faces as we went along, and saw that they were good- humoured faces, unmistakably Irish; their voices were soft and the rise and fall of the talk was very sweet and gentle; but most of them were very shabby, and many of them undeniably dirty, and some had cele- brated Saturday evening by taking a glass too much.
6 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
They were not drunk — and I may as well say here that I did not see what I would call a drunken man all the time I was in Ireland — but they were happy and up- lifted, and required rather more room to walk than they would need on Monday morning.
Our porter, meanwhile, was ploughing through the crowd ahead of us like a ship through the sea, swing- ing a bag in either hand, quite regardless of the shins of the passers-by, and we were hard put to it to keep him in sight. It was farther than I had thought, but presently I saw a tall column looming ahead which I recognised as the Nelson Pillar, and I assured Betty that we were nearly there, for I knew that our hotel was almost opposite the Pillar. Our porter, however, crossed a broad street, which I was sure must be Sack- ville Street, without pausing, and continued at top speed straight ahead. We followed him for some mo- ments; but the street grew steadily darker and more deserted, and finally I sprinted ahead and stopped him.
"Look here," I said. "We don't want to keep on walking all night. How much farther is the hotel?"
He set down the bags and mopped his dripping face with his sleeve.
"I'm not quite sure, sir," he said, looking about him.
"I don't believe it is up this way at all," I pro- tested. "It's back there on Sackville Street."
"It is, sir," he agreed cheerfully, and picked up the bags again and started back.
"That is Sackville Street, isn't it?" I asked.
"Sure, I don't know, sir."
"Don't know?" I echoed, and stared at him. "Don't you know where the hotel is?"
DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT 7
"You see, sir, I'm a stranger in Dublin, like your- self," he explained.
"Well, why on earth didn't you say so?" I de- manded.
He didn't answer; but of course I realised instantly why he hadn't said so. If he had, he wouldn't have got the job. That was what he was afraid of. In fact, he was afraid, even yet, that I would take the bags away from him and get some one else to carry them. I didn't do that, but I took command of the expedition.
"Come along," I said. "You follow me."
"Thank you, sir," he said, his face lighting up again, and fell in behind us.
As we retraced our steps, I tried to figure out how he had expected to find the hotel by plunging straight ahead without asking the way of any one, and for how long, if I had not stopped him, he would have kept on walking. Perhaps he had expected to keep going round and round until some good fairy led him to our destination.
At the corner of Sackville Street, I saw a policeman's helmet looming high above the crowd, and I went to him and asked the way, while our porter waited in the background. Perhaps he was afraid of policemen, or perhaps it was just the instinctive Irish dislike of them. This particular one bent a benignant face down upon us from his altitude of something over six feet, and in a moment set us right. The hotel was only a few steps away. The door was locked, and I had to ring, and while we were waiting, our porter looked about him with a bewildered face,
8 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
"What name was it you gave this street, sir 9" he asked, at last.
"Sackville Street," I answered, and pointed for con- firmation to the sign at the corner, very plain under the electric light.
From the vacant look he gave it I knew he couldn't read ; but he scratched his head perplexedly.
"A friend of mine told me 'twas O'Connell Street," he said finally, and I paid him and dismissed him without realising that I had been brought face to face with the age-long conflict between English officialism and Irish patriotism.
Ten minutes later, I opened the window of our room and found myself looking out at Lord Nelson, leaning sentimentally on his sword on top of his pillar — posing as he so often did when he found himself in the limelight. Far below, the street still hummed with life, although it was near midnight. The pavements were crowded, side-cars whirled hither and thither, some of the shops had not yet closed. Dublin cer- tainly seemed a gay town.
CHAPTER II
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF AN ANCIENT CAPITAL
I KNOW Dublin somewhat better now, and I no longer think of it as a gay town — rather as a supremely tragic one. Turn the corner from any of the main thoroughfares, and you will soon find yourself in a foul alley of crowded tenements, in the midst of a misery and squalor that wring the heart. You will wonder to see women laughing together and children playing on the damp pavements. It is thin laughter and half-hearted play; and yet, even here, there is a certain air of carelessness and good-humour. It may be that these miserable people do not realise their mis- ery. Cleanliness is perhaps as painful to a person reared in dirt as dirt is to a person reared in cleanli- ness; slum dwellers, I suppose, do not notice the slum odour; a few decades of slum life must inevitably destroy or, at least, deaden those niceties of smell and taste and feeling which play so large a part in the lives of the well-to-do. And it is fortunate that this is so. But one threads one's way along these squalid streets, shuddering at thought of the vice and disease that must be bred there, and mourning, not so much for their unfortunate inhabitants, as for the blindness and inefficiency of the social order which permits them to exist.
These appalling alleys are always in the background of my thoughts of Dublin; and yet it is not them I see
9
10 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
when I close my eyes and evoke my memory of that ancient town. The picture which comes before me then is of the wide O'Connell Bridge, with the great monument of the Liberator guarding one end of it, and the curving street beyond, sweeping past the tall por- tico of the old Parliament House, past the time- stained buildings of Trinity College, and so on along busy Grafton Street to St. Stephen's Green. This is the most beautiful and characteristic of Dublin's vistas ; and one visualises it instinctively when one thinks of Dublin, just as one visualises the boulevards and the Avenue de 1' Opera when one thinks of Paris, or the Dam and the Kalverstraat when one thinks of Am- sterdam, or the Strand and Piccadilly when one thinks of London.
It was in this direction that our feet turned, that bright Sunday morning, when we sallied forth for the first time to see the town, and we were impressed al- most at once by two things : the unusual height of Dub- lin policemen and the eccentric attitudes of Dublin statues. There are few finer bodies of men in the world than the Royal Irish Constabulary. They are as spruce and erect as grenadiers; throughout the length and breadth of Ireland, I never saw a fat one. They are recruited all over the island, and the tallest ones must be selected for the Dublin service. At any rate, they tower a full head above the average citizen of that town, and, in consequence, there is always one or more of them in sight.
As for the statues, they sadly lack repose. The O'Connell Monument is a riot of action, though the Liberator himself is comparatively cool and self-pos-
DUBLIN CASTLE
Jnderwood & Underwood. N. Y.
O'CONNELL, ALIAS SACKVILLE STREET, DUBLIN
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 11
sessed. Just beyond the bridge, Smith O'Brien poses with leg advanced and head flung back and arms proudly folded in the traditional attitude of haughty defiance; opposite him, Henry Grattan stands with hand outstretched midway of an eloquent period; and, as you explore the streets, you will see other patriots in bronze or marble doing everything but what they should be doing : standing quietly and making the best of a bad job. For to stand atop a shaft of stone and endure the public gaze eternally is a bad job, even for a statue. But a good statue conceals its feeling of absurdity and ennui under a dignified exterior. Most Dublin ones do not. They are visibly irked and im- patient.
I mentioned this interesting fact, one evening, to a Dublin woman of my acquaintance, and she laughed.
" 'Tis true they are impatient," she agreed. "But perhaps they will quiet down once the government stops calling O'Connell Street by a wrong name."
"Where is O'Connell Street?" I asked, for I had failed to notice it.
"Your hotel faces it; but the government names it after a viceroy whom nobody has thought of for a hundred years."
It was then I understood the confusion of the man who had carried our bags up from the station; for to every good Irishman Sackville Street is always O'Con- nell Street, in honour of the patriot whose monument adorns it. That it is still known officially as Sackville Street is probably due to the inertia of a government always suspicious of change, rather than to any desire to honour a forgotten viceroy, or hesitation to add
12 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
another leaf to O'Connell's crown of laurel. O'Con- nell himself, in some critical quarters, is not quite the idol he once was; but Irishmen agree that the wide and beautiful street which is the centre of Dublin should be named after him, and his monument, at one end of it, is still the natural rallying-place for the populace, whose orators love to illustrate their periods by pointing to the figure of Erin breaking her fetters at its base.
At the other end of the street is a very noble memo- rial of another patriot — Charles Stewart Parnell. Par- nelPs fame burns brighter and clearer with the passing years, and this memorial, so simple, so dignified, and yet so full of meaning, is one which no American can contemplate without a thrill of pride, for it is the work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens — a consummate artist, American to the marrow, though Dublin-born, of a French father and an Irish mother.
Midway of this great thoroughfare, rises the Nelson Pillar — a fluted column springing a hundred and fifty feet into the air, dominating the whole town. I do not understand why Nelson should have been so sig- nally honoured in the Irish capital, for there was noth- ing Irish about him, either in birth or temperament. Perhaps that is the reason. Stranger things have hap- pened in Ireland. And indeed it is no stranger than the whim which set another statue to face the old Par- liament House — a gilded atrocity representing Wil- liam of Orange, garbed as a Roman emperor in laurel- wreath and toga, bestriding a sway-backed horse!
The Home Rule Parliament will no doubt promptly change the street signs along the broad thoroughfare
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 13
which forms the heart of Dublin; but meanwhile every- body agrees in calling the bridge O'Connell's monument faces by his name. A very handsome bridge it is, and there is a beautiful view from it, both up and down the river. Dublin is like Paris, in that it is built on both sides of a river, and the view from this point re- minds one somewhat of the view along the Seine. There are many bridges, and many domed buildings, many boats moored to the quays — and many patient fishermen waiting for a bite!
A short distance beyond the bridge is the great gran- ite structure with curving fagade and rain-blackened columns, a queer but impressive jumble of all the Greek orders, which now houses the Bank of Ireland. Time was when it housed the Irish Parliament, and that time may come again; meanwhile it stands as a monument to the classical taste of the eighteenth cen- tury and its fondness for allegorical sculpture — Erin supported by Fidelity and Commerce, and Fortitude supported by Justice and Liberty ! Those seem to me to be mixed allegories, but never mind.
Those later days of the eighteenth century were the days of Dublin's glory, for then she was really, as well as sentimentally, the capital of Ireland. Her most beautiful public buildings date from that period, and all her fine spacious dwelling-houses. After the Union, nobody built wide spacious dwellings, but only narrow mean ones, to suit the new spirit; and the new spirit was so incapable of living in the lovely old houses that it turned them into tenements, and put a family in every room, without any sense of crowding! I sometimes fear that the old spirit is gone for good, and
14 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
X
that not even independence can bring it back to Dub- lin.
It was the Irish House of Commons which, in 1752, provided the funds for the new home of Trinity Col- lege, just across the street — a great pile of time-worn buildings, also in the classic style, and rather dull ; but it is worth while to go in through the great gateway for a look at the outer and inner quadrangles.
Beyond the college stretches Grafton Street, the principal shopping-street of Dublin, and at its head is St. Stephen's Green, a pretty park, with some beautiful eighteenth century houses looking down upon it. This was the centre of the fashionable residence district in the old days, and the walk along the north side was the "Beaux Walk." Such of the residences as remain are mostly given over to public purposes, and the square itself is redolently British; for there is a statue of George II in the centre, and one of Lord Eglinton not far away, and a triumphal arch commemorating the war in South Africa. But, if you look closely, you may find the inconspicuous bust of James Clarence Mangan, who coughed his life out in the Dublin slums while Tom Moore — who was also born here — was pos- ing before fine London ladies; and Mangan had this re- ward, that he remained sincere and honest and warmly Irish to the last, a true bard of Erin, and one whose memory she does well to cherish. How feeble Tom Moore's tinklings sound beside the white passion of "Dark Rosaleen!"
Over dews, over sands, Will I fly for your weal :
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 15
Your holy, delicate white hands
Shall girdle me with steel. At home in your emerald bowers,
From morning's dawn till e'en, You'll pray for me, my flower of flowers,
My dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
You'll think of me through daylight's hours, My virgin flower, my flower of flowers,
My dark Rosaleen!
A short walk down Kildare Street leads to a hand- some, wide-flung building with a court in front, once the mansion of the Duke of Leinster, but now occu- pied by the Royal Dublin Society. The wing at the right is the Science and Art Museum, that to the left the National Library. The latter is scarcely worth a visit, unless there is some reading you wish to do, but we shall have to spend some hours in the museum.
On this Sunday morning, however, Betty and I walked on through to Leinster Lawn, a pleasant en- closed square, with gravelled walks and gardens gay with flowers, but marred with many statues ; and here you will note that a Victorian government spent a huge sum in commemorating the virtues of the Prince Consort. We contemplated it for a while, and then went on to the great building which closes in the park on the north, and which houses the National Gallery of Ireland. We found the collection surprisingly good. It is especially rich in Dutch art, and possesses three Rembrandts, one of an old and another of a young man, and the other showing some shepherds building a fire — just such a subject as Rembrandt loved. And
16 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
there is a good Teniers, and an inimitable canvas by Jan Steen, "The Village School." There are also a number of pictures by Italian masters, but these did not seem to me so noteworthy.
This general collection of paintings is on the upper floor. The ground floor houses the National Portrait Gallery, composed for the most part of mediocre pre- sentments of mediocre personalities, but with a high light here and there worth searching for. Sir Godfrey Kneller's portrait of Dick Steele is there, and Holbein's Henry Wyatt, and Zuccaro's Raleigh, and there are three or four portraits by Lely and Reynolds, but not, I should say, in their best style.
Let me add here that there is in Dublin another pic- ture gallery well worth a visit. This is the Municipal Gallery, housed in a beautiful old mansion in Harcourt Street — another memorial of spacious eighteenth cen- tury days, where that famous judge and duellist, Lord Clonmell, lived. The house itself would be worth seeing, even if there were no pictures in it, for it is a splendid example of Georgian domestic architecture; but there are, besides some beautiful examples of the Barbizon school, a number of modern Irish paintings which promise much for the future of Irish art.
1 The day was so bright and warm that it seemed a pity to spend the whole of it in town, so, after lunch, we took a tram for the Hill of Howth. Most of the tram lines of the city start from the Nelson Pillar, so we had only to cross the street to the starting point. There seems to be a considerable difference of opinion as to the correct pronunciation of "Howth." Perhaps
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 17
that is because it is a Danish word — hoved, a head — the Danes having left the mark of their presence in the names of places all over Ireland, even in the names of three of its four provinces. Only far Con- naught escaped the stigma. At any rate, when I asked a policeman which tram to take for Howth, I pro- nounced the word as it is spelt, to rhyme with "south." He corrected me at once.
" 'Tis the Hill of Hooth ye mean," he said, making it rhyme with "youth," "and that's your tram yon- der."
We clambered up the steep stairway at the back to a seat on top, and presently we started; and then the conductor came around with tickets, and asked where we were going — in Ireland, as everywhere else in Eu- rope, the fare is gauged by the length of the journey.
"To the Hill of Hooth," I answered proudly.
"Ah, the Hill of Hoth, is it," he said, making it rhyme with "both," and he picked out the correct tick- ets from the assortment he carried, punched them and gave them to me.
We used the pronunciations indiscriminately, after that, and I never learned which is right, though I sus- pect that "Hoth" is.
Howth is a great detached block of mountain thrown down, by some caprice of nature, at the sea-ward edge of a level plain to the north of Dublin Bay, where it stands very bold and beautiful. It is some eight or ten miles from Dublin, and the tram thither runs through the north-eastern part of the town, and then emerges on the Strand, with Dublin Bay on one side and many handsome residences on the other. Away
i8 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
across the bay are the beautiful green masses of the Wicklow hills, and presently you come to Clontarf, where, on Good Friday, nine hundred years ago, the Irish, under their great king, Brian Boru, met the mar- shalled legions of the Danes, and broke their power in Ireland.
For the Danes had sailed up the Liffey a century before, and built a castle to command the ford, some- where near the site of the present castle; and about this stronghold grew up the city of Dublin; and then they built other forts to the south and north and west; bands of raiders marched to and fro over the country, plundering shrines, despoiling monasteries, levying tribute, until all Ireland, with the exception of the extreme west, crouched under the Danish power. The Danes, it should be remembered, were the terror and scourge of Europe, and since the Ireland of that day was the richest country of Europe in churches and monasteries and other religious establishments, it was' upon Ireland the Pagan invaders left their deepest mark.
For a hundred years they had their will of the land, crushing down such weak and divided resistance as the people were able to offer. And then came Brian Boru, a man strong enough to draw all Ireland into one al- liance, and at last the Danes met a resistance which made them pause. For twenty years, Brian waged desperate war against them, defeating them sometimes, sometimes defeated; but never giving up, though often besought to do so; retiring to his bogs until he could recruit his shattered forces, and then, as soon as might be, falling again upon his enemies.
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 19
In the intervals of this warfare, he devoted himself to setting his kingdom in order, and to such good pur- pose that, as the historians tell — and Tom Moore rhymes — a lone woman could make the circuit of Erin, without fear of molestation, though decked with gold and jewels. Brian did more than that — and this is the measure of his greatness : he built roads, erected churches and monasteries to replace those destroyed by the Danes, founded schools to which men came from far countries, and "sent professors and masters to teach wisdom and knowledge and to buy books beyond the sea."
It was in 1014 that the final great battle of Clon- tarf was fought. Both sides, realising that this was the decisive struggle, had mustered every man they could. With Brian were his own Munster men, and the forces of O'Rourke and Hy Many from Connaught, and Malachy with his Meath legions, and Desmond with the men of Kerry and West Cork — a wild host, with discipline of the rudest, trusting for victory not to strategy or tactics, but to sheer strength of arm.
And what a muster of Danes there was ! Not only the Danes of Dublin, but the hosts from the Orkneys and "from every island on the Scottish main, from Uist to Arran" ; and even from far-off Scandinavia and Iceland the levies hastened, led by "Thornstein, Hall of the Side's son, and Halldor, son of Gudmund the Powerful, and many other northern champions of lesser note." It is characteristic of Irish history through the ages that, on this great day, one Irish province cast in its lot with its country's enemies, for the battalions of Leinster formed side by side with the Danes.
20 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
There are Danish and Irish sagas which tell the story of that fight, and blood-stirring tales they are. Brian Boru, bent under the weight of seventy- four years, took station apart on a bit of rising ground, and there, kneeling on a cushion, alternately prayed and watched the battle. The Danes had the better of it, at first, hewing down their adversaries with their gleaming axes; but the Munster men stood firm and fought so savagely that at last the Danes broke and fled. One party of them passed the little hill where Brian knelt, and paused long enough to cut him down ; but his life's work was done: the power of the Danes was broken, and there was no longer need to fear that the Norsemen would rule Ireland.
Just north of Clontarf parish church stands an an- cient yew, and tradition says that it was under this tree that Brian's body was laid by his men. The tra- dition may be true or not, but the wonderful tree, the most venerable in Ireland, is worth turning aside a few moments to visit. It stands in private grounds, and permission must be asked to enter, but it is seldom refused.
Like too many other spots in Ireland, Clontarf has its tragic memory as well as its glorious one, for it was here that O'Connell's Home Rule movement, to which thousands of men had pledged fealty, dropped sud- denly to pieces because of the indecision of its leader at the first hint of British opposition. But there is no need to tell that story here.
The town of Howth consists of one long street run- ning around the base of the hill and facing the harbour
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 21
and the Irish Sea. The harbour is enclosed by impress- ive piers of granite, and was once a busy place, for it was the Dublin packet station until Kingstown super- seded it. Since then, the entrance has silted up, and now nothing rides at anchor there but small yachts and fishing-boats. On that clear and sunny day the view was very beautiful. A mile to the north was the rugged little island known as Ireland's Eye, and far away beyond the long stretch of low coast loomed the purple masses of the Carlingford hills. Away to the east stretched the Irish Sea, greenish-grey in the sun- light, with a white foam-crest here and there, and to the south lay Dublin Bay against the background of the Wicklow mountains.
High on a cliff above the haven lie the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey, and we presently clambered up to them. We found them encircled by an embattled wall, but a neighbourhood urchin directed us to a pile of tumble- down buildings at the corner as the home of the care- taker. He was not there, but his wife was, as well as a large collection of ragged children, and one of these, a girl of ten or thereabouts, was sent by her mother to do the honours. She was very shy at first, but her tongue finally loosened, and we were en- raptured with her soft voice and beautiful accent. Her father was a fisherman, she said; they were all fisher-families who lived in the tumble-down pile, which was once a part of the abbey and so comes legit- imately by its decay, since it is four or five hundred years old, and has apparently never been repaired.
Of the abbey church itself, only the walls remain, and they are the survivals of three distinct buildings.
22 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
The west front is part of the original Danish church, built in 1042, and is pierced by a small round-headed doorway, above which rises an open bell-turret. In 1235, the Archbishop of Dublin rebuilt the Danish church, retaining only its fagade. The interior, as he remodelled it, consisted of a nave and one aisle, sep- arated by three pointed arches. They are still there, very low and rude, marking the length of the Arch- bishop's church. Two centuries later, this was found too small, and so the church was lengthened by the addition of three more arches. They also are still standing, and are both higher and wider than the first three. The tracery in the east window is still intact, and is very graceful, as may be seen by the photograph opposite this page, in which the variation in the arches is also well shown. Note also the round-headed door- way at the side, with the remains of a porch in front — a detail not often seen in old Irish churches. And, last of all, note the ruined building in the corner. Although it has no roof, it is still used as a dwelling, as the curtained window shows.
Just inside the east window of the church is the tomb of Christopher, nineteenth Lord Howth, who died about 1490. It is an altar tomb, bearing the re- cumbent figures of the knight and his lady, the former's feet resting, after the usual fashion, on his dog. Con- sidering the vicissitudes of weather and vandalism through which they have passed, both figures are sur- prisingly well preserved.
The Howth peninsula still belongs to the Howth family, who trace their line direct to Sir Almericus Tristram, an Anglo-Norman knight who conquered and
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 23
annexed it in 1177, and the demesne, one of the most beautiful in Ireland, lies to the west of the town. The castle, a long, battlemented building flanked with tow- ers, is said to contain many objects of interest, but we did not get in, for the gardener informed us that it was open to the public only on Tuesdays and Satur- days. The grounds are famous for their gorgeous rhododendrons, and there is a cromlech there, under which, so legend says, lies Aideen, wife of Oscar, son of Ossian and chief hero of those redoubtable warriors, the Fianna.
In Ireland, during the summer months, sunrise and sunset are eighteen hours apart, and so, though it was rather late when we got back to the hotel, it was as light as midday. We were starting for our room, when a many-buttoned bell-boy, with a face like a cherub, who was always hovering near, stopped us and told us shyly that, if we would wait a few minutes, we could see the parade go past.
During the morning, we had noticed gaily-uni- formed bands marching hither and thither, convoying little groups of people, some of them in fancy costume, and had learned that there was to be a great labour celebration somewhere, with music and much oratory. We had not thought it worth while to run it down, but we said we should be glad to see the parade, so our guide took us out to the balcony on the first floor, and then remained to talk.
"You would be from America, sir, I'm thinking," he began.
"Yes," I said.
24 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
"Then you have seen Indians !"
"Indians? Why, yes, I've seen a few."
"On the war-path?" he cried, his eyes shining with excitement.
I couldn't help laughing.
"No," I said. "They don't go on the war-path any more. They're quite tame now."
His face fell.
"But you have seen cowboys?" he persisted.
"Only in Wild West Shows," I admitted. "That's where I have seen most of my Indians."
"They're brave lads, aren't they?" and his eyes were shining again.
"Why, have you seen them?" I questioned in sur- prise.
"Ah, I have, sir, many times, in the moving-pic- tures," he explained. "It must be a fine thing to live in America!"
I found out afterwards that the Wild West film is exceedingly popular in Ireland. No show is complete without one. I saw some, later on, and most sangui- nary and impossible they were; but they were always wildly applauded, and I think most Irishmen believe that the life of the average American is largely em- ployed in fighting Indians and rescuing damsels in dis- tress. I tried to tell the bell-boy that life in America was much like life everywhere — humdrum and matter- of-fact, with no Indians and few adventures ; but I soon desisted. Why should I spoil his dream?
And then, from up the street, came the rattle and blare of martial music, and we had our first view of an Irish performer on the bass-drum. It is a remark-
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 25
able and exhilarating spectacle. The drummer grasps a stick in each hand, and sometimes he pounds with both of them, and sometimes he twirls one over his head and pounds with the other, and sometimes he crosses his arms over the top of the drum and pounds that way. I suppose there is an etiquette about it, for they all. conduct themselves in the same frenzied fash- ion, while the crowd stares fascinated. It is exhaust- ing work, and I am told that during a long parade the drummers sometimes have to be changed two or three times. But there is never any lack of candidates.
There were thousands of men in line, that day, mem- bers of a hundred different lodges, each with its banner. Their women-folk trooped along with them, often arm- in-arm ; and they trudged silently on with the slow and dogged tread of the, beast of burden; and the faces of men and women alike were the pale, patient faces of those who look often in the eyes of want. It melted the heart to see them — to see their rough and toil-worn clothing, their gnarled and twisted hands, their heavy hob-nailed shoes — and to think of their treadmill lives, without hope and without beauty — just an endless struggle to keep the soul in the body. Minute after minute, for almost an hour, they filed past. What they hoped to gain, I do not know — a living wage, perhaps, since that is what labour needs most in Ire- land— and what it has not yet won !
Our Buttons had watched the parade with the amused tolerance of the uniformed aristocrat.
"There's a lot of mad people in Dublin," he re- marked cheerfully, as we turned to go in.
CHAPTER III
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN
DUBLIN is by far the most fascinating town in Ire- land. She has charm — that supreme attribute alike of women and of cities; and she has beauty, which is a lesser thing. She is rich in the possession of many treasures, and proud of the memorials of many famous sons. Despite all the vicissitudes of fortune, she has remained the spiritual and artistic capital of Ireland, and she looks forward passionately to the day when the temporal crown will be restored to her. To be sure, there is a canker in her bosom, but she knows that it is there; and perhaps some day she will gather courage to cut it out.
Among her memorials and treasures, are four of ab- sorbing interest — the grave of Swift, the tomb of Strongbow, the Cross of Cong and the Book of Kells. It was for the first of these, which is in St. Patrick's Cathedral, that we started Monday morning, and to get there we mounted for the first time to the seats of a jaunting-car.
I suppose I may as well pause here for a word about this peculiarly Irish institution. Why it should be peculiarly Irish is hard to understand, for it furnishes a rapid, easy, and — when one has learned the trick — comfortable means of locomotion. Every one, of course, is familiar with the appearance of a jaunting- car — or side-car, as it is more often called — with its
26
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 27
two seats back to back, facing outwards, and a foot- rest overhanging each wheel.
Opposite the next page is a series of post-card pic- tures showing its evolution from the primitive drag, which is the earliest form of vehicle all the world over, and which still survives in the hilly districts of Ireland, where wheels would be useless on the pathless moun- tain-sides. Then comes a rude cart with solid wheels and revolving axle working inside the shafts, still used in parts of far Connaught, and then the cart with spoke wheels working outside the shafts on a fixed axle — pretty much the form still used all the world over — just such a "low-backed car" as sweet Peggy used when she drove to market on that memorable day in spring. The next step was taken when some comfort-loving driver removed the side-boards, in order that he might sit with his legs hanging down; and one sees them sit- ting just so all over Ireland, with their women- folk crouched on the floor of the cart behind, their knees drawn up under their chins, and all muffled in heavy shawls. I do not remember that I ever saw a woman sitting on the edge of a cart with her legs hanging over — perhaps it isn't good form !
Thus far there is nothing essentially Irish about any of these vehicles ; but presently it occurred to some in- ventive Jehu that he would be more comfortable if he had a rest for his feet, and presto! the side-car. It was merely a question of refinements, after that — the addition of backs and cushions to the seats, the enlarge- ment of the wheels to make the car ride more easily, the attachment of long springs for the same purpose, and the placing of a little box between the seats for
28 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
the driver to sit on when his car is full. In a few of the larger places, the development has reached the final refinement of rubber tires, but usually these are considered a too-expensive luxury.
Now evolution is supposed to be controlled by the survival of the fittest, but this is only half-true of the side-car; for, while admirably adapted to hilly roads, it is the worst possible conveyance in wet weather. Hilly roads are fairly frequent in Ireland, but they are nowhere as compared to wet days, and the side-car is a standing proof of the Irishman's indifference to rain. Indeed, we grew indifferent to it ourselves, before we had been in Ireland very long, for it really didn't seem to matter.
I suppose it is the climate, so soft, so sweet, so balmy that one gets no harm from a wetting. The Irish tramp around without any thought of the weather, work just the same in the rain as in the sun, never think of using a rain-coat or an umbrella — would doubtless consider the purchase of either a waste of money which could be far better spent — and yet, all the time we were in Ireland, we never saw a man or woman with a cold ! The Irish are proud of their climate, and they have a right to be. And, now I think of it, perhaps the climate explains the jaunting-car.
That compound, by the way, is never used by an Irishman. He says simply "car." "Car" in Ireland means a side-car, and nothing else. In most other countries, "car" is short for motor-car. In Ireland, if one means motor, one must say motor. But the vis- itor will never have occasion to mean motor unless he owns one, for, outside of the trams in a few of the
THE EVOLUTION OF THE JAUNTING CAR
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 29
larger cities, the side-car is practically the only form of street and neighbourhood conveyance. One soon grows to like it; we have ridden fifty miles on one in a single day, and many times we rode twenty-five or thirty miles, without any undue sense of fatigue. The secret is to pick out a car with a comfortably-padded back extending in a curve around the rear end of each seat. One can tuck oneself into this curve and swing happily along mile after mile.
The driver of a side-car is called a jarvey. I don't know why. The Oxford dictionary says the word is a "by-form of the surname Jarvis," but I am not learned enough to see the connection, unless it was Mr. Jarvis who drove the first side-car. I wish I could say that the jarvey differed as much from the cabbies and chauffeurs of other lands as his car does from the cab and the taxi; but, alas, this is not the case. He is just as rapacious and piratical as they, though he may rob you with a smile, while they do it with a frown; and he has this advantage : there is no taximeter with which to control him. Everywhere, if one. is not a million- aire, one must be careful to bargain in advance. Once the bargain is concluded, your jarvey is the most agree- able and obliging of fellows. He usually has every reason to be, for nine times out of ten he gets much the better of the bargain ! I have never been able to decide whether, in these modern times when piracy on the high seas has been repressed, men with piratical instincts turn naturally to cab-driving, or whether all men have latent piratical instincts which cab-driving inevitably develops.
The Dublin jarvey is famous for his ability to turn
30 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
a corner at top-speed. He usually does it on one wheel, and the person on the outside seat has the feel- ing that, unless he holds tight, he will certainly be hurled into misty space. We held on, that morning, and so reached St. Patrick's without misadventure in a surprisingly few minutes. .
St. Patrick's Cathedral is not an especially impress- ive edifice. It dates from Norman days, and was built over one of St. Patrick's holy wells ; but, like most Irish churches, it was in ruins most of the time, and fifty years ago it was practically rebuilt in its present shape. Sir Benjamin Guinness, of the Guinness Brew- ery, furnished the money. Like all the other old re- ligious establishments, it was taken from the Catholics in the time of Henry VIII and given to his Established Church — the Episcopal Church, here called the Church of Ireland — and has remained in. its possession ever since, though the church itself was disestablished some forty years ago.
By far the most interesting fact about St. Patrick's is that Jonathan Swift was for thirty-two years its Dean, and now lies buried there beside that "Stella" whom he made immortal. A brass in the pavement marks the spot where they lie side by side, and on the wall not far away is the marble slab which enshrines the epitaph he himself wrote. It is in Latin, and may be Englished thus:
Jonathan Swift, for thirty years Dean of this Cathedral, lies here, where savage indignation call no longer tear his heart. Go, traveller, and, if you can, imitate him who played a man's part as the champion of liberty.
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 31
Another slab bears a second epitaph written by Swift to mark the grave of "Mrs. Hester Johnson, better known to the world by the name of 'Stella,' under which she is celebrated in the writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of this Cathedral." Whether she should have borne the name of him who celebrated her the world will never know. She died seventeen years be- fore him, "killed by his unkindness," and was buried here at midnight, while he shut himself into a back room of his deanery across the way that he might not see the lights of the funeral party. He had faults and frailties enough, heaven knows, but the Irish remember them with charity, for, though his savage indignation had other fuel than Ireland's wrongs and sorrows, yet they too made his heart burn, and he voiced that feeling in words more burning still. He died in a madhouse, as he expected to die, leaving
"the little wealth he had To build a house for fools and mad, And showed by one satiric touch No nation wanted it so much."
There is another characteristic epitaph of Swift's on a tablet in the south wall, near the spot where General Schomberg lies — that bluff old soldier who met glorious death at the head of his victorious troops at the battle of the Boyne. Swift wished to mark the grave with an appropriate memorial, but Schomberg's relatives de- clined to contribute anything toward its cost; where- upon Swift and his Chapter put up this slab, paying tribute to the hero's virtues, and adding that his valour
32 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
was more revered by strangers than by his own kindred.
There are many other curious and interesting monu- ments in the place, well worth inspecting, but I shall refer to only one of them — the one which started the feud that sent Stratford to the scaffold. It is a tower- ing structure, erected by the great Earl of Cork to the memory of his "virtuous and religious" Countess, in 1629. It stood originally at the east end of the choir near the altar, but Strafford, instigated by Archbishop Laud, who protested that it was a monstrosity which desecrated that sacred place, compelled its removal to the nave, where it now stands. The Earl of Cork never forgave him, and hounded him to his death. The monument is a marvel of its kind, containing no less than sixteen highly-coloured figures, most of them life-size. The Earl and his lady lie side by side in the central panel, with two sons kneeling at their head and two at their feet, while their six daughters kneel in the panel below, three on either side of an unidenti- fied infant. After contemplating this huge atrocity, one cannot but conclude that the Archbishop was right.
Back of the Cathedral is a little open square, where the children of the neighbouring slums come to play in the sunshine on the gravelled walks; and dirty and ragged and distressful as they are, they have still about them childhood's clouds of glory. So that it wrings the heart to look at the bedraggled, gin-soaked, sad- eyed, hopeless men and women who crowd the benches and to realise not only that they were children once, but that most of these children will grow to just such miserable maturity.
We walked from the Cathedral up to the Castle,
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 33
that morning, crossing this square and traversing a corner of the slums, appalling in their dirt and squalor, where whole families live crowded in a single room. In Dublin there are more than twenty thousand such families. Think what that means: five, six, seven, often even eight or nine persons, living within the same four walls — some in dark basements, some in ricketty attics — cooking and eating there, when they have any- thing to cook and eat; sitting there through the long hours; sleeping there through the foul nights; awak- ing there each morning to another hopeless day of misery. Think how impossible it is to be clean or de- cent amid such surroundings. Small wonder self-re- spect soon withers, and that drink, the only path of escape from these horrors, even for a little while, is eagerly welcomed. And the fact that every great city has somewhere within her boundaries some such foul- ness as this is perhaps the one thing our civilisation has most reason to be ashamed of!
Dublin Castle is interesting only because of its his- tory. It was here, by what was then the ford across the LifTey just above the tideway, that the Danish in- vaders built their first stronghold in 837, and from it the last of them was expelled in 1170 by Strongbow at the head of his Anglo-Norman knights; here, two years later, Henry II received the submission of the overawed Irish chiefs ; and from that day forward, this old grey fortress cast its shadow over the whole land. No tribesman was too remote to dread it, for the chance of any day might send him to rot in its dungeon, or shriek his life out in its torture-chamber, or set his
34 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
head to blacken on its tower — even as the shaggy head of Shan the Proud blackened and withered there for all the world to see. In a word, it is from the Castle that an alien rule has been imposed on Ireland for more than a thousand years, until to-day to say "the Castle" is to say "the Government."
Of the mediaeval castle, only one of the four towers remains, and the curtains which connected them have been replaced by rows of office-buildings, where the Barnacles who rule Ireland have their lairs. A haughty attendant — not too haughty, however, to ac- cept a tip — will show you through the state apart- ments, which are not worth visiting; and another, more human one, will show you through the chapel. It is more interesting without than within, for over the north door, side by side in delightful democratic equal- ity, are busts of Dean Swift and St. Peter, while over the east one Brian Boru occupies an exalted place be- tween St. Patrick and the Virgin Mary, while on the corbels of the window-arches the heads of ninety sov- ereigns of Great Britain have been cut — I cannot say with what fidelity.
It is but a step from the Castle to Christ Church Cathedral, by far the most interesting building in Dub- lin. The Danes founded it in 1038; then came Strongbow, who built an English cathedral atop the rude Danish church, which is now the crypt, and his transepts and one bay of his choir still survive. There were various additions and rebuildings, after that, but in 1 569 the bog on which the Cathedral is built moved under its weight, the entire south wall of the nave and the vaulted roof fell in, and the debris lay where
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 35
it fell until 1875, when Henry Roe, of Roe's Whiskey, furnished the money for a complete restoration.
It is a significant coincidence that St. Patrick's was restored from the profits of a brewery and Christ Church from the profits of a distillery, for it was by some such profits that they had to be restored, if they were to be restored at all, because brewing and dis- tilling are the only industries which have flourished in Dublin since the Act of Union. All others have de- cayed or withered entirely away. Wherein is food for thought!
But this takes nothing from the fact that Christ Church is an interesting structure; and the most in- teresting thing in it is the tomb of Strongbow. Rich- ard de Clare his name was, second Earl of Pembroke, and it was to him, so legend says, that Dermot Mac- Murrough, King of Leinster, appealed for aid, in 1 166, after he had been driven from his kingdom and com- pelled to restore to Tiernan O'Rourke, Prince of BrefTni, Dervorgilla — otherwise Mrs. O'Rourke — with whom he had eloped. It wasn't the lady that Dermot wanted — it was revenge, and, most of all, his kingdom — we shall hear more of this story later on — and Strongbow readily agreed to assist. He needed lit- tle persuasion, for the Normans had been looking long- ingly across the Irish Sea for many years ; and Dermot got more than he bargained for, for Strongbow brought his legions over from Wales, entered Dublin, and soon established English rule so firmly that it was never afterwards displaced.
When Strongbow died, he was buried here in the church that he had built, and a recumbent statue in
36 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
chain armour was placed above the tomb, with legs crossed above the knees to indicate three crusades. Crossed at the ankles would have meant one crusade, between knee and ankle, two. I don't know how the old sculptors indicated four crusades; perhaps they never had to face that problem. Some critics assert that this is not the old statue at all ; but if we paid heed to the critics, there would be mighty little left to be- lieve !
If you will lay your hand upon the head of the statue, you will find that the top is worn away into a hole. And that hole was worn by human fingers — thousands upon thousands of them — placed there just as yours are, as witness to the making of a deed or the signing of an agreement or the paying of a debt. Al- most all of such old documents in Dublin were "Made at the Tomb of Strongbow." Thither people came for centuries to settle accounts, and the Irish are so conservative, so tenacious of tradition, that I dare say the tomb is sometimes the scene of such transactions, even yet. Beside the knight's statue lies a truncated effigy supposed to represent his son, whom, in a fit of rage, he cut in two with a single stroke of his sword for cowardice on the battle-field.
There are many other things of interest about the church, especially about the crypt, where one may see the old city stocks, and the tabernacle and candlesticks used at the Mass celebrated here for James II while he was trying to conquer Ulster; and the church is for- tunate in possessing a most intelligent verger, with whom it is a pleasure to explore it. We talked with him quite a while that day, and he lamented bitterly
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 37
that so few visitors to Dublin think the church worth seeing. I heartily endorse his opinion of them!
Which brings us to those two wonderful master- pieces of ancient Irish art, the Cross of Cong and the Book of Kells.
The Cross of Cong is in the National Museum of Science and Art, and is only the most interesting of many interesting things which have been assembled there. The first exhibit as one passes through the vestibule, has a flavour peculiarly Irish. It is an elaborate state carriage, lavishly decorated with carv- ings and inlay and bronze figures, and it was ordered by some Irish lord, who, when it was completed, found that he had no money to pay for it, and so left it on the builder's hands. What the poor builder did can only be conjectured. Perhaps he took down his shillelagh and went out and assaulted the lord; per- haps he fled to the hills and became a brigand ; perhaps he just sat philosophically down and let his creditors do the worrying.
Just beyond the vestibule is a great court, containing a remarkable collection of plaster replicas of ancient Celtic crosses. They should be examined closely, es- pecially the two which reproduce the high and low crosses at Monasterboice. We shall see the real crosses, before we leave Ireland, but they have iron railings around them, which prevent close examination, and they are not provided with explanatory keys as the replicas are. Half an hour's study of the replicas helps immensely toward appreciation of the originals.
The chief glory of the museum is its collection of
38 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Irish antiquities on the upper floor. It starts with the Stone Age, and we could not but remark how closely the flint arrow-heads and spear-heads and other implements resemble those of the Indians and Mound- builders, so common in our part of Ohio. Then comes the Bronze Age, with a magnificent collection of orna- ments of hammered gold, and some extraordinarily in- teresting examples of cinerary urns and food vessels — for the old Irish burned their dead, and, after the fashion of most Pagan peoples, put food in the grave beside them, to start them on their journey in the other world.
In the room beyond are the so-called Christian an- tiquities: that is, all the objects of art, as well as of do- mestic and military usage, which date from the time of St. Patrick down to the Norman conquest — roughly, from 400 A. D. to 1200 A. D. Before that time, Ire- land was Pagan; after the Norman conquest, she was crushed and broken. It was during these eight hun- dred years, while the rest of Europe was struggling in ignorance and misery through the Dark Ages, that Ire- land touched the summit of her artistic and spiritual development — and a lofty summit it was !
Her art was of home growth, uninfluenced from any outside source, and it was admirable. Her schools and monasteries were so famous that students from all over Europe flocked to them, as the recognised centres of learning. Scholars were revered and books were holy things — so holy that beautiful shrines were made to hold them, of gold or silver, set with precious stones. Five or six of them, nine hundred years old and more, are preserved in this collection.
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 39
The bells used by the early Irish saints in the cele- bration of the Mass were also highly venerated, and, cracked and worn by centuries of use, were at last enclosed in shrines. Most holy of all, of course, was the rude little iron bell used by St. Patrick, and re- covered from his grave in 552. The exquisite shrine made for it by some master artist about 1100 is here, as is also the bell itself. There is a picture of the shrine opposite the next page ; the bell is merely a rude funnel made of two bent iron plates rivetted together and then dipped in molten bronze — not much to look at, but an evoker of visions fifteen centuries old for them who have eyes to see!
I should like to say something of the croziers, of the brooches, of the chalices which are gathered here; but I must hasten on to the chief treasure, the Cross of Cong. It is perhaps the very finest example of early Irish art in existence anywhere. It was made to en- shrine a fragment of the True Cross, sent from Rome in 1123 to Turlough O'Conor, King of Ireland, and it is called the "Cross of Cong" because Rory O'Conor, the last titular King of all Ireland, took it with him to the Abbey of Cong, at the head of Lough Corrib, when he sought sanctuary there in his last years, and it was by the Abbots of Cong that it was preserved re- ligiously through the long centuries. The last Abbot died about a hundred years ago, and the museum ac- quired the cross by purchase.
There is a picture of it opposite the next page, which gives some faint idea of its beauty. It was in a cavity behind the central crystal that the fragment of the True Cross was placed; but it is not there now, and nobody
40 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
seems to know what became of it. Perhaps it doesn't matter much; at any rate, all that need concern us here is the fact that, eight hundred years ago in Ire- land, there lived an artist capable of producing a mas- terpiece like this.
It is of oak, covered with plates of bronze and silver, washed in places with a thick coating of gold, and with golden filigree work of the most exquisite kind around the central crystal. It is elaborately carved, front and back, with the intertwined pattern characteristic of Irish ornamentation, and every detail is of the finest workmanship. It is inscribed with a Latin verse,
Hac cruce crux tegitur qua passus conditor orbis,
"In this cross is the cross enclosed upon which suffered the Founder of the world"; and there is also a long inscription in Irish which bids us pray, among others, for Turlough O' Conor, King of Erin, for whom the shrine was made, and for Maelisu MacBraddan O'Echon, the man who fashioned it. Thus is pre- served the name of a great artist, who has been dust for eight centuries.
The Book of Kells is even more wonderful. It is to the library of Trinity College we must go to see it — and go we must! — for it is indisputably the "first among all the illuminated manuscripts of the world." No mere description can give any idea of its beauty, nor can any picture, for each of its pages is a separate masterpiece. Kells was a monastery celebrated for its sanctity and learning, and it was there, sometime in the eighth century, that an inspired monk executed this Latin copy of the Gospels. It is of sheepskin
THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN 41
parchment, and each of its pages is framed with ex- quisite tracery and ornamentation, and with a beauti- ful harmony of colouring. Most wonderful of all, perhaps, the colours are as fresh and brilliant as they were when they came from the artist's brush, eleven centuries ago.
There are many other things in this old library worth seeing — among them the Book of Darrow, thirteen centuries old, and ornamented with designs which, as Betty remarked, would make beautiful crochet pat- terns. And there is Brian Boru's harp — the very one, perhaps, that shed the soul of music through Tara's halls — only unfortunately, the critics say that it isn't more than five or six hundred years old. And there are stacks of modern books, and the attendant who piloted us around remarked sadly that many of the best of them were never taken off the shelves, except to be dusted. I couldn't help smiling, for that is a complaint common to all librarians!
We went out, that night, to a big bazar given for the benefit of the Passionist Fathers, where we were made almost riotously welcome. "America" is the open sesame to every Irish heart; and how winning those bright-eyed Irish girls were in their quaint cos- tumes! Ordinarily Irish girls are shy with strangers; but they were working in a good cause that night, and if any man got out of the place with a penny in his pocket it must certainly have been because he lacked a heart! And the nice old women, with smiling eyes and wrinkled, pleasant faces — we could have stayed and talked to them till morning ! Indeed, we almost did !
CHAPTER IV
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK
OUR third day in Dublin was ushered in by a tre- mendous explosion. In a minute the street outside was filled with dense black smoke, and then in another minute with excited people. When we got down to breakfast, we found that the suffragettes had tried to blow up the post-office, which is next to the hotel, by throwing a bomb through the door. But the woman who threw the bomb, like most women, couldn't throw straight, and instead of going through the door, the bomb struck a stone at the side of it and exploded. Our bell-boy proudly showed us the hole that it had made in the wall.
The day was so bright and pleasant that we decided to spend it somewhere in the country, and as we wanted to see a round tower, and as there is a very handsome one at Clondalkin, a few miles west of Dub- lin, we decided to go there. The ride thither gave us our first glimpse of rural Ireland — rather unkempt, with the fields very lush and green ; and then, when we got off the train, we were struck by a fact which we had occasion to remark many times thereafter: that railroads in Ireland are built with an entire disregard of the towns along the route. Perhaps it is because the towns are only Irish that the railroads are so haughty and disdainful — for of course the roads are
English; at any rate, they never swerve an inch to get
42
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 43
closer to any town. The train condescends to pause an instant at the point nearest the town, and then puffs arrogantly on again, while the passengers who have been hustled off hoof it the rest of the way.
We got off, that morning, at a little station with "Clondalkin" on it, but when we looked about, there was no town anywhere in sight. We asked the man who took the tickets if this was all there was of the town, and he said no, that the town was over yonder, and he pointed vaguely to the south. There was no conveyance, so we started to walk; and instead of condemning Irish railroads, we were soon praising their high wisdom, for if there is anything more de- lightful than to walk along an Irish lane, between hedgerows fragrant with hawthorn and climbing roses, past fields embroidered with buttercups and primroses and daisies, in an air so fresh and sweet that the lungs can't get enough of it, I don't know what it is. And presently as we went on, breathing great breaths of all this beauty, we caught sight of the conical top of the round tower, above the trees to the left.
I should say that Clondalkin is at least a mile from its station, and we found it a rambling village of small houses, built of stone, white-washed and with roofs of thatch. Many of them, even along the prin- cipal street, are in ruins, for Clondalkin, like so many other Irish villages, has been slowly drying up for half a century. There was a great abbey here once, but nothing is left of it except the round tower and a fragment of the belfry.
The tower stands at the edge of what is now the main street, and is a splendid example of another pe-
44 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
culiarly Irish institution. For these tall towers of stone, resembling nothing so much as gigantic chim- neys, were built all over eastern and central Ireland, nobody knows just when and nobody knows just why; but there nearly seventy of them stand to this day.
They are always of stone, and are sometimes more than a hundred feet high. Some of them taper to- ward the top in a way which shows the high skill of their builders. That they were well-built their sur- vival through the centuries attests. The narrow en- trance door is usually ten or twelve feet from the ground, and there is a tiny window lighting each floor into which the tower was divided. At the top there are usually four windows, one facing each point of the compass; and then the tower is finished with a conical cap of closely-fitted stones.
As to their purpose, there has been violent contro- versy. Different antiquarians have believed them to be fire-temples of the Druids, phallic emblems, astronomi- cal observatories, anchorite towers or penitential pri- sons. But the weight of opinion seems to be that they were built in connection with churches and monasteries to serve the triple purpose of belfries and watch-towers and places of refuge, and that they date from the ninth and tenth centuries, when the Danes were pillag- ing the country. In case of need, the monks could snatch up the most precious of their treasures, run for the tower, clamber up a ladder to the little door high above the ground, pull the ladder up after them, bar the door and be comparatively safe.
I confess I do not find this theory convincing. As belfries the towers must have been failures, for the
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 45
small bells of those days, hung a hundred feet above the ground in a chamber with only four tiny open- ings, would be all but inaudible. As watch-towers they were ineffective, for the enemy had only to ad- vance at night to elude the lookout altogether; and as places of refuge, they leave much to be desired. For there is no way to get food or water into them, and the enemy had only to camp down about them for a few days to starve the inmates out. However, I am not an antiquarian, and my opinion is of no especial value — besides, I have no better theory to suggest. Whatever their purpose, there they stand, and very astonishing they are.
The Clondalkin tower, for the first thirteen feet, is a block of solid masonry about twenty feet in diameter, and above this is the little door opening into the first story. New floors have been built at the different levels and ladders placed between them, so that one may climb the eighty-five feet to the top, but we were contented to take the view for granted. While I manoeuvred for a photograph in a field of buttercups which left my shoes covered with yellow pollen, Betty got into talk with the people who lived in the cottage at the tower-foot, and then she crossed the street to look over a wall at a tiny garden that was a perfect riot of bloom, and by the time I got there, the fresh- faced old woman with a crown of white hair who owned the garden had come out, and, after a few minutes' talk, started to pick Betty a bouquet of her choicest flowers.
Betty was in a panic, for she didn't want the garden despoiled, — at the same time she realised that she must
46 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
be careful or she would hurt the feelings of this kindly woman, who was so evidently enjoying pulling her flowers to give to the stranger from America. It was at that moment the brilliant idea flashed into her head to ask if the true shamrock grew in the neighbourhood.
"Sure, miss, I have it right here," was the answer, and the owner of the garden picked up proudly a small pot in which grew a plant that looked to me like clover.
"But doesn't it grow wild?" Betty asked.
"It does, miss; but 'tis very hard to find. This was sent me by my brother in Tipperary. JTis the true shamrock, miss," and she broke off a spray for each of us.
Let me say here that she knew perfectly well Betty was a married woman; her first question had been as to our relationship. But all over Ireland, women, whether married or single, are habitually addressed as "miss," just as, conversely, in France they are ad- dressed habitually as "madame." But we had got the old woman's mind off her flowers, and we managed to escape before she thought of them again.
There are not, I fancy, many visitors to Clondalkin, for, as we sauntered on along the street, we found our- selves objects of the liveliest interest. It was a kindly interest, too, for every one who could catch our eyes smiled and nodded and wished us good-day, just as the Dutch used to do in the little towns of Holland. We were heading for the church, and when we reached it we found that there was a large school attached to it, and most of the pupils were having their lessons out- doors, a group in this corner and a group in that. The small children were being taught by older ones.
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 47
and the older children were being taught by nuns ; but I am afraid that our passage through the school-yard nearly broke up the lessons. It was a sort of triumphal progress, for, as we passed each class, the teacher in charge would say "Stand !" and all the children would rise to their feet and stare at us with round eyes, and the teacher would bow gravely. I am sorry now I didn't stop and talk to some of them, but the formal nature of our reception confused and embarrassed us, and we hastened on.
We took a look at the church, which is new and bare; and then we walked on toward the gate, past a lawn which two gardeners were leisurely mowing. It was evident from the way they returned our greeting that they wanted to talk, so we stopped and asked if we could get a car in the village to take us back to the station.
"You can, miss," said the elder of the two men, who did all the talking, while his younger companion stood by and grinned. "There is a very good car to be had in the village," and he told us where to go to find the owner. "You would be from America? I have a sister and two brothers there." And he went on to tell us about them, where they lived and what they were doing and how they had prospered. And then Betty asked him if he could find her a piece of the true shamrock. "I can, miss," he answered instantly, and stepping over a low wire fence, he waded out into a meadow and came back in a moment with a clover- like clump in his hand. "This is it, miss," he said, and gave it to her; "the true shamrock."
We examined it eagerly. It was a trefoil, the leaf
48 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
of which is like our white clover, except that it lacks the little white rings which mark the leaf of ours, and it blossoms with a tiny yellow flower. I confess that it wasn't at all my idea of the shamrock, nor was it Betty's, and she asked the gardener doubtfully if he was sure that this was it.
"I am, miss," he answered promptly; "as sure as I am of anything."
"But down in the village," said Betty, "a woman gave me this," and she took the spray from her button- hole, "and said it was the true shamrock. You see the leaf is quite green and larger and the blossom is white."
"True for you, miss; and there be some people who think that the true shamrock. But it is not so — 'tis only white clover. The true shamrock is that I have given you."
"Well, you are a gardener," said Betty, "and ought to know."
"Ah, miss," retorted the man, his eyes twinkling, "you could start the prettiest shindy you ever saw by getting all the gardeners in Ireland together, and ask- ing them to decide which was the true shamrock!"
I suppose I may as well thresh out the question here, so far as it is possible to thresh it out at all, for though, in the east, the west, the north and south of Ireland, we sought the true shamrock, we were no more certain of it when we got through than before we began. The only conclusion we could reach, after listening to every one, was that there are three or four varieties of the shamrock, and that almost any trefoil will do.
The legend is that, about 450, St. Patrick reached
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 49
the Rock of Cashel, in his missionary journeyings over Ireland, and at once went to work to convert ^Engus MacNatfraich, the ruling king who lived in the great castle there. One day, out on the summit of the rock, as the Saint was preaching to the king and his as- sembled household, he started to explain the idea of the Trinity, and found, as many have done since, that it was rather difficult to do. Casting about for an il- lustration, his eyes fell upon a trefoil growing at his feet, and he stooped and plucked it, and used its three petals growing from one stem as a symbol of the Three-in-One. This simple and homely illustration made the idea intelligible, and whenever after that St. Patrick found himself on the subject of the Trinity, he always stooped and plucked a trefoil to demonstrate what he meant.
Now of course the true shamrock is the particular trefoil which St. Patrick plucked first on the Rock of Cashel, but there is no way of telling which that was. In his subsequent preaching, the Saint would pluck the first that came to hand, since any of them would answer his purpose, and so, sooner or later, all the Irish trefoils would be thus used by him. The Irish word "seamrog" means simply a trefoil, and in modern times, the name has been applied to watercress, to wood- sorrel, and to both yellow and white clover ; but nowa- days only the two last-named kinds are generally worn on St. Patrick's day. Whether white or yellow clover is worn is said to depend somewhat on the locality, but the weight of authority is, I think, slightly on the side of the yellow.
Whatever its colour, it is a most elusive plant and
50 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
difficult to get. Our original idea was that every Irish field was thick with shamrocks, but in no instance except that of the gardener at Clondalkin, do I remem- ber any one finding some growing wild right at hand. Indeed, in most localities, it didn't seem to grow wild at all, but was carefully raised in a pot, like a flower. Where it did grow wild, it was always in some distant and inaccessible place. I should have suspected that this was simply blarney, and that our informants either wished to keep our profane hands off the shamrock or expected to get paid for going and getting us some, but for the fact that those who raised it always eagerly offered us a spray, and those who didn't usually dis- claimed any exact knowledge of where it grew.
We bade the Clondalkin gardener and his helper good-bye at last, and walked on down to the village for a look at the remnant of the fort the Danes built here as their extreme western outpost against the wild Irish, and presently we fell in with an old woman, bent with rheumatism, hobbling painfully along, and she told us all about her ailment, and then as we passed a handsome house set back in a garden surrounded by a high wall, she pointed it out proudly as the residence of the parish priest. Then we thought it was time to be seeing about our car, and started down the street to find its owner, when we heard some one running after us. It was a man of about thirty, and his face, though not very clean, was beaming with friendli- ness.
"Is it a car your honour would be wantin"?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "How did you know?"
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 51
"The man up at the church told me, sir. He said you'd be wishin' to drive to the station."
"Well, we do," I said. "It's too far to walk. Have you a car?"
"I have, sir, and it's myself would be glad to carry you and your lady there."
"All right," I agreed; and then, as an afterthought, "How much will you charge*?"
"Not a penny, sir," he protested warmly. "Not a penny."
I stared at him. I confess I didn't understand. He returned my stare with a broad smile.
"The Dublin train doesn't go for an hour yet, sir," he went on. "If you'll just be wanderin' down this way when the time comes, you'll find me ready."
"It's mighty kind of you," I said hesitatingly; "but we couldn't think of troubling you . . ."
"Niver a bit of trouble, sir," he broke in. "I'll be that proud to do it."
He seemed so sincerely in earnest that we finally agreed, and he raced away as he had come, while we went on to the village post-office to mail a postcard — • and perhaps find some one else to talk to.
The post-office was a little cubby-hole of a place, in charge of a white-haired, withered little old woman, whom we found very ready to talk indeed. At first there were the inevitable questions about America and about our family history, and then she told us about herself and her work and the many things she had to do. For every Irish post-office, no matter how small, is the centre of many activities. Not only does it handle the village mail, but it is also the village tele-
52 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
graph-office, and it does the work — by means of the parcel-post — which in this country has been done until quite recently by the express companies. Furthermore it is at the post-office that the old age pensions are dis- bursed and the multifarious details of the workman's insurance act attended to.
The latter is too complicated to be explained here, but we soon had a demonstration of the working of the old age pension, for, as we sat there talking, a wrinkled old woman with a shabby shawl over her head, came in, said something we did not understand, held out her hand, was given three or four pennies, and walked quickly out.
"The poor creatures," said the postmistress gently, "how can one be always refusin' them!" And then, seeing that we did not understand, she went on, "That one gets an old age pension, five shillings the week; but it never lasts the week out, and so she comes in for a bit of an advance. I shouldn't be giving it to her, for she's no better in the end, but I can't turn her away. Besides, she thinks — and there's many like her — that the pension may be stoppin' any time, next week maybe, and so what she gets this week is so much ahead. Many of them have no idea at all of where the money do be coming from."
I am not myself partial to pensions of any sort, for no permanent good can come from alms-giving, which weakens instead of strengthens; but Ireland, perhaps, needs special treatment. At any rate, the pensions have been a great help. Every person over seventy years of age and with an income of less than ten shil- lings a week, receives five shillings weekly from the
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 53
government. The same law applies to England and Scotland, but there is an impression that Ireland is getting more than her share. Certainly there is a sur- prisingly large number of people there whose income is under ten shillings and whose years exceed three- score and ten. I questioned the postmistress about this, and she smiled.
"Yes, there be a great many," she agreed. "In this small place alone there are fifty poor souls who get their five shillings every Friday. Are they all over seventy? Sure, I don't know; there be many of them don't know themselves; but they all think they are, only it was very hard sometimes to make the committee believe it. There is Mary Clancy, now, as spry a woman as you will see anywhere, and lookin' not a day over fifty. The committee was for refusin' her, but she said, said she, 'Your honours, I was the mother of fourteen children, and the youngest of them was Bridget, whom you see here beside me. Bridget was married when she was seventeen, and she has fifteen children of her own, and this is the youngest of them she has by the hand — you'll see that he is four years old. Now how old am I?' The gentlemen of the committee they looked at her and then they looked at each other and then they took out their pencils and made some figures and then they scratched their heads and then they said she should have a pension. And sure she deserved it !"
We agreed with her, — though, as I figured it out afterwards, Mrs. Clancy may still have been a year or two under seventy — and then she went on to explain that the pensions had been a blessing in another way,
54 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
for not only do they give the old people a bit to live on, but their children treat them better in consequence. In the old days, the parents were considered an en- cumbrance, and whenever a marriage contract was made or a division of the property, it was always care- fully stipulated who should look after them. Natu- rally in a land where a man was hard put to it to pro- vide for his own family, he was reluctant to assume this additional burden, and the result often was that the old people went to the workhouse — a place they shunned and detested and considered it a disgrace to enter. But the pension has changed all that, for a person with a steady income of five shillings a week is not to be lightly regarded in Ireland; and so the old people can live with their children now, and the work- houses are somewhat less crowded than they used to be.
But they are still full enough, heaven knows, in spite of the aversion and disgust with which the whole Irish people regard them. Let me explain briefly why this is so, because the establishment of the workhouse system is typical of the blind fashion in which Eng- land, in the past, has dealt with Irish problems, — the whole Irish problem, as some protest, is merely the re- sult of a stupid people trying to govern a clever one !
About eighty years ago, England realised that some- thing must be done for the Irish poor. Irish indus- tries had been killed by unfriendly legislation, the land was being turned from tillage to grass, and so, since there was no work, there was nothing for the labouring class to do but emigrate or starve. In fact, a large section of the people had not even those alter-
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 55
natives, for there was no way in which they could get money enough to emigrate.
The Irish themselves suggested that something be done to develop the industrial resources of the coun- try, so that the able-bodied could find work, and that some provision be made for the old, sick and infirm who were unable to work, and for children who were too young. Instead of that, and in spite of frenzied and universal Irish protest, a bill was put through Parliament extending the English workhouse system to Ireland.
Now, the workhouse system was devised to provide for tramps — for people who would not work, though work was plentiful; so there is a stigma about the workhouse which the Irish poor detest and which most of them do not deserve. They enter it only when driven by direst need — and how dire that need has been may be judged by the fact that, in 1905, for in- stance, the number of workhouse inmates exceeded forty-five thousand. Of these, about four thousand might be classified as tramps. The remainder were aged and infirm men and women, young children, and a sprinkling of starving middle-aged who could find no work — but the disgrace of the workhouse was upon them all.
To-day, the traveller in Ireland finds one of these mammoth structures in every town — in nearly every village, for their total number is 159. In fact, the two most imposing buildings in the average Irish town are the workhouse and the jail. And there is a savage irony in this, for not only are there few voluntary paupers in Ireland, but there is amazingly little crime.
56 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Six millions a year of Irish money are spent to maintain the workhouses; how much the jails cost I don't know; but perhaps in that golden age which some optimists believe will follow the coming of Home Rule, work- houses and jails alike will be transformed into schools and factories, and Irish money will be spent in bright- ening and beautifying the lives of Ireland's people.
We bade good-bye, at last, to the little Clondalkin postmistress, with many mutual good wishes, and wan- dered forth to find the Samaritan who had offered to take us to the station; and finally we saw him stand- ing in a gateway beckoning to us, and when we reached him, we found the gateway led to the house which had been pointed out to us as that of the par- ish priest. It was a beautiful house, with lovely grounds and gardens and a large conservatory against one end, and we stood hesitating in the gateway, won- dering if we would better enter.
"Come in, sir; come in, miss!" cried our new-found friend. "The Father is away from home the day, worse luck, but he'd never forgive me if I didn't make you welcome."
"Oh, then you're the gardener," I said.
"Sure, I'm everything, sir," and he hustled us up the path, his face beaming with happiness. "And how grieved His Riverence will be when he comes back and learns that he missed you. If he was anywhere near, I'd have gone for him at once, but he went to Dublin to the conference and he won't be back till evenin5. He's a grand man, God bless him, and has travelled all over the world, and it's himself would
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK 57
know how to talk to you! There is the cart, sir; but there's no hurry. I must cut some blooms for your lady."
Betty was already admiring the flowers — great scar- let peonies, white and pink geraniums, cinerarias, laburnums, and I know not what beside; but she tried to stop him as he made a dash at them, knife in hand.
"Oh, but you mustn't cut them !" she cried. "What would the Father say!"
"Sure, miss, if he was here, he'd make me cut twice as many!" he retorted, and went on cutting and cut- ting. "If he was here, 'tis not by this train you'd be leaving. He'd take you all over the house, and it would break his heart if you didn't stop for tea. It's sorry he'll be when he gets home and I tell him of you!"
We too were sorry, and said so — sorrier, next day, when we learned from Katherine Tynan Hinkson what an accomplished and interesting man he is. Meanwhile, the gardener had entered the greenhouse and was attacking the plants there. Almost by main force, and sorely against his will, we made him stop. As it was, Betty had about all she could carry — as lovely a bouquet, she protested, as she had ever had in her life. And the joy of this simple, kindly fellow in being able to give it to her was beautiful to see.
Then he brought out a fat little mare and hitched her to the cart, and insisted on driving us for a while along the fragrant country roads before he took us to the station. And I am sure that he valued our thanks much more than the coin I slipped into his hand.
58 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
We went out, that night, to see some friends in Dublin, and Betty took part of her bouquet along to give to them. And as we were walking up Grafton Street, an old and tattered woman, with two or three grimy little bouquets in her hands, fell in beside us and begged us to buy one. Finally she laid one of them on top of the gorgeous bunch Betty was carry- ing.
"Take it, miss; take it!" she urged. "Just see how beautiful it is !"
"It's not beautiful at all !" Betty protested. "It's faded."
"And so am I faded, miss," came the instant retort. "Sure, we can't all be fresh and lovely like yourself!'*
Of course, after that, I bought the bouquet !
CHAPTER V
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN
DUBLIN is fortunate in its environs. A few miles to the south or west, and one is in the midst of lovely scenery. The Liffey, just above the town, changes from an unsightly stream into a beautiful river; just to the south lie the Wicklow hills — one can reach their foot by tram-line and some of their wildest beau- ties are within an hour's walk; a short run by rail takes one to Bray, from where the Dargle, a glen beloved of Dubliners, is within easy reach. But the wise traveller will keep on to Rathdrum, and from there drive over to Glendalough. Or the trip may be made all the way from Dublin by motor-omnibus, and by this route one gets the full beauty of the Wicklow passes ; but I think the car trip preferable, at least in fine weather.
The forty-mile run from Dublin to Rathdrum is by the very edge of the sea. The roadway has been cut high in the face of the cliffs that fringe the coast — sometimes piercing a projecting headland, sometimes spanning a deep gully, sometimes skirting a sheer precipice — and the view at every turn is very romantic and beautiful. The train pauses at Bray, and then, still hugging the coast, reaches Wicklow, where it turns inland and mounts toward the hills along a pleasant valley to Rathdrum, perched in the most picturesque way on the steep banks of the Avonmore, for all the world like an Alpine village.
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60 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
Betty and I were the only ones who descended at Rathdrum, that day, and we were glad, for it is pe- culiarly true of a side-car that two are company and any larger number a crowd. The car was waiting, and in a few minutes we were off on the twelve-mile drive.
The road mounted steeply for a time, passed through a dingy village clinging to a hillside, and then sud- denly emerged high above the lovely Vale of Clara. Far down, so far it seemed the merest ribbon, the Avon- more sparkled over its rocky bed; beside it, here and there, a thatched cottage nestled among the trees; and the greenest of green fields ran back to the hills on either side. Here the gorse began, mounting the hillsides in a riot of golden bloom, only to be met and van- quished on the highest slopes by the low, closely-grow- ing heather, brown with last year's withered flowers, but soon to veil the hilltops in a cloud of purple. But the gorse was in its glory — every hedge, every fence, every wall, every neglected corner was ablaze with it; it outlined every field; the road we travelled was a royal way, bordered on either side with gold. "Un- profitably gay*?" Betty hotly disputed it. For how could such beauty be unprofitable?
It was a perfect day, with the air magically soft and the sun just warm enough for comfort, and we sat there, mightily content, drinking in mile after mile of loveliness. Away across the valley, we caught a glimpse of Avondale House, a school of forestry now, but sacred to every Irishman as the home of Parnell. A little farther on, Castle Howard glooms down upon the valley where the Avonmore meets the Avonbeg — that "Meeting of the Waters" celebrated by Tom
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 61
Moore. But it would take a far greater poet to do justice to that exquisitely beautiful Vale of Avoca, stretching away into the shimmering distance.
The road turned away, at last, from the edge of the valley and plunged into a beautiful wood, and we could see that the bracken was alive with rabbits. It was a game preserve, our driver said, and he told us to whom it belonged, but I have forgotten. I suggested that, when he had nothing better to do, it would be easy enough to come out and knock over a rabbit.
"They would be putting a lad away for six months for the likes of that," he protested.
"Surely no one would grudge you a rabbit now and then!"
"Ah, wouldn't they?" and he laughed grimly. "There's nothing the keepers like so much as to get their hands on one of us. Why, sir, 'tis a crime for a man to be caught on the far side of that wall. Not but what I haven't got me a rabbit before this," he added, "and will again."
We passed a gang of men repairing the road, and two or three others sitting along the roadside, break- ing stone by hand, and wearing goggles to protect their eyes from the flying splinters ; and our driver told us how the contract for keeping each section of road in shape was let each year by the county council to the lowest bidder, and the roads inspected at regular in- tervals to see that the work was properly done. Two shillings a day — fifty cents — was about the average wage. I suppose it is because stone is so plentiful and labour so cheap that the roads all over Ireland are so good; but one would be inclined to welcome a rut
62 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
now and then, if it meant a decent wage for the labourers !
We emerged from the wood presently, and then, away to the left, our jarvey pointed out the high peaks which guard the entrance to Glendalough — and let me say here that the word "lough," which occurs so frequently in Irish geography, means lake, and is pro- nounced almost exactly like the Scotch "loch." Glen- dalough is one of the most beautiful and romantic spots in Ireland, and its story runneth thus :
In the year 498, the King of Leinster had a son whom he named Caomh-ghen, or Gentle-born, and whom to-day we call Kevin. The King had been con- verted by St. Patrick himself, and he brought his boy up a Christian; and Kevin had never the slightest doubt as to his vocation, but knew from the very first that he must be a priest. So he was sent first to St. Petroc's school in Wicklow, and then to his uncle, St. Eugenius, who had a school near Glenealy.
Kevin grew in grace and wisdom, and likewise in beauty, until a handsomer lad was to be found nowhere in Erin, and many a girl looked sideways at him as he passed, but he paid no heed. One of them, seeing him so fair and saintly, lost her heart to him entirely, and her head as well, for she grew so shameless that she followed him in his walks, pleading with him, touch- ing his hand, kissing his robe — all of which must have been most embarrassing to that modest and retiring man. At last, one day, she waylaid him in a wood, and, hungry with passion, flung herself upon him.
There are two versions of what followed. One is that St. Kevin escaped by jumping into a bush of
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 63
nettles, and cooled the damsel's ardour by beating her with a branch of them, whereupon she asked his par- don and made a vow of perpetual virginity. The other, and much more plausible one, is that, after the manner of women, she loved Kevin more desperately after he had beaten her than she had before, and that finally the Saint, worn out by a struggle in which he saw that he would some day be defeated, resolved to hide himself where no man could discover him, and be- took himself to the wild and inaccessible spot where the mountains meet above Glendalough. There high in the side of the cliff above the lake, he found a crevice where he made his bed, and lay down with a sigh of relief for the first peaceful sleep he had had for a long time. Here is Tom Moore's rendering of the rest of the story:
On the bold cliff's bosom cast, Tranquil now he sleeps at last; Dreams of heaven, nor thinks that e'er Woman's smile can haunt him there. But nor earth nor heaven is free From her power if fond she be; Even now while calm he sleeps, Kathleen o'er him leans and weeps.
Fearless she had tracked his feet To this rocky, wild retreat, And when morning met his view, Her wild glances met it too. Ah ! your saints have cruel hearts ! Sternly from his bed he starts, And, with rude, repulsive shock, Hurls her from the beetling rock.
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Glendalough, thy gloomy wave Soon was gentle Kathleen's grave! Soon the saint (but, ah ! too late) Felt her love and mourned her fate. When he said, "Heaven rest her soul!" Round the lake light music stole, And her ghost was seen to glide Smiling o'er the fatal tide.
Most biographers of the Saint hotly deny that he killed the fair Kathleen, and point out that he was far too holy a man to do such a thing, even in a moment of anger ; but, on the other hand, Kathleen's ghost may be seen almost any night sitting on a rock by the lake- side, combing its yellow hair and lamenting its sad fate. What, then, are we to believe^ My own theory is that when the Saint opened his eyes, that fatal morning, and found his tempter bending over him, he sprang hastily away, well knowing to what lengths her passion led her, and inadvertently brushed her off the narrow ledge of rock. The horrified Saint scrambled down the cliff as quickly as he could, but the too-impulsive girl was dead. A good many people will add that it served the hussy right.
This seems to me a reasonable theory; whether it be true or not, Saint Kevin dwelt seven years in his cave, after Kathleen's death, without being further dis- turbed. Then one day, a shepherd climbing down over the cliff searching for a lost sheep, came upon the holy man, sitting meditating in his cell, and hastened away to spread the news of the discovery of a new saint. Great throngs crowded the lake to get a glimpse of him, much to his annoyance, and besought him to
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 65
come down so that they could see him better. This he sternly refused to do, and told them to go away ; but finally he permitted them to build him a little chapel on a shelf of rock near his cell. That was in June, 536; but the number of his disciples increased so rap- idly that the chapel soon proved too small, and at last an angel appeared to him and ordered him to found a monastery at the lower end of the lake. This he did, and it soon became one of the most famous in Ire- land.
It must have been a picturesque place ; for there was a special stone-roofed cell for the Saint, and no less than seven churches to hold the people, and a great huddle of domestic buildings to protect the students from the rain and cold, and finally a tall round tower, from which to watch for the Norse invader. St. Kevin himself died in the odour of sanctity on the third day of June, 618. What I like about this story of St. Kevin are the dates — they give it such an unimpeach- able vraisemblance !
After his death, the monastery had a varied history. It was destroyed by fire in 770, and sacked by the Danes in 830 and many times thereafter; but the final blow was struck by the English invaders in 1308, when the place was burnt to the ground. Since then it has been in ruins, much as it is to-day.
As we drove into the valley, that lovely day in May, no prospect could have been more beautiful. To right and left, in the distance, towered the bare brown hills, very steep and rugged, with the blue lake nes- tling between. In the foreground lay the ruins of the seven churches, with the round tower rising high above
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them; and, from among the trees, peeped here and there the thatched roof of a cottage with a plume of purple smoke rising from its chimney. It was like a vision — like some ideal, painted scene, too lovely to be real — and we gazed at it in speechless enchantment while our jarvey drove us around the lower lake, un- der the shadow of the hills, and so to the little inn where we were to have lunch.
We were looking in delight at the inn, with its thatched roof and whitewashed walls, when a formi- dable figure appeared in the door — a towering young woman, with eyes terrifically keen and a thick shock of the reddest hair I ever saw. She was a singularly pure specimen, as I afterwards learned, of the red Irish — a sort of tKrow-back, I suppose, to the old Vi- kings of the Danish conquest. I admit that I quailed a little, for she was looking at us with an expression which seemed to me anything but friendly.
"Can we get lunch?" I inquired.
"You can," she answered, short and sharp like the snap of a whip, and she stood in the doorway staring at us, without making any sign that we should enter.
"Is it ready?" I ventured further, for the long drive had made us very hungry.
"It is not."
Let me say here that very rarely does any one of Irish blood say "yes" or "no" in answer to a question. When you ask the man at the station, "Is this the train for So-and-so?" he will invariably answer, "It is," or "It is not," as the case may be. When you ask your jarvey if he thinks it will rain to-day, his invariable answer is "It will not." I never heard an Irishman
© Underwood & Underwood, X Y.
GLENDALOUGH AND THE RUINS OF ST. KEVIN'S CHURCHES
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 67
admit unreservedly that it was going to rain. But before I had time to ask the red-headed girl any further questions, she was hustled aside by a typical little brown Irishwoman, who asked us in and made us wel- come. Lunch would be ready in fifteen minutes, she said; meanwhile, if we wished, we could walk to the waterfall.
Of course we did wish, and set eagerly forth past the end of the upper lake, across a bridge, past a great empty hotel which was falling to decay, and up a little stream to the fall. It is really a series of rapids rather than a fall, and only mildly pretty ; but growing abun- dantly in the damp ground along the margin of the stream was what Betty declared to be the true sham- rock— a very beautiful trefoil, evidently a variety of oxalis, and certainly much nearer our ideal of the shamrock than the skimpy plant shown us by the gar- dener at Clondalkin. We gathered some of it, and then hastened back — for we didn't want to be late for lunch. As we were passing the lake, we noticed an extremely dirty and unkempt individual, who looked like a vagabond, sitting on a stone, and as soon as he saw us, he jumped up and fell in beside us.
"Your honour will be goin' to St. Kevin's bed," he began.
"Where is the bed?' I asked.
"In the cliff beyant there, sir," and he pointed across the lake.
"How do we get to it?"
"Sure I'll carry your honour and your lady in me boat."
I looked at the fellow, and at the wide lake, and at
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the little flat-bottomed skiff moored to a rock near by, and I had my doubts as to the wisdom of entrusting ourselves to the combination. He read the doubt in my face, and broke in with voluble protests.
"Arrah, you must go to the bed, your honour," he cried; "and your honour's lady, too. 'Tis the place where the blessed Saint lived for siven years, and if you sit down in his seat you will niver have the back- ache, and if you lie down in his bed you will niver have any ache at all, at all, and if you make three wishes they will surely come true."
Betty and I glanced at each other. We were tempted. Then I looked at our would-be guide.
"Why don't you make three wishes yourself?" I asked.
"I have, your honour."
"Did they come true?"
"They did, your honour," he answered instantly. "I asked for a light heart, a quick wit and a ready tongue. Your honour can see that I have all of them."
My heart began to warm to him, for he was the first person we had met in Ireland who talked like this.
"Now just be lookin' at this, your honour," he went on, and led us to the side of the road where stood a cross of stone — the terminal cross, as I afterwards learned, which marked the boundary of the old mon- astery. "Do you see them marks? This large one is the mark of a horse's hoof, and this small one of a colt's; and 'twas by a miracle they came there. In the old time, there was a man who stole a mare and her foal, but who denied it, and who was brought before
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St. Kevin. The Saint placed the man in front of this cross and told him if he was guilty to be sayin' it, and if he was not guilty to be sayin' it; and the man said he was not guilty. And as he spoke the words, the shape of the hoofs appeared on the cross, and when the man saw them, he knew it was no use tryin' to de- ceive the Saint, so he confessed everything. And there the hoof -prints are to this day."
They certainly bore some resemblance to hoof-prints, and I could not but admire the ingenuity of the tale which had been invented to explain them.
"What happened to the thief?" I asked. "Did the Saint let him go?"
"He did not, your honour, for it was the law that he must be hanged. But before he died, he asked the Saint to grant him one favour, and the Saint told him to name it; and the man asked that he be buried in the same graveyard with the Saint himself, and that on his grave a stone be placed with a hole in the middle, so that, if a horse stepped over his grave, he might put out his hand and pull it in. The Saint kept his promise, and in the graveyard yonder you may see the stone."
As, indeed, we did; at least, there is a grave there covered by a stone with a large round hole in the middle.
"And now, your honour," went on our guide, as we came to the door of the inn, "you will be wan tin' me to row you over to the Saint's bed, I'm thinkin'."
"What is the fare?" I asked.
"As much over sixpence as you care to give, your honour."
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"All right," I said. "We'll be ready presently." And we went in to lunch.
We certainly enjoyed that meal, though I have for- gotten its ingredients; but I have not forgotten the clean, pleasant dining-room in which it was served. And then we sallied forth for the visit to St. Kevin's bed.
Our guide was awaiting us, and helped us into his boat and pushed off; and at once began to recount the legends of the lake ; how the fairies danced punctually at nine every evening, whenever there was a moon, while at eleven the ghost of the fair Kathleen sat on a stone and sang and combed her hair, and at twelve the wraith of a wicked sorceress struck blind by St. Kevin glided about the lake. I forget what else happened, but it was evident that any one spending a night there would not lack for entertainment. And he told us why no skylark ever sings in the vale of Glendalough.
It seems that when St. Kevin was building his mon- astery, he had a great number of workmen employed, and the rule was that they should begin the day's labour with the singing of the lark and end it when the lambs lay down to rest. It was summer time, and the larks began to sing about three in the morning, while the lambs refused to retire until nine at night. The workmen thought these hours excessive, and so complained to St. Kevin, and he listened to them, and looked at them, and when he saw their poor jaded faces and tired eyes wanting sleep, his kind heart pitied them, and he promised to see what he could do. So he raised his eyes to heaven and put up a prayer that the lark might never sing in the valley, and that the lamb
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might lie down before the sun was set; and the prayer was granted, and from that day to this Glendalough has been famous as
"the lake whose gloomy shore Skylark never warbles o'er."
At what hour the lambs now go to rest our boatman did not state, and I did not have time to make any observations for myself; but I commend the question to the attention of antiquarians.
By the time all these tales had been told, we were across the lake and drawing in toward a high cliff on the other side; and suddenly somebody shouted at us, and, as the hills shuttlecocked the echo back and forth across the water, we looked up and saw two men cling- ing to the cliff about forty feet up. As our boat ran in to the shore, they came scrambling down and helped us out upon a narrow strand.
"The seat and the bed are up yonder," said our guide. "Them ones will help your honour up."
I looked at the perpendicular cliff, quite smooth ex- cept for a little indentation here and there where one might possibly put one's toe, and my desire to sit in St. Kevin's seat suffered a severe diminution, for I have no head for heights. I said as much and listened sceptically to the fervent assurances of the guides that there was no danger at all, at all, that they had piloted thousands of people up and down the cliff without a single mishap, glory be to God. I knew they were talking for a tip, and not from any abstract love of truth. But in matters of this sort, Betty is much more impulsive than I — as will appear more than once in
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the course of this narrative — and she promptly de- clared that she was going up, for the chance to be granted three wishes was too good to be missed. So up she went, one man pulling in front and the other guiding her toes into those little crevices in the rock; and presently she passed from sight, and then her voice floated down to me saying that she was all right.
Of course I had to follow, if I was to escape a life- time of derision, and after a desperate scramble, I found her sitting on a narrow ledge at the back of a shallow cave in the cliff, with her eyes closed, making her three wishes. Then I sat down and made mine; and then the guides offered to conduct us to St. Kevin's bed, but when I found that the bed was a hole in the cliff into which one had to be poked feet first, and that to get to it one had to walk along a ledge about three inches wide, I interposed a veto so vigorous that it pre- vailed.
Having got up, it was necessary to get down, and when I looked at the cliff, I understood why St. Kevin had stayed there seven years. The method of descent is simply to sit on the edge and slide over and trust to the man below. Fortunately he was on the job, so we live to tell the tale. As to the efficacy of the seat, I can only say that two of my three wishes came true, which is a good average. I don't know about Betty's, for it breaks the charm to tell !
I asked our boatman afterwards why he didn't pilot his passengers up the cliff himself, and so earn the extra sixpence which is the fee for that service; and he told me that he couldn't because that was an hereditary right, controlled by one family, in which it had been
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 73
handed down for generations. The father trains his sons in the precise method of handling the climbers, so that they become very expert at it, and there is really no great danger. One member of the family is al- ways on the lookout above the cliff, and when any visitor approaches, two members climb down to offer their services. Our boatman added that he wished he belonged to the family, because in good seasons they made a lot of money.
We pushed out into the lake again, and rowed up a little farther to another narrow beach, whence a rude flight of steps led to a shelf of rock many feet above the lake, on which are the ruins of St. Kevin's first little church. There is not much left of it, which is natural enough since it was built nearly a thousand years before America was discovered; but I took the picture of it which is reproduced opposite the next page, and which gives a faint idea of the beauty of the lake.
All during the afternoon, I had been conscious, at intervals, of a dull rumbling among the hills, and as we pushed out from the shore, I heard it again, and asked the boatman if it was thunder, for the clouds had begun to bank up along the horizon, and I remembered that we had twelve miles to ride on a side-car before we reached the station. But he said that it wasn't thunder ; there was an artillery camp many miles away among the hills and the rumbling was the echo of the guns. He also assured me, after a look around, that it wouldn't rain before morning. The basis of an Irish weather prediction, as I have said before, is not at all a desire to foretell what is coming, but merely
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the wish to comfort the inquirer; but in this case the prediction happened to come true.
When we got back to the inn, we found a new ar- rival, a very pleasant woman who had come over in the coach from Dublin. Her husband, I learned, was an inspector employed by the National Education Board, who had come to Glendalough to inspect the schools in the neighbourhood. He had started out to inspect one at once, but when he returned I had a most interesting talk with him concerning education in Ireland, and the problems which it has to face.
The Irish schools, like everything else Irish, are con- trolled by a central board which sits at Dublin Castle. There are sixty-six other boards and bureaus and de- partments sitting there, each dealing with some special branch of Irish affairs, and all of them are costly and complicated. These sixty-seven varieties must cause a pang of envy in the breast of our own Heinz, for that is ten more than he produces! The particular board which controls the schools is called the National Edu- cation Board, and, like all the others, it is in no way responsible to the Irish people. In fact, it isn't re- sponsible to anybody. Its members are appointed for life, and it is virtually a self -perpetuating body, for vacancies are usually filled in accordance with the recommendation of a majority of its members. It is absolutely supreme in Irish educational affairs.
The elementary schools in Ireland are known as "National Schools," and each of them is controlled by a local manager, who is always either the priest or the rector of the parish — the priest if the parish is largely Roman Catholic, the rector if it is largely Protestant,
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 75
If there are enough children, both Catholic and Prot- estant, to fill two schools, there will be two, and the two creeds will be separated. This is always done, of course, in the cities, and in the north of Ireland there are separate schools for the Presbyterians; but in the country districts this cannot be done, so that, whatever the religious complexion of the school, there will al- ways be a few pupils of the other denomination in it. In the villages where there is a church, as at Clondal- kin, the school is usually connected with the church and in that case, if it is Roman Catholic, the teachers will be nuns.
The local manager of the school has absolute author- ity over it. He employs and dismisses the teachers; he prescribes the course of study; no book which he prohibits may be used in the school ; any book, within very wide limits, which he wishes to use, he may use; he determines the character of the religious instruction. If he is a Catholic, this is, of course, Catholicism; if he is a Protestant, it is Protestantism — which means in Ireland either Presbyterianism in the north or Church of Irelandism in the south and west. But, as a very noted preacher remarked to me one evening, if he should happen to be a Mohammedan, he would be perfectly free to teach Mohammedanism.
The secular instruction given in the schools is sup- posed not to be coloured by religion, but it is inevitable that it should be; and this is especially true of Ire- land, in whose history religious differences have played and still play so large a part. The result is that the memory of old wrongs, far better forgotten, is kept alive and flaming; and not only that, but the
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wrongs themselves are magnified and distorted out of all resemblance to the truth. Some one has remarked that half the ill-feeling in Ireland is caused by the memory of things that never happened; and further- more such atrocities as did occur in some far distant day are spoken of as though they happened yesterday. To every Catholic, Limerick is still "The City of the Violated Treaty," although the treaty referred to was made (and broken) in 1691, and Catholics have long since been given every right it granted them. In Derry, the "siege" is referred to constantly as though it were just over, though as a matter of fact it oc- curred in 1689. To shout "To hell with King Billy !" is the deadliest insult that Catholic can offer Protestant, though King Billy, otherwise William III of Orange, has been dead for more than two centuries. And when one asks the caretaker of any old ruin how the place came to be ruined, the invariable answer is " 'Twas Crummell did it!" although it may have been in ruins a century before Cromwell was born.
A certain period of every day, in every National School, is set apart for religious instruction. When that period arrives, a placard on the wall bearing the words "Secular Instruction," is reversed, displaying the words "Religious Instruction" printed on the other side. Then everybody in the schoolhouse who does not belong to the denomination in which religious in- struction is to be given is chased outside. Thus, as you drive about Ireland, you will see little groups of boys and girls standing idly in front of the school- houses, and you will wonder what they are doing there.
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They are waiting for the religious instruction period to be ended.
No Protestant child is permitted to be present while Catholic instruction is going on, and no Catholic child while Protestant instruction is being given. The law used to require the teacher forcibly to eject such a child; but this raised an awful rumpus because, of course, both Catholics and Protestants are anxious to make converts, and the teachers used to say that they had conscientious scruples against driving out any child who might wish to be converted. So the law now re- quires the teacher to notify the child's parents; and the result is, I fancy, very painful to the child.
All of which, I will say frankly, seems to me ab- surd. I do not believe that religious and secular in- struction can be combined in this way, especially with a mixed population, without impairing the efficiency of both. The first real struggle the Home Rule Parlia- ment will have to face, in the opinion of my friend the inspector, is the struggle to secularise education. And this, he added, will not be a struggle of Protestant against Catholic, but of clerical against anti-clerical, for, while religious instruction is a far more vital prin- ciple with the Catholic church than with the Protestant church, Protestant preachers in Ireland are just as jealous of their power over the schools and just as determined to retain it, as the Catholic priests. The influence of the clergy in Ireland is very great, and I am inclined to think they will win the first battle; but I also think that they are certain to lose in the end.
The General Education Board keeps in touch with the local schools by employing inspectors, who visit
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them three times a year and report on their condition. These visits are supposed to be unexpected, but, as a matter of fact, they seldom are.
"Word always gets about," my informant explained, with a smile, "that we are in the neighbourhood, and of course things are furbished up a bit."
"I should like to visit some of the schools," I said.
"You are at perfect liberty to do so. Any orderly person has the right to enter any school at any time."
"It is the poor little schools I wish to see," I added.
"You will find plenty of them in the west of Ire- land— in fact, that is about the only kind they have there. And you will probably scare the teacher out of a year's growth when you step in. He will think you are an inspector, or a government official of some kind, who has heard something to his discredit and has come to investigate."
"Something to his discredit*?" I repeated.
"Perhaps that he doesn't try to make the children in his district come to school. That is one great fault with our system. We have a compulsory education law, and every child in Ireland is supposed to go to school until he is fourteen. But no effort is made to enforce it, and not over half the children attend school with any sort of regularity. Often, of course, their parents need them; but more frequently it is because the parents are so ignorant themselves that they don't appreciate the value of an education. That isn't their fault entirely, for until thirty or forty years ago, it was practically impossible for a Catholic child to get any education, since the schools were managed by Protestants in a proselytising spirit and the priests
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 79
would not allow Catholic children to attend them. "I have some of the old readers that were used in those days," went on the inspector, with a smile, "and I wish I had them here. They would amuse you. In one of them, the Board cut out Scott's lines,
" 'Breathes there a man with soul so dead Who never to himself has said This is my own, my native land,'
and so on, fearing that they might have a bad effect upon Irish children by teaching them to love the land they were born in, and substituted some verses written by one of their own members. One stanza ran some- thing like this:
" 'I thank the goodness and the grace Which on my birth have smiled, And made me in these Christian days A happy English child.'
The Board claimed there was nothing sectarian about that stanza, but I wonder what the O'Malleys over in Joyce's Country thought when their children recited it*? I'll bet there was a riot! And the histories had every sort of history in them except Irish history. Ire- land was treated as a kind of tail to England's kite, and the English conquest was spoken of as a thing for which Ireland should be deeply grateful, and the Eng- lish government was held up to admiration as the best and wisest that man could hope to devise.
"Ah, well, those days are over now, and they don't try to make a happy English child out of an Irish
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Catholic any longer. The principal trouble now is that there isn't enough money to carry on the schools properly. Many of the buildings are unfit for school- houses, and the teachers are miserably paid. The school-books are usually poor little penny affairs, for the children can't afford more expensive ones. We visit the schools three times a year and look them over, but there isn't anything we can do. Here is the blank we are supposed to fill out."
The blank was a portentous four-page document, with many printed questions. The first section dealt with the condition of the schoolhouse and premises, the second with the school equipment, the third with the organisation, and so on. As might be expected, many of the questions have to do with the subject of religious instruction. Here are some of them:
Note objections (if any) to arrangements for Religious In- struction.
Have you examined the Religious Instruction Certificate Book?
Are the Rules as to this book observed ?
Is the school bona fide open to pupils of all denominations ?
In case of Convent or Monastery schools, paid by capitation, state is the staff sufficient.
The "Religious Instruction Certificate Book" — note the reverent capitals — is the book in which the religion of each child is certified to by its parents, so that there can be no controversy on the subject, and in which the child's attendance is carefully entered. There is also a Punishment Book, in which the teacher, when a child is punished, must enter the details of the affair for the inspector's information; and an Observation Book, in
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 81
which the inspector is supposed to note suggestions for the teacher's guidance ; as well as records of attendance and proficiency, and all the usual red tape of the Cir- cumlocution Office. I have never seen any of these books, but I fancy that, with the exception of the first- named, few teachers spend much time over them.
As I have said before, the local manager has absolute control of the school, and the poverty of the school funds is sometimes due to his desire to keep this power wholly in his own hands. The government grant is intended only as a partial support, and is supposed to be supplemented by a local contribution. But fre- quently no local contribution is asked for or desired, because, if one was made, the persons who made it would rightfully claim some voice in the management of the school. I have heard queer tales of managers' eccentricities. One of them read somewhere of the high educational value of teaching children to fold paper in various shapes, and -so had the children in his school devote an hour every day to this exercise. It was popular with the children, but the indignation of their parents may be imagined. They were, how- ever, quite powerless to do anything except raise a row. Another, who believed that the highest func- tion of education was to develop the aesthetic conscious- ness, had the children in his school arrange rags of various colours in symphonies, and the people in his parish nearly went mad with rage.
But these, of course, were exceptions. As a rule, the course of study is utilitarian and humdrum enough, and the only colour the manager injects into it is that of religion. I note that the subjects of study men-
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tioned in the inspector's blank are oral and written English, history, arithmetic, geography, object lessons and elementary science, cookery and laundry work, singing, drawing, needlework, and training of infants. This sounds ambitious enough, but I fancy it is mostly blarney, so far as the small schools are concerned, at any rate. About all most of them do is to teach the children to read and write and cipher — and these most haltingly. Twenty per cent, of the people in western Ireland are still unable to do even that.
"You are a Nationalist, I suppose?" I said, after I had finished looking through the blank.
"I am," he assented emphatically.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because it is bad for Ireland to be treated like a spoiled child. That is the way England treats us now — we can get anything we want if we yell loud enough. And it's bad for England, too. She has problems enough of her own, heaven knows, but all she can think about is Ireland. Every sensible Eng- lishman will be glad to get rid of us, so his govern- ment can have a little time to attend to its own affairs. What Ireland needs is to be chucked overboard and told to sink or swim. We'll swim, of course, but the shore's a long way off, and it will be a hard pull ; but the harder it is, the closer we Irishmen will be drawn together. Home Rule won't bring any shower of blessings — it's more apt to bring hardships for a while ; but it will give us a chance to stop thinking about our wrongs, and go to work to make Ireland a country worth living in."
The time had come for us to take our leave, and the
THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN 83
inspector and his wife walked with us, for half a mile or so, along a beautiful path through the woods on the other side of the lower lake, and finally, with many ex- pressions of good-will, bade us good-bye. We went on again, to the ruins of St. Kevin's seven churches, with the round tower looming high above them, while all about are the mounds and slabs of the old grave- yard. All the churches are little ones — mere midgets, some of them — and they are in all states of preserva- tion, from a few fragments of wall to the almost per- fect "St. Kevin's Kitchen" — a tiny structure with high stone roof, which was set apart for the Saint's use, and which was so solidly built that it passed unharmed through the many burnings and sackings of the mon- astery, and still stands intact, defying the centuries. There is a queer little tower at one end of it, and a chamber above between the vault and the high roof; but most of these pre-Norman churches are small and bare of ornament, and remarkable only for their great age.
We spent some time in the graveyard, looking at the crosses and ornamented tombstones, and sculptured fragments lying about, and then we inspected the round tower ; but my picture of it looks like a silhouette against the sunset sky; and finally we went on to the road, where our car was waiting. As we swung along through the fresh, cool air of the evening, we drew our jarvey into talk. He was very pessimistic about the state of the country, and apparently did not believe that Home Rule would help it much. There was no chance, he said, for a man to get ahead. It was a hard struggle for most of them to get enough to eat
84 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
and a place to sleep and a few clothes to wear. A little sickness or bad luck, and there was nothing left but the workhouse — the workmen's insurance act did not include men like him. His own wages were ten shillings ($2.40) a week, and there were many who could not earn even that. On ten shillings — eked out by such tips as he picked up from his passengers — he managed to clothe and feed himself, but that was all. Marriage was not to be thought of; there was no hope of saving money enough to go to America; in fact, there was no hope of any kind. But though he spoke bitterly enough, he didn't seem unreasonably cast down, and I dare say spent little time thinking about his hard fate except when some passing Americans like ourselves reminded him of it.
And at last, just as dusk was falling, we wound down into the valley at Rathdrum; and presently our train came along; and an hour later we were again walking along O'Connell Street. It was long past nine o'clock, but not yet dark.
CHAPTER VI
DROGHEDA THE DREARY
THERE was one more excursion we wanted to make from Dublin. That was to Drogheda (pronounced Drawda) of bitter memory; from where we hoped to drive to the scene of the battle of the Boyne, and on to Dowth and Newgrange, the sepulchres of the ancient kings of Erin, and finally to the abbeys of Mellifont and Monasterboice. So we set forth, next morning, on this pilgrimage; but fate willed that we were not to accomplish it that day.
Drogheda is about thirty miles north of Dublin, near the mouth of the River Boyne, and the ride thither, for the most part close beside the sea, is not of special interest, as the coast is flat and the only town of any importance on the way is Balbriggan, celebrated for its hosiery. Drogheda itself is an up- and-down place, built on the side of a hill. I suppose the castle which was the nucleus of the town stood on top of the hill, and houses were gradually built from it down to the ford from which the town takes its name. Encircled with walls and dominated by its castle, it was no doubt picturesque enough, but it is singularly dingy and unattractive now, with slums almost as bad as Dublin's and evidences of biting poverty every- where.
We blundered into the fish-market, as we were ex- ploring the streets, and watched for some time the
8s
86 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
haggling between the dealers and the women who had come to market — a haggling so vigorous that it often threatened to end in blows. Most of the fish had been cut up into pieces, and every piece was fingered and poked and examined with a scrutiny almost micro- scopic; and then the would-be purchaser would make an offer for it, which would be indignantly refused. Then the dealer would name his price, and this never failed to arouse a storm of protest. Then dealer and purchaser would indulge in a few personalities, recall- ing with relish any discreditable facts in the other's private life or family history; and finally, sometimes, an agreement would be reached. In any case, the price was never more than a few pennies, and the reluctance with which they were produced and handed over proved how tremendously hard it had been to earn them.
Drogheda recalls Cromwell to every Irishman, usually with a malediction, for it was here that the massacre occurred which made and still makes the Great Protector anathema in Catholic Ireland. Briefly, the facts are these: The Irish Catholics, un- der Owen Roe O'Neill, had, naturally enough, sup- ported Charles I against the Parliament, and when the Parliament cut off his head, promptly declared for his son, Charles II, and started in to conquer Ulster, which was largely Protestant then as now.
Cromwell realised that, before the Commonwealth would be safe, the rebellion in Ireland must be put down, and at once addressed himself to the task. He landed at Dublin about the middle of August, 1649, and marched against Drogheda, which was held by an Irish force of some three thousand men. Arrived be-
DROGHEDA THE DREARY 87
fore it, he summoned the town to surrender; upon its refusal, took it by storm, and "in the heat of action," as he afterwards wrote, ordered that the whole garri- son be put to the sword. Not more than thirty of the three thousand escaped, and such Catholic priests as were found in the place were hanged. Cromwell after- wards sought to justify this cruelty on two grounds: as a reprisal for the killing of Protestants in Ulster, and as the most efficacious way to strike terror to the Irish and end the rebellion. As a matter of fact, it cannot be justified, as John Morley very clearly points out in a chapter of his life of Cromwell which should be read by every one interested in Irish history.
Some fragments of the old walls still remain, and one of the gates, which will be found pictured opposite the next page. It spans what is now the principal street, and consists of two battlemented towers, pierced with loopholes in each of their four stories, and connected by a retiring wall also loopholed. It is so well pre- served because it stands on the opposite side of the town from the one Cromwell attacked, and is the most perfect specimen of the mediaeval city-gate which I saw anywhere in Ireland. When one has seen it, one has exhausted the antiquarian interest of Drogheda, for all that is left of the old monastery is a battered fragment. As for the modern town, the churches are rococo and ugly, while the most imposing building is the workhouse, capable of accommodating a thousand inmates.
Having satisfied our curiosity as to Drogheda, we ad- dressed ourselves to getting out to the battlefield and abbeys. The railroads sell combination tickets for the
88 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
whole trip, at three or four shillings each, carrying their passengers about in brakes; but these excursions do not start till June, so it was necessary that we get a car. At the station, and again at the wharf by the river, we had observed large bulletin boards with a list of the jaunting-car tariffs fixed by the corporation, and giv- ing the price of the trip we wanted to take as ten shill- ings for two people. In the square by the post-office, a number of cars were drawn up along the curb, and, picking out the best-looking one, I told the jarvey where we wanted to go.
"Very good, sir," he said. "I'm the lad can take ye. Do you and your lady get right up."
"What is the fare?" I asked.
"One pound, sir."
"The legal fare is just half that," I pointed out.
"It may be," he agreed pleasantly.
We left him negligently flicking his horse with his whip, and presently we met a policeman, and told him we wanted to drive out to Monasterboice, and while we didn't mind being robbed, we didn't care to be looted, and we asked his advice. He scratched his head dubiously.
"Ye see it is like this, sir," he said; "there is no one to enforce the regulations, so the jar vies just charge what they please. I'm free to admit they have no conscience. There is one, though, who is fairly hon- est," and he directed us to his house. "Tell him you come from me, and he'll treat you well."
But that transaction was never closed. We found the house — grimy, dark, dirt-floored, trash-littered — with the man's wife and assorted children within; but
DROGHEDA THE DREARY 89
the woman told us that "himself" had driven out into the country and would not be back till evening. And just then it began to drizzle most dismally.
"This is no day for the trip, anyway," I said. "Suppose we wait till we get to Belfast, and run down from there."
So it was agreed, and we made our way back to the station, through a sea of sticky mud, and presently took train again for Ireland's ancient capital.
We were ready to leave Dublin for a swing clear around the coast of Ireland, and late that afternoon, having sifted our luggage to the minimum and armed ourselves cap-a-pie against every vicissitude of weather, we bade our friends at the hotel good-bye (not for- getting the bell-boy), drove to the station, and got aboard a train, which presently rolled away south- wards. It was very full — the third-class crowded with soldiers in khaki bound for the camp on the Cur- ragh of Kildare, and our own compartment jammed with a variety of people.
In one corner, a white-haired priest mumbled his breviary and watched the crowd with absent eyes, while across from him a loud-voiced woman, evidently, from her big hat and cheap finery, just home from America, was trying to overawe the friends who had gone to Dublin to meet her by an exhibition of sham gentility. In the seat with us was a plump and com- fortable woman of middle age, with whom we soon got into talk about everything from children to Home Rule.
What she had to say about Home Rule was inter-
9o THE CHARM OF IRELAND
esting. Her home was somewhere down in the Vale of Tipperary, and I judged from her appearance that she was the wife of a well-to-do farmer. She was most emphatically not a Nationalist.
"It isn't them who own land, or who are buy in' a little farm under the purchase act that want Home Rule," she said. "No, no; them ones would be glad to let well enough alone. 'Tis the labourers, the farm-hands, the ditch-diggers, and such-like people, who have nothin' to lose, that shout the loudest for it. They would like a bit of land themselves, and they fancy that under Home Rule they'll be gettin' it; but where is it to come from, I'd like to know, unless off of them that has it now ; and who would be trustin' the likes of them to pay for it? Ah, 'tis foolish to think of! Besides, if everybody owned land, where would we be gettin' labour to work it? No, no; 'tis time to stop, I say, and there be many who think like me."
"What wages does a labourer make?" I asked.
"From ten to twelve shillin's a week."
"All the year round?"
"There's no work in winter, so how can one be payin' wages then?"
"But how can they live on that?"
"They can't live on it," she said fiercely; "many of them ones couldn't live at all, if it wasn't for the money that's sent them from America. But what can the farmers do? If they pay higher wages, they ruin themselves. Most of them have give up in disgust and turned their land into grass."
"What do the labourers do then?" I asked.
DROGHEDA THE DREARY 91
"They move away some'rs else — to America if they can."
"Perhaps Home Rule will make things better," I suggested.
"How, I'd like to know? By raisin' taxes'? That same is the first thing will happen! No, no; the solid men hereabouts don't want Home Rule — they're afraid of it; but they know well enough they must keep their tongues in their mouths, except with each other. The world's goin' crazy — that's what I think."
Now I look back on it, that conversation seems to me to sum up pretty well the situation in rural Ire- land— the small farmer, handicapped by poverty and primitive methods, ground down in the markets of the world, and in turn grinding down the labourers be- neath him, or turning his farm into grass, so that there is no work at all except for a few shepherds. And I believe it is true that, as a whole, only the upper class and the lower class of Irishmen really want Home Rule — the upper class from motives of patriotism, the lower class from hope of betterment; while the middle class is either lukewarm or opposed to it at heart. The middle class is, of course, always and everywhere, the conservative class, the class which fears change most and is the last to consent to it; in Ireland, it is com- posed largely of small farmers, who have dragged themselves a step above the peasantry and who are just finding their feet under the land purchase act, and I think their liveliest fear is that a Home Rule Parlia- ment will somehow compel them to pay living wages
92 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
to their labourers. I can only say that I hope it will !
Outside, meanwhile, rural Ireland was unfolding it- self under our eyes, varied, beautiful — and sad. The first part of it we had already traversed on our excur- sion to Clondalkin; beyond that village, the road emerged from the hills encircling Dublin, and soon we could see their beautiful rounded masses far to the left, forming a charming background to meadows whose greenness no words can describe. Every foot of the ground is historic; for first the train passes Celbridge where Swift's "Vanessa" dwelt, and just beyond is Lyons Hill, where Daniel O'Connell shot and killed a Dublin merchant named D'Esterre in a duel a hundred years ago — an affair, it should be added, in which D'Esterre was the aggressor; and presently the line crosses a broad and beautiful undulating down, the Curragh of Kildare, where St. Brigid pastured her flocks, and it was made in this wise :
One time, when Brigid, who was but a poor serving- girl, being the daughter of a bond-woman, was mind- ing her cow, with no place to feed it but the side of the road, the rich man who owned the land for leagues around came by, and saw her and her cow, and a pity for her sprang into his heart.
"How much land would it take to give grass to the cow*?" said he.
"No more than my cloak would cover," said she.
"I will give that," said the rich man.
"Glory be to God !" said Brigid, and she took off her cloak and laid it on the ground, and she had no sooner done so than it began to grow, until it spread miles and miles on every side.
DROGHEDA THE DREARY 93
But just then a silly old woman came by, bad cess to her, and she opened her foolish mouth and she said, "If that cloak keeps on spreading, all Ireland will be free."
And with that the cloak stopped and spread no more ; but the rich man was true to his word, and Brigid held the land which it covered during all her lifetime, and it has been a famous grazing-ground ever since, though the creatures are crowded off part of it now by a great military camp.
Beyond the Curragh, the train rumbles over a wide bog, which trembles uneasily beneath it, and the black turf-cuttings stretch away as far as the eye can see; and then the Hill of Allen looms up against the hori- zon, where the Kings of Leinster dwelt in the old days, and the fields grow greener than ever, but for miles and miles there is not a single house.
And this is the sad part of it; for this fertile land, as rich as any in the world, supports only flocks and herds, instead of the men and women and children who once peopled it. They have all been driven away, by eviction, by famine, by the hard necessity of finding work; for there is no work here except for a few herdsmen, and has not been for half a century. For when the landlords found — or fancied they found — there was more money in grazing than in agriculture, they turned the people out and the sheep and cattle in — and the sheep and cattle are still there.
But the landscape grows ever lovelier and more lovely. Away on either hand, high ranges of hills spring into being, closing in the Golden Vale of Tip- perary, and one realises it was a true yision of the
94 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
place of his birth that Denis McCarthy had when he wrote his lilting verses in praise of it:
Ah, sweet is Tipperary in the springtime of the year,
When the hawthorn's whiter than the snow, When the feathered folk assemble and the air is all a-tremblc
With their singing and their winging to and fro; When queenly Slievenamon puts her verdant vesture on
And smiles to hear the news the breezes bring; When the sun begins to glance on the rivulets that dance —
Ah, sweet is Tipperary in the spring!
Slievenamon is not in sight from the train — we shall see it to-morrow from the Rock of Cashel; but just ahead is a rugged hill with a singular, half-moon de- pression at the summit, for all the world as though some one had taken a great bite out of it — and that is precisely what happened, for once upon a time the Prince of Darkness passed that way, and when he came to the hill, being pressed with hunger, he took a bite out of the top of it; but it was not to his taste, so he spat it out again, and it fell some miles away across the valley, where it lies to this day, and is called the Rock of Cashel, while the hill is known as the Devil's Bit.
And then we came to Thurles — and to earth.
Now Thurles — the word is pronounced in two syl- lables, as though it were spelled Thurless — is a small town and has only two inns. We knew nothing of either, so we asked the advice of a bluff, farmer-look- ing man in our compartment, who was native to the place. He declined, at first, to express an opinion, saying it would ill become him to exalt one inn at the
DROGHEDA THE DREARY 95
expense of the other, since the keepers of both were friends of his; but after some moments of cogitation, he said that he would recommend one of them, since it was kept by a poor widow woman. I confess this did not seem to me a convincing reason for going there ; but our new-found friend took charge of us, and, hav- ing seen us safely to the platform, called loudly for "Jimmy," and an old man presently shambled for- ward, to whose care, with many wishes for a pleas- ant journey, we were committed.
The old man proved to be the driver of a very ram- shackle omnibus, in which we were presently rumbling along a wide and dreary street. The hotel, when we got to it, proved bare and cheerless, with every corner crowded with cots. The landlady explained that the great horse-fair opened in a day or two, and that she was preparing for the crowds which always attended it; but finally she found a room for us away up in the attic, and left us alone with a candle. The weather had turned very cold, and we were tired and uncom- fortable, and even our electric torch could not make the room look otherwise than dingy; and I think, for a moment, we regretted that we had come to Ireland — and then, presto! change . . .
For there came a knock at the door, and a soft-voiced maid entered with towels and hot water, and asked if there wasn't something else she could do for us; and then another came, to see if there was anything she could do, and between them they lapped us in such a warmth of Irish welcome that we were soon aglow. I left them blarneying Betty and went down to the shining little bar, where I smoked a pipe in company
96 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
with two or three habitues and the barmaid, and had a most improving talk about the state of the country. They were as hungry to hear about America as I was to hear about Ireland, and it was very late before I mounted the stairs again.
All through the night, we were awakened at inter- vals by the tramping and neighing of the horses arriv- ing for the fair.
CHAPTER VII
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL OF THE KINGS
IF one doesn't like bacon and eggs, one must go with- out breakfast in Ireland, unless one likes fish, or is con- tent with bread and butter. Every evening Betty would have a colloquy with the maid, which ran some- thing like this :
"What will ye be wan tin' for breakfast, miss?"
"What can we have?"
"Oh, anything ye like, miss."
"Well, what, for instance?"
"There's bacon and eggs, miss, and there's fish."
We usually took bacon and eggs, for fish seemed out of place on the breakfast-table. Besides, we were sure to encounter it later at dinner.
"And will ye have coffee or tay, miss?" the maid would continue.
We took coffee once, and after that we took tea. The tea is good, though strong, and it seems somehow to suit the climate; but one sip of Irish coffee will be enough for most people.
So next morning we sat down to our breakfast of tea and bacon and eggs with a- good appetite. The cloth was not as clean as it might have been, but the eggs were fresh and the bacon sweet, and the bread and butter were delicious — as they are all over Ireland — and the tea tasted better than I had ever imagined tea could taste, and outside the sun was shining brightly,
97,
98 THE CHARM OF IRELAND
but no brighter than the face of the maid who waited on us, and there was a pleasant stir of movement up and down the street, for it was Saturday and market- day, so that it was quite impossible to be otherwise than happy and content. And presently the car I had arranged for the night before drove up, and we were off on the four-mile drive to the ruins of Holy Cross Abbey.
We had to go slowly, at first, for the street was crowded with people come to market, and with the wares exposed for sale. There were little carts heaped high with brown turf, which might be bought for two or three shillings a load, though every load repre- sented as many days' hard work; there were red calves in little pens, and chickens in crates, and eggs and butter in baskets; and there were a lot of pedlars of- fering all sorts of dry-goods and hardware and odds and ends to the country-people who stood stolidly around, apparently rather sorry they had come. The faces were typically Irish — the men with short noses and shaved lips and little fuzzy side-whiskers, and the women with cheeks almost startlingly ruddy; but there wasn't a trace of those rollicking spirits which the Irish in books and on the stage seldom fail to dis- play.
Once clear of the crowd, we rolled out of the town, over a bridge above the railway, and along a pleasant road, past little thatched cottages overflowing with children; meeting, from time to time, a family driving to town, all crowded together on a little cart behind a shaggy donkey, the men with their feet hanging down, the women scrooched up under their shawls, with their
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL 99
knees as high as their chins. They all stared at us curiously; but our driver passed them by with disdain, as not worth his notice, and from a word or two he let fall, it was evident that he considered them beneath him.
The road was rather higher than the surrounding country, and we could see across it, north and south, for many miles ; then it descended to a winding stream, the Suir, flowing gently between rushy banks, and pres- ently we saw ahead a great pile of crumbling build- ings— and then we were at Holy Cross, one of the most exquisite and interesting of the hundreds of ruins which cover Ireland.
That word "hundreds" is no exaggeration. In a single day's journey, one will see scores; and as one goes on thus, day after day, one begins to realise what a populous and wealthy country Ireland was eight hun- dred years ago, how crowded with castles and monas- teries; and I think the deepest impression the traveller bears away with him is the memory of these battered and deserted remnants of former grandeur. And yet it is not quite just to blame England for them, as most of the Irish do. It was the English, of course, who broke up the monasteries and destroyed many of the castles ; but the march of the centuries would probably have wrought much the same ruin in the end ; for men no longer live in castles, finding homes far pleasanter; and it is not now to monks they go for learning, nor is the right of sanctuary needed as it was in the time when might made right, and a poor man's only hope of safety lay in getting to some altar ahead of his pursuers. Yet one cannot tread these beautiful places
loo THE CHARM OF IRELAND
without a certain sadness and regret — regret for the vanished pomp and ceremony, the cowled processions and torch-lit feasts, the shuffle of feet and the songs of minstrels — in a word, for the old order, so impressive, so picturesque — and so cruel !
Holy Cross was a great place in those days, for, as its name indicates, it held as its most precious relic a fragment of the True Cross, given by the Pope, in 1110, to Donough O'Brien, grandson of Brian Boru, and thousands of pilgrims came to pray before it. The relic had many strange vicissitudes, in the centuries that followed, but it was not lost, as was the one which the Cross of Cong enshrined, and it is preserved to-day in the Ursuline convent at Blackrock. Holy Cross had better luck than most, for, at the dissolution in 1563, it was granted to the Earl of Ormonde, a friend who cherished it. But the end came with the passing of the Stuarts, and now it is deserted save for the old woman who acts as caretaker, and who lives in a little ivy-covered house built against the wall of the great church.
She opened the iron gate which bars access to the ruins, and let us wander about them at will, for which we were grateful. The plan of the place is that com- mon to almost all monastic establishments : a cruciform church, with the altar at the east end, as nearest Jeru- salem, the arms of the cross, or transepts, stretching north and south, and the body of the cross, or nave, extending to the west, where the main entrance was ; a door from the nave opened to the south into a court around which were the cloisters and the domestic build- ings— the refectory, the chapter-house and the dormi-
HOLY CROSS ABBEY, FROM THE CLOISTERS THE MIGHTY RUINS ON THE ROCK OF CASHEL
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL 101
tories; and still beyond these were the granaries and storehouses and guest-houses and various out-build- ings. Also, like most others, it stands on the bank of a river, for the monks were fond of fishing, — and had no mind to go hungry on Friday!
The roof of the church has fallen in, but it is other- wise well-preserved, even to the window-tracery; and the square tower above the crossing is apparently as firm as ever. The whole place abounds in beautiful detail, proof of the loving workmanship that was lav- ished on it; but its bright particular gem is a little sanctum in the north transept, surrounded by delicate twisted pillars and covered by a roof beautifully groined. Whether this was the sanctuary of the relic, or the place where the monks were laid from death to burial, or the tomb of some saintly Abbot, no one knows; but there it is, a living testimony to the beauty of Irish artistry.
The cloister is now a grass-grown court, and only a few arches remain of the colonnade which once sur- rounded it; but the square of domestic buildings about it is better preserved than one will find almost any- where else, and deserves careful exploration.
As was the custom in most of the abbeys, the friars, when they died, were laid to rest beneath the flags of the church floor; the church is still used as a burial place, and is cluttered with graves, marked by stones leaning at every angle. One's feet sink deep into the mould — a mould composed, so the caretaker told us in awestruck voice, of human dust.
We mounted the narrow staircase to the tower roof and sat there for a long time, gazing down on these
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lichened and crumbling walls, restoring them in im- agination and repeopling them with the White Brothers and the pilgrims and the innumerable hangers-on who once crowded them. It required no great stretch of fancy to conjure the old days back — that day, for in- stance, three centuries and more ago, when Red Hugh O'Donnell, marching southward from Galway with his army to join the Spaniards at Kinsale, came down yon- der white highway, and stopped at the monastery gate, and invoked a blessing from the Abbot. And the Abbot, with all the monks in attendance, carried the fragment of the Cross in its gilded shrine out to the gate, and held it up for all to see, and Red Hugh and his men knelt down there in the road, while the priest prayed that through them Ireland might win freedom. And even as they knelt, a wild-eyed rapparee came pounding up with the news that a great force of Eng- lish was at Cashel, a few miles away ; so Red Hugh had to flee with his men over the hills to the westward, to die a year later, poisoned by a man he thought his friend.
We descended after a time, and crossed the river to have a look at the Abbey from that vantage-ground; and at last, most regretfully, we mounted the car again and drove back to Thurles. An hour later, we were at Cashel — the one place in all Ireland best worth seeing.
I write that in all earnestness. If the traveller has time for only one excursion out of Dublin, he should hesitate not an instant, but go to Cashel. I shall try to tell why.
Cashel is a rock some three hundred feet high dropped down among the pastures along the northern
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL 103
edge of the Golden Vale of Tipperary. I do not know how the geologists explain it. How the Irish explain it I have told already. Its sides are of the steepest, and its flat top is about two acres in extent. In itself it is a natural fortress, and it was of course seized upon as such by the dim people who fought back and forth over the length and breadth of Ireland in the far ages before history begins. At first it was strengthened by a wall around the top. Any such defensive wall in Ireland is called a cashel, as one of earth is called a rath, and there are both raths and cashels all up and down the land, for forts have always been sorely needed there; but this is the Cashel above all others.
Buildings were put up inside the wall, rude at first, but gradually growing more elaborate, and when the real history of the place begins, say about fifteen cen- turies ago, it was already the seat of the Kings of Munster, that is of the southern half of Ireland. Hither about 450 came St. Patrick to convert the King and his household; it was while preaching here that he is said first to have plucked the trefoil or sham- rock to illustrate the principle of the Three-in-One ; Brian Boru strengthened its fortifications; and in 1 134 was consecrated here that wonderful chapel of Cormac McCarthy, King of Munster, which still endures as a most convincing demonstration of the beauty of old Irish architecture. Then a round tower was put up, and then a castle, and then a great cathedral, for King Murtough had granted the Rock to "the religious of Ireland," and the Archbishop of Cashel came, before long, to be nearly as powerful as the great Archbishop of Armagh; and then a monastery was built, and
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schools, under the sway first of the Benedictines and later of the Cistercians. All this made a stupendous group of buildings, a splendid and impressive symbol of Cashel's greatness.
But under Elizabeth, the scale turned. Dermot O'Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel, was taken prisoner and carried to Dublin and hanged. His successor, Milar Magrath, abjured his religion, under Elizabethan pressure, and to prove the sincerity of his Protestant- ism, married not once, but twice. From that time on, the place was used as a Protestant cathedral, un- til, in 1744, Archbishop Price succeeded to the see.
Now the Archbishop was a man who loved his ease, and though his palace was situated conveniently enough at the foot of the Rock, his church was perched most inconveniently upon it, and the only way even an archbishop could get to it was to walk. Price spent a lot of money trying to build a carriage road up the Rock, but finally he gave it up and procured from Par- liament an act decreeing that, whereas, "in several dioceses, cathedral churches are so incommodiously sit- uated that they cannot be resorted to for divine serv- ice," power should be given the chief governor, with assent of the privy council, to "remove the site of a cathedral church to some convenient parish church." Two years later, in 1749, an act was passed directing that the cathedral be removed from the Rock into the town. This was, of course, impossible in any but a metaphorical sense ; but, incredible as it may seem, since he couldn't remove it, Price determined to destroy it, secured from the government the loan of a regiment of soldiers, and set them to work tearing it down. They
Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
CASHEL OF THE KINGS
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL 105
stripped off the leaden roof, knocked in the vaulting, and left the place the ruin that it is to-day. It might be remarked, in passing, that here is one ruin "Crum- mell" didn't make. George II was King of England in 1749, and Cromwell had been dead nearly a hun- dred years.
I shall never forget my first glimpse of this stupen- dous pile of buildings, looming high in air, all turrets and towers, like those fairy palaces which Maxneld Parrish loves to paint. A short branch runs from Goold's Cross to Cashel, and it was from the windows of the rickety little train we peered, first on this side and then on that — and then, quite suddenly, away to the left, we saw the Rock, golden-grey, high against the sky, so fairy-like and ethereal that it seemed impossible it could be anything more than a wonderful vision or mirage. And then the train stopped, and we jumped out, and hurried from the station, and presently we were following the path around the Rock. But that was too slow, and with a simultaneous impulse we left the path and climbed the wall, and hastened up- ward over rock and heather, straight toward this new marvel. We skirted another wall, and climbed a stile — and then we were stopped by a high iron gate, se- cured with a chain and formidable padlock.
But we had scarcely time to feel the shock of dis- appointment, when we saw hastening upward toward us a sturdy old man, with weather-beaten face framed by a shock of reddish-grey hair and beard, and a mo- ment later we had the pleasure of meeting John Min- ogue, the caretaker — the most accomplished caretaker, I venture to say, in all the length and breadth of Ire-
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land. For, as we soon found, he has the history and legends and architectural peculiarities of Cashel at his tongue's end — he knows them intimately, accurately, in every detail, for he has lived with them all his life and loves them.
He unlocked the iron gate and ushered us in, and chased away the rabble of ragged children who had followed him up from the village ; and then began one of the most delightful experiences that I have ever had. I almost despair of attempting to describe it.
At our feet lay the Vale of Tipperary — an expanse of greenest green stretching unbroken to the foot of a great mountain-chain, the Galtees, thirty miles away. Farther to the north, we could just discern the gap of the Devil's Bit, beyond which lay Limerick and the Shannon. And then we walked to the other side of the Rock, and there, away in the distance, towered the great bulk of "queenly Slievenamon," the Moun- tain of Fair Women, and as we stood there gazing at it, John Minogue told us how it got its name.
It was in the days when Cormac son of Art was King of Erin, and Finn son of Cumhal, Finn the Fair, he of the High Deeds, — whose name I shall spell hereafter as it is pronounced, Finn MacCool — had been declared by birthright and by swordright Captain of that in- vincible brotherhood of fighting-men, the Fianna. Finn was past his youth, and had a comely son, Ossian the sweet singer; but at times his spirit hung heavy on him, for his wife was dead, and no man has peaceful slumber who is without a fitting mate. So he looked about for one to share his bed, but found it hard to choose, for there were many fine women in Erin; and
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL 107
at last in his perplexity he sat himself down on the summit of Slievenamon, and said that all who wished might run a race from the bottom to the top, and she who won should be his wife. So it was done, and the race was won by Grainne, daughter of the great Cormac himself. The feast was set for a fortnight later, in the king's hall at Tara — and what happened there we shall hear later on.
We might have been standing yet upon the Rock, gazing out across that marvellous valley, if John Minogue had not dragged us away to see the wonders of the place. Not the least of them is the weather- beaten stone cross, with the crucifixion on one side and an effigy of St. Patrick on the other, which stands just outside the castle entrance, on the rude pedestal where the Kings of Munster were crowned in the old, old days. Here it was, perhaps, that St. Patrick himself stood when he stooped to pluck the trefoil, and that King ^Engus was baptised. Legend has it that, as he was performing that ceremony, the Saint, without knowing it, drove the spiked end of his crozier through the King's foot. ^Engus said never a word, nor made complaint, thinking it part of the rite; but when the Saint went to take up his crozier and saw what he had done, he blessed the King and promised that none of that royal stock should die of wounds forever. Per- haps the promise was not "forever," for, five centuries later, Brian Boru, the greatest of them all, was killed in battle at Clontarf, as I have told.
But the greatest wonder of all at Cashel is the jewel of a chapel built by Cormac and standing as firm to- day as when its stones were laid, eight centuries ago.
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It nestles in between the choir and south transept of the later cathedral, and its entrance is the most mag- nificent doorway of its kind existing anywhere on this earth.
It is round-headed, as in all Irish Romanesque, with five deep mouldings rich in dog-tooth and lozenge orna- mentation, and though it is battered and weather-worn, it is still most beautiful and impressive.
Inside, the chapel is divided into nave and chancel, both very small, but decorated with a richness and massiveness almost oppressive — twisted columns, ar- caded walls, dog-tooth mouldings, rounded arches, traceried surfaces, sculptured capitals, and I know not what beside. Facing the choir is a stone sarcophagus, beautifully ornamented with characteristic Celtic ser- pent work, as may be seen in the photograph. It is called "King Cormac's Coffin." It was in the small apartment over the nave and under the steep stone roof that Cormac was struck down by an assassin, as he knelt in prayer.
It was something of a relief to get out into the high, roofless cathedral, where one feels at liberty to draw a deep breath. The cathedral is rich with sculptures, too; but I shall not attempt to describe them. I can only hope that it may be your fortune to visit the place, some day, and have John Minogue to take you round. But, let me warn you, he does not waste himself on the unsympathetic. While we stood admiring the sculp- tures of St. Patrick and St. Brigid and eleven of the apostles, in the north transept (the sculptor omitted St. Matthew for some unknown reason; or perhaps our guide told me why and I have forgotten) ; as we stood
HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL 109
there gazing in delight at these inimitable figures, a party of four or five entered the church, and stood star- ing vacantly about.
"See here, Mr. Minogue," I said, after a time, "we can amuse ourselves for a while, if you'd like to look after those other people."
Minogue shot one glance at them.
"No," he said; "they're not worth it. Now come — I must show you the round tower."
A beauty the tower is, with walls four feet thick, built of great blocks of stone, and a little round- headed doorway, twelve feet above the ground. It stands eighty-five feet high, and is wonderfully pre- served; but when we looked up it from the inside, we saw that the old masons did not succeed in getting it quite true.
It was an hour later — or perhaps two hours later — that we emerged again from the iron gate, and found the rabble of children still waiting. They closed in on us at once, murmuring something in a queer half- mumble, half-whisper, of which we could not under- stand a word.
"What is it they're saying?" we asked.
"They're saying," explained Minogue, "that if your honour will toss a penny amongst them, they will fight for it; or, if you'd rather, they will put up a prayer for you, so that you will get safe home again. They don't consider that begging, you see, since they offer some return for the money."
And then, as they hustled us more closely, he turned and shouted something at them — some magic incanta-
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tion, I fancy, for they scurried away as though the devil was after them. I regretted, afterwards, that I had not asked him for the formula — but in the end, we found one of our own, as you shall hear.
Our guide insisted that we go down with him to his house and see his books, and write our names in his album, and have a cup of tea. He lived in an ivy- covered cottage, just under the Rock, and his old wife came out to welcome us; and we sat and talked and wrote our names and looked at his books — one had been given him by Stephen Gwynne, and others by other writers whose names I have forgotten ; but the treasure of his library was a huge volume, carefully wrapped against possible soiling, which, when unwrapped, proved to be a copy of Arthur Champneys' "Irish Ec- clesiastical Architecture," and with gleaming face our host turned to the preface and showed us where Champ- neys acknowledged his indebtedness for much valuable assistance to John Minogue, of the Rock of Cashel.
We bade him good-bye, at last, and made our way down through the quaint little town, which snuggles against one side of the Rock — a town of narrow, crooked streets, and thatched houses, and friendly women leaning over their half-doors, and multitudi- nous children ; but the most vivid memory I have of it, is of the pleasant tang of turf smoke in the air. And presently we came out again upon the road leading to the station.
From the top of the Rock we had seen, in the middle of a field not far away, a ruin which seemed very ex- tensive, and Minogue told us that it was Hore Abbey, a Cistercian monastery built about 1272, but had added
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that it was scarcely worth visiting after Cashel. That was perhaps true — few ruins can compare with Cashel — but when we saw the grey bulk of the old abbey looming above the wall at our left, we decided to get to it, if we could.
It required some resolution, for the way thither lay across a very wet and muddy pasture, with grass knee- high in places, and Betty would probably have de- clined to venture but for the assurance that there are no snakes in Ireland. The nearer we got to the ruin, the worse the going grew, but we finally scrambled in- side over a broken wall, and sat down on a block of fallen masonry to look about us.
The mist, which had been thickening for the last half hour, had, almost imperceptibly, turned to rain, and this was mizzling softly down, shrouding everything as with a pearly veil, and adding a beauty and sense of mystery to the place which it may have lacked at other times. But it seemed to us singularly impressive, with its narrow lancet windows, and plain, square pillars. Such vaulting as remains, at the crossing and in the chapels, is very simple, and the whole church was evidently built with a dignity and severity of detail which modern builders might well imitate. It seems a shame that it is not kept in better order and a decent approach built to it; but I suppose the Board of Works, whose duty it is to care for Irish ruins, finds itself over- burdened with the multiplicity of them.
We sat there absorbing the centuries-old atmosphere, until a glance at my watch told me that we must hurry if we would catch our train. We did hurry, though with many a backward glance, for one is reluctant to
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leave a beautiful place which one may never see again ; but we caught the train, and the last glimpse we had of Cashel was as of some gigantic magic palace, sus- pended in air and shrouded in mist.
CHAPTER VIII
ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY
IT was getting on toward evening when we caught our train on the main line at Goold's Cross. The storm had swept southward, and the hills there were masked with rain, but the Golden Vale had emerged from its baptism more lush, more green, more dazzling than ever. We left it behind, at last, plunged into a wood of lofty and magnificent trees, and paused at Limerick Junction, with its great echoing train-shed and wide network of tracks and switches. Beyond the Junction, one gets from the train a splendid view of the pictur- esque Gal tees, the highest mountains in the south of Ireland, fissured and gullied and folded into deep ra- vines in the most romantic way.
The train had been comparatively empty thus far, and we had rejoiced in a compartment to ourselves; but as we drew into the station at Charleville, we were astonished to see a perfect mob of people crowding the platform, with more coming up every minute. The instant the train stopped, the mob snatched open the doors and swept into it like a tidal wave. When the riot subsided a bit, we found that four men and two girls were crowded in with us, and the corridor out- side was jammed with people standing up. We asked the cause of the excitement, and were told that there had been a race-meeting at Charleville, which had at- tracted a great crowd from all over the south-eastern
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part of Ireland, especially from Cork, thirty-five miles away.
Our companions soon got to chaffing each other, and it developed that all of them, even the two girls, had been betting on the races, and I inferred that they had all lost every cent they had. It was assumed, as a matter of course, that nobody would go to a race-meet- ing without putting something on the horses; it was also assumed that every normal man and woman would make almost any sacrifice to get to a meeting; and there was a lively discussion as to possible ways and means of attending another meeting which was to be held somewhere in the neighbourhood the following week. And finally, it was apparent that everybody present had contemplated the world through the bottom of a glass more than once that day. As I looked at them and listened to them, I began to understand the cause of at least a portion of Irish poverty.
It was a good-humoured crowd, in spite of its re- verses, and when a girl with a tambourine piped up a song, she was loudly encouraged to go on and even managed to collect a few pennies, found unexpectedly in odd pockets. Then one of the men in our compart- ment told a story; I have forgotten what it was about, but it was received uproariously; and then everybody talked at once as loud as possible, and the clatter was deafening.
We were glad when we got to Cork.
Cork is superficially a sort of smaller Dublin. It has one handsome thoroughfare, approached by a hand- some bridge, and the rest of the town is composed for
ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY 115
the most part of dirty lanes between ugly houses. In Dublin, the principal street and bridge are dedicated to O'Connell; in Cork both bridge and street are named after St. Patrick — that is about the only difference, except that Cork lacks that atmosphere of charm and culture which makes Dublin so attractive.
We took a stroll about the streets, that Saturday night after dinner, and found them thronged with peo- ple, as at Dublin; but here there was a large admix- ture of English soldiers and sailors, come up from Queenstown to celebrate. Many of them had girls on their arms, and those who had not were evidently hoping to have, and the impression one got was that Cork suffers a good deal from the evils of a garrison town. There is a tradition that the girls of Cork are unusually lovely; but I fear it is onty a tradition. Or perhaps the lovely ones stay at home on Saturday night.
Sunday dawned clear and bright, and as soon as we had breakfasted, we set out for the most famous spot in the vicinity of Cork, and perhaps in all Ireland, Blarney Castle. Undoubtedly the one Irish tradition which is known everywhere is that of the blarney stone ; "blarney" itself has passed into the language as a noun, an adjective, and a verb; and the old tower of which the stone is a part has been pictured so often that its appearance is probably better known than that of any other ruin in Europe. Blarney is about five miles from Cork, and the easiest way of getting there is by the light railway, which runs close beside a pretty stream, in which, this bright morning, many fishermen were trying their luck. And at last, high above the trees,
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we saw the rugged keep which is all that is left of the old castle. Almost at once the train stopped at the station, which is just outside the entrance to the castle grounds.
"The Groves of Blarney" are still charming, though they have changed greatly since the day when Richard Milliken wrote his famous song in praise of them. There were grottoes and beds of flowers, and terraces and rustic bowers there then, and statues of heathen gods and nymphs so fair all standing naked in the open air; but misfortune overtook the castle's owner and
The muses shed a tear when the cruel auctioneer, With his hammer in his hand, to sweet Blarney came.
So the statues vanished, together with the grottoes and the terraces; but the sweet silent brook still ripples through the grounds, and its banks are covered with daisies and buttercups, and guarded by giant beeches. Very lovely it is, so that one loiters to watch the danc- ing water, even with Blarney Castle close at hand.
Approached thus, the massive donjon tower, set on a cliff and looming a hundred and twenty feet into the air, is most impressive. To the left is a lower and more ornamental fragment of the old castle, which, in its day, was the strongest in all Munster. Cormac Mc- Carthy built it in the fifteenth century as a defence against the English, and it was held by the Irish until Cromwell's army besieged and captured it. Around the top of the tower is a series of machicolations, or openings between supporting corbels, through which the besieged, in the old days, could drop stones and
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pour molten lead and red-hot ashes and such-like things down upon the assailants, and it is in the sill of one of these openings that the famous Blarney stone is fixed.
Legend has it that, once upon a time, in the spring of the year when the waters were running high, Cor- mac McCarthy was returning home through the black- ness of the night, and when he put his horse at the last ford, he thought for a moment he would be swept away, so swift and deep was the current. But his horse managed to keep its feet, and just as it was scrambling out upon the farther bank, McCarthy heard a scream from the darkness behind him, and then a woman's voice crying for help. So he dashed back into the stream, and after a fearful struggle, dragged the woman to safety.
In the dim light, McCarthy could see only that she was old and withered; but her eyes gleamed like a cat's when she looked at him; and she called down blessings upon him for his courage, and bade him, when he got home, go out upon the battlement and kiss a certain stone, whose location she described to him. Thereupon she vanished, and so McCarthy knew it was a witch he had rescued. Next morning, he went out upon the battlement and found the stone and kissed it, and thereafter was endowed with an eloquence so sweet and persuasive that no man or woman could re- sist it.
Such is the legend, and it may have had its origin in the soft, delutherin speeches with which Dermot Mc- Carthy put off the English, when they called upon him to surrender his castle. Certain it is that it was fixed
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finally and firmly in the popular mind by the stanza which Father Prout added to Milliken's song:
There is a stone there, that whoever kisses
Oh! he never misses to grow eloquent. 'Tis he may clamber to a lady's chamber,
Or become a member of Parliament. A clever spouter he'll sure turn out, or
An out and outer, to be let alone ; Don't hope to hinder him, or to bewilder him,
Sure he's a pilgrim from the Blarney Stone.
And ever since then, troops of pilgrims have thronged to Blarney to kiss the stone.
The top of the tower is reached by a narrow stair- case which goes round and round in the thickness of the wall, with narrow loopholes of windows here and there looking out upon the beautiful country, and a door at every level giving access to the great, square interior. The floors have all fallen in and there is only the blue sky for roof, but the graceful old fireplaces still remain and some traces of ornamentation, and the ancient walls, eighteen feet thick in places, and with mortar as hard as the rock, are wonderful to see; and finally you come out upon the battlemented parapet, with miles and miles of Ireland at your feet.
But it wasn't to gaze at the view we had come to Blarney Castle, it was to kiss the stone, and we went at once to look for it. It was easy enough to find, for, on top of the battlement above it, a row of tall iron spikes has been set, and the stone itself is tied into the wall by iron braces, for one of Cromwell's cannon-balls al- most dislodged it, and it is worn and polished by the
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application of thousands of lips. But to kiss it — well, that is another story!
For the sill of which the stone forms a part is some two feet lower than the level of the walk around the parapet, and, to get to it, there is a horrid open space some three feet wide to span, and below that open space is a sheer drop of a hundred and twenty feet to the ground below. When one looks down through it, all that one can see are the waving tree-tops far, far beneath. There is just one way to accomplish the feat, and that is to lie down on your back, while somebody grasps your ankles, and then permit yourself to be shoved backward and downward across the abyss until your mouth is underneath the sill.
Betty and I looked at the stone and at the yawning chasm and then at each other; and then we went away and sat down in a corner of the battlement to think it over.
We had supposed that there would be some expe- rienced guides on hand, anxious to earn sixpence by assisting at the rite, as there had been at St. Kevin's bed; but the tower was deserted, save for ourselves.
"Well," said Betty, at last, "there's one thing cer- tain— I'm not going away from here until I've kissed that stone. I'd be ashamed to go home without kiss- ing it."
"So would I," I agreed; "but I'd prefer that to hang- ing head downward over that abyss. Anyway, I won't take the responsibility of holding you by the heels while you do it. Perhaps some one will come up, after awhile, to help."
So we looked at the scenery and talked of various
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things; but all either of us thought about was kissing the stone, and we touched on it incidentally now and then, and then shied away from it, and pretended to think of something else. Presently we heard voices on the stair, and a man and two women emerged on the parapet. We waited, but they didn't approach the stone, they just looked around at the landscape; and finally Betty inquired casually if they were going to kiss the Blarney stone.
"Kiss the Blarney stone 2" echoed the man, who was an Englishman. "I should think not! It's altogether too risky!"
"But it seems a shame to go away without kissing it," Betty protested.
"Yes, it does," the other agreed; "but I was here once before, and I fought that all out then. It's really just a silly old legend, you know — nobody believes
it!"
Now to my mind silly old legends are far more worthy of belief than most things, but it would be folly to say so to an Englishman. So the conversation dropped, and presently he and his companions went away, and Betty and I sat down again and renewed our conversation.
And then again we heard voices, and this time it was two American women, well along in years. They asked us if we knew which was the Blarney stone, and we hastened to point it out to them, and explained the process of kissing it. There were postcards illustrat- ing the process on sale at the entrance, and we had studied them attentively before we came in, so that we knew the theory of it quite well.
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"We were just sitting here trying to screw up cour- age to do it," Betty added.
The newcomers looked at the stone, and then at the abyss.
"Well, /'// never do it!" they exclaimed simultane- ously, and they contented themselves with throwing a kiss at it; and then they went away, and Betty and I, both rather pale around the gills, continued to talk of ships and shoes and sealing-wax. But I saw in her eyes that somehow or other she was going to kiss the stone.
And then a tall, thin man came up the stair, and lie asked us where the stone was, and we showed him, and he looked at it, and then he glanced down into the intervening gulf, and drew back with a shudder.
"Not for me," he said. "Not— for— me !"
"We've come all the way from America," said Betty, "and we simply can't go away until we've kissed it."
"Well, I've come all the way from New Zealand, madam," said the man, "but I wouldn't think for a minute of risking my life like that."
"It used to be a good deal more dangerous than it is now," I pointed out, as much for my own benefit as for his. "They used to take people by the ankles and hold them upside down outside