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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Charm of Ireland, by Burton Egbert
+Stevenson
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Charm of Ireland
+
+
+Author: Burton Egbert Stevenson
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 8, 2011  [eBook #35529]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHARM OF IRELAND***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Emmy, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
+available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the numerous original illustrations.
+      See 35529-h.htm or 35529-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35529/35529-h/35529-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35529/35529-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/charmofireland00stevuoft
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      An o with a macron is represented in the text by [=o].
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CHARM OF IRELAND
+
+
+[Illustration: TWO TINY CONNAUGHT TOILERS
+
+_See page 356_]
+
+
+THE CHARM OF IRELAND
+
+by
+
+BURTON E. STEVENSON
+
+Author of "The Spell of Holland," "The Mystery of the Boule
+Cabinet," etc.
+
+With Many Illustrations from Photographs by the Author
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Dodd, Mead and Company
+1914
+
+Copyright, 1914
+By Dodd, Mead & Company
+
+
+
+
+             _TO_
+
+           J. I. B.
+
+          _THIS BOOK_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                         PAGE
+       I DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT                     1
+      II LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF AN ANCIENT CAPITAL    9
+     III THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN                    26
+      IV ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK               42
+       V THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN                   59
+      VI DROGHEDA THE DREARY                        85
+     VII HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL OF THE KINGS         97
+    VIII ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY                     113
+      IX CUSHLA MA CHREE                           128
+       X THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE               139
+      XI A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND                 153
+     XII THE "GRAND TOUR"                          177
+    XIII ROUND ABOUT KILLARNEY                     192
+     XIV O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR              203
+      XV THE RUINS AT ADARE                        224
+     XVI "WHERE THE RIVER SHANNON FLOWS"           242
+    XVII LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE                   265
+   XVIII GALWAY OF THE TRIBES                      292
+     XIX IAR CONNAUGHT                             314
+      XX JOYCE'S COUNTRY                           339
+     XXI THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM                    358
+    XXII THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR                 375
+   XXIII THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS                   398
+    XXIV THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE                 415
+     XXV THE MAIDEN CITY                           438
+    XXVI THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH                    458
+   XXVII THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS                  472
+  XXVIII THE GLENS OF ANTRIM                       485
+    XXIX BELFAST                                   503
+     XXX THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK                  519
+    XXXI THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE                   534
+   XXXII THE END OF THE PILGRIMAGE                 559
+         INDEX                                     567
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  Two Tiny Connaught Toilers                  _Frontispiece_
+                                                    FACING
+                                                     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                                   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
+  The Shannon, near World's End                      248
+  St. Senan's Well                                   248
+  The Bridge at Killaloe                             258
+  The Oratory at Killaloe                            258
+  Entrance to St. Molua's Oratory                    262
+  A Fisherman's Home                                 262
+  The Choir of the Abbey at Athenry                  270
+  A Cottage at Athenry                               270
+  The Goldsmith Rectory at Lissoy                    276
+  The "Three Jolly Pigeons"                          276
+  On the Road to Clonmacnoise                        288
+  St. Kieran's Cathair, Clonmacnoise                 288
+  The Market at Galway                               296
+  "Ould Saftie"                                      296
+  The Claddagh, Galway                               300
+  A Claddagh Home                                    300
+  A Galway Vista                                     302
+  The Memorial of a Spartan Father                   302
+  The Connemara Marble Quarry                        322
+  A Connemara Home                                   322
+  In "Joyce's Country"                               344
+  On the Shore of Lough Mask                         344
+  The Cloister at Cong Abbey                         348
+  The Monks' Fishing-house, Cong Abbey               348
+  The Turf-Cutters                                   356
+  A Girl of "Joyce's Country"                        356
+  Cromlechs at Carrowmore                            392
+  Sligo Abbey from the Cloister                      400
+  The Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis                            400
+  A Ruin on the Shore of Lough Gill                  402
+  The Last Fragment of an Ancient Stronghold         402
+  A Cashel near Dromahair                            408
+  St. Patrick's Holy Well                            408
+  The Coast at Bundoran                              416
+  The Home of "Colleen Bawn"                         416
+  Birthplace of William Allingham                    430
+  Castle Donegal                                     430
+  The Walls of Derry                                 466
+  The Grainan of Aileach                             466
+  The "Giant's Head," near Portrush                  480
+  The Ruins of Dunluce Castle                        480
+  The Giant's Causeway                               482
+  The Cliffs beyond the Causeway                     482
+  The Grave of Ossian                                496
+  An Antrim Landscape                                496
+  A Humble Home in Antrim                            498
+  The Old Jail at Cushendall                         498
+  The City Hall, Belfast                             516
+  High Street, Belfast                               516
+  The Grave of Patrick, Brigid and Columba           522
+  The Old Cross at Downpatrick                       522
+  The Great Rath at Downpatrick                      526
+  The Inner and Outer Circles                        526
+  The Central Mound                                  526
+  The Eye Well at Struell                            528
+  The Well of Sins at Struell                        528
+  The Birthplace of John Boyle O'Reilly              540
+  Entrance to Dowth Tumulus                          540
+  Entrance to Newgrange                              546
+  The Ruins of Mellifont                             546
+  The Round Tower, Monasterboice                     554
+  The High Cross, Monasterboice                      554
+  Muiredach's Cross, Monasterboice                   556
+
+
+
+
+THE CHARM OF IRELAND
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT
+
+
+TWILIGHT was at hand when the little steamer, slender as a greyhound,
+cast loose from the pier at Holyhead, made its way cautiously out past
+the breakwater, and then, gathering speed, headed away across the Irish
+Sea, straight toward the setting sun.
+
+The boat showed many evidences that the Irish Sea can be savage when it
+chooses. Everything movable about the decks was carefully lashed down;
+there were railings and knotted ropes everywhere to cling to; and in the
+saloon the table-racks were set ready at hand, as though they had just
+been used, and might be needed again at any moment. But, on this
+Saturday evening in late May, the sea was in a pleasant, even a jovial,
+mood, with just enough swell to send a thin shower of spray across the
+deck from time to time, and lend exhilaration to the rush of the fleet
+little turbine.
+
+There were many boats in sight--small ones, for the most part, rolling
+and pitching apparently much worse than we; and then the gathering
+darkness obscured them one by one, and presently all that was left of
+them were the bobbing white lights at their mastheads. A biting chill
+crept into the air, and Betty finally sought refuge from it in the
+saloon, while I made my way back to the smoking-room, hoping for a
+friendly pipe with some one.
+
+I was attracted at once by a rosy-faced old priest, 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 long?"
+
+"More than thirty years," he said, and took a few reflective puffs.
+
+"No doubt you will find many changes," I ventured.
+
+But he shook his head. "I am thinking I shall find Tuam much as I left
+it," he said. "There are not many changes in Ireland, even in thirty
+years. 'Tis not like America. I am afraid I shall have to give up
+smoking while I am there," he added, with a little sigh.
+
+"Give up smoking?" I echoed. "But 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 companion laughed when I told
+him this.
+
+"That is not so at all," he said. "Every priest, of 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 anything 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 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 exhilaration, in setting
+foot for the first time in any country; 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 before our eyes that we
+crossed the pier and sought seats in the boat-train.
+
+It is only five or six miles from Kingstown to Dublin, 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 collected 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 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 gintleman. 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 sixpence--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 celebrated Saturday evening by taking a glass too much.
+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 uplifted, 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, swinging 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 Sackville Street, without pausing, and
+continued at top speed straight ahead. We followed him for some moments;
+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 protested. "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?"
+
+"You see, sir, I'm a stranger in Dublin, like yourself," he explained.
+
+"Well, why on earth didn't you say so?" I demanded.
+
+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.
+
+"What name was it you gave this street, sir?" he asked, at last.
+
+"Sackville Street," I answered, and pointed for confirmation 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 certainly 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
+misery. Cleanliness is perhaps as painful to a person reared in dirt as
+dirt is to a person reared in cleanliness; 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.
+
+[Illustration: DUBLIN CASTLE
+
+© Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.]
+
+[Illustration: O'CONNELL, ALIAS SACKVILLE STREET, DUBLIN]
+
+These appalling alleys are always in the background of my thoughts of
+Dublin; and yet it is not them I see 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 portico 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 l'Opera
+when one thinks of Paris, or the Dam and the Kalverstraat when one
+thinks of Amsterdam, 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 almost at once by two things: the unusual height of
+Dublin 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-possessed. 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 impatient.
+
+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'Connell 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
+another leaf to O'Connell's crown of laurel. O'Connell 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 memorial of another
+patriot--Charles Stewart Parnell. Parnell's fame burns brighter and
+clearer with the passing years, and this memorial, so simple, so
+dignified, and yet so full of meaning, is one which no American can
+contemplate without a thrill of pride, for it is the work of Augustus
+Saint-Gaudens--a consummate artist, American to the marrow, though
+Dublin-born, of a French father and an Irish mother.
+
+Midway of this great thoroughfare, rises the Nelson Pillar--a fluted
+column springing a hundred and fifty feet into the air, dominating the
+whole town. I do not understand why Nelson should have been so signally
+honoured in the Irish capital, for there was nothing Irish about him,
+either in birth or temperament. Perhaps that is the reason. Stranger
+things have happened in Ireland. And indeed it is no stranger than the
+whim which set another statue to face the old Parliament House--a gilded
+atrocity representing William 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 which forms the heart of Dublin; but
+meanwhile everybody 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 reminds 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 granite structure with
+curving façade 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 century 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 that not even independence can bring it
+back to Dublin.
+
+It was the Irish House of Commons which, in 1752, provided the funds for
+the new home of Trinity College, 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 posing before fine London ladies; and
+Mangan had this reward, 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:
+          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 handsome, wide-flung
+building with a court in front, once the mansion of the Duke of
+Leinster, but now occupied 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 enclosed 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 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 presentments 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 picture gallery well
+worth a visit. This is the Municipal Gallery, housed in a beautiful old
+mansion in Harcourt Street--another memorial of spacious eighteenth
+century days, where that famous judge and duellist, Lord Clonmell,
+lived. The house itself would be worth seeing, even if there were no
+pictures in it, for it is a splendid example of Georgian domestic
+architecture; but there are, besides some beautiful examples of the
+Barbizon school, a number of modern Irish paintings which promise much
+for the future of Irish art.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day was so bright and warm that it seemed a pity to spend the whole
+of it in town, so, after lunch, we took a tram for the Hill of Howth.
+Most of the tram lines of the city start from the Nelson Pillar, so we
+had only to cross the street to the starting point.
+
+There seems to be a considerable difference of opinion as to the correct
+pronunciation of "Howth." Perhaps 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 Connaught escaped the stigma. At any rate, when
+I asked a policeman which tram to take for Howth, I pronounced 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 yonder."
+
+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 Europe,
+the fare is gauged by the length of the journey.
+
+"To the Hill of Hooth," I answered proudly.
+
+"Ah, the Hill of H[=o]th, is it," he said, making it rhyme with "both,"
+and he picked out the correct tickets 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 suspect that "H[=o]th" 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 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 marshalled 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, somewhere 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
+alliance, 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.
+
+In the intervals of this warfare, he devoted himself to setting his
+kingdom in order, and to such good purpose 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 Clontarf 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.
+
+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 ancient yew, and
+tradition says that it was under this tree that Brian's body was laid by
+his men. The tradition 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 suddenly
+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 running around the base of
+the hill and facing the harbour and the Irish Sea. The harbour is
+enclosed by impressive piers of granite, and was once a busy place, for
+it was the Dublin packet station until Kingstown superseded 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 sunlight, 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
+tumbledown buildings at the corner as the home of the caretaker. 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 enraptured 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 legitimately 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. 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
+façade. The interior, as he remodelled it, consisted of a nave and one
+aisle, separated by three pointed arches. They are still there, very low
+and rude, marking the length of the Archbishop'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 doorway 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.
+
+[Illustration: RUINS OF ST. MARY'S ABBEY, HOWTH]
+
+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 recumbent figures of the knight and his lady, the former's feet
+resting, after the usual fashion, on his dog. Considering the
+vicissitudes of weather and vandalism through which they have passed,
+both figures are surprisingly 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 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 towers, 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 Saturdays. 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-uniformed 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.
+
+"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 surprise.
+
+"Ah, I have, sir, many times, in the moving-pictures," 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
+sanguinary 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 employed in fighting Indians and rescuing
+damsels in distress. 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 remarkable 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 fashion, while the crowd stares
+fascinated. It is exhausting 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, members 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 Ireland--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 remarked cheerfully, as we
+turned to go in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN
+
+
+DUBLIN is by far the most fascinating town in Ireland. 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 absorbing 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 two seats back to back, facing outwards,
+and a foot-rest overhanging each wheel.
+
+Opposite the next page is a series of post-card pictures 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 mountain-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 sitting 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 inventive 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 enlargement 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 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE EVOLUTION OF THE JAUNTING CAR]
+
+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 visitor will never have occasion to
+mean motor unless he owns one, for, outside of the trams in a few of
+the 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
+millionaire, one must be careful to bargain in advance. Once the bargain
+is concluded, your jarvey is the most agreeable 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 a corner at
+top-speed. He usually does it on one wheel, and the person on the
+outside seat has the feeling 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 impressive 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 Brewery, furnished the money. Like
+all the other old religious establishments, it was taken from the
+Catholics in the time of Henry VIII and given to his Established
+Church--the Episcopal Church, here called the Church of Ireland--and has
+remained in its possession ever since, though the church itself was
+disestablished some forty years ago.
+
+By far the most interesting fact about St. Patrick's is that Jonathan
+Swift was for thirty-two years its Dean, and now lies buried there
+beside that "Stella" whom he made immortal. A brass in the pavement
+marks the spot where they lie side by side, and on the wall not far away
+is the marble slab which enshrines the epitaph he himself wrote. It is
+in Latin, and may be Englished thus:
+
+          Jonathan Swift, for thirty years Dean of this
+          Cathedral, lies here, where savage indignation can
+          no longer tear his heart. Go, traveller, and, if
+          you can, imitate him who played a man's part as
+          the champion of liberty.
+
+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 before 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 declined to contribute
+anything toward its cost; whereupon Swift and his Chapter put up this
+slab, paying tribute to the hero's virtues, and adding that his valour
+was more revered by strangers than by his own kindred.
+
+There are many other curious and interesting monuments in the place,
+well worth inspecting, but I shall refer to only one of them--the one
+which started the feud that sent Strafford to the scaffold. It is a
+towering 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 unidentified 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, 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 anything to cook and
+eat; sitting there through the long hours; sleeping there through the
+foul nights; awaking there each morning to another hopeless day of
+misery. Think how impossible it is to be clean or decent amid such
+surroundings. Small wonder self-respect 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 foulness as this is perhaps the one
+thing our civilisation has most reason to be ashamed of!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dublin Castle is interesting only because of its history. It was here,
+by what was then the ford across the Liffey just above the tideway, that
+the Danish invaders 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 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 mediæval 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 accept a tip--will
+show you through the state apartments, 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 equality, are busts of Dean Swift and St.
+Peter, while over the east one Brian Boru occupies an exalted place
+between St. Patrick and the Virgin Mary, while on the corbels of the
+window-arches the heads of ninety sovereigns 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 Dublin. The Danes founded it in 1038; then
+came Strongbow, who built an English cathedral atop the rude Danish
+church, which is now the crypt, and his transepts and one bay of his
+choir still survive. There were various additions and rebuildings, after
+that, but in 1569 the bog on which the Cathedral is built moved under
+its weight, the entire south wall of the nave and the vaulted roof fell
+in, and the debris lay where 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 distilling are the only
+industries which have flourished in Dublin since the Act of Union. All
+others have decayed 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 interesting thing in it is the tomb
+of Strongbow. Richard de Clare his name was, second Earl of Pembroke,
+and it was to him, so legend says, that Dermot MacMurrough, King of
+Leinster, appealed for aid, in 1166, after he had been driven from his
+kingdom and compelled to restore to Tiernan O'Rourke, Prince of Breffni,
+Dervorgilla--otherwise Mrs. O'Rourke--with whom he had eloped. It wasn't
+the lady that Dermot wanted--it was revenge, and, most of all, his
+kingdom--we shall hear more of this story later on--and Strongbow
+readily agreed to assist. He needed little persuasion, for the Normans
+had been looking longingly 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 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 believe!
+
+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. Almost 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 fortunate 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 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 masterpieces 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 carvings 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; perhaps 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, especially 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 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 Moundbuilders, so common in
+our part of Ohio. Then comes the Bronze Age, with a magnificent
+collection of ornaments of hammered gold, and some extraordinarily
+interesting 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 antiquities: that is, all
+the objects of art, as well as of domestic 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, Ireland was Pagan; after
+the Norman conquest, she was crushed and broken. It was during these
+eight hundred years, while the rest of Europe was struggling in
+ignorance and misery through the Dark Ages, that Ireland 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 bells used by the early Irish saints in the celebration 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 recovered 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 enshrine 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 religiously through the long centuries. The last Abbot died
+about a hundred years ago, and the museum acquired 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 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 Ireland, there lived an artist capable of producing
+a masterpiece like this.
+
+[Illustration: THE CROSS OF CONG]
+
+[Illustration: THE SHRINE OF ST. PATRICK'S BELL]
+
+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 preserved 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 parchment, and each of
+its pages is framed with exquisite tracery and ornamentation, and with a
+beautiful 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 patterns. 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 costumes! 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 tremendous 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 Dublin, 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 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 delightful 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
+principal 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 peculiarly Irish institution. For these
+tall towers of stone, resembling nothing so much as gigantic chimneys,
+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 toward the top in a way which shows the high
+skill of their builders. That they were well-built their survival
+through the centuries attests. The narrow entrance 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 controversy. Different
+antiquarians have believed them to be fire-temples of the Druids,
+phallic emblems, astronomical observatories, anchorite towers or
+penitential prisons. 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
+pillaging 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 small bells of those days, hung a
+hundred feet above the ground in a chamber with only four tiny openings,
+would be all but inaudible. As watch-towers they were ineffective, for
+the enemy had only to advance 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 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. 'Tis the true shamrock, miss," and she broke off a
+spray for each of us.
+
+Let me say here that she knew perfectly well Betty was a married woman;
+her first question had been as to our relationship. But all over
+Ireland, women, whether married or single, are habitually addressed as
+"miss," just as, conversely, in France they are addressed 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 ourselves 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
+outdoors, a group in this corner and a group in that. The small children
+were being taught by older ones, 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 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 asking 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 the Rock of Cashel,
+in his missionary journeyings over Ireland, and at once went to work to
+convert Ængus 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 assembled 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 illustration, 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 nowadays 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 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
+remember 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 disclaimed 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 friendliness.
+
+"Is it a car your honour would be wantin'?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," I said. "How did you know?"
+
+"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 telegraph-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 disbursed 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 shillings a week, receives five shillings
+weekly from the 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 surprisingly large number of people
+there whose income is under ten shillings and whose years exceed
+threescore 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, 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 encumbrance, and whenever a marriage contract was made or
+a division of the property, it was always carefully stipulated who
+should look after them. Naturally in a land where a man was hard put to
+it to provide 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 workhouses 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 England, in
+the past, has dealt with Irish problems,--the whole Irish problem, as
+some protest, is merely the result of a stupid people trying to govern a
+clever one!
+
+About eighty years ago, England realised that something must be done for
+the Irish poor. Irish industries 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 alternatives, 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 country, 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
+instance, 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. 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, workhouses and jails alike will be transformed into schools
+and factories, and Irish money will be spent in brightening 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 wandered forth to find the Samaritan who
+had offered to take us to the station; and finally we saw him standing
+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
+parish 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, wondering if we would better enter.
+
+"Come in, sir; come in, miss!" cried our new-found friend. "The Father
+is away from home the day, worse luck, but he'd never forgive me if I
+didn't make you welcome."
+
+"Oh, then you're the gardener," I said.
+
+"Sure, I'm everything, sir," and he hustled us up the path, his face
+beaming with happiness. "And how grieved His Riverence will be when he
+comes back and learns that he missed you. If he was anywhere near, I'd
+have gone for him at once, but he went to Dublin to the conference and
+he won't be back till evenin'. He's a grand man, God bless him, and has
+travelled all over the world, and it's himself would 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 scarlet 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 cutting. "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.
+
+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
+carrying.
+
+"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 beauties 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.
+
+Betty and I were the only ones who descended at Rathdrum, that day, and
+we were glad, for it is peculiarly 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 suddenly emerged high above the lovely
+Vale of Clara. Far down, so far it seemed the merest ribbon, the
+Avonmore 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
+vanquished on the highest slopes by the low, closely-growing 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. "Unprofitably 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 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, breaking 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 intervals 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
+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 pronounced almost
+exactly like the Scotch "loch." Glendalough 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 converted 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, touching 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 nettles, and cooled the damsel's ardour by
+beating her with a branch of them, whereupon she asked his pardon 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 betook 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.
+
+          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 lakeside,
+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 disturbed. 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 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 rapidly 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 Ireland.
+
+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 unimpeachable
+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 nestling
+between. In the foreground lay the ruins of the seven churches, with the
+round tower rising high above 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, under the
+shadow of the hills, and so to the little inn where we were to have
+lunch.
+
+[Illustration: © Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
+
+GLENDALOUGH AND THE RUINS OF ST. KEVIN'S CHURCHES]
+
+We were looking in delight at the inn, with its thatched roof and
+whitewashed walls, when a formidable figure appeared in the door--a
+towering young woman, with eyes terrifically keen and a thick shock of
+the reddest hair I ever saw. She was a singularly pure specimen, as I
+afterwards learned, of the red Irish--a sort of throw-back, I suppose,
+to the old Vikings 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 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 welcome. 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
+abundantly in the damp ground along the margin of the stream was what
+Betty declared to be the true shamrock--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 gardener 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 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
+backache, 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 monastery.
+"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 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
+deceive the Saint, so he confessed everything. And there the hoof-prints
+are to this day."
+
+They certainly bore some resemblance to hoof-prints, and I could not but
+admire the ingenuity of the tale which had been invented to explain
+them.
+
+"What happened to the thief?" I asked. "Did the Saint let him go?"
+
+"He did not, your honour, for it was the law that he must be hanged. But
+before he died, he asked the Saint to grant him one favour, and the
+Saint told him to name it; and the man asked that he be buried in the
+same graveyard with the Saint himself, and that on his grave a stone be
+placed with a hole in the middle, so that, if a horse stepped over his
+grave, he might put out his hand and pull it in. The Saint kept his
+promise, and in the graveyard yonder you may see the stone."
+
+As, indeed, we did; at least, there is a grave there covered by a stone
+with a large round hole in the middle.
+
+"And now, your honour," went on our guide, as we came to the door of the
+inn, "you will be wantin' me to row you over to the Saint's bed, I'm
+thinkin'."
+
+"What is the fare?" I asked.
+
+"As much over sixpence as you care to give, your honour."
+
+"All right," I said. "We'll be ready presently." And we went in to
+lunch.
+
+We certainly enjoyed that meal, though I have forgotten 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 monastery, 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 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 clinging 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 except 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 the course of this narrative--and she promptly declared 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 lifetime 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 prevailed.
+
+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 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 always 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 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 arrival, 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE ROAD TO ST. KEVIN'S SEAT]
+
+[Illustration: THE FIRST OF ST. KEVIN'S CHURCHES]
+
+The Irish schools, like everything else Irish, are controlled by a
+central board which sits at Dublin Castle. There are sixty-six other
+boards and bureaus and departments 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
+Education Board, and, like all the others, it is in no way responsible
+to the Irish people. In fact, it isn't responsible 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. If there are
+enough children, both Catholic and Protestant, 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 always be a few pupils of the other denomination in
+it. In the villages where there is a church, as at Clondalkin, 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 authority 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 supposed not to be
+coloured by religion, but it is inevitable that it should be; and this
+is especially true of Ireland, 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 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 furthermore 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 occurred 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 instruction 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 schoolhouses, and you will wonder what
+they are doing there.
+
+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
+requires 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 absurd. I do not believe
+that religious and secular instruction can be combined in this way,
+especially with a mixed population, without impairing the efficiency of
+both. The first real struggle the Home Rule Parliament 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 principle 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 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 Ireland--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 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
+something 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. Ireland 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
+English 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 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 schoolhouses, 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 Instruction.
+
+          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 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 Circumlocution
+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 frequently 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, however, quite powerless to do anything except raise a row.
+Another, who believed that the highest function of education was to
+develop the æsthetic consciousness, 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
+mentioned 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 Englishman will be glad to get rid of us, so his government 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 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 expressions 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
+graveyard. All the churches are little ones--mere midgets, some of
+them--and they are in all states of preservation, from a few fragments
+of wall to the almost perfect "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 monastery, 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 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 everywhere.
+
+We blundered into the fish-market, as we were exploring the streets, and
+watched for some time the 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
+microscopic; 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, recalling 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, under Owen Roe O'Neill, had, naturally
+enough, supported 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 before 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 garrison 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 afterwards
+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 preserved because it stands
+on the opposite side of the town from the one Cromwell attacked, and is
+the most perfect specimen of the mediæval 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 addressed ourselves to
+getting out to the battlefield and abbeys. The railroads sell
+combination tickets for the 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 giving the price of the trip we wanted to take as ten
+shillings 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE ROUND TOWER, CLONDALKIN]
+
+[Illustration: ST. LAWRENCE'S GATE, DROGHEDA]
+
+"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 jarvies just charge what they please. I'm free to
+admit they have no conscience. There is one, though, who is fairly
+honest," 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 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-à-pie against every vicissitude of
+weather, we bade our friends at the hotel good-bye (not forgetting the
+bell-boy), drove to the station, and got aboard a train, which presently
+rolled away southwards. It was very full--the third-class crowded with
+soldiers in khaki bound for the camp on the Curragh 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
+comfortable 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 interesting. Her home was
+somewhere down in the Vale of Tipperary, and I judged from her
+appearance that she was the wife of a well-to-do farmer. She was most
+emphatically not a Nationalist.
+
+"It isn't them who own land, or who are buyin' a little farm under the
+purchase act that want Home Rule," she said. "No, no; them ones would be
+glad to let well enough alone. 'Tis the labourers, the farm-hands, the
+ditch-diggers, and such-like people, who have nothin' to lose, that
+shout the loudest for it. They would like a bit of land themselves, and
+they fancy that under Home Rule they'll be gettin' it; but where is it
+to come from, I'd like to know, unless off of them that has it now; and
+who would be trustin' the likes of them to pay for 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.
+
+"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 Ireland--the small farmer, handicapped by
+poverty and primitive methods, ground down in the markets of the world,
+and in turn grinding down the labourers beneath 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 composed 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 Parliament will somehow compel them to pay living
+wages to their labourers. I can only say that I hope it will!
+
+Outside, meanwhile, rural Ireland was unfolding itself under our eyes,
+varied, beautiful--and sad. The first part of it we had already
+traversed on our excursion 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 minding 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.
+
+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
+horizon, 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 Tipperary, and one realises it was a true vision of the place of his
+birth that Denis McCarthy had when he wrote his lilting verses in praise
+of it:
+
+    Ah, sweet is Tipperary in the springtime of the year,
+      When the hawthorn's whiter than the snow,
+    When the feathered folk assemble and the air is all a-tremble
+      With their singing and their winging to and fro;
+    When queenly Slievenamon puts her verdant vesture on
+      And smiles to hear the news the breezes bring;
+    When the sun begins to glance on the rivulets that dance--
+      Ah, sweet is Tipperary in the spring!
+
+Slievenamon is not in sight from the train--we shall see it to-morrow
+from the Rock of Cashel; but just ahead is a rugged hill with a
+singular, half-moon depression 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 syllables, 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-looking 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 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, having seen us safely to
+the platform, called loudly for "Jimmy," and an old man presently
+shambled forward, to whose care, with many wishes for a pleasant
+journey, we were committed.
+
+The old man proved to be the driver of a very ramshackle 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 uncomfortable, 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 with
+two or three habitués 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 intervals by the tramping and
+neighing of the horses arriving for the fair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL OF THE KINGS
+
+
+IF one doesn't like bacon and eggs, one must go without breakfast in
+Ireland, unless one likes fish, or is content with bread and butter.
+Every evening Betty would have a colloquy with the maid, which ran
+something like this:
+
+"What will ye be wantin' for breakfast, miss?"
+
+"What can we have?"
+
+"Oh, anything ye like, miss."
+
+"Well, what, for instance?"
+
+"There's bacon and eggs, miss, and there's fish."
+
+We usually took bacon and eggs, for fish seemed out of place on the
+breakfast-table. Besides, we were sure to encounter it later at dinner.
+
+"And will ye have coffee or tay, miss?" the maid would continue.
+
+We took coffee once, and after that we took tea. The tea is good, though
+strong, and it seems somehow to suit the climate; but one sip of Irish
+coffee will be enough for most people.
+
+So next morning we sat down to our breakfast of tea and bacon and eggs
+with a good appetite. The cloth was not as clean as it might have been,
+but the eggs were fresh and the bacon sweet, and the bread and butter
+were delicious--as they are all over Ireland--and the tea tasted better
+than I had ever imagined tea could taste, and outside the sun was
+shining brightly, 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 represented 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 offering 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 display.
+
+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 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
+presently we saw ahead a great pile of crumbling buildings--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 hundred
+years ago, how crowded with castles and monasteries; 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 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!
+
+[Illustration: HOLY CROSS ABBEY, FROM THE CLOISTERS]
+
+[Illustration: THE MIGHTY RUINS ON THE ROCK OF CASHEL]
+
+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 common to almost all monastic establishments: a cruciform
+church, with the altar at the east end, as nearest Jerusalem, 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 buildings--the refectory, the
+chapter-house and the dormitories; and still beyond these were the
+granaries and storehouses and guest-houses and various out-buildings.
+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 otherwise
+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 lavished 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 surrounded it; but the square of domestic
+buildings about it is better preserved than one will find almost
+anywhere 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 lichened and crumbling walls, restoring
+them in imagination 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 instance, 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 yonder 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 English 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 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 centuries 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
+shamrock to illustrate the principle of the Three-in-One; Brian Boru
+strengthened its fortifications; and in 1134 was consecrated here that
+wonderful chapel of Cormac McCarthy, King of Munster, which still
+endures as a most convincing demonstration of the beauty of old Irish
+architecture. Then a round tower was put up, and then a castle, and then
+a great cathedral, for King Murtough had granted the Rock to "the
+religious of Ireland," and the Archbishop of Cashel came, before long,
+to be nearly as powerful as the great Archbishop of Armagh; and then a
+monastery was built, and 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.
+
+[Illustration: © Underwood & Underwood, N.Y.
+
+CASHEL OF THE KINGS]
+
+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 Protestantism, married not
+once, but twice. From that time on, the place was used as a Protestant
+cathedral, until, 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
+Parliament an act decreeing that, whereas, "in several dioceses,
+cathedral churches are so incommodiously situated that they cannot be
+resorted to for divine service," 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 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 "Crummell" didn't make. George II was
+King of England in 1749, and Cromwell had been dead nearly a hundred
+years.
+
+I shall never forget my first glimpse of this stupendous pile of
+buildings, looming high in air, all turrets and towers, like those fairy
+palaces which Maxfield Parrish loves to paint. A short branch runs from
+Goold's Cross to Cashel, and it was from the windows of the rickety
+little train we peered, first on this side and then on that--and then,
+quite suddenly, away to the left, we saw the Rock, golden-grey, high
+against the sky, so fairy-like and ethereal that it seemed impossible it
+could be anything more than a wonderful vision or mirage. And then the
+train stopped, and we jumped out, and hurried from the station, and
+presently we were following the path around the Rock. But that was too
+slow, and with a simultaneous impulse we left the path and climbed the
+wall, and hastened upward 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, secured with a chain and formidable
+padlock.
+
+But we had scarcely time to feel the shock of disappointment, 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 moment
+later we had the pleasure of meeting John Minogue, the caretaker--the
+most accomplished caretaker, I venture to say, in all the length and
+breadth of Ireland. 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 Mountain
+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 invincible 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 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 Gráinne, 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 Ængus 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. Ængus 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. Perhaps 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. It nestles in between the choir and south transept
+of the later cathedral, and its entrance is the most magnificent 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 ornamentation, 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, arcaded 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 serpent 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 sculptures 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 there gazing in delight at these inimitable
+figures, a party of four or five entered the church, and stood staring
+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 preserved;
+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 understand 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 incantation, 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
+Ecclesiastical Architecture," and with gleaming face our host turned to
+the preface and showed us where Champneys 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 multitudinous 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 extensive, and Minogue told us that it
+was Hore Abbey, a Cistercian monastery built about 1272, but had added
+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 declined 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 inside 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
+overburdened 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 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, suspended 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 picturesque Galtees, the highest mountains
+in the south of Ireland, fissured and gullied and folded into deep
+ravines 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 outside 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 attracted a
+great crowd from all over the south-eastern 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-meeting 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 reverses, 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 compartment 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 handsome bridge, and the rest of the town
+is composed for 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 people, as at Dublin; but here there was a
+large admixture of English soldiers and sailors, come up from Queenstown
+to celebrate. Many of them had girls on their arms, and those who had
+not were evidently hoping to have, and the impression one got was that
+Cork suffers a good deal from the evils of a garrison town. There is a
+tradition that the girls of Cork are unusually lovely; but I fear it is
+only a tradition. Or perhaps the lovely ones stay at home on Saturday
+night.
+
+Sunday dawned clear and bright, and as soon as we had breakfasted, we
+set out for the most famous spot in the vicinity of Cork, and perhaps in
+all Ireland, Blarney Castle. Undoubtedly the one Irish tradition which
+is known everywhere is that of the blarney stone; "blarney" itself has
+passed into the language as a noun, an adjective, and a verb; and the
+old tower of which the stone is a part has been pictured so often that
+its appearance is probably better known than that of any other ruin in
+Europe. Blarney is about five miles from Cork, and the easiest way of
+getting there is by the light railway, which runs close beside a pretty
+stream, in which, this bright morning, many fishermen were trying their
+luck. And at last, high above the trees, 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.
+
+[Illustration: BLARNEY CASTLE]
+
+"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 dancing
+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 McCarthy 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 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, Cormac McCarthy was returning home through the
+blackness 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 resist it.
+
+Such is the legend, and it may have had its origin in the soft,
+delutherin speeches with which Dermot McCarthy put off the English, when
+they called upon him to surrender his castle. Certain it is that it was
+fixed 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 staircase 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 almost dislodged it, and
+it is worn and polished by the 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 experienced 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 certain--I'm not going
+away from here until I've kissed that stone. I'd be ashamed to go home
+without kissing it."
+
+"So would I," I agreed; "but I'd prefer that to hanging 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 things; but all
+either of us thought about was kissing the stone, and we touched on it
+incidentally now and then, and then shied away from it, and pretended to
+think of something else. Presently we heard voices on the stair, and a
+man and two women emerged on the parapet. We waited, but they didn't
+approach the stone, they just looked around at the landscape; and
+finally Betty inquired casually if they were going to kiss the Blarney
+stone.
+
+"Kiss the Blarney stone?" echoed the man, who was an Englishman. "I
+should think not! It's altogether too risky!"
+
+"But it seems a shame to go away without kissing it," Betty protested.
+
+"Yes, it does," the other agreed; "but I was here once before, and I
+fought that all out then. It's really just a silly old legend, you
+know--nobody believes it!"
+
+Now to my mind silly old legends are far more worthy of belief than most
+things, but it would be folly to say so to an Englishman. So the
+conversation dropped, and presently he and his companions went away, and
+Betty and I sat down again and renewed our conversation.
+
+And then again we heard voices, and this time it was two American women,
+well along in years. They asked us if we knew which was the Blarney
+stone, and we hastened to point it out to them, and explained the
+process of kissing it. There were postcards illustrating 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.
+
+"We were just sitting here trying to screw up courage to do it," Betty
+added.
+
+The newcomers looked at the stone, and then at the abyss.
+
+"Well, _I'll_ never do it!" they exclaimed simultaneously, and they
+contented themselves with throwing a kiss at it; and then _they_ went
+away, and Betty and I, both rather pale around the gills, continued to
+talk of ships and shoes and sealing-wax. But I saw in her eyes that
+somehow or other she was going to kiss the stone.
+
+And then a tall, thin man came up the stair, and _he_ asked us where the
+stone was, and we showed him, and he looked at it, and then he glanced
+down into the intervening gulf, and drew back with a shudder.
+
+"Not for me," he said. "Not--for--me!"
+
+"We've come all the way from America," said Betty, "and we simply
+_can't_ go away until we've kissed it."
+
+"Well, _I've_ come all the way from New Zealand, madam," said the man,
+"but I wouldn't think for a minute of risking my life like that."
+
+"It used to be a good deal more dangerous than it is now," I pointed
+out, as much for my own benefit as for his. "They used to take people by
+the ankles and hold them upside down outside the battlement. I suppose
+they dropped somebody over, for those spikes were put there along the
+top to stop it. If the people who hold your legs are steady, there
+really isn't any danger now."
+
+The New Zealander took another peep over into space.
+
+"No sirree!" he said. "No sir--ree!"
+
+But he didn't go away. Instead, he sat down and began to talk; and I
+fancied I could see in his eyes some such uneasy purpose as I saw in
+Betty's.
+
+And then a boy of twelve or fourteen came up. He was evidently native to
+the neighbourhood, and I asked him if he had ever kissed the stone.
+
+"I have, sir, many a time," he said.
+
+"Would you mind doing it again, so that we can see just how it is done?"
+
+He readily consented, and lay down on his back with his head and
+shoulders over the gulf, and the New Zealander took one leg and I took
+the other. Then the boy reached his hands above his head and grasped the
+iron bars which ran down inside the battlement to hold the stone in
+place.
+
+"Now, push me down," he said.
+
+My heart was in my mouth as we pushed him down, for it seemed an awful
+distance, though I knew we couldn't drop him because he wasn't very
+heavy; and then we heard a resounding smack.
+
+"All right," he called. "Pull me up."
+
+We pulled him up, and in an instant he was on his feet.
+
+"That's all there is to it," he said, and sauntered off.
+
+"Hm-m-m!" grunted the New Zealander, and sat down again.
+
+I gazed at the landscape for a minute or two, my hands deep in my
+pockets.
+
+When I turned around, Betty had her hat and coat off, and was spreading
+her raincoat on the parapet opposite the stone.
+
+"What are you going to do?" I demanded sternly.
+
+She sat down on the raincoat with her back to the abyss.
+
+"Come on, you two, and hold me," she commanded.
+
+I suppose I might have refused, but I didn't. The truth is, I wanted her
+to kiss the stone as badly as she wanted to; so I knelt on one side of
+her and the New Zealander knelt on the other, and we each grasped an
+ankle. She groped for the iron bars, found them after an instant, and
+drew herself toward them.
+
+"Now, push me down," she said.
+
+We did; and as soon as we heard the smack, we hauled her up again, her
+face aglow with triumph. It took her some minutes to get her hair fixed,
+for most of the hair-pins had fallen out. When she looked up, she saw
+that I had taken off my coat.
+
+"What are you going to do?" she demanded, in much the same tone that I
+had used.
+
+"I'm going to kiss that stone," I said. "Do you suppose I'd go away now,
+without kissing it? Why, I'd never hear the last of it! Get hold of my
+legs," and I sat down, keeping my eyes carefully averted from the
+hundred-and-twenty-foot drop.
+
+"Oh, but look here," she protested, "I don't know whether I'm strong
+enough to hold you."
+
+"Yes, you are," I said, making sure that there was nothing in my
+trousers' pockets to fall out. "Now, then!"
+
+Just then four or five Irish girls came out upon the tower, and Betty,
+stricken with the fear of losing me, asked them if they wouldn't help,
+and they said they would; so, with one man and four women holding on to
+my legs, I let myself over backwards. One doesn't realise how much two
+feet is, till one tries to take it backwards; it seemed to me that I was
+hanging in midair by my heels, so I kissed a stone hastily and started
+to come up.
+
+"That wasn't it," protested one of the girls who had been watching me;
+"you've got to go farther down."
+
+So they pushed me farther down, and I saw the smooth, worn stone right
+before my eyes.
+
+"Is this it?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," she said; so I kissed it, and in a moment was right side up
+again; and I don't know when I have felt prouder.
+
+And then the New Zealander, his face grim and set, began to take things
+out of his trousers' pockets.
+
+"If you people will hold me," he said, "I'll do it too."
+
+So we held him, and _he_ did it.
+
+Then he and I offered to hold the Irish girls, but they refused,
+giggling, and as there was nothing more to do on top of that tower, we
+went down again, treading as if on air, more elated than I can say.
+
+That sense of elation endures to this day, and I would earnestly advise
+every one who visits Blarney Castle to kiss the stone. I am not aware
+that I am any more eloquent than I ever was, and Betty never had any
+real need to kiss it, but to go to Blarney without doing so is--well, is
+like going to Paris without seeing the Louvre, or to the Louvre without
+seeing the Winged Victory and the Venus of Milo. Really, there isn't any
+danger, if you have two people of average strength holding you; and
+there isn't even any very great sense of danger, since your back is to
+the abyss and you can't see it. My advice is to do it at once, as soon
+as you get to the top of the tower, without stopping to think about it
+too long. After that, with a serene mind, you can look at the view,
+which is very, very lovely, and explore the ruin, which is one of the
+most interesting and noteworthy in Ireland.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We sat down on a bench just outside the castle entrance to rest after
+our exertions. There was a young man and woman on the bench, and in
+about a minute we were talking together. It turned out that they were
+members of Alexander Marsh's company, then touring Ireland in classical
+repertoire, and would open in Cork in "The Three Musketeers" the
+following evening. I had never heard of Alexander Marsh, but they both
+pronounced his name with such awe and reverence that I fancied he must
+be a second Irving, and I said at once that we should have to see the
+play. We went on to talk about that high-hearted story, which I love;
+and I noticed a growing embarrassment in our companions.
+
+"See here," said the man at last, "you know the book so well and think
+so much of it, that I'm afraid the play will disappoint you. For one
+thing, we can't put on Richelieu. The play makes rather a fool of him,
+and the Catholics over here would get angry in a minute if we made a
+fool of a Cardinal, even on the stage. So we have to call him Roquefort,
+and leave out the Cardinal altogether, which, of course, spoils the
+whole point of the plot. It's a pity, too, because his robes are
+gorgeous. Of course it doesn't make so much difference to people who
+haven't read the book--and mighty few over here have; but I'm afraid you
+wouldn't like it."
+
+I was afraid so, too; so we promised we wouldn't come.
+
+And then they went on to tell us about themselves. They were married, it
+seemed, and were full of enthusiasms and ideals, and they spoke with
+that beautiful accent so common on the English stage; and he had been to
+New York once, and for some reason had fared pretty badly there; but he
+hoped to get to America again. He didn't say why, but I inferred it was
+because in America he could earn a decent salary, which was probably
+impossible in the Irish provinces.
+
+We left them after a while, and wandered through what is left of the
+groves of Blarney, and visited the caves in the cliffs under the castle,
+at one time used for dungeons, into which the McCarthys thrust such of
+their enemies as they could capture. And then we explored the charming
+little river which runs along under the cliff, and walked on to Blarney
+Lake, a pretty bit of water, with more than its share of traditions:
+for, at a certain season of the year, a herd of white cows rises from
+its bosom and feeds along its banks, and it is the home of a red trout
+which will not rise to the fly, and it was into this lake that the last
+of the McCarthys cast his great chest of plate, when his castle was
+declared forfeited to the English, and his spirit keeps guard every
+night along the shore, and the secret of its whereabouts will never be
+revealed until a McCarthy is again Lord of Blarney.
+
+We walked back to the entrance, at last, and had a most delicious tea on
+the veranda of a clean tea-shop there, with gay little stone-chatters
+hopping about our feet, picking up the crumbs; and then we loitered
+about the quaint little village, and visited the church, set in the
+midst of a pretty park, and wandered along a road under lofty trees, and
+were wholly, completely, riotously happy.
+
+We had kissed the Blarney Stone!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CUSHLA MA CHREE
+
+
+IT was very evident, as we went back to Cork, that the people who live
+there do not regard it as an earthly paradise, for it seemed as though
+the whole population of the place was out in the fields. We had seen the
+same thing at Dublin the Sunday before--every open space near the city
+crowded with men and women and children; from which I infer that the
+Irish have sense enough--or perhaps it is an instinct--to get out of
+their slums and into the fresh, clean air whenever they have a chance.
+And the way they lie about in the moist grass on the damp ground is
+another proof of the amenity of the Irish climate.
+
+When we got back to the town, we decided we could spend an hour very
+pleasantly driving about and seeing the place; and, since the day was
+fine, we voted for an outside car. Be it known, there are two varieties
+of car in Cork: one the common or garden variety, the outside car, and
+the other a sort of anti-type called an inside car. The difference is
+that, in an outside car you sit on the inside, that is in the middle
+with your feet hanging over the wheel, while in an inside car you sit on
+the outside, that is over the wheel with your feet hanging down in the
+middle. Also the inside car has a top over it and side-curtains which
+can be let down in wet weather. I hope this is clear, for I do not know
+how to make it clearer without a diagram. Both inside and outside cars
+are rather more ramshackle in Cork than anywhere else in Ireland.
+
+The legal rate for a car in Cork is one shilling sixpence per hour, and
+I decided in advance that, come what might, come what may, I would not
+pay more than twice the legal rate for the use of one. So when we got
+off the train at the Cork terminus, I passed under review the cars
+standing in the street in front of it, while each individual jarvey,
+seeing I was interested, stood up in his seat and bellowed at the top of
+his voice. Finally I picked out the least disreputable one and looked
+the jarvey in the eye.
+
+"We want to drive around for an hour or two," I said. "How much will you
+charge an hour?"
+
+"Jump right up, sir," he cried, and wheeled his car in front of me with
+a flourish.
+
+"You'll have to answer my question first."
+
+"'Twill be only five shillings an hour, sir."
+
+I passed on to the next driver, who had been listening to this colloquy
+with absorbed interest. His price was four shillings. So I passed on to
+the third. His price was three shillings. I suppose if I had passed once
+again, the price would have been two shillings; but three shillings was
+within my limit, so we mounted into our places and were off.
+
+I fear, however, that that phrase, "we were off," gives a wrong idea of
+our exit. We did not whirl up the street, with our horse curvetting
+proudly and the jarvey clinging to the reins. No, nothing like that. The
+horse trotted--I convinced myself of this, from time to time, by looking
+at him--but he was one of those up-and-down trotters, that come down in
+almost exactly the same place from which they go up. The jarvey
+encouraged him from time to time by touching him gently with the whip,
+but the horse never varied his gait, except that, whenever he came to a
+grade, he walked. Sometimes we would catch up with a pedestrian
+sauntering in the same direction, and then it was quite exciting to see
+how we worked our way past him, inch by inch. This mode of progression
+had one advantage: it was not necessary to stop anywhere to examine
+architectural details or absorb local atmosphere. We had plenty of time
+to do that as we passed. In fact, in some of the slum streets, we
+absorbed rather more of the atmosphere than we cared for.
+
+Cork is an ancient place, built for the most part on an island in the
+River Lee. St. Fin Barre started it in the seventh century by founding a
+monastery on the island; the Danes sailed up the river, some centuries
+later, and captured it; and then the Anglo-Normans took it from the
+Danes and managed to keep it by ceaseless vigilance. The Irish peril was
+so imminent, that the English had to bar the gates not only at night,
+but whenever they went to church or to their meals, and no stranger was
+suffered inside the walls until he had checked his sword and dagger and
+other lethal weapons with the gate-keeper.
+
+But the Irish have always had a way with them; and what they couldn't
+accomplish by force of arms, they did by blarney;--or maybe it was the
+girls who did it! At any rate, at the end of a few generations Cork was
+about the Irishest town in Ireland, and levied its own taxes and made
+its own laws and even set up its own mint, and when the English
+Parliament attempted to interfere, invited it to mind its own business.
+The climax came when that picturesque impostor, Perkin Warbeck, landed
+in the town, was hailed as a son of the Duke of Clarence and the
+rightful King of England by the mayor, and provided with new clothes and
+a purse of gold by the citizens, together with a force for the invasion
+of England. The result of which was that the mayor lost his head and the
+city its charter.
+
+Cork is a tragic word in Irish ears not because of this ancient history,
+but because of the dreadful scenes enacted here in the wake of the great
+famine of 1847. It was here that thousands and thousands of famished,
+hopeless, half-crazed men and women said good-bye to Ireland forever and
+embarked for the New World. Hundreds more, unable to win farther, lay
+down in the streets and died, and every road leading into the town was
+hedged with unburied bodies. That ghastly torrent of emigration has kept
+up ever since, though it reached its flood some twenty years ago, and is
+by no means so ghastly as it was. Yet every train that comes into the
+town bears its quota of rough-clad people, mere boys and girls most of
+them, with wet eyes and set faces, and behind it, all through the west
+and south, it leaves a wake of sobs and wails and bitter weeping.
+
+Cork possesses nothing of antiquarian interest. The old churches have
+all been swept away. The oldest one still standing dates only from 1722,
+and is worth a visit not because of itself, but because of some verses
+written about its bells by a poet who lies buried in its churchyard. St.
+Anne Shandon, with its tall, parti-coloured tower surmounted by its
+fish-weathervane, stands on a hill to the north of the Lee. The tower
+contains a peal of eight bells, and it was their music which furnished
+inspiration for Father Prout's pleasant lines:
+
+    With deep affection and recollection
+      I often think of the Shandon bells,
+    Whose sounds so wild would, in the days of childhood,
+      Fling round my cradle their magic spells.
+    On this I ponder where'er I wander,
+      And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee,--
+    With thy bells of Shandon, that sound so grand on
+      The pleasant waters of the River Lee.
+
+Of course we wanted to see St. Anne Shandon and to hear the bells, so,
+with some difficulty, we persuaded our driver to put his horse at the
+ascent. The streets rising up that hill are all slums, with little lanes
+more slummy still ambling away in various directions; and all of them
+were full of people, that afternoon, who hailed our advent as an
+unexpected addition to the pleasures and excitements of the day, and
+followed along, inspecting us curiously, and commenting frankly upon the
+details of our attire. The impression we made was, I think, on the
+whole, favourable, but there is a certain novelty in hearing yourself
+discussed as impersonally as if you were a statue, and after the first
+embarrassment, we rather enjoyed it. At last we reached the church, and
+stopped there in the shadow of the tower until the chimes rang. They are
+very sweet and melodious, and fully deserve Father Prout's rhapsody.
+
+The wife of the inspector we met at Glendalough had told Betty of a
+convent at Cork where girls were taught lace-making, and had given her
+the names of two nuns, either of whom, she was sure, would be glad to
+show us the school. It is in the convents that most of the lace-making
+in Ireland is taught nowadays, and of course we wanted to see one of the
+schools, so Monday morning we sallied forth in search of this one. We
+found it without difficulty--a great barrack of a building opening upon
+a court. Both nuns were there, and I do not remember ever having
+received anywhere a warmer welcome. Certainly we might see the
+lace-makers, and Sister Catherine took us in charge at once, explaining
+on the way that there were not as many girls at work as usual that
+morning, because one of their number had been married the day before,
+and the whole crowd had stayed up very late celebrating the great event.
+And then she led us into a room where about twenty girls were bending
+over their work.
+
+They all arose as we entered, and then I sat down and watched them,
+while Sister Catherine took Betty about from one girl to the next, and
+explained the kind of lace each was making. Some of it was
+Carrickmacross, of which, it seems, there are two varieties, appliqué
+and guipure; and some of it was needle-point, that aristocrat of laces
+of which one sees so much in Belgium; and some of it was Limerick, and
+there were other kinds whose names I have forgotten, but all of it was
+beautifully done. The designing is the work of Sister Catherine, and,
+while I am very far from being a connoisseur, some of the pieces she
+afterwards showed us were very lovely indeed. Then we were asked if we
+wouldn't like to hear the girls sing, and of course we said we would, so
+one of them, at a nod from the Sister, got to her feet and very gravely
+and earnestly sang John Philpot Curran's tender verses, "Cushla ma
+Chree," which is Irish for "Darling of My Heart":
+
+    Dear Erin, how sweetly thy green bosom rises!
+      An emerald set in the ring of the sea!
+    Each blade of thy meadows my faithful heart prizes,
+      Thou queen of the west! the world's cushla ma chree!
+
+    Thy gates open wide to the poor and the stranger--
+      There smiles hospitality hearty and free;
+    Thy friendship is seen in the moment of danger,
+      And the wanderer is welcomed with cushla ma chree.
+
+    Thy sons they are brave; but, the battle once over,
+      In brotherly peace with their foes they agree;
+    And the roseate cheeks of thy daughters discover
+      The soul-speaking blush that says cushla ma chree.
+
+    Then flourish forever, my dear native Erin,
+      While sadly I wander an exile from thee;
+    And, firm as thy mountains, no injury fearing,
+      May heaven defend its own cushla ma chree!
+
+It is a very characteristic Irish poem of the sentimental sort, and it
+has been set to a soft and plaintive air also characteristically Irish,
+and it took on a beauty which the lines by themselves do not possess as
+we heard it sung that morning, with the girls, bending to their work,
+joining in the chorus. Then we were shown over the convent, and finally
+taken to the parlour, where Sister Bonaventura joined us, and where we
+had a very pleasant talk.
+
+The convent's chief treasure is the great parchment volume in which its
+history is noted from day to day. How far back it goes I have forgotten,
+but I think to the very founding of the institution, and it is
+illuminated throughout very beautifully, while the lettering is superb.
+The great events in the life of every nun are recorded here, and those
+events are three: when she became a novice, when she took the final
+vows, and when she died. Those are the only events that concern the
+community, except that sometimes when death followed a painful and
+lingering illness, it was noted how cheerfully the pain was borne.
+Occasionally some delicate woman found the hard life more than she could
+endure, and then she was permitted to put aside her robes and go back
+into the world.
+
+I spent half an hour looking through the book, and Sister Bonaventura
+showed me the record of her own entry into the convent. It was in the
+year in which I was born, and I shivered a little at the thought that,
+during all the long time I had been growing to boyhood and manhood and
+middle age, she had been immured here in this convent at Cork; during
+all the years that I had been reading and writing and talking with men
+and women and knocking about the world, she had been doing over and over
+again her little round of daily duties; but when I looked at her bright
+brave face and quiet eyes, and listened to her calm sweet voice, I
+wondered if, after all, she hadn't got farther than I!
+
+It would be a mistake, however, to think of these nuns--or of any I ever
+met--as pious, strait-laced, lachrymose creatures. They were quite the
+reverse of that; they were fairly bubbling over with good humour and
+with big-hearted blarney. Some one had given them a victrola, and it was
+evidently the supreme delight of their lives.
+
+"We can't go to the opera," they said; "but the opera comes to us. We
+have a concert nearly every evening, and it's sorry we are when the bell
+rings and we have to go to bed."
+
+They showed us their austere little chapel, after that, and introduced
+us to the Mother Superior, a very delicate, placid, transparent woman of
+more than eighty, who reminded me of the sister of Bishop Myriel; and I
+am sure they were sorry when we had to say good-bye.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We went down to Monkstown by rail, that afternoon, to see Queenstown
+harbour. The line runs close to the river, passing Passage, whose charms
+have been celebrated by Father Prout, and finally reaching Monkstown, on
+the heights above which stands the famous, four-square castle which cost
+its owner only fourpence. The story goes that, in 1636, John Archdeckan
+marched away to the war in Flanders, and his wife determined to surprise
+him, on his return, by presenting him with a stately castle. So she
+gathered a great number of builders together and gave them the job on
+the condition that they would buy all their food and drink and clothing
+from her. When the castle was done, she balanced her accounts and found
+that she had expended fourpence more than she had received.
+
+At Monkstown, we took a boat and ferried across the harbour, past many
+grey men-of-war which lay at anchor there. Very beautiful it is, with
+the high, green-clad hills pressing about it on all sides, and shrouding
+the entrance so completely that one might fancy oneself in a landlocked
+lake. Queenstown is built on the side of one of these hills, and is
+dominated by the great, white cathedral, which has been building for
+fifty years, and is not yet finished.
+
+It is a curious coincidence that the two ports of Ireland by which most
+visitors enter and leave it should be named after two people whom the
+Irish have little reason to love. In 1821, when George IV embarked at
+the port of Dunleary, just below Dublin, he "graciously gave permission"
+that its name might be changed to Kingstown in honour of the event. In
+1849, Queen Victoria paid one of her very few visits to Ireland, and
+sailed into the Cove of Cork. As she herself wrote, "To give the people
+the satisfaction of calling the place Queenstown, in honour of its being
+the first spot on which I set foot on Irish ground, I stepped on shore
+amidst the roar of cannon and the enthusiastic shouts of the people."
+Forty years later, when the Irish had come to realise that the Queen had
+no interest in them, they had the dignity and good sense to put aside
+the servility to which they have sometimes been too prone, and to refuse
+to take part in the celebration of her Jubilee. But Queenstown is still
+Queenstown.
+
+The town consists of a single long street of public houses and emigrant
+hotels and steamship offices facing the water, and some steep lanes
+running back up over the hill, and the day we were there, it was crowded
+with emigrants, Swedes and Norwegians mostly, who had been brought
+ashore from the stranded _Haverford_, and who spent their time wandering
+aimlessly up and down, trying to find out what was going to happen to
+them. There were many sailors and marines knocking about the grog-shops,
+as well as the crowd of navvies and longshoremen always to be found
+lounging about a water-front. This water-front is one great
+landing-stage, and it is here that perhaps a million Irish men and women
+have stepped forever off of Irish soil.
+
+We climbed up the hill presently to the cathedral, which owes not a
+little of its impressiveness to its superb site. Its exterior is
+handsome and imposing--good Gothic, though perhaps a trifle too florid
+for the purest taste; but the effect of the interior is ruined by the
+absurd columns of the nave, made of dark marble, and so slender that the
+heavy structure of white stone above them seems to be hanging in the
+air.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We had hoped to go by rail to Youghal and take steamer up the Blackwater
+to Cappoquin, and from there drive over to the Trappist monastery at Mt.
+Melleray; but we found that the steamer did not start until the
+fifteenth of June, so most regretfully that excursion had to be
+abandoned. Those who have made it tell me it is a very beautiful one.
+Cloyne is also perhaps worth visiting; but we were tired of Cork and
+hungering for Killarney, and so decided to turn our faces westward next
+day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE
+
+
+THERE are two ways of getting from Cork to Killarney, one by the
+so-called "Prince of Wales Route," because the late King Edward went
+that way in 1858, and the other by way of Macroom. Both routes converge
+at Glengarriff and are identical beyond that, and as the best scenery
+along the route is between Glengarriff and Killarney, I don't think it
+really matters much which route is chosen. The "Prince of Wales Route"
+is by rail to Bantry, and then either by boat or coach to Glengarriff,
+which is only a few miles away. The other route is to Macroom by rail,
+and from there there is a very fine ride by coach of nearly forty miles
+to Glengarriff. We chose the Macroom route because of the longer coach
+ride and because it touches Gougane Barra, the famous retreat of St. Fin
+Barre. I think, on the whole, it is the more picturesque of the two
+routes; but either is vastly preferable to the all-rail route. Indeed,
+the visitor to Killarney who misses the run from Glengarriff, misses
+some of the most beautiful and impressive scenery in all Ireland.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was shortly after nine o'clock that our train pulled out of the
+station at Cork, and at first the line ran between small, well-tilled
+fields, each with its cosy cottage. The whole country-side had an air of
+content and passable well-being; every wall was gay with the yellow
+gorse, and in the fields the green of potato and turnip was just
+beginning to show above the dark earth of the ridges in which they were
+planted. These ridged fields, which we were to see so often afterwards
+in the west of Ireland, tell of a ground so soaked with moisture that it
+must be carefully and thoroughly drained before anything will grow in
+it. The ridges, which run with the slope of the land, are usually about
+eighteen inches wide, and are separated by ditches a foot wide and a
+foot deep to carry off the excess moisture. There is always a trickle of
+water at the bottom of these ditches, and the task of keeping them open
+and free from weeds is a never-ending one.
+
+Presently on a high rock away to the left, appeared the tower which is
+all that is left of the old stronghold of the Barretts, and farther on
+are the green-clad ruins of Kilcrea Abbey, and near by is another great
+keep marking an old castle of the McCarthys. And then the train skirts
+the wild bog of Kilcrea, and then there are more ruins, and still more;
+and at last the train stops at its terminus, Macroom.
+
+The motor-coach was awaiting us, and we were relieved to find that, so
+far from being crowded, there was only one other couple, Americans like
+ourselves, to make the trip. The season had opened only the day before,
+and, after we got started, the driver confided to us that this was the
+first time he had ever been over the road. Even if he hadn't told us, we
+should soon have had every reason to suspect it.
+
+The road follows the valley of the Lee, which is not here the single
+clear and shining stream which we saw above Cork, but is broken into a
+score of channels between islands covered with low-growing brush--a sort
+of morass, of a strange and weird appearance. Here and there an ivied
+ruin towers above the trees, for this was the country of the O'Learys
+and these are the strongholds they built to defend it against the
+aggressions of their neighbours; and then we rattled down the street of
+a little village, and the driver brought the coach to a stop before the
+door of an inn, told us that this was Inchigeelagh and that there would
+be ten minutes for refreshments, and then disappeared in the direction
+of the bar.
+
+I suppose he got his refreshments for nothing, as a reward for stopping
+there. At least I can think of no other reason for stopping, since
+Inchigeelagh is only half an hour from Macroom, unless it was to give
+the nerves of the passengers a chance to quiet down a little. For we had
+already begun to realise that our driver was a speed-maniac. He had
+struck a hair-raising gait from the start, had sent the lumbering bus
+down grades and around turns at a rate that was decidedly disconcerting,
+and while there had been no especial danger except to the people we
+met--for the road was bordered by high earthen walls--the rattle and jar
+of the solid tires had been enough to make the teeth chatter.
+
+So we were glad when the racket stopped, and we could get down and
+stroll about a little; and we soon found that Inchigeelagh is a very
+quaint village. We walked down to the bridge over the Lee, and looked at
+Lough Allua stretching away to the west; and then we stopped at a
+tumbledown cottage to talk to an old woman who was leaning over her
+half-door; and she invited us in and asked us to sit down. It was my
+first glimpse of the interior of an Irish cottage of the poorer class,
+and it opened my eyes to the cruel lot of the people--and there are
+many, many thousands of them--who are compelled to live in such
+surroundings.
+
+There was just one room, perhaps eight feet by fifteen, lighted by two
+little windows about eighteen inches square, one on either side the
+door. The doorway was just high enough to enter without stooping, and
+ran from the ground right up to the eaves. The floor was of clay, and
+the walls inside had been daubed with mud to fill up the cracks and then
+whitewashed, but the damp had flaked the whitewash off in great
+leprous-looking blotches. The ceiling was formed by some rough boards
+laid on top of the joists overhead, so low that one feared to stand
+upright, and I suppose the dark space under the thatch was used as a
+sleeping-room, for there was a ladder leading to it, and I saw nothing
+in the room below which looked like a bed. There may have been a bed
+there, however, which, being new to rural Ireland, I did not recognise
+as such.
+
+At one end of the room was an open fireplace in which a few blocks of
+turf smoked and flared, with that pungent odour which we had already
+come to like, but which, at such close quarters, was a little
+over-powering. A black and battered pot hung on a crane above the fire,
+and some sort of mess was bubbling in it--potatoes I suppose. There was
+a rude table, and two or three chairs, and all sorts of rags and debris
+hung against the walls and piled in the corners, and a few dishes in a
+rough home-made dresser, and an old brush-broom, and some boxes and a
+lot of other indescribable trash. Three or four bedraggled chickens
+were wandering in and out, and I glanced around for the pig. But there
+was no pig--this family was far too poor to own one.
+
+It seemed impossible that a human being could live for any length of
+time in a place so bare of comfort, and I looked at the old woman, who
+had sat down across from us, and wondered how she managed to survive. I
+suspect she was not half so old as her wrinkled face and sunken eyes and
+shrivelled hands indicated. She lived there with her husband, she said,
+and had for many years. He was a labourer, and, in good times, could
+earn ten shillings a week; but most of the time it was impossible to
+find any work at all. She had no relatives in America to turn to, and
+neither she nor her husband was old enough to get a pension, so that it
+was a hard struggle to keep out of the workhouse. But they _had_ kept
+out thus far, glory be to God, though the struggle was growing harder
+every year, for they were getting older and their rheumatism was getting
+worse, and neither of them could work as they once could.
+
+All this was said quite simply, in a manner not complaining, but
+resigned, as if accepting the inevitable. Her philosophy of life seemed
+to be that, since Fate had chosen to set herself and her husband in the
+midst of circumstances so hard, there was nothing to do but struggle on
+as long as possible, with the certainty of coming to the workhouse in
+the end. No doubt they would be far more comfortable in the workhouse
+than they had ever been outside of it, and yet they had that horror of
+it which is common to all Irish men and women. The horror, I think, is
+not so much at the abstract idea of receiving charity as at the public
+stigma which the workhouse gives. The Irish have been eager enough to
+draw their old age pensions, and many of them, who shrink from the
+workhouse as from a foul disgrace, do not hesitate to beg a few pennies
+from the passing stranger.
+
+[Illustration: A COTTAGE AT INCHIGEELAGH]
+
+[Illustration: THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE]
+
+The old woman at Inchigeelagh, however, did not beg, nor intimate in any
+way that she desired or expected money, but she did not refuse the coin
+I slipped into her hand, after I had taken the picture of her and of her
+cottage, which you will find opposite this page. Perhaps she would have
+liked to do so, but the little coin represented a measure of potatoes or
+of turnips, and so a little less hunger, a little more strength. How
+many of us, I wonder, would be too proud to beg if we could find no work
+to do, and our backs were bare and our stomachs empty?
+
+The tooting of the horn warned us that our bus was ready to go on again,
+and we were soon skirting the shore of Lough Allua, with picturesque
+mountains closing in ahead. And then our driver crossed the bridge over
+the Lee, and made a wrong turning, and didn't know it until somebody
+shouted at him and set him right; and this small misadventure seemed
+completely to wreck his self-control, so that, when he got back to the
+main road, he rushed along in a manner more terrifying than ever. The
+fearful racket heralded our approach, else there must have been more
+than one bad accident; and I can yet see wild-eyed men leaping from
+their seats and springing frantically to their horses' heads, while the
+white-faced women seated in the carts peered out at us under their
+shawls as we brushed past, and no doubt sent a malediction after us.
+Geese, chickens and pigs scurried wildly in every direction, and that we
+did not leave the road strewn with their dead bodies was little less
+than a miracle. The road ran between high hedges, so that we could see
+only a little way ahead, and we got to watching the curves with a sort
+of fascination, for it seemed certain that we _must_ run into something
+at the next one.
+
+We had been mounting gradually all this time, often up gradients so
+steep that they kept the driver busy with his gears, and the view had
+gradually widened and grown in impressiveness. Then we turned off a
+narrow road at the right, and I thought for a moment our driver had gone
+wrong again.
+
+"We're going to Gougane Barra," he explained, seeing my look, for I sat
+on the seat beside him, and in a few minutes we were skirting a narrow
+lough, hemmed in, on the north, by a range of precipitous mountains,
+with gullied sides patched with grey granite and dark heather, as bare
+and desolate as a mountain could be.
+
+There is an inn by the lake shore, and the bus stopped in front of it.
+The driver showed us with a gesture the little island containing the
+shrine of St. Fin Barre, and then hastened away into the inn. We four
+started for the island, and presently we heard heavy steps behind us,
+and an animated scarecrow armed with a big stick came running up and
+shouted something in an incomprehensible tongue, and waved the stick
+above his head, and proceeded to lead the way. He was evidently the
+guide, so we followed him along the border of the lake, and across the
+narrow strip of land which now connects the island with the shore, and
+all the time our guide was talking in the most earnest way, but not a
+word could any of us understand. It sounded remotely like English, and
+he evidently understood English, for when we asked him to repeat some
+particularly emphatic bit, he would do so with added emphasis, but quite
+in vain. I shall never forget how earnestly he would look in our faces,
+raising his voice as though we were deaf, and pointing with his stick,
+and gesturing with his other hand, in the effort to make us understand.
+
+We persuaded him to go and sit down, after awhile, and then we had a
+chance really to look about us. There is something indescribably savage
+and threatening about that dark sheet of water, shadowed by gloomy
+cliffs, bare of vegetation, and torn into deep gullies by the cataracts
+which leap down them. Through the hills to the east, the water from the
+lake has carved itself a narrow outlet, and the stream which rushes away
+through this gorge is the beginning of the River Lee. No place so grand
+and desolate would be without its legend, and this is Gougane Barra's:
+
+When the blessed Saint Patrick gathered together all the snakes in
+Ireland and drove them over the mountains and into the western sea,
+there was one hideous monster which he overlooked, so well had it
+concealed itself in this mountain-circled tarn. It was a winged dragon,
+and it kept very quiet until the Saint was dead, for fear of what might
+happen; but, once Patrick was gathered to his fathers, the dragon
+fancied it might do as it pleased. So it issued forth, all the more
+savage for its years of retirement, and started to lay waste the
+country. The frightened people appealed to their saints to help them,
+and among those who put up prayers was a holy man named Fineen Barre,
+who had a hermitage on an island in the lake, and so knew the dragon
+well. And the saints in heaven looked down and saw the distress of the
+poor people and pitied them, and they told Fineen Barre that they would
+give him power to slay the dragon on one condition, and that condition
+was that he should build a church on the spot where the waters of the
+lake met the tide of the sea.
+
+Fineen accepted the condition gladly, and went out and met the monster
+and slew it and threw its body into the lake, and its black blood
+darkens the water to this day. And when that was done, he set off down
+the river, and at the spot where its waters met the tide, he built his
+church, and the city of Cork grew up about it. And then in place of the
+church, he built a great cathedral, and when he died his body was placed
+in a silver coffin and buried before its high altar. Then the city was
+plundered by the Danes, who dug up the coffin and carried it away, and
+what became of the Saint's bones no one knows.
+
+But the little island where he first lived has been a holy place from
+that day to this, and on the anniversary of his death, which comes in
+September, crowds of pilgrims journey here to say their prayers before
+the thirteen stations set apart by tradition, and to bless themselves
+with water from the Saint's well.
+
+The well is just at the entrance to the island, and its water is
+supposed to possess miraculous power. Our voluble but ununderstandable
+guide invited us by urgent gestures to test its efficacy, but the water
+looked scummy and dirty, and we declined. A few steps farther on is a
+small, stone-roofed chapel, built in the likeness of Cormac's chapel on
+the Rock of Cashel, and in it services are held during the days of
+pilgrimage to the shrine. There are also some remains of an old chapel,
+supposed to have been Saint Fin Barre's own; but by far the most
+interesting thing on the island is the stone enclosure within which the
+pilgrims say their prayers.
+
+The enclosure, which is surrounded by a heavy wall of stones laid
+loosely on each other, after the ancient Irish fashion, is about thirty
+feet square, and its level is some feet below that of the ground
+outside, so that one goes down into it by a short flight of steps. In
+the centre of the enclosure a plain wooden cross stands on a platform of
+five steps. On the flagstone at its foot is an inscription telling in
+detail how the "rounds" are to be performed on the vigil and forenoon of
+St. Fin Barre's feast-day. In the enclosing wall, which is fourteen feet
+thick in places, under heavy arches, are eight cells, which may be used
+as places of retreat by those undergoing penance. The Stations of the
+Cross are set in the upper portion of the wall, but are ugly modern
+plaster-casts. I took a picture of the place, which will be found
+opposite page 144, and which gives a fairly good idea of it.
+
+In the middle of a scrubby grove, a little way from the enclosure, is a
+wishing-stone, which had evidently been much used, I hope to good
+purpose, for the stone itself was covered with trinkets and the bushes
+round about were hung thickly with rags and hairpins and rosaries and
+other tokens. I picked up somewhere, perhaps from the jargon of the
+guide, that this wishing-stone is the altar of Fin Barre's old chapel,
+but I haven't been able to verify this, and it may not be so; but the
+game is to put up a prayer to the Saint, and make your wish, and leave
+some token to show you are in earnest, and the wish will surely come
+true. Of course we made a wish and added some half-pennies to the
+collection on the altar. In turning over the trinkets already deposited
+there, we were amused to find two bright Lincoln cents.
+
+On the shore just opposite the island is a little cemetery held in great
+repute because of the holy men who are buried there. For the island has
+been the home of a succession of hermits from the time St. Fin Barre
+left it to build his church at Cork, and there are many legends of their
+saintly lives and wonderful deeds. When they died, they were buried in
+the cemetery, where there is also a cross to the memory of Jeremiah
+Callanan, a poet native to the neighbourhood, who celebrated the shrine
+in some pretty verses beginning:
+
+  There is a green island in lone Gougane Barra,
+  Where Allua of songs rushes forth as an arrow;
+  In deep-valleyed Desmond--a thousand wild fountains
+  Come down to that lake, from their home in the mountains.
+
+But the wild honking of the horn told us it was time to go; our guide
+realised this, too, and was back at our heels more voluble and
+inarticulate than ever; not too inarticulate, however, to sell a knobby
+shillelagh to our companions and to accept with thanks the pennies I
+dropped into his hand. He tried to stay, hat in hand, until we
+departed, but the strain was too much for him, and after a moment he
+made off for the bar of the inn.
+
+Our chauffeur was evidently vexed that we had lingered so long at the
+shrine of the Saint, for he hurtled us down the rough by-road at a great
+rate, whirled into the smoother highway on two wheels, and then opened
+his throttle wide and pushed up his spark and let her rip. The road
+mounted steadily, with the view to the south opening more and more, and
+a rugged range of hills ahead coming closer and closer, until they lay
+flung right across the road, and then we swept around a sharp turn and
+entered the Pass of Keimaneigh.
+
+The guide-books assert that no pass in Europe exceeds it in grandeur,
+but this is a gross exaggeration--it is not nearly so fine, for
+instance, as the Pass of Llanberis; and yet it is wild and savage and
+very beautiful--a deep gorge cut right through the mountains by a
+glacier, which has left the marks of its passage on the rocks on either
+side. There is just room between the craggy precipices for a narrow road
+and the rugged channel of the rushing stream which drains the mountains.
+The pass is most picturesque near its eastern end, for there the cliffs
+are steepest, and the overhanging crags assume their most fantastic
+shapes. In every nook and cranny of the rocks ferns and heather and
+wild-flowers have found a foothold, the feathery plumes of London-pride
+being especially noticeable. Here in Ireland it is called St. Patrick's
+Cabbage, and no doubt there is a legend connecting the Saint with it,
+but I have never happened to run across it.
+
+As we plunged deeper into the pass, the walls on either side closed in
+more and more, great boulders dislodged from the heights above crowded
+the road so closely that more than once it was forced to turn aside to
+avoid them; the greenery of fern and colour of flower gave place to the
+sober hue of the heather and the dark green of the bog-myrtle; and then
+we were suddenly conscious that the stream by the roadside, which had
+been flowing back toward Cork, was flowing forward toward Bantry Bay,
+and we knew that we had reached the summit of the watershed dividing
+east from west. And then the hills fell back, and there, far below us,
+stretched a great rugged valley, with a tiny river wandering through,
+and white threads of roads curving here and there, and Lilliputian
+houses scattered among the fields.
+
+The car paused for an instant on the edge of this abyss and then plunged
+into it. At least, that was the sensation it gave its passengers. I do
+not know that I have ever travelled a steeper road, or one which wound
+more threateningly near the unguarded edges of precipices--certainly not
+in a heavy motor-bus hurtling along at thirty miles an hour. Perhaps the
+brakes were not holding, or perhaps the driver had had a drink too much;
+at any rate, we bounced from rock to rock and spun around sharp turns,
+only a foot or two from the edge of the road, which there was absolutely
+nothing to guard and which dropped sheer for hundreds of feet. But at
+last the more hair-raising of these turns were left behind, the road
+straightened out along the side of the hill, and then, far ahead, we saw
+opening out below us the blue waters and craggy shores of Bantry Bay.
+
+Down and down we dropped, with new vistas opening every minute, until we
+were running close beside the border of the bay, and for ten miles we
+followed its convolutions. Then we swung away between high hedges, and
+Betty nearly fell out of the bus--for the hedges were of fuchsias, ten
+feet high and heavy with scarlet flowers!
+
+That was the crowning delight of that wonderful drive. We ran between
+high rows of fuchsias for perhaps half a mile; then we turned through a
+gate into beautiful grounds; and a moment later we were climbing out in
+front of the hotel at Glengarriff--half an hour ahead of schedule time!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND
+
+
+YOU may well believe that, with such variegated loveliness all about us,
+we did not linger in the hotel a moment longer than was necessary, but
+made a hasty tea and sallied forth to explore the neighbourhood. First
+of all, Betty must pick some fuchsias, so we went back to the road, and
+climbed over a wall into a field surrounded by high hedges of the
+gorgeous flower. It was a new experience for Betty to reach up overhead
+and break off great branches which were simply masses of scarlet bells,
+until she had her arms full, and I suspect she went a little wobbly over
+it; but she was to have the same experience many times thereafter, for
+the fuchsia grows in great profusion throughout southern and western
+Ireland.
+
+I saw but one variety, however, the flower of which has a dark blue
+trumpet and scarlet bell, but this is perhaps the most showy of all, and
+nothing could be more gorgeous than a hedge in full bloom. In the woods,
+or in gardens where they are left untrimmed, the bushes will grow into
+veritable trees, twenty-five or thirty feet high.
+
+We went back to the hotel, when Betty had gathered all she could carry,
+and she sent the flowers up to our room by a maid who laughed
+sympathetically--I fancy she had seen such attacks of madness more than
+once before--and then we started along a winding path which led through
+the woods down to the shore of the bay. And we soon found that fuchsias
+were not the only things which grow to giant proportions here, for the
+path was hedged with ferns four or five feet high--great, lordly
+fellows, standing stiffly upright as though on parade. Ferns were
+everywhere, even on the trees overhead, for the trees are padded with
+moss, and in this the ferns have found a foothold. And there were holly
+trees still scarlet with last year's berries, and hawthorn fragrant with
+bloom; and over everything the English ivy ran riot--rather in the same
+fashion, I thought as I looked at it, in which England herself has run
+riot over Ireland.
+
+We got down to the shore of the bay, at last, and I quite agree with
+Thackeray that it is a world's wonder, with its rock-strewn shore and
+emerald islands and pellucid water, framed in, all about, by rugged
+mountains. We wandered along its edge, gay with sea-pinks, for an hour
+or more, and then spent another hour loitering in the woods, and finally
+walked on, between the flaming hedges and fern-draped trees, to the
+little village, which we could smell, long before we came to it, by the
+tang of peat-smoke in the air. It is a mere huddle of low, thatched
+houses, and I judge that, even amid these gorgeous surroundings, life
+can be as hard and sordid as anywhere in Ireland.
+
+A little distance from the village was a pretty, two-storied villa,
+covered with roses and climbing vines, and with a large garden beside
+it, blazing with a great variety of gorgeous bloom. We stopped to look
+at it over the gate, and the gardener espied us and came hurrying
+forward to ask us in to see the flowers. And one of the plants he
+showed us most proudly was a single, sickly-looking stalk of Indian
+corn, about a foot high, growing in a pot. When we told him that, in the
+state we came from, Indian corn filled thousands and thousands of acres
+every summer, and grew from eight to ten feet high, he looked as though
+he scarcely believed us. But that little stalk of corn brought home to
+me, as perhaps nothing else could have done, the fact that my own
+particular corner of the earth is divinely favoured, too, in ways
+unknown even to Glengarriff.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had a most improving conversation, that night, in the smoking-room of
+the hotel, with a Catholic priest and a salesman for the British
+Petroleum Company. The priest, who must have been at least sixty-five,
+had the typical long, thin Irish face, and was intensely Nationalist.
+The salesman was younger and rather rubicund, and I judge that he was an
+Englishman and a Unionist. It was the priest who did most of the talking
+about Home Rule, after I got him started, and he protested earnestly
+that Ulster's fears of unfair treatment were utterly unfounded. The
+Catholics, he said, didn't want supremacy; all they wanted was equality,
+but they _did_ want that, and felt they were entitled to it. England, he
+admitted, had made great strides within the past ten years toward
+atoning for her old injustice to Ireland, and was evidently trying hard
+to do what was right.
+
+"Yes," broke in the salesman; "she's going altogether too far. What with
+old age pensions and the purchase act and poor relief and railway
+building and putting up labourers' houses and what not, she's spending
+twice as much on this country as she gets out of it. It won't do; it has
+got to stop."
+
+"I don't believe England spends more on Ireland than she gets out of
+us," said the priest quickly.
+
+"Here it is in black and white," and the other triumphantly slapped the
+paper he had been reading. "Imperial expenditures for Ireland, 1912-13,
+£12,381,500; received from Ireland, £10,850,000; deficit,
+£1,531,500--that would be about seven and a half million dollars," he
+added, for my benefit. "Over a million and a half pounds sterling that
+England has made Ireland a present of in the past year! What do you
+think of that?" and he turned back to the priest.
+
+"The figures may be true," said the latter, slowly, "and then again they
+may not. I have been told that England burdens Ireland with many
+expenditures which don't belong to us. But in any event, I agree with
+you that charity does us no good--it does us harm. We don't want
+charity."
+
+"Hm-m-m!" grunted the salesman sceptically.
+
+"I'll admit," went on the other, "that there are and always have been
+many Irishmen only too eager to take alms--more shame to them. There
+have always been many ready to sell themselves for a good position under
+government, and to sell their country too, if need be. We have our share
+of patriots, but we have more than our share of traitors, I sometimes
+think. But it isn't by them the country should be judged. What true
+Irishmen want is the right to stand alone like men and fight their own
+battles, and in fighting them, the north and south will forget their
+foolish quarrel and become friends again as they should be. They aren't
+half as far apart, even now, as some would have you believe. Most of
+this talk about Ulster is the black work of men who make their living
+out of it, who care nothing for Ireland, and take advantage of every
+little by-election to stir the fire and keep the pot bubbling."
+
+I remarked that this ceaseless agitation over elections was unknown in
+America, where all the elections were held on one day, after which there
+were no more elections for a year.
+
+The priest stared at me in astonishment.
+
+"Did I understand you to say," he asked, "that the elections all over
+your country are held on the same day?"
+
+"Yes," I said; "on a day early in November, fixed by law."
+
+"I don't see how you manage it."
+
+"It isn't hard to manage--it's really very simple."
+
+"But where do you get enough police?"
+
+"Enough police?"
+
+"Yes. Here in Ireland, when we have an election, we have to send in the
+police from all the country round to keep the peace. If we tried to have
+all our elections on one day, there would be riots everywhere."
+
+"What about?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know--the people wouldn't know themselves, most likely; but
+there's many of them would welcome the chance for a shindy, if the
+police wasn't there. Isn't it the same in America?"
+
+I told him I had been an election officer many times, but had never seen
+any serious disorder at the polls.
+
+"Aren't there many riots next day?" he asked.
+
+"Why," I said, "the day after election is the quietest day in the year.
+Everybody goes to work as though nothing had happened."
+
+"I don't think there is much danger of riots," put in the salesman, "but
+we couldn't have your system over here because with us a man has a right
+to vote wherever he owns property and pays taxes, and if all the
+elections were held on one day, he couldn't get around."
+
+"Ah, yes," nodded the priest; "I did not think of that. How do you
+manage it in America?"
+
+"With us," I explained, "every man has one vote and no more."
+
+Again his eyes goggled.
+
+"Would you be telling me," he gasped, "that your millionaires, your men
+of vast properties, have no more votes than the poor man?"
+
+And when I told him that was so, I think he was by way of pitying our
+millionaires, as men deprived of their just rights--as, perhaps, in some
+respects, they are.
+
+And then the salesman told me that he had been to America, as far west
+as Kansas, where he had visited some friends. He had gone over, he said,
+with that sort of good-natured contempt for everything American so
+common in England, but he had come away convinced that there was no
+country on earth to match it.
+
+"The only thing I saw to criticise in America were the roads," he added.
+"Why don't you take a leaf from Lloyd George's book? He has put a tax of
+three-pence a gallon on gasoline used by pleasure cars, and this tax
+goes into a fund for the upkeep of the highways, proportioned according
+to the number of cars in each county. Gasoline used in commercial cars
+pays a tax of three-ha'-pence a gallon. A great sum is collected in this
+way, and the upkeep of the highways is thrown upon the people who do
+them the most damage. If you'd do the same in America, your roads would
+soon be as good as ours; and nobody could complain that the tax was
+unjust."
+
+I agreed that it was a clever idea, and I hereby call it to the
+attention of our lawmakers.
+
+"Well," said the priest, who had been listening attentively to all this,
+"I am glad to know the truth about this tax. I had heard of it, and had
+thought it another English exaction laid upon Ireland. Now I see that I
+was wrong; for, as you say, it is a just tax."
+
+And then he told us some stories of the old days, of famine and
+persecution and eviction, of the hard fight for life on the rocky
+hillsides, while the fertile valleys were given over to grazing or
+ringed with high walls and turned into game preserves. There were
+lighter stories, too, of the humorous side of Irish character, and one
+of them, though I suspect it is an old one, I will set down here.
+
+The southwest coast of Ireland, of which Bantry Bay forms a part, is one
+of the most dangerous in the world, because of the rugged capes which
+stretch far out into the ocean and the small islands and hidden reefs
+which lie beyond. It is just the sort of coast where fish abound, and so
+little villages are scattered all along it, whose men-folks fish
+whenever the weather lets them, and at other times labour in the tiny
+potato patches up on the rocky hillsides. Naturally they are familiar
+with all the twists and turnings of the coast, and are always on the
+lookout to add to their scanty incomes by a job of piloting.
+
+One day the crew of a fishing-boat perceived a big freighter nosing
+about in a light fog, rather closer inshore than she should have been,
+and at once lay alongside and put a man aboard.
+
+"Will you be wantin' a pilot, sir?" he asked the captain, who was
+anxiously pacing the bridge.
+
+The captain stared a moment at the dirty and tattered visitor.
+
+"Who the devil are you?" he demanded, at last.
+
+"Me name's McCarthy, sir. I'm a pilot, sir."
+
+"A pilot!" and the captain looked at McCarthy again. "I don't believe
+it."
+
+"'Tis the truth I'm tellin' you, sir," protested McCarthy.
+
+"Well," said the captain, "if it's the truth, you can easily prove it.
+Let me hear you box the compass."
+
+McCarthy was nonplussed. More than once, sitting over a pot of ale in
+some public house, he had heard old sailors proudly rattle off the
+points of the compass, but, though he remembered how the rigmarole
+sounded, he had no idea how to do it, nor even any very clear idea of
+what it meant.
+
+"Faith, I can't do it, sir," he admitted.
+
+"Can't do it?" roared the captain. "Can't box the compass! And yet you
+call yourself a pilot."
+
+McCarthy did some rapid thinking, for he saw a good job, which he could
+ill afford to lose, slipping through his fingers.
+
+"It's like this, sir," he said, finally, "in our small place, it's the
+Irish we would be using, niver a word of English, and all the English
+any of us knows is just the little we might pick up from bein' after the
+ships. I can't box the compass in English, but I can box it in the
+Irish, sir, if that will do."
+
+The captain looked into the speaker's guileless eyes and also did some
+rapid thinking. He knew no Gaelic, but he needed a pilot badly, and he
+reflected that, in any language, it ought to be possible to tell whether
+the compass was being boxed correctly, because the words would have to
+follow each other with a certain similarity of sound, as north,
+north-and-by-east, north-north-east, north-east-by-north, and so on.
+
+"All right," he growled, "go ahead and let's hear you."
+
+"My father," McCarthy began solemnly in his homely Gaelic; "my
+grandfather, my grandfather's grandmother, my grandmother's grandfather,
+my great grandfather, my great grandfather's grandmother, my great
+grandmother's great. . . ."
+
+"Hold on," shouted the captain, quite convinced. "I see you know how.
+Take charge of the ship!"
+
+And McCarthy thereupon proved he knew how by getting the vessel safely
+past Cape Clear!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was pouring rain, next morning, a steady, driving rain, which looked
+as though it might last forever, and we were confronted by the problem
+which so often confronts the traveller in Ireland, whether to go or
+stay. To go meant the possibility of having the most beautiful drive in
+Ireland obscured in mist; to stay meant a dreary day at the hotel, with
+no assurance that the next day would be any better, or the next, or the
+next. At last we decided to go.
+
+Never after that was the problem so difficult, for we soon realised the
+folly of permitting Irish rain to interfere with any plan. In the first
+place, the rain is not an unmixed evil, for it is soft and fresh and
+vivifying, and it adds mystery and picturesqueness to the most
+commonplace landscape; and in the second place, it is very fickle,
+begins unaccountably, stops unexpectedly, and rarely lasts the day
+through. In fact, the crest of any ridge may take one into it, or out of
+it, as we were to find that day.
+
+So when, about ten o'clock, the bus came puffing up to the door, we
+climbed aboard. The road, for a little way, wound up the valley of the
+Glengarriff River, and then, striking off into the mountains, climbed
+upward at a gradient that tested the power of the engine. Almost at once
+we were in the mountain mist, soft and grey, eddying all about us,
+whirling aside for an instant now and then to give us tantalising
+glimpses down into the valleys, and then closing in again. Up and up we
+went, a thousand feet and more, and at last we came to the crest of the
+mountain range which divides County Cork from County Kerry. The road
+plunges under the crest through a long tunnel, and then winds steeply
+down into the valley of the Sheen.
+
+Again there was a series of sharp and unprotected turns, just as on the
+day before, and this time with the added complication of a slippery,
+sloppy road; but I have never ridden with a more careful or more
+accomplished driver than we had that day, and he nursed the heavy bus
+along so quietly and with such easy mastery that no one thought of
+danger. Gradually the mist lightened and cleared away, until we could
+see the wide valley far below, with the tiny winding river at the
+bottom, and the walled fields and midget houses. There was a succession
+of such valleys all the way to Kenmare, and we finally rolled up before
+the big hotel there just in time for lunch.
+
+We walked down into the village, afterwards, and found it more bustling
+and prosperous than any of the other small villages we had seen. This is
+due partly perhaps to the tourist traffic, for Kenmare is a famous
+bathing and fishing resort; but homespun tweeds are manufactured there
+in considerable quantities, and at the convent scores of girls are
+employed at lace-making, Celtic embroidery, wood-carving and
+leather-work. The school is said to be one of the best managed in
+Ireland, and I was sorry that we did not have time to visit it. We saw,
+however, some of the Kerry girls in the street, and they were fully
+handsome enough to give colour to the doggerel:
+
+    'Tis sure that the lads will be goin' to Cork
+    When their money is gone and they're wantin' to work;
+    But 'tis just as sure that they'll turn back to Kerry
+    For a purty colleen when they're wantin' to marry.
+
+Kerry is a poor country and always will be, for it consists mostly of
+stony hills, and though it is renowned for its scenery, no one except
+the hotel keepers can live on that. Such little hill farms as have been
+wrested from the rocks produce but scantily; so when there is a "long
+family," as the Irish put it--and "long families" are the rule--one son
+will stay at home to look after the old people, and the others will fare
+forth into the world to search for a living. I hope it is true that they
+come back when they're searching for wives. Otherwise the lot of the
+Kerry girls, hard enough under any circumstances, would be harder still.
+Nowhere in Ireland are there brighter eyes or redder cheeks.
+
+[Illustration: THE BAY AT GLENGARRIFF]
+
+[Illustration: THE UPPER LAKE, KILLARNEY, FROM THE KENMARE ROAD]
+
+The rain was quite over by the time we were ready to start again, and
+the mist had disappeared under the rays of the sun, so that we had the
+benefit of the full beauty of the Kenmare River, which is really a wide
+bay, as we ran close along its western bank. Then the road doubled back
+from it, and presently the driver stopped at a spot where a narrow
+footpath struck down into the woods, and advised us to take it, saying
+that he would wait for us at its other end. In a moment we found
+ourselves clambering down the side of a wildly-beautiful ravine, with
+the roar of rushing water rising from below, and trees festooned with
+ferns and ivy meeting above our heads. And then, high above us, we saw
+the arch of a stone bridge; and quite suddenly we came out upon the
+stream, the Blackwater, foaming over the rocks. It was at its very best,
+from the heavy rain of the morning, and we stood there watching it,
+fascinated by its beauty, as long as we dared.
+
+We went on again close beside the shore of the bay, and in half an hour
+came to Parknasilla, where there is another big hotel, set in the midst
+of beautiful grounds, and with superb views opening on every side. The
+climate here is sub-tropical, and the vegetation mounts to a climax
+of riotous profusion, with palms and calla lilies growing in the open.
+The bay, too, is very fine, with bluff, rock-strewn shores, and
+innumerable green islets speckling its sparkling waters, and rugged
+mountains closing in the distance.
+
+Then again we were off, mounting steadily, steadily, winding under
+beetling crags and above grey precipices; up and up, with the world
+sinking away into the valley at our left, and the heathery, rock-strewn
+heights soaring upward at our right; and finally, at our feet, opened
+the wonderful panorama of the Brown Valley--brown bog, brown rock, brown
+heather, mounting to the distant slopes of Macgillicuddy's Reeks. We
+dropped down toward it, mile after mile; then up and up again, to the
+crest of the ridge beyond--and there, far below us, lay the lakes of
+Killarney, rimmed with green hills and dotted with green islands--the
+most sweetly beautiful in all the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The loveliest general view of the lakes of Killarney to be had from
+anywhere is as one drops down toward them along the Kenmare road. Their
+individual beauties may, of course, be seen to better advantage closer
+at hand; but from this height, the whole wonderful panorama stretches
+before one. Right across the valley opens the Gap of Dunloe, with the
+rugged Reeks on one side and the green clad Purple Mountain on the
+other; below is the narrow, island-dotted, hill-encircled upper lake;
+farther away is Muckross Lake, and far in the distance stretch the blue
+waters of Lough Leane, the largest of them all. My advice is to take a
+long look at it, for you will never see anything more lovely.
+
+The road soon dropped among the trees, and our driver pointed out with
+evident pride the Queen's cottage on the shore of the upper lake, built
+a good many years ago in order that Victoria, on her tour of the lakes,
+might have a fitting place in which to lunch, and which has never been
+occupied since. Then the road ran close beside the border of the middle
+lake, plunged again into the woods for a mile or two; and at last the
+bus stopped before the inn where we intended to stay, and we climbed
+down regretfully.
+
+The inn was a long, two-storied building, standing a little back from
+the road, and the porter who came running out to take our bags might
+have stepped straight out of Pickwick, he was so fat, so jolly, and so
+rubicund. I had some films I wanted developed at once, because I was
+afraid the damp weather would affect them, and I asked him where I could
+get it done.
+
+"There's a man just this side of the village can do it, sir," he said.
+"You will see his sign as you go along the road."
+
+"How far is it?" I asked.
+
+"The village is two mile, sir."
+
+"Then it's less than two miles?"
+
+"It is, sir."
+
+I turned to Betty.
+
+"We've got plenty of time before dinner," I said. "Suppose we walk in
+and see the town."
+
+And Betty, wotting little of what was before her, consented.
+
+I put my films in my pocket, and we set off eagerly along the pleasant
+road, past a little village, past a church with a graveyard back of it
+and a Celtic cross high on the hillside above it, past a hotel or two,
+around one turn after another, with green-clad hills mounting steeply to
+our right and the blue lake lying low on our left. We met an occasional
+cyclist, or a donkey-cart being driven home from market, or a labourer
+trudging stolidly home from work, or two or three girls strolling along
+with arms interlaced, exchanging confidences. And the air was very sweet
+and the evening very cool and pleasant, and the sky full of glorious
+colour--
+
+"We must certainly have come two miles," said Betty. "What do you
+suppose is the matter?"
+
+"I don't know," I said, looking at my watch and noting that we had been
+half an hour on the road. "Perhaps we'll see the town around the next
+turn."
+
+But we didn't. All we saw was about half a mile of empty road. We
+covered this and came to another turn, and there before us lay another
+long stretch of road. Determined not to give up, we pushed on, and came
+to a bridge over a rippling little stream, which we learned afterward
+was the Flesk, and we stopped and looked at it awhile and rested.
+
+"We must be nearly there," I said encouragingly.
+
+"What's bothering me," explained Betty, "isn't the distance we have to
+go to get there; it's the distance we have to go to get back."
+
+There was another bend in the road just beyond the bridge, and we turned
+this, confident that the village would be there. But it wasn't. We saw
+nothing but the smooth highway, stretching away and away into the dim
+distance. I looked at my watch again.
+
+"We've been walking nearly an hour," I said. "It looks as though we
+might miss dinner, after all."
+
+And just then there came the trot of a horse and the jingle of harness
+along the road behind us, and a side-car drew up with a flourish.
+
+"Would your honour be wantin' a car?" asked the jarvey, leaning toward
+us ingratiatingly.
+
+"We were told there was a photographer's just this side of the village.
+Do you know where it is?"
+
+"I do, your honour."
+
+"How far is it?"
+
+"'Tis just over there beyont. If you will step up on the car, I'll have
+ye there in a minute. I'm goin' right past it."
+
+Of course we got up. And, as the jarvey had said, the photographer's
+shop was just around the next bend. But before I got down, I made a
+bargain with him to drive us back to our hotel, and, after I had left my
+films, we set merrily off through the gathering dusk.
+
+"There's one thing I don't understand," I said, at last. "The porter at
+the hotel said it was only two miles to the village. Yet we walked for
+an hour without getting there."
+
+"He meant Irish miles, your honour," explained the jarvey, laughing.
+"There is an old saying that 'an Irish mile is a mile and a bit, and the
+bit is as long as the mile.' You see, here in ould Ireland we always
+stretch everything."
+
+I have found since that the Irish mile is about a mile and a quarter;
+but this is no real measure of its elasticity. More than once thereafter
+we saw one mile stretch out to three; and we soon came to realise that
+the Irish mind is extremely vague and inexact when it comes to distances
+and directions.
+
+We got back to the hotel to have our first view of what proved to be a
+nightly ceremony. On a stand in the entrance hall was a huge platter,
+and on the platter lay a huge salmon, and a card leaning against it
+announced that it weighed fourteen pounds and had been caught that day
+by Captain Gregory, and there were flowers all about it, so it's a proud
+fish it should have been. There were five or six other salmon on a lower
+table, each with a card giving its weight--anywhere from five pounds to
+eleven--and the whole collection represented the day's catch of the
+guests of the hotel.
+
+For the hotel, being handy to the lakes, and clean and comfortable and
+homelike, is a favourite resort of the fishermen who come to Killarney
+during the salmon season. Every evening while we were there, as the
+fishermen came in, tired and wet, with their boatmen tramping behind
+them carrying the fish--if there were any--they were met at the door by
+the rotund porter, his face beaming like a full moon--a red harvest
+moon!--and the fish would be solemnly weighed, and the biggest would be
+decorated with flowers and awarded the place of honour, and the others
+would be grouped around it, and after dinner, the fishermen would stand
+and look at them, their hands deep in their pockets; and later on there
+would be a great bustle as the fish were wrapped in straw and tied up,
+ready to be sent by parcel-post to admiring friends back home!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a cosmopolitan crowd which gathered that evening after dinner
+about the big fireplace in the smoking-room, where a most welcome and
+comforting wood fire blazed and crackled. The weather had turned very
+cold, and Betty and I were dressed as warmly as we had been at any time
+during the winter, though it was the fifth of June, and the papers were
+running long columns about the fearful heat wave which had America in
+its grip. There was a sturdy, red-faced old Scotchman in carpet
+slippers, and a sallow, heavy-lidded ancient whom the others addressed
+as "colonel," and just such a close-clipped, stiff-backed sporting
+squire as is Canon Hannay's Major Kent, of near Ballymoy; and there were
+two or three other Englishmen with no outstanding characteristic except
+their insularity; and the talk was of flies and rods and casts, and
+everybody was indignant at the suffragette who had rushed out on the
+track and tried to stop the Derby; and there was a steady emptying of
+tall glasses and a steadily-deepening cloud of tobacco smoke, and
+everybody was very comfortable and cosy. And presently the old Scotchman
+took pity on me as a mere American who knew nothing about the high
+mysteries of sport.
+
+"It must be a great pleasure for you to sit before an open fire like
+this," he said.
+
+"It is," I agreed. "There's nothing more pleasant than a wood fire."
+
+"Ye may well say so. But of course in America you have nothing like it."
+
+"Nothing like it?" I repeated, looking at him.
+
+"Why no," he said. "You never see an open fire in America. All you have
+is steam pipes running all around the room."
+
+I looked at him again to see if he was in earnest; and then I tried
+gently to disabuse his mind of that idea. But it was no use. Indeed, he
+got rather huffy when I said I had never seen a room with steam pipes
+running all around it.
+
+The savage insularity of the average Englishman is matter for
+never-ending amusement, once one has grown accustomed to his contempt.
+He believes that all American men are money-grubbers, and all American
+women social climbers, who chew gum and talk loudly, while their
+daughters are forward minxes who call their fathers "popper," and that
+men, women, and children are alike wholly lacking in culture and
+good-taste. The peculiar thing about it is that he never for an instant
+doubts his own good taste in telling one all this frankly to one's face.
+
+This is no fancy sketch. My own opinion is that the average Englishman
+has no genuine feeling of friendship for America, and his ignorance of
+things American is abysmal. One day, on the boat coming home, a
+well-educated Englishman whom I had got to know, asked me the name of a
+man with whom I had been talking.
+
+"That is Senator So-and-so," I answered.
+
+"What is a senator?" he inquired.
+
+I remember that one day Betty and I and two other Americans happened to
+be driving through the Tyrol in a coach with two Englishmen, and they
+began to discuss American railway accidents--a favourite topic with
+Englishmen when Americans are present; and one of them remarked that it
+was no wonder there were so many accidents in America, since when
+Americans built a railroad all they did was to lay the ties along on top
+of the ground and spike the rails to them. I asked him if he had ever
+been to America, and he said no, and I advised him to run over and pay
+us a visit some time. This huffed him.
+
+"Ah!" he said. "But what you Americans would give for a king!"
+
+"Give for a king?"
+
+"Yes; you would give anything for a king. Then you could have a court
+and an aristocracy, and some real society. You're sick of your limping,
+halting, make-believe government, and you know it!"
+
+We all four stared at him in astonishment, wondering if he had gone
+suddenly mad. Then Betty got her breath.
+
+"No," she said; "you're really wrong about that. You see we settled the
+king question back in 1776."
+
+The rest was silence.
+
+But really Englishmen aren't to blame for their distorted ideas of
+America, for they get those ideas from the English newspapers, and the
+only kind of American news most English newspapers publish is freak
+news. During that week, for instance, almost the only American news in
+any of the papers was about the terrific heat-wave, about Harry Thaw's
+escape from Matteawan, and about some millionaire who had taken
+bichloride of mercury by mistake, and lived for ten days or so
+afterwards, occupying the time very cheerfully in closing up his
+affairs. After his death, one of the great London dailies published a
+column editorial about the affair, reasoning in the most solemn manner
+that his survival for so long a time could have been due only to the
+remarkable tonic properties of the American climate.
+
+With the Irish it is entirely different. In the first place, America is
+to them the haven to which a million Irishmen have fled from English
+persecution; and in the next place, their knowledge of the country comes
+not from newspapers but from letters written by relatives and friends.
+The letters are somewhat rosier, I fear, than the facts warrant, but
+they establish a kindly feeling which makes every Irishman ready to
+welcome the passing American as a friend and brother. The only trouble
+is that he is also apt to regard him as necessarily a millionaire.
+
+It is undoubtedly true that a large portion of the lower-class Irish
+consider it no disgrace to beg from an American. Not that they are
+habitual beggars, but when an American comes their way, they seem to
+consider it a waste of opportunity if they do not apply for a small
+donation. In tourist centres, such as Dublin and Killarney, they are
+very persistent, especially the children, and will follow along for
+minutes on end telling the tale of their poverty and distress in queer
+bated voices, as though they lacked the strength to speak aloud. But
+Betty accidentally discovered a cure for this nuisance, quite as
+effective as John Minogue's, and I take pleasure in passing it on.
+
+Like most other people who have lived together for a long time, we have
+developed a lot of symbols and pass-words, without meaning to any one
+but ourselves; and it has become a rather foolish habit of mine when we
+are together and I see something I especially admire, to express my
+admiration by uttering the single word "Hickenlooper." And Betty, if she
+agrees, says "Oppenheimer," and we understand each other and pass on.
+One day in Cork, a group of children were unusually annoying, and
+followed along and followed along, until Betty, losing patience, turned
+upon them sharply, pointed her finger at them, and said "Oppenheimer!" I
+shall never forget the startled look in their eyes, as they stopped dead
+in their tracks, stared at her for an instant, and then fled
+helter-skelter. We decided afterwards that they thought she was putting
+a curse on them. She tried it more than once thereafter, and it never
+failed to work; so, if you are annoyed beyond endurance by juvenile
+beggars in Ireland, turn upon them sharply, point your finger at them,
+and say "Oppenheimer!"
+
+And since I am giving advice, I will give one bit more before I close
+this chapter.
+
+Among the purchases which Betty had made in New York, just before we
+sailed, was a small electric torch. I had derided it as unnecessary, but
+she had insisted on bringing it along, and had put it in our
+travelling-bag when we were sorting over our luggage in Dublin. The
+first night at Thurles, in a dreary little room, with only the
+flickering candle for a light, I acknowledged her wisdom, for the bright
+glow of the torch was very welcome. Again at Glengarriff candles were
+the only illumination, and that night at Killarney, when I got to our
+room, I found her in animated conversation with the chambermaid by the
+light of a single tallow dip. They were talking about America, I think,
+and the maid's eyes were shining with excitement and her cheeks were
+flushed and the beautiful soft brogue was rolling off her tongue, when a
+sudden gust from the open window blew the candle out. Betty picked up
+the torch from the dresser and pressed the button.
+
+"Glory be to God! What's that?" cried the girl, as the glare flashed
+into her astonished eyes.
+
+"It's only a torch," said Betty. "It won't hurt you." And then, when I
+had lighted the candle again, she showed the girl how it worked.
+
+"Glory be to God!" she cried again. "The wonder of it! You would niver
+be gettin' that in Ireland!"
+
+"No; I got it in New York."
+
+"Ah, 'tis a wonderful place," said the girl, reverentially. "No place
+but America would be havin' such things as that!"
+
+Now this is no doubt a libel upon Ireland, for I suppose one can get
+electric torches there. At any rate, my advice is to get one
+somewhere--a good one--and take it along in your handbag. This advice is
+good for the continent as well as for Ireland, but it is especially good
+for the latter, and the reason is this:
+
+In the old days, when English prodigals wasted their substance on
+castellated palaces, the Irish squire, being a wiser man, spent his
+money on good wine and good horses--or, when he had no money, ran
+light-heartedly into debt for them. As to his family mansion, he
+contented himself with adding a wing from time to time, as it might be
+needed, either because of the increasing number of his children, or the
+widening circle of his friends. The result was a singular house, often
+only one story high, never more than two, flung wide over a great deal
+of ground, and of a most irregular plan. Such a house had many
+advantages, for, as another writer has pointed out, "at one end of it
+the ladies could sleep undisturbed, no matter how joyous the men were at
+the other; there were no stairs to fall down; and the long narrow
+corridors were pleasant to those who found it hard to direct their
+devious steps."
+
+But the time came when these hospitable Irishmen found themselves
+overwhelmed by debt, their houses were taken from them, and many of
+them, since they were too large for any private family, were converted
+into inns. The traveller in rural Ireland will encounter more than one
+of them, and will find those long, shadowy, zig-zag corridors eerie
+places after night, unless he has a torch to light his steps. The doors
+are not always fitted with locks, and if the window is kept open, an
+intruder has only to step over the sill. We never had any intruder; but
+had we had, I am sure one flash from the torch would have sent him
+flying.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE "GRAND TOUR"
+
+
+THERE are many excursions which can be made over and around the
+Killarney lakes, but the most important one--the "grand tour," so to
+speak--starts at the town, proceeds by car to Kate Kearney's cottage,
+then by pony through the Gap of Dunloe, then by boat the full length of
+the lakes to Ross Castle, and back to town again by car. This round
+takes a day to accomplish, and gives one a very fair idea of Killarney.
+It is about all most of the people who come to Killarney ever see of it.
+In fact, some of them don't see that much--as will presently appear.
+
+Now Killarney is to Ireland what the Trossachs are to Scotland and
+Niagara Falls to America--in other words, its most famous show-place;
+and so it has passed more or less under the control of that ubiquitous
+exploiter of show-places, Thomas Cook. Cook arranges all the excursions,
+Cook controls most of the vehicles, Cook's boats are the biggest and
+safest, and so, if you wish to see Killarney "in the least fatiguing
+manner," you must resign yourself to Cook. Let me say here that I admire
+Cook; there is no place where a traveller is served more courteously,
+more fairly, or more intelligently than in a Cook office. No one need be
+ashamed to make intelligent use of Cook. The reason of his disrepute is
+that he has come to be used so largely by self-complacent people whose
+idea of seeing Europe is to gallop from place to place in charge of a
+conductor. But that isn't Cook's fault.
+
+Killarney is the one place in Ireland which every tourist wants to see,
+not because it is characteristically Irish, but because it has been very
+carefully exploited. In my own opinion, a trip to Holy Cross and Cashel,
+or to Mellifont and Monasterboice and the tombs of the kings, or to the
+congested districts of Connaught, is far better worth while. But the
+great bulk of tourist traffic follows the beaten path, and in Ireland
+the beaten path leads straight to Killarney.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As we sat at breakfast next morning, we witnessed the ceremonial rites
+involved in getting the fishermen started off for the day's sport. The
+rotund porter acted as major-domo, and puffed and panted and hurried
+hither and yon, his brow creased with the anxieties of his high office.
+
+It is a point of honour with all true fishermen to wear only the most
+faded, rain-stained, disreputable of garments, and it was a
+weird-looking company which gathered in front of the hotel that morning,
+with their hats, decorated with many-coloured flies, flapping around
+their brick-red faces. There was one woman in the lot who was going out
+with her father--a short, square spinster, evidently hard as nails, with
+a face as red as the reddest, and boots as heavy as the heaviest. The
+wonder was that she didn't smoke a pipe like the others. They overhauled
+their tackle with great care--shook out the lines, tested rods and
+reels, examined the flies, and finally trudged away, the boatman
+following, laden with rain-proofs and lunch-basket and gaff and
+landing-net, and with a broad grin on his face at the prospect of
+sharing his employer's tobacco and lunch, and of earning a few shillings
+in so pleasant a manner.
+
+When we had finished breakfast, we went out to have a look at the
+weather, and found the sun shining brightly, with every prospect of a
+pleasant day. The porter assured us that there was no chance of rain;
+but we had already had some experience of the fickleness of the Irish
+climate, so we went back and prepared for the worst, and clambered
+presently to the seat of the car Cook sent for us.
+
+On the way in to the village, we stopped at another hotel to pick up
+three American women who had been touring the continent and England, and
+who, by a long jump, had managed to squeeze in one day for Killarney
+before hastening on to Queenstown to catch their boat. They had arrived
+late the night before, and would leave for Cork as soon as the tour of
+the lakes had been completed, and they were jubilant because the day was
+so fine. They had feared it might rain, and that their long journey
+would be for nothing. The only protection against rain they had with
+them was two small umbrellas, and I could see that they were somewhat
+amused at our rain-coats and leggings.
+
+There was a long open coach, with seats for about twenty people, waiting
+in front of Cook's office in the village, and presently, as cars drove
+in from the various hotels, this was filled to overflowing, and at last
+we rumbled away. We were fortunate in having been assigned to the front
+seat with the driver, a handsome, good-humoured fellow, not averse to
+talking; and behind us we could hear the merry chatter of the happy and
+contented crowd. We passed the workhouse, which, as usual, is the
+biggest building in the place, and then the lunatic asylum, which is
+almost as big, and then we saw the ruins of Aghadoe high on the
+hillside--and then I felt a drop of rain on my cheek. There was another
+drop, and then another, and then a gentle patter, and then a rushing and
+remorseless downpour.
+
+We held the rubber lap-robe up under our chins and the water ran down it
+in streams. The happy chatter had turned to exclamations of
+consternation and dismay, and we did not need to look around to realise
+the havoc which the rain was working. The driver chirruped to his horses
+and endeavoured to divert his passengers with a few stanzas of a classic
+Irish drinking song, rendered in a resounding baritone:
+
+    Let the farmer praise his grounds,
+    Let the huntsman praise his hounds,
+      The shepherd his dew-scented lawn;
+    But I, more blest than they,
+    Spend each happy night and day
+      With my charming little cruiskeen lawn, lawn, lawn,
+      With my charming little cruiskeen lawn.
+
+"What does cruiskeen lawn mean?" asked a man's voice behind us.
+
+"Oh, it is just a term of endearment," said a woman's voice in answer.
+"Don't you remember the song about Willy Reilly and his dear cruiskeen
+lawn?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said the man.
+
+I caught a twinkle in our driver's eye, but he said nothing. After all,
+Willy Reilly, being a true Irishman, no doubt loved his cruiskeen lawn,
+or little full jug, almost as well as his colleen bawn, or fair-haired
+lassie.
+
+So we rolled merrily on, and presently turned into a hilly lane, where a
+crowd of ragamuffins mounted on bony steeds awaited us. These were the
+pony-boys, and a wild-looking lot they were as they fell in about us and
+proceeded to act as a sort of cavalry escort. We took a bridge and a
+steep grade beyond at a gallop, and drew up in front of a white-washed,
+slate-roofed little house, which our driver announced was Kate Kearney's
+cottage, and his bedraggled passengers made a break for its welcome
+shelter. It was Lady Morgan who celebrated Kate's charms in the
+ingenuous verses beginning,
+
+          Oh, did you not hear of Kate Kearney?
+          She lives on the banks of Killarney,
+          From the glance of her eye shun danger and fly,
+          For fatal's the glance of Kate Kearney,
+
+and she is supposed to have lived somewhere in this neighbourhood,
+though it is a long way from the "banks of Killarney." At any rate, this
+spick-and-span cottage, very unlike Kate's, has been given her name, and
+I dare say that any of the girls who tend bar inside would answer to it,
+just to keep up the local colour.
+
+The room into which the door opens has a bar at one end and an open fire
+at the other, and while the women of the party crowded about the fire,
+the men paused before the bar for a taste of potheen. There are many
+other opportunities to taste it before one gets through the gap, but if
+it is to be done at all, it would better be done here, for here one
+gets a clean glass to drink it out of. The whiskey is supposed to be
+surreptitious, but of course it has paid the tax like any other; an inch
+of it is poured into the bottom of the glass, and then the glass is
+filled with milk, and one drinks it and smacks one's lips and looks
+knowing. I drank a glass of it in the interests of this narrative, and I
+am free to say I have drunk many things I liked better.
+
+At the end of half an hour, everybody had managed to get fairly dry, and
+a prolonged discussion arose whether to go on through the gap or turn
+back to the town. The rain was still falling steadily, and there was no
+sign of break in the heavy clouds, though our conductor contended that
+they were clearing away to the westward. The motley crew of pony-boys,
+with their shaggy "coppaleens," were all most insistent that the shower
+would soon be over, and that it would be a great mistake to go back.
+Betty and I had already made up our minds: we were going to see the
+thing through whatever happened; but the rest of the crowd vacillated
+back and forth in cruel indecision, especially the three women who must
+see Killarney to-day or never. We advised them to risk it; but in the
+end, only one other member of the party, a little German Jew, decided to
+do so, and all the rest clambered back into the bus and were driven off
+toward the town. The Cook's conductor stayed with us to act as pilot.
+
+I wish you could have heard the chorus of commendation from those Irish
+throats as Betty mounted her pony. Sure she was the brave lady, she was
+the wise lady, the torrents and cataracts would be that fine; let the
+featherbed trash drive off back to the town, sure they were not worth a
+thought; the shower would soon pass by, and it would be a fine day, and
+anyway the Irish rain was a soft sweet rain that never did any harm, and
+the gap was the grandest sight in the whole world--so their tongues ran
+on.
+
+I gave my camera into the keeping of the pony-boy who was going along
+with us, and scrambled into the saddle. I have had mighty little
+equestrian experience since my hobby-horse days, and I cannot pretend
+that I enjoyed that ride, for the road was rough and up-and-down and the
+pony anything but a smooth stepper. If I had it to do again, I think I
+should walk. The distance is only about five miles, and a person not
+thoroughly at home in the saddle has far more leisure to survey the
+beauties of the gap when he is using his own legs than when he is
+bumping along on a "coppaleen."
+
+The accompaniments of the ride are more diverting than the ride itself.
+We had gone scarcely a dozen yards, when we found a photographer with
+his camera set up in the middle of the road, who took our pictures on
+the off chance that we'd buy one. Then from the shelter of a rock arose
+a battered human, with a still more battered cornet, which looked as
+though it had been used as a shillelagh in moments of absent-mindedness,
+and he offered to awake the echo for a penny. I produced the penny, but
+the blast he blew upon the horn was so faint and wavering that Echo
+slept on undisturbed. Then we came to an individual playing with great
+violence upon a wheezy accordion. The pony-boys said that he had been a
+great actor, but that rheumatism had overtaken him, so that he could
+strut the boards no longer, and he had finally been reduced to playing
+an accordion in the Gap of Dunloe, and they besought charity for him, as
+the most deserving case in the gap. And then we came to two men with a
+small cannon, which they offered to discharge for sixpence. And then
+began a long procession of barefooted old women, pretending to offer
+homeknit woollen socks and home-distilled potheen for sale, but really
+begging--begging most insistently, running along beside the ponies with
+their poor red feet slopping in the mud or slipping over the stones;
+voluble with their blessings if they got a small coin, and plainly
+thinking themselves insulted if they didn't.
+
+Meanwhile, we had mounted into the gap along a rough and winding
+bridle-path, and a desolately-impressive place we found it. A little
+river, the Loe, runs at the bottom, and close on either side high,
+frowning, rock-strewn precipices tower steeply upwards. There is no sign
+of vegetation--except a patch of heather maintaining a perilous foothold
+here and there on the bare and desolate hills,--the Tomies on one side
+and McGillicuddy's Reeks on the other. And then, at what seemed the most
+desolate spot, we came to a substantial, two-storied house, a station of
+the Royal Irish Constabulary. What the police could find to do in such a
+desert was difficult to imagine; but we stopped a few minutes to talk
+with them, and they evidently welcomed the diversion.
+
+Legend has it that the Gap of Dunloe was cleft by Finn MacCool with a
+single blow of his great sword, and that it was here, in the Black Lough
+into which the River Loe presently widens, that St. Patrick imprisoned
+the last snake in Ireland, by persuading it to enter a box on the
+promise that he would release it to-morrow. When the morrow came, the
+too-trusting serpent reminded the Saint of his promise, and asked him to
+open the lid, but Patrick replied that it was not yet to-morrow, but
+only to-day, and so the snake is still there in the box on the bottom of
+the lake, waiting for to-morrow to come. It makes such a fearful
+bubbling sometimes that it scares all the fish away, so that, while
+there are fish in plenty in the other lakes, there is none in this.
+There is a bridge at one end of the lake, and if one makes a wish as one
+crosses it, the wish will come true.
+
+The road mounts steadily, curving from side to side of the valley, and
+one should stop from time to time and look back, or the full beauty of
+the place will be lost. We found the wind rushing along the heights, as
+we worked our way upward, and the rain fairly poured at times, so that
+the cataracts performed splendidly. At least I can vouch for two of
+them--one down Betty's nose and the other down mine! But presently, the
+clouds blew away, and the rain stopped just before we came out on the
+heights above the Black Valley.
+
+This is undoubtedly the most beautiful point of the ride. To the right a
+savage glen runs back into the very heart of the Reeks, ending in a
+pocket shut in by sheer and rugged precipices. Far below lies the
+valley, with a silver ribbon of a river winding through it, and to the
+left shine the blue waters of the upper lake.
+
+I dismounted at this point, turned my pony over to the boy, and went
+down the winding road on foot, for I didn't want anything to distract
+my eyes from this wonderful view. And presently we were down among the
+trees, before a little lodge called for some unknown reason "Lord
+Brandon's Cottage," in which sat a man to whom we had to pay a shilling
+each before we could pass to the landing-place at the head of the lake,
+where the boats and lunch were waiting. Killarney is about the only spot
+in Ireland which is exploited in this manner, but here you will find
+fees exacted at every turn--a petty annoyance which, added to the
+persistent begging and insistent demands for tips, does much to
+interfere with the pleasure of the Killarney trip.
+
+At the landing we found two boats which had rowed up from Ross Castle
+during the morning--a small one with two oarsmen and a larger one with
+four. The conductor marshalled us into the big one, took his seat at the
+stern, got out our lunches, which had been sent up from the hotel,
+tucked us in with heavy waterproofs, drew the tiller-lines across his
+lap and gave the signal to start.
+
+The upper lake is much the most beautiful of the three, with its many
+islands, and the high hills hemming it in. Near its lower end is Arbutus
+Island, and it is worth pausing a moment beside it to look at the
+arbutus, that handsomest of shrubs, with ruddy stem and glossy leaf,
+which is indigenous all about Killarney, but reaches its height of glory
+on this little island. It is impossible to tell where the outlet of the
+lake is, until you are right upon it, but it suddenly opens out between
+two high rocks, and the boat enters the Long Range--the winding river
+some three miles in length which connects the upper and middle lakes.
+
+The rock on the left is called Colman's Leap, and the legend is that,
+once upon a time, this Colman, who was lord of the upper lake, was
+chased down the mountain by some supporters of The O'Donaghue, and took
+a flying leap across the river, in proof of which you may still see the
+print of his feet in the rock where he landed on the other side. Our
+guide offered to show us the foot-prints, if we required any proof of
+the story, but we assured him of our unquestioning belief.
+
+The Reach itself is quite as beautiful as any of the lakes, for its
+banks are covered with the most varied and luxuriant vegetation; and
+once, as we drifted quietly along, we saw a red deer browsing among the
+bracken. And then we drifted past the foot of a great precipice, and the
+channel narrowed, the current quickened, and the boatmen prepared to run
+the rapids into the middle lake.
+
+One of the boatmen was a wild-eyed old fellow, very nervous and fidgety,
+who had considerable difficulty in wielding an oar against the husky
+fellow opposite him, and more than once the steersman had admonished him
+to put more ginger into it. Now, as we drew near the rapids, his
+agitation increased, his eyes grew wilder than ever, and as the current
+caught us and we shot under the ancient arch of masonry called the Old
+Weir Bridge, he managed to strike his oar on a rock with a force that
+nearly broke it. The nose of the boat swerved alarmingly for an instant,
+but the steersman brought her round with a quick jerk, and in a minute
+more we were in the quiet waters of the middle lake. The atmosphere was
+far from quiet, however, as the steersman relieved his mind. Let it be
+added that the rapids are not very terrible, as will be seen from the
+picture opposite this page, and even if the boat struck a rock and was
+ripped in two, one could get ashore without much difficulty.
+
+[Illustration: OLD WEIR BRIDGE, KILLARNEY]
+
+[Illustration: THE MEETING OF THE WATERS]
+
+[Illustration: ROSS CASTLE, KILLARNEY]
+
+Just beyond, at the "meeting of the waters," there is a whirlpool called
+O'Sullivan's Punchbowl, and every rock and cave along the shore has its
+tradition, many of them manufactured, I suspect, for the consumption of
+the summer visitor. Most of the traditions are of The O'Donaghue,
+Chieftain of the Glens. A long cave is O'Donaghue's Wine-cellar; a
+depression at its mouth is O'Donaghue's Chair; and a tall knoll beside
+it is O'Donaghue's Butler, otherwise Jockybwee.
+
+The boat leaves the middle lake under another massive, high-hipped arch
+of masonry--Drohid-na-Brickeen, "The Bridge of the Little Trout," or
+Brickeen Bridge, as it is called now--and emerges into Glena Bay,
+another place of beauty; but, as we were gazing at its loveliness, the
+boat suddenly pitched sideways, then tried to stand on end, and we
+started round to find ourselves in the midst of an ugly expanse of
+white-capped water. We had never thought of rough water on Killarney;
+yet here it was, and mighty rough at that. The lower lake is five miles
+long and half as wide, and when the wind gets a good sweep at it, it can
+kick up a sea that is not to be despised.
+
+"'Tis just O'Donaghue's white horses out for a frolic," said the
+steersman encouragingly, and took a new grip of his lines. The oarsmen
+bent to their work, and we headed out into the lake, for it was
+necessary to cross to Ross Island.
+
+We said nothing, but held tight, and grinned palely at each other when
+the boat made a peculiarly ferocious pitch; the spray flew in sheets,
+the wind dashed the spindrift viciously in our faces, and we would have
+been very wet indeed but for the waterproofs. But after the first few
+minutes, we began to enjoy it, for it was evident that the boat was a
+staunch one, and even if it went over, it wouldn't sink. I don't suppose
+there was really any danger of its going over, though it hung at an
+alarming angle on the side of a huge wave, once or twice; and at the end
+of half an hour, we swept under the lee of Ross Island, and our sweating
+boatmen paused to take breath. The excitable one was trembling so he
+could scarcely get his pipe between his teeth.
+
+That night at the hotel, Betty was talking to two Englishwomen who had
+hired a boatman to row them out to Inisfallen Island. The lake hadn't
+been especially rough when they went out, and it wasn't until they got
+out of the lee of the island on the return trip that they realised its
+fury. Their boatman, at the end of a few moments, found himself unable
+either to get ahead or to go back; the most he could do was to keep the
+boat's head to the waves, and for nearly an hour they tossed there,
+shipping great seas, bailing desperately, too frightened to be sea-sick,
+and finally giving themselves up for lost, when the wind shifted and
+their boatman managed to struggle past the point of Ross Island. They
+expressed surprise that their hair wasn't white, and said that they
+would consider all the remainder of their lives sheer gain, because they
+felt that, except for a miracle, they would have ended on June 5, 1913.
+No doubt they exaggerated their danger, but just the same I would advise
+any one who is nervous on the water to be sure that the lower lake is
+fairly smooth before attempting to cross it. We certainly drew a breath
+of relief when we stepped ashore in the shadow of the ivy-clad ruins of
+Ross Castle.
+
+The castle itself is not of especial interest, for all that is left of
+it is the ruin of the old keep, with some crumbling outworks, not nearly
+so imposing as Blarney. About the only reason to visit it is to get the
+view from the top, which is very fine. But it has some stirring
+associations, for it was the stronghold of the great O'Donaghue, whose
+legend dominates the whole district. The story goes that, every May
+morning just before sunrise, the old warrior, armed cap-à-pie, emerges
+from the lake, mounts his white horse, and rides like the wind across
+the waters, attended by fairies who strew his path with flowers.
+
+It was here the Royalist forces made their last stand against Cromwell,
+and they thought they were safe, because the castle was a strong one,
+and was built on an island, which made it unusually difficult to attack;
+and furthermore there was an old legend which said it would never be
+taken until a fleet swam upon the lake. Ludlow brought an army of four
+thousand men over the mountains, and started a siege, but made little
+progress; and then, one morning, as the garrison looked out over the
+battlements, they saw a fleet of boats bearing down upon them across the
+lake, and they rubbed their eyes and looked again, only to see the boats
+nearer, and now they could discern the pieces of ordnance mounted in
+the bows and the soldiers who crowded them, and they were so awed by the
+fulfilment of the prophecy that they surrendered without more ado. That
+was the end of Ross Castle, but nobody knows certainly to this day how
+Ludlow got the boats over the hills from Castlemaine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A pretty drive along the margin of the middle lake brought us back to
+the hotel, where we found all the fishermen assembled, for the water had
+been too rough for fishing. We hurried out of our wet things, and dinner
+certainly tasted good; and when we joined the others about the fire,
+that evening, we found that we had qualified for admission to their
+charmed circle by going through the gap and crossing the lake on such a
+day. We were no longer tenderfeet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ROUND ABOUT KILLARNEY
+
+
+WE had been assured more than once, during our trip through the Gap of
+Dunloe, that the Irish rain is a soft, sweet rain, which does nobody any
+harm, and we found that this was true, for we felt splendidly next
+morning. The only evidence of our strenuous experience was a certain
+redness of visage, which grew deeper and deeper, as the days went on,
+until it approached that rich brick-red, which we had already noted as a
+characteristic of Irish fishermen.
+
+The day was bright and warm, and after breakfast we walked in to the
+town to take a look at our films. We found the road even more beautiful
+in the morning than it had been in the evening, and, since we knew how
+long it was, it did not seem long at all. But we were rather
+disappointed in the films. I had not appreciated how much the moisture
+in the atmosphere diminished the intensity of the sun, and so most of
+the films were under-exposed. Amateur photographers in Ireland will do
+well to remember that they must use an aperture twice as large or an
+exposure twice as long as is necessary anywhere else.
+
+We walked on in to the town, and were sauntering along looking in the
+windows, when some one touched me on the elbow.
+
+"Hello, comrade," said a voice, and I swung around to find myself
+looking into the face of a tall, thin American whom we had met at
+Dublin looking at the Book of Kells in Trinity College Library. We had
+fallen into talk upon that occasion, and he had confided to us that he
+was from Massachusetts, that he was a bachelor, that he had started out
+by himself to see Europe, and that he was very lonely. He looked
+lonelier than ever, standing on this Killarney street corner, and he
+said that he was getting disgusted with Ireland, that it seemed to be
+raining all the time, that Killarney wasn't half as beautiful as he had
+been led to believe, and that he had about made up his mind not to go up
+the west coast, as he had intended, but to go straight to the continent.
+We remarked that we intended going up the west coast, and I saw his eye
+light with anticipation, but there are some sacrifices too great for
+human nature, and I didn't suggest his coming along.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Perhaps the most interesting show-place in the vicinity of Killarney is
+Muckross Abbey, and we spent that afternoon exploring it and its
+grounds. Muckross is far surpassed in interest by many other Irish
+ruins, but it is very beautiful, embowered as it is in magnificent trees
+and all but covered with glistening ivy. It is not very old, as Irish
+ruins go, for it dates only from the latter half of the fifteenth
+century, when it was founded for the Franciscans. The gem of the place
+is undoubtedly the cloister, with its arcade of graceful arches ranged
+around a court and lighting a finely-vaulted ambulatory. In the middle
+of the court is a giant yew, many centuries old, which spreads its
+branches from wall to wall. It is encircled with barbed wire, and I
+don't know whether this is to protect it from vandals, or to protect
+vandals from it--for the legend is that whoever plucks a spray of this
+tree dies within a twelvemonth.
+
+[Illustration: MUCKROSS ABBEY, KILLARNEY]
+
+[Illustration: THE CLOISTER AT MUCKROSS ABBEY]
+
+The adjoining graveyard is crowded with interesting old tombs, and as we
+were wandering about looking at them, a funeral arrived. The priest
+walked in front, reading the burial service, while his assistant walked
+beside him, holding an umbrella over him, for it had begun to rain. Both
+of them wore black and white scarfs draped over one shoulder and strips
+of black and white cloth tied about their hats. Behind them came the
+coffin, carried on the shoulders of four men, the pair in front and the
+pair behind gripping each other about the waist so as not to be thrown
+apart by the inequalities of the path. Then came the mourners, about a
+dozen men, each with a black streamer about his hat. A number of women
+came last, their shawls over their heads.
+
+The coffin was placed on the ground, and every one knelt in the dripping
+grass, bareheaded under the drenching rain, until the service was
+concluded. One of the mourners, at the proper moment, produced from
+beneath his coat a little black bottle which proved to contain the holy
+water, and with this the priest sprinkled the rude black casket, with
+little crosses for the screw-heads. Then the priest and his assistant
+went away, and the men hastened to get to their feet and clap on their
+hats, and then there was a general production of black clay cutties, and
+in a moment a dozen deep puffs of smoke were floating away before the
+breeze.
+
+The women of the party retired behind a corner of the abbey to eat a
+bite of lunch, and the men stood around talking and smoking; and finally
+the caretaker produced four long-handled spades, and there was an
+animated discussion as to just where the grave should be dug. As is
+usually the case with Irish graveyards, this one was so crowded that it
+was no easy matter to find room for a fresh grave, but at last the spot
+was fixed upon, and four of the men fell to with the spades. When they
+grew tired, four others took up the work, and in half an hour the
+shallow grave was dug, the coffin placed in it, and the earth heaped
+back upon it. There was no keening.
+
+One of the women who was with the party told us that the funeral
+procession had come all the way from the end of the upper lake, more
+than fourteen miles away, and that the deceased was a woman of
+ninety-six. Fancy the tragedies she must have seen! For she was a woman
+of twenty-six, married, no doubt, with children, in the famine of '47.
+How many of them died, I wondered, and how had she herself managed to
+survive the awful years which followed? Her home beyond the upper
+lake--I could close my eyes and see it--the dark little cabin with its
+thatched roof and dirt floor and single room; I could picture the rocky
+field from which she and her husband had somehow managed to wring a
+livelihood; I could see her running with her poor bare feet through mud
+and over stones beside some laughing tourist in the hope of getting a
+penny or two--
+
+But it is too tragic to think about!
+
+The shower passed, after a time, and we went on along a beautiful walk
+leading toward the lake--the Friars' Walk, it is called, and it is
+bordered by century-old beeches, yews, pines and limes, the most
+magnificent trees that I have ever seen, so glorious and inspiring that
+we were lured on and on. We came to the shore of the lake, at last,
+where the waves have carved the rocks into beautiful and fantastic
+shapes, and we followed the shore a long way, stopping at every jutting
+headland for a long look out over the grey, wind-swept water. Then the
+path turned inland and came out upon the middle lake, and here we found
+the fishermen from our hotel just getting to land, in a very drenched
+and disconsolate condition, for the water had been too rough for good
+sport.
+
+That evening before the fire, the old Englishman, of whom I have already
+spoken, relieved his mind to me upon the subject of Ireland and the
+Irish. He said it was no use to try to help the Irish: in the first
+place, they didn't deserve any help; in the second place they took your
+help with one hand and bludgeoned you with the other; and in the third
+place any attempt to help them only made matters worse. Take the old age
+pensions, for example. They were a farce. Hundreds and hundreds of
+farmers had given their property to their children, so that they could
+go into court and swear they possessed nothing and claim a pension.
+Thousands more who were nowhere near seventy were drawing pensions
+because there was no way to prove just how old they were. And most of
+the pension money went for drink. Every pensioner had credit at the
+public houses, and his pension was usually drunk away long before it was
+received. The only effect of the act had been to make the Irish worse
+drunkards than ever--and they were already the worst in the world. That
+was the cause of their poverty; that was the reason they lived in filth
+and wretchedness. They were without ambition, without pride, without any
+sense of manhood or decency--all they wanted was whiskey, and they would
+do anything to get it. All this, I dare say, is the honest belief of a
+great many Englishmen; and there is in it just that small grain of truth
+which makes it sting.
+
+But I grew tired of listening, after a time, and went out to the bar,
+where a very loquacious Ulsterman with the broadest of Scotch accents
+was explaining his woes to the grinning barmaid. He had just been
+dismissed, it seemed, from some position in the neighbourhood because he
+had "been out with a few friends" the night before. He was convinced
+that his late employer was no gentleman, because a gentleman would have
+understood the circumstances and overlooked them; he pronounced Kerry
+the most God-forsaken of counties, and announced his intention of
+getting back to Ulster as soon as he could. No doubt his experience in
+the south of Ireland made him a more rabid Orangeman than ever, and I
+suppose he lost no time in signing the covenant and enlisting in
+Ulster's "army."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We had planned to spend our last day at Killarney walking and driving
+about the neighbourhood, and we were delighted, when we came down to
+breakfast that Saturday morning, to find the weather all that could be
+desired, with the sun shining from a brilliant sky, and not a cloud upon
+it, except high, white, fair-weather ones flying before the wind. So as
+soon as we had eaten, we started away on a car for a drive through the
+deer-park of the Earl of Kenmare, a walk along the "fairy glen" which
+traverses it, and then another drive up along the heights to the ruins
+of Aghadoe.
+
+We met many little carts driving in to Killarney, for it was market
+day--the identical type which had already grown so familiar: a flat cart
+with a man driving, his legs hanging down, and his women-folks crouched
+behind him under their shawls, with their knees drawn up to their chins,
+and the shaggy donkey which furnished the motive power, trotting briskly
+and alertly along. I don't know what the poor Irish would do without
+this serviceable little beast, long lived and useful in so many ways,
+able to exist on stones and nettles, and costing only a pound or two.
+Betty was so impressed with their usefulness that she wanted to buy one
+and send it home, but that speculation fell through.
+
+As we climbed higher and higher up the heights, the wind grew cold and
+cutting, but the view below us over the lakes to the south opened more
+and more--a glorious panorama of wood and hill and white-capped water,
+with ever-varying light and shade under the drifting clouds. But what a
+contrast between this smiling landscape and the one which met our eyes
+when we turned them to the north, where one bleak and desolate hill
+towered behind another, away and away as far as the eye could see, a
+wilderness of grey boulders and black, fissured crags.
+
+The car stopped at last before some stone steps leading over a wall, but
+as we started to mount them, a woman came running out of a near-by
+cottage and insisted on unlocking the gate for us, in the hope, of
+course, of getting a tip. She was the caretaker in charge of the ruins
+of Aghadoe, and she tried to tell us something about them, but the
+visitor who has to rely on her for information must content himself with
+very little.
+
+The story, as I piece it together, is something like this: About the
+middle of the seventh century, there dwelt at Killarney a very holy man
+named St. Finian the Leper, and on Inisfallen, the largest of the
+Killarney islands, he founded an abbey, whose ruins may yet be seen
+there; and here at Aghadoe, the Field of the Two Yews, he built a
+church, which became the seat of a bishop. As was often the case, the
+original church proved, in time, to be too small, and an addition was
+tacked on to it. A round tower was also built as a protection against
+the Danes, and a little farther down the slope, a rude castle was put up
+as a residence for the bishop.
+
+There is very little left of the castle and the round tower, but the
+walls of the church are still standing. The early church built by St.
+Finian forms the western part, or nave, and is entered by a beautiful
+round-headed doorway, of the familiar Celtic type. The rain of centuries
+has washed away much of the carving, but enough remains to show how
+elaborate it was. The windows here are also round-headed, but the later
+portion, or choir, is lighted by narrow lancet windows, which prove that
+it was built some time in the thirteenth century, after the Normans
+came. These are the only things of interest left in the ruins, and the
+visit to them is worth making not so much on their account, as for the
+magnificent view over the lakes.
+
+We drove back to Killarney along the border of the lower lake, through
+the Kenmare demesne, and past the many-gabled mansion of the Earl, which
+has since been destroyed by fire; and we spent a very pleasant hour
+wandering about the village. The main street at Killarney is
+unattractive enough, crowded as it is with shops whose principal stock
+in trade is post-cards and photographs and books of views and
+monstrosities in bog oak and Connemara marble--souvenirs, in a word, for
+Cook tourists to take home. But turn up any of the narrow lanes which
+branch off on either side, and there is authentic Ireland--the Ireland
+of plastered cottages and thatched roofs and half-naked children and
+gossiping women leaning over their half-doors.
+
+As it was market day, the lanes were more than usually crowded, and I
+explored them one after another, to an accompaniment of much
+good-humoured chaffing from the girls and women, especially when I
+unlimbered my camera. Then we walked out and took a look at the
+cathedral, a towering structure, still uncompleted as to its interior
+and bare and cold, but an impressive proof of the influence of the
+church which could raise the money to build so great an edifice in this
+poverty-stricken land; and then we stopped at some of the shops and
+looked at the Irish homespun, and spent a little time at an
+auction-sale, where the bidding was very slow and cautious, and finally
+we caught the omnibus back to our hotel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was still one place we wished to see. That was the Torc cascade,
+and, after tea, we set out to walk to it. The road lay for about a mile
+along the road skirting Muckross Lake, and then we came to a gate where
+a boy was waiting to exact a fee of nine-pence. Then we mounted a steep
+path, under magnificent pines, close beside the brawling Owengarriff
+River, up and up, with a lovely view of the lakes opening below us; and
+finally we came to the cascade--a white welter of water slithering down
+over the black rocks, very beautiful and impressive.
+
+We sat there for a long time, looking at it and at the stately wood
+which clothed the opposite hillside, and at the blue water lying far
+below us, and at the green hills away beyond, and we both agreed that,
+next to the view from the Kenmare road, this was the most glorious view
+to be had about Killarney. Subsequent reflection has not altered this,
+and, after the trip through the Gap of Dunloe and across the lakes, I
+should certainly place this one to the Torc cascade. Beside it, the view
+from Aghadoe is nowhere.
+
+We went on reluctantly, at last, mounting still higher until we came to
+a path bearing away to the left through the woods, and we followed this
+until we came to a mountain road which we had been told was there. It is
+called the Queen's Drive, and I suppose Victoria passed this way during
+her visit to the lakes; and it led us past the reservoir which supplies
+Killarney with water, and on down through magnificent woods whose beauty
+is marred only by a lot of so-called "monkey trees"--a monstrosity which
+had annoyed us all through Ireland, but to which I have not yet
+referred.
+
+The monkey tree is a sort of evergreen, with long, thin branches clad
+with close-growing foliage, and looking not unlike monkeys' arms. In
+fact, the tree itself resembles in a grotesque way a lot of monkeys
+swinging in midair, and hence its name. It is a hideous thing, and yet a
+specimen grows in every dooryard. There was one in front of our hotel,
+there were others along the road; here they had been planted in great
+numbers and reached an unprecedented size--but we were glad to observe
+that a few were dying. The monkey tree seems to be to Irish homes what
+the rubber-plant used to be to American ones, and it appalled us to see
+how many little ones were being started in tiny front yards, which they
+would one day overshadow and render abominable. I can only hope that, in
+some happy hour, a wave of reform will sweep over Ireland and carry
+these monstrosities before it.
+
+We came out, at last, upon a little huddle of houses on the hillside
+above our hotel, and stopped to talk to some children and their mother,
+then went on downward, in the gathering dusk, very happy because of a
+beautiful and satisfying day. And just as we turned into the highroad,
+Betty saw something gleaming on the ground at her feet, and stooped and
+picked up a shilling. From what ragged pocket had it fallen, we
+wondered? How great a tragedy would its loss represent? We looked up and
+down the road, but there was no one in sight. So we decided to keep it
+for luck, and we have it yet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR
+
+
+THERE was quite a crowd on the platform, that Sunday morning, of
+travellers turning their backs on Killarney, and we found ourselves
+eventually in a compartment with two Americans, man and wife, who were
+plainly in no pleasant humour. The man was especially disgruntled about
+something, and I judged from his exclamations that he had got decidedly
+the worst of it when it came to settling the bill. It is in some such
+mood as this, I fear, that many people leave Killarney.
+
+But the view from the window soon made us forget our fellow-passengers.
+The road runs for a time close beside the Flesk, one of the prettiest of
+Irish rivers, while away to the south rose the beautiful Killarney
+hills, peak upon peak, with mighty Mangerton dominating all of them. And
+then came the Paps, two conical elevations separated by a deep ravine;
+and then the bleak brown slopes of the Muskerry hills, with a ruined
+castle of the McCarthys guarding the only pass into the valley. To the
+north a boggy plain stretched away and away, ridged with black pits,
+like long earthworks, from which the turf had been cut.
+
+The hills to the south grew gradually less rugged, and presently we
+dropped into the beautiful valley of the Blackwater, with many ruined
+castles perched on the crags which overshadow it--castles built by the
+McCarthys, the O'Callaghans, and I know not what other septs, memorials
+of the old days of raid and counter-raid, of warring clans and
+treacherous chieftains.
+
+And then we came to Mallow, and had to change into another carriage,
+where we found five Americans, who were also coming from Killarney, and
+who also believed that they had been held up. Their grievance was
+against the hotel at which they had stopped, and they said wildly that
+it was no better than a den of thieves. This, of course, was an
+exaggeration, and, in any event, I did not pity them much, for it was
+soon evident that their visit to Ireland had been a waste of time. They
+knew nothing of her history and traditions; her ruins held no meaning
+for them; her empty valleys told them nothing of her past; they had
+never heard of Cormac, or Finn the Fair, or Ossian, or Conn the Hundred
+Fighter, or even of Brian Boru; they had never heard of that old
+civilisation which the Danes swept away, and saw nothing very wonderful
+in the Cross of Cong or the Book of Kells. So to them Ireland had proved
+a disappointment, just as she will to every one who visits her in
+ignorance and indifference.
+
+We reached Limerick Junction, at last, and changed thankfully to the
+branch which runs to Limerick, twenty miles away. And almost at once we
+came upon traces of Patrick Sarsfield, of glorious memory, for a few
+miles beyond the Junction, to the left of the line, are the ruins of a
+castle, which was held by the English, but which he surprised one night,
+on one of those famous raids of his, and captured and blew up. And then
+the line mounted the hills which divide the Vale of Tipperary from the
+valley of the Shannon, crossed them, and came out upon a land as
+beautiful and fertile as any we had seen in Ireland. Such lushness, such
+greenness, such calm, quiet loveliness can surely be matched in few
+other spots upon this earth.
+
+It was still early afternoon when the train rolled in to the station at
+Limerick, and on the platform we met the actor and his wife whom we had
+talked with at Blarney a week before. They had come to Limerick, where
+their principal was a great favourite, for a three weeks' engagement. I
+saw the actor afterwards on the street, and he told me that the theatre
+was in terrible shape, for some misguided enthusiasts had attempted to
+hold a Unionist meeting there, a few days previously, and the patriotic
+Limerickians had nearly torn the place to pieces.
+
+Limerick is by far the most important town of central or western
+Ireland; in fact it is surpassed in population only by Belfast, Dublin
+and Cork, and it has many amusing points of resemblance to the two
+latter. It is divided into two parts by a branch of the Shannon; it has
+one long, curving principal street leading to a bridge; the street is
+known officially as George Street, after an English king, but to all
+Irishmen it is O'Connell Street, in honour of the Liberator whose statue
+is its chief adornment; this street is a street of bright and attractive
+shops, not in itself interesting, but cross the bridge to the older part
+of the town, or turn up any of the little lanes which lead off from it,
+and you will find nothing more picturesque anywhere--nor more
+distressful.
+
+We walked along George Street, that afternoon, and crossed the bridge
+to the island on which Limerick had its birth. The bridge is called
+Matthew Bridge, not after the Disciple, but after Ireland's great
+apostle of temperance. Beyond the bridge is a maze of narrow, crooked
+streets, and we made our way through them to the old cathedral, whose
+tower served as guide. We got there just as vespers were over, and we
+found the verger very willing to show us about.
+
+I do not imagine there are many Protestants at Limerick; at least, a
+very small portion of this impressive old church serves the needs of the
+congregation, and the rest of it is bare and empty--and imposing. Rarely
+indeed have I seen a more sombre interior, for the walls are very
+massive, and the windows small, and there is a surprising number of dark
+little chapels--the principal one, of course, being dedicated as a
+burial place for the Earls of Limerick. The carved miserere seats are
+worth examining, as are also many of the old tombs which clutter the
+interior. There is an elaborate one to the Earl of Thomond in the
+chancel, and a carved slab covering the grave of Donall O'Brien, King of
+Munster, who founded the cathedral in 1179; but among the quaintest is a
+slab built into the wall of the nave with this epitaph cut upon it:
+
+               MEMENTO MORY
+          HERE LIETH LITTELL SAMUEL
+          BARINGTON THAT GREAT UNDER
+          TAKER OF FAMOUS CITTIES
+          CLOCK AND CHIME MAKER
+          HE MADE HIS ONE TIME GOE
+          EARLY AND LATTER BUT NOW
+          HE IS RETURNED TO GOD
+          HIS CREATOR
+          THE 29 OF NOVEMBER THEN
+          HE SCEST AND FOR HIS
+          MEMORY THIS HERE IS PLEAST
+          BY HIS SON BEN
+                    1693
+
+We spent a very pleasant half hour in the church, and then we wandered
+on through the crooked streets to the magnificent Norman castle, set up
+here to defend the passage of the Shannon. Most venerable and impressive
+it is, with its great drum towers, and curtains ten feet thick. Just in
+front of it the Shannon is spanned by a fine modern bridge, replacing
+the ancient one which was the scene of so many conflicts, and at the
+farther end of it, mounted on a pedestal, is the famous stone on which
+Sarsfield signed his treaty with the English in 1691--the treaty which
+guaranteed equal rights to Catholics, but which, as every Catholic
+Irishman somewhat too vividly remembers, resulted only in a more bitter
+persecution. Irish memory, curiously enough, seems always to grow
+clearer with the passing years, and the mists of two centuries
+accentuate, rather than obscure, the fame of Limerick as "The City of
+the Violated Treaty." The story runneth thus:
+
+The River Shannon, with its wide estuary, its many lakes, and its mighty
+current flowing between impassable bogs or beetling cliffs, has always
+been a formidable barrier between east and west Ireland. In the old
+days, the only doors in this barrier was the ford at Athlone, just below
+Lough Ree, and another all but impassable one at Killaloe, just below
+Lough Derg; but in the ninth century, the Danes sailed up from the sea,
+landed on an island at the head of the tideway, fortified it, and so
+started the city of Limerick. The current of the river was divided here,
+and the invaders managed in time to get a bridge across, and so opened
+another door in the Shannon barrier. Brian Boru drove them out, at last,
+and then the Normans came and, after their fashion everywhere, rendered
+their hold secure by erecting a great round-towered castle to guard the
+bridge. Edward Bruce captured it in 1316, and three centuries later,
+Hugh O'Neill held it for six months against Cromwell's great general,
+Ireton. The Ironsides captured it, finally, and Ireton died of the
+plague not long afterwards in a house just back of the cathedral.
+
+But it was in the war against William of Orange that Limerick played its
+most distinguished part. I have already told how the Irish chose the
+cause of the Stuarts against the Parliament; how they proclaimed Charles
+II king as soon as his father's head was off, and of the vengeance
+Cromwell took. So it was inevitable that they should espouse the cause
+of James II against the Protestant William, whom the English had called
+over from the Netherlands to be their king. James came to Ireland to
+lead the rebellion, proved himself an idiot and a coward, and ended by
+running away and leaving the Irish to their fate.
+
+William's troops swept the country, took town after town and castle
+after castle, until Limerick remained nearly the last stronghold in
+Irish hands. So William marched against it, at the head of 26,000 men,
+but the position was a very strong one, and that ablest of Irish
+generals, Patrick Sarsfield, was in command of the town, and William was
+beaten back. The next year another great army under General Ginkle
+marched against the place, first capturing Athlone, and so getting
+across the river. A terrific attack was concentrated on the fortress
+guarding the bridge, a breach was made, the fort stormed, and the
+garrison put to the sword, only about a hundred out of eight hundred
+escaping across the other branch of the river into Limerick.
+
+Sarsfield still held the town, but his men were disheartened by the loss
+of the castle. Ginkle, on the other hand, realised that to take the town
+would be no easy task. A truce was proposed, negotiations began, both
+sides were eager to end the war, and the result was that the famous
+Treaty of Limerick was signed by Ginkle and Sarsfield on the third day
+of October, 1691, on a stone near the County Clare end of the bridge
+over the Shannon.
+
+There were twelve articles in the treaty, and some of them were
+kept--the one, for instance, permitting all persons to leave the country
+who wished to do so, and to take their families and portable goods
+along; but one was not kept, the most important one, perhaps, which
+provided that Irish Catholics should enjoy all the religious rights they
+possessed under Charles II, and that all Irish still in arms, who should
+immediately submit and take the oath of allegiance, should be secured in
+the free and undisputed possession of their estates. In a word, the
+price of peace was to have been a general indemnity and freedom of
+religious worship. It was not an excessive price, but it was never paid.
+
+The Protestant colonists in Ireland protested in great wrath that they
+had been betrayed, and the Irish Parliament, which the colonists
+controlled, after a bitter fight, repudiated the treaty, or, at least,
+confirmed only so much of it as "consisted with the safety and welfare
+of his Majesty's subjects in Ireland," and passed a number of new laws
+aimed at Catholics, disqualifying them from teaching school, from
+sending their children abroad to be educated, from observing any holy
+day except those set apart by the Church of Ireland, and many others of
+the same sort, some of almost insane malignity. All this was, of course,
+quite unjustifiable, but "King Billy" seems to have been in no way
+responsible for it. In any event, it happened more than two centuries
+ago, all these laws have long since been repealed, and it seems absurd
+to keep their memory so fresh and burning.
+
+One word more, and I am done with history. After the surrender of
+Limerick, Sarsfield and his men were given the choice of enlisting in
+William's army or leaving the country. They chose the latter, and went
+to France, where the last Catholic king of England had sought refuge.
+He, of course, was unable to maintain them, so they enlisted under the
+French king, Louis XIV, and formed the Irish Brigade, which was
+afterwards to become so famous, and in which, during the next fifty
+years, nearly half a million Irishmen enlisted, as the best means of
+avenging themselves on England. The part they played at Landen, at
+Barcelona, at Cremona, at Blenheim, at Ramilles, and finally at
+Fontenoy--all this is matter of history.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We crossed the bridge again, after a look at the treaty stone--which,
+enshrined on its lofty pedestal, is really a monument to English
+perfidy--passed the castle, and plunged into the crooked streets of
+"English Town," as this oldest part of Limerick is called, with its
+tall, foreign-looking, tumbledown houses--as picturesque a quarter as I
+have seen anywhere. For Limerick grew into an important city in the
+century following its capture by the English, and many wealthy people
+put up handsome town-houses, four or five stories high, with wide halls
+and sweeping stairs and beautiful doorways and tall windows framed in
+sculptured stone. It is these old houses which shadow the narrow lanes
+of "English Town," and they are all tenements now, for the well-to-do
+people--such of them as are left--have moved over to the newer, more
+fashionable, more sanitary quarter. No attempt is made to keep them in
+repair, and many of them have fallen down, leaving ragged gaps in the
+street. Others seem in imminent danger of falling, and the distressed
+look of the place is further heightened by the great fragments of the
+old walls which remain here and there.
+
+This part of Limerick is on the island where the town started; the part
+just beyond the bridge which leads to the mainland is called Irish Town,
+and it, too, was once included in the city walls, a long stretch of
+which is still standing back of the ancient citadel. Here too,
+especially along the quay, are handsome houses, long since fallen from
+their high estate, and now the homes of the poorest of the poor, a
+family in every room. It is something of a shock to see these ragged and
+distressed people climbing the beautiful stairways, or sitting in the
+handsome doorways or leaning out of the carved windows, very much at
+home in the place which was once the abode of wealth and fashion, while
+the noisy play of dirty and neglected children echoes through the rooms
+which once rang with gentle laughter and impassioned toast.
+
+Newtown-Pery, the newer part of the town, built on land reclaimed from
+the river by the Pery family, the Earls of Limerick, who still own it,
+contrasts strongly with the older part, for its streets are wide and
+straight and run regularly at right angles, and it is a bustling place,
+but quite without interest to the stranger. The houses are almost
+uniformly four stories high, and are built of a peculiar dark-brown
+brick, which makes them look much older than they really are. And down
+along the water-front are nearly a mile of quays, with floating docks
+and heavy cranes, and towering warehouses looking down upon them.
+
+Time was when Limerick fondly hoped to become the greatest port in
+Ireland. She had every advantage--a noble situation on the broad estuary
+of the Shannon, up which ships from America could sail direct to her
+wharves--but in spite of great expenditures to improve her harbour
+facilities, not only did no new trade come, but such as she already had
+withered and withered, until to-day her tall warehouses are empty, her
+quays almost deserted, and in the broad expanse of the Shannon there are
+few boats except excursion steamers and pleasure yachts.
+
+The cause of this decay? Irishmen assert that there is only one
+cause--unjust and discriminating laws passed by England to protect her
+own trade by destroying Irish industry. No doubt this is true; but these
+laws have been repealed for many years, and there is little evidence of
+the healthy revival of these industries anywhere in Ireland. Such
+revival as there is has been carefully fostered by various government
+agencies; there has been no great spontaneous revival, and perhaps there
+never will be. But it is a melancholy sight--the empty, decaying mills,
+the idle factories, the deserted warehouses, the ruined dwellings, which
+the traveller sees all up and down the land.
+
+I went out for another stroll about the town, after tea, for I wanted to
+see the new Catholic cathedral, whose tall spire dominates the landscape
+for many miles around. And as I went, I could not but notice the impress
+the English have left on the names of the streets. The principal street,
+as I have said already, is George Street; then there is Cecil Street,
+and William Street, and Nelson Street, and Catherine Street, and George
+and Charlotte Quays opposite each other. There is one, however, named
+after a local celebrity whom all Irishmen should delight to
+honour--Gerald Griffin, an authentic poet, whose "Eileen Aroon" is one
+of the tenderest and most musical of lyrics.
+
+Gerald Griffin Street is one of the most important in Limerick, and it
+is by it that one gains the cathedral, an impressive building,
+especially as to its interior, dimly lighted through high, narrow lancet
+windows. And here again one admires not so much the church itself, as
+the indomitable spirit which could undertake the task of building such
+an edifice in want-stricken Ireland.
+
+The Sarsfield monument is in the cathedral square, a rampageous figure,
+charging with drawn sword off the top of a shaft of stone--perhaps the
+most ridiculous tribute to a great soldier and patriot to be seen
+anywhere on this earth. I, at least, have never seen any to match it,
+unless it be that imperturbable dandy, supposed to represent Andrew
+Jackson, who calmly doffs his chapeau from the back of a rearing horse
+in front of our own White House!
+
+I walked on, after that, down toward the quays, along little lanes of
+thatched houses, and then back into the region of the old mansions, with
+their chattering women and sprawling children; and then, suddenly, I
+became aware of the girls.
+
+Limerick, like Cork, is supposed to be famous for the beauty of its
+women, and the younger generation was out in force, that Sunday evening,
+rigged up in its best clothes, evidently ready for any harmless
+adventure. There _were_ some nice-looking girls among them, no doubt of
+that, with bright eyes and red lips and glowing cheeks, and the advent
+of a stranger in their midst filled them with the liveliest interest,
+which they were at no pains to dissemble. I know nothing about the
+psychology of Irish girls, for I was not in a position to investigate or
+experiment; but while they are shy, at first, I should judge that most
+of them are not altogether averse to mild flirtation. The glance of
+their eye is not, perhaps, as fatal as Kate Kearney's, but it is very
+taking.
+
+I wish I could say as much for the boys; but if there were any witty,
+invincible Rory O'Mores left in Ireland, I didn't see them. The Irish
+young man seems very different indeed from the light-hearted, audacious,
+philandering scapegrace so dear to Lover and Lever and scores of lesser
+poets, and once so familiar upon the stage. They are not forever
+breaking into song, they do not brim with sentiment, they are not, so
+far as I could judge, full of heroic emotions and high ambitions. In
+fact, they are quite the opposite of all that--matter-of-fact, humdrum,
+rather stupid.
+
+Of course there are exceptions, and I was fortunate enough to meet one
+that very evening. I stopped in at a tobacconist's to get a paper, and
+fell into talk with the proprietor; and presently there entered a man
+who bought a pennyworth of tobacco, filled his pipe, and then remained
+for a word, seeing that I was a stranger. We were talking about Ireland,
+and in a very few minutes the newcomer had the centre of the stage.
+
+O'Connell, journeyman tailor, so he introduced himself, and I wish I
+could paint a picture of him that would make him live for you as he
+lives for me. He was a faded little man, of indeterminate age, with a
+straw-coloured moustache and sallow skin, but his eyes were very bright,
+and before long his face was glowing with an infectious enthusiasm. His
+clothes were worn and shabby, but one forgot them as he stood there and
+talked--indeed they even lent a sort of dignity to his lean, nervous
+little figure.
+
+First he told of how Cleeve, the big butter man, was trying to get the
+city to close the swing bridge over the Shannon, so that his heavy
+trams, which went about the country collecting milk, could cross it. To
+close the bridge would shut off permanently about four hundred yards of
+quay; but, so Cleeve argued, the quays were little used, and the town
+would never need that stretch above the bridge. But O'Connell did not
+believe it.
+
+"'Tis true," he said, "that England with her cruel laws, has killed our
+trade and brought us all to want; 'tis true that we have no use for the
+quay at present. But all that will be changed when we get Home Rule.
+Then, sir, you will see our quays crowded with boats from end to end;
+you will see our mills and factories humming with life, you will see our
+warehouses piled with commodities from every quarter of the world. To
+shut off part of them, just because this bloated butter-maker wants it,
+would be a crime against the people of this town."
+
+"How is all this to be brought about?" I asked.
+
+"'Tis you Americans will be doing it, sir. The Irish in America, our
+brothers, God bless them, will rally to the ould land. Her children will
+come home to the Shan Van Vocht, once she is free of England. 'Tis them
+ones will set us on our feet again. They will be putting their money
+into our industries, till in the whole island there will be not an idle
+wheel or a smokeless chimney."
+
+I told him I was afraid his dreams were too rosy; that the American
+Irish, like all other Americans, would be governed by dividends, not by
+sentiment, in the investment of their money. But nothing could shake his
+belief in the good time coming. I asked him what he thought of Ulster,
+and he laughed.
+
+"The Protestants have nothing to fear from Home Rule," he said. "'Tis
+them will control this government. We Catholics are going to pick the
+best and strongest men in this island to man the ship, and there will be
+more Protestants than Catholics amongst them. We will need strong arms
+at the helm, and what do we care what their religion may be, if only
+they're good men and true? You're a Protestant, I take it, sir?"
+
+"Yes," I said; "I am."
+
+"And does that make me think any the less of you? Not a bit of it. 'Tis
+the same God we look at, only with different eyes."
+
+"Not even that," I corrected; "with the same eyes--just from a different
+angle."
+
+"You've said it, sir. I can't improve on that. Well then, what is it the
+Ulster men are afraid of? They say it's the priests. But how silly that
+is! Let them look back into history, and see what has happened when the
+priests interfered with things that did not concern them. In spiritual
+matters I bow to my priest; in everything else, I am independent of him.
+It is so with all Irishmen, and has always been. Do you remember what
+the great O'Connell said: 'I would as soon,' said he, 'take my politics
+from Stamboul as from Rome.' Do you remember what happened when Rome
+tried to prevent the Catholics of Ireland from contributing to the
+testimonial for the greatest patriot Ireland has ever had, Charles
+Stewart Parnell? But of course you don't. I'll just tell you. Why, sir,
+the whole country was on fire from end to end. 'Make Peter's Pence into
+Parnell's Pounds' was the battle-cry, and the money poured in like rain.
+Mr. Parnell's friends had hoped to raise fifteen thousand pounds for
+him. When they got the money counted at last, they had near forty
+thousand pounds. What do you think of that now?"
+
+"I think it was fine," I said. "But why is it, then, Ulster is so
+frightened?"
+
+"Ah, Ulster isn't frightened--it's just a lot of talk from people who
+live by talkin'. There's many Catholics who are against Home Rule, and
+there's many Protestants who are for it. They'll all be for it, after
+they've tried it a while. And we won't let the Protestants stay out--we
+can't afford to--we need them too much. Why, sir, our leaders have
+always been Protestants, and I'm thinking always will be."
+
+"There was O'Connell," I reminded him.
+
+"I have not forgotten him--I quoted him but a moment since; and 'tis
+true he was a great man and a true patriot. But he fell into grievous
+error when he chose Catholic emancipation, when he might have got Home
+Rule. What did Catholic emancipation mean to me and thousands like me?
+It meant just nothing at all. It meant that some Catholics of
+O'Connell's own class could hold jobs under government--that was all.
+The greatest man this island ever produced, sir, was a Protestant. I
+have mentioned him already; his name was Charles Stewart Parnell!"
+
+I wish you could have seen his shining eyes and heard his quivering
+voice as he went on to tell me about Parnell; and how, after the scandal
+which ruined his life--a scandal prearranged, so many think, by his
+political enemies--he had come to Limerick to address a meeting, with
+death in his face and a broken heart in his eyes; and there had been
+some in the crowd that hissed him and pelted him with mud; and the
+little tailor, his chest swelling at the old glorious memory, told how
+he had been one of those who rallied around the stricken leader and beat
+the crowd back and got him safe away. There were tears in his eyes
+before he had ended.
+
+"Ah, woman," he went on, "'twas not only Parnell you ruined then, it was
+ould Ireland, too! And not for the first time! Why, sir, 'twas because
+of a woman the British first came to this island. Troy had her Helen, as
+Homer tells, and so had Erin. 'Twas the same story over again.
+Dervorgilla the lady's name was, and she was the wife of Tiernan
+O'Rourke, Prince of Breffni, who had his fine castle on the beautiful
+green banks of Lough Gill. It was there that Dermot MacMurrough, King of
+Leinster, saw her, and after that no other woman would do for him. So he
+courted her in odd corners and whispered soft honeyed words into her
+ear; and she listened, as women will, and her head was turned by his
+flattery. One day her husband, who was a pious man, kissed her good-bye
+and started on a pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory in Lough Derg;
+and he was there nine days; and when he came back, what did he find? Ah,
+sir, Tom Moore has told it far better than I can:
+
+  "'The valley lay smiling before me,
+     Where lately I left her behind;
+   Yet I trembled, and something hung o'er me,
+     That saddened the joy of my mind.
+   I looked for the lamp which, she told me,
+     Should shine when her Pilgrim returned;
+   But, though darkness began to enfold me,
+     No lamp from the battlements burned!
+
+  "'I flew to her chamber--'twas lonely,
+     As if the loved tenant lay dead;--
+   Ah, would it were death, and death only;
+     But no, the young false one had fled.
+   And there hung the lute that could soften
+     My very worst pains into bliss;
+   While the hand, which had waked it so often,
+     Now throbbed to a proud rival's kiss.'"
+
+I wish I could convey the tremor of the voice with which O'Connell,
+journeyman tailor, recited these silly lines. I can see him yet,
+standing there, one hand against his heart, his eyes straining up to the
+battlements from which no welcoming light gleamed. I can see the
+proprietor of the little shop, as he lounged against his counter,
+smiling good-naturedly. I can see the two or three other men who had
+drifted in, listening with all their ears.
+
+And then O'Connell went on to tell how O'Rourke, finding his wife had
+fled with MacMurrough, appealed to his overlord, King Turlough O'Conor,
+and how the two of them so harassed MacMurrough that he was compelled to
+restore Dervorgilla to her husband and to flee to England, where he went
+to Strongbow and persuaded him to bring his Normans to Ireland to help
+him in his feud; and how Strongbow, once he got a firm grip on the land,
+refused to loosen it, and the curse of English rule had been on Ireland
+ever since.
+
+I looked this story up, afterwards, and found that legend tells it much
+as O'Connell did, and it is probably true. But, just the same, it is
+hardly fair to lay the whole blame for Ireland's woes on Dervorgilla,
+for the Normans had been looking longingly across the Irish Sea years
+before MacMurrough fled to them, and would no doubt have crossed it,
+sooner or later, without an invitation. The tragic point of the story is
+that, as usual, the invader found the Irish divided and so unable to
+resist. We shall see the castle from which Dervorgilla fled, before our
+journey is done, and also the place where she lies buried, at Mellifont,
+in the valley of the Boyne.
+
+The quotation from Tom Moore had turned my little tailor's thoughts
+toward poetry, and he asked if I knew this poem and that, and when I
+didn't, as was frequently the case, he would quote a few lines, or sing
+them, if they had been set to music.
+
+"Of course you know 'To the Dead of Ninety-eight'?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," I said; "but that is not Johnson's noblest poem. Do you know his
+'Ode to Ireland'?"
+
+"I do not," he answered. "Let us have it, sir."
+
+How sorry I was that I couldn't let them have it, or didn't have a copy
+that I could read to them, for it is a stirring poem; I had to confess
+that I didn't know it, but I can't resist quoting one splendid stanza
+now--
+
+    "No swordsmen are the Christians!" Oisin cried:
+    "O Patrick! thine is but a little race."
+    Nay, ancient Oisin! they have greatly died
+    In battle glory and with warrior grace.
+    Signed with the Cross, they conquered and they fell;
+      Sons of the Cross, they stand:
+    The Prince of Peace loves righteous warfare well,
+    And loves thine armies, O our Holy Land!
+    The Lord of Hosts is with thee, and thine eyes
+      Shall see upon thee rise
+    His glory, and the blessing of His Hand.
+
+"Have you heard Timothy Sullivan's 'Song from the Backwoods'?" he asked
+me finally, and when I said I never had, he sang it for the assembled
+company, and a splendid song I found it. Here it is:
+
+          Deep in Canadian woods we've met,
+            From one bright island flown;
+          Great is the land we tread, but yet
+            Our hearts are with our own.
+          And ere we leave this shanty small,
+            While fades the Autumn day,
+              We'll toast Old Ireland!
+              Dear Old Ireland!
+              Ireland, boys, hurray!
+
+          We've heard her faults a hundred times,
+            The new ones and the old,
+          In songs and sermons, rants and rhymes,
+            Enlarged some fifty-fold.
+          But take them all, the great and small,
+            And this we've got to say:--
+              Here's dear Old Ireland!
+              Good Old Ireland!
+              Ireland, boys, hurray!
+
+As he went on with the song, the others in the shop warmed up to it and
+joined in the chorus so lustily that a crowd gathered outside; and the
+shopkeeper got a little nervous, fearing, perhaps, a visit from some
+passing constable, and he whispered in O'Connell's ear, when the song
+was done, and there were no more songs that evening.
+
+But still we sat and talked and smoked and O'Connell told me something
+of himself: of the fifteen shillings a week he could earn when he had
+steady work; of the three-pence a week he paid out under the insurance
+act, and how, if he was sick, he would draw a benefit of ten shillings
+a week for six months. He said bitterly that, if he lived in England, he
+would get free medical attendance, too, but that had been refused to
+Ireland through the machinations of the doctors and their friends. He
+told of the blessing the old age pension had been to many people he
+knew, and he admitted that England had been trying, of late years, to
+atone for her old injustices toward Ireland, and was now, perhaps,
+spending more money on the country than she got out of it.
+
+"But there is a saying, sir, as you know," he concluded, rising and
+knocking out his pipe, "that hell is paved with good intentions; and
+however good England's intentions may be, she can never govern us well,
+because she can never understand us. Besides, it's not charity we want,
+it's freedom. Better a crust of bread and freedom, than luxury and
+chains! We'll have some hard fights, but we'll win out. Come back in ten
+years, sir, and you'll see a new Ireland. Take my word for it. It's glad
+I am that I came in here this night," he added. "I was feeling downcast
+and disheartened; but that is all over now. This talk has been a great
+pleasure to me. Good-bye, sir; God save you!" and he disappeared into
+the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE RUINS AT ADARE
+
+
+WE threw back the shutters, next morning, to a cold and dreary day of
+misting rain; and after a look at it, Betty elected to spend it before a
+cosy fire in our great, high-ceilinged room. I have wondered since if
+our hotel at Limerick was not one of those handsome eighteenth-century
+mansions, brought by the hard necessities of time to the use of passing
+travellers. It is difficult to explain the gorgeousness of some of its
+rooms on any other theory. Ours was a very large one, with elaborate
+ceiling-mouldings and panelled walls and a mantel of carved marble,
+which Betty inspected longingly. She could see it, I fancy, in her own
+drawing-room, and perhaps its beauties had something to do with her
+decision to spend the day in front of it.
+
+There were two or three pictures I wanted to take--one of the old castle
+and another of the crooked little lane I had wandered through the night
+before; so I set forth to get them, along busy George Street, with its
+bright shops, and then across the river to English Town, and so to the
+castle front. I found it very hard to get anything like a satisfactory
+picture of it, because the parapet of the new bridge is in the way, and
+because the angle of my lens was not wide enough to take in both the
+towers. I did the best I could, took a last look at the treaty stone,
+but forbore to add to its fame by photographing it; and then traversed
+again the quaint old streets, with their ramshackle houses, and so came
+to the little lane.
+
+The town, as I came through it, had been full of market-carts drawn by
+ragged donkeys and driven by shawled women, and I loitered about for a
+time, hoping that one of them would come this way and so add a touch of
+human interest to my picture. A painter was busy giving one of the
+thatched houses a coat of white-wash; only it wasn't white-wash,
+properly speaking, because a colouring-matter had been added to it which
+made it a vivid pink. This pink wash is very popular in Ireland, and,
+varied sometimes by a yellow wash, adds a high note to nearly every
+landscape. I talked with the man awhile, and then, the rain coming down
+more heavily, I slipped into a cobbler's shop for shelter.
+
+It would be difficult to imagine anything more comfortless and primitive
+than that interior. The shop occupied one of the two rooms of the family
+home--bare little rooms with dirt floors and tiny windows and no
+furniture except the most necessary. Somebody has said that there are
+two pieces of furniture always worthy of veneration--the table and the
+bed; but I doubt if even that philosopher could have found anything to
+venerate in the specimens which this house contained. The table was a
+rude affair of rough boards, with one corner supported by a box in lieu
+of a leg, and the bed was a mere pile of rags on a sort of low shelf in
+one corner. What sort of fare was set forth upon that table, and what
+sort of rest the bed afforded, was not difficult to imagine.
+
+The cobbler was tapping away at a pair of shoes, trying to mend them,
+and sadly they needed it. Indeed, they were such shoes as no
+self-respecting tramp would wear in America, and I could not but suspect
+that the cobbler had fished them from a garbage heap somewhere, and was
+trying, as a sort of speculation, to make them worth a few pennies. Two
+or three blocks of turf smoked and flared in a narrow fire-place, and,
+as always, a black pot hung over them, with some sort of mess bubbling
+inside it. The cobbler's wife sat on a stool before the fire
+contemplating the boiling pot gloomily, and a dirty child, of
+undeterminable sex, played with the scraps of leather on the floor.
+
+I apologised for my intrusion; but the atmosphere of the place was not
+genial. I fancied they resented my presence,--as I should have done, had
+our positions been reversed--and so, as soon as the downpour slackened a
+bit, I pressed a penny into the baby's fist and took myself off. The
+cobbler, suddenly softened, followed me outside to see me take the
+picture, and perhaps to be in it; but that picture was a failure, all
+spotted by the rain.
+
+I intended going to Adare, a little town not far away, said to possess a
+most remarkable collection of ruins, but it was yet an hour till train
+time, and I spent it exploring the town back of the railway station. I
+found it a most picturesque collection of crooked streets and quaint
+houses, and my advent was frankly treated as a great event by the
+gossips leaning over their half-doors. How eager they were to talk; I
+should have liked to stop and talk to all of them; but when I got ready
+to take a picture of the very crookedest street, their interest in my
+proceedings was so urgent and humorously-expressed that I lost my head
+and forgot to pull the slide--a fact I didn't realise until I had bade
+them good-bye and was walking away; and then I was ashamed to go back
+and take another.
+
+The train for Adare was waiting beside the platform when I got to the
+station, and I carefully selected a vacant compartment and clambered
+aboard. And then a guard came along and laughingly told me I would have
+to get out, because that car was reserved for a "Mothers' Union," which
+was going to Adare to hold a meeting. So I got out and waited on the
+platform till the Union arrived--some twenty or thirty comfortable-looking
+matrons, in high spirits, which the miserable weather did not dampen in
+the least. Irish meetings are held, I suppose, just the same rain or
+shine. It was Simeon Ford who remarked that if the Scotch knew enough to
+go in when it rained, they would never get any outdoor exercise. This is
+equally true of the Irish--only in Ireland, one doesn't need to go in,
+for sure 'tis a soft rain that does nobody any harm!
+
+Adare is about ten miles from Limerick and the road thither runs along
+the valley of the Shannon, with its lush meadows and lovely woods,
+veiled that day in a pearly mist of rain. As usual, the station is
+nearly a mile from the town, and as I started to walk it, I saw a tall
+old man coming along behind me, and I waited for him.
+
+"'Tis a bad day," I said.
+
+"It is so," he agreed; "and it's a long walk I have before me, for my
+house would be two miles beyont the village."
+
+"They tell me there are some fine ruins in the village."
+
+"There are so;" and then he looked at me more attentively. "You're not a
+native of these parts?" he asked, at last.
+
+"No," I said; "I'm from America."
+
+"From America!" he echoed, incredulously.
+
+"Yes; from the state called Ohio."
+
+"Think of that, now!" he cried. "And I can understand every word you
+say! Why, glory be to God, you speak fairer than the old woman up here
+along who has never crossed the road!"
+
+I should have liked to hear more about this remarkable old woman, but he
+gave me no chance with his many questions about America. He had a son in
+New Jersey, he said, and the boy was doing well, and sent a bit of money
+home at Christmas and such like. It was a wonderful place, America. Ah,
+if he were not so old--
+
+So, talking in this manner, we came to the town, and he pointed out the
+inn to me, opposite a picturesque string of thatched cottages nestling
+among the trees, and bade me Godspeed and went on his way; and I suppose
+that night before the fire he told of his meeting with the wanderer from
+far-off America, and how well he could understand his language!
+
+I went on to the inn, which was a surprisingly pretty one, new and clean
+and well-kept; and I took off my wet coat and sat down in the cosy bar
+before a lunch which tasted as good as any I have ever eaten; and then I
+lit my pipe and drew up before the fire and asked the pretty maid who
+served me how to get to the ruins. They were all, it seemed, inside the
+demesne of the Earl of Dunraven, the entrance to which was just across
+the road, and it was necessary that I should have an entrance ticket,
+which the maid hastened to get for me from the proprietor of the inn.
+When she gave it to me, I asked the price, and was told there was no
+charge, as the Earl of Dunraven was always glad for people to come to
+see the ruins.
+
+All honour to him for that!
+
+So it was with a very pleasant feeling about the heart that I presently
+crossed the road and surrendered a portion of my ticket to a black-eyed
+girl at the gate-house, and she told me how to go to get to the ruins,
+and hoped I wouldn't be soaked through. But I didn't mind the rain; it
+only added to the beauty of the park. Besides, I was thinking of "Silken
+Thomas."
+
+Have you ever heard of "Silken Thomas," tenth Earl of Kildare? Probably
+not; yet he was a great man in his day--not so great as his grandfather,
+that greatest of the Geraldines, whose trial for treason before Henry
+VII is a thing Irishmen love to remember.
+
+"This man burned the cathedral at Cashel," said the prosecutor, "and we
+will prove it."
+
+"Spare your evidence," said the Earl. "I admit that I set fire to the
+church, but 'twas only because I thought the archbishop was inside."
+
+"All Ireland cannot rule this man!" cried one of his opponents.
+
+"Then, by God, this man shall rule all Ireland!" said the King, and
+Kildare was made lord lieutenant, and went back to Dublin in triumph.
+
+It was in the thirteenth century that Adare came into possession of
+this mighty family, and the second Earl built a great castle here, on
+the site of an older one which had belonged to the dispossessed
+O'Donovans. The first Earl had already built near by a monastery for the
+Augustinians; and another Earl and his pious wife built a yet handsomer
+one for the Franciscans; so that here was citadel and sanctuary for
+them, when they grew weary of fighting, or when the tide of battle went
+against them. It was a Kildare who led the northern half of Ireland
+against the southern, at the great battle of Knocktow, where Irishmen
+slew each other by thousands, while the English looked on and chuckled
+in their sleeves; and after that, the Kildares waxed so powerful that
+Wolsey, the great minister of the eighth Henry, took alarm at their
+over-vaulting ambition, and caused the head of the house, the ninth
+Earl, to be summoned to London. He went unwillingly, though he had been
+given every assurance of safety; and his misgivings proved well-founded,
+for he was at once imprisoned in the Tower.
+
+He left behind him in Ireland his son, "Silken" Thomas, so-called from
+the richness of his attire and retinue, a youth of twenty-one; and when
+the news came that the old Earl had been put to death, Silken Thomas,
+deeming it credible enough, renounced his allegiance to England, marched
+into Dublin, and threw down his sword of state before the Chancellor and
+Archbishop in St. Mary's Abbey, and then rode boldly forth again, none
+daring to stop him. But it came to naught, for a great English force
+wore him out in a long campaign, seduced his allies from him, and
+finally persuaded him to yield on condition that his life should be
+spared. He sailed for England, assured of a pardon, was arrested as soon
+as he landed, and was beheaded, and drawn and quartered on Tower Hill,
+together with five of his kinsmen.
+
+So ended the haughty Geraldines. The estate was confiscated, and the
+castle, after being besieged by Desmonds and O'Connells, by Irish and by
+English, was finally taken by Cromwell's men and destroyed, and they
+also, perhaps, put the finishing touches to the monasteries.
+
+That was the wild old story I was thinking of as I made my way along the
+winding road, over a beautiful little stream in which I could see the
+trout lurking, and then across a golf ground to the ivy-draped ruins of
+the old abbey of the Franciscans, built by the Geraldines in the heyday
+of their power. It is a beautiful cluster of buildings, with a graceful
+square tower rising high above them; and they are in excellent
+preservation, lacking only the roofs and a portion of gable here and
+there. Even the window tracery is, for the most part, intact.
+
+The interior of the church is of unusual richness and beauty, abounding
+in delicate detail--recessed altar-tombs, richly-carved sedilia, arched
+vaults, graceful mouldings, and the window traceries are very pure and
+lovely. Here, as at Muckross, the cloisters are especially beautiful,
+and are perfectly preserved. They are lighted on two sides by pointed
+arches arranged in groups of three, while on the side next the church
+the arches are grouped in pairs, and the fourth side is closed in by a
+lovely arcade, with double octagonal columns. Here, also as at Muckross,
+the friars planted a yew tree in the centre of the court, and it is now
+a venerable giant. Whether it is as deadly as the Muckross yew I do not
+know.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHOIR OF THE ABBEY AT ADARE]
+
+[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF THE GERALDINES, ADARE]
+
+Beyond the cloisters are the refectory and domestic offices and
+dormitories, all well-preserved, and repaying the most careful scrutiny.
+I don't know when I have been more ecstatically happy than when, after
+examining all this beauty, I sat myself down under an arch in the very
+midst of it, and smoked a pipe and gazed and gazed.
+
+I tore myself away at last, and made my way across the meadow to the
+ruins of the castle, which I could see looming above the trees by the
+river. Right on the bank of the river it stands, and at one time there
+was a moat all around it which the river fed. One can see traces of the
+moat, even yet, with a fosse beyond, and there is enough left of the
+castle to show how great and strong this citadel of the Geraldines was.
+There is a high outer wall, all battlemented, pierced by a single gate;
+and then an inner ward, also with a single gate, flanked by heavy
+defending towers. Within this looms the ultimate place of refuge, the
+mighty donjon, forty feet square, with walls of tremendous strength, and
+flanking towers, and every device for defence, so that one wonders how
+it was ever taken.
+
+One can still go up by the narrow stone stair, and from the top look
+down upon these walls within walls, and fancy oneself back in the Middle
+Ages, with their pageantries and heroisms and picturesque mummeries; and
+one can see, too, how hard and comfortless life was then, save for the
+few who held wealth and power in their mailed fists. "The good old
+times!" Not much! The sad, cruel, gruesome, selfish, treacherous old
+times, whose like, thank heaven, will never be seen again upon this
+earth!
+
+The rain was pouring down in sheets as I left the castle, but I could
+not forbear going back again to the friary for a last look at it; and
+then I tramped happily back along the road to the gate; and the
+black-eyed girl was there to welcome me, and to say how sorry she was
+that the day was so bad. But I did not think it bad; I thought it
+beautiful, and said so; only I was afraid my photographs wouldn't be
+worth reproducing.
+
+And then the girl asked me if I wouldn't come in and sit by the fire a
+bit, and we had a little gossip, of course about America. She had a
+married sister in New York, she said, and she hoped some day to join
+her. And then she told me that the cottage next door was where the
+famous Adare cigarettes were made--an industry started by the Earl, who
+grew the tobacco on his place.
+
+I stopped in to see the factory, and found four girls rolling the
+cigarettes and a man blending the tobaccos. He told me that the Earl had
+planted twenty-five acres with tobacco, and that it did very well; but
+it was not used alone, as it was too dark, but blended with the lighter
+Maryland, brought from America. I bought a packet of the cigarettes in
+the interests of this narrative, but they did not seem to me in any way
+extraordinary.
+
+I went on again and stopped in at the parish church, which was at one
+time a Trinitarian Friary, or White Abbey, founded seven hundred years
+ago. It was falling into ruins, when the Earl, who seems omnipotent in
+these parts, restored it and fitted it up as a church and turned it over
+to the Catholics. There is a big school attached to it now, and as I
+entered the grounds, a white-coifed nun who was sitting at a window
+looking over some papers, fled hastily. The church itself is chiefly
+remarkable for a very beautiful five-lighted window over the altar. Just
+outside is a handsome Celtic cross, surmounting the fountain where the
+villagers get their water.
+
+There was a store farther down the street, and I stopped in to get some
+postcards. It was the most crowded store I ever saw, the ceiling hung
+with tinware, the shelves heaped with merchandise of every kind, and the
+floor so crowded with boxes and barrels that there was scarcely room to
+squeeze between them. I remarked to the proprietor that he seemed to
+carry a large stock, and he explained that he tried to have everything
+anybody would want, for it was foolish to let any money get away. While
+we were talking, a girl came in to sell some eggs. She had them in a
+basket, and the man took them out, but instead of counting them, he
+weighed them.
+
+I went on back to the station, after that, through the driving rain, and
+I was very wet by the time I got there--wet on the outside, that is, but
+warm and dry and happy underneath. And at the station, I found three
+men, who were engaged in a heated argument as to whether a man weighed
+any more after he had eaten dinner than he did before. One of the men
+contended very earnestly that one could eat the heartiest of meals
+without gaining an ounce of weight if one only took the precaution of
+drinking a mug or two of beer or porter with the meal, since the drink
+lightened the brain and so neutralised the weight of the food in the
+stomach. He asserted that he had seen this proved more than once, and
+that he was willing to bet on it. He was also willing to bet that he
+could put twelve pennies into a brimming glass of stout without causing
+it to spill. As the village was a mile away, there was no place to get a
+glass of stout and try this interesting experiment.
+
+And then one of the men, looking at my wet coat and dripping cap, asked
+me if I had been fishing.
+
+"No," I said. "I was tramping around through the demesne looking at the
+ruins and trying to get some pictures of them," and I tapped my camera.
+
+He looked at the camera and then he looked at me.
+
+"Where would you be from?" he asked.
+
+"From America."
+
+"From America?" he echoed in surprise. "Ah, well," he added, after a
+moment's thought, "that do seem a long way to come just to get a few
+photos!"
+
+I couldn't help laughing as I agreed that it did; but I had never before
+thought of it in just that way.
+
+And then he told me that he had five brothers in America, but he himself
+had been in the army, and was minded to enlist again. In the army, one
+got enough to eat and warm clothes to wear and a tight roof to sleep
+under, which was more than most men were able to do in Ireland!
+
+The Mothers' Union presently arrived, very wet but very happy. I was
+curious to know what they had discussed at their meeting, and what
+conclusions they had reached, but the train pulled in a moment later,
+and I had no time to make any inquiries. If Betty had been along, I
+think I should have persuaded her to attend that meeting; but I found
+her very warm and comfortable before her fire back at Limerick, and I
+confess that I was glad to get out of my wet things and sit down in
+front of it.
+
+At 9:25 o'clock that night, when we supposed that most of Limerick was
+in bed, we heard the sound of music and the tramp of many feet in the
+street below, and looked out to see a band going past, followed by a
+great crowd of men tramping silently along in the wet. Ordinarily, I
+would have rushed out to see what was up; but I was tired, and the fire
+felt very good, and so I sat down again in front of it. I have been
+sorry since, for I suspect it was a Home Rule meeting, and Limerick has
+a great reputation for shindies. Perhaps O'Connell, journeyman tailor,
+made a speech. If he did, I am sorrier still, for I am sure it was a
+good one!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was one thing more at Limerick we wished to see--the great butter
+factory of the Messrs. Cleeve, on the other side of the Shannon. We had
+already seen, rumbling through the streets of Limerick, the heavy steam
+trams carrying enormous iron tanks, which collect the milk from the
+country for miles around--from ten thousand cows some one told us--and
+we had seen so few industries in Ireland that it seemed worth while to
+inspect this one. So, next morning, we walked down to the water-front,
+past the towering, empty warehouses, to the swing bridge which Cleeve
+wants to close so that his trams can get across the Shannon without
+going away around by the castle.
+
+The bridge, a very fine one, was named originally after Wellesley, but
+has been re-christened after Patrick Sarsfield, in whose honour the
+street which leads up from it is also named. The swivel which allows
+boats to pass and which isn't strong enough to carry the weight of
+Cleeve's trams, is on the Limerick side, and just beyond it is a statue
+which one naturally thinks is Sarsfield's, until one reads the
+inscription at its base and finds it is a presentment of a certain Lord
+Fitzgibbon, who was killed in the charge of the Light Brigade. Beyond
+that, the bridge stretches away across the wide and rapid stream, by far
+the biggest river in Ireland.
+
+The butter factory is not far off, and we entered the office and told
+the clerk who came forward that we should like to see the place. He
+asked for my card, had me write my American address on it, and then
+disappeared with it into an inner room. There was a delay of some
+minutes, and finally one of the Messrs. Cleeve came out, my card in his
+hand.
+
+After greeting us quite cordially, he looked at the camera which I had
+under my arm, and asked if I expected to take any pictures of the place.
+
+"Why, no," I said; "I hadn't thought of doing so. I certainly won't if
+you don't want me to."
+
+"Are you interested in the butter business?"
+
+"Only as a private consumer."
+
+"Or in the condensed milk business??"
+
+"No," I said promptly, "neither of us is interested in that, even as
+consumers." And then, seeing that he still hesitated, I explained that
+we were just travelling Americans who had heard about the factory and
+thought we should like to see it; but that if it was against the rules,
+he had only to say so, and it would be all right.
+
+"It isn't against the rules," he explained. "In fact, we welcome
+visitors; only we have to be careful. We have some secret processes,
+especially with our condensed milk, which we wouldn't care to have our
+competitors know about. But I'm sure you're all right," he added, and
+called a clerk and told him to show us everything.
+
+Most interesting we found it, for twenty-three million gallons of milk
+are used there every year, and are converted not only into butter and
+condensed milk, but into buttons and cigarette holders and all sorts of
+things for which celluloid is commonly used. It was in this use of one
+of the by-products of the business, casein, so our guide explained, that
+much of the profit was made, since both the butter and the condensed
+milk had to be sold on a very close margin.
+
+The factory is a very complete one, making everything it uses--its own
+cans and boxes, its own labels, its own cartons, its containers of every
+kind and shape, as well as their contents. And the machinery with which
+this is done is very intricate and ingenious.
+
+Our guide said that one of the principal hazards of the business was the
+likelihood that some new machine would be invented at any time to
+displace the old ones, and would have to be purchased in order to keep
+abreast of competition.
+
+We saw the long troughs into which the milk is poured and strained and
+heated to Pasteurize it, and then run through the separators. In the
+next room were the great churns, from which the yellow butter was being
+taken; and beyond were the mechanical kneaders, which worked out the
+superfluous water and worked in the salt; and then the butter was put
+through a machine which divided it into blocks weighing a pound or two
+pounds, and then each of these blocks was carefully weighed, to be sure
+that it was full weight, and if it wasn't a little dab of butter was
+added before it was wrapped up and placed in the carton. And during all
+these processes it was never touched by any human finger.
+
+On the floor above were the great copper retorts in which the milk was
+being condensed by boiling. We looked in through a little isinglassed
+opening, and could see it seething like a volcano. And still higher up
+were the machines which turned the hardened casein, which would
+otherwise be wasted, into buttons and novelties of various kinds. The
+place seemed very prosperous and well-managed, and, so our guide assured
+us, was doing well. We were glad to find one such place in southern
+Ireland.
+
+Of course there are many others; and perhaps the impression I have given
+of Limerick does the town injustice, for it is a busy place. It is
+famous for its bacon, to the making of which ten thousand pigs are
+sacrificed weekly. It used also to be famous for its lace, worked by
+hand on fine net; but Limerick lace is made almost everywhere nowadays
+except at Limerick, although there is a successful school there, I
+believe, in one of the convents.
+
+The name of the town has also passed into the language as that of a
+distinctive five-line stanza, which Edward Lear made famous, and of
+which such distinguished poets as Rudyard Kipling, Cosmo Monkhouse,
+George du Maurier, Gelett Burgess and Carolyn Wells have written famous
+examples. The limerick is said to have been originally an extempore
+composition, a lot of people getting together and composing limericks,
+in turn, as a sort of game designed to while away an evening. Whether
+this was first done at Limerick I don't know, but the name came from the
+chorus which was sung after every stanza in order to give the next
+person time to get his limerick into shape:
+
+          Oh, won't you come up, come up, come up,
+            Oh, won't you come up to Limerick?
+          Oh, won't you come up, come all the way up,
+            Come all the way up to Limerick?
+
+At least, that is the way I heard the chorus sung once, many years ago,
+without understanding in the least what it meant. The invitation, of
+course, is for the passing ship to enter the wide estuary of the Shannon
+and sail up to Limerick's waiting quays. If the first limerick was
+composed at Limerick, it must have been a long time ago, and I doubt if
+any are produced there nowadays.
+
+We took a last stroll about the town, after we had seen the
+butter-making, and looked at the great artillery barracks, and the big
+market, and the mammoth jail and the still more mammoth lunatic asylum,
+where the inmates are decked out in bright red bonnets, which I should
+think would make them madder still. And then we walked through an open
+space called the People's Park, whose principal ornament is a tall
+column surmounted by the statue of a man named Spring Rice. Betty
+remarked that she had heard of spring wheat, but never of Spring Rice,
+and asked who he was; but I didn't know; and then we came to the
+Carnegie Library, and went inside to see what it was like.
+
+I have seldom seen a drearier place. In the reading-room a few shabby
+men were looking over some newspapers, but the rest of the building was
+deserted, except for one old man, who may have been the librarian. There
+were few books, and the names of those the library had were arranged in
+a remarkable mechanism which resembled a lot of miniature post-office
+boxes; and when the book was in, the name was turned out toward you, and
+when it was out, the card was turned blank-side out. It was the most
+complicated thing I ever saw in a public library. I suppose after a
+while, when the library gets more books, this bulletin will be used only
+for the newer ones; but I don't imagine there is a great demand for
+books in Limerick. At least mighty few seemed to be in circulation.
+Where life's realities are so bitter, where want is always at one's
+heels, there is little time for intellectual recreation.
+
+How bitter those realities are we realised, as we had never done before,
+on our way back to the station; for, on the doorstep of a low, little
+house, sat a ragged girl of six or eight, cuddling her doll against her
+breast and crooning to it softly. And the doll was just a block of turf,
+with a scrap of dirty rag for a dress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+"WHERE THE RIVER SHANNON FLOWS"
+
+
+I HAVE already spoken of the wonders of the River Shannon, which rises
+in a bubbling cauldron away above Lough Allen, and flows down through
+ten counties to the sea; widening into lakes twenty miles long, or
+draining vast stretches of impassable bog; navigable for more than two
+hundred miles; and, finally, the great barrier between eastern Ireland,
+which the Danes and English over-ran and conquered, and western Ireland,
+which has never ceased to be Irish, and where the old Gaelic is still
+the language of the people.
+
+The most beautiful portion of the river lies between Lough Derg, at
+whose lower end stands the ancient town of Killaloe, and Limerick, which
+marks the limit of the tideway. In this twenty-mile stretch, the river,
+for the first and last time in its course, is crowded in between high
+hills, and runs swift and deep and strong. It was this stretch we
+started out from Limerick, that day, to explore, and our first
+stopping-place was Castleconnell, about halfway to Killaloe. We found it
+a perfect gem of a town, situated most romantically on the left bank of
+the river, and with one of the nicest, cleanest, most satisfactory
+little inns I have ever seen. It reminded us of our inn at Killarney,
+for it was a rambling, two-storied structure, and the resort of
+fishermen. Castleconnell, as the guide-book puts it, is the Utopia of
+Irish anglers. I can well believe it, for the salmon we saw caught at
+Killarney were mere babies beside the ones which are captured here.
+
+We made straight for the river as soon as we had divested ourselves of
+our luggage, down along the winding village street, past the ruins of
+the castle which was once the seat of the O'Briens, kings of Thomond,
+and which Ginkle blew up during the siege of Limerick, thinking it too
+dangerous a neighbour; and then we turned upstream, close beside the
+water's edge, for two or three miles. The exquisite beauty of every
+vista lured us on and on--the wide, rushing river, with its wooded
+banks, broken here and there by green lawns and white villas, lovely,
+restful-looking homes, whose owners must find life a succession of
+pleasant days. For this portion of the valley of the Shannon seems to me
+one of the real garden spots of the world.
+
+The river was in flood, and so not at its best for fishing, but
+nevertheless we passed many anglers patiently whipping the water in the
+hope that, by some accident, a passing fish might see the fly and take
+it. And at last we came to the end of the river road--a place called
+"World's End," where we had expected to get tea. But the refreshment
+booth was closed and there was no sign of any one in the neighbourhood.
+
+We were very hungry therefore, when we got back to our inn, and our high
+tea tasted very good indeed, served in the pleasantest of dining rooms,
+on a table with snowy linen and polished dishes and shining silver, and
+by a waiter who knew his business so well that I judged him to be
+French. What a pleasure that meal was, after the slovenly service of the
+house at Limerick, most of whose customers were commercial travellers!
+Irish commercial travellers, I judge, are the least fastidious of men!
+
+Just across the street from the inn at Castleconnell is the place where
+the famous Enright rods are made, and after tea we went over to take a
+look at them. I know nothing about rods, but any one could appreciate
+the beauties of the masterpieces which the man in charge showed us. And
+then he asked us if we wouldn't like to try one of them, and insisted on
+lending us his own--hurrying home after it, and stringing on the line
+and tying on the flies, and pressing it into my hand in a very fever of
+good-nature. I confess I shrank from taking it. I had a vision of some
+mighty fish gobbling down the fly and dashing off with a jerk that would
+crumple up the rod in my hands, and I tried to decline it. But he
+wouldn't hear of it--besides, there was Betty, her eyes shining at the
+prospect of fishing in the Shannon.
+
+So I took the rod at last, and we went down to the river again, and
+worked our way slowly down stream, along a path ablaze with primroses,
+and cast from place to place for an hour or more. There were many others
+doing the same thing, and they all seemed to think that the fish would
+be sure to rise as the twilight deepened. But they didn't, and I saw no
+fish caught that day. This didn't in the least interfere with any one's
+pleasure, for your true angler delights quite as much in the mere act of
+fishing as in actually catching fish. But it was with a sigh of relief I
+finally returned the rod intact to its owner. He said that I was welcome
+to it any time I wanted it, but I did not ask for it again.
+
+There were five or six fishermen staying at the hotel, and they came in
+one by one, empty-handed. They had had no luck that day--the water was
+too high; but it was already falling, and they were looking forward to
+great sport on the morrow.
+
+That morrow was a memorable one for us, also. It was a perfect day, and
+we set out, as soon as we had breakfasted, for the falls of Doonas and
+St. Senan's well, one of the most famous of the holy wells of Ireland.
+To get to it, it was necessary to cross the river, and the only way to
+get across is by a ferry, which consists of a flat-bottomed skiff,
+propelled by a man armed only with a small paddle. As I looked from the
+paddle to the mighty sweep of the river, rushing headlong past, I had
+some misgivings, but we clambered aboard, and the boatman pushed off.
+
+He headed almost directly upstream, and then, when the current caught
+us, managed by vigorous and skilful paddling to hold his boat diagonally
+against it, so that it swept us swiftly over toward the other bank, and
+we touched it exactly opposite our point of departure. It was an
+exhibition of skill which I shall not soon forget.
+
+We stepped ashore upon a beautiful meadow rolling up to a stately,
+wide-flung mansion, and turned our faces down the river. Already the
+fishermen were abroad, some of them casting from the bank, but the most
+out in midstream, in flat-bottomed boats like the one we had crossed in,
+which two men with paddles held steady in some miraculous way against
+the stream. One was at the bow and the other at the stern, and they did
+not seem to be paddling very hard, but the boat swung slowly and
+steadily back and forth above any spot which looked promising, no
+matter how swift the current.
+
+It grew swifter with every moment, for we were approaching the rapids,
+and at last we came out on a bluff overhanging them. Above the rapids,
+the river flows in a broad stream forty feet deep, but here it is broken
+into great flurries and whirlpools by the rocky bed, which rises in dark
+irregular masses above its surface, and the roar and the dash and the
+white foam and flying spray are very picturesque. For nearly a mile the
+tumult continues, and then the stream quiets down again and sweeps on
+toward Limerick and the sea.
+
+We followed close beside it to a little inn called the "Angler's Rest,"
+set back at the edge of a pretty garden, entered through a gate with
+three steps, on which were graven the words of the old Irish greeting,
+"Cead Mile Failte," a hundred thousand welcomes. We sat down for a time
+at the margin of the river and watched the changing water, and then set
+off to find St. Senan's well.
+
+There are really two wells. The first is in a graveyard, a few rods
+away, where a fragment of an old church is still standing. It is a
+tangled and neglected place, with the headstones tumbled every way, and
+bushes and weeds running riot, but the path that leads to the well shows
+evidence of frequent use. The well itself is merely a small hollow in an
+outcropping of rock--a shallow basin, about a foot in diameter, but
+always miraculously full of water. I don't know how the water gets into
+it, or whether it is true that the basin is always full, but it
+certainly was that day; and the legend is that whoever bathes his
+forehead in that water will never again be troubled with headache,
+provided that he does it reverently, with full belief, and with the
+proper prayers. The well is shadowed by a tall hawthorn bush, and this
+bush is hung thick with cheap rosaries and rags and hairpins and bits of
+string and other tokens placed there by the true believers who had
+tested the wonderful properties of the water. We tested them, too, of
+course, and added our tokens to the rest.
+
+The principal well is a little farther up the road, set back in a circle
+of trees and approached by a short avenue of lindens. It is a far more
+important well than the other--is one of the most famous in Ireland,
+indeed--and is covered with a little shrine, which you will find
+pictured opposite the next page. The shrine is hung with rosaries and
+crowded with figurines and pictures of the Virgin and of various saints,
+among which, I suppose, the learned in such matters might have picked
+out Saint Senan, who blessed this well and gave it its miraculous power.
+The trees which encircle the glade in which the well stands are also
+hung with offerings--sacred pictures, rosaries, small vessels of gilt,
+and the crutches of those who came lame and halting and went away cured.
+On either side of the entrance is a bench where one may sit while saying
+one's prayers, and in front of the shrine is a shallow basin, some two
+feet wide and a yard long, into which the water from the well trickles,
+and where one may sit and wash all infirmities away. The water is held
+to be especially efficacious in curing rheumatism and hip disease and
+diseases of the joints; and I only hope the cripples who left their
+crutches behind them never had need of them again.
+
+[Illustration: THE SHANNON, NEAR WORLD'S END]
+
+[Illustration: ST. SENAN'S WELL]
+
+This whole valley of the Shannon, from Killaloe to the sea, is dominated
+by the patron of this well, St. Senan, a holy man who died in 544, and
+whose life resembled that of St. Kevin, whom we have already encountered
+at Glendalough. Like Kevin, Senan was persecuted by the ladies, who, in
+all ages, have taken a peculiar delight in pursuing holy men, and he was
+finally driven to take refuge on a little island at the mouth of the
+Shannon, Scattery Island, where he hoped to be left in peace. But he was
+destined to disappointment, for a lady named Cannera, since sainted,
+followed him and asked permission to remain. This scene, of course,
+appealed to Tom Moore, and he enshrined it in a poem, of which this is
+the final stanza:
+
+          The Lady's prayer Senanus spurned;
+          The winds blew fresh, the bark returned;
+          But legends hint that had the maid
+            Till morning's light delayed,
+          And given the Saint one rosy smile,
+          She ne'er had left his lonely isle.
+
+I do not know upon what evidence Moore bases this slander of a holy man;
+but, at any rate, he stayed on his island, and built a monastery and
+collection of little churches there for the use of the disciples who
+soon gathered about him, and their ruins, which much resemble those at
+Glendalough, even to a tall round tower, may be seen to this day. Some
+antiquarians hold that St. Senan is merely a personification of the
+Shannon; but I don't see how a personification could build a
+collection of churches. It is more satisfactory, anyway, to think of him
+as a person who once existed, and lived a picturesque life, and built
+churches and blessed holy wells, and died at a ripe age in the odour of
+sanctity.
+
+We sat for a long time before his shrine, looking at the tokens and the
+crutches, and wishing we had been there the day they were abandoned. To
+be made whole by faith is a wonderful thing, whatever form the faith may
+take, and I should like to have seen the faces of the cripples as they
+felt the miracle working within them, here in this obscure place.
+Unlettered they no doubt were, unable to read or write perhaps,
+believing this flat and stable earth the centre about which the universe
+revolves; but they touched heights that day which such sophisticated and
+cynically sceptical persons as you and I can never reach.
+
+We left the shrine, at last, and made our way back to the river, and up
+along it, past the rapids, to the ferry. The ferryman was watching for
+us, and had us back on the Castleconnell side in short order. He
+evidently considered the sixpence I gave him a munificent reward for the
+double trip.
+
+When we got back up into the village, we found it in the throes of a
+great excitement over the arrival of three itinerant musicians, two of
+whom played cornets, while the third banged with little sticks upon a
+stringed instrument suspended in front of him. The cornetists paused
+from time to time, to make short excursions, cap in hand, in search of
+pennies, but the third man never stopped, but kept playing away all up
+the street and out of sight. We came across them again when we walked
+over to the station to take the train for Killaloe; but I judge their
+harvest was a slender one, for the people who hung out of gates and over
+doors to listen to the music, disappeared promptly whenever the
+collectors started on their rounds.
+
+We had a little while to wait at the station, and I got into talk with
+the signalman, who told me he had a brother, a Jesuit priest, in
+Maryland, and who wanted to hear about America, whither he hoped to be
+able to come some day. That it would be at best a far-off day I judged
+from the wistful way in which he said it.
+
+And then he saw that I was interested in the signal-system by which the
+trains on his little branch were managed, and he explained it to me. For
+each section of the road there is a hollow iron tube, some two feet
+long, with brass rings around it, called a staff. The engine-driver
+brings one of these staffs in with him, and this must be deposited in an
+automatic device in the signal-house and another received from the
+signalman before the train can proceed. When the staff is deposited in
+the machine, it automatically signals the next station and releases the
+staff in the machine there, ready to be given to the engineer of the
+approaching train. No staff, once placed in the machine, can be got out
+again until it is released in this way, and as no train can leave a
+station until its engineer has received a staff, it is practically
+impossible for two trains to be on the same section of road at the same
+time. The system is rather slow, but it is sure; and being automatic, it
+leaves nothing to chance, or to the vagaries of either engineer or
+signalman.
+
+The bell rang, signalling the approach of our train, the signalman
+carefully closed the gates across the highway which ran past the
+station, and a crowd of men and boys collected, to whom the arrival of
+the train was the most important and interesting event of the day; and
+then it puffed slowly in, and we climbed aboard. Killaloe is only ten
+miles or so from Castleconnell, but we had to change at a station called
+Bird Hill; and then the line ran close beside the Shannon, with lofty
+hills crowding down upon it, and at last we saw the beautiful bridge
+which spans the river, and beyond it the spires and roofs of the little
+town.
+
+Not unless one knows one's Irish history will one realise what a
+wonderful place Killaloe is; for Killaloe is none other than Kincora, a
+word to stir Irish hearts, the stronghold of the greatest of Irish
+kings, Brian Boru. When that great chieftain fell at Clontarf, MacLiag,
+his minstrel, wrote a lament for him in the old Gaelic, and James
+Clarence Mangan has rendered it into an English version, of which this
+is the first stanza:
+
+          O, where, Kincora, is Brian the Great?
+            And where is the beauty that once was thine?
+          O, where are the princes and nobles that sate
+            At the feast in thy halls, and drank the red wine?
+                          Where, O, Kincora?
+
+It was by no mere chance that Kincora, the seat of the Kings of Thomond,
+was situated just here, for it was this point which controlled the
+valley of the lower Shannon. Limerick marks the head of the tideway
+navigable from the sea, then come fifteen miles of rushing torrent, of
+fall and rapid, which no boat can pass; and then comes the long stretch
+of placid lake and river over which boats may go as far as the ford of
+Athlone, and farther. Between Athlone and the sea, there was just one
+ford--a treacherous and hidden one, it is true, possible only to those
+who knew every step of it, but still a ford--and it was here, a little
+above the present town of Killaloe, where Lough Derg begins to narrow
+between the hills.
+
+Brian was born here in 941. Twenty years before, the Danes had sailed in
+force up the Shannon and fortified the island at the head of the tideway
+which is now the oldest part of Limerick. They set themselves to ravage
+the wide and fertile valley, to sack the shrines of the churches, to
+exact tribute from every chieftain--nay, from every family. MacLiag,
+Brian's bard, author of that old epic, "The Wars of the Gael with the
+Gall," another Homer almost, who told the story of Danish oppression
+down to their final defeat at Clontarf, thus described the burden under
+which, in those days, the people of Ireland groaned:
+
+          "Such was the oppressiveness of the tribute and
+          the rent of the foreigners over all Erin, that
+          there was a king from them over every territory, a
+          chief over every chieftaincy, an abbot over every
+          church, a steward over every village, and a
+          soldier in every house, so that no man of Erin had
+          power to give even the milk of his cow, nor as
+          much as the clutch of eggs of one hen, in succour
+          or in kindness to an aged man, or to a friend, but
+          was forced to keep them for the foreign steward or
+          bailiff or soldier. And though there were but one
+          milk-giving cow in the house, she durst not be
+          milked for an infant of one night, nor for a sick
+          person, but must be kept for the foreigner; and
+          however long he might be absent from the house,
+          his share or his supply durst not be lessened."
+
+Brian had an elder brother, Mahon, who was king of South Munster, and
+dwelt at Cashel, and the two did what they could against the invaders,
+killing them off "in twos and in threes, in fives and in scores"; but
+always fresh hordes poured in, and at last Mahon grew disheartened at
+the seemingly endless struggle against these stark, mail-clad warriors;
+while as for Brian, his force was reduced to a mere tattered handful,
+hiding in the hills. Then it was that he and Mahon met to discuss the
+future.
+
+"But where hast thou left thy followers?" Mahon asked, looking at the
+men, only a score in number, standing behind their chief.
+
+"I have left them," answered Brian, "on the field of battle."
+
+"Ah," said Mahon, sadly. "Is it so? You see how little we can do against
+these foreigners."
+
+"Little as it is," said Brian, "it is better than peace."
+
+"But it is folly to keep on fighting," said Mahon. "We can not conquer
+these shining warriors, clad in their polished corselets. The part of
+wisdom is to make terms with them, and leave no more of our men dead
+upon the field."
+
+"It is natural for men to die," answered Brian calmly; "but it is
+neither the nature nor the inheritance of the Dalcassians to submit to
+injury and outrage. And yet I have no wish to lead any unwilling man to
+battle. Let the question of war or peace be left to the whole clan."
+
+So it was done, and "the voice of hundreds as of one man answered for
+war."
+
+Mahon abode loyally by this decision, and there was a great muster, and
+a fierce battle near the spot where Limerick Junction now stands, and
+the Danes were routed, "and fled to the ditches, and to the valleys, and
+to the solitudes of that great sweet-flowery plain," and the Irish
+pursued them all through the night, and with the morning, came to
+Limerick, and stormed and took the island fortress; plundered it, and
+reduced it "to a cloud of smoke and red fire afterwards."
+
+Then Mahon was murdered by some such treachery as stains so many pages
+of Irish history, and Brian became king of all Munster. His first work
+was to punish his brother's murderers, which he did with grim celerity,
+so that, as the chronicler puts it, they soon found that he "was not a
+stone in place of an egg, nor a wisp in place of a club, but a hero in
+place of a hero, and valour in place of valour." After that, with new
+energy, he turned against the Danes, and harried them and was himself
+harried, defeated them and was himself defeated, but fought on undaunted
+year after year, until the final great victory at Clontarf, where he
+himself was slain. And during all the years that he was king of Munster,
+he ruled it, not from Cashel, but from Kincora, his well-beloved castle
+here at the ford of the Shannon.
+
+The ford is no longer there, for an elaborate system of sluice-gates and
+weirs has been constructed to hold the water back and regulate the
+supply to the lower reaches of the river, and one crosses to the town
+upon a beautiful stone bridge of thirteen arches, between which the
+water swirls and eddies, forming deep pools, where great salmon love to
+lurk. At its other end is the town, with its houses mounting the steep
+slope from the river, and dominated by the square tower of its old
+cathedral.
+
+It was to the cathedral we went first, and a venerable pile we found it,
+dating from the twelfth century, and attributed to that same Donall
+O'Brien, King of Munster, who built the one at Limerick. But, alas, it
+is venerable only from without; as one steps through the doorway, all
+illusion of age vanishes, for the interior has been "improved" to suit
+the needs of a small Church of Ireland congregation.
+
+The Protestants in this parish are so few that the choir of the
+cathedral is more than ample for them; so it has been closed off from
+the rest of the church by a glass screen with hideous wooden
+"tracery"--there is a rose window (think of it!) sawed out of boards;
+and beyond this screen an ugly pavement of black and yellow tiles has
+been laid over the beautiful grey flags of the old pavement, and pews
+have been installed. One of the transepts is used as a robing-room; in
+the other an elaborate combination of steam-engine, dynamo and
+storage-batteries has been placed to furnish heat and light--and this,
+mind you, in the church which was once the royal burying-place of the
+Kings of Munster!
+
+It seems foolish to maintain a great church like this for the use of so
+small a congregation as worships here, and yet the same thing is done
+all over Ireland, though it would seem to be only common sense to give
+the big churches to the big congregations, and to provide small churches
+for the small ones. But I suppose no one in Ireland would dare make such
+a suggestion.
+
+I am surprised that the energetic vicar of this parish has not decided
+that the church is too dark and hired some workmen to knock out the
+lancet windows. These windows are one of its chief beauties, they are so
+tall, so narrow, so deeply splayed--the very earliest form, before the
+builders gathered courage to cut any but the smallest openings in their
+walls. And in the wall of the nave, blocked up and with use unexplained,
+is a magnificent Irish-Romanesque doorway. Tradition has it that it was
+the entrance to the tomb of King Murtough O'Brien, and its date is
+placed at the beginning of the twelfth century. The man who built it was
+an artist, for nothing could be more graceful than its four
+semi-circular arches, rising one beyond the other and covered with
+ornamentation--spiral and leaf work, grotesque animals with tails twined
+into the hair of human heads, flowers and lozenges, and the familiar
+dog-tooth pattern, of which the Irish were so fond.
+
+Interesting as the church is, or would be but for the "improvements," it
+is far outranked by a tiny stone structure just outside--the parish
+church of Brian Boru himself. It is less than thirty feet long, and the
+walls are nearly four feet thick, and the two narrow windows which light
+it, one on either side, are loopholes rather than windows; and the
+doorway by which it is entered, narrower at the top than at the bottom,
+is a veritable gem; and the high-pitched roof of fitted blocks of stone
+is twice as high as the walls;--and on the stone slabs of its pavement
+Brian Boru was wont to kneel in prayer, five centuries before Columbus
+sailed out of Palos!
+
+Of course I wanted a picture of this shrine; but there were
+difficulties, for it stands in a little depression which conceals part
+of it, and the high wall around the churchyard prevented my getting far
+enough away to get all of the high-pitched roof on the film. The
+caretaker, who was most interested in my manoeuvres, brought a ladder
+at last, and I mounted to the top of the wall, and took the picture
+opposite the next page; but, even then, I didn't get it all.
+
+The graveyard about these churches is a large one, but it is crowded
+with tombs; and the north half of it is mown and orderly, and the south
+half is almost impenetrable because of the rank and matted grass and
+weeds and nettles. This is the result of an old quarrel, more foolish
+than most. For, like Ireland itself, this graveyard is divided between
+Protestants and Catholics, the Protestants to the north and the
+Catholics to the south of the church; and the Protestants consider their
+duty done when they have cared for the graves in their own half; while
+the Catholics hold that, since the Protestants claim the cathedral, they
+are bound to look after its precincts; and the result is that the
+visitor to those precincts is half the time floundering knee-deep in
+weeds.
+
+The most interesting tomb in the place is in the midst of this tangle,
+therefore a Catholic's. It bears the date 1719, and is most elaborately
+decorated with carved figures--one kneeling above the legend, "This is
+the way to Blis"; another, a man with crossed arms, inquiring, "What am
+I? What is man?"--two questions which have posed the greatest of
+philosophers. One panel bears this sestet:
+
+          How sweetly rest Christ's saints in love
+          That in his presence bee.
+          My dearest friends with Christ above
+          Thim wil I go and see
+          And all my friends in Christ below
+          Will post soon after me.
+
+[Illustration: THE BRIDGE AT KILLALOE]
+
+[Illustration: THE ORATORY AT KILLALOE]
+
+We left the place, at last, and walked on along the street, peeping in
+between the bars of an iron gate at the beautiful grounds of the
+Bishop's palace; and then up a steep and narrow lane to the little
+plateau which is now the town's market-place, but where, in the old
+days, Brian's palace of Kincora stood. Not a stone is left of that
+palace now, for the wild men of Connaught swept down from the mountains,
+in the twelfth century, while the English were trying to hold the castle
+and so control the destinies of Clare, and drove the intruders out, and
+tore the castle stone from stone, and threw timber and stone alike into
+the Shannon. Just beyond the square stands the Catholic church--a
+barn-like modern structure, hastily thrown together to shelter the
+swarming congregation, for which the cathedral would be none too large.
+
+We went on down the hill, past the canal, with the roaring river beyond,
+and the purple vistas of Lough Derg opening between the hills in the
+distance, along an avenue of noble trees, and there before us lay a
+great double rath, sloping steeply to the river, built here to guard the
+ford. The ford lies there before it--a ford no longer, since the sluices
+back up the water; but in the old days this was the key to County Clare,
+this was the path taken by the men of Connaught in raid and foray; and
+here it was that Sarsfield, with four hundred men, followed Hogan the
+rapparee, on that night expedition which resulted in the destruction of
+the English ammunition-train. Aubrey de Vere has told the story in a
+spirited little poem, beginning,
+
+          Sarsfield went out the Dutch to rout,
+            And to take and break their cannon;
+          To Mass went he at half past three,
+            And at four he crossed the Shannon.
+
+We had hoped to go to Athlone by way of Lough Derg, but we had already
+learned that that was not to be, for we had been told, back at the
+bridge, that the passenger service across the lake would not start until
+the sixteenth of June. And we were sorry, for, from the summit of this
+old rath, the lake, stretching away into the misty distance, looked very
+beautiful and inviting.
+
+We made our way back to the village and stopped in at a nice little
+hotel just below the bridge, and had tea, served most appetizingly by a
+clean, bright-eyed maid; and then, while Betty sat down to rest, I
+sallied forth to see, if possible, the greatest curiosity of all about
+Killaloe--the original church or oratory of St. Molua, on an island near
+the left bank of the Shannon, about half a mile downstream.
+
+Now to get back to St. Molua, one has to go a long way indeed, for he
+died three hundred years before Brian Boru was born. He was the first
+bishop of Killaloe, which is named after him, "cill" meaning church, and
+Killaloe being merely a contraction of Cill Molua, the church of Molua.
+The little oratory on the island, to which he retired for contemplation,
+after the manner of Irish saints, was built not later than the year
+600.
+
+You will understand, therefore, why I was so eager to see it, and I went
+into the bar to consult with the barmaid as to the best manner of
+getting to it. I had been told that it was possible to reach it from the
+left bank of the river without the aid of a boat, but the maid assured
+me this could be done only when the river was low, and was out of the
+question in the present stage of the water. So she went to the door and
+called to a passing boatman, and explained my wishes, and he at once
+volunteered to ferry me over to the island. His house, he said, was just
+opposite the island, and his boat was tied up at the landing there; so
+we walked down to it, along the bank of the canal which parallels the
+river.
+
+A little way down the canal was a mill, and a boat was tied up in front
+of it unloading some grain, and when I looked into the boat, I saw that
+the grain was shelled Indian corn! It was not from America, however, but
+from Russia, and my companion told me that quite a demand for cornmeal
+was growing up in the neighbourhood, and that it was used mixed with
+flour. And then he listened, his eyes round with wonder, while I told
+him how corn grows. He had never seen it on the ear, and did not know
+the meaning of the word "cob," except as applied to a horse.
+
+"And of course you have seen bananas growing!" he said, when I had
+finished, and I think he scarcely believed me when I tried to explain
+that a country warm enough for corn might still be too cold for bananas.
+
+We finally reached his house--a little hovel built on a bluff
+overhanging the river--and went down some rude stone steps to the
+water's edge; and he unchained his boat, and whistled to his dog, and
+pushed off. It was quite an exciting paddle, for the current was very
+swift; but we got across to the island at last, after some hair-raising
+scrapings against rocks and over submerged reefs. We found the island a
+tangle of weeds and briars, but we broke our way through, and after some
+searching, found the tiny church, almost hidden by the bushes about it.
+They were so thick that I found it quite impossible to get a picture of
+the whole church, but by breaking down some of them, I finally managed
+to get a picture of the narrow inclined doorway, with my guide's dog
+posing on the threshold.
+
+The oratory is built solidly of stone, with walls three feet thick, and
+a steep stone roof. Its inside measurements are ten feet by six! There
+is a single window, with a round head cut out of a block of stone, and
+in the wall on either side just below it is a shallow recess. The
+ceiling has fallen in, but one can still see the holes in the walls
+where the supporting beams rested. Above it, under the steep roof, was a
+croft, where perhaps the saint slept.
+
+Consider, for a moment, what was going on in the world when this little
+church was built. It takes us back to the age of legend--the age of King
+Arthur and his knights--to that dim period when the Saxons were
+conquering England, and the Frankish kingdom was falling to pieces, and
+Mohammed was preaching his gospel in Arabia. A century and a half would
+elapse before Charlemagne was born, and two centuries before the first
+Norse boat, driving westward before the tempest, touched the New England
+coast!
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO ST. MOLUA'S ORATORY]
+
+[Illustration: A FISHERMAN'S HOME]
+
+There is, of course, a holy well on the island--the one at which St.
+Molua drank; and we found it after a long search, but the river was so
+high that it was under two or three feet of water. There were some rags
+and other tokens hanging on the neighbouring bushes, but not many, and I
+judge that few people ever come to this historic spot.
+
+At last I was ready to go, and we climbed into the boat and started for
+the mainland; and once I thought we were surely going to capsize, for
+the boat got out of control and banged into a rock; but we finally
+stemmed the current, and the boatman dropped his paddle and snatched up
+a pole, and pushed along so close to the shore that the overhanging
+branches slapped us in the face, and the dog, thinking we were going to
+land, made a wild leap for the bank, fell short, and nearly drowned.
+
+When we were safe again at the landing-place, and the boat tied up, I
+asked my companion how much I owed him for his trouble.
+
+"Not a penny, sir," he said, warmly. "It's glad I am to oblige a
+pleasant gentleman like yourself."
+
+"Oh, but look here," I protested, "that won't do," and I fished through
+my pockets and was appalled to find that I had only nine-pence in
+change. "Wait till we get back to the hotel," I said, "and I'll get some
+money."
+
+"What is that you have in your hand, sir?"
+
+"Oh, that's only nine-pence."
+
+"That would be far too much, sir," he said; and when I hesitatingly
+gave it to him, he as hesitatingly took it, and I really believe he was
+in earnest in thinking it too much.
+
+On our way back to the town, he expounded to me his theory of life,
+which was to give faithful service to one's employer, and help one's
+fellow-men when possible, and never bother unduly about the future,
+which was never as black as it looked. And I agreed with him that
+trouble always came butt-end first, and that, after it had passed, it
+frequently dwindled to a pinpoint--the which has been said in verse
+somewhere, by Sam Walter Foss I think, but I can't put my hand on it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We got back to Castleconnell just as the fishermen were coming in, and
+it was far from empty-handed they were this time. The array of salmon
+stretched out on the floor of the bar, when they had all arrived, was a
+very noble one. And everybody stood around and looked at them proudly,
+and told of the enormous flies that had been used, and how one monster
+had whipped the boat around and towed it right down through the rapids,
+and lucky it was that the water was high or it would infallibly have
+been ripped to pieces, but the boatmen kept their heads and managed to
+get it through, and when the salmon came out in the quiet river below
+and found itself still fast, it gave up and let itself be gaffed without
+any further fuss.
+
+And again after dinner, we saw the familiar sight of the catch being
+wrapped in straw to be sent by parcel post back to England, as proof of
+the anglers' prowess; and I can guess how those battles on Shannon
+water were fought over again when the angler got back to the bosom of
+his family. As for me, I have only to close my eyes to see again that
+noble stream sweeping along between its green, flower-sprinkled banks,
+foaming over the weirs, brawling past the rapids, hurrying between the
+quays of Limerick, and widening into the great estuary where it meets
+the sea.
+
+          Into the West, where, o'er the wide Atlantic,
+            The lights of sunset gleam,
+          From its high sources in the heart of Erin
+            Flows the great stream.
+
+          Yet back in stormy cloud or viewless vapour
+            The wandering waters come,
+          And faithfully across the trackless heaven
+            Find their old home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE
+
+
+SINCE we could not get to Athlone by water, we must needs get there by
+rail; so, most regretfully, next morning, we bade good-bye to
+Castleconnell and took train for Limerick. Half an hour later, we pulled
+out of the Limerick terminus, circled about the town, crossed the
+Shannon by a long, low bridge, and were in County Clare.
+
+Ruins are more numerous here than almost anywhere else in Ireland, for
+this western slope of the Shannon valley, so fertile and coveted, was
+famous fighting-ground. There are one or two in sight all the time,
+across the beautiful rolling meadows. Near Cratloe there are three,
+their great square keeps looming above the trees, and looking out across
+the wide Shannon estuary. A little farther on is the famous seat of the
+Earls of Thomond, Bunratty Castle, a fine old fortress, with all the
+approved mediæval trimmings of moat, guard-room, banqueting-hall,
+dungeons and torture-chamber, and I am sorry we did not get to visit it.
+Indeed, there are many places in the neighbourhood worth a visit--but if
+one is going to visit every Irish ruin, he will need ten years for the
+task. Only it does cause a pang of the heart to pass any of them by.
+
+We must have passed at least fifty by, that day; but I found that the
+train stopped for a while at Ennis, the chief town of Clare, and I
+hurried out to see what I could of it. It is certainly a picturesque
+place, with narrow winding streets, and queer little courts, and houses
+painted pink or washed with yellow ochre. I glanced in at the new
+Catholic cathedral, whose most impressive feature is a rather good
+picture of the ascension over the high altar; and then spent a few
+minutes among the ruins of the Franciscan friary, a queer jumble of
+buildings which I did not have time to untangle.
+
+As usual, the two biggest buildings in the town are the jail and the
+lunatic asylum, and I passed them both on my way back to the station.
+Some of the lunatics were languidly hoeing a big potato patch that day,
+with five or six guards looking on. I have never looked up the
+statistics of lunacy in Ireland, but if all the asylums are full, the
+rate must be very high.
+
+About half a mile beyond Ennis, the train passes a most imposing ruin,
+very close to the railway. It is the ruin of Clare Abbey, and is
+dominated by a great square tower, which must be visible for many miles
+around. There is still another ruin, that of Killone Abbey, only a few
+miles away, and for a connoisseur in ruins, Ennis would be an excellent
+place to spend a few days.
+
+From Ennis, we turned almost due northward toward Athenry, and the
+landscape became the rockiest I have ever seen. Every little field was
+surrounded by a high stone wall, and as these walls did not begin to
+exhaust the supply, there were great heaps of rocks in every available
+corner--every one of them dug from the shallow soil with almost
+incredible labour. The fact that any one would try to reclaim such land
+speaks volumes for the hard necessities of the people who settled here.
+I don't suppose they enjoyed the labour, but they had no choice--at
+least, their only choice was to wrest a living from these rocky fields
+or starve. No doubt many of them did starve, but the rest kept labouring
+on, with insect-like industry, reclaiming this corner and that, adding
+to the soil of their fields inch by inch.
+
+There is an old saying that in this district, and in others like it in
+Connaught, the first three crops are stones, and I can well believe it.
+The green appearance of these hillsides is a delusion and a snare, for
+it is nothing but a skin of turf over the rocks, and these rocks must be
+dug away to the depth of two feet, sometimes, before the soil is
+reached. In any other part of the world, a man who would attempt to
+convert such a hillside into an arable field would be thought insane;
+here, in the west of Ireland, it is the usual thing. Most tragic of all,
+after it was fit for tillage, it did not belong to the man whose labour
+had made it so, but to his English landlord, who promptly proceeded to
+raise the rent!
+
+We ran out of this rocky land, at last, and crossed a vast bog, scarred
+with long, black, water-filled ditches, from which the turf had been
+taken. There were a few people here and there cutting it, but a woman
+who had got into the compartment with us said that the continued wet
+weather had made the work very difficult and dangerous. All the people
+hereabouts, she added, lived by the turf cutting, at which they could
+earn, perhaps, ten-pence a day; but in bad seasons they were soon close
+to starvation. I remarked that, with such wages, they must be close to
+it all the time, and she smiled sadly and said that that was true.
+Only, of course, in the bogs the children can work, as well as the men
+and women, and that helps. Indeed, we saw them many times--little boys
+and girls who should have been at school or running free, gaining health
+and strength for the hard years to come, tugging at the heavy,
+water-soaked blocks of peat, and laying them out in the sun to dry. It
+takes a month of sun to dry the peat; in wet weather it won't dry at
+all, and so isn't salable. Truly, the lives of the poor Irish hang on
+slender threads!
+
+There are ruins of castles and monasteries and raths and cashels all
+through this region, and a lot of them cluster about the dirty little
+town of Athenry, which can boast a castle, two monasteries, city walls
+and an old gate. Such richness was not to be passed by, and we left the
+train, checked our luggage at the parcel office, fought off a jarvey who
+was determined to drive us to the ruins which we could see quite plainly
+just across the track, crossed the road by the overhead bridge, and came
+out in the streets of the village.
+
+Athenry is typically Irish, with streets running every way, houses built
+any way, and their inhabitants leaning over the half-doors, or braced
+against the walls at the street corners, or going slowly about such
+business as they have. Life has stood still here for at least a century;
+and yet Athenry was once a royal town--"The Ford of the Kings" its name
+signifies--and a royal court was held here in the great castle, and a
+beautiful monastery was built near by at the express wish of St.
+Dominick himself, and it became a famous place of learning, to which
+scholars flocked from all over Europe. Alas and alack!
+
+    Vanished, those high conceits! Desolate and forlorn,
+    We hunger against hope for that lost heritage.
+
+For the red tide of war swept over Athenry more than once, and left it
+but smoking ruins. Eleven thousand Connaughtmen lay piled about the
+walls one summer day in 1316, all that was left of the army that tried
+to make Edward Bruce king of Ireland; two centuries later, when the
+Earls of Clanricarde swept Connaught with fire and sword, Athenry fell
+before them, and was left in ashes; and when it struggled to its feet
+again, it was only to fall before the destroying hand of Red Hugh
+O'Donnell, who left scarcely one stone upon another, and from that blow
+it never rallied.
+
+One of the old gates still survives, well preserved in spite of war and
+weather, and near it is a quaint old market cross, with the Virgin and
+Child on one side and Christ on the other. All that is left of the
+thirteenth century castle is the gabled keep, looming high on a rock
+just back of the town, and some fragments of the battlemented curtains.
+All the floors have fallen in, and its four massive walls are open to
+the heavens. Red Hugh, when he destroyed it, did his work well!
+
+The ruins of the abbey nestle in the shadow of the rock on which the
+castle stands, and we made our way down to them, along disordered
+streets swarming with geese, ducks, dogs, chickens and children, only to
+find the way closed by an iron gate, securely padlocked. But a passer-by
+told us that the village blacksmith had the key, and indicated vaguely
+the way to his shop, which we found after some circuitous wanderings.
+The smith was a gnarled little man, quite the reverse of Longfellow's,
+and as soon as we had made our errand known, he snatched down the keys
+and hastened to lead the way to the ruins, leaving his work without
+pausing to remove his apron, and without a backward glance at his
+helper, who stood open-mouthed by the forge.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHOIR OF THE ABBEY AT ATHENRY]
+
+[Illustration: A COTTAGE AT ATHENRY]
+
+There were three gates to unlock before we reached the ruins, and then
+the blacksmith hurried back to his work, leaving his daughter to keep an
+eye on us. The church is all that is left of the monastery, for the
+domestic buildings, and even the cloisters have been swept entirely away
+by the rude hand of time, and the far ruder ones of the villagers who
+needed stone for their houses. The church itself has suffered more than
+most, for not only is the roof gone, but the tower and one transept and
+most of the window-tracery, and the whole interior has been swept by a
+savage storm, the tombs hacked and hewed, and the carved decorations
+knocked to fragments. Doubtless if we had questioned the girl who stood
+staring at us, she would have said that "Crummell did it," and in this
+case, history would bear her out, for the Puritan soldiery _did_ do a
+lot of damage here. They and the sans-culottes suffered from the same
+mania--a sort of vertigo of destructiveness before memorials of kings or
+Catholics!
+
+But they couldn't destroy everything, and what is left in this old
+church is well worth seeing, for there are some graceful pointed
+windows, and six narrow lancets in a lovely row along the north wall of
+the choir, and a fine arcade in the north transept, and many details
+of decoration beautiful in spite of mutilation. The place is crowded
+with tombs, for this was the burial place of the Dalys and the Lynchs
+and the De Burgos, and is still in use as such. The tomb of the "noble
+family of De Burgh" is in one corner, and there are many mural tablets,
+with inscriptions in French and Latin and Gaelic, as well as English. In
+fact one of them announces in French and Latin and English, presumably
+so that every one except the Irish might read, that "here is the antient
+Sepulchre of the Sept of the Walls of Droghty late demolished by the
+Cromellians."
+
+We went back through the town, at last, and while I was manoeuvring
+for the picture opposite page 270, Betty got into talk with a girl who
+was leaning over a half-door, and found, marvellous to relate, that she
+had once lived in Brookline, Mass. We asked her why she had come back to
+Ireland, and after a moment's thought she said it was because "America
+wasn't fair." We thought of aristocratic Brookline, the abode of
+millionaires, and then we looked about us--at the ragged donkey standing
+across the way, at the pig wandering down the middle of the dirty
+street, at the low little houses and the shabby people--and perhaps we
+smiled, but be sure it was in sympathy, not in derision.
+
+We crossed over to the railway hotel, finally, and had lunch, and when
+we came out, the woman who managed the place waylaid us at the front
+door for a chat. She told us of a woman from the village who was on the
+_Titanic_, but was saved, and discussed various scandals in high life,
+which she had gleaned from the half-penny press; and then we spoke of
+the girl we had met in the village, and she deplored the high-and-mighty
+airs which some of the girls who come home from America give themselves.
+
+"But I once heard one of them put well in her place," she added, "when
+she came back with her hat full of flowers and her petticoat full of
+flounces, and walked about the town as though we were all dirt beneath
+her feet. Well, one day an old man stopped her for a word, a friend of
+the family who wished her well, but she put up her nose at him--and
+perhaps he was not very clean--and was for going past. But he put out
+his hand and caught her by the arm. 'You're after bein' a fine lady
+now,' says he, 'but I mind the time, and that but a few years since,
+when I've seen ye sittin' on your bare-backed ass, with your naked legs
+hangin' down--yes, and I can be tellin' ye more than that, if so be ye
+wish to hear it!' She didn't stay long in the village after that," added
+the speaker, with a chuckle of relish.
+
+Our train came along, presently, and we were soon running over as
+dreary, bleak and miserable a land as any we had seen in Ireland. Vast
+boggy plains, bare rocky hillsides, with scarcely a house to be seen
+anywhere--only a ruin, now and then, marking the site of some ancient
+stronghold; and so, in the first dusk of the evening, we came to
+Athlone.
+
+One would have thought that, with so important a town, the station would
+have been placed somewhere near it; but habit was too strong for the
+builders of the line, and so they put the station about a mile away, at
+the end of a dreary stretch of road, beyond a great barrack, along the
+river, past the castle, and over the bridge.
+
+Athlone has been famous for its widows ever since the days of Molly
+Malone, ohone! who
+
+            Melted the hearts
+          Of the swains in them parts;
+
+and we found that the best hotel in the place, which was not as good as
+it might have been, was managed by a widow, who might well have posed
+for the lovely Molly. She had not been a widow long, and I judged would
+not be if the swains of the town had any voice in the matter, for the
+bar was very popular when she was behind it.
+
+We went out, after dinner, to see the town, and found it one of the most
+ugly and depressing we had yet encountered--a sort of cross between a
+town and a village, but with the attractions of neither. The water-front
+is its most interesting part, for a fragment of the old castle which was
+built to guard the second of the all-important fords of the Shannon
+still stands there. Kincora, you will remember, guarded the other. But
+Kincora was three days' march to the southward; and for two days' march
+to the northward there was no other place where the Shannon could be
+crossed; and so here at the ford just below Lough Ree, in the old days,
+a franklin named Luan set up a rude little inn, and the place came to be
+known as Ath Luan, Luan's Ford--Athlone. Here in the year 1001, hostages
+were sent from all Ireland to meet Brian Boru and proclaim him High
+King; and here, a century later, the O'Conors built a rath and a tower
+to guard the ford and levy tribute upon all who used it. In another
+hundred years, the Normans had seized it, and put up the strong,
+round-towered castle, parts of which still remain; and for seven
+centuries after that, the English power "sat astride the passage of
+Connaught," save for the brief time, after the battle of the Boyne, it
+was held by the Irish. But Ginkle captured it, as he was soon to capture
+Limerick, and a few years later, most of what was left of the town was
+destroyed when the magazine of the castle blew up during a thunderstorm.
+
+But though there is little in Athlone to delay the visitor, there are
+two places in the neighbourhood worth seeing. Nine miles to the north is
+Lissoy, made immortal by Goldsmith as
+
+          Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain;
+
+and ten miles to the south, on the bank of the Shannon, are the ruins of
+Clonmacnoise, whither, twelve centuries ago, men in search of knowledge
+turned their faces from all the corners of Europe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was for Lissoy we started next morning, on a car for which I had
+bargained the night before. Our jarvey was a loquacious old fellow, who
+talked unceasingly, but in so broken a brogue that it was only with the
+greatest difficulty we could follow him. He had known some people who
+had gone down on the _Titanic_, and he told us all about them; but most
+of his talk was a lament for the hard times, the sorrowful state of the
+country, the paucity of tourists, and the vagaries of the landlady, of
+whom he spoke in the most mournful and pessimistic way. She was not, I
+gathered, a native of Athlone, but a Dublin woman whose ideas were
+new-fangled and highfalutin, and who, I inferred, did not look kindly
+upon the careless habits of her "help."
+
+The road lay through a pleasant, rolling country, with glimpses of Lough
+Ree to the left, and on a hill to the right a tall shaft which our
+jarvey told us marked the exact centre of Ireland. When one looks at the
+map, one sees that it is at least somewhere near the centre. But it has
+been explained to other passers-by in many ways: as the remains of a
+round tower, as a tower which a rich man built in order to mount to the
+top of it every day to count his sheep, as a pole for his tent put up by
+Finn MacCool, as a wind-mill in the old days, and as a dozen other
+things--anything, in fact, that happened to occur to the man who was
+asked the question. One answer, you may be sure, he never made, and that
+was that he didn't know!
+
+There _are_ some remains of old windmills in the neighbourhood--we saw
+one or two on near-by hillsides, close enough to recognise them; and if
+I had known at the time what a divergence of opinion there was about
+that lonely tower in the distance, I would have driven over to it and
+investigated it on my own hook. But our jarvey's answer was so positive
+that it left no room for doubt, so we drove on through a village of tiny
+thatched houses, with the smoke of the turf giving a pleasant tang to
+the air; then up a long hill, to the left at a cross-roads, and at last
+our jarvey drew up before a five-barred gate. We looked at him
+questioningly, for there was no village in sight.
+
+"'Tis here it was, sir," he said, "sweet Auburn, the loveliest village
+of the plain. 'Twas up that path yonder the village preacher's modest
+mansion rose, though there is little enough left of it now; and over
+yonder, behind that wall with the yellow furze atop it, unprofitably
+gay, was where the village master taught his little school, and there is
+nothing at all left of that; and a little furder on is the 'Three Jolly
+Pigeons,' where news much older than the ale went round."
+
+[Illustration: THE GOLDSMITH RECTORY AT LISSOY]
+
+[Illustration: THE "THREE JOLLY PIGEONS"]
+
+I looked at him wonderingly.
+
+"Where did you pick up all that patter?" I asked.
+
+He snickered.
+
+"Ah, you would not be the first gintleman I have driven out here, sir,"
+he explained; "and many of them would be speakin' parts of the poem."
+
+"I suppose ale is still to be obtained at the 'Three Jolly Pigeons'?"
+
+"It is, sir, if so be your honour would be wantin' some. And they have
+one of the big stones of the old mill for a doorstep," he added, as an
+extra inducement not to pass it by.
+
+We got down from our seats, went through the gate, and up the path which
+Goldsmith and his father trod so many times; for, whether or not Lissoy
+was really Auburn, there can be no doubt that the elder Goldsmith was
+really vicar here, and that he lived in the house, the rectory of
+Kilkenny West, of which only a fragment of the front wall remains, and
+that Oliver was a boy here. The ash trees which shadowed the path have
+disappeared, but there are still plenty of gabbling geese around, and a
+file of them went past as I took a picture of the remnant of the
+rectory. A shed with a hideous roof of corrugated iron has been built
+behind it, and near by is a two-storied house where the present tenant
+lives. We found an old woman, for all the world like Goldsmith's
+"widowed, solitary thing," carding wool in an outhouse, and she showed
+us the old well, deep in the ground, walled around and approached by a
+steep flight of steps.
+
+There was nothing more to see, so we went back to the gate, escorted by
+three friendly pigs, and clambered up to our seats again, and looked out
+over the valley. There is nothing in that valley but gently-rolling
+pastures, and nothing lives there now but sheep and cattle. And it sends
+a chill up the spine to realise that once a village stood there, and
+that it has melted away into the earth. Not a stone is left of its
+houses, not a sod of its walls, not a flower of its gardens.
+
+But that village was Lissoy, not Auburn. No such village as Auburn ever
+existed in Ireland, where the young folks sported on the village green,
+and the swain responsive to the milkmaid sung, and the village master
+taught his school during the day, and argued with the preacher in the
+evening, and a jolly crowd gathered every night at the inn to drink the
+nut-brown ale. There is not a single Irish detail in that picture; it is
+all English, just as Goldsmith intended it should be, for it was of
+"England's griefs" he was writing, not of Ireland's. In that day, few
+people here in Westmeath spoke anything but Irish; the village children
+knew nothing of schools, except hedge-row ones, taught by some fugitive
+priest; the "honest rustics" had no "decent churches," but only hidden
+caves in dark valleys, where Mass was said secretly and at the risk of
+life; and, rest assured, when any inhabitant of this valley had money to
+spend for drink, he wasted it on no such futile beverage as nut-brown
+ale!
+
+I am sure that little of it is sold to-day at the "Three Jolly Pigeons,"
+where we presently arrived, a low wayside tavern with thatched roof and
+plastered wall, kept by John Nally, who welcomed us most kindly, and
+grew enthusiastic when I proposed to take a picture. There was a rickety
+donkey-cart standing by the door, and its owner came out to be in the
+picture, too--raggeder even than his donkey, disreputable, dirty,
+gin-soaked, and with only a jagged tooth or two in his expansive mouth,
+but carefree and full of mirth.
+
+Betty, who had been admiring the supreme raggedness of the donkey, asked
+its name.
+
+"Top o' the Mornin', miss," answered the man, with a shout of laughter,
+and I am sure the name was the inspiration of the moment.
+
+And then, while our jarvey drank his whiskey, I had a talk with Mr.
+Nally, who, of course, for reasons of trade perhaps, is firmly of the
+belief that Auburn is Lissoy and no other. And he told me of another
+poet who was born down on the banks of the Inny, a mile or two away, and
+who, in the old days, spent many an evening at the Pigeons--Johnny Casey
+he called him, and it turned out to be that same John Keegan Casey, who
+wrote "The Rising of the Moon," and "Maire my Girl," and "Gracie og
+Machree," and "Donal Kenny,"--Irish subjects all, and most of them local
+ones, as well. Donal Kenny, for instance, was a bold blade, a clever
+hand with the snare and the net, who turned the heads of all the girls
+in the neighbourhood, and broke those of most of the boys, until it was
+glad they were when he went off with himself to America. I have looked
+up the poem since, and I fear that Casey enveloped the parting scene
+with exaggerated sentiment; yet the verses have a swing to them:
+
+          Come, piper, play the "Shaskan Reel,"
+            Or else the "Lasses on the Heather,"
+          And, Mary, lay aside your wheel
+            Until we dance once more together.
+          At fair and pattern oft before
+            Of reels and jigs we've tripped full many;
+          But ne'er again this loved old floor
+            Will feel the foot of Donal Kenny.
+
+We tore ourselves away, at last, taking a road which ran along the
+border of the lake--a beautiful sheet of bluest water, dotted with
+greenest islands, with the rolling plains of Roscommon rising beyond.
+And then, from the top of a long hill, we saw below us the spires of
+Athlone, and soon we were rattling down into the town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That morning, while looking through our guide-book, we had encountered a
+sentence which piqued our curiosity. It was this:
+
+          "Some of the walls of St. Peter's Abbey remain, in
+          which can be seen one of those curious figures
+          called 'Sheela-na-gig."
+
+I remembered dimly that, back at Cashel, John Minogue had called our
+attention to a grotesque figure with twisted legs and distorted visage
+carved on a stone, and had called it something that sounded like
+Sheela-na-gig; but I wasn't sure, and so we started out blithely to find
+this one.
+
+Right at the start, we met with unexpected difficulties, for nobody at
+the hotel, not even the ancient jarvey, had ever heard of the
+Sheela-na-gig. The barmaid, however, said that St. Peter's Abbey was on
+the other side of the river, past the castle, so we went over there, and
+found that part of the town much more dilapidated and picturesque than
+the more modern portion on the Westmeath side. We wandered around for
+quite a while, asking the way of this person and that, and finally we
+wound up at St. Peter's church, a new structure and one singularly
+uninteresting. It was evident that there was no Sheela-na-gig there; and
+at this point Betty surrendered, and went back to the hotel to write
+some letters.
+
+But I had started out on the quest of the Sheela-na-gig, and I was
+determined to find it. I thought possibly it might be somewhere among
+the ruins of the Franciscan Abbey, which stand close to the other side
+of the river, so I crossed the river again, and after walking about a
+mile along a high wall through a dirty lane, reached a gate, only to
+find it locked. There was a man inside, raking a gravelled walk, but he
+said nobody was admitted to the ruins, and anyway he was quite positive
+that there was no such thing as a Sheela-na-gig among them. He added
+that a portion of the ruins had been torn down to make room for an
+extension of the Athlone Woolen Mills, and perhaps they had the
+Sheela-na-gig there.
+
+I had no faith in this suggestion, but for want of something better to
+do, I turned in at the office of the mills, and was warmly welcomed by
+the manager, who invited me to inspect the place. It is an exceedingly
+rambling and haphazard structure, but it gives employment to hundreds of
+people, mostly girls and women, whose pale faces and drooping figures
+bore testimony to the wearing nature of the work. The mill gets the wool
+in the raw state, straight from the grower, and the processes by which
+it is cleaned and carded and spun into thread, and dyed, and woven into
+cloth, and inspected, and weighed, and finally rolled up ready for the
+market, are many and intricate. The manager told me that the mill turned
+out thirty thousand yards of tweed a week, and he hoped to turn out even
+more, as soon as a reduction of the tariff permitted him to get into the
+American market. Even with a duty of forty-five per cent., he could
+compete with American tweeds, and with a lower duty he could undersell
+them.
+
+It needed only a glance at the shabby, toil-worn men and women working
+in his factory to understand why this was true. I didn't ask him what
+wages his women earned, but I _did_ ask as to their hours of labour.
+They go to work at 6:30 in the morning and work till six in the evening,
+with a three-quarter hour interval for breakfast and the same for lunch.
+I saw groups of them, afterwards, strolling about the streets in the
+twilight, and sad and poor and spiritless they looked. Yet they are
+eager for the work, for at least it keeps them alive, and one can
+scarcely blame the manager for sticking to the market price, and so
+doing his best to meet a remorseless competition. I confess that such
+economic problems as this are too stiff for me.
+
+As I was about to leave, I casually mentioned my search for the
+Sheela-na-gig--and he knew where it was! It was over on the other bank,
+it seemed, not far from the river-front, and he directed me with great
+detail how to get to it; but, alas, in such a town of crooked streets,
+definite direction was impossible. However, with hope springing eternal,
+I crossed the bridge a third time, turned up-stream close beside the
+river, wandered into a board-yard, extricated myself, got into a blind
+alley that ended in a high wall and had to retrace my steps; asked man
+after man, who only stared vacantly and shook their heads; and finally
+found a boy who knew, and who eagerly left his work to conduct me to the
+spot.
+
+Imagine with what a feeling of triumph I stood at last before the
+Sheela-na-gig!
+
+It is carved over the wide arch of the entrance to what was once an
+abbey, but what I think is now a laundry--an impish, leering figure,
+clasping its knees up under its chin, and peering down to see who
+passes. Underneath the imp are the words "St. Peter's Port," and
+underneath the words is a grotesque head. On either side of the arch is
+a sculptured plaque, that to the left bearing the words "May Satan never
+enter," and that to the right, "Wilo Wisp & Jack the Printer,"--the two,
+of course, forming a couplet.
+
+While I was staring at these remarkable inscriptions and trying to
+puzzle out some meaning for them, an old woman, who had been watching me
+with interest from the door of her house, came out and tried to tell me
+the history of the gate. But she spoke so incoherently that I could make
+nothing of it beyond the fact that the inscriptions originated in two
+men's rivalry for possession of the property; so somebody else will
+have to untangle that legend.
+
+A little way up the street there was a shop which, among other things,
+had post-cards displayed for sale, and I stopped in, thinking I might
+get a picture of the gate and perhaps learn something more of its story.
+But when I asked for such a card, the proprietor stared at me in
+amazement.
+
+"There is no such gate hereabouts," he said.
+
+"But there is," I protested; "right there at the end of the street. Do
+you mean to say you have never seen the Sheela-na-gig, nor read that
+line about Wilo Wisp and Jack the Printer?"
+
+He rubbed his head dazedly.
+
+"I have not," he admitted. "Look at that, now," he went on; "here have I
+been going past that gate for years, and you come all the way from
+America and see more in one minute than I have seen in me whole life!"
+
+Then he asked me if I had been up on top the castle, which was just
+opposite his shop, and I replied that I had not.
+
+"Nor have I," he said; "but I am told there is a grand view from up
+there."
+
+"Why not go up with me now?" I suggested.
+
+"I might," he agreed; and then he looked at the tall keep of the castle
+and shook his head. "'Tis not to-day I can be doing it; you see, I must
+stay with the shop."
+
+So I left him there, and essayed the heights of the castle by myself.
+Only for a little way, however, was I by myself, for some families
+connected with the garrison live there, and they are all prolific; so I
+soon found myself surrounded by a horde of ragged children, who begged
+for ha'pennies in the queer bated voice which seems to go with begging
+in Ireland. I distributed a few, but that was a mistake; for when they
+found I not only had some ha'pennies but was actually willing to part
+with them, they grew almost ferocious; I said "Oppenheimer!" in vain,
+and I was only saved at last by a husky woman who issued forth from one
+of the towers and swept down upon them, vi et armis, and drove them
+headlong out of sight. She was red-headed and curious, and she stopped
+for a bit of talk. (I pass over the part about America.)
+
+"How do you like living in the old castle?" I asked her, finally.
+
+"Sure, 'tis a grand place, sir."
+
+"Do you ever see any ghosts?"
+
+"Ghosts? Niver a one, sir."
+
+"Nor hear any banshees?"
+
+"Banshees is it? Sure, they niver come to this place, sir, 'tis that
+healthy, bein' so high."
+
+And it must, indeed, be healthier than the narrow, gloomy, squalid
+streets below. I could look down into them from the top of the tower, to
+which I presently mounted, and see their swarming life--men and women
+idling about, a girl drawing water from the public pump, a boy skinning
+some eels at the corner, small children playing in the gutters. On the
+other side lay the river, empty save for a few small launches, and
+beyond it the roofs of the newer part of the town, and beyond the town
+the beautiful Westmeath hills.
+
+Just at my feet was the bridge across the Shannon, connecting east and
+west Ireland. It is a modern one, but it stands on the site of the old
+one, built while Elizabeth was queen, and the scene of a desperate
+conflict when Ginkle stormed the town. Of the castle itself, only the
+keep is old. The drum-towers, which frown down upon the river, are of
+later date, though one would never suspect it to look at them; but when
+one gets to the top of them, one finds embrasures for artillery, and the
+approach is up a graded way along which the guns can be taken. The old
+drawbridge and portcullis which guarded the entrance to the keep are
+still in place, but there is little else of interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The ruins of the ancient abbey of Clonmacnoise lie close beside the
+Shannon, some ten miles below Athlone, and the road thither winds
+through a rolling country down to the broad river, which here flows
+lazily between flat banks. One would expect so noble a stretch of water
+to be crowded with commerce, but it was quite empty that morning, save
+for an occasional rude, flat-bottomed punt, loaded high with turf, which
+a man and a boy would be poling slowly upstream toward Athlone.
+
+It was a desolate scene; and Clonmacnoise looked desolate, too, with its
+gaunt grey towers, and huddle of little buildings, and cluttered
+graveyard. It seemed incredible that this obscure corner of the world
+was once a centre of learning toward which scholars turned their faces
+from the far ends of Europe, to which Charlemagne sent gifts, and within
+whose walls princes and nobles were reared in wisdom and piety. Yet such
+it was--the nearest to being a national university among all the abbeys,
+for it was not identified with any class or province, but chose its
+abbots from all Ireland, and welcomed its students from all the world.
+
+The abbey was founded by St. Kieran in 548. St. Kieran belonged to what
+is known as the Second Order of Irish Saints, founders of monasteries
+and of great co-operative communities, as distinguished from the First
+Order--St. Patrick and his immediate successors--who were bishops and
+missionaries and founders of churches, and the Third Order, who were
+hermits, dwelling in desert places, often in small stone cells, just as
+St. Molua did in his little cell near Killaloe. St. Kieran had already
+started an abbey on an island in Lough Ree, but grew dissatisfied with
+it, for some reason, and he and eight companions got on board a boat and
+floated down the river, rejecting this place and that as not suited to
+their purpose, and finally reaching this sloping meadow, where their
+leader bade them stop.
+
+"Let us remain here," he said, "for many souls will ascend to heaven
+from this spot."
+
+So the abbey was started, and, though Kieran himself died in the
+following year, it grew rapidly in importance. Let me try to picture the
+place as it was then. The students lived in small huts crowded about the
+precincts; the classes were held in the open air; only for purposes of
+worship were permanent buildings built. Here, as at Glendalough, there
+was not one large church, but seven small ones; and the students seem to
+have attended divine service in the groups in which they studied. It was
+a self-supporting community, tilling its own lands, spinning its own
+wool, weaving its own cloth, and building its own churches; and its
+life, while not austere, was of the simplest.
+
+The students, at times, numbered as many as three thousand. The teaching
+was free, but from every student a certain amount of service was
+required in the interest of the community. The principal study, of
+course, was that of religion, but from the very first the heathen
+classics and the Irish language, arithmetic, rhetoric, astronomy and
+natural science were taught side by side with theology.
+
+The life at Clonmacnoise was typical of that at all the other monastic
+schools with which Ireland was then so thickly dotted; and it is the
+more interesting because the whole continent of Europe, at that time,
+was groping through the very darkest period of the Middle Ages. Culture
+there was at its lowest ebb--knowledge of Greek, for instance, had so
+nearly vanished that any one who knew Greek was assumed at once to have
+come from Ireland, where it was taught in all the schools. Those schools
+sent forth swarms of missionaries, "the most fearless spiritual knights
+the world has known," to spread the light over Europe; they established
+centres at Cambrai, at Rheims, at Soissons, at Laon, at Liége; they
+founded the great monastery at Ratisbon; they built others at Wurzburg,
+at Nuremberg, at Constanz, at Vienna--and then came the Vikings, and put
+an end to Irish learning. For the Vikings were Pagans, and the shrines
+of the churches, the treasuries of the monasteries and schools, were the
+first objects of onslaught.
+
+For two centuries, the Danes made of Ireland "spoil-land and sword-land
+and conquered land, ravaged her chieftaincies and her privileged
+churches and her sanctuaries, and rent her shrines and her reliquaries
+and her books, and demolished her beautiful ornamented temples--in a
+word, though there were an hundred sharp and ready tongues in each head,
+and an hundred loud, unceasing voices from each tongue, they could never
+enumerate all the Gael suffered, both men and women, laity and clergy,
+noble and ignoble, from these wrathful, valiant, purely-pagan people."
+The Danes aimed to destroy all learning, which they hated and
+distrusted, and they very nearly succeeded.
+
+[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO CLONMACNOISE]
+
+[Illustration: ST. KIERAN'S CATHAIR, CLONMACNOISE]
+
+I have already told how, under Brian Boru, the Irish drew together, and
+finally managed to defeat the Danes at Clontarf; and for a century and a
+half after that, ancient Erin seemed rising from her ashes. The books
+destroyed by the Danes were re-written, churches and monasteries
+rebuilt, schools re-opened--and then came Strongbow at the head of his
+Normans, and that dream was ended. There was civilisation in Ireland
+after that, but it was a civilisation dominated by England; there was
+education, but not for the native Irish; there were great monasteries,
+but they were built by French or Norman monks--by Franciscans or
+Cistercians or Augustinians; and finally even these were swept away with
+the coming of the Established Church.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall not attempt to describe the ruins of the seven churches of
+Clonmacnoise, except to say that, though they are all small, they are
+crowded with interesting detail; and there are two round towers,
+somewhat squat and rude, as a witness to the danger of Danish raiders;
+but the glory of the place is the magnificent sculptured cross, erected
+a thousand years ago over the grave of Flann, High King of Erin, and
+still standing as a witness to Irish craftsmanship. It is ten feet
+high, cut from a single block of stone, and elaborately carved from top
+to bottom, and its date is fixed by an Irish inscription which can still
+be deciphered: "A prayer for Colman who made this cross on the King
+Flann." It was Flann who built the largest of the stone churches, near
+which the cross stands, about 909, and at that time Colman was Abbot of
+Clonmacnoise. Flann died five years later, and Colman honoured his
+memory with this magnificent tribute.
+
+Its maker's name is lost, but there can be no doubt he was a great
+artist. On one side he has represented scenes from the founding of
+Clonmacnoise, and on the other scenes from the Passion of the Saviour.
+The crucifixion, as usual, is depicted at the intersection, while hell
+and heaven are shown on the arms themselves, crowded with the damned or
+the blessed, as the case may be. There is another cross in the graveyard
+scarcely less interesting, though no one knows on whose grave it stands,
+and there is the shaft of a third. And all about them are crowded the
+lichened tombstones marking the graves of the fortunate ones who won
+sepulture in St. Kieran's cathair, and who, on the last day, will be
+borne straight to heaven with him.
+
+For this enclosure was once the very holiest in Ireland. It was here
+that Kieran was laid, and then his prophecy was remembered that many
+souls would ascend to heaven from this spot; and the belief gradually
+grew that no one interred "in the graveyard of noble Kieran" would ever
+be adjudged to damnation. In consequence, so many people wanted to be
+buried there that there wasn't room for all of them, and in the end,
+even powerful kings and princes were forced to contend with great gifts
+for a place of sepulture. Here Flann was laid; and hither was borne the
+body of Rory O'Conor, the last who claimed the kingship of all Ireland,
+after his death at Cong. The great abbey at Cong served well enough as
+the retreat for his declining years, but it was only at Clonmacnoise, in
+the sacred cathair of Kieran, that he would be buried. And, as I closed
+the chapter on the Shannon with some verses of one of Ireland's truest
+poets, I cannot do better than close this one with his lovely rendering
+of the lament which Enock O'Gillan wrote many centuries ago for
+
+
+THE DEAD AT CLONMACNOISE
+
+    In a quiet-watered land, a land of roses,
+      Stands St. Kieran's city fair,
+    And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations
+      Slumber there.
+
+    There beneath the dewy hillside sleep the noblest
+      Of the clan of Conn,
+    Each below his stone with name in branching Ogham
+      And the sacred knot thereon.
+
+    There they laid to rest the seven kings of Tara,
+      There the sons of Cairbré sleep--
+    Battle-banners of the Gael that in Kieran's plain of crosses
+      Now their final hosting keep.
+
+    And in Clonmacnoise they laid the men of Teffia,
+      And right many a lord of Bregh;
+    Deep the sod above Clan Creidé and Clan Conaill,
+      Kind in hall and fierce in fray.
+
+    Many and many a son of Conn the Hundred-fighter
+      In the red earth lies at rest;
+    Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers,
+      Many a swan-white breast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+GALWAY OF THE TRIBES
+
+
+IT was in the dusk of early evening that our train started westward from
+Athlone, and we soon found ourselves traversing again the dreary bogs
+which we had crossed on our way from Athenry. I have seldom seen a more
+beautiful sunset than the one that evening, and we watched the changing
+sky and the flaming west for long hours; and then, just as darkness
+came, the great reaches of Galway Bay opened before us, and we were at
+our journey's end--Galway of the Tribes, the beautiful old town which is
+the gateway to Connemara.
+
+There is a good hotel connected with the railway, and we had dinner
+there, and then went forth to see the town. We were struck at once by
+its picturesqueness, its foreign air. The narrow curving streets do not
+somehow look like Irish streets, nor do the houses look like Irish
+houses; rather might one fancy oneself in some old town of France or
+Belgium. We were fascinated by it, and wandered about for a long time,
+along dim lanes, into dark courts, looking at the shawled women and
+listening to the soft talk of the strolling girls.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nobody knows certainly how Galway got its name. Some say it was because
+a woman named Galva was drowned in the river; others maintain that the
+name was derived from the Gallæci of Spain, who used to trade here; and
+still others think that it came from the Gaels, who eventually occupied
+it in the course of their conquest of Ireland. Whatever the origin of
+the name, the town was but a poor place, a mere trading village of
+little importance, until the English came. Richard de Burgo was granted
+the county of Connaught by the English king in 1226, and six years later
+he entered Galway, rebuilt and enlarged the castle which had been put up
+by the Connaught men, threw a wall around the town, and so established
+another of those centres of Norman power, which were soon to overshadow
+the whole of Ireland. It was a very English colony, at first, with a
+deep-seated contempt for the wild Irish. Over the west gate, which
+looked toward Connemara, was the inscription,
+
+          FROM THE FURY OF THE O'FLAHERTIES
+          GOOD LORD DELIVER US.
+
+and one of the by-laws of the town was that no citizen should receive
+into his house at Christmas or on any other feast day any of the Burkes,
+MacWilliamses, or Kelleys, and that "neither O' nor Mac shalle strutte
+ne swaggere thro the streetes of Gallway."
+
+The years wore away this animosity, as they have a fashion of doing in
+Ireland, and by Cromwell's time, the citizens of the town had become so
+Irish that they were contemptuously called "the tribes of Galway" by the
+Puritan soldiers. But, as was the case of the Beggars in Holland, a name
+given in contempt was adopted as a badge of honour, and the "Tribes of
+Galway" became a mark of distinction for men who had suffered and fought
+and had never been conquered. There were thirteen of these tribes; and
+the Blakes and Lynches and Joyces and Martins who still form the greater
+part of the old town's population are their descendants--but how fallen
+from their high estate!
+
+For many years, Galway had a practical monopoly of the trade with Spain,
+there was always a large Spanish colony here, and it is to this
+long-continued intercourse that many persons attribute the foreign air
+of the town. I have even seen it asserted that the people are of a
+decided Spanish type; but we were unable to discern it, and I am
+inclined to think the Spanish influence has been much exaggerated. Its
+period of prosperity ended with the coming of the Parliamentary army,
+which took the place and plundered it; and the final blow was struck
+forty years later, when the army of William of Orange, fresh from its
+victories to the east, laid siege to it and captured it in two days. The
+old families found themselves ruined, trade utterly ceased, the great
+warehouses fell to decay, and the mansions of the aristocracy, no longer
+able to maintain them, were given over to use as tenements. There is
+to-day about Galway an air of ruin and decay such as I have seen
+equalled in few other Irish towns; but there are also some signs of
+reawakening, and it may be that, after three centuries, the tide has
+turned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We found the streets crowded, next morning, with the most picturesque
+people we had seen anywhere in Ireland, for it was Saturday and so
+market day, and the country-folk had gathered in from many miles around.
+The men were for the most part buttoned up in cutaways of stiff frieze,
+nearly as hard and unyielding as iron; and the women, almost without
+exception, wore bright red skirts, made of fuzzy homespun flannel, which
+they had themselves woven from wool dyed with the rich crimson of
+madder. The shaggier the flannel, the more it is esteemed, and some of
+the skirts we saw had a nap half an inch deep. They are made very full
+and short, somewhat after the fashion of the Dutch; but the resemblance
+ended there, for most of these women were barefooted, and strode about
+with a disregard of cobbles and sharp paving-stones which proved the
+toughness of their soles.
+
+Galway, as well as most other Irish towns, boasts a number of millinery
+stores, with windows full of befeathered and beribboned hats; but one
+wonders where their customers come from, for hats are a luxury unknown
+to most Irish women, who habitually go either bareheaded, or with the
+head muffled in a shawl. All the women here in Galway were shawled, and
+beautiful shawls they were, of a delicate fawn-colour, and very soft and
+thick.
+
+We went at once to the market, and found the country women ranged along
+the curb, with great baskets in front of them containing eggs and butter
+and other products of the farm. How far they had walked, that morning,
+carrying these heavy burdens, I did not like to guess, but we met one
+later who had eight miles to go before she would be home again. A few
+had carts drawn by little grey donkeys; and the old woman in one of
+these was so typical that I wanted to get her picture. She was sitting
+there watching the crowd with her elbows on her knees, and a chicken in
+her hands, but when she saw me unlimbering my camera, she shook her
+head menacingly.
+
+[Illustration: THE MARKET AT GALWAY]
+
+[Illustration: "OULD SAFTIE"]
+
+There was a constable in the crowd, and he offered to clear the
+bystanders away, so that I could get a good picture of her. I remarked
+that she seemed to object, and he said that he didn't see why that made
+any difference, and that it wouldn't do her any harm. But I preferred
+diplomacy to force, and finally I asked a quaint-looking old man
+standing by if I might take his picture.
+
+"Ye may, and welcome," was the prompt response.
+
+So I stood him up in front of the cart and got my focus.
+
+"Will ye be seein' the ould saftie!" cried the woman. "Look at the ould
+saftie standin' there to get his picter took." And she went on to say
+other, and presumably much less complimentary things, in Irish; but my
+subject only grinned pleasantly and paid no heed. If you will look at
+the picture opposite this page, you can almost see the scornful
+invectives issuing from her lips. My subject was very proud indeed when
+I promised him a print; and I hope it reached him safely.
+
+Eggs are sold by the score in Galway, and the price that day was one
+shilling twopence, or about twenty-eight cents--which is not as cheap as
+one would expect them to be in a country where wages are so low. But
+perhaps it is only labour that is cheap in Ireland!
+
+One row of women were offering for sale a kind of seaweed, whose Celtic
+name, as they pronounced it, I could not catch, but which in English
+they called dillisk; a red weed which they assured us they had gathered
+from the rocks along the beach that very morning, and which many
+people were buying and stuffing into their mouths and chewing with the
+greatest relish. It did not look especially inviting, but the women
+insisted, with much laughter, that we sample it, and we finally did,
+somewhat gingerly. The only taste I detected in it was that of the
+salt-water in which it had been soaked; but it is supposed to be very
+healthy, and to be especially efficacious in straightening out a man who
+has had a drop too much. No matter how tangled his legs may be, so the
+women assured us, a few mouthfuls of dillisk will set him right again;
+and no man with a pocketful of dillisk was ever known to go astray or
+spend the night in a ditch. I regret that we were not able to experiment
+with this interesting plant; but if it really possesses this remarkable
+property, it deserves a wider popularity than it now enjoys.
+
+While I was talking to the women and the constable--who was a Dublin man
+and very lonesome among these Irish-speaking people, who regarded him
+with scorn and derision--Betty had been exploring the junk-shops of the
+neighbourhood, and presently came back with the news that she had
+discovered a Dutch masterpiece. Now we are both very fond of Dutch art,
+so I hastened to look at the picture; and, indeed, it may have been an
+Ostade, for it was a small panel showing two boors drinking, and it
+seemed to me excellently painted; but when the keeper of the shop saw
+that we were interested, he named a price out of all reason, and I was
+not certain enough of my own judgment to back it to that extent. I
+intended to go back later on and do a little bargaining; but I didn't;
+and the first connoisseur who goes to Galway should take a look at the
+picture--it is in a little shop just a few doors from the cathedral--and
+he may pick up a bargain.
+
+We went on down the street, and crossed the Corrib River to the
+Claddagh--a picturesque huddle of thatched and whitewashed cottages, the
+homes of fishermen and their families, Irish of the Irish, who, from
+time immemorial have formed a unique community, almost a race apart.
+Galway, within its walls on the other side of the river, was very, very
+English; here on this strip of land next to the bay, the despised Irish
+built their cabins, and formed a colony which made its own laws, which
+was always ruled by one of its own members, where no strangers were
+permitted to dwell, and whose people always intermarried with each
+other. That old semi-feudal condition is, of course, no longer strictly
+maintained; but the Claddagh people still keep to themselves, the men
+follow the sea for a living just as they have always done, and the women
+peddle the catch about the streets of Galway, as has been their custom
+ever since the English settled there. They wear a quaint and distinctive
+costume, one feature of which is the red petticoat I have already
+described, and common to all Connemara women. But in addition to this is
+a blue mantle, and a white kerchief bound tightly round the head, and
+then over this, if the woman is unusually well-to-do, a fawn-coloured
+shawl. The feet are usually bare, and so are the sturdy legs, some
+inches of which, very red and rough from exposure to every weather, are
+visible below the short skirts.
+
+The houses of the Claddagh have been built wherever fancy dictated, and
+in consequence form a most confusing jumble, for one man's back door
+usually opens into another man's front yard. How a man gets home from
+the tavern on a dark night I don't know, but I suspect that the
+consumption of dillisk is large. We stopped to talk to a woman leaning
+over a half-door; and her children, who had been playing in the dirt,
+gathered around, and there is a picture of her quaint little house
+opposite the next page. Then while I foraged for more pictures, Betty
+sat down on a stone, and a perfect horde of children soon assembled to
+stare at her. They were very shy at first and perfectly well-behaved;
+but gradually they grew bolder, and finally, under careful
+encouragement, their tongues loosened, until they were chattering away
+like magpies.
+
+The people of the Claddagh are said to be a very moral and religious
+race, who never go to sea or even away from home on any Sunday or
+religious holiday; and these dirty, unkempt, neglected, but chubby and
+red-cheeked children were capital illustrations of Kipling's lines:
+
+  By a moon they all can play with--grubby and grimed and unshod--
+  Very happy together, and very near to God.
+
+They were certainly happy enough; and, whether they were near to God or
+not, they had all evidently been taught their catechism with great care,
+for when Betty took from one of them a little picture of the Madonna and
+asked who it was, they answered in chorus, without an instant's
+hesitation, "The blessed Virgin, miss."
+
+The Claddagh people are dark as a rule, though here and there one sees a
+genuine Titian blond, and Spanish blood has been ascribed to them; but
+they probably date much farther back than the Spaniards--back, indeed,
+to that ancient, original Irish race, "men of the leathern wallet,"
+antedating the Milesians or Gaels who now form the bulk of the Irish
+people. The older race took refuge in the bleak Connemara hills before
+the stronger invaders, to come creeping down again and found their
+colony here at the mouth of the Corrib when the invaders had swept on
+eastward to the kindlier and more fertile country there. Their whole
+life is bound up in this topsy-turvy little settlement, where they live
+just as they have lived for centuries, undisturbed by the march of
+civilisation.
+
+[Illustration: THE CLADDAGH, GALWAY]
+
+[Illustration: A CLADDAGH HOME]
+
+We tore ourselves away, at last, from this primeval place, and recrossed
+the river to the turf market, with its familiar little carts piled high
+with the dark fuel.
+
+"The bogs are very wet this year, are they not?" I asked an old man.
+
+"They are, sir, God save ye," he replied, his wrinkled face lighting up
+at the chance to talk to a stranger. "There never was such a year for
+rain. I'm sixty year, God bless ye, and I've never seen such another."
+And then he went on to relate the story of his life, with a "God save
+ye" to every clause. A hearty old fellow he was, in spite of his sixty
+years; and he had driven his cart of turf down ten miles out of the
+mountains, that morning, and would drive ten miles back that night; and
+if he was lucky he would get half a crown--sixty cents--for the load of
+turf which had taken a hard day's labour to cut, and numerous turnings
+during a month to dry.
+
+We went on past some fragments of the old walls, with a most romantic
+arched gateway, and through the fish market, over which the red-skirted
+women from the Claddagh presided--great strapping creatures, with broad
+hips and straight backs and shining, good-humoured faces. Most of them
+were selling an ugly, big-mouthed, unappetising-looking fish, whose name
+I couldn't catch; but they told us it was a fish for poor people, not
+for the likes of us, God bless ye--full of bones and scarcely worth the
+trouble of eating, but plentiful and therefore cheap.
+
+The principal street of Galway is called Shop Street--a name so
+singularly lacking in imagination that it would prove the English origin
+of the town at once, were any proof needed--and about midway of this
+stands a beautiful four-storied building, known as Lynch's Castle, once
+a fine mansion but now a chandler's shop. The walls are ornamented with
+carved medallions, and there is a row of sculptured supports for a
+vanished balcony sticking out like gargoyles all around the top; and
+over the door there is the stone figure of a monkey holding a child,
+commemorating the saving of one of the Lynch children from a fire, by a
+favourite monkey, some centuries ago.
+
+The Lynches were great people in old Galway, and another memorial of
+them exists just around the corner--a fragment of wall, with a doorway
+below and a mullioned window above, and it was from this window, so
+legend says, that James Lynch Fitzstephen, sometime mayor of Galway,
+hanged his son with his own hands. The principal inscription reads:
+
+          This memorial of the stern and unbending justice
+          of the chief magistrate of this city, James Lynch
+          Fitzstephen, elected mayor A. D. 1493, who
+          condemned and executed his own guilty son, Walter,
+          on this spot, has been restored to its ancient
+          site A. D. 1854, with the approval of the Town
+          Commissioners, by their Chairman, Very Rev. Peter
+          Daly, P. P., and Vicar of St. Nicholas.
+
+Below the window is a skull and crossbones, with a much more interesting
+inscription:
+
+          1524
+          REMEMBER DEATHE VANITI OF VANITI
+          AND AL IS BUT VANITI
+
+[Illustration: A GALWAY VISTA]
+
+[Illustration: THE MEMORIAL OF A SPARTAN FATHER]
+
+The story of the very upright Fitzstephen runs in this wise: He was a
+merchant, prominent in the Spanish trade, and fortunate in everything
+except in his only son, Walter, who was as bad a nut as was to be found
+anywhere. But he had shown some fondness for a Galway lady of good
+family, and it was hoped she might reform him; when, unhappily, she
+looked, or was thought to look, too favourably upon a handsome young
+hidalgo, who had come from Spain as the guest of the elder Fitzstephen.
+So young Walter waited for him one night at a dark corner, thrust a
+knife into his heart, and then gave himself up to his father, as the
+town's chief magistrate.
+
+Walter, as is often the way with rake-hellies, was a great favourite in
+the town, and everybody interceded for his pardon, but his father
+condemned him to death. Whereupon a number of young bloods organised a
+rescue party, but just as they were breaking into the house, the
+inexorable parent put a noose about his son's neck, and hanged him from
+the window mullion above the crowd's head--the same mullion, I suppose,
+which you can see in the picture opposite the preceding page.
+
+Just behind the reminder of this fifteenth-century Brutus, stands the
+fourteenth-century church of St. Nicholas, a venerable and beautiful
+structure, with good windows and splendid doorways, and containing some
+interesting tombs--one of them in honour of Mayor Lynch, the hero of the
+tragedy I have just related. On the south wall is a large tablet to
+"Jane Eyre, relict of Edward Eyre," (I wonder if Charlotte Brontë ever
+heard of her), who died in 1760, aged 88. At the bottom of the slab the
+fact is commemorated that "The sum of 300L was given by the Widow Jane
+Eyre to the Corporation of Galway for the yearly sum of 24L to be
+distributed in bread to 36 poor objects, on every Sunday forever." The
+sexton told us that the yearly income from this bequest was now
+thirty-six pounds, but that the weekly distribution of bread had
+occasioned so much disturbance that it had been discontinued, and the
+income of the bequest was now divided equally among twelve deserving
+families.
+
+As we stood there, the peal of bells in the tower began to ring for
+service, but their musical invitation went quite unheeded by the crowd
+in the market-place outside, all of whom, of course, were Catholics. One
+woman, clad in black, slipped into a pew just before the curate began to
+read the lesson. We waited a while to see if any one else would come,
+but no one did, and at last we quietly took ourselves off.
+
+There was one other sight in Galway we wanted to see--the most famous of
+its kind in Ireland--and that was the salmon making their way up the
+Corrib River from the sea to spawn in the lake above; and the place to
+see them is from the bridge which leads from the courthouse on the east
+bank of the river to the great walled jail on the west bank. Just above
+the bridge is the weir which backs up the water from Lough Corrib to
+afford power for some dozen mills--though all the mills, so far as I
+could see, are decayed and ruined and empty. But below this weir the
+salmon gather in such numbers that sometimes they lie side by side
+solidly clear across the bed of the stream.
+
+A number of fishermen were flogging the water, and we sat down under the
+trees on the eastern bank to watch them for a while before going out on
+the bridge. Two or three of them were stationed on a narrow plank
+platform built out over the water just in front of us, and the others
+were on the farther bank, in the shadow of the grey wall of the jail.
+This is supposed to be the very best place in all Ireland to catch
+salmon, and, in the season, more anglers than the short stretch of shore
+can accommodate are eager to pay the fifteen shillings, which is the fee
+for a day's fishing there. They fish quite close together, which is
+somewhat awkward, but has its advantages occasionally; as, for instance,
+on that day, not very long ago, when one enthusiast, having hooked a
+noble fish, dropped dead in the act of playing it. The long account of
+this sad event which the Galway paper published, concluded with the
+following paragraph:
+
+          Our readers will be glad to learn that the rod
+          which Mr. Doyle dropped was immediately taken up
+          by our esteemed townsman, Mr. Martin, who found
+          the fish still on, and after ten minutes' play,
+          succeeded in landing it--a fine clean-run salmon
+          of fifteen pounds.
+
+One cannot but admire the quick wit of Mr. Martin, who, seeing at a
+glance that his fellow-townsman was past all human aid, realised that
+the only thing to do was to save the fish, and saved it!
+
+But no fish were caught while we were there. We had rather expected to
+see one hooked every minute, but we watched for half an hour, and there
+was not even a rise; so at last we walked out on the bridge to see if
+there were really any fish in the stream.
+
+The bridge has a high parapet, worn glassy-smooth by the coat-sleeves of
+countless lookers-on, and there are convenient places to rest the feet,
+so we leaned over and looked down. The water was quite clear, and we
+could see the stones on the bottom plainly--but no fish.
+
+"Look, there's one," said a voice at my elbow, and following the
+pointing finger, I saw a great salmon, his greenish back almost exactly
+the colour of the water, poised in the stream, swaying slowly from side
+to side, exerting himself just enough to hold his place against the
+current. Then the finger pointed to another and another, and we saw that
+the river was alive with fish--and then I looked around to see whose
+finger it was, and found myself gazing into the smiling eyes of a young
+priest--not exactly young, either, for his hair was sprinkled with grey;
+but his face was fresh and youthful.
+
+"Of course you're from America," he said. "One can see that." And when I
+nodded assent, he added, "Well, you Americans brag like hell, but you
+have good reason to."
+
+I glanced at him again, thinking perhaps I had mistaken his vocation;
+but there was no mistaking his rabat.
+
+"I have been to America," he went on. "I went there as a beggar for a
+church here; and after my mission was done, I rested and enjoyed myself;
+and I want to say that there is no country like America."
+
+The words were said with an earnestness that warmed my heart; and of
+course I agreed with him; and then, when he learned we were from Ohio,
+he told us how he had crossed our State on his way to San Francisco, and
+that seemed to establish a kind of relationship; and when we were
+satisfied with looking at the fish, he insisted on taking us through the
+marble works, just across the river, where some great columns of
+Connemara marble were being polished. It comes from a quarry high on
+Lissoughter, which we were soon to visit--though we didn't know it
+then!--and it is very beautiful indeed, usually a deep green, but
+sometimes a warm brown, and always gorgeously veined.
+
+And then he asked us if we wouldn't like to see Queen's College, the
+Galway branch of the National University of Ireland; and of course we
+said we would, and so we started for it, he pushing his wheel before
+him; and on the way, we met a handsome old man, who stopped when he saw
+us, and smilingly asked for an introduction. It proved to be Bishop
+O'Dee, and even in the short chat we had with him, it was easy to see
+that he deserved his reputation for culture and scholarship. He has two
+pet aversions, so our guide told us, as we went on together, bribery and
+drunkenness. I don't imagine there is much bribery in Connaught, but I
+fear the Bishop has a formidable antagonist in John Barleycorn.
+
+We came to the college presently--a fine Gothic building, with a good
+quadrangle, and we went through its somewhat heterogeneous museum and
+looked in at some of the halls. There are now about a hundred and forty
+pupils, so our guide said, and the new seminary, which drew students
+from all the west of Ireland, and which was just getting nicely started,
+was certain to increase this number greatly.
+
+The National University of Ireland was established in 1908, as I
+understand it, for the purpose of affording Catholic youth an
+opportunity for higher education. The act provides that "no test
+whatever of religious belief shall be imposed on any person as a
+condition of his becoming or continuing to be a professor, lecturer,
+fellow, scholar or student" of the college; nevertheless it is well
+understood that its spirit and atmosphere are Catholic, and such
+Protestant youth as desire higher education usually enter Trinity
+College, Dublin, or Queen's College, Belfast. There are three colleges
+in the National University of Ireland--University College, Dublin, which
+is the parent institution, Queen's College, Cork, and Queen's College,
+Galway. All of them are maintained by state grants.
+
+I am not quite clear as to the maintenance of the new seminary, to which
+our guide next conducted us; but it is a mammoth building, with queer
+squat towers, giving it an aspect quite oriental. Our guide said that
+the architecture was Irish-Romanesque, but it reminded me of nothing so
+much as of the pictures I had seen of the temples of ancient Syria and
+Egypt. The seminary is really an intermediate school, and is planned on
+a very extensive scale. Its promoters are hoping great things for it,
+which I trust will come to pass. We mounted to the top of the main
+tower, and looked out over the bay and the hills, and talked of America
+and of Ireland, and of many other things, and then our guide asked us if
+we wouldn't come and have tea with him.
+
+"Ah, I hope you will come," he urged, seeing that we hesitated. "When I
+was in America, the welcome I got was so warm and open-hearted, that I
+feel I am forever indebted to all Americans, and it is a great pleasure
+to me when I am able to repay a little of that kindness. It's few
+opportunities I have, and I hope you won't refuse me this one."
+
+So we accepted the invitation, telling him how kind we thought it, and
+started back through the streets, with the women and children
+courtesying to our guide as we passed, and he never failing to give them
+a pleasant word.
+
+"'Tis not to my own quarters I'll be taking you," he explained, "but to
+those of a brother priest, who will be proud to have them put to this
+use," and he stopped in front of a row of little houses, called St.
+Joseph's Terrace, and opened the door of one of them, and ushered us in,
+and called the old servant, and bade her get us tea.
+
+It was served in a bare little dining-room--with bread and butter and
+jam and cake--and very good it tasted, though the tea was far too strong
+for us, and we had to ask for some hot water with which to weaken it.
+Our host laughed at us; he drank his straight, without milk or sugar,
+and he told us about the first time he ordered tea in New York. When he
+started to pour it, he thought the cook had forgot to put any tea in the
+pot, so he called the waiter and sent it back; and the waiter, who was
+Irish and understood, laughed and took the pot back and put some more
+tea in.
+
+"It was still far too weak," went on our host; "but I was ashamed to say
+anything more, so I drank it, though I might as well have been drinking
+hot water. Indeed, I got no good tea in America. And I nearly burnt my
+mouth off me once, trying to eat ice-cream. I took a great spoonful,
+without knowing what it would be like, and I thought it would be the
+death of me. And I shall never forget the first time they served Indian
+corn. It was in great long ears, such as I had never seen before; and I
+had no idea how to eat it, so I said it didn't agree with me; and then I
+was astonished to see the other people at the table--educated, cultured
+people they were, too--pick it up in their fingers and gnaw it off just
+as an animal would! Ah, that was a strange sight!"
+
+I do not know when I have spent a pleasanter half-hour; but he had to
+bid us good-bye, at last, for he was due at some service; and he wrung
+our hands and wished us Godspeed, and sprang on his bicycle and pedalled
+off down the road, turning at the corner to wave his hat to us. And I am
+sure his heart was light at thought of the good deed he had done that
+day!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Galway possesses a tram-line, which starts at the head of Shop Street
+and runs out to a suburb called Salthill; and as this happens to pass
+St. Joseph's Terrace, we walked slowly on until a tram should come
+along. And in a moment a woman stopped us--a woman so ragged and forlorn
+and with such a tale of woe that, in spite of my dislike for beggars and
+suspicion of them, I gave her sixpence; and she fairly broke down and
+wept at sight of that bit of silver, and we walked on followed by her
+blessings and thinking sadly of the want and misery of Ireland's people.
+
+We had another instance of it, before long, for after we had got on the
+tram, an old man stopped it and tried to clamber aboard, but the
+conductor put him off, after a short sharp altercation, and he followed
+us along the sidewalk, shaking his stick and, I suppose, hurling curses
+after us. The conductor explained that the old fellow had no money to
+pay for a ticket, but had proposed to pay for it after he had collected
+some money which was due him in Galway. This he no doubt considered an
+entirely reasonable proposition, and he was justly incensed when the
+conductor refused to extend the small necessary credit.
+
+"Them ones gave us trouble enough at first," the conductor added. "They
+thought because the trams were owned by the town that they should all
+ride free, and that only strangers should be made to pay. Even yet, they
+think it downright savage of us to put them off just because they
+haven't the price of a ticket. It costs us no more, they say, to take
+them than to leave them, and so, out of kindness and charity, we ought
+to take them. Och, but they're a thick-headed people!" he concluded, and
+retired to the rear platform to ruminate upon the trials of his
+position.
+
+We got down at the head of Shop Street, and Betty went on to the hotel
+to rest, while I spent a pleasant half-hour wandering about the streets
+and through the calf-market. There were numbers of little red calves,
+cooped up in tiny pens, and groups of countrymen standing about looking
+at them, their hands under their coat-tails and their faces quite
+destitute of expression. At long intervals there would be a little
+bargaining; which, if the would-be purchaser was in earnest, grew
+sharper and sharper, sometimes ending in mutual recriminations, and
+sometimes in an agreement, in which case buyer and seller struck hands
+on it. Then the calf in question would be caught and his legs tied
+together, and a piece of gunny-sack wrapped about him, and he would be
+carried away by his new owner. Or perhaps he might be sent somewhere by
+parcel-post. Calves tied up in gunny-sacks with their heads sticking out
+form a considerable portion of the Irish mail--how often have I seen the
+postmen lifting them on and off the cars or lugging them away to the
+parcel-room!
+
+Betty rejoined me, after a time, and we got on the tram to ride out to
+Salthill. Curiously enough, when we had climbed to the top of it, we
+found sitting there the old man whom we had seen put off earlier in the
+afternoon. I don't know whether he recognised us; but he at once
+proceeded to relate to us the story of that misadventure, with great
+warmth and in minutest detail--just as he would relate it, no doubt, to
+every listener for a month to come.
+
+"Why, God bless ye, sir, I told the felly he should have his penny," he
+explained, with the utmost earnestness. "There was a man in the town
+would be owin' me eight shillin's, and he had promised to pay me this
+very evenin'--but it was no use; he put me off into the road, bad cess
+to him, and it was in my mind to lay my stick across his head. But he
+can't put me off now," he added triumphantly, and held up his ticket for
+us to see.
+
+And then he told us how he had five miles to walk beyond the end of the
+tram-line before he would be home; but he seemed to think nothing of
+having had to walk ten or twelve miles to collect his wages. Indeed,
+most Irish regard such a walk as not worth thinking of; which is as
+well, since many children have to walk four or five miles to school, and
+men and women alike will trudge twice that distance in going from one
+tiny field to another to do a bit of cultivating. Our new-found friend
+seemed quite taken with us, for when the tram came to a stop, he asked
+us if we wouldn't have a drink with him; and when we declined, bade us a
+warm good-bye, with many kind wishes, and then shambled over to the
+public-house for a last drink by himself. Twenty minutes later, we saw
+him go past along the road, his face to the west, on the long walk to
+his tiny home among the hills.
+
+Salthill is a popular summer resort, and has a picturesque beach. The
+view out over Galway Bay is very beautiful, and the wide stretch of
+water seems to offer a perfect harbour; but there were no ships riding
+at anchor there. Time was when the people of the town fancied their bay
+was to become a world-famous port because of its nearness to America,
+and a steamship company was formed, and the government was persuaded to
+build a great breakwater and half a mile of quays and a floating dock
+five acres in extent. But the company's life was a short one, for one
+of its boats sank and another burned, and the other companies all
+preferred to go on to Liverpool or London or Southampton, and the docks
+and quays and harbour of Galway were left deserted, save for the little
+hookers of the Claddagh fishermen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+IAR CONNAUGHT
+
+
+WE were ready to say good-bye to Galway and to fare westward into far
+Connaught, most primitive of Irish provinces; but on Sunday there is
+only a single train each way, and the westbound one leaves Galway at six
+in the morning. We managed to catch it, somewhat to our surprise,
+crossed the Corrib River on a long bridge and viaduct, and were at once
+in Iar Connaught--West Connaught, the domain of the wild O'Flaherties,
+from whom the dwellers in Galway every Sunday besought the Lord to
+deliver them.
+
+The train skirts the shore of Lough Corrib, and one has beautiful
+glimpses of the lake and the hills beyond; and then it plunges into a
+wild and desolate country, strewn with great glacial boulders, some of
+them poised so precariously on hill-side and cliff-edge that it seems
+the rattle of every passing train would bring them crashing down.
+
+And then we came out upon wide moors, crossed by innumerable little
+streams, and then ahead of us the great Connemara mountains began to
+loom against the sky--gigantic masses of grey granite, bare of
+vegetation, even of the skin of turf which can find foothold almost
+anywhere, but which is powerless against these masses of solid rock. The
+Maamturk Mountains are the first to be seen, rugged giants two thousand
+feet high, and the road mounts toward them over a pass, and then dips
+rapidly to the station at Recess, which was our stopping-point.
+
+It was still so early that there was nobody about, and when we got to
+the hotel we found it locked; but the porter hastened to open the door
+in answer to our ring, and we found ourselves in one of the nicest
+hotels we had encountered anywhere in Ireland. We had already made up
+our minds to spend that Sunday climbing Lissoughter, a mountain just
+back of the hotel, famous for the view from its top; and so, as soon as
+we had disposed of our luggage and eaten a most appetising breakfast, we
+inquired how to get to it. And Sheila was summoned to tell us--Sheila
+with a complexion like peach-bloom, and the brightest of blue eyes, and
+the fluffiest of brown hair, fit to pose as the prototype of Sweet
+Peggy, or Kathleen Bawn, or Kitty Neil, or any other of the lovely girls
+the Irish poets delighted to sing. Not the least of the attractions of
+this hotel at Recess are the girls who work there--as bright and
+blooming a lot of Irish lasses as one could wish to see--and Sheila, I
+think, was the flower of them all. She told us how to go, and we set off
+happily through the soft, bright air of the morning.
+
+Our road, at first, lay along the margin of a placid lake, then turned
+off sharply to the right, and the climb began. It was an easy climb,
+with beautiful views over bogs and lakes and mountains opening at every
+step. There was a wet bog on either side the road, and at a place where
+the peat was being cut, we walked out to take a closer look at it. And
+as we stood there gazing down into the black excavation, we felt the
+ground trembling beneath our feet; and when we looked up, there was a
+man striding upward toward us, two hundred feet away, but at every
+stride shaking the bog so that we could feel the tremor distinctly. The
+bog shook more and more as he approached and passed us; and then the
+tremor grew fainter and fainter as he went on his way. Unless I had felt
+it, I would never have believed that the footsteps of a single man could
+have created so wide a disturbance, and I understood how serious were
+the difficulties the railways had to face in getting across the bogs of
+central Ireland.
+
+Half a mile farther on, we came to a cluster of little cabins clinging
+to the hillside, and we paused to ask the way of a man who was pottering
+about them; and, after a moment, we found that we were talking to Mr.
+Rafferty, who with his brother, both bachelors, own the only quarry in
+the world which produces Connemara marble; and when he offered to show
+it to us, you may well believe we assented.
+
+From the very first moment, I had perceived an air about Mr. Rafferty
+which puzzled me. He was undoubtedly Irish, and yet his manner of
+speaking was not precisely the Irish manner I had grown accustomed to;
+his intonation was not precisely the Irish intonation, his choice of
+words and acquaintance with slang was surprisingly wide for a man born
+and reared in Connemara, and there was a certain alertness about him
+which was not Irish at all. And then, when he started to tell us his
+story, I understood, for he had been born in New York and spent the
+first fifteen or twenty years of his life there. Not until then did I
+realise in how many subtle, scarcely recognisable ways does the American
+Irishman differ from the Irish Irishman.
+
+His father was a Connemara man who had gone to America in the decade
+following the great famine and settled in New York, where the son who
+was talking to us was born. The father had come back to Connemara,
+again, for some reason, and had settled at Recess, and, by mere
+accident, one day discovered the vein of marble high on the side of
+Lissoughter. There was no railroad in the valley then, and nobody
+supposed the vein would ever be of any value, so he managed to get
+control of it, and his sons came back from America to help him work it.
+Its development was very slow and difficult, for the only way of getting
+the marble to market was to haul it along the mountain roads to Galway,
+forty miles distant.
+
+But since the coming of the railroad, all that is changed. Some
+primitive machinery has been installed, larger blocks can be handled,
+and already more than one office building in New York has its vestibule
+embellished with the beautiful green stone. Even the fragments are
+carefully saved and worked up into small ornaments and novelties to sell
+to tourists--round towers and Celtic crosses and such things.
+
+We were at the entrance to the quarry by this time, and he took us
+through and explained its workings to us. It is a surface vein, as you
+will see from the photograph opposite page 322, which I took next day,
+and no one knows its depth or its extent. Enough has been uncovered to
+last for many years, at the present rate of quarrying. Of course if it
+was in America, a great company would be formed to exploit it, and
+modern machinery installed, and it would be yanked out by the thousands
+of tons a day; but since it is in Ireland, I doubt if the rate of
+production will ever be largely increased.
+
+We bade Mr. Rafferty good-bye at last, and took up the climb again
+toward the summit of the mountain which loomed before us; up and up,
+with the view opening more and more. Away at the bottom of the valley
+ran the white ribbon of a road, with a cluster of thatched roofs huddled
+near it, here and there; and beyond the valley towered the granite sides
+of the Twelve Pins of Bunnabeola, the loftiest and most picturesque
+mountains in these western highlands.
+
+We came to a cabin, presently, away up there by itself on the mountain
+side, and we stopped long enough to leave the specimens of marble which
+Mr. Rafferty had given us, for they threatened to become embarrassingly
+heavy before the climb was ended. The family who lived there came out to
+show us the best way up the hill, and stood watching us as we climbed
+on. The path for a time lay along the bottom of a brook; then we came
+out upon the bare hillside, with an outcrop of granite here and there
+and dripping bog between, and no living thing in sight except agile,
+black-faced sheep, who peered down at us curiously from every crag. The
+way grew steeper and steeper and the stretches of bog more wet and
+treacherous; but always the view was more magnificent, especially to the
+west, where the Twelve Pins were, and to the south, where the plain
+stretched away, gleaming with innumerable little lakes. I never saw so
+many lakes at one time as I saw that day--there must have been two or
+three hundred of them between us and the far horizon, each of them
+gleaming in the sun like a polished mirror.
+
+After an hour of this steep and slippery work, Betty declared that she
+had had enough; but the last grey escarpment of the mountain loomed just
+over our heads, and I hated to give up with the goal so near. She said
+she would wait for me while I went up alone, so, leaving her cosily
+seated in a niche in the cliff, I scrambled on, along the granite wall,
+on hands and knees sometimes; and at last I came out upon the very
+summit, with one of the most beautiful views in all Ireland at my feet.
+
+Lissoughter stands exactly at the end of a great transverse valley, with
+the Maamturk Mountains on one side and the Twelve Pins on the other, and
+at the bottom of this valley gleam the waters of Inagh and Derryclare;
+and the granite hills stretch away as far as the eye can see, one behind
+the other, rugged and bleak, without a sign of vegetation--far more
+impressive than the green-clad hills about Killarney. The day was
+gloriously clear, and I sat there for a long time, gazing first this way
+and then that, and I can shut my eyes now and see again that glorious
+landscape. The top of Lissoughter is a ring of granite, with a bog in
+the depression in the centre; and on the highest point of this ring some
+one had heaped up a little cairn of stones. Feeling something like Peary
+at the north pole, I tore a leaf from my note-book, wrote my name and
+address upon it, with greetings to the next comer, and placed it under
+the topmost stone of this cairn. I did not suppose that it would ever be
+discovered, but when I got home, I found a postal awaiting me from an
+Irish girl, who had climbed Lissoughter with a party a week later, and
+found my note where I had left it.
+
+When we got down again to the cottage where we had left our marble, we
+found the man of the house out in front, and stopped for a chat with
+him. Yes, it was a fine day; very wet it had been, but a few more such
+days as this would do the potatoes a world of good, and one could get
+into the bogs again to cut the winter fuel. As we talked, children
+gathered from various directions, until there were ten standing about
+staring at us, and Betty asked him if they were the neighbours'
+children.
+
+"They are not, miss," he answered, grinning. "They're all mine."
+
+"All yours!" echoed Betty, and counted them again.
+
+The man turned to the eldest girl.
+
+"Mary Agnes, go bring the baby," he said; and Mary Agnes disappeared
+indoors, and came out presently with number eleven.
+
+How they manage to live I don't know; but they do live, and, so far at
+least as the children are concerned, even grow fat. Their bright eyes
+and red cheeks spoke of anything but undernourishment, and it must take
+a large pot to hold enough to satisfy that family! How the pot is filled
+is the mystery.
+
+Their home was typical of Connaught--and of the poorer part of all
+Ireland, indeed: a low cabin, built of stones and whitewashed, with two
+rooms, a dirt floor, a few pieces of rude furniture, a pile of straw and
+rags for a bed, and hardly enough clothes to go around. In fact, below
+the age of ten or twelve, it was impossible to tell the boys from the
+girls, for they were all dressed alike in a single garment, a sort of
+shift made of homespun flannel, and usually, I judge, cut out of the
+mother's old red petticoats; and boys and girls alike have their hair
+cropped close. All through Connemara we saw this fashion--a single
+rudely-made garment of wool, worn by the children of both sexes all the
+year round, without undergarment of any kind, without shoes or
+stockings. The flannel the garments are made of is practically
+indestructible, and I fancy they are taken off only when outgrown and
+passed on to the next youngest member of the family. When a boy outgrows
+it and is privileged to put on trousers, it is a proud day for him, for
+he ceases to be a mere petticoated "malrach" and becomes a "gossure."
+
+Mary Agnes, the oldest member of this particular family, was a girl of
+sixteen, who was soon to leave for America to try her fortune; I don't
+know by what miracles of self-denial the money for her passage had been
+scraped together! She was an ugly girl, with bad teeth and stupid
+expression, and I am afraid she will find life no bed of roses, even
+here in America. The rest of the children went to school; and the
+nearest schoolhouse was five Irish miles away!
+
+We went on at last, down past the other cabins, which are occupied by
+the men employed in the quarry. They were all faithful replicas of the
+one I have described, and they were all swarming with children. I never
+ceased to be astonished at these children, for though they were dirty
+and half-naked, they all seemed plump and healthy. Potatoes, I suppose,
+is the main article of their diet, for every cabin had its deep-trenched
+patch, won by back-breaking toil from the rocks of the hillside. That
+leisurely walk down into the green valley is unforgettable, the day was
+so bright, the air so fresh and sweet, the view so lovely.
+
+[Illustration: THE CONNEMARA MARBLE QUARRY]
+
+[Illustration: A CONNEMARA HOME]
+
+We spent the remainder of the afternoon playing clock golf, and
+exploring the beautiful garden attached to the hotel; and that night we
+sat in front of a great open fire-place where a wood fire crackled, and
+luxuriated in the pleasant fatigue of a well-spent day. If I had known
+as much then as I do now, we would have spent other evenings there, for
+Recess is as good a point as any from which to explore Connaught, and
+the hotel there is immeasurably superior to any other in that section of
+Ireland--clean and bright and comfortable and well-managed, with food
+that was a pleasant variant from the unimaginative dishes we had grown
+so weary of. It has been built by the railroad company to encourage
+tourist traffic, and I don't see how it can pay; but, for the sake of
+travellers in that part of Ireland, I hope it will never be closed.
+
+I said something of this, that evening, to the manager and to Sheila;
+and added to the latter that if she would tell me the secret of her
+complexion, I would make a fortune for both of us.
+
+"'Tis just the air," she laughed. "Send your lady friends out here to
+us, and we'll soon have them blooming like roses."
+
+So there is another reason for a stay at Recess.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I clambered back up to the quarry, next morning, for I wanted some
+pictures of it, and of the quaint cabins along the way. I found Mr.
+Rafferty there, and a gang of men busy loading some blocks of marble
+upon a cart, preparatory to taking them down the mountain. Just back of
+the quarry, two red-skirted women were digging in a potato patch, and
+they looked so picturesque and Millet-like that I asked them if I might
+take their picture. They held a quick consultation, and then said I
+might provided I paid them two shillings first!
+
+But I _did_ want a picture of one of those poor little mountain cabins,
+and on my way back, I saw a woman standing at the door of one of them,
+and she passed the time of day so amiably that I stopped to talk. The
+year had been very hard, she said--as what year is not, in such a
+place!--and her husband was even then at Oughterard, trying to find
+work. Meanwhile, she was left with the children, to do the best she
+could, and what they found to live on I don't know; but she was glad for
+me to take a picture of her little place, with herself and the children
+and the dog standing in front of it, and I am sure the coin I slipped
+into the baby's fist was very welcome. That picture is opposite page
+322, and it gives a better idea than any mere description could of these
+damp, dark, comfortless mountain homes, with their low walls, and tiny
+windows, and leaky, grass-grown thatch, tied on with ropes. Both the
+boys in the picture wear the red flannel garment common to all Connemara
+children. The girl has just outgrown it.
+
+Farther on, I came upon a woman and her daughter, a girl of about
+sixteen, working in a potato patch; and the girl was really pretty,
+although at the moment she was engaged in spreading manure with her
+hands about the roots of the plants. Her skirt was kilted high,
+revealing her graceful and rounded legs, and when she smiled her teeth
+were very white. That was the finishing touch, for teeth are bad in
+Ireland, and most pretty girls need only smile to disillusion one. So,
+after some talk about the weather, and about America, I asked the mother
+if I might not take the girl's picture; and the girl was willing enough,
+for she hastily let down her skirt, blushing with pleasure; but her
+mother shook her head.
+
+"You are not the first one to be askin' that," she said; "but I have
+said no to all of them, for I would not have her growing vain."
+
+"She has a right to be vain," I pointed out, "for she is very pretty;
+and it wouldn't hurt her to have her picture taken."
+
+"Handsome is as handsome does," said her mother; "and she is not as good
+as she looks."
+
+No doubt with a little more blarney I could have won her consent; but in
+my heart of hearts I knew she was right, and I didn't try to persuade
+her. It was not the first time I realised I was not cut out for a
+photographer! She said the girl would be going to America before long,
+and I advised her to take care of her teeth, and bade them good-bye and
+went on my way. I have regretted since that I didn't try the blarney,
+for that picture would certainly have embellished the pages of this
+book!
+
+I had thought that the fine weather would bring out the turf cutters in
+force, and I had hoped to get a picture of them at work; but the
+cuttings were all empty, for some reason, and at last, after a final
+long look at the beautiful valley, I made my way back to the hotel, and
+an hour later we were faring westward toward Clifden.
+
+The road ran for many miles with the granite masses of the Twelve Pins
+towering on the right, springing sheer two thousand feet from the bogs
+around them--great cones rising one behind the other, their summits
+gleaming so white in the sun that they seemed crowned with snow. We ran
+away from them, at last, across a dreary moor, down to the sea, and so
+to Clifden.
+
+Clifden is a little modern town with a single wide street overlooking
+the bay; but we had time for only a glance at it, for the motor-bus was
+waiting which was to take us to Leenane,--which is pronounced to rhyme
+with "fan," as though it had no final "e"--and we were soon climbing out
+of the town, with a beautiful view of the bay to the left, and on a
+cliff close to the shore the great masts of the Marconi station, which
+is in touch with the coast of Newfoundland. No contrast could have been
+more complete--this latest and greatest of the achievements of science,
+set down in a country where nothing has altered for five centuries; a
+country to which the description penned by Rory O'Flaherty, more than a
+century before our Revolution, applies as closely and completely as it
+did when it was written. Another contrast, just as great, is that
+between the handsome young Italian who set those masts here and the men
+who live in the little cottages along the sea under them. And yet
+Marconi himself is half Irish--for his mother was Irish, and he has
+married an Irish girl; and I fancy he is glad that one of the greatest
+of his stations should be here on the Irish coast.
+
+We mounted steadily along a winding road, and at every turn the scenery
+grew more superb--great sweeps of rugged landscape, of bog and rocky
+field and granite mountain, rousing the soul like a blare of martial
+music. Beyond Letterfrank, the road dips into the lovely Pass of
+Kylemore; and again, as back at Glengarriff, it was bordered with
+fuchsia hedges, gay with scarlet flowers. And presently we were running
+close beside Kylemore Lake, with the white towers of the castle gleaming
+above the trees on the other side--a magnificent structure, now owned by
+the Duke of Manchester--financed by his Cincinnati father-in-law!
+
+And then we came out upon a wide moor, and the road climbed up and
+up--and all at once, we came to the top of the pass, and there, far
+below us lay Killary Bay, a narrow arm of the Atlantic running back into
+the very heart of the Connemara mountains, which press upon it so
+closely that there is barely room for the road between rock and water.
+We dropped down toward it, passed a tiny mountain village, came out upon
+the shore, and sped along at the very edge of the water, until, far
+ahead, we saw the cluster of houses which is Leenane; and in another
+moment we had stopped before the rambling building which is McKeown's
+Hotel.
+
+McKeown himself is a bearded giant of a man, with bronzed face and the
+sunniest of smiles, and his hotel is a sort of paradise for fishermen.
+To others it is not so attractive; but in surroundings it could hardly
+be surpassed. Right at its door stretches Killary Bay; back of it tower
+the steep hills, and across the inlet grey and purple giants spring two
+thousand feet into the air, right up from the water's edge.
+
+A few looms have been set up by Mr. McKeown in a building adjoining the
+hotel, and tweeds are woven there from yarn spun in the neighbourhood,
+forming a small industry which gives employment to a number of persons;
+and a few yards farther down the road is a station of the constabulary,
+and it looked so bright and inviting that I stopped in for a chat with
+the men.
+
+I have already spoken of the Royal Irish Constabulary--the force which
+polices the country; slim, soldierly men, governed from Dublin Castle,
+and really constituting an army, eleven thousand strong, armed with
+carbines, sword bayonets and revolvers, and ready to be concentrated
+instantly wherever there is trouble. They are nearly all Irishmen, so it
+is not a foreign army, but they are seldom assigned to the districts
+where they were born and reared; and the men who command them from
+Dublin Castle are English army officers, who are in no way responsible
+to the public. All, in fact, that Ireland has to do with the Royal Irish
+Constabulary is to foot the bills.
+
+Because of this fact, because in the old days they were called out to
+assist at every eviction and at every political or religious arrest,
+because their services are still required at every trial and
+mass-meeting and fair and market, and finally because their demeanour is
+sometimes rather top-lofty, the Irish generally regard them with a
+suspicion and dislike which seem to me undeserved. So far as I came into
+contact with them, I found them courteous and kindly men, and apparently
+as good Irishmen as any one could desire. But there is one cause for
+complaint which has a real basis, and that is that, in a country which
+is as free of crime as Ireland now is, a police force should be
+maintained which averages one to every 394 of the population, and which
+costs annually about $7,500,000. In the old days of evictions and
+coercion acts and political and religious strife, some such force may
+have been necessary; but that need has passed. Crime is to-day much less
+frequent and serious in Ireland than in England, yet in Ireland the per
+capita cost of the police is $1.64, while in England it is only
+fifty-six cents.
+
+But the members of the constabulary are not to blame for this, and one
+grows accustomed to seeing them everywhere--at the Dublin crossings, at
+the street corners of every little village, walking briskly in pairs
+along the loneliest of mountain roads, stationed in the wilds of the
+hills or amid the desolation of the bogs, often with no house in sight
+except the barrack in which they live.
+
+I certainly got a warm welcome, that day, from the sergeant in charge of
+the Leenane barrack, and from the one constable who happened to be on
+duty there. They showed me all through the place, clean and bare and
+Spartan-like, with their kits along the wall, ready to be caught up at a
+moment's notice, for a call to duty may come at any time, and there must
+be no delay. It was a real barrack, too, with heavy bars across the
+windows, and a door that would resist any mob.
+
+And then they showed me their equipment. To the belt which they all wear
+a leather case is suspended for the baton, and a square leather pouch
+which contains a pair of handcuffs. At the back is the ammunition pouch,
+and on the side opposite the baton hangs the sword-bayonet, which can
+also be used as a knife or dagger. The small carbine they carry weighs
+only six and a half pounds, but is wonderfully compact and efficient,
+with a six-shot magazine, and a graduated sight up to two thousand
+yards. No man in this station had ever had occasion to use his rifle,
+and they all said earnestly that they hoped they never would.
+
+They have a beat of twelve miles along the mountain roads, and they
+cover it twice every day and once every night. I asked them the reason
+for so much vigilance, for I could not imagine any serious crime back in
+these hills among this simple and kindly people; and they said that
+there was really very little crime; but a sheep would be missing now and
+then, or a bit of poaching would be done, or perhaps a quarrel would
+arise between some farmer and his labourers and a horse would be
+lamed--it was such things as those they had to be on the lookout for.
+The position of constable is a good one--for Ireland; and I imagine that
+most of those who enter the service stay in it till retired, for it
+carries an increase of pay every five years, with a pension after
+twenty-five years' service, or in case of disability.
+
+We sat and talked for a long time about America and Ireland, and
+intelligent fellows I found them, though perhaps with a little of the
+soldier's contempt for the shiftless civilian. And then I walked on to
+the village which nestles at the head of the bay, a single street of
+slated houses. Everybody wanted to talk, and I remember one old granny,
+with face incredibly wrinkled, who sat in front of her door knitting a
+stocking without once glancing at it, and who told me she was
+eighty-five and had nine children in America. And I met the girl who,
+with her brother, teaches the village school, and she asked me if I
+wouldn't come in, before I left, and see the school, and I promised her
+I would.
+
+Then I noticed that one of the little shops had the name "Gaynor" over
+the door, and I stopped in to ask the proprietor if he knew that was
+also the name of the mayor of New York. He did--indeed, he knew as much
+about Mayor Gaynor as I did. There were two other men sitting there, and
+they asked me to sit down. One of them was a mail carrier, and he told
+me something of his trips back up into the hills, and how almost all the
+letters he delivered were from America, each with a bit of money in it.
+
+"When there is bad times in America," he went on, "and when men are out
+of work there, it pinches us here just as hard as it pinches them
+there--harder, maybe, for if the money don't come, there is nothing for
+it but the work-house. A man can't make a living on these poor hill
+farms, no matter how hard he tries, and there is no work to be had about
+here, save a little car driving and such like in the summer for visitors
+like yourself."
+
+"Why do they stay here?" I asked. "Why don't they go away?"
+
+"Where would they go? There's no place for them to go in
+Ireland--America is the only place, and every one that can raise the
+money does go there, you may be sure. Them that's left behind are too
+poor or too old to cross the sea; and then, however bad it is, there is
+some that will not leave the little home they was born in, so long as
+they can stay there and keep the soul in their body. There be some so
+wrongheaded that they won't even move down into the valley farms which
+they might be getting from the Congested Districts Board."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have been fighting shy of the Congested Districts Board ever since I
+left Cork; but here, in the very heart of the worst of the congested
+districts, I may as well explain what the words mean.
+
+No one, travelling from Galway to Clifden and then on to Leenane, as we
+had done, would have thought of the district as "congested," for, while
+the little huddles of thatched roofs which mark a village are fairly
+frequent, they are scarcely noticeable in the great stretches of hill
+and bog and rocky meadow among which they nestle. And, indeed,
+"congested," in this sense, does not mean crowded with people; it means
+exceptionally poor; and there is no district of Ireland poorer than
+Connaught, that land of bog and granite, where every inch of ground must
+be either elaborately drained or wrested from the rock, and where, even
+after years of labour, the fields are still either so wet that a little
+extra rain ruins them, or so full of stones that the reaping must be
+done with the hook. In Connaught, even the poorest man has a right to be
+proud of his home, because, however small and mean it may be, it
+represents infinite toil.
+
+But how does it come that any one lives in these hills, where life is
+such a constant and heartrending struggle? The answer is that Connaught
+is the Irish pale. After Cromwell had subdued Ireland, the Puritan
+Parliament announced that it was "Not their intention to extirpate the
+whole nation," as many people had been led, not unreasonably, to
+believe; and a year later, they proved their humanitarian intentions by
+enacting that such Irish as survived should be permitted to live
+thereafter between the Atlantic and the Shannon, certain portions of
+which were set aside, as the Parliament said in unintentional rhyme,
+
+          "For the habitation
+           of the Irish nation."
+
+It was stipulated, however, that they should not settle within four
+miles of the sea, within four miles of a town, nor within two miles of
+the Shannon; they were given until the first of May, 1654, to get into
+their new homes, after which date, any found outside of Connaught were
+to be treated as outlaws and killed out of hand. The misery and
+sufferings of the little bands of terror-stricken people, wandering in
+the depth of winter westward along unknown roads to an unknown,
+inhospitable country, will not bear thinking of--or, thinking of it, one
+can understand something of Irish hate for Cromwell's memory. As a
+matter of fact, the edict sounds worse than it was, as such edicts
+usually do, for it was impossible for it to be literally carried out.
+All the Irish were not banished to Connaught, for many of them preferred
+to face death where they had always lived rather than among the
+Connemara hills; and they were not murdered out of hand, but given work,
+for the new landlords were glad to employ them at menial labour, since
+no other labourers were to be had. But from that time on, it was usually
+the Protestant Englishman who lived in the mansion house, and the Irish
+Catholic whose home was roofed with thatch and floored with dirt.
+
+Let us be careful not to grow sentimental over the wrongs of Ireland,
+nor to magnify them. They are not unique, for they have been paralleled
+many times in history. We should be careful, too, not to judge a
+seventeenth-century Parliament by twentieth-century ideals. There is
+this to be said for it: that its only hope of existence lay in stamping
+out rebellion, and the only way, apparently, to stamp out rebellion in
+Ireland was to kill the rebels. That the Parliament chose to banish them
+rather than kill them is so much to its credit, and I doubt not that,
+after the vote had been taken, many of those old Puritans went home with
+the feeling that they had done a merciful and Christian deed. Nor should
+we forget that the wars of religion were as bitter on one side as on the
+other: St. Bartholomew was far more bloody than Drogheda, and the
+removal of the Irish to Connaught was matched by the banishment of the
+Huguenots from France, thirty years later. It did not seem possible, in
+that day, that Protestant and Catholic could ever live side by side in
+peace and friendship, and that narrow bigotry alone would strive to keep
+alive the memory of those mistaken, centuries-old feuds and
+persecutions.
+
+The best portions of Connaught were already fully settled, as the
+fugitive Irish found when they got there; furthermore, although the
+broad Shannon formed a natural moat which would hold safely the Irish
+who had crossed it, it was further strengthened by giving to Cromwell's
+soldiers all the broad belt of fertile land along the river, as well as
+the rich valleys running back into the hills. All that was left for the
+newcomers were the bleak moors and rocky mountain-sides, where no one
+else would live; and since these, for the most part, were quite unfit to
+be cultivated, there was every reason to believe that the people
+condemned to live among them would soon cease from troubling.
+
+But they didn't--at least, all of them didn't. They built rude shelters
+of rock for their families, and the cabins one sees to-day throughout
+Connemara are the direct descendants of those early ones, with scarcely
+an altered feature. They set to work to reclaim the hillsides, and
+though, every year, the spade turned up a new crop of stones, the fields
+slowly grew capable of producing a little food. Before that time, of
+course, many of the people had starved, but those that were left were
+all the better off, and it looked, for a while, as though they might
+some day be able to open the door without seeing the wolf there.
+
+But the end was not yet. It should be remembered that these mountain
+farms did not belong to the people who had created them, and who
+laboured constantly to improve them, but were part of the "plantation"
+of some court favourite or adventurer, so that rent must be paid for
+them; and as the farm improved the rent was raised, although the
+improvement resulted from the labour of the man who paid the rent, so
+that, in the end, it was not the tenant who was richer, but the
+landlord. If the rent was raised to a point where the tenant couldn't
+pay it, or if the landlord wanted the land, the tenant was evicted with
+absolutely no compensation for the improvements he had made. Then it was
+a question either of going to America, or, if there wasn't money enough
+for that, as was usually the case, of taking up some other stretch of
+rocky hillside, and beginning the weary struggle all over again. The
+craze for grazing, which started some forty or fifty years ago, resulted
+in the eviction of many thousands from farms their own industry had
+made, and to-day, as one drives through Connaught, one sees great
+stretches of land given over to sheep which were once part of such
+farms, and one can tell it is so by the faint ridges which mark the old
+tillage.
+
+So evolution proceeded, but for the Irish peasantry it was devolution,
+for every step was a step downward; and millions of them left the land
+in despair, and millions of those that remained were unable to make
+enough to live on; and the workhouses kept getting bigger and bigger,
+and the people poorer and poorer; until finally, a few English
+statesmen, with a somewhat broader outlook than the average, saw that
+something had to be done, and set about doing it. There is no need for
+me to enumerate the steps that were taken--some of them wise, many of
+them foolish; but the greatest of all was the enactment of legislation
+permitting and assisting tenants to become the owners of the land on
+which they lived.
+
+This was in 1891, when the Congested Districts Board was established,
+with wide powers, which have since been made wider still; but the kernel
+of it all is this: in the west of Ireland, where the need is greatest,
+the board has power to condemn and purchase at a fair valuation the
+fertile land of the great land-owners, except the demesne, which is the
+park about the mansion house, and can then re-sell this land to small
+farmers, giving them about sixty years to pay for it, the payments being
+figured on the basis of the cost price, plus interest at the rate of
+four per cent. Such condemnation and re-selling is necessarily slow, but
+it is going steadily forward, and must in the end, change the whole face
+of western Ireland. Indeed, there are some who think it has already done
+so.
+
+The Congested Districts Board has done much more than buy and re-sell
+land; it has aided and developed agriculture, improved the breeding of
+stock, encouraged the establishment of industries, developed the
+fisheries along the western coast, established technical schools--in
+short, it has assumed a sort of paternal oversight of the districts
+committed to its care.
+
+All of the "congested districts" aren't in the west of Ireland--there
+are districts in the east and south where the holdings are
+"uneconomic"--that is, where the income possible to be derived from them
+is not enough to support a family--sometimes not enough even to pay the
+rent. But conditions are worst in Connaught, and remain worst, in spite
+of the work of the board. It is here that life has sunk to its lowest
+terms, where the usual home is a hovel unfit for habitation, sheltering
+not only the family, but the chickens and the pigs and the donkey; it is
+here that manure is piled habitually just outside the door, and where
+fearful epidemics sweep the countryside. At the time we were at Leenane,
+there was an outbreak of typhus a few miles back in the mountains. It
+had been announced with hysterical scare-heads by the Dublin papers, but
+the people of the neighbourhood thought little of it--they had seen
+typhus so often!
+
+Which brings me back to Gaynor's general store, and the mail-carrier who
+was telling me about the letters from America.
+
+"Yes," Gaynor put in, "and about the only letters that go out from here
+are for America--and well I know what is inside them! There was a time
+when I sold stamps to the poor people, or gave credit to them when they
+couldn't pay, and the only stamps I ever thought of buying was the
+tuppence-ha'penny ones, which we used to have to put on American
+letters. And many is the letter I have written for poor starving people
+praying for a little help from the son or daughter who had gone to the
+States, and who was maybe forgetting how hard life is back here in
+Connaught."
+
+"Not many of them do be forgetting," said the mail-carrier, puffing his
+pipe slowly; "I will say that for them. There be many away from here
+now," he went on, "just for the summer--gone to England or Scotland to
+help with the harvest. It is a hard life, but they make eighteen
+shillings a week there, and the money they bring back with them will
+help many a family through the winter. There be thousands and thousands
+here in Connaught who could not live but for the money they make every
+year in this way."
+
+He stopped to watch Gaynor weigh out a shilling's worth of
+flour--American flour!--for a girl who had come in with a dingy basket,
+into which the flour was dumped; and then he went on to tell me
+something about his trips up over the hills--for no house in Ireland is
+too poor or too remote for the mail-carrier to reach. Talk about rural
+delivery! With us, a man must have his mail-box down by the highroad,
+where the carrier can reach it easily; in Ireland, the carrier climbs
+to every man's very door, and puts the letter into his hand--and I can
+imagine the joy that it brings. Irish mail-carriers play Santa Claus all
+the year round!
+
+I tore myself away, at last, from this absorbing conversation, and
+started back to the hotel. The sun had not yet set; but suddenly the
+thought came to me that it must be very late, and I snatched out my
+watch and looked at it. It was half-past eight--an hour after the
+hotel's dinner time! However, in a fishing hotel, they are accustomed to
+the vagaries of their guests; and I found that dinner had been kept hot
+for me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later, as we sat on the balcony in front of our room, gazing out
+across the moonlit water, we heard the tread of quick feet along the
+road, and, looking down, saw pass two constables, starting out upon
+their night patrol. And whenever I think of Leenane, I see those two
+slim, erect figures marching vigorously away into the darkness along the
+lonely road.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+JOYCE'S COUNTRY
+
+
+TWENTY-FIVE miles away to the eastward from Leenane, across a wild
+stretch of hill and bog known as Joyce's Country, are the ruins of the
+old abbey of Cong, and thither we set out, next morning, behind a little
+black mare who would need all her staying powers for the trip that day,
+and on a car driven, as was fitting, by a man named Joyce--as perhaps
+half the men are who live in this neighbourhood. "Jyce" is the local
+pronunciation; and the Joyces are one of the handsomest and fiercest
+breeds of mountaineers to be met with anywhere--fit companions for those
+of Kentucky and Tennessee.
+
+The original Joyces were Welshmen, so it is said, who came to Ireland
+about 1300, and, with the permission of the all-powerful O'Flaherties,
+settled in this country between Lough Mask and the sea. Why they should
+have chosen so inhospitable a region I don't know--perhaps because no
+one else wanted it. Certainly the O'Flaherties didn't; for they
+preferred to live along the sea, where fish was plentiful. But the
+Joyces were an agricultural people; they turned as much of the hillside
+as they could into arable land, cultivated with the spade to this day
+and reaped with the hook. On the rest of it, they grazed their flocks,
+and they still graze them there.
+
+It was a beautiful, warm day, with fleecy clouds in the sky and a blue
+haze about the hills, and everybody was out enjoying the sunshine as we
+drove through the village and turned up along the shoulder of the
+Devil's Mother Mountain. The fine weather had brought the men and women
+out to work in the potato fields--such of the men, that is, as hadn't
+yet left for England or Scotland to spend the summer in the fields
+there. Usually there were five or six women to one man, each of them
+armed with a spade or a fork, and it was pitiful to see the poor little
+patches in which they were working. Almost always they were on a steep
+hillside--there isn't much else but hillside hereabouts which can be
+cultivated, for even where there happens to be a little level land in
+the valley, it is almost always wet bog in which nothing can be grown.
+The patches were very, very small, and each of them was surrounded by a
+high wall built of the stones which had been dug from the ground; and at
+the bottom of every slope was a pile of surplus stones which had been
+rolled there out of the way.
+
+The potatoes were planted in drills about two feet wide, and then
+between the drills a deep trench was dug to carry off the water, for
+even on the hillsides the ground is very wet; and these trenches must be
+kept clear of weeds so that the water will run off freely, and of course
+the drills must be kept clear of weeds too; and the ground is so poor
+that manure must be freely used, and the only way to get it where it is
+needed is to place it there by hand. And almost every time the spade is
+driven into the ground, it brings up more stones which must be carried
+away, until it sometimes becomes quite a problem what to do with them.
+
+As many as possible are built into the fences; and the dominant feature
+of every Connemara landscape is the zig-zag tapestry of stone walls
+which covers it. They run in every direction--up the sides of hills so
+steep that it seems a miracle they don't slide off, around fields so
+small that the ground can't be seen above the fence, along the tops of
+high ridges where they form grotesque patterns against the sky which
+shines through every chink, in places where there seems to be no need
+whatever for a wall and yet to which the stones have been carried with
+prodigious labour.
+
+But do not suppose that, even with all this toil, the fields are cleared
+of stones. Everywhere there are outcroppings of solid rock which the
+tiller of the field has been unable to dislodge, and around which he
+must sow and reap. In consequence, there are practically no fields in
+which it would be possible to drive a plow, and few indeed in which it
+is possible to swing a scythe. The fields themselves are so small that
+one wonders anybody should trouble to cultivate them at all. I have seen
+scores and scores not more than fifty feet square, each surrounded with
+its high wall; I have seen many less than that, with just space enough
+for a two-roomed hovel, where the family must take the stock into the
+house with them, because there is no place for an out-building, and
+where the manure must be heaped against the wall, because to throw it a
+foot away would be to put it on land belonging to some one else. The
+land which the family itself cultivated might lie in twenty different
+places, miles away.
+
+This complication, which is unparalleled elsewhere in the world, arose
+in this way: Half a century ago a man would lease some acres of ground
+and by terrific labour convert it into tillable land. As his sons grew
+up and his daughters married, he would sub-let to each of his sons and
+sons-in-law small portions of his holding, and their other relatives
+would do the same, so that, while each of them might be the tenant of
+four or five acres, they would be scattered in a dozen different places.
+A second generation further complicated things. An acre field would be
+split up between ten different tenants, each with his stone wall around
+his portion; and one of the biggest jobs the Congested Districts Board
+has had to tackle is that of so redistributing the land that each tenant
+shall have a compact portion.
+
+Imagine the small farmers of any neighbourhood called together for the
+purpose of redistribution, each of them suspicious and jealous of all
+the others, each of them believing that his scattered bits of land are
+quite exceptionally valuable, each of them remembering the bitter labour
+by which he reclaimed each rood; and then imagine the patience and tact
+which are needed to convince them that they are not being cheated, and
+to persuade them to agree to the proposed re-allotment. Talk about the
+labours of Hercules! Why they were child's play compared with this!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We drove on, that morning, down a wide valley, past these tiny walled
+fields and thatched houses, now and then passing one of the neat little
+slated cottages which the County Council builds where it can, but which
+are distressingly few and far between; and then we came out into the
+grazing country, with stone walls running right up the thousand-foot
+hillsides to the very top, and the white sheep dotted over the green
+turf; and then we turned off along a side-road, which speedily mounted
+through a narrow pass, across a wide bog, and so to the head of a deep
+gorge where, far below us, stretched the blue waters of Lough Nafooey,
+lying in a deep cup of granite mountains.
+
+I have never seen a steeper road than that which zig-zags down into this
+valley, and I was very glad indeed to get off and walk, not only because
+of the steepness, but also because on foot I could stop whenever I chose
+and look at the beautiful scene below--the long, narrow lake, crowded in
+on the south by steep, bare mountains, and with a white ribbon of road
+running along its northern edge, past a cluster of houses built close
+beside it, and with the furrowed fields behind them mounting steeply
+upwards. The whole village was out at work in the fields, and the red
+petticoats of the women gave the scene just that added touch of colour
+it needed.
+
+The mountains on the southern shore grew less rugged presently, and as
+soon as the ground grew level enough for tillage, it presented such a
+complicated pattern of stone walls as must be unique, even here in this
+bewalled district. For more than a mile we drove along opposite them;
+and then we reached the end of the lake, and struck off along another
+valley toward Lough Mask. We were soon on another desolate moor, dotted
+with the black stumps of bog oak; and then the road sank into a pass, as
+the hills closed in on either side, and skirted a dancing brook, and
+then before us opened the lower part of Lough Mask.
+
+[Illustration: IN "JOYCE'S COUNTRY"]
+
+[Illustration: ON THE SHORE OF LOUGH MASK]
+
+I have said that these Irish mountaineers are fierce, and I must explain
+now what I meant by that, for a kindlier people, one more eager to bid
+you welcome or help you on your way, you will find nowhere. The same is
+true of the Kentucky mountaineers; and yet they do not hesitate to put a
+bullet through any man they regard as an enemy. So with the Joyces and
+the O'Malleys. It was here among these hills that the "Invincibles" and
+the "Moonlighters" ranged in the days of the Land League; their notions
+of right and wrong were, and still are, the old primitive ones. They
+believe in the Mosaic law of an eye for an eye; murder after murder has
+been done here, and no one disapproved; and yet a man with a purse
+filled with gold, or a woman with no protection save her chastity, might
+walk these roads unharmed and unafraid on the darkest night.
+
+Just before one reaches the bridge over the narrow stream through which
+the upper lake flows into the lower, the road passes close to a cluster
+of houses, and it was in one of them that two bailiffs of Lord Ardilaun
+were beaten to death, and their bodies placed in sacks weighted with
+stones; and then they were carried down to the lake, and every one along
+the road was made to lend a hand to carrying them. That was but one
+tragedy of many such--outbreaks of the feud which started six centuries
+ago, and which only within the past decade has shown any sign of being
+outlived and forgotten.
+
+I do not know when I have been more impressed and astonished than when I
+stood on the bridge over the river below Lough Mask, and gazed out upon
+that noble sheet of water, stretching away to the north like an
+inland sea. It was dotted with beautiful islands, but no farther shore
+was visible, not even when we mounted a bold crag overhanging the water
+in order to get a wider view. We went on again, with the lake at our
+left, and then the road turned away between high stone walls--only these
+walls were solidly built of dressed stones laid in mortar, and were
+surmounted with broken glass set in cement. There was a gate here and
+there, through which we could catch glimpses of wild and unkempt woods,
+a-riot with a luxuriant vegetation bearing witness to the richness of
+the soil.
+
+The wall must have been ten feet high, and after we had gone on for half
+an hour with no sign of it coming to an end, we asked the driver what it
+was, and he told us that it was the wall surrounding part of the estate
+of Lord Ardilaun, which stretches clear on to Cong, a distance of six or
+eight miles--the very choicest land of the whole district. Some of it is
+let to tenants, so our driver said, at rents which are almost
+prohibitive; but the most part is walled in, with many notices against
+trespassing posted about it--a preserve for woodcock.
+
+We dropped through the little town of Rosshill, once the seat of the
+Earl of Leitrim (but now owned by Lord Ardilaun), and then into Clonbur
+(also owned by Lord Ardilaun), where the wall stopped for a while to
+make room for the houses, but began again as soon as the village ended;
+and then we passed a curious collection of cairns on a plateau at the
+side of the road, some of them surmounted by weather-blackened wooden
+crosses; and then on a hill to the right we saw another great cairn;
+and then we suddenly realised that we were on the battlefield of
+Moytura, which raged for five days over this peninsula between Lough
+Corrib and Lough Mask, so long ago that nobody knows exactly when it
+was, though it has been roughly dated at two thousand years before
+Christ.
+
+The contestants in that battle were the Firbolgs, the men of the
+leathern wallets, who had come from the south to Ireland five days
+before the flood, and the De Dananns, a tall, fair, blue-eyed race of
+magicians from the north, who had "settled on the Connemara mountains in
+the likeness of a blue mist." The De Dananns were the victors, and the
+cairns we saw that day were the monuments they raised over the burial
+places of their dead warriors.
+
+There was another famous battle on this same peninsula, not so many
+years ago, for over there on the shore of Lough Mask lived Captain
+Boycott, whose name has passed into the language as that of the silent
+and effective weapon which the peasantry forged against him, in Land
+League days.
+
+Half a mile farther, and a sharp turn of the road brought us into the
+village of Cong, a single street of drab houses, whose principal
+attraction is the ruins of the abbey where the Cross of Cong was
+fashioned; but the long drive had made us hungry, and so first of all we
+stopped at a clean little inn and had tea, and it was set forth in a
+service of old silver lustre which Betty marvelled over so warmly that
+she almost forgot to eat. And then we started for the abbey, which, of
+course, like everything else hereabouts, belongs to Lord Ardilaun.
+
+From the road, all that one can see of it is a portion of the wall of
+the church, so overgrown with ivy that even the windows are covered; but
+we managed to rout out a boy, who took us around to the cloister side,
+which is very beautiful indeed, with its lovely broken arcades, its
+rounded arches, its clustered pillars, and round-headed windows--some
+glimpse of which will be found in the photograph opposite page 346.
+There is not much of interest left in the church, but in one corner is a
+small, dark, stone-roofed charnel house, still heaped high with the
+whitened skulls of the monks who were entombed there.
+
+The abbey stands close to the bank of that wonderful white river which,
+coming underground from Lough Mask, bursts from the earth in a deep
+chasm a mile above Cong, and sweeps, deep and rapid, down into Lough
+Corrib. And the monks at Cong were more ingenious than most, for there,
+on a little island in the middle of the river, stand the ruins of their
+fishing-house, constructed over a narrow channel into which the nets
+were dropped, and they were so arranged that when a fish was captured,
+its struggles rang a bell back at the abbey, and some one would hasten
+to secure it. We made our way through an orchard of beautiful old apple
+trees bearded with lichen, waist-deep in grass, to the very edge of the
+stream, that I might get the picture of this labour-saving edifice,
+which you will find opposite the preceding page.
+
+Then the boy asked us if we would care to see Ashford House, the seat of
+Lord Ardilaun; and for the benefit of those of my readers who are
+wondering from what ancient family Lord Ardilaun is descended, I may as
+well state here that he is none other than Guinness, of Guinness's
+Stout, and takes his title of Baron Ardilaun from a little island out in
+Lough Corrib. We said, of course, that we should like to see Ashford
+House, and we walked for half a mile through the beautiful woods of the
+demesne, up to the great mansion of limestone and granite, set at the
+edge of a terrace sloping down to the lake. The entrance to it is under
+a square tower with drawbridge and portcullised gateway, and the house
+itself is a mammoth affair, with turrets and battlements and towers and
+machicolations and other mediævalities, quite useless and meaningless on
+a modern residence, and there are acres and acres of elaborately-planted
+grounds, with sunken gardens and fountains and long shady avenues
+stretching away into dim distance.
+
+[Illustration: THE CLOISTER AT CONG ABBEY]
+
+[Illustration: THE MONKS' FISHING-HOUSE, CONG ABBEY]
+
+But nobody lives here except a few caretakers, for Lord Ardilaun, an old
+man of seventy-three, prefers the south of France, so that Ashford House
+is deserted from year's end to year's end, except for a few days now and
+then when a shooting-party of more than usual importance comes to kill
+the woodcock. For the ordinary party, another mansion, farther down the
+lake on Doon Hill, suffices; but when the king comes, as he did in 1905,
+of course the great house has to be opened.
+
+One reads in Murray, which is a very British guide-book, how, on that
+occasion, the king and his party killed ninety brace of woodcock in a
+single day; and how, five years later, 587 brace were bagged in five
+days; but it will be quite impossible for you to understand, unless you
+are also British, the peculiar veneration with which such coverts as
+these are regarded by British sportsmen, and the peculiar cast of
+mind which deems it right and proper that thousands of fertile acres
+should be maintained as game preserves in a land where most of the
+people are forced to wring their livelihood from the rocky hillsides.
+
+It is only for such great parties that Lord Ardilaun returns to do the
+honours; and he hastens away again, as soon as the parties are over. He
+knows nothing of his tenants; he leaves the collection of his rents to a
+factor, and the preservation of his coverts to a force of gamekeepers,
+and any one caught inside the wall may expect to be prosecuted to the
+limit of the law.
+
+Now I have no quarrel with Lord Ardilaun. The stout he sells is honest
+stout, and he got possession of this estate by honest purchase, which is
+more than can be said for most great estates in Ireland. But he presents
+an example of that absentee landlordism which has been the chief and
+peculiar curse of this unfortunate country. With landlords who lived on
+their estates and looked after their properties and got acquainted with
+their tenants and took some human interest in their welfare, the tenants
+themselves seldom had any quarrel. It was the landlords who lived in
+England or on the continent, who entrusted the collection of rents to
+agents, and whose only interest in their Irish estates was to get the
+largest possible returns from them--it was these men who kept the
+country in an uproar of eviction and persecution.
+
+Indeed, I believe that if all Irish landlords were resident landlords,
+the Irish labourer would be better off without the land purchase act;
+for there are no more grasping and exacting masters in the world than
+the small farmers to whom the great estates are passing. The old owners
+might be despotic, but they were not mean; and where they lived among
+their people and came to know them, their despotism was usually a
+benevolent despotism, tempered with mercy. The rule of the small farmer
+will be a despotism, too, but there will be no mercy about it. Joyce,
+our driver, voiced all this in a sentence, as we were driving back.
+
+"Land purchase, is it?" he said, puffing his short pipe, and staring out
+across the hills. "Yes, I have heard much of it; but I'm thinking it
+will be a cruel time for the poor."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The neighbourhood of Cong is remarkable for its natural curiosities, for
+the ground to the north toward Lough Mask is honeycombed with caves,
+made by the water working its way through to Lough Corrib. Geologists
+explain it learnedly, and doubtless to their own satisfaction, by saying
+that the peninsula is composed of carboniferous limestone which has been
+perforated and undermined by the solvent action of the free carbonic
+acid in the river water; but I prefer to believe, with the residents of
+the neighbourhood, that it was the work of the Little People.
+
+The lofty tunnel through which the sunken river flows is accessible in
+several places, and one of these, called the Pigeon Hole, is not far
+from the village and is worth visiting. It is in the centre of a field,
+and is a perpendicular hole some sixty feet deep, clothed with ferns and
+moss and very damp indeed, and the steps by which one goes down are very
+slippery, so that some caution is necessary; but there at the bottom is
+a vaulted cavern through which the river sweeps. The girl who has come
+along, carrying a wisp of straw, lights it and walks away into the
+depths of the cavern, but the effect is not especially dazzling and the
+smoke from the straw is most offensive. They order these things better
+in France--at the Grotto of Han, for instance!
+
+Another curiosity of the peninsula is not a natural but an artificial
+one--a canal dug during famine times with government money to connect
+Lough Corrib with Lough Mask. This was expected to be a great blessing
+to the west of Ireland, extending navigation from Galway clear up across
+Lough Mask and Lough Conn to Ballina; but, alas, when it was finished,
+it was found that the canal wouldn't hold water, for the rock through
+which it was cut was so porous that the water ran through it like a
+sieve, and left the canal as dry as a bone. So there it remains to this
+day, and one may walk from end to end of it dryshod and ponder on the
+marvels of English rule in Ireland!
+
+One thing more at Cong is worth inspecting, and that is the old cross
+which stands at the intersection of the street with the road to the
+abbey. It was erected centuries ago to the memory of two abbots, Nicol
+and Gilbert O'Duffy, whose names may yet be read on its base; and it is
+a cross that can work miracles. Here is one of them:
+
+There was a boy here at Cong, once, who was stupid and could learn
+nothing, but spent all his time wandering along the river or climbing
+the hills or lying in the fields staring up at the sky. Everybody said
+he would come to a bad end; but one day he sat down on the base of this
+cross, and fell asleep with his head against it; and that night, when he
+went home, he took up the newspaper which his father was reading and
+read aloud every word that was on it; and they took him to the priest,
+thinking a spell was on him, and there was not a book the priest had, in
+Latin or Irish or any language whatever, but the boy he could read it at
+a glance; and they sent him down to Cork to the college there, but there
+was nothing his masters could teach him that he did not know already;
+and the fame of him became so great that when Queen Victoria was looking
+about her for a man to put at the head of the new college at Galway, she
+hit upon him, and so he was given charge of Queen's College, and his
+name was O'Brien Crowe, and he made that college a great college, and he
+taught things there that no other man in Ireland had ever so much as
+dreamed of!
+
+I am sorry I had not heard this tale when I was at Galway; I should have
+liked to ask Bishop O'Dee how much of it is true.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We returned to Leenane by a different road, which lay for some miles
+close beside the shore of Lough Corrib, white-capped now under a stiff
+wind which had arisen, and studded with lovely green islands. It is
+undoubtedly one of the most beautiful of the Irish lakes, but even here
+the shadow of Land League days still lingers, for close by the shore is
+Ebor Hall, which was the residence of Lord Mountmorris, who was beaten
+to death near by; and as we drove on, our jarvey pointed out the scenes
+of similar if less famous tragedies, whose details I have forgotten. But
+all that was thirty years ago; the problem which the Land League tried
+to solve has been solved in another fashion; the peasantry of Ireland
+have won the fight for fair rent, fixed hold, and free sale, and can
+afford to forget the past.
+
+Just beyond the Doon peninsula, the road opens up the long expanse of
+the narrow arm of the lake which runs back many miles into the
+mountains, and on an island a little distance from the shore, towers the
+keep of a ruined castle--Caisleán-na-Circe, or Hen Castle in the prosaic
+vernacular. Islands, as you will have remarked before this, were a
+favourite place in Ireland for castles and monasteries, and the deeper
+the water about them the better, for it was a welcome defence in the
+days when midnight raids were the favourite pastime of every chief, and
+no sport was so popular with the English as that of hunting the Irish
+"wolves."
+
+There are many legends to explain the name of this castle in Lough
+Corrib. One is that the castle was built in a single night by an old
+witch and her hen, and she gave it and the hen to The O'Flaherty,
+telling him that, if the castle was ever besieged, he need not worry
+about provisions, since the hen would lay eggs enough to keep the
+garrison from want. It was not long before a force of O'Malleys ferried
+over from the mainland and camped down about the walls, and O'Flaherty,
+forgetting the witch's words, killed the hen and was soon starved out.
+Another legend is that the castle was held during a long siege by the
+formidable Gráinne, wife of Donell O'Flaherty, and that her husband was
+so proud of her that he named the place Hen Castle in her honour. Still
+another is that the Joyces were holding it against the O'Flaherties,
+but were about to surrender, when the famous Grace O'Malley marched a
+party of her clansmen over the mountains from the sea and drove the
+O'Flaherties off, and so it was named after her. These are examples of
+what the Irish imagination can do when it turns itself loose; for the
+fact is that the castle, at least as it stands now, was built by Richard
+de Burgo, that first old doughty Norman ruler of Connaught, to hold the
+pass from the isthmus of Cong into the wilds of Connemara. The keep is
+plainly Anglo-Norman, flanked by great square towers of cut limestone.
+
+A few miles farther on is the village of Maam, set in the midst of
+magnificent scenery at the intersection of two valleys, one running to
+the west and one to the south, closed in by the wildest, bleakest,
+ruggedest of mountains. Our driver drew up here to water and wind the
+horse, and I wandered about the village for a while, and stopped at last
+at the open door of a little cottage where an old woman and some
+children were sitting before a flaring fire of turf, and a hen was
+hovering some chickens in a basket in one corner. Three or four others
+were wandering about the dirt floor, looking for crumbs as a matter of
+habit, though they must have known perfectly well that there were no
+crumbs there.
+
+I was welcomed heartily and invited to sit down before the fire, with
+that instinctive courtesy and open-heartedness which is characteristic
+of the Irish peasantry. Let the traveller take shelter anywhere, pause
+before any door, and he will be greeted warmly. There is an old Irish
+riddle which runs something like this:
+
+          From house to house it goes,
+            A wanderer frail and slight,
+          And whether it rains or snows,
+            It bides outside in the night.
+
+It is the footpath the Irish mean; and if they could bring it in out of
+the rain and the snow, I am sure they would, just as they bring their
+chickens and cats and dogs and pigs and donkeys in, to share the warmth
+of the fire.
+
+So in this little cottage a stool was at once vacated for me and set in
+a good place, and a ring of smiling faces closed around me, and the rain
+of eager questions began as to whence I came and whither I was going. I
+wish I could give you some idea of the tangle of trash that littered the
+single room of that hovel--old clothes, old boards, broken baskets, a
+pile of turf in one corner but scattered all about where the chickens
+had been scratching at it, a low shelf piled with rags and straw for a
+bed, a rude dresser displaying some chipped dishes--but I despair of
+picturing it. And the dirty, ragged children, with their bright eyes and
+red cheeks; and the old woman, wrinkled and toil-worn, but obviously
+thinking life not so bad, after all. . . .
+
+A whistle from Joyce told me that he was ready to start, and we were
+soon climbing out of the valley, emerging at last upon a vast moor, with
+great mountain masses away to the south, their summits veiled in mist.
+We could see groups of people working in the bog here and there, and at
+last we came upon two men and two boys cutting turf close to the road. I
+asked them if I might take their picture, and they laughed and agreed,
+and it is opposite this page, but the sun was setting and the light was
+not good enough to give me a sharp negative. Still one can see the man
+at the bottom of the ditch cutting the peat with a sharp-edged
+instrument like a narrow spade and throwing the water-soaked bricks out
+on the edge, where the boys picked them up and laid them out at a little
+distance to dry.
+
+[Illustration: THE TURF-CUTTERS]
+
+[Illustration: A GIRL OF "JOYCE'S COUNTRY"]
+
+"There's one would make a picture," said Joyce, about ten minutes later,
+and I turned to see him pointing with his whip at a little girl
+unloading turf from the panniers of a donkey by the side of the road.
+
+Needless to say, I was out of my seat in an instant, and Betty, scarcely
+less excited, was asking the girl if I might not take her picture; and
+then Joyce said something to her in the Irish, and then from across the
+bog came her mother's voice telling her, also in Irish, to hold still
+and do as the gentleman wished.
+
+She was a child of eight or ten, with dark hair and eyes, and slighter
+and frailer than the average Irish child; and she wore the
+characteristic garment fashioned from red flannel which all the poor
+children in Connemara wear; and she was bare-headed and barefooted; and
+her task was to drive the ragged little donkey out into the bog and fill
+the panniers with the bricks, and drive it back again to the side of the
+road, and pile the turf there, ready for the cart which would take it
+away. From the place where the turf was being cut to the roadside was at
+least a quarter of a mile, and how often that child had travelled that
+road that day I did not like to think. From the pile of turf that lay
+at the side of the road, it was evident she had not idled!
+
+She was not without her vanity, for she had her skirt kilted up, and let
+it quickly down as soon as she realised what I wanted; and then she let
+me pose her as I wished. You should have seen her astonishment when I
+pressed a small coin into her hand, as some slight recompense for the
+trouble I had given her; you should have seen her shining eyes and
+trembling lips. . . .
+
+Up we went and up, with the mists of evening deepening about us; and at
+last we reached the summit of the pass, and dropped rapidly down toward
+Leenane. Half an hour later, we trotted briskly up to the hotel, the
+little mare apparently as fresh as ever, in spite of the fifty miles, up
+hill and down, she had covered that day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM
+
+
+IT was well we went to Cong when we did, for the next day was cold and
+rainy, with a clammy mist in the air which settled into the valleys and
+soaked everything it touched. I walked over to the village, after
+breakfast, to keep my promise to the school-teacher. The school is a
+dingy frame building with two rooms and two teachers, a man for the
+older pupils and a woman for the younger ones. They are brother and
+sister, and from their poor clothes and half-fed appearance, I judge
+that teachers are even worse paid in Ireland than elsewhere. But they
+both welcomed me warmly, and the man hastened to set out for me the only
+chair in the place, carefully dusting it beforehand.
+
+He called the roll, and it was delightful to hear the soft, childish
+voices answer "Prisent, sorr," "Prisent, sorr." Then he counted heads to
+be sure, I suppose, that some child hadn't answered twice, once for
+himself and once for some absent friend. There were about thirty
+children present, ranging in age from six to fifteen; and they were all
+barefoot, of course, and such clothing as they had was very worn and
+ragged, and most of them had walked four or five miles, that morning,
+down out of the hills. The teacher said sadly that the attendance should
+be twice as large, but there was no way of enforcing the compulsory
+education law, though the priest did what he could.
+
+I wish I could paint you a picture of that school, so that you could see
+it, as I can, when I close my eyes. In the larger room there was a
+little furniture--a chair and cheap desk for the teacher, some rude
+forms for the children, and a small blackboard; but the other room was
+absolutely bare, and the children sat around on the floor in a circle,
+with their legs sticking out in front of them, red with cold, while the
+teacher stood in their midst to hear them recite. Each of them had over
+his shoulder a cheap little satchel, usually tied together with string;
+and in this he carried his two or three books--thin, paper-covered
+affairs, which cost a penny each; and all the children, large and small,
+had to carry their books about with them all the time they were in
+school because there was no place to put them.
+
+The reading lesson had just started when I entered the room where the
+smaller children were, and it was about the advantages of an education.
+It brought tears to the eyes to hear them, in their soft voices and
+sweet dialect, read aloud with intense earnestness what a great help
+education is in the battle of life and in how many ways it is useful.
+When the reading was done, the teacher asked them the meaning of the
+longest words, and had them tell again in their own way what the lesson
+had said, to be certain that they understood it.
+
+Poor kiddies! As I looked at them, I could see in my mind's eye our
+schoolhouses back home, heated and ventilated by the best systems--there
+was ventilation enough here, heaven knows, for the door was wide open,
+but no heat, though the day was very raw and chilly, and the children
+were shivering--equipped with expensive furniture and the latest devices
+of charts and maps; and I could see the well-fed, well-clothed children,
+with their beautiful costly books which make teachers almost
+unnecessary, languidly reading some such lesson as was being read here
+in Connaught, on the advantages of an education! It would not have been
+read so earnestly, be sure of that, nor with such poignant meaning.
+
+And in that moment, I thrilled with a realisation of Ireland's greatest
+and truest need. It is not land purchase, or reform of the franchise, or
+temperance, or home rule, though these needs are great enough; it is
+education. It is education only that can solve her industrial problems
+and her labour problems; and, however she may prosper under the
+favouring laws of a new political régime, it is only by education, by
+the banishment of ignorance and illiteracy, that she can hope to take
+her place among the nations of the world.
+
+It was a sort of vision I had, standing there in that bare little room,
+of a new Ireland, dotted with schools and colleges, as she was a
+thousand years ago, illumined with the white light of knowledge; but
+here, meanwhile, were these eager, bright-eyed, ragged little children,
+stumbling along the path of knowledge as well as they could; but a rocky
+path they find it, and how deserving of help they are! I wish you could
+have seen those soiled, thumbed little readers, which cost, as I have
+said, only a penny each, and which, if they had cost more, would have
+been beyond the reach of the average Connaught family.
+
+I bought a few of them, afterwards, to bring home with me, and when I
+looked through them, I found them very primitive indeed. Here, for
+instance, is Lesson Six in the primer:
+
+          Pat has a cat.
+          It is fat. It is on the mat.
+          The cat ran at the rat.
+          It bit the fat cat.
+          Pat hit the rat.
+          The rat ran. The cat ran at it.
+          The rat bit the fat cat.
+
+Cats and rats used, I remember, to be favourite subjects in the readers
+of my own early school days; and so were dogs. It is still so in
+Ireland, as Lesson Eight will show:
+
+          Is it a dog?
+          It is a fox.
+          Was the fox in a box?
+          The dog was in the box.
+          He was in the mud.
+          Rub the mud off the dog.
+          He ran at the fox in the mud.
+          The dog ran at the fox and bit it.
+
+My principal objection to this is that it is nonsense: how, for example,
+if the dog was in the box, could it have been also in the mud? These
+questions occur to children even more readily than to adults, and to
+teach them nonsense is wrong and unjust. Also these lessons tell no
+story; they have no continuity; they ask questions without answering
+them; they change the subject almost as often as the dictionary. Here,
+for instance, is the first lesson of the second term:
+
+          Tom put the best fish in a dish.
+          The cat sat near it on a rug.
+          Let the hen rest in her nest.
+          Frank rode a mile on an ass.
+          He went so fast he sent up the dust.
+
+The last sentence shows it was an Irishman made this book; but why, in
+this lesson, did he not continue with the story of the fish in the dish,
+which the cat was plainly watching from the rug with malicious intent,
+instead of branching off to a wholly irrelevant remark about a hen, and
+then to an account of Frank's adventure with an ass? Perhaps the first
+step to be made in educational reform in Ireland is the adoption of
+better school-books, and there is no reason why this step should be
+delayed.
+
+I went back, presently, to the other room where the larger boys and
+girls were reciting in small sections, standing shrinkingly before the
+shrivelled little teacher, whose fierceness, I am sure, was assumed for
+the occasion, and he got out for me a sheaf of compositions which the
+boys and girls had written on the subject, "My Home," and of which he
+was evidently very proud. They were written in the round, laborious
+penmanship of the copy-book, and the homes which they described were,
+for the most part, those poor little cabins clinging to the rocky
+hillsides, which I have tried to picture; but here the picture was drawn
+sharply and simply, with few strokes, without any suspicion that it was
+a tragic one. For instance, this is John Kerrigan's picture of
+
+
+My Home.
+
+          My home is in County Galway and is placed in
+          Ganaginula. It is built on a height near the
+          roadside. The length of it is eighteen feet and
+          the breadth is six feet. It is about ten feet
+          high. The covering is timber and thatch. It is
+          built with stones and mortar. There are four
+          windows, two in the kitchen and two in the room.
+          The floor is made of sand and gravel.
+
+That was all that John Kerrigan found to describe about his home, and I
+dare say there wasn't much more; but it is easy to picture it standing
+there on the bleak hillside, with its low walls of rubble and its roof
+of thatch, and its two little rooms, nine feet by six, with dirt floor
+and tiny windows. And at one end of the kitchen there would be an open
+fireplace, with some blocks of turf smoking in it, and above the turf
+there would be hanging a black pot, where the potatoes are boiling which
+is all John will have for supper. . . .
+
+I put the compositions aside, for a lesson in Gaelic had begun. The
+teacher wrote on the little blackboard some sentences composed of the
+strangest-looking words imaginable, and the pronunciation of them was
+stranger still. But the lesson proceeded rapidly, and it was evident
+that most of the children understood Gaelic quite as well as they did
+English. That, of course, is not saying very much; and I fancy that
+about all these children can be expected to learn is to read and write.
+Indeed, it is a wonder that they learn even that, for the odds against
+them are almost overwhelming.
+
+I bade them good-bye at last, and returned pensively to the hotel, and
+there I found the district physician making some repairs to his
+motor-cycle. It probably needs them often, for the roads up into the
+hills are trying for anything on wheels; but he said it was surprising
+where it would go and how much knocking about it would stand. And then,
+naturally enough, we fell into talk about his work.
+
+Every poor person in Ireland is, as I understand it, entitled to free
+medical attendance. The country is divided into districts, in each of
+which a doctor is stationed, paid partially by the government and
+depending for the remainder of his income on his private practice.
+Before a person is entitled to free attendance, he must secure a ticket
+from one of the poor-law guardians, who have the management of the
+charities in each district; and no physician is compelled to give free
+attendance, unless the person asking for it can produce one of these
+tickets.
+
+"Even then," continued the doctor at Leenane, who was explaining all
+this to me, "I don't put myself out, if I think the person presenting
+the ticket can afford to pay. I look him over, of course, and give him
+some medicine, with instructions how to take it--the law compels me to
+do that; but I don't bother myself to see whether the instructions are
+carried out. And if he's really sick, he soon realises that if he wants
+me to be interested, he's got to pay for it, and he manages to find a
+guinea or so. This sounds hard-hearted, perhaps; but it's astonishing
+how many beggars there are in this country, and how the poor-law
+guardians let themselves be imposed on. Why, people come to me with
+cards and try to get free attendance who could buy and sell me ten times
+over! I don't bite my tongue telling them what I think of them, you may
+well believe. The trouble is, the poor-law guardians are natives of the
+district and they all have some axe to grind; so the doctor, who is a
+stranger for whom they care nothing, gets the worst of it. This is about
+the worst district in Ireland, anyway, so big and poor and full of
+hills. A man has to work himself to death to make three hundred pounds a
+year out of it."
+
+Various reflections occurred to me while he was talking. One was that
+three hundred pounds a year is many, many times the income of the
+average dweller in Connaught; and another was that, to leave any
+discretion to the physician in regard to the treatment of charity
+patients is not without its dangers; and still a third was that, in any
+sudden emergency, such as might occur at any time, many valuable minutes
+would be lost if the poor-law guardians had to be hunted up and a card
+obtained before the doctor could be summoned. I suppose, in such cases,
+the doctor is summoned first, and the card secured when there is time to
+do so.
+
+It is probably only in cases of dire need that the district doctor is
+summoned at all. The fact that he is a stranger and a government
+appointee is enough to make a large section of the Irish peasantry
+distrust him. This one told me that he is never called for confinement
+cases, because every old Irish woman considers herself competent to
+handle them, and usually is; and that other cases are treated with "home
+remedies" or visits to holy wells, until they get so bad that the doctor
+is turned to as a last resort.
+
+"The ignorance of the people is past all belief," he went on. "They
+haven't any idea of what causes disease; they never heard of germs; they
+don't know it is unhealthy to have a stinking heap of manure and human
+excrement under the window or in front of the door; they don't believe
+there is any reason why a person dying with consumption shouldn't sleep
+in the same bed with other people, and eat out of the same dishes, and
+spit all about the place. And so we have typhus, and tuberculosis--you
+Americans are partially responsible for that."
+
+"In what way?" I asked.
+
+"The people born and reared in these western highlands, with lungs
+adapted through long generations to this soft, moist climate, can't
+stand the American atmosphere. When they are poor and live crowded
+together in your towns, consumption gets them; and then, when they're
+too far gone to work, they come back home to cough their lives out and
+poison all their friends. They lie in these dark cabins without a
+window, which soon become perfect plague-spots; and the children,
+playing on the filthy, infected floor, get the infection in their lungs;
+or perhaps they cut their knees and rub it into the sore. Ugh! it makes
+one sick to think about it. There ought to be a law preventing any such
+infected person landing in Ireland--you won't let such a one land in
+America."
+
+I had to admit that that would be one way of dealing with the mischief;
+and I suggested that another way would be to try to educate the people
+to some knowledge of the simpler facts of hygiene. But the doctor
+snorted.
+
+"Educate them!" he echoed. "You can't educate them! Why, you haven't any
+conception of the depths of their ignorance. And they're superstitious,
+too; they don't believe in science; they think it's something
+irreligious, something against their faith. If prayers to the Virgin
+won't cure them, or a visit to some holy well or other, why nothing
+will. If I do cure them, I don't get the credit--they simply believe
+they've got on the good side of one of their saints. What is a man to do
+against such ignorance as that? The only reason they don't all die is
+because this country is so full of little streams that the running water
+carries off most of their filth, and the turf smoke which fills their
+houses helps to disinfect them."
+
+I agreed that his was a hard task; and left him still tinkering with his
+motor-cycle, and went over to smoke a pipe with the men at the stables.
+Joyce, our driver of the day before, was there, and he smiled as he
+pointed his pipe-stem toward the doctor, with whom he had seen me
+talking.
+
+"He's a hard one, he is," he said. "Not a word of advice nor a sup of
+medicine do you get out of that one, if he thinks you've got a shillin'
+about you. He thinks we're all liars and thieves, which is natural
+enough, for he's an Englishman--and I'm not sayin' but what it may be
+true of some of us," and he grinned around at his companions.
+
+"Tell the gintleman about the other one," one of them suggested.
+
+"Ah, Mister O'Beirn, that was," said Joyce; "a Galway man, born to the
+Irish. How he got the app'intment, I don't know; but he did stir this
+district up--went about givin' long talks, he did, about how we're made
+and why we get sick, and such like; and he went into the houses and made
+the women wash the childer and set things to rights, and they bore with
+him because they knew he meant them no harm. He wore himself to a bone,
+he did, and we were all fond of him; but I'm not sayin' it wasn't a
+relief when he was moved to another district, and we could make
+ourselves comfortable again."
+
+"No doubt the children are glad, too," I ventured.
+
+"They are, sir; and why should one bother washin' them when they get
+dirty again right away? Sure the women have enough to do without that!"
+
+But it would be a mistake to suppose that the lives of the women and
+girls are all work and no play. Betty chanced to remark to the girl who
+waited on our table at the hotel that she must find the winters very
+lonesome.
+
+"Oh, not at all, miss," she protested. "We have a very good time in the
+winter with a dance every week; and at Christmas Mr. McKeown do be
+givin' us a big party here at the hotel. Then there will be maybe two or
+three weddings, and as many christenings, and some of the girls who have
+been to America will come home for a visit and there will be dances for
+them, so there is always plenty to do."
+
+So Leenane has its social season, just the same as New York and Paris
+and London; and I suppose the same is true of every Irish village. The
+Irish are said to be great dancers, but we were never fortunate enough
+to see them at it.
+
+You may perhaps have noticed that in such Irish conversations as I have
+given in these pages, I have contented myself with trying to indicate
+the idiom, without attempting to imitate the brogue; and this is
+because it is impossible to imitate it with any degree of accuracy.
+Such imitation would be either a burlesque or would be unreadable. For
+example, while we were talking to the waitress at Leenane, Betty asked
+her what a very delicious jam which she served with our tea was made of.
+
+"Black törn, miss," she answered--at least, that is what it sounded
+like.
+
+"Black törn?" repeated Betty. "What is it? A berry or a fruit?"
+
+The girl tried to describe it, but not recognisably.
+
+"Can you spell it?" asked Betty at last.
+
+"I can, miss; b-l-a-c-k, black, c-u-r-r-a-n-t, törn," answered the girl.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We bade good-bye to Leenane, that afternoon, taking the motor-bus for
+Westport, and my friends of the constabulary were out to see me off and
+shake hands, and Gaynor sent a "God speed ye" after us from the door of
+his little shop, and the schoolmaster and his sister waved to us from
+the door of the school. It was almost like leaving old friends; and
+indeed, I often think of them as such, and of that drab little town
+crouching at the head of Killary, and of how serious a thing life is to
+those who dwell there. We looked back for a last glimpse of it, as we
+turned up the road out of the valley--the row of dingy houses, the grey
+mountains rising steeply behind them, the broad sheet of blue water in
+front--how plainly I recall that picture!
+
+There were three other passengers on the bus--an elderly man and woman,
+rather obese and grumpy, and a younger man with clean-shaven eager
+face; and we were puzzled for a time to determine their relationship,
+for the younger man was most assiduous in attending to the wants of his
+companions and pointing out the places of interest along the road. And
+then, finally, it dawned upon us--here was a personally conducted party;
+a man and wife who had brought a guide along to see them safely through
+the wilds of Ireland!
+
+The road from Leenane to Westport is not nearly so picturesque as that
+from Clifden, for we soon ran out of the hills, and for miles and miles
+sped across a wild bog, without a sign of life except a few sheep
+grazing here and there. We met a flock of them upon the road, and the
+way the shepherd's dog, at a sharp whistle from him, herded his charges
+to one side out of the way was beautiful to see.
+
+Then at last, far below us, at the bottom of a valley, we saw the roofs
+of Westport, and we started down the road into it--a steep and dangerous
+road, for we came within an ace of running down a loaded cart that was
+labouring up; and when we came to the foot of the hill, we were startled
+by a remarkable monument looming high in the middle of the principal
+street--a tall, fluted shaft, with two seated women at its base, rising
+from an octagonal pedestal, and surmounted by a heroic figure in knee
+breeches and trailing robe--without question the very ugliest monument I
+ever saw. It was so extraordinarily ugly that we came back next day to
+look at it, and discovered the following inscription:
+
+          To the Memory of
+          GEORGE GLENDINING
+          Born in Westport 1770
+          Died in Westport 1845
+
+If the deceased had any other claim to fame except that he was born in
+Westport, and also ended his days there, it does not appear upon his
+monument.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Westport has only one hotel, and it is probably the worst in Ireland.
+When we had been ushered along its dark and dirty corridors, into a room
+as dingy as can be imagined, and had found that it was the best room to
+be had, and that there was nothing to do but grin and bear it, we sat
+down and looked at each other, and I could see in Betty's disgusted face
+some such thought as Touchstone voiced: "So here I am in Arden. The more
+fool I. When I was at home, I was in a better place."
+
+"'Travellers must be content,'" I said. "Let's get out of here and look
+at the town."
+
+Betty agreed with alacrity; but we soon found that it is a dull and
+uninteresting place, offering no diversion except a stroll through Lord
+Sligo's demesne. The gate was open, so we entered and plodded along a
+sticky road, past the square, unimpressive mansion-house, out to the
+head of Clew Bay. We walked on, past the longest line of deserted quays
+and empty warehouses we had encountered in Ireland. There must be half a
+mile of quays, and the warehouses are towering, four-storied structures,
+with vast interiors given over to rats and spiders; and all along that
+dreary vista, there was just one boat--a small one, unloading lumber.
+
+It was government money, I suppose, which built the quay, and a
+government board which authorised it; and looking at it, one realises
+where Canon Hannay got the local colour for the descriptions of the
+activities of government boards which are scattered through his Irish
+stories. For Canon Hannay, whose pen name is George A. Birmingham, lives
+here at Westport; and the bay which faces it is the scene of most of his
+tales.
+
+It is a beautiful bay, dotted with the greenest of islands; and it was
+among those islands that the irrepressible Meldon sailed in quest of
+Spanish gold; it was there the Major's niece had her surprising
+adventures; and I have wondered since if the grotesque statue back in
+the town may not have suggested that of the mythical General John Regan.
+
+And there, in the distance, towering above the bay, is Croagh Patrick,
+the great hill, falling steeply into the water from a height of 2500
+feet, down which Saint Patrick one fine morning drove all the snakes and
+toads and poisonous creatures in Ireland, to their death in the sea
+below. Indeed, the marks of their passage are still plainly to be seen,
+for the precipice down which they fell is furrowed and scraped in the
+most convincing manner:
+
+          The Wicklow hills are very high,
+            And so's the Hill of Howth, sir;
+          But there's a hill much bigger still,
+            Much higher nor them both, sir;
+          'Twas on the top of this high hill
+            St. Patrick preached his sarmint
+          That drove the frogs into the bogs
+            And banished all the varmint.
+
+The legend is that St. Patrick, who had spent forty days on the mountain
+in fasting and prayer, stood at the edge of the precipice and rang his
+little bell--the same bell we have seen in the museum at Dublin--and all
+the snakes and toads in Ireland, attracted by the sound, plunged over
+the cliff and so down into the sea.
+
+From a distance, Croagh Patrick seems to end in a sharp point; but there
+is really a little plateau up there, some half-acre in extent, and a
+small church has been built there, and on the last Sunday in July,
+pilgrims gather from all over Ireland and proceed to the mountain on
+foot and toil up its rugged sides and attend Mass on the summit and then
+make the rounds of the stations on their knees, just as has been done
+from time immemorial. For Croagh Patrick is a very holy place, since
+Ireland's great apostle prayed and fasted there, and those who pray and
+fast there likewise shall not go unrewarded.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I heard the click of a typewriter, as I went up the walk to the rectory,
+that evening, to spend a few hours with Canon Hannay, and it must be
+only by improving every minute that he gets through the immense amount
+of work he manages to accomplish. He had just arranged for an American
+lecture tour in the following October, and both he and his wife were
+pleasantly excited at the prospect of encountering American
+sleeping-cars and soft-shelled crabs and corn on the cob, and other such
+novelties, some of which they had heard were very dreadful. I reassured
+them as well as I could; and then we talked awhile about George Moore's
+inimitable reminiscences, and Canon Hannay's own books; but the gist of
+the evening was the discussion of Ireland and Irish problems which
+occupied the greater part of it. It was very late indeed when I arose to
+say good-night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR
+
+
+WE took a last look about the town, next morning, not forgetting the
+Glendining monument, which has the fascination supreme ugliness
+sometimes possesses; and then we walked on down to the station, where a
+loquacious old woman accosted Betty with a tale of woe which culminated
+in an appeal for aid; and it was suddenly borne in on me that not once
+in the whole of Connaught had we encountered a beggar. Not even a child
+had held out its hand or indicated in any way that it desired or
+expected alms. And I do not know that I can pay any greater compliment
+to the people of that distressful province than by setting down this
+fact. We were in Mayo now--and Mayo is different!
+
+The first town out of Westport is Castlebar, which, as Murray puts it,
+"has all the buildings usual in a county town, viz. Asylum, Gaol,
+Court-house and Barracks," and they can be seen looming up above the
+other buildings as the train passes, some half mile away. Beyond
+Castlebar, the line crosses the so-called plains of Mayo, a vast expanse
+of naked limestone rock, very ugly and sinister; and then to the left is
+a village dominated by a round tower; and finally we came to
+Claremorris, where we were to change cars.
+
+Claremorris, no doubt, also has an asylum, a jail, a court-house and a
+barracks; but we didn't go out to see, for nobody seemed to know just
+when our train might be expected, and we were afraid to run any risks.
+So we sat down on the platform, and Betty fell into talk with a clean,
+nice-looking old man, who was carefully gathering up all the dodgers and
+posters and old newspapers that were lying around, and folding them up
+and putting them in his pocket, I suppose to read at leisure after he
+got home. And he told about where he lived, and how many children he
+had, and described the disposition of each of them; and then he
+questioned Betty about her condition in life, and age, and size of
+family, and all the time he was looking intently at her mouth.
+
+"Tell me, miss," he said, at last, "is them your own teeth you've got?"
+
+"Indeed they are," laughed Betty, and clashed them to prove it.
+
+"I would hardly believe it," he went on, and looked closer. "I niver saw
+any like them."
+
+"They're strong as iron," and Betty clashed them again.
+
+"And white as snow. I wish my daughter was here, for she will not
+believe me when I tell her."
+
+Good teeth, as I have remarked before, are the exception in Ireland; and
+most of those that appear good at first glance, turn out, at second
+glance, to be fabrications of the dentist. Perhaps it has always been
+so. Irish poets are fond of dwelling on the glories of Irish hair, and
+it is still glorious; they tell over and over again of the brightness of
+Irish eyes, and they are still bright; they describe how many times the
+beauty of Irish complexions, and there is none to match them anywhere
+else in the world; but I do not remember that any of them refer to
+Irish teeth. It is a pity, for many a pretty face is ruined by the ugly
+teeth a smile discloses.
+
+We got away from Claremorris, finally, after narrowly escaping being
+carried back to Westport, and proceeded northward over a new line which
+has been built across the plains of County Mayo. There were few
+passengers, and we had a compartment to ourselves, except for two
+priests who rode with us for a short distance, and who wanted to know
+all about President Wilson, of whom they had heard many splendid things.
+Just where we crossed into County Sligo I don't know; but we were in it
+at Collooney, a village more prosperous than most, with a number of
+mills; and then we came to Ballysadare, where there are some famous
+salmon fisheries.
+
+As we ran on past Ballysadare, a hill like a truncated cone loomed up on
+the left, and in the centre of the level top was something that looked
+like a huge bump, and as we drew nearer, we saw that it was a great
+cairn of loose stones piled on top of each other. The hill was
+Knocknarea, and the cairn, which is six hundred feet around and
+thirty-five feet high, is said to have been piled over the body of
+Meave, Queen of Connaught, by her tribesmen, in the first century after
+Christ. Meave was killed while bathing in Lough Ree by Conal Carnach,
+who, angry at her share in the death of the mighty Cuchulain, put a
+stone into a sling and cast it at her with such sure aim that he
+inflicted a mortal wound. There is some dispute as to whether she was
+really borne to the top of Knocknarea for burial; but the cairn is
+called "Miscan Meave," or "Meave's Heap," and if it does not actually
+cover her body, it probably commemorates her death. She lived so long
+ago that her name has passed into folk-lore--in England as Queen Mab.
+
+Knocknarea, with its strange shape, dominates the whole landscape, and
+is in sight all the way to Sligo, for the train describes a half-circle
+around it. Sligo itself is a considerable town, with more bustle about
+its streets than is usual in western Ireland, and the proprietor of its
+principal hotel is a canny individual who follows the precept, once so
+popular with American railroads, of charging all the traffic will bear.
+When I asked the price of a double room, he looked me over, and then he
+said ten shillings the night.
+
+"Ten shillings a night!" I echoed, in some surprise, for I had not
+expected to encounter rates so metropolitan on the west coast of
+Ireland; and then I asked to see the room, thinking it might be
+something palatial. But it was quite an ordinary room; clean and airy
+and comfortable enough; but I judged the usual charge for it was about
+five shillings. There are few things I detest more than being
+overcharged. "Come along," I said to Betty. "There's another hotel in
+this town; we'll have a look at it."
+
+The proprietor was waiting nervously in the lobby.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked, as we came down. "Isn't the room all
+right?"
+
+"Oh, it's right enough," I said; "but I'm not going to pay two prices
+for it."
+
+"But this is the best hotel in Sligo," he protested. "There's an
+American millionaire and his wife staying here right now."
+
+"Well, I'm not a millionaire," I said; "and even if I were, I wouldn't
+pay ten shillings for that room," and I started to walk out, for I
+didn't want to argue about it.
+
+But he followed me to the door.
+
+"What would you pay, now?" he asked, ingratiatingly.
+
+I looked at him in surprise, for I hadn't had any idea of fixing his
+rates for him.
+
+"Five shillings," I said.
+
+"You may have it for six," he countered.
+
+I hesitated. I didn't like the man; but it was a nice room, and the
+dining-room looked clean. Probably we should fare worse if we went
+farther.
+
+"All right," I agreed finally; and I am bound to admit that he never
+showed any malice, but treated us as nicely as possible during all our
+stay in Sligo. Perhaps he is a retired jarvey, and this is just his way
+of doing business.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sligo, with its well-built houses and bustling streets, has every
+appearance of being prosperous, and I have been told that it is one of
+the few towns in Ireland which is growing in population. It has had its
+share of battles and sieges, for Red Hugh O'Donnell captured it from the
+English, and then the English captured it from Red Hugh, and camped in
+the monastery and did what they could to destroy it; but enough of it
+remains to make a most interesting ruin, and we set out at once to see
+it.
+
+It is a Norman foundation, dating from 1252, but a good deal of the
+existing structure is later than that. The most interesting feature, to
+my mind, is the row of eight narrow lancet windows lighting the choir of
+the church. I like these early lancets, and I am inclined to question
+whether the wide windows and elaborate tracery of later Gothic are as
+dignified and severely beautiful. There is a grace and simplicity about
+these tall, narrow openings, with their pointed arches, which cannot be
+surpassed.
+
+There are some interesting monuments, too, in the choir, notably a most
+elaborate one to O'Conor Sligo against the south wall. O'Conor and his
+wife, life-size, kneel facing each other in two niches, over and below
+and on either side of which are sculptured cherubs and saints and skulls
+and swords and drums and spades and hooks and hour-glasses, together
+with the arms of the family and an appropriate motto or two. From the
+choir, a low door gives access to the charnel-house, and beyond that is
+the graveyard; while from the nave there is an entrance to the
+cloisters, three sides of which are very well preserved, though the
+level of the ground almost touches the base of the pillars.
+
+It is, I should say, at least four feet higher than it was when the
+cloisters were built, and this accretion is mostly human dust, for the
+graveyard has been in active use for a good many centuries. Burials grew
+so excessive, at last, that before one body could be placed in the
+ground, another had to be dug out of it; and gruesome stories are told
+of the ruthless way in which old skeletons were torn from the graves and
+thrown out upon the ground and allowed to lie there, a scandal to the
+whole county. All that has changed now, and there wasn't a bone in sight
+the day we visited the place. Indeed, the old caretaker waxed very
+indignant about the way he had been wronged.
+
+"'Tis in that book you have in your hand the slander is," he said, and
+nodded toward my red-bound Murray, and I read the sentence aloud:
+
+          "The exposure of human remains, and the general
+          neglect here and in other church ruins, are a
+          scandal to the local authorities."
+
+"Now, I ask ye to look around, sir," continued the caretaker, excitedly,
+"and tell me if ye see anywhere aught to warrant such words as them
+ones. Human remains, indeed! Ye see, sir, it was like this. The day the
+felly was here who wrote that book, I had just picked up a bone which
+had got uncovered on me, and slipped it under a tomb temporary like,
+till I could find time to bury it decent; and then he come by, and saw
+it, and that was what he writ. The bones do be workin' up to the surface
+all the time--and how can that be helped, I should like to know? But I
+put them under again as soon as I see them. As for neglect--look about
+ye and tell me if ye see neglect."
+
+I assured him that everything seemed to be in good shape, for the grass
+had just been cut and everything was very tidy. And then he told me that
+he and his helper had been working on the place for a week past,
+because, in a few days, the Irish Antiquarian Society was to meet at
+Sligo, and its members would be poking their noses about everywhere.
+From which I inferred that, perhaps, at ordinary times, the place may be
+rather ragged, and that an occasional bone _may_ escape the guardian's
+watchful eye.
+
+When we got back to the hotel and entered the dining-room for dinner, we
+were amused to find that the American millionaire and wife, of whom the
+proprietor had boasted, were no other than the personally-conducted
+couple who had come with us on the coach from Leenane to Westport. They
+were eating grumpily, while their guide, who ate with them, was doing
+his best to impart an air of cheerfulness to the meal by chattering away
+about the country. The head-waiter hovered near in a tremor of anxiety,
+and almost jumped out of his skin whenever the guide raised his finger.
+
+I went into the smoking-room, later on, to write some letters; and
+presently the door opened, and the guide slipped in, and closed the door
+carefully, and sat down with a sigh, and got out a pipe and filled and
+lighted it, and rang for a whiskey and soda. And then I caught his eye,
+and I couldn't help smiling at its expression, and in a minute we were
+talking. He was a special Cook guide, he told me, and the two people
+with him were from Chicago.
+
+"I fancied," he went on, "when I took this engagement, that I was going
+to have an easy time of it with just two people, but I have never worked
+so hard in my life. The man is all right; but all the woman wants to do
+is to keep moving on. You know Glengarriff? Well, then you know what a
+jolly place it is, and what a splendid trip it is over the hills from
+Macroom. Would you believe me, that woman would not even turn her head
+to look at that view. I would say to her, 'Now, Mrs. Blank, isn't that
+superb!' and she would just bat her eyelids; and when we got to
+Glengarriff, she raised a most awful row because we had to stay there
+over night, and because there was no light but candles in the bedrooms.
+
+"I don't know why such people travel at all," he went on wearily. "Yes I
+do, too--she travels just to buy post-cards and send them back home. She
+buys a hundred at every stop, and as soon as she gets them addressed and
+posted, she is ready to start on. Ruins? Why she won't look at ruins.
+She wouldn't even get out of the carriage at Muckross Abbey--but she
+thinks that new Catholic cathedral at Killarney a marvel of beauty. It
+is the only thing she has grown enthusiastic about since she has been in
+Ireland. We had planned to stay at Killarney four days, but she wanted
+to go on before she had been there four hours. I tell you, sir, it's
+disheartening."
+
+I asked him how long he had been conducting for Cook, and he said only
+for a short time, for he was an actor by profession, and hoped to return
+to the stage some day. But by a run of bad luck, he had been involved in
+three or four failures, and had been driven to Cook's to make a living.
+He had been to America, and he told me with what company, but I have
+forgotten, and then he was going on to tell me what rôles he had played
+and which of them had been his greatest successes, and the worn,
+harassed look left his face--and just then the door opened and the
+Chicagoan stuck his head in, and frowned when he saw us talking and
+laughing together; and my companion grew suddenly sober, and went out to
+see what was wanted, and I didn't see him again. I suppose they were on
+their way at daybreak.
+
+Sligo is the centre of one of the most interesting districts in Ireland
+for the antiquarian. There is that great cairn on the top of Knocknarea,
+and on the plain of Carrowmore near the mountain's foot is such a
+collection of megalithic remains as exists nowhere else in the British
+Isles, while on the summit of a hill overshadowing Lough Gill is a
+remarkable enclosure, resembling Stonehenge, but far more extensive.
+
+It was for Carrowmore we set off on foot, next morning, determined to
+spend the day, which was beautifully bright and warm, in a leisurely
+ramble over the plain, which, four thousand years ago, was the scene of
+a great battle, in which the De Dananns were again the victors, as they
+were at Moytura, below Lough Mask. This battle is known as Northern
+Moytura, and here the De Dananns met and conquered Balor of the Evil Eye
+and his Formorians, and after that they were undisputed masters of Erin
+for a thousand years, until the Milesians, or Gaels, sailing from
+south-western Europe, beached their boats upon the shore of Kenmare Bay.
+It was to mark the graves of the warriors who fell in that dim-distant
+fray that the circles and cromlechs which dot its site were probably
+erected; but the Irish have another theory, which we shall hear
+presently.
+
+I shall not soon forget that walk, at first through the busy streets of
+the town, past solid, well-built houses of brick, with bright shops on
+the lower floor and living-rooms above; then into the poorer and
+quainter quarter, where the houses are all one-storied, built of rubble,
+roofed with straw, and, as we could see through the open doors, stuffed
+with trash, as all these little Irish houses seem to be; and finally
+out along the country road, between fragrant hedges, occasionally
+passing a pretty villa, set in the midst of handsome grounds--and then
+we came to a place where the road branched, and we stopped.
+
+Our guide-book gave no definite directions as to how to get to
+Carrowmore. "On Carrowmore," it says, with magnificent vagueness,
+"within three miles south-west of Sligo, is a large and most interesting
+series of megalithic remains"; nor does it tell how far the remains are
+apart, or how to find them. If it had been Baedeker, now, we would not
+have stood there hesitant at the cross-roads, because he would not only
+have told us which way to turn, but would have provided a diagram, and
+led us step by step from one cromlech to the other. There is no Baedeker
+for Ireland, which is a pity, for I have never yet found a guide to
+equal that painstaking German.
+
+There was no one to ask, so we took the road which led toward
+Knocknarea; but after we had gone some distance, a telegraph-boy came by
+on his wheel, and told us that we should have taken the other road; so
+we walked back to the branch and turned up it. The road mounted
+steadily, and after about a mile of up-hill work, we came to a cluster
+of thatched houses, and I went up to one of them to ask the way of a
+woman who was leaning over her half-door.
+
+I think I have already said somewhere that Irish directions are the
+vaguest in the world--perhaps this is the reason Murray is so vague,
+since it is written by an Irishman!--and the conversation on this
+occasion ran something like this:
+
+"Good morning," I began. "It is a fine day, isn't it?"
+
+"It is so, glory be to God."
+
+"Can you tell me how to get to the cromlechs?"
+
+"The cromlechs? What might that be?"
+
+"The big stone monuments that are back here in the fields somewhere."
+
+"Ah--so it is the big stones you would be after?"
+
+"Yes. Can you tell me how to get to them?"
+
+"I might," said the woman cautiously. She had been looking at me all
+this time with the brightest of eyes, and then she looked at Betty, who
+had remained behind at the gate. "Is yon one your wife?" she asked, with
+a nod in Betty's direction.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You would be from America."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you people hereabouts?"
+
+"Oh, no; we haven't any relatives in Ireland."
+
+"And would you be comin' all this way just to see the big stones?"
+
+"We want to see everything," I explained. "The stones are near here,
+aren't they?"
+
+"They are so. Just a step up yonder lane, and you are right among them."
+
+She was preparing to ask further questions; but this direction seemed
+definite enough, so I thanked her and fled, and Betty and I proceeded to
+take a step up the lane. We took many steps without seeing any stones;
+and finally we turned up a narrow by-lane, and came to a tiny cottage,
+hidden in the trees. We were greeted by a noisy barking, and then a man
+hurried out of the cottage and quieted the dog and told us not to be
+alarmed. We told him we were looking for the stones.
+
+"There be some just a small step from here," he said; "but you would
+never find them by yourselves, so I will go with you. You are from
+America, I'm thinking?"
+
+"Yes," I admitted, wondering, with sinking heart, if it was going to
+begin all over again.
+
+"I have four brothers in America, and all doing well, glory be to God,
+though seldom it is that I hear from them."
+
+"How did you happen to stay in Ireland?" I asked.
+
+"One must stay with the mother," he explained simply. "I was the oldest,
+so that was for me to do."
+
+He was a nice-looking man of middle age, with a kindly, intelligent
+face, and eyes very bright; and while his clothes were old and worn,
+they were clean.
+
+"She is dead now, God rest her soul," he added, with a little convulsion
+of the face I didn't understand till later, "and I am alone here."
+
+"What," I said; "not married?"
+
+"No," he answered, with a smile, "there's just Tricker and me."
+
+"Tricker?"
+
+"Sure that's the dog, and a great help he is to me. Come here, Tricker,
+and show the lady and gentleman what you can do." The shaggy black dog
+came and sat down in front of him, looking up at him with shining eyes.
+"You would hardly believe it, miss, but Tricker gathers all my eggs for
+me, and he can tell a duck egg from a hen egg. If I do be having a bit
+of company, I will tell Tricker to go out and bring in some duck eggs,
+and I have never known him to make a mistake. Or perhaps I will be
+wanting some water from the spring, and I just give Tricker the bucket
+and send him for it. Or perhaps I will be wanting some coal, and then I
+just tell Tricker to fetch it."
+
+There was a little pile of coal lying in one corner of the yard, and I
+had noticed it with some surprise, for we had seen nothing but turf in
+the west of Ireland; but our host told us that the coal came from
+Donegal and that it was better than turf and even cheaper in the long
+run.
+
+"Tricker," he said, "take in some coal!"
+
+Tricker ran to the coal and picked up a lump in his jaws and trotted
+through the open door of the house and laid the lump down on the hearth
+inside; then he came back and took in another lump, and then a third,
+and finally his master stopped him.
+
+"He would be taking it all in if I left him to himself," he said. "He is
+not very well, for he was kicked by the mare the other day, and I
+thought for a time he was going to die on me. But he did not, glory be
+to God, and I think he will soon be well again. And now, if you will
+come this way, I will be showing you the stones."
+
+He led the way across a field, which he said was his, and then over a
+stone wall into another; and in the middle of it was a depressed tomb
+with slabbed sides, in which, I suppose, at some far-off time, the body
+of some chieftain had been laid; and then our guide showed us the path
+which we must follow to get to the cromlechs; and then I put my hand in
+my pocket.
+
+"Ah, no," he protested, drawing back.
+
+"For Tricker," I said; "to get him some dainty, because he's ill."
+
+His face softened.
+
+"Ah, well, sir," he said, "if you put it like that, I'll take it, and
+Tricker and I both thank ye kindly; and you, miss. God speed ye," and he
+stood watching us for quite a while, as we made our way up toward the
+road which ran along the edge of the ridge above us.
+
+As soon as we gained it, we saw the first of the cromlechs; and then, in
+a farther field, we saw another--great stones, standing upright in a
+circle of smaller ones, with a mighty covering slab on top, grey and
+lichened, and most impressive. They are supposed, as I have said, to
+mark the graves of warriors who fell in battle four thousand years ago;
+but the Irish peasantry explain them in a more romantic way, as the beds
+which Diarmuid prepared nightly for his mistress, Gráinne, during the
+year they fled together up and down Ireland to escape the wrath of her
+husband, the mighty Finn MacCool.
+
+Gráinne, you will remember, was the daughter of King Cormac, and she it
+was who won that race up Slievenamon for the honour of Finn's hand.
+There was a splendid wedding at Tara; but as Gráinne sat at the feast,
+she looked at the man she had just married, and saw that the weight of
+years was on him; and then she looked about the board and noticed a
+"freckled, sweet-worded man, who had the curling, dusky black hair, and
+cheeks berry-red," and she asked who he was, and she was told that he
+was Diarmuid, "the white-toothed, of lightsome countenance, the best
+lover of women and of maidens that was in the whole world." And Gráinne
+looked on him again, and her heart melted in her bosom; and she mixed a
+drink and sent it about the board, until there came upon all the company
+"a stupor of sleep and deep slumber."
+
+Then she arose from her seat and went straight to Diarmuid, and laid a
+bond upon him that he should take her away; and Diarmuid, who was leal
+to Finn, asked his comrades what he should do, and they all said he must
+bide by the bond she had laid on him, for he was bound to refuse no
+woman, though his death should come of it.
+
+"Is that the counsel of you all to me?" asked Diarmuid.
+
+"It is," said Ossian and Oscar and all the rest; and then Diarmuid rose
+from his place, and his eyes were wet with tears, and he said farewell
+to his comrades, for he knew that from that day he was no longer a
+member of the goodly company of the Fianna, but only a hunted man.
+
+And he and Gráinne fled from Tara to Athlone, and crossed the Shannon by
+the ford there, with Finn's trackers close behind them; and for a year
+and a day they travelled through the length and breadth of Ireland; and
+every night Diarmuid built for his love a chamber of mighty stones, and
+carpeted it with sweet grass, and crept softly in beside her and held
+her in his arms till morning, so that no hurt might come to her. And
+there the chambers remain to this day, 366 of them, to prove the story
+true.
+
+I wish I could tell the remainder of the legend, but there is no space
+here; besides you will find it and many others like it very beautifully
+told in one of the most fascinating Irish books I know--Stephen Gwynne's
+"Fair Hills of Ireland"; a book which I have pillaged remorselessly, and
+which I recommend to every one planning to visit the Island of the
+Saints.
+
+There are really more than 366 of the cromlechs, though nobody knows the
+exact number; and they are the most venerable monuments reared by man in
+Ireland. The growth of peat around certain of them proves that they have
+stood where they now stand for at least four thousand years. How the
+huge covering stones, sometimes weighing hundreds of tons, were lifted
+into place, no one knows, just as no one knows how the Egyptians raised
+their great monoliths from the quarry.
+
+There are two most impressive cromlechs at Carrowmore, quite close
+together, and my pictures of them are opposite the next page. The first
+one we came to stands near the road in a pasture, and it was merely a
+question of clambering over a wall to get to it; but to reach the other,
+it was necessary to cross a newly-cultivated field; and as there were
+some men working in it, I asked permission to do so.
+
+"Ah," said one of them, "so it is the big stones you have come to see.
+You're very welcome. I only wish you could take them with you."
+
+"So do I," I said. "We haven't anything like them in America. Everybody
+would want to see them."
+
+"That is just the trouble here. There are always people coming to see
+them, and they tramp about over my field, with no thought of the damage
+they will be doing, and without asking my leave, as you have done. And
+then it is at least half an acre of good land that the stones make good
+for naught, and good land is not that plentiful in Ireland that we can
+afford to waste any of it. And then there's the trouble of ploughing
+around them."
+
+[Illustration: CROMLECHS AT CARROWMORE]
+
+The farmer was right, in a way, for a half acre of good land would have
+been of far more value to him than this beautiful cromlech in the midst
+of its circle of stones; but how happy I would have been to give it half
+an acre, if I could have wafted it home to America! The circle is
+considerably more than a hundred feet in diameter, and the stones which
+compose it are great boulders, four or five feet high, set on end. The
+cromlech itself is very imposing, with massive side supports, six or
+seven feet high, and a mighty covering stone, flat on the under side. It
+is like a giant bestriding the landscape; and Betty remarked that it
+reminded her of the legs of Uncle Pumblechook, with several miles of
+open country showing between them. My picture of it has Knocknarea in
+the background, and if you look closely, you will see the little bump in
+the middle of its summit which is the cairn of Queen Meave.
+
+The hill was only a mile or so away, and I proposed going over to it,
+but Betty vetoed that, for it meant some stiff climbing, and we had
+already walked a good many miles; so we started back slowly along the
+road to Sligo, and a beautiful road it was, with the purple hills in the
+distance, and the green rolling fields on either side, and the
+whitewashed cottages gathered close beside it. And the doors of all of
+them were wide open, and the people who lived in them, hearing our
+footsteps, came out to pass the time of day and make some comment on the
+weather; and one old woman, who had been hoeing her potatoes, was so
+eager to talk that we stopped and sat down on the low wall in front of
+her cottage, and stayed for half an hour.
+
+She began with the usual questions--where we were from, if we were
+married, how old we were, and so on; and then she started to tell us
+about herself, omitting no detail, however intimate.
+
+"I have been to America," she said; "for seven years I lived there, and
+a grand place it is; and you will be wondering why I ever came back to
+County Sligo. 'Twas because of this bit of land, which would be mine,
+and this houseen, which is a poor one, but I was born there, and I will
+die there, glory be to God. I would ask you in, but it is that dirty, I
+am ashamed of it. There is so much to be done in the field that I have
+had no time for the house; besides, I am getting old and my legs are
+very bad. I got a bottle from the doctor, and I do be taking a sip of it
+now and then, but it does me no good. I am thinking there is nothing
+will cure me.
+
+"We were not always down in the world like this," she rattled on. "There
+was a time when we were well off. That was before my man was hurted. He
+was a county councillor, then, and as handsome a man as you would be
+seeing in a day's walk; and many's the time he has gone to Dublin with a
+flower in his button-hole, and me looking after him with pride, for he
+was always a good head to me. But a horse kicked him, and broke his leg
+and his arm, and he has not had the right use of either since; and so
+we started going down; and when one starts doing that, there's no
+stopping.
+
+"That's himself going there," she added, indicating an unkempt figure
+limping painfully along the road with the help of a heavy cane. "He's
+ashamed for you to see him, he's that dirty;" but curiosity proved
+stronger than pride, in the end, and he finally came hobbling up to us,
+a wreck of a man with dirty clothes and unkempt hair and unshaven face
+and battered derby hat--and yet one could see that he had been a
+handsome fellow once.
+
+We mentioned our stopping at the house of the bachelor who owned
+Tricker, and both our companions grew serious.
+
+"Ah, poor boy," said the woman, "he does be havin' a hard time. There
+was no one but his mother--all the others had gone to America; and he
+looked after her as careful as a daughter could; but she was very
+feeble, and he come home from the field one day to find her dead on the
+hearth. She had fallen in the fire and burned, bein' too weak to get up.
+It was a great shock to him, her dyin' in a way so painful and without a
+priest; and we all felt for him, though he was to blame for not marryin'
+some girl who could have looked after the old woman. He is well off, but
+there's no girl could put the comether on him, though many have
+tried,--nice girls, too, as nice as ever put a shawl across their
+heads."
+
+I remarked that we had been surprised at the number of bachelors in
+Ireland; we had supposed that all Irishmen married and had "long
+families," but it was not so at all. Some were too poor to marry, and
+that we could understand; but many that were not poor preferred to stay
+single. There were the Rafferty brothers, owners of the Connemara marble
+quarry; there was the proprietor of the hotel at Castleconnell; and now
+here was this man.
+
+"It is so," the old woman agreed. "There be many bachelors
+hereabouts--men too who could well afford to take a wife. The priest
+gets very warm over it. Not long ago, he said some words about it in the
+church--he said if it was left to him, he would be puttin' all these
+bachelors in a boat with a rotten bottom, and sendin' them out to sea,
+and sink or swim, small loss it would be whatever happened. For he said
+they were poor creatures, who thought of nothing but their own pleasure,
+who wasted their money in Dublin, instead of raising a family with it,
+and who would come to no good end. And I'm thinking that was nothing to
+what he had been saying to them in private. For of course, before he
+said anything in public, he had been after them to let him speak to the
+fathers of some of the nice girls there be about here."
+
+Among the Irish, especially the Irish peasantry, marriage is still
+largely a matter of arrangement between the families of the young
+people; though I doubt if it is ever quite so carelessly done as in one
+of Lever's books, where, after the bargain has been made, the father of
+three daughters asks the suitor which one it is he wants, and the suitor
+has them all brought in so that he may inspect them before he makes up
+his mind. It is always a solemn occasion, however, with the suitor's
+relatives ranged along one side of a table, and the bride's relatives
+along the other--male relatives, be it understood, for it is not lucky
+for a woman to take part in a match-making; and the bargaining is very
+shrewd and quite without sentiment; but the marriages thus arranged
+usually turn out well. For, if they are without romance, they are also
+without illusion. The woman knows beforehand what will be expected of
+her as wife and mother; the man is quite aware that matrimony has its
+rough side; and so there is no rude awakening for either. It is really a
+partnership, in which both are equal, and which both work equally hard
+to make successful.
+
+But I suspect that, in Ireland as elsewhere, marriage is not the
+inevitable thing it once was, especially for the men. It may be, as the
+priest said, that they have grown selfish and think only of their own
+comfort; or it may be that their needs have become more complex and
+their ideals harder to satisfy. Whatever the cause, Ireland certainly
+has her full share of bachelors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We went to a picture-show at Sligo, that night, and I have never seen a
+livelier audience. There was, of course, a cowboy film which was
+received with the keenest pleasure; and there was a lurid melodrama,
+which culminated in the hero flinging the villain over a high cliff, at
+which those present rose to their feet and stamped and cheered; and then
+King George was shown reviewing the Life Guards, and the crowd watched
+in moody silence--a silence that was painful and threatening. As the
+troops marched past, gallant and glittering, a sight to stir the blood,
+there was not the suspicion of a cheer or hand-clap--just a strange,
+breathless silence. We were to witness the same thing thereafter in
+"loyal" Derry--the most convincing evidence imaginable of the feeling
+toward England which every Irishman, Protestant or Catholic, carries
+deep in his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS
+
+
+WE wanted to drive around Lough Gill, a distance of about twenty-five
+miles, and I had mentioned this project to our landlord the day before,
+and asked the price of a car. He said it was a long trip and a trying
+one on a horse, and that the price would be twenty shillings, and I saw
+the same glitter in his eye which had been there when he named the price
+of a room.
+
+That afternoon, I happened to see a sign over a shop announcing that
+posting was done in all its branches. Remembering the glitter in the
+landlord's eye, I stopped in and asked the woman in charge if a car
+could be had for the trip around Lough Gill. She said it might, and the
+price would be twelve shillings, including the driver. I closed with her
+on the spot, and told her to have the car ready at nine o'clock next
+morning; and somewhat to my surprise it was; and we set forth on what
+was to prove one of the most beautiful and adventurous excursions we had
+had in Ireland.
+
+It was a bright, warm day, and our jarvey, a picturesque old fellow, was
+quite certain it would not rain; but we put our rain-coats and all our
+other waterproof paraphernalia in the well of the car, so as to be
+prepared for the worst; and we elected to go out by the northern shore
+and come back by the southern one. For a mile or two our road lay
+through beautiful fragrant woods, and then we came out high above the
+lake.
+
+There is no prettier lake in Ireland than Lough Gill, with its green
+islands, and its blue water reflecting the blue sky and the fleecy
+clouds, and its banks covered with a vegetation almost as varied and
+luxuriant as that about Killarney, and the purple mountains crowding
+down upon it--only it is hardly fair to call them purple, for they are
+of many colours--the grey granite of their towering escarpments gleaming
+in the sun, the wide stretches of heather just showing a flush of
+lavender, the clumps of dark woodland clothing the glens, the broad
+spread of green pastures along their lower slopes, all combining in a
+picture not soon forgotten. For two or three miles we trotted on with
+this fairy scene stretched before us, and then we turned back into the
+hills, for we wanted to see the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis, the Stone of Conn
+the Son of Rush, set up on a neighbouring hilltop as a warning and a
+sign.
+
+At least, Murray calls it the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis, but our driver had
+never heard of it, though he protested that he knew every foot of the
+neighbourhood. Perhaps he did not recognise the words as I pronounced
+them, and as he could not read, it did no good for me to show them to
+him in the book. So I described it to him as well as I was able, never
+having seen it myself and having only the vaguest idea what it looked
+like, as a collection of great standing stones on top of a hill not far
+away; and still he had never heard of it. He was inclined to turn back
+to the lake, but I persisted; and finally he stopped a man who was
+driving a cart in to Sligo, and they talked together awhile in Irish,
+and then our driver turned up another road, not very hopefully.
+
+[Illustration: SLIGO ABBEY FROM THE CLOISTER]
+
+[Illustration: THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS]
+
+It was a very hilly road, and our horse developed an alarming propensity
+to gallop--a propensity which the driver encouraged rather than strove
+to check, so that we felt, a good part of the time, as though we were
+riding to a fire at break-neck speed. The jaunting-car, it should be
+remembered, is a two-wheeled vehicle, and when the animal between the
+shafts takes it into his head to gallop, it describes violent arcs
+through the air. But we hung grimly on, and finally our driver drew up
+at a house near the roadside.
+
+"'Tis here," he said.
+
+We got down and looked around, but saw nothing that resembled the
+Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis; and then a woman came out of the house, and we
+asked her if she knew where it was, and, wonder of wonders! she did.
+Most wonderful of all, she had been to see it herself, so she knew where
+it was not vaguely but precisely, and she told us just how to go. It was
+on the hill back of the house, and she showed us the path which we must
+follow, and told us to look out for the rabbit-warrens, or we might
+sprain an ankle; and we set off through knee-deep heather up over the
+hill. It was quite a climb, and when we got to the top we saw no
+standing stones, and I wondered if we were going to miss them, after
+all; but we pressed on, and then, as we topped the next rise, my heart
+gave a leap--for there before us was the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis--the most
+remarkable stone enclosure I have seen anywhere, with the exception of
+Stonehenge--and Stonehenge is more remarkable only because its stones
+are larger.
+
+In every other way--in extent and in complexity--this enclosure far
+outranks Stonehenge. Great upright rocks, lichened and weatherbeaten
+by the rains and winds of forty centuries, form a rude oblong, about a
+hundred and fifty feet in length by fifty feet across. It stretches east
+and west, and at the western end is a square projection like a
+vestibule, divided into two chambers; while at the eastern end are two
+smaller oblongs some ten or twelve feet square, and their doorways are
+two trilithons--that is to say, two great rocks set on end with another
+rock laid across them, just as at Stonehenge. I despair of trying to
+picture it in words, but I took two photographs, one of which is
+opposite the preceding page, and gives some idea of the appearance of
+this remarkable monument--at least of the trilithons. But it gives no
+idea of its shape or its extent. There was no vantage point from which I
+could get a photograph that would do that.
+
+Its effect, here on this bleak hilltop, with other bleak hills all
+around as far as the eye could see, was tremendously impressive. Nobody
+knows who built it, nor when it was built, nor why. That it was a shrine
+of some sort, a holy place, seems evident; and to me it seemed also
+evident that the holy of holies were those two little chambers back of
+the trilithic doorways; and it seemed to me also significant that they
+should be at the east end, nearest the sunrise, just as the altars in
+Gothic churches are, and that there should be a vestibule or entrance at
+the west end. Surely it was built with some reference to the sun; and I
+tried to picture the horde of panting men, who had, with incredible
+labour, hacked out these giant stones from some quarry now unknown, and
+pulled them up the steep hillside and somehow manoeuvred them into
+place. Some powerful motive must have actuated them, and I can think of
+none powerful enough except the motive of religion--the motive of
+building a great temple to the God they worshipped, in the hope of
+pleasing Him and winning His favour.
+
+[Illustration: A RUIN ON THE SHORE OF LOUGH GILL]
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST FRAGMENT OF AN ANCIENT STRONGHOLD]
+
+What strange rites, I wondered, had these old stones witnessed; what
+pageantries, what sacrifices, what incantations? Of all that ancient
+people there remains on earth not a single trace, except in such silent
+monuments of stone as this, so mighty the passing centuries have been
+powerless to destroy them, more mysterious, more inscrutable than the
+Sphinx.
+
+We tore ourselves away, at last, and went silently down through the
+heather, which was fairly swarming with rabbits; and we mounted our car
+and headed back toward the lake. We came out presently close beside the
+shore, and followed it around its upper end. Just there, out at the end
+of a point of land, stands the fragment of a tower, and our jarvey told
+us it was all that was left of the castle from which Dervorgilla eloped
+with Dermot MacMurrough--a tale already told by the little tailor of
+Limerick.
+
+Of course I wanted a picture of it, and after much manoeuvring, I
+managed to get the one opposite this page, which I include only because
+of the beautiful Japanesy branch across one corner; for this wasn't
+Breffni's castle at all, as we were presently to find. A little farther
+on, and quite near the road, was another ruin, and a most imposing one,
+with drum towers at the four corners, and a dilapidated cottage hugging
+its wall; and I took a peep within the square enclosure, used now as a
+kind of barnyard. There were little turrets looking out over the
+lake, and a spiral stair in one corner, and mullioned windows and tall
+chimneys and yawning fireplaces; and it looked a most important place,
+but I have not been able to discover anything of its history. Then we
+went on again, with beautiful views of the lake at our right, and high
+on our left the flat-topped mountain called O'Rourke's Table, where,
+once upon a time, as told by the old ballad, "O'Rourke's Noble Feast"
+was spread:
+
+          O'Rourke's noble fare will ne'er be forgot
+          By those who were there, or those who were not.
+          His revels to keep, we sup and we dine
+          On seven score sheep, fat bullocks and swine,
+
+and so on. It is, indeed, a table fit for such a celebration--a rock
+plateau with sheer escarpments of grey granite dropping away from it,
+and a close cover of purple heather for a cloth.
+
+The road curved on along the lake; then turned away from it through a
+beautiful ravine; and then a sparkling river was dashing along at our
+right, and beyond it loomed the grey walls of a most extensive ruin; and
+then we dropped steeply down into the town of Dromahair, and stopped at
+a pretty inn to bait the horse.
+
+I wanted to get closer to the ruins, and I asked if there was a bridge
+across the river, and was told that there was, just behind the hotel. So
+I made my way down to it, to find that the "bridge" was a slender plank,
+without handrail or guard, spanning some ugly-looking rapids. I looked
+at the plank, and I looked at the swirling water, and I looked at the
+grey ruins on the farther shore, and I hesitated for a long time; but I
+wasn't equal to it; and I turned away at last and made my way back to
+the village in the hope of finding some more stable bridge there.
+
+The dominating feature of the village is not the workhouse or lunatic
+asylum, but an enormous mill, five stories high, built of black stone as
+hard as flint, to endure for all eternity, but forlorn and deserted; and
+while I was gazing at it and wondering where the money had come from to
+build it, a man came out of the house attached to it and spoke to me. He
+was an Englishman, he said, who was spending his vacation at Dromahair.
+I asked him if there was any other bridge across the river except the
+slender plank, and he said there was not; and that it was characteristic
+of the Irish that there should not be, for a more careless, shiftless,
+happy-go-lucky race did not exist anywhere on earth.
+
+I asked him about the mill, and he said that it was just another example
+of Irish inefficiency and wrong-headedness; that it had been erected at
+great expense and equipped with the most costly machinery to grind
+American grain, which was to be brought up Sligo Bay from the sea, and
+up the river and across the lake; and then, when all was ready, there
+was no grain to grind--or none, at least, which could be brought to the
+mill without prohibitive expense. Furthermore, the power was so poor and
+costly that it would have been impossible to operate the mill profitably
+even if there had been plenty of grain. But the owner of the mill, with
+some sort of dim faith in the power of Home Rule to produce the grain,
+was preparing to install a turbine to run the machinery, and had already
+started to build a big aqueduct to bring the water in from above the
+rapids.
+
+The rapids are just above the mill, and are quite imposing; and there,
+just beyond them, is the abbey. I was near enough to see it fairly well,
+though not, of course, in detail as I should have liked to do; but I
+comforted myself with the thought that it is a comparatively modern one,
+dating from the sixteenth century, when Margaret, the wife of another
+O'Rourke, having, perhaps, like Dervorgilla, done something she
+regretted, built it for the Franciscans.
+
+I had another comfort, too; for I asked the Englishman if he had seen
+the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis; and he said that he had been hunting for it for
+a week, but hadn't been able to find it, as none of the people
+thereabouts seemed to know where it was; and he was astonished when I
+told him that we had found it, and commented with envy upon the energy
+of Americans. He asked me where it was, and I told him as nearly as I
+could; and then he wanted me to come in and have tea, and was for
+sending up to the hotel for Betty; but I had to decline that invitation.
+I think he was lonely and glad to find some one to talk to, for he was
+unusually expansive for an Englishman; and he said he would send his car
+in to Sligo after us, if we would come out next day; but I told him we
+were going on to Bundoran.
+
+And then I left him and went back up the hill to the ivy-covered ruin
+which was really the castle of Tiernan O'Rourke. It stands on the edge
+of the hill overlooking the valley--the same valley which lay smiling
+before him that evening he came back from his pilgrimage to Lough Derg;
+and up there was the battlement from which no light burned. It was
+battered down in the sixteenth century, in some obscure fight, and all
+that is left of the castle now is the shell of its walls.
+
+I am afraid Tom Moore, as well as O'Connell, journeyman tailor, has
+invested the story with a glamour which did not belong to it; for
+Tiernan O'Rourke was a one-eyed bandit who had sacked the abbey of
+Clonard a few years before, and who certainly had need of pilgrimages to
+shrive him from his sins; and Dervorgilla, so far from being a "young
+false one," was forty-two years old; and MacMurrough took care to carry
+off, not only the lady's person, but all her movable property, and most
+of her husband's, as well.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The clouds were gathering in the west as we set out from Dromahair, and
+presently the rain began to slant down, slowly and softly at first, and
+then in a regular torrent. I do not know when I have seen it rain
+harder; but we were soon fixed for it and didn't mind. Dromahair is
+about twelve miles from Sligo, and they are hilly miles, so we knew that
+we had at least three hours of this wet work ahead of us; but the people
+working in the fields or plodding along the road paid no attention to
+the rain, so why should we? In fact, most of them, though without any
+sort of protection, seemed to be quite unconscious that it was raining
+at all.
+
+And then, just when the rain was hardest, I saw to the left a circle of
+stones crowning a little hill, and I knew it was a cashel. A cashel, as
+I have explained already, is a fort made of stones, just as a rath is a
+fort made of earth, both being in the form of a circle; and I knew I
+could get pictures of raths without much difficulty, but I didn't know
+when I would see another cashel; so I made the driver stop, and got my
+camera out of the well, and started off through a field to get a picture
+of this one, not heeding Betty's anxious inquiry if I had suddenly gone
+mad.
+
+That field into which I plunged was thigh-deep with dripping grass, and
+I didn't realise how wet it was until I was well into it, and then there
+was nothing to do but go on. So I scrambled up the hill and took two
+pictures, shielding my lens, as well as I could, against the driving
+rain; and I hadn't any idea that the pictures would be good ones, but
+they were, and one of them is opposite the next page.
+
+There was no vantage point from which I could take a picture which would
+show the circular shape of the cashel; but it had been built in a
+perfect circle about sixty feet in diameter. It was on top of a steep
+hillock, of which it occupied nearly the whole summit. The walls,
+pierced only by a single narrow entrance, were about six feet high, and
+four or five feet thick, and the lower stones were very massive, as the
+picture shows. They had been roughly dressed and laid without
+mortar--the ancient Irish knew nothing of mortar, apparently, for all
+these old stone circles are uncemented; but they had been so nicely
+fitted that they were still in place after many centuries, though the
+clambering ivy was doing its best to pull them down.
+
+Right in the middle of the circle was a great stone slab, flush with
+the ground. The only use I could imagine for it was as a base for a
+shrine or altar; but as I went down to the road again, an old man came
+out of a little house to talk, and he said that some antiquarians from
+Sligo, who believed the slab covered the entrance to a secret passage,
+had taken it up and found beneath it, not a passage, but a beautifully
+fitted pavement; and that the parish priest, investigating on his own
+account, had dug up some wood ashes, and so decided that this was the
+place where the fire was built.
+
+[Illustration: A CASHEL NEAR DROMAHAIR]
+
+[Illustration: ST. PATRICK'S HOLY WELL]
+
+"But no one knows," my informant rambled on. "Maybe some day some wise
+man like yourself will be able to tell us what it was for."
+
+I remarked that the man who did so would have to be far wiser than I;
+but he protested that he knew a wise man when he saw one; and I suspect
+that there is a blarney stone in some of these ruins, which the general
+public doesn't know about.
+
+I was sorry it was raining, for there was another cashel on a hill to
+the right, and a great rath a little farther off, and I should have
+liked to explore both of them; but really the weather was too bad, so I
+went back reluctantly to the car, which our jarvey had driven close
+under a clump of trees for shelter, and we were soon jogging contentedly
+on again.
+
+The valley which slopes down here to Lough Gill seems very fertile, and
+the little farms have a more prosperous look than is usual in Ireland.
+This is partly due to the fact that a number of neat labourers' cottages
+have been built to replace the usual tumbledown hovels, and still more
+are going up.
+
+This erection of labourers' cottages, which is going on to-day all over
+Ireland, seems to me almost as important as land purchase. If there is
+any class of Irish more deserving of pity than another, it is the
+agricultural labourer. He is worse off than the tenants; he has no land,
+however poor, to cultivate, except perhaps a tiny patch in front of his
+door; he has no means of livelihood except the unskilled labour of his
+hands; if he can manage to earn ten shillings a week he is unusually
+fortunate. In most cases, his average income throughout the year will be
+scarcely half that. So naturally the labourers and their families live
+in the most wretched of all the wretched hovels, in want, discomfort and
+peril of disease.
+
+It is for the relief of these unfortunate people that the new houses are
+being built. They are very plain; but they have large windows which can
+be opened, and stone floors which can be cleaned, and tight slate roofs,
+and sanitary outbuildings; and each of them has a half acre or so of
+garden, where vegetables enough to support the family can be raised
+during the summer; and they rent for from two to three shillings a
+week--just enough to pay interest on the amount invested in the house,
+with a small sinking fund for upkeep and repairs. The money needed is
+borrowed from the government by the county council, and the council has
+control of the houses, decides where they shall be built, what rent
+shall be asked for them, and exercises a general supervision over the
+tenants.
+
+The same thing is being done in the towns, where the insanitary
+dwellings of the poorer artisans are being replaced by comfortable
+houses, rented at a very low rate. Nearly a hundred thousand of these
+cottages have been built within the past ten years, replacing as many
+insanitary shacks, which, for the most part, have been torn down. The
+shacks were much more picturesque, but nobody regrets them. And the
+severely utilitarian aspect of the new dwellings will no doubt soon be
+masked with vines and climbing roses.
+
+It was such cottages as this, then, that gave the valley sloping down to
+Lough Gill an unusually prosperous appearance, and many more were in
+course of erection throughout the neighbourhood. We padded past them,
+along the road above the lake, between beautiful hedgerows, gay with
+climbing roses; and then we turned away through a luxuriant wood, where
+the bracken was almost waist-high and the trees were draped with moss
+and ferns, just as we had seen them along the southern coast. And then
+we passed through a gate and jolted down a very rough and narrow lane;
+and finally our driver stopped at the edge of a wood, and pointed to a
+path running away under the trees.
+
+"'Tis the path to St. Patrick's holy well," he said; and we clambered
+down, and made our way under the trees and up the hillside, and there
+before us was the well.
+
+It is a lively spring, which bubbles up from the ground in considerable
+volume, fills a deep basin, and then sparkles away down into the valley.
+A wall has been built around it, with an opening on one side, and steps
+by which one may descend and drink of the magic water. Just above it on
+the hillside is a shrine, something like the one we had seen at St.
+Senan's well--really an altar, where, I suppose, Mass may be
+celebrated; and it was crowded with figurines of the Virgin and small
+crucifixes and rosaries and sacred pictures, and the bushes all about
+were tied with rags and strings and other tokens which the pilgrims to
+the shrine had left behind.
+
+This well is a very famous one, and the number of pilgrims who come to
+it prove how general is the belief in its powers. It is really a belief
+in the power of prayer, for prayer is always necessary. I tried to get a
+picture of the well and the shrine above it, but it was very dark under
+the trees, and there was no place where I could rest my camera for a
+time exposure; but the photograph opposite page 408, is better than I
+had any reason to expect.
+
+We found that the rain had ceased when we came out from under the trees,
+and we jogged happily back to the highroad and on towards Sligo; and
+presently far ahead the bay opened out, rimmed by romantic hills, green
+nearly to the summit, and then culminating in steep escarpments of grey
+rock; and beneath us in the valley lay the roofs and spires of the town,
+and we were soon rattling through its streets.
+
+We went back to the hotel to change out of our wet things and get a cup
+of hot chocolate; and then we took a last stroll about the streets, and
+stopped to see the church of St. John, said to be older than the abbey,
+but recently restored and now used by a Church of Ireland congregation.
+The graveyard about it is full of interesting tombs, and the street it
+fronts is one of the most romantic in the town. Indeed, the whole town
+is interesting; its greatest drawback for the visitor being the beggars
+who infest it, and who are nearly as pertinacious as those at Killarney.
+
+We went back to the hotel, at last, and told the proprietor that we were
+going to Bundoran by the four o'clock train.
+
+"You will make a great mistake," he protested, "to leave Sligo without
+going around Lough Gill."
+
+It was then I had my revenge.
+
+"We have been around Lough Gill," I explained sweetly. "That's where we
+were this morning."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is no easy task to travel along the west coast of Ireland. The great
+bays which indent it, running far inland, and the mountain ranges which
+tower one behind the other, make it impossible to follow anything like a
+straight line. The only thing to do is to zig-zag around them. Our
+journey, that afternoon, was a striking example of this. Bundoran lies
+twenty-two miles north along the coast from Sligo; but to get there by
+rail, it was necessary to travel ninety-two--forty-eight miles
+north-eastward to Enniskillen, and then forty-four miles westward to the
+coast again.
+
+The road to Enniskillen parallels Lough Gill, though it is so hemmed in
+by hills that we caught no glimpse of the water; and then proceeds
+across a dreary bog, climbing up and up with a wide valley opening to
+the south; and then runs into woodland and even orchards--the first, I
+think, that we had seen in Ireland; and then drops down toward
+Enniskillen, whose name lives in English history as that of one of the
+most famous of its regiments. It is said to be a pretty town, nestling
+between two lakes and entirely water-girt; but we did not stop to see
+it.
+
+We changed instead to the Bundoran line, which runs along the northern
+shore of Lough Erne; and we found the train crowded with people, on
+their way to spend the week-end at that famous resort; at least so we
+supposed, but when we got to Pettigoe, there was a crowd on the
+platform, waving flags and shouting, and as the train stopped somebody
+set off a series of bombs; and most of the passengers piled out of the
+train to take part in the celebration; and then we saw a man and woman
+standing rather sheepishly in front of another man, who was evidently
+delivering an address of welcome. We asked the guard what it was all
+about, and he said that the citizens of Pettigoe were welcoming home a
+fellow-townsman who had gone to Australia and won a fortune and also a
+wife--or perhaps I should put it the other way around--and had come back
+to Pettigoe to live.
+
+I was half-inclined to get off there myself, in order to visit St.
+Patrick's Purgatory, a famous place of pilgrimage on an island in Lough
+Derg, five miles away; but from the map it looked as though it would be
+possible to drive over from Donegal, which would be much more
+convenient. I found out afterwards that there is a mountain range
+between Donegal and Lough Derg, and no direct road over it; so we did
+not get to visit the island where, so legend says, St. Patrick had a
+vision of purgatory, and which became so celebrated that pilgrims
+flocked to it from all over Europe. The time prescribed for the
+ceremonies is from the first of June to the middle of August, and the
+island is often so crowded with penitents performing the rounds that
+visitors are not permitted to land.
+
+Our train moved on, after the address of welcome was concluded, and we
+could see the blue waters of Lough Erne stretching away to the south,
+while westward the sun was setting in a glory of crimson clouds; and
+presently the broad estuary of the Erne opened below us, hemmed in with
+high banks of yellow sand; and then we were at Bundoran--a bathing
+resort, consisting of a single street of boarding-houses facing the sea;
+and a little farther on, a great hotel, built on a projecting point of
+the cliffs. As we paused at its door to look about us, we realised that
+we had come very far indeed from primitive Connemara, for the first
+thing which met our eyes was a huge sign:
+
+          BEWARE OF GOLF BALLS!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE WINING BANKS OF ERNE
+
+
+THE weather god was certainly good to us in Ireland. The occasional
+showers and two or three heavy downpours were merely short interludes,
+and by no means unpleasant ones, in the long succession of sweetly
+beautiful days which I remember when I run my mind back over those
+delightful weeks. That day at Bundoran was one of them, soft and
+fragrant and altogether perfect.
+
+There is nothing Irish about Bundoran except its climate--not, at least,
+if one stays at the hotel which has been built there by the Great
+Northern Railroad, and which is one of the most satisfactory hotels I
+was ever in. And perhaps it would be as well to say a word here about
+Irish hotels.
+
+The small, friendly inn, which is one of the delights of European
+travel, does not exist in Ireland; or, if it does, it is so carelessly
+managed that it is not endurable. Commercial hotels are also apt to be
+inferior. The only hotels that are sure to be pleasant and satisfactory
+are the large ones which cater to tourist traffic. In the more important
+towns, of course, there is never any difficulty in finding a good hotel;
+in the smaller towns, the only safe rule is to go to the best in the
+place, and if there is one managed by the railway, that is usually the
+one to choose.
+
+Some years ago, the Irish railways realised that the surest way to
+encourage tourist traffic in the west and south was to provide
+attractive hotel accommodations, and they set about doing this with the
+result that the traveller in Ireland is now well provided for. Such
+hotels as those at Bundoran, Recess and Parknasilla--and there are many
+others like them, handsome buildings, splendidly equipped, set in the
+midst of beautiful surroundings--leave nothing to be desired. Nor are
+their rates excessive, considering the excellent service they offer,
+averaging a little over three dollars a day. In the smaller towns, the
+tariff is considerably less than this, though the service is almost as
+good. In places where the railroad does not itself own or manage a
+hotel, it usually sees to it that at least one under private management
+is kept up to a satisfactory standard. So no one wishing to explore
+Ireland need hesitate on account of the hotels. They will be found, with
+a few exceptions, surprisingly good.
+
+[Illustration: THE COAST AT BUNDORAN]
+
+[Illustration: THE HOME OF "COLLEEN BAWN"]
+
+The hotel at Bundoran is set close to the edge of the scarred and
+weather-beaten cliffs, which look right out over the Atlantic toward
+America. It was along the top of these cliffs that we set out, that
+Sunday morning, and below us lay the strand where three galleons of the
+Spanish Armada went to pieces, as they were staggering homewards from
+the battle in the Channel. From time to time, an effort is made to find
+these "treasure ships," but, though cannon and anchors and such-like
+gear have been recovered, no one as yet has found any treasure.
+
+The great waves which roll right in from the Atlantic, and which proved
+too much for the galleons, have worn the cliffs into the most fantastic
+shapes; and a little way above the hotel there is a natural arch,
+called the Fairy Bridge, some twenty-five feet wide, which the water has
+cut in the rocks. When the tide comes in, it may be seen boiling and
+bubbling below the bridge, as in a witch's cauldron. Most beautiful of
+all is a wide yellow strand, a little farther on, with the rollers
+breaking far out and sweeping in, in white-topped majesty. We sat for a
+long time watching them, rolling in in long lines one behind the other;
+and then we scrambled down to the beach through the bare and shifting
+dunes. Seen thus from below, the black cliffs are most impressive.
+
+We went on again, at last, over the upland toward a wide-flung camp,
+where the Fourth Inniskillens were getting their summer practice; and
+one of the men directed us how to find a cromlech and a cairn, which we
+knew were there somewhere, but which we were unable to see amid the
+innumerable ridges. From the cairn, which crowns a little eminence
+overlooking the Erne estuary, there was supposed to be, so our
+acquaintance said, an underground passage to the other side of the
+river, where stands the old castle of the Ffolliotts; but as the estuary
+is at least a mile wide, I doubt if this ever existed except in the
+imagination of the country-side. The castle is there, however,--we could
+see its towers looming above the trees; but there was no way to get to
+it, that day, for the river lay between. I was determined to see it
+closer before we left the neighbourhood, because it was from that castle
+that the fair Colleen Bawn eloped with Willy Reilly.
+
+Farther down the stream, a two-masted schooner lay wrecked beside a
+sand-bank, and across from us some soldiers were fishing in tiny boats,
+while a company was going through some manoeuvres on the shore, so far
+away they looked like a company of ants deploying this way and that. For
+a long time we watched them; then we bade our companion good-bye, and
+went slowly back through the bracken, where Betty picked a great bouquet
+of primroses and violets and blue-bells; and we stumbled upon another
+ancient burial-place; and stopped at the ruins of an old church; and got
+back finally to the hotel to find the golf-links full of industrious
+players.
+
+Betty got into talk with the owner of a shaggy English sheep-dog--shaggy
+clear to its feet, and looking for all the world like Nana, the
+accomplished nurse of the Darling children; and I went on down to the
+beach to watch the tide come in. It was swirling threateningly about the
+black rocks; and out at the farthest point of them I found a man
+sitting. He invited me to sit down beside him, and we fell into talk. He
+was a handsome old fellow, a barrister from Dublin, who had come clear
+across Ireland (which isn't as far as it sounds) to get a breath of sea
+air. There was no air like the Bundoran air, he said, and two or three
+days of it did him a world of good. And then we began to talk about
+Ireland; and I was guilty of the somewhat banal remark that, before
+Ireland could make any real progress, life there would have to be made
+attractive enough to keep her young people at home, for she could never
+hope to get ahead as long as her best blood was drained away from her.
+
+He pooh-poohed the idea.
+
+"The best advice you can give any Irish man or Irish girl," he said,
+"is to leave the country the first chance they get; and that will always
+be good advice, because there will never be anything here for them to
+do. All this talk about the revival of industry is foolish. You can't
+revive what's dead; and industry here has been dead for three hundred
+years. Besides this is an agricultural country, and it will never be
+anything else; and over wide stretches of it, grazing pays better than
+tillage will ever do, so grazing there will be. Home Rule will make no
+difference--how can it? I suppose we're going to get it, and I'll be
+glad to see it come, if only to stop this ceaseless agitation; but as
+for its reviving any industries, or increasing wages, or making Ireland
+a place for ambitious young people to live in--I don't believe it."
+
+"You don't foresee a roseate future, then?"
+
+"Not for Ireland. All these schemes for land purchase and new cottages
+and pensions and so on may make life here a little more comfortable than
+it has been; but this country has been in a lethargy for centuries, and
+it will never be shaken off. The Irish have no ambition; they just live
+along from day to day without any thought for the future; and they will
+always be like that. It's their nature."
+
+He would doubtless have said more to the same effect, for he was very
+much in earnest, but the rising tide drove us in, and I did not see him
+again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The picturesque old town of Ballyshannon is only a few miles from
+Bundoran, and we took train for it next morning, after a last stroll
+along the cliffs and a look at the "rock-pool," a treasure-house of
+fossils and marine growths of every kind. First of all, we wanted to
+see the Colleen Bawn castle, so we got a car at the station, and set
+out.
+
+Ballyshannon, after the fashion of Irish towns, is built on the side of
+a hill, and no horse unaccustomed to mountaineering could have got up
+the street which leads from the river; but our horse had been reared in
+the town, so he managed to scramble up; and then we turned to the left
+and followed along the river to the falls--a dashing mass of spray,
+where the whole body of water which rushes down from Lough Erne sweeps
+roaring over a cliff some thirty feet high. Two or three miles along
+country roads brought us to a gate; and here our driver, looking a
+little anxious, had a short conference with a woman who lived in a neat
+labourer's cottage near by; and finally he opened the gate and drove
+through.
+
+Half a mile along this lane brought us to another gate; and there our
+driver stopped, and showed us the castle just ahead, and said that was
+all the farther he could go, and that we would have to walk the rest of
+the way. There was a certain constraint in his manner which I did not
+understand till afterwards.
+
+We went on through the gate, and across what had once been the demesne,
+but had been swept bare of trees, and was now divided between a meadow
+and a stable-yard, and in a few minutes we stood before the castle which
+was the scene of a romance very dear to Irish hearts. It is not really a
+castle, but merely a tall and ugly house, with three bays and a low
+terrace in front, and it is not very old, since it dates only from 1739,
+when it was built as the home of the Ffolliotts, a powerful English
+family into whose hands this whole neighbourhood had fallen. The
+Ffolliotts, of course, were Protestants, and Willy Reilly was a
+Catholic; but Helen Ffolliott was so ill-advised as to fall in love with
+him, and one night packed up her jewels and eloped. A hue and cry was
+raised after them, and they were soon captured, and Reilly was thrown
+into Sligo jail, and it looked for a while as though he might be
+"stretched," for all this happened about 1745, when the penal laws
+against Catholics were most severe. But the fair Helen came to the
+rescue, and swore at the trial that she had been the leader in the
+affair, not Reilly, and so he escaped with a sentence of banishment.
+What happened thereafter history does not state; but Will Carleton, who
+wove a poor romance about the affair, manages to reunite the lovers in
+the end.
+
+It is not to be wondered at that Reilly became a popular hero. Here was
+a young and handsome Catholic, who, in the most daring way, had captured
+the heart of a great Protestant heiress, the daughter of a persecutor of
+Catholics, and, in addition, a girl so lovely that she was the toast of
+the whole country-side. The ballad which celebrated the affair had an
+immense vogue. It is a real ballad, rough and halting, but rudely
+eloquent. You remember how it starts:
+
+    "Oh! rise up, Willy Reilly, and come alongst with me,
+     I mean for to go with you and leave this countrie,
+     To leave my father's dwelling, his houses and fine lands;"
+     And away goes Willy Reilly and his dear Colleen Bawn.
+
+In the ballad, the family is called Folliard, which is the way the name
+is still pronounced in the neighbourhood; but the old mansion is now
+occupied by a tenant. And pretty soon we understood our jarvey's
+uneasiness, for first a man came to the front door and looked at us, and
+then went quickly in again; and then an old woman opened the side door,
+and glared at us, and when we asked if we might have a glimpse of the
+interior, slammed the door in our faces. I must give her credit,
+however, for restraining a particularly savage-looking dog eager to be
+at us. But it was evident we weren't wanted there, for even the turkey
+gobbler resented our visit, and strutted fiercely about us, trying to
+scare us out. So we went back to the car, and our jarvey breathed a sigh
+of relief when he saw us.
+
+"Sure, I didn't know whether you'd come back alive or not," he said.
+"The master is away from home the day, and the woman that does work for
+him wouldn't be above settin' the dog on you. But it's all right, glory
+be to God," and he climbed up to his box and drove us back to
+Ballyshannon.
+
+We left our luggage at the station of the Donegal narrow-gauge railway,
+and then walked down into the town. We found it a quaint place, with the
+friendliest of people; and we were fortunate in discovering a clean inn
+on the main street, where we had the nicest of lunches, after which we
+set off to see the abbey.
+
+The road to the abbey lies through a deep, romantic dell, at the bottom
+of which we found a grain mill working, its great wheel turned by the
+brook which rushes through the glen; and a little farther on were four
+or five other mills, all fallen to decay, their wheels mere skeletons,
+and their machinery red with rust. Just beyond, a little higher up the
+hill, stands all that is left of the abbey, a few shattered fragments of
+the old walls. Yet the abbey was, in its day, a great foundation,
+patronised by the mighty Prince of Tyrconnell, and taking its name of
+Assaroe from the falls in the river--Eas Aedha Ruaidh, the Waterfall of
+Red Hugh, who was High King of Erin about three centuries before Christ,
+and who was swept over the falls and drowned while trying to cross the
+ford above them. A boy who played about the ruins described them, when
+he grew to manhood, in a musical stanza:
+
+    Grey, grey is Abbey Assaroe, by Ballyshanny town,
+    It has neither door nor window, the walls are broken down;
+    The carven stones lie scattered in briars and nettle-bed;
+    The only feet are those that come at burial of the dead.
+    A little rocky rivulet runs murmuring to the tide,
+    Singing a song of ancient days, in sorrow, not in pride;
+    The bore-tree and the lightsome ash across the portal grow,
+    And heaven itself is now the roof of Abbey Assaroe.
+
+We had heard certain legends of underground passages, which could still
+be explored, and we asked an old man who was cutting grass in the
+graveyard if he knew anything about them, and he said that he did not.
+We remarked that it was a hard task cutting the grass around the
+gravestones; and he said it was so, and would not be worth doing but
+that the grass was given to him for the cutting; but the guardians were
+unreasonable men who wanted it cut long before it was ready--it ought
+really to stand a week longer, now, but them ones would not wait!
+
+We went back past the mill, and met a man in flour-besprinkled clothes,
+who bade us good-day and stopped to talk; and it proved to be the
+miller. He invited us in to see the mill, which was grinding Russian
+corn, very red and hard, into yellow meal which was used for feeding
+cattle. We tried to tell him something of the delights of corn-bread and
+griddle-cakes, but he was plainly sceptical.
+
+He was an Ulster man, and had been running the mill for three years, but
+he said it was a hard struggle to make both ends meet. If it was not
+that his power cost him nothing, he would have had to give it up long
+ago. Power apart, I could imagine no poorer place for a mill, for it was
+at least two miles from the railway, and the road into the hollow was so
+steep that it must be a terrific struggle to get a loaded wagon into or
+out of it. There had been a number of mills in the neighbourhood at one
+time, but they had all given up the struggle long ago, except one flour
+mill, which had somehow managed to survive.
+
+We told him that we had seen the ruins of some of them as we went to the
+abbey.
+
+"Have you been to the abbey?" he asked. "Did you see the underground
+passages?"
+
+"Are there really some?"
+
+"Come along, and I'll show you."
+
+We protested that we didn't want him to leave his work, but he said the
+mill could take care of itself for awhile; and we started off together
+up the hill, through a gate to the right, and then knee-deep through the
+grass to the brook which ran at the bottom of the ravine, under the
+walls of the monastery. And there, sure enough, was the mouth of a
+passage cut in the solid rock of the bank. It was about six feet high
+by three wide, and ran in about a hundred feet, for all the world like
+the entrance to a mine. How much farther it extended I don't know, for
+an iron gate had been put across it to keep out explorers; but there can
+be no doubt that, at one time, it connected with the abbey itself, and
+formed a secret means of ingress and egress, which was no doubt often
+very convenient.
+
+And then our guide showed us something else, which was far more
+interesting. In the penal days, Catholic priests were forbidden to
+celebrate Mass under the severest penalties; but nevertheless they
+managed to hold a service now and then in some out of the way place,
+carefully concealed, with sentries posted all about to guard against
+surprise. A short distance down stream from the entrance to the secret
+passage was a shallow cave in the cliff, so overhung with ivy that it
+could scarcely be seen, and here, many times, the Catholics of the
+neighbourhood had gathered at word that a priest would celebrate Mass.
+On the heights all about lookouts would be placed, and then the men and
+women would kneel before the mouth of the little cave and take part in
+the sacrament.
+
+At the back of the cave, the shelf of rock which served as the altar
+still remains, and at one side of it is a rude piscina--a basin hollowed
+in the rock, with a small hole in the bottom to drain it; and it was
+here the vessels used in the celebration of the Mass were washed, after
+the service was over. I wanted mightily to get a picture of this cave,
+but it had started to shower, and though I got under the umbrella and
+made an exposure, the picture was a failure.
+
+We bade our guide good-bye, with many thanks for his kindness, and went
+slowly back along the highroad toward Ballyshannon; and presently from a
+tiny cottage beside the road two old women issued and greeted us with
+great cordiality. They were clean and neatly dressed, and the younger
+one, who did most of the talking, seemed to be quite unusually
+interested in our private history and solicitous for our welfare, and
+the blarney with which her tongue plastered us was the most finished I
+have ever listened to. We thanked her for her good wishes, and were
+about to go on, much pleased at this new demonstration of Irish
+cordiality, when we had a rude awakening.
+
+"Ah, your honour," she said, "would you not be giving me something for
+my poor sister here? You see she is all twisted with rheumatism, and can
+scarcely walk, and the medicine do be costing so much that she often
+must go without it. Just a small coin, God bless ye."
+
+I didn't want to give her anything, for I suspected that she made a
+practice of waylaying passers-by and begging from them; and then I
+looked at the older woman, who was standing by with her hands crossed
+before her, and I saw how the fingers were twisted and withered and how
+the face was drawn with pain--so I compromised by dropping sixpence into
+the outstretched hand.
+
+"If your honour would only be makin' it eightpence now," the woman said
+quickly; "we can get three bottles of castor-oil for eightpence--"
+
+But the other woman stopped her.
+
+"No, no," she protested; "take shame to yourself for askin' the kind
+gentleman for more. We thank your honour, and God bless ye, and may He
+bring ye safe home."
+
+And the other woman joined in the blessings too, and they continued to
+bless us, considerably to our embarrassment, until we were out of
+ear-shot.
+
+Betty had had enough of Ballyshannon; besides, the showers were coming
+with increasing force and frequency; so she elected to go back to the
+railway station and rest, while I wandered about for a last look at the
+town. And now, I suppose, I shall have to say a word about its history.
+
+All this country to the north of Lough Erne is Tyrone--Tir Owen, the
+Province of Owen--and was once a great principality, which stretched
+eastward clear to the shore of the Channel about Belfast. Northwest of
+it, answering roughly to the present county of Donegal, was
+Tyrconnell--Tir Connell, the Province of Connell; and Connell and Owen
+were brothers, sons of Nial of the Nine Hostages, who was King of
+Ireland from 379 to 405, and whose eight sons cut Ireland up between
+them into the principalities which were, in time, by their own
+internecine warfare, to make Ireland incapable of defending herself
+against the invader. Saint Patrick, about 450, found Connell in his
+castle on Lough Erne and baptised him; and then he journeyed north to
+Owen's great fortress, which we shall see before long on a hill
+overlooking Lough Swilly, and baptised him.
+
+Five centuries later, when Brian Boru had brought all Ireland to
+acknowledge his kingship, he decreed that every family should take a
+surname from some distinguished ancestor, and so began the era of the
+O's and the Macs. The two great clans of Tyrone and Tyrconnell chose the
+names of O'Neill and O'Donnell, and the river Erne was the frontier of
+the O'Donnell domain. There was a ford here at Ballyshannon, and so, of
+course, a castle to guard it, and many were the herds of lifted cattle
+which the O'Donnells, sallying south into Sligo, drove back before them
+into Donegal. Cattle was the principal form of property in those old
+days--about the only kind, at least, that could be stolen--and so it was
+always cattle that the raiders went after.
+
+The English brought a great force against the place in 1597, and for
+three days besieged the castle and tried unavailingly to carry it by
+assault; and then the O'Donnell clans poured down from the hills, and
+the English, seeing themselves trapped, tried to cross the river at the
+ford just above the falls; and the strongest managed to get across, but
+the women and the wounded and the weak were swept away.
+
+There is no trace remaining of the castle, but just below the graceful
+bridge of stone which crosses the river is the ford over which the
+English poured that day, and an ugly ford it is, for the water runs deep
+and strong, quickening at its lower edge into the rapids above the
+falls. From the centre of this bridge, some twenty-five years ago, the
+ashes of one of Ireland's truest poets were scattered on the swift,
+smooth-running water and carried down to the sea, and a tablet marks the
+spot:
+
+          WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
+          A Native of This Town
+          Born 1824; died 1889.
+
+          Here once he roved, a happy boy,
+            Along the winding banks of Erne,
+          And now, please God, with finer joy,
+            A fairer world his eyes discern.
+
+It is certainly a halting quatrain, quite unworthy the immortality of
+marble. A couplet from Allingham's own poem in praise of his birthplace
+would have been far more fitting; but I suppose that the lines on the
+tablet were composed by some local dignitary, and that nobody dared tell
+him how bad they were. I know of no more graceful tribute to any town
+than Allingham paid to Ballyshannon in his "Winding Banks of Erne." The
+first stanza gives a savour of its quality:
+
+  Adieu to Ballyshanny, where I was bred and born;
+  Go where I may, I'll think of you, as sure as night and morn:
+  The kindly spot, the friendly town, where everyone is known,
+  And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own;
+  There's not a house or window, there's not a field or hill,
+  But east or west, in foreign lands, I'll recollect them still;
+  I leave my warm heart with you, though my back I'm forced to turn--
+  Adieu to Ballyshanny, and the winding banks of Erne.
+
+You will note that the savour is the same as that of the lines I have
+already quoted describing Abbey Assaroe, and of course the same hand
+wrote them. I wish I could quote the whole poem to Ballyshannon, for it
+is worth quoting, but one more stanza must suffice, the last one:
+
+  If ever I'm a moneyed man, I mean, please God, to cast
+  My golden anchor in the place where youthful years were passed;
+  Though heads that now are black or brown must meanwhile gather grey,
+  New faces rise by every hearth, and old ones drop away--
+  Yet dearer still that Irish hill than all the world beside;
+  It's home, sweet home, where'er I roam, through lands and waters wide.
+  And if the Lord allows me, I surely will return
+  To my native Ballyshanny, and the winding banks of Erne.
+
+His birthplace is not far away--one of a row of plain old stone houses
+standing in the Mall, with a tablet:
+
+          WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
+          Poet
+          Born in This House
+          19th March, 1824
+
+I walked on past it, down to the river below the falls, where, close to
+the water's edge, a seat has been placed under a rustic canopy, and I
+sat there for a long time and watched the foaming water rushing over the
+cliff, with a crash and roar which, as Allingham says, is the voice of
+the town, "solemn, persistent, humming through the air day and night,
+summer and winter. Whenever I think of that town, I seem to hear the
+voice. The river which makes it, runs over rocky ledges into the tide.
+Before, spreads a great ocean in sunshine or storm; behind stretches a
+many-islanded lake. On the south runs a wavy line of blue mountains; and
+on the north, over green, rocky hills, rise peaks of a more distant
+range."
+
+[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF WILLIAM ALLINGHAM]
+
+[Illustration: CASTLE DONEGAL]
+
+It is up from the ocean the salmon come in the spring, seeking a place
+to spawn, and before they can get into the "many-islanded lake," they
+have to pass the falls. It is a ten-foot leap, even at flood-tide; but
+they take it, and a beautiful sight it must be to see them do it. But I
+saw none that day. Just below the falls is a little island, Inis-Saimer,
+said to be the spot where the Firbolgs, the earliest inhabitants of
+Ireland, first touched foot to Irish soil. It is given over now to some
+small buildings connected with the fishery, which is very valuable.
+There were a number of boats out, that day, with fishermen in them
+patiently whipping the water, but I did not see any fish caught.
+
+Ballyshannon is not, I judge, so prosperous as it once was, for across
+the river from where I sat were a number of tall mills and warehouses,
+empty and evidently dropping to decay. But it is more bustling than many
+other towns in Ireland, and has perhaps not sunk quite so deeply into
+the Slough of Despond. And then again, as the towering mass of the
+Belfast Bank in the main street warned me as I walked back through the
+village, we were getting nearer to the hustling north!
+
+The little train we were to take for Donegal backed up to the platform
+soon after I reached the station. It is a narrow-gauge road, and the
+coaches are miniature affairs, scarcely high enough to stand up in, as
+we found when we entered. And just then the heavens opened, and the rain
+poured down in sheets. We closed door and windows, and congratulated
+ourselves that we were snug and dry--and then the other passengers began
+to arrive, soaked through and dripping wet; and as the train consisted
+of only two coaches, our compartment was soon invaded by two women and
+two girls, whose gowns were fairly plastered to them. They dried
+themselves as well as they could, but little streams of water continued
+to trickle off of them for half an hour.
+
+The road runs through a bare, bleak valley for the first part of the
+way, clinging perilously to the hillside, and then climbs steeply over
+the watershed into the valley of the Ballintra, which is green and
+smiling and apparently prosperous; and at last winds down along the
+shore of Donegal Bay, through a district of orchards and lush meadows
+and beautiful hedges and comfortable houses, and so into the picturesque
+town--Dunna-Gall, the Fort of the Strangers--the ancient seat of the
+O'Donnells; but to me Donegal, town and county, has one connotation
+which overshadows all others, and that is with Father O'Flynn. Just
+where he lived I don't know, but the tribute which Alfred Perceval
+Graves paid him is the most eloquent ever paid in rhyme to any
+priest--and, as a comment upon the efforts of selfish politicians to fan
+the flame of religious bigotry in Ireland, it is worth remembering that
+it was written by a Protestant! Do you know the poem? Well, if you do,
+you will be glad to read it again, and if you do not, you will have
+every reason to thank me for introducing you to it; so, just to give
+myself the pleasure of writing it, I am going to quote it entire, for it
+would be a crime to leave out a line of it.
+
+FATHER O'FLYNN
+
+    Of priests we can offer a charmin' variety,
+    Far renowned for larnin' and piety;
+    Still, I'd advance ye widout impropriety,
+      Father O'Flynn as the flower of them all.
+          Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn,
+          _Sláinte_ and _sláinte_ and _sláinte_ agin;
+              Powerfulest preacher, and
+              Tinderest teacher, and
+          Kindliest creature in ould Donegal.
+
+    Don't talk of your Provost and Fellows of Trinity,
+    Famous forever at Greek and Latinity,
+    Faix! and the divels and all at Divinity--
+      Father O'Flynn'd make hares of them all!
+          Come, I vinture to give ye my word,
+          Niver the likes of his logic was heard,
+              Down from mythology
+              Into thayology,
+          Troth! and conchology if he'd the call.
+
+    Och! Father O'Flynn, you've the wonderful way wid you,
+    All ould sinners are wishful to pray wid you,
+    All the young childer are wild for to play wid you,
+      You've such a way wid you, Father avick!
+          Still, for all you've so gentle a soul,
+          Gad, you've your flock in the grandest control,
+              Checking the crazy ones,
+              Coaxin' onaisy ones,
+          Liftin' the lazy ones on wid the stick.
+
+    And, though quite avoidin' all foolish frivolity,
+    Still, at all seasons of innocent jollity,
+    Where was the play-boy could claim an equality
+      At comicality, Father, wid you?
+          Once the Bishop looked grave at your jest,
+          Till this remark set him off wid the rest:
+              "Is it lave gaiety
+              All to the laity?
+          Cannot the clargy be Irishmen too?"
+
+There is a quaint old inn in Donegal, with dining and sitting rooms
+crowded with "curiosities" gathered from the four quarters of the globe
+by the proprietor, who was once a soldier; and his daughter looks after
+the comfort of the guests; and we had there that night a most satisfying
+dinner. And then, as it was still quite light, I filled my pipe and
+started out to stroll about the town; but I hadn't gone far when I heard
+a bell being rung with great violence, and when I looked again, I saw
+the small boy who was ringing it; and when he passed me, I asked him
+what the matter was, and he handed me a poster, printed most gorgeously
+in red and black, and these were the first lines of it:
+
+          TOWN HALL, DONEGAL
+
+          Monday Evg., June 23rd, 1913
+
+          MONSTER ATTRACTION
+
+          Powerful Performance!
+          For the Benefit of Mr. Joe Cullen,
+          The Donegal Old Favourite
+          On which occasion the ladies and
+          gentlemen of the Donegal Amateur
+          Dramatic and Variety Club will
+          Appear.
+
+Then followed the programme. There were to be four scenes from "The Ever
+Popular Play Entitled Robert Emmet," also "The Laughable Sketch Entitled
+The Cottage by the Sea," also "The Irish Farce, Miss Muldowedy from
+Ireland," the whole to be interspersed with variety turns by members of
+the club, as well as Mr. Cullen. "Don't Miss This Treat," the poster
+concluded. "Motto, 'Fun without Vulgarity.'"
+
+Blessing the chance which had brought us to Donegal upon this day, I
+hastened back to the hotel, showed the poster to Betty, and three
+minutes later, we were sallying forth in quest of the town-hall, whose
+entrance proved to be up a little court just across the street. The
+prices of admission, so the bill announced, were "2s., 1s. and 6d.," and
+I consulted with the abashed young man at the door as to which seats we
+should take. He advised the shilling ones, and we thereupon paid and
+entered. I wondered afterwards where the two shilling seats were, for
+the shilling ones were the best in the house.
+
+Although it was nearly time for the performance to begin, we were almost
+the first arrivals; but we soon heard heavy feet mounting the stair, and
+quite a crowd of men and boys began to file into the sixpenny seats at
+the rear. A few girls and women came forward into the shilling seats;
+but from the look of them, I suspected that they were deadheads, and I
+fear that Mr. Cullen did not reap a great fortune from that benefit!
+
+There was a tiny stage at one end of the hall, and the stage-manager,
+after the habit of all such, was having his troubles, for he could not
+get the footlights--a strip of gas-pipe with holes in it--to work. We
+thought for a while that he was going to blow himself up, and the whole
+house along with him; but he gave up the struggle, at last; the pianist
+played an overture, and the curtain rose.
+
+I have never seen the whole of "Robert Emmet," but from what I saw of it
+that night, I judge that it must have been written for a star, for
+nobody does much talking except Emmet himself. He, however, does a lot;
+and it was fortunate that, in this instance, he was impersonated by Mr.
+Cullen, for I am sure none of the other actors could have learned the
+part. Mr. Cullen proved to be a hatchet-faced old gentleman without any
+teeth; but he had a pleasing voice, and Emmet's grandiloquent speech
+from the dock was greeted with applause.
+
+Of the two farces I will say nothing, except that they were really not
+so bad as one would expect, once the actors had recovered from their
+embarrassment when they perceived two strangers present; but the feature
+of the evening was the songs, which were many and various and
+well-rendered. I remember only one of them, which we then heard for the
+first time, but which we were to hear many times thereafter, a lilting,
+catchy air, in which the audience assisted with the chorus, which ran
+something like this:
+
+          It's a long way to Tipperary,
+            It's a long way to go;
+          It's a long way to Tipperary,
+            The sweetest land I know.
+          Good-bye, Piccadilly,
+            Farewell, Leicester Square;
+          It's a long, long way to Tipperary,
+            But my heart is there.
+
+It is the old, old theme of the Irish exile longing for home; the theme
+of I know not how many poems, from the time of St. Columba, banished
+overseas and "thinking long" of
+
+          Derry mine, my own oak grove,
+          Little cell, my home, my love;
+
+down through Father Dollard's lilting "Song of the Little Villages":
+
+    The pleasant little villages that grace the Irish glynns
+    Down among the wheat-fields--up amid the whins;
+    The little white-walled villages, crowding close together,
+    Clinging to the Old Sod in spite of wind and weather:
+        Ballytarsney, Ballymore, Ballyboden, Boyle,
+        Ballingarry, Ballymagorry by the Banks of Foyle,
+        Ballylaneen, Ballyporeen, Bansha, Ballysadare,
+        Ballybrack, Ballinalack, Barna, Ballyclare,
+
+to the tender verses by Stephen Gwynne with which I will close this
+already, perhaps, too-poetical chapter:
+
+    Ireland, oh, Ireland! centre of my longings,
+      Country of my fathers, home of my heart,
+    Overseas you call me, "Why an exile from me?
+      Wherefore sea-severed, long leagues apart?"
+
+    As the shining salmon, homeless in the sea-depths,
+      Hears the river call him, scents out the land,
+    Leaps and rejoices in the meeting of the waters,
+      Breasts weir and torrent, nests him in the sand;
+
+    Lives there and loves; yet with the year's returning,
+      Rusting in his river, pines for the sea;
+    Sweeps down again to the ripple of the tideway,
+      Roamer of the ocean, vagabond and free.
+
+    Wanderer am I, like the salmon of thy rivers;
+      London is my ocean, murmurous and deep,
+    Tossing and vast; yet through the roar of London
+      Reaches me thy summons, calls me in sleep.
+
+    Pearly are the skies in the country of my fathers,
+      Purple are thy mountains, home of my heart:
+    Mother of my yearning, love of all my longings,
+      Keep me in remembrance, long leagues apart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE MAIDEN CITY
+
+
+ASs far back as its history goes, Donegal was the seat of the
+O'Donnells, that powerful clan of which the choicest flowers were Hugh
+Roe and Red Hugh, and here they had their castle, on a small bluff
+overlooking the waters of the River Eask. It still stands there,
+remarkably well-preserved considering its vicissitudes, one of the
+handsomest semi-fortified buildings in existence anywhere. It is by far
+the most interesting thing to be seen in the town of Donegal, and we set
+out for it immediately after breakfast next morning.
+
+Donegal we found by daylight to be a pleasant little town, with a single
+street of two-storied houses curving down over the hill toward the
+river, and a few narrow lanes branching off from it, after the
+traditional fashion of the Irish village. The castle is nestled in a
+bend of the river, which defends it on two sides, and there is still a
+trace of the moat which used to defend the other two. The best view of
+it is from the bridge crossing the river, and surprisingly beautiful it
+is, with its gabled towers and square bartizan turrets and mullioned
+windows. The picture opposite this page shows how the castle looks from
+the land side, with one of the square turrets, perfectly preserved; but
+the mullioned windows are the most striking feature of this side of the
+building, which was the domestic side, and so had larger openings than
+the one overlooking the river, which was more open to attack.
+
+Just when the castle was built no one knows, but it was thoroughly
+restored and largely added to by Sir Basil Brooke, to whom it was
+granted after the confiscation in 1610, when the power of the O'Donnells
+was finally broken. Red Hugh was really the last of the line, and his
+short life of twenty-eight years was more crowded with adventure than
+that of most heroes of romance.
+
+He was the son of Hugh O'Donnell, head of the clan, and of a
+high-spirited daughter of the Lord of the Isles, Innen Dhu Mac Donnell,
+whom Hugh of the Red Hair resembled in more ways than one. He was
+kidnapped by the English when only thirteen, and taken to Dublin and
+imprisoned in the castle there, as a hostage for his father's good
+behaviour. A year later, he managed to escape; was recaptured, escaped
+again; and, by remarkable cunning and daring, eluded the pursuers who
+were close after him, and got through to Donegal.
+
+He arrived there to find a great force of English camped about the
+place; but, half dead with exposure as he was, he mustered a force of
+his clansmen, marched on the English and put them to rout--a good
+beginning for a boy of fourteen. From that time forward, he was the
+firebrand which kept all Ireland alight against the invaders; but at
+last, as has happened so frequently in Irish history, a traitor in his
+own camp overthrew him--his cousin and brother-in-law, Nial Garv the
+Fierce, who, being older than Hugh, thought that he should have had the
+O'Donnellship and been crowned at the Rock of Doon, and so grew jealous
+of the red haired lad, and ended by going over to the English.
+
+There was red battle between them after that, and the English were
+treated to the pleasant spectacle of Irishmen slaying each other; but
+Hugh was called away to Kinsale to join the Spaniards, stopping at Holy
+Cross on the way, as we have seen, for the Abbot's blessing, and then
+going on to a ruinous defeat. He went to Spain, after that, to plead for
+more help, and died there, of poison it is said, at the age of
+twenty-eight, and lies buried at Valladolid.
+
+His brother, Rory O'Donnell, was recognised by the English and made Earl
+of Tyrconnell, but at the end of a year or two he found himself so
+surrounded with intrigue that, in fear for his life, he gathered up such
+of his belongings as he could and fled the country. O'Neill, Earl of
+Tyrone, fled with him, and this "flight of the earls" was the end of
+Irish power in the north of Ireland, for their estates were declared
+forfeit, and divided among adherents of the English court. Nial Garv,
+who had contributed so much to the O'Donnells' overthrow, put in a claim
+for their estates, but was arrested and sent to the Tower of London and
+left to rot there till he died. Such was the end of Donegal as the seat
+of a Celtic Princedom, for the new prince was an Englishman, Sir Basil
+Brooke.
+
+It is his imprint you will see upon the castle as it exists
+to-day--particularly in the great sculptured chimney-piece which stands
+in what was once the banqueting hall, and which is a marvel of
+elaborate, though not very finished, carving. Brooke was a Catholic and
+a royalist, a supporter of Charles I, and after the fall of that unlucky
+monarch, was imprisoned in the Tower and his estate declared forfeited
+to the Parliament. The old castle, now the property of the Earl of
+Arran, fell gradually to ruin, until to-day only the shell remains.
+
+Next to the chimney-piece, the most interesting feature of the interior
+is the vaulting of the lower rooms, which are lighted only by narrow
+slits like loopholes. This vaulting is made of flat stones, an inch or
+two in thickness, set on edge, and though rough enough, is as firm
+to-day as the day it was put in place.
+
+As we came out of the grounds, we were accosted by an old man with a
+flowing white beard, who suggested that we visit his tweed depot, just
+across the street, and see for ourselves what Donegal tweeds really
+were. He was so pleasant about it that we couldn't refuse; and to say
+that we were astonished when we stepped inside his shop would be putting
+it mildly, for there, in that village of twelve hundred people, was the
+largest stock of tweeds and other Irish weaves that I have ever seen.
+The place was fairly jammed with great rolls of cloth; and when we said
+we weren't especially interested in tweeds, but might be in a
+steamer-rug, he led us up to a wide balcony and produced rug after rug;
+beautiful rugs, soft and thick, pure wool in ever fibre. Of course we
+succumbed!
+
+Mr. Timony, for such was the old man's name, was very proud of his shop,
+as he had a right to be, and of his American custom. He told us that
+President Woodrow Wilson and William Randolph Hearst had both been
+among his visitors, and he evidently considered them equally
+distinguished!
+
+It had begun to shower again by the time we tore ourselves away from Mr.
+Timony, and Betty elected to return to the hotel; but I wanted to see
+the ruins of the old abbey, a little way down the river, and walked out
+to it. There is scarcely more left of it than there is of Assaroe--just
+some fragments of ivy-clad wall standing in the midst of a graveyard, as
+may be seen from the picture opposite page 438. The graveyard is still
+used, and when I got there, I found three men trying to decide on the
+site for a grave, while the diggers stood by, with their long-handled
+spades, waiting the word to begin. They had a hard time finding a place,
+for the graveyard is crowded, like most Irish ones, and they wandered
+about from place to place for quite a while.
+
+That so little is left of the abbey is due to the fact that in 1601,
+Nial Garv took possession of the place, and Red Hugh besieged him there,
+and in some way Garv's store of gunpowder exploded and tore the
+buildings to pieces. All of which is told in that priceless volume of
+Irish history which was written here, the "Annals of the Four Masters,"
+a book of eleven hundred quarto pages, which, by some miracle of luck,
+has been preserved. The "four masters" were four monks of the abbey, and
+it is largely to their labours we owe what history we have of the times
+in which they lived.
+
+There are a few arches of the cloisters still standing, and they
+resemble those at Sligo not only in shape and character, but also in the
+fact that repeated burials have raised the ground about them many feet
+above its ancient level, so that what was once a lofty arched doorway
+can now be passed only by stooping low. Hugh Roe O'Donnell and his wife,
+Fingalla, who founded the monastery for the Franciscans in 1474, are
+said to be buried here, but I did not find their graves. There is also a
+legend that castle and abbey were at one time connected by a secret
+passage, but I scarcely believe it, for they are a long way apart.
+
+The rain was sheeting down in earnest when I finally left the place, but
+the gravediggers were bending to their task, quite oblivious of the
+downpour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We bade good-bye to Donegal that afternoon, and took train for
+Londonderry and the "Black North." And it was not long before we
+realised that we had turned our backs upon the Ireland of the Irish and
+entered the Ireland of the English and the Scotch--a very different
+country!
+
+Just outside of Donegal, we witnessed one of those leave-takings, which
+have occurred a million times in Ireland during the past fifty years. As
+the train stopped at a little station, we saw that the platform was
+crowded, and then we perceived the cause. A boy and two girls, some
+seventeen or eighteen years old, were setting out for Derry to take ship
+for America, and their relatives and friends had come down to see them
+off. There were tears in every eye, and if blessings have any virtue,
+enough were showered on that trio that afternoon to see them safely
+through life.
+
+The guard came along presently, and hustled them into the compartment
+ahead of ours--he had seen such scenes a hundred times, I suppose, and
+had long since ceased to be impressed by them--and then the three
+children hung out of the door and took a last look at their people; and
+then the engine whistled and the train started slowly, and one man, his
+face working convulsively, began to run along beside it, then suddenly
+recollected himself, and stopped with a jerk.
+
+The whole country-side must have known that the three were going, for
+every house for miles had a group of men and women out to wave at them
+as the train passed; and the exiles waved and waved back, and leaned out
+and gazed at the country they were leaving, as though to impress its
+every feature on their minds.
+
+And indeed it is a beautiful country, for the road follows the valley of
+the Eask, and presently Lough Eask opened before us, lying in a deep
+basin at the foot of lofty hills--such hills as cover the whole of
+Donegal and make it one of the most picturesque of Irish counties.
+Beyond the lake, the line traverses one of the wildest valleys we had
+seen in Ireland, the Gap of Barnesmore--a bleak, rock-strewn defile,
+with a little stream running at the bottom and the post-road following
+its windings; but the railway line has been laid, most perilously it
+seemed, right along the face of the mountain. There were evidences of
+land-slips here and there, and it was plain that great boulders were
+always rolling down, so I should fancy that a sharp watch has to be kept
+on those five miles of road-bed. But we got across without accident, and
+the views out over the valley and the Donegal mountains were superb--I
+only wish we had had time to explore them more thoroughly.
+
+Just beyond the gap, the line passes Lough Mourne, a melancholy little
+lake set in a framework of bleak hills, and then runs on across a still
+bleaker moor; but gradually, as the hills are left behind, the character
+of the country changes, the houses become more numerous, the fields
+larger and less stony, one sees an orchard here and there--and then,
+quite suddenly, the whole landscape becomes prosperous and pastoral, and
+we caught our first glimpse of wide fields covered with a light and
+vivid green, which we knew was the green of flax. After that, there was
+no time, until we left Ireland, that this new and lovely tint was not
+among the other tints of whatever landscape we might be looking at.
+
+We paused for a moment at the prosperous little town of Stranorlar, and
+then went on northwards, past one village after another, along the
+valley of the Finn, to Strabane--like Leenane, pronounced to rhyme with
+"fan." We had an hour or two to wait here, so we walked up into the
+town, and had lunch at a pleasant inn, and then took a look about the
+place; and I think it was then we began to realise that the picturesque
+part of Ireland was behind us. Certainly there is nothing picturesque
+about Strabane, although it resembles most other Irish towns in having a
+huge workhouse and jail. But it has also some large shirt-factories,
+whence came the whirr of machinery, and where we could see the girls and
+women in long rows bending to their tasks; and it has great ware-houses,
+not falling to ruin like those of Galway and Westport and Ballyshannon,
+but filled with merchandise and busy with men and drays. We were so
+unaccustomed to such a sight that we stopped and looked at it for quite
+a while.
+
+It is a fifteen mile run from Strabane to Derry, for the most part along
+the bank of the Foyle, through a beautiful and prosperous country, with
+many villages clustered among the trees; and at six o'clock we reached
+the "Maiden City,"--by far the busiest town we had seen since Dublin. In
+fact, as we turned up past the old walls and came to the centre of the
+town, the bustle of business and roar of traffic seemed to me to surpass
+Dublin; and more than once, when we were settled in our room, the
+unaccustomed noise drew us to the window to see what was going on. We
+went out, presently, to see that portion of the town which stands within
+the ancient walls; but before I describe that excursion, I shall have to
+tell something of what those walls stand for.
+
+Fourteen hundred years ago--in 546, to be exact--Columba, greatest of
+Irish saints after Patrick and Brigid, passed this way, and stopping in
+the oak grove which clothed the hill on which the town now stands, was
+so impressed with the lovely situation, that he founded an abbey there,
+which was known as Daire-Columbkille--Columba's Oak-grove.
+
+There was another reason, perhaps, besides the beauty of the spot, which
+persuaded the Saint to choose this site for his monastery, and that was
+the nearness of the great fort on Elagh mountain, the stronghold of the
+Lord of Tyrone. He doubtless hoped that, in the shadow of that mighty
+cashel, his abbey would be safe from spoliation; but in this he was
+disappointed, for its position on a navigable river, so close to the
+sea, made it easy prey to the Danes and the Saxons, and they sailed up
+to it time and again and laid it waste. But it grew in importance in
+spite of repeated burnings, and it held off the English longer than
+most, for, though it was plundered by Strongbow's men in 1195, and
+included in the grant to Richard de Burgo, the Red Earl of Ulster, in
+1311, it was not until 1609, two years after that "flight of the earls"
+which left Tyrone and Tyrconnell confiscated to the English, that it was
+really conquered.
+
+In confiscating this vast domain, as in all previous and subsequent
+confiscations in Ireland, the English crown proceeded upon the theory
+that all the land a chief ruled over belonged to that chief; but in
+Ireland this was not at all the case, for there the land belonged, and
+always had belonged, not to the chief but to his people. This, however,
+was not allowed to interfere in any way with its re-apportionment among
+court favourites and companies of adventurers; and Derry, together with
+a vast tract of land about it, was granted to the Corporation of London,
+which thereupon proceeded to re-name it Londonderry, in token of its
+subserviency. Three years later, the Irish Society for the New
+Plantation in Ulster was formed, and to it was granted the towns of
+Coleraine and Londonderry, with seven thousand acres of land and the
+fisheries of the Foyle and the Bann. The society was pledged to enclose
+Derry with walls, and these were laid out and built in 1617. They were
+strong and serviceable, as may be seen to this day, and so wide that a
+carriage and four could drive along the top of them.
+
+The new colonists were mostly Protestants, and in the war which soon
+followed between King Charles and the Parliament naturally chose the
+Republican side, so that Derry quickly became the centre of resistance
+to royalty in Ulster. The town prospered under the Commonwealth, but the
+ups and downs of Irish politics after the Restoration kept it in a
+perpetual turmoil.
+
+I have already told how, after the fall of Charles I, Cromwell's army
+conquered Ireland, drove the Irish to the hills west of the Shannon, and
+divided the fertile land among the Puritan soldiers and the adherents of
+the Parliament. When Charles II was restored to the throne, part of the
+price exacted from him for that restoration was the so-called Act of
+Settlement, in which this division of the land among its Protestant
+conquerors was confirmed. That the Irish should protest against the
+injustice of this was natural enough; and that, once seated on the
+throne, the king should give ear to the protestations was natural too,
+since the Irish had been his father's allies and had lost their lands in
+fighting his battles for him. So, while Irish Catholic Ireland brought
+heavy pressure to bear on the king, English Protestant Ireland was on
+pins and needles through fear of what might happen. Finally the
+Cromwellians agreed to surrender a third of the estates in their
+possession, and on this basis peace of a sort was patched up.
+
+That was in 1665, and it looked for a while as though Protestant and
+Catholic would thereafter be able to live together in amity, for there
+was a general revival of industry which resulted in a prosperity the
+country had seldom known, and a consequent abatement of religious
+discord. But Charles died, and his brother, James II, at once proceeded
+to remodel the Irish army upon a Catholic basis, even going so far as
+partially to disarm the Protestants, who of course immediately concluded
+that they were all going to be massacred in revenge for Drogheda.
+
+But James soon found himself facing a rebellion in England, and in 1688
+a large force of Irish troops were transported to England to help him
+hold his throne. Among these troops was the regiment which had been
+stationed at Derry; and when, alarmed at the attitude of the town, the
+king attempted to throw another garrison into it, rebellion flamed up
+swift and fierce, and some apprentice boys seized the keys of the city
+gates and closed and locked them in the face of the royal army.
+Enniskillen followed suit, and everywhere throughout the north of
+Ireland, the Protestants began to form town companies and to arm and
+drill for their own defence. Thus was organised the first "army of
+Ulster"! It was soon to be needed--as I hope and believe the latest one
+will never be!
+
+Certain English leaders, determined to get rid of James at any cost, had
+invited William Prince of Orange to bring an army to England to restore
+liberty and rescue Protestantism from the destruction which seemed to
+threaten it. William, it should be remembered, stood very near the
+English throne, for his mother was the eldest daughter of Charles I, and
+his wife was his own cousin, the eldest daughter of Charles's son, James
+II. William, who had been expecting such an invitation, at once gathered
+a great army together and landed in England in November. James, finding
+himself detested and deserted by all parties, fled to France; and
+William and Mary were proclaimed King and Queen of Great Britain and
+Ireland.
+
+Ireland, of course, was still in rebellion. There is no more pathetic
+page of Irish history than that which tells of Irish loyalty to the
+Stuarts; for the Stuarts cared nothing for Ireland, but only for
+themselves, and used the Irish merely as pawns in their selfish struggle
+for power. The poor Irish stood firm for James, and got a great army
+together; and James came over from France with a small French force, and
+together they marched against Derry, which the Protestants still held,
+but which James expected to capture with little difficulty. The
+commander at Derry was a man named Robert Lundy, a Protestant and
+soldier of some experience, but he seems to have been a Jacobite at
+heart for, after one skirmish near Strabane, he held a council of war,
+recommended immediate surrender, ordered that there should be no firing,
+and sent word to James that the city was ready to submit. But he had
+reckoned without Derry's militant spirit; for when news of his decision
+got abroad, the people sprang to arms, and Lundy escaped with his life
+only by fleeing in disguise.
+
+Meanwhile, the Rev. George Walker and Major Henry Baker and Captain Adam
+Murray, three militants to the backbone, took charge of affairs and put
+Derry in the best state of defence possible; but the outlook was not
+bright. Military opinion was agreed that the town could not hold out
+against such an army as James was bringing against it; it seemed likely
+that to defend it would be to invite another Drogheda; and while the
+debate in the town council was still raging, James appeared under the
+walls expecting an immediate surrender.
+
+Negotiations were begun; but the sight of the Catholic army was the last
+thing needed to inflame the townsmen. A group of them managed to get a
+cannon pointed in the king's direction and touched it off. The ball is
+said to have passed so close to him that the wind of it blew off his
+hat; at any rate, the negotiations ended then and there, and with a
+shout of "No surrender!" Derry prepared for the struggle.
+
+That was the eighteenth day of April, 1689, and for fifteen weeks the
+town held out against a strict siege, which nothing could break. There
+were assaults and sallies, a bombardment which killed many people--all
+the accompaniments of a siege, with the final accompaniment of famine.
+It was the old story of horseflesh, mice and rats and even salted hides
+being greedily devoured; of a garrison thinning wofully from death and
+disease; but though there seemed to be no choice except starvation or
+surrender, nobody thought of surrender. And then, on Sunday, July 28th,
+a relief fleet which had been hovering uncertainly at the mouth of the
+harbour for some weeks, ran the batteries, broke the boom across the
+river, swept up to the city, and the siege was ended.
+
+Such was the siege of Derry. A thousand incidents, impossible to set
+down here, are treasured in the minds of every inhabitant; and, lest the
+great event should ever be forgotten, two anniversaries connected with
+it are celebrated every year, on December 18th the Closing of the Gates
+against the King's Army, and on August 12th the Raising of the Siege.
+There are processions and meetings and speeches of a very Protestant
+character, and at the December festival the effigy of the perfidious
+Lundy is hanged and burnt--not without some little rioting, for rather
+more than half the population of Derry is Catholic and Nationalist. One
+of the popular airs upon these occasions is, of course, "Boyne Water,"
+and another is about Derry herself. It is called
+
+
+THE MAIDEN CITY
+
+  Where Foyle his swelling waters rolls northward to the main,
+  Here, Queen of Erin's daughters, fair Derry fixed her reign;
+  A holy temple crowned her, and commerce graced her street,
+  A rampart wall was round her, the river at her feet;
+  And here she sat alone, boys, and, looking from the hill,
+  Vowed the Maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.
+
+  From Antrim crossing over, in famous eighty-eight,
+  A plumed and belted lover came to the Ferry Gate:
+  She summoned to defend her our sires--a beardless race--
+  They shouted "No Surrender!" and slammed it in his face.
+  Then, in a quiet tone, boys, they told him 'twas their will
+  That the Maiden on her throne, boys, should be a Maiden still.
+
+  Next, crushing all before him, a kingly wooer came
+  (The royal banner o'er him blushed crimson deep for shame);
+  He showed the Pope's commission, nor dreamed to be refused;
+  She pitied his condition, but begged to stand excused.
+  In short, the fact is known, boys, she chased him from the hill,
+  For the Maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.
+
+  On our peaceful sires descending, 'twas then the tempest broke,
+  Their peaceful dwellings rending, 'mid blood and flame and smoke.
+  That hallowed graveyard yonder swells with the slaughtered dead--
+  O brothers! pause and ponder--it was for us they bled;
+  And while their gift we own, boys--the fane that tops our hill--
+  Oh! the Maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still!
+
+  Nor wily tongue shall move us, nor tyrant arm affright,
+  We'll look to One above us who ne'er forsook the right;
+  Who will, may crouch and tender the birthright of the free,
+  But, brothers, "No Surrender!" no compromise for me!
+  We want no barrier stone, boys, no gates to guard the hill,
+  Yet the Maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still!
+
+There is a good marching song, if there ever was one--a song to make the
+heart leap and the spirit sing, when a thousand voices roar it in
+unison; and it very fairly represents the spirit of Derry and of the
+whole of Protestant Ulster--a spirit which is admirable, though often
+mistaken, and sometimes made use of for base and selfish ends. The song
+was written by a woman, a native of Derry, of course, Charlotte Tonna,
+some sixty years ago; and it is a song of which Ireland, north and
+south, should be proud.
+
+Let me tell here, as briefly as may be, the rest of the story of that
+ill-fated rebellion, of which Derry wrote one terrific chapter, for
+unless we know it, it will be impossible for us to understand Ulster.
+
+The relief of the Maiden City was followed by the complete defeat of the
+royal army before Enniskillen, and no further attempt was made to
+subjugate the north of Ireland. James took up headquarters at Dublin,
+and every nerve was strained to recruit an army capable of withstanding
+the one which William was certain to bring into Ireland. The king of
+France sent seven thousand veterans, with a park of artillery and large
+stores of arms and ammunition, every device of religious and racial
+hatred was employed to persuade Irishmen to enlist; so that when, on
+June 30, 1690, the Protestant and Catholic armies stood facing each
+other on either side Boyne River, a few miles above Drogheda, the
+Protestants had no very great numerical advantage. In discipline and
+general efficiency, however, their advantage was immense, and the odds
+against James were so great that it was folly for him to risk a battle;
+but he could not make up his mind what to do, and in consequence, when
+William threw his troops across the river, he caught the Irish
+unprepared, and defeated them after a brisk engagement.
+
+James was the first to gallop from the field. He reached Dublin that
+night, snatched a few hours' rest, and then pressed on to Waterford,
+where he took ship for France. Deprived of their cowardly leader, and
+perhaps with some comprehension of how they had been betrayed, the Irish
+would have been glad to lay down their arms on terms of a general
+amnesty, which William, for his part, was willing to grant. But the
+English settlers intervened. They had been compelled to restore to the
+Irish a third of the estates which the Commonwealth had confiscated;
+there were thousands of other fertile acres which the settlers coveted;
+and, as a result of their influence, the amnesty, when finally
+published, was confined to the tenant and the landless man. In
+consequence, the Irish army was held together by Tyrconnell and
+Sarsfield, and the rebellion did not end until Athlone, Cork, Kinsale,
+Limerick, and finally Galway had been captured by the English. The
+Irish troops were permitted to go to France and enlist in the king's
+army, as has been told already; and so ended the hope of placing a
+Catholic monarch on the English throne. So ended, too, for more than two
+centuries, Catholic liberty in Ireland.
+
+It is this Protestant triumph which is so dear to Ulster, and which the
+walls of Derry have been preserved to commemorate. Their preservation is
+a great inconvenience to the inhabitants of that town, but any one who
+proposed to remove them would be treated as a traitor. They circle the
+steep hill upon which the oldest part of the town is built, and when one
+wishes to enter it, one must go around to one of the gates. There are
+seven gates, now, instead of the original four; but it takes quite a
+walk, sometimes, to get to one, for the walls are something over a mile
+around. But no patriotic resident would think of objecting to
+this--indeed, the walk gives him time to meditate upon his city's glory
+and to thank the Lord that he was born there. I suspect that the
+Catholics of Derry are just as proud of the walls as the Protestants
+are.
+
+It so happened that there was a gate not far from our hotel, so we
+passed through it, and found ourselves confronted by one of the steepest
+streets I have ever seen. The hill on which the old citadel was built
+slopes very abruptly on this side toward the river, and no attempt has
+been made to cut it down. We managed to climb it, and came out upon the
+so-called Diamond--the square at the centre of the town where the old
+town hall once stood, but which has now, to quote Murray, "been
+converted into a pleasant garden by the London Companies." For it
+should be remembered that the grant made to the London Companies three
+hundred years ago is still in force.
+
+The Diamond is the heart of the town, and from it four arteries radiate,
+running to the four original gates; other smaller streets zig-zag away
+in various directions, and everywhere is the vigorous flow of life and
+trade. The shops are bright and attractive, and that evening crowds of
+girls, freed from the day's labour in the factories, were loitering past
+them, arm in arm, staring in at the windows and chattering among
+themselves. They were distinctly livelier than the factory girls of
+Athlone, and I judge that life is easier for them and that they are
+better paid.
+
+We walked about for a long time, and then, for want of something better
+to do, went to a moving-picture show. I have forgotten all the pictures
+but two--a meeting of the Knights of the Garter at Windsor and a review
+of a body of English cavalry. In the former, King George and Queen Mary
+twice passed slowly before the audience; in the latter, the king, on a
+spirited horse, cantered down the field and then took his station in the
+foreground while his troops galloped past. It was a stirring scene; but
+the audience watched it in stony, almost breathless silence, without the
+shadow of applause--and this in "loyal Derry"! I am inclined to think
+that, with reference to England, the north of Ireland and the south of
+Ireland are "sisters under their skins."
+
+We had been wondering, during the final reel, how we were going to find
+our way back to the hotel through the dark and unfamiliar streets, for
+it was nearly ten o'clock; and we came out into them with a start of
+astonishment, for it was still quite light, with the street lights not
+yet on. So we loitered about for half an hour longer; and then, from the
+balcony in front of our window, sat watching for an hour more the
+fascinating life flowing past below us.
+
+One feature of it was a boy quartette,--one of the boys with a clear,
+high soprano voice,--which sang very sweetly, "It's a long way to
+Tipperary"; and then, just as we began to think everybody had gone to
+bed, there came a blast of martial music down the street, and the tramp
+of feet, and a company of men swung past, going heaven knows where; but
+the fife-and-drum corps which marched at their head was making the
+windows rattle with
+
+    "The Maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still!"
+
+It was the first of many such processions we were to see during our
+remaining weeks in Ireland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH
+
+
+DERRY has a charm--the charm of the hive--for it is a busy town, and a
+cheerful one. It is only on mooted anniversaries, I fancy, or when some
+fire-brand politician comes to town, that the Protestants and Catholics
+amuse themselves by breaking each other's heads. At other times they
+must work amicably side by side. At least, I saw nobody idle; and
+Catholics and Protestants alike were plainly infected by the same spirit
+of hustle.
+
+The cause of the difference between the north and south of Ireland has
+been hotly debated for a hundred years. Why is the north energetic and
+prosperous, while the south is lazy and poverty-stricken? Some say
+it is the difference in climate, others the difference in religion.
+I could perceive no great difference in the climate, and as for
+religion--strange as it may seem to those who think of Ulster only in
+the light of Orange manifestoes--there are almost as many Catholics as
+Protestants in the north of Ireland. My own opinion is that the Celt is
+easy-going in the south and industrious in the north because of the
+environment. "Canny" is undoubtedly the best of all adjectives to apply
+to the Scotch--they are congenitally thrifty and industrious. The Celt,
+on the other hand, is congenitally easy-going and unambitious. Left to
+himself, among his own people, weighted with centuries of repression, he
+falls into a lethargy from which it is impossible to awaken him--from
+which, I sometimes think, he will never be awakened. But put him in
+another environment, and he soon catches its spirit. At least, his
+children catch it, and their children are confirmed in it--and there you
+are. Put them back in the old environment, and in another generation or
+two they will have slipped back into the old habits of carelessness and
+improvidence. This, it seems to me, is the Irishman's history not only
+in the north of Ireland, but here in America. He is adaptable,
+impressionable, and plastic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It would be absurd for any one to go to Derry without making a circuit
+of the walls, and this we proceeded to do next morning. We mounted them
+at the New Gate, where they are at least twenty-five feet high. There is
+a promenade on top about fifteen feet wide, and along the outer edge the
+old cannon given by the London companies still frown down through the
+embrasures of the battlement. Outside the wall there was originally a
+moat, but this has disappeared, and so have many of the old bastions. A
+few of them still remain--the double bastion where the fruitful gallows
+stood, and from which the noisy old gun, affectionately christened
+"Roaring Meg," still points out over the town. And back of the
+cathedral, the old wall stands as it stood during the siege, with its
+high protecting parapet, crowned with little loop-holed turrets.
+
+The cathedral itself is a quaint, squat structure, with pinnacled tower,
+standing in the midst of a crowded graveyard, the most prominent object
+in which is an obelisk erected over the bodies of those who fell in the
+siege. The inscription, as is fitting, is long and eloquent. The church
+itself is comparatively modern and uninteresting, but it is filled with
+trophies of the siege--a bomb-shell containing a summons to surrender
+which fell in the cathedral yard, the flags taken from the French during
+a sally, memorials of the Rev. Mr. Walker, and so on. It is still called
+after St. Columba, although the abbey built by the Saint stood outside
+the present walls.
+
+A little distance past the cathedral is another bastion which has been
+turned into a foundation for the great monument to Walker--a fluted
+column ninety feet high, surmounted by a statue of the hero, his Bible
+in one hand. Time was when he held a sword in the other, but legend has
+it that the sword fell with a crash on the day that O'Connell won
+Catholic emancipation for Ireland.
+
+A fierce controversy has raged about the part Walker really played in
+the siege; and it is probable that he at least shared the honours with
+Murray and Baker. However that may be, he must have been an inspiring
+figure, as he walked about the walls, with his white hair and
+impassioned face and commanding vigour--a vigour which his seventy-two
+years seem nowise to have impaired; and his end was inspiring, too, for
+he did not rest quietly at home, content with his laurels, as most men
+would have done. Instead, he joined William's army, was in the forefront
+at the Battle of the Boyne, and managed to get killed there while
+exhorting the troops to do their duty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The town of Derry has long since outgrown the old walls, but there is
+little else worth seeing there, unless one is interested in a busy
+port, or in humming factories, or rumbling mills, or clattering
+foundries. Of these there is full store. But a few miles to the west, on
+the summit of a hill looking down upon Lough Swilly, is the cashel which
+was once the stronghold of the Kings of Ulster, and for it I set out
+that afternoon.
+
+Murray, with that vagueness delightful in the Irish but exasperating in
+a guide-book, remarks that "it can be reached from Bridge End Station on
+the Buncrana line," so I proceeded to the station of the Buncrana line
+on the outskirts of the town, and bought a ticket to Bridge End Station.
+The ticket seller had apparently never heard of the Grainan of Aileach,
+as the cashel is called, and seemed rather to doubt if such a thing
+existed at all; but I determined to trust to luck, and took my seat in
+the little train which presently backed in along the platform.
+
+The Buncrana line is, I judge, a small affair; at any rate, the train
+was very primitive, and the two men who shared the compartment with me
+complained bitterly of the poor service the railroads give the people of
+Ireland. They said it was a shame and a disgrace, and that no free
+people would put up with the insults and ignominy which the railroads
+heap upon the Irish, and much more to the same effect. I had heard this
+complaint before and have read it in more than one book; but I never had
+any real cause of complaint myself. Beyond a tendency to let the
+passengers look out for themselves, the guards are as courteous as
+guards anywhere; and only once, on the occasion of the race-meeting at
+Charleville, did we suffer from crowding. This was not because we
+travelled first, because we didn't--we travelled second; and when I was
+alone, I always travelled third, as I would advise any one to do who
+wishes really to meet the people.
+
+Bridge End Station is only a few minutes' run from Derry, and when I got
+off there, I asked the man who took my ticket if he could direct me to
+the cashel.
+
+"I can," he said; "but it is a long way from here, and a stiff climb. Do
+you see that hill yonder?" and he pointed to a lofty peak some miles
+away. "It is there you will find the fort, right on the very top."
+
+"Have you ever been there?" I asked.
+
+"I have not, though I'm thinking I will go some day, for them that have
+seen it tell me it is a wonderful sight. But 'tis a long walk."
+
+"Well, I'm going to try for it," I said, and hitched my camera under my
+arm. "How do I start?"
+
+"By that road yonder; and turn to your right at the village. Good luck
+to you, sir."
+
+I could see he didn't really believe I would get to the cashel; but I
+set off happily along the road, between high hedges; and presently I
+passed a village, and turned to the right, as he had told me; and then
+two barefooted children caught up with me, on their way home from
+school. They knew the way to the cashel very well, though they had never
+been there either; and presently they left me and struck off across the
+fields; and then I came to a place where the road forked, and stopped to
+ask a man who was wheeling manure from a big stable which way to go. He
+too was astonished that any one should start off so carelessly on such
+an expedition; but he directed me up a narrow by-way, which soon began
+to climb steeply; and then the valley beneath me opened more and more,
+and finally I saw to my right the summit I was aiming for, and struck
+boldly toward it along a boggy path.
+
+The path led me to the rear of a thatched cottage, where two men were
+stacking hay. They assured me that I was on the right road, and I pushed
+on again for the summit, past another little house, from which a man
+suddenly emerged and hailed me.
+
+"Where be you going?" he demanded.
+
+"To the fort," I said. "It's up this way, isn't it?"
+
+"It might be."
+
+"Am I trespassing?" I asked, for there seemed to be an unfriendly air
+about him.
+
+"You are so," he answered.
+
+"I'm sorry," I stammered; "if there's another way--"
+
+"There is no other way."
+
+"Well, then, I'll have to go this way," I said. "I'll not do any harm."
+
+"That's as may be. You must pay three-pence if you wish to pass."
+
+I paid the three-pence rather than waste time in argument, which, of
+course, wouldn't have done any good; and his countenance became
+distinctly more pleasant when the pennies were in his hand, and he
+directed me how to go; and I started up again, over springy heather now,
+along a high wall of stones gathered from the field; and then the ground
+grew wet and boggy, just as it is on the mountains of Connemara, and I
+had to make a detour--the man who directed me, probably thought nothing
+of a little bog! A ploughman in a neighbouring field stopped work to
+watch me with interest until I passed from sight, and two red calves
+also came close to investigate the stranger; and then I crested the last
+ridge and saw towering before me the stronghold where Owen, son of Nial
+the Great, established himself to rule over his province, Tyrone.
+
+For a moment I was fairly startled at the huge apparition, grey and
+solitary and impressive, for I had expected no such monster edifice--a
+cyclopean circle of stone, looking like the handiwork of some race of
+giants, three hundred feet around and eighteen feet high, with a wall
+fourteen feet in thickness!
+
+The outer face of the wall is inclined slightly inwards, and is very
+smooth and regular. It is made of flat, hammer-dressed stones of various
+sizes, carefully fitted together, but uncemented, as with all these old
+forts. The stones are for the most part quite small, very different from
+the great blocks used in the other cashels I had seen. There is a single
+entrance, a doorway some five feet high by two wide, slightly inclined
+inward toward the top, and looking very tiny indeed in that great
+stretch of wall; and then my heart stood still with dismay, for there
+was an iron gate across the entrance, and I thought for a moment that it
+was locked. With a sigh of relief I found that the padlock which held it
+was not snapped shut, and I opened it and entered.
+
+It was as though I had stepped into some old Roman amphitheatre, for the
+terraces which run around it from top to bottom have the appearance of
+tiers of seats. They mount one above the other to the narrow platform at
+the top, which is guarded by a low parapet. Two flights of steps run up
+the slope, but an active man would have no need of them. On either side
+of the entrance door a gallery runs away in the thickness of the wall,
+opening some distance away on the interior, and designed, I suppose, to
+enable an extra force to defend the entrance.
+
+Of the castle which once stood within that stone circle not a trace
+remains, and the circle itself, as it stands to-day, is largely a
+restoration, for Murtagh O'Brien captured it in 1101 and did his best to
+destroy it, and the storms of the centuries that followed beat it down
+stone by stone. But these fragments have all been gathered up and put
+back into place, so that the great fort stands to-day much as it did in
+the days of its glory, except that the outworks of earth and stone which
+formed the first lines of defence, have disappeared. The cashel was to
+this great fortification what the donjon tower was to the later Norman
+castle--the ultimate place of refuge for the garrison.
+
+"Grainan" means a royal seat, and "Aileach," so say the Four Masters of
+Donegal, was a Scotch princess, "modest and blooming," who lost her
+heart to Owen of the Hy-Nial, and followed him back to Erin. After the
+division of the north of Ireland with his brother Connell, he set up his
+palace here--Connell's you will remember was at Donegal--and so this
+became the royal seat of the rulers of Tyrone. Hither came St. Patrick
+to baptise Owen and his family; hither came St. Columba before his exile
+to Iona; hither captive Danes were dragged in triumph. But at last
+Murtagh O'Brien, King of Munster, led a great raid to the north, and
+defeated the army of Tyrone and captured the mighty fortress, and made
+each of his soldiers carry away a stone of it in token of his triumph.
+
+[Illustration: THE WALLS OF DERRY]
+
+[Illustration: THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH]
+
+That ended its earthly glory, but it remains glorious in legend; for it
+is beneath its old grey walls that the Knights of the Gael stand
+deathless and untiring, each beside his steed with his hand upon the
+saddlebow, waiting the trumpet-call that shall break the charm that
+binds them, and release them to win back their heritage in Erin. In the
+caves within the hill the knights stand waiting--great vaulted chambers
+whose entrance no man knows. Nor does any man know when their release
+will come, whether to-morrow or not till centuries hence, for 'tis
+Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan herself who must choose the day and hour.
+
+    Sore disgrace it is to see the Arbitress of thrones
+    Vassal to a Saxoneen of cold and sapless bones!
+    Bitter anguish wrings our souls; with heavy sighs and groans
+      We wait the Young Deliverer of Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan.
+
+Glorious is the view from the top of those old walls. To the right is
+Lough Foyle, to the left Lough Swilly, with the hills of Donegal, draped
+in silver mist, beyond--wild, grey crags, rising one behind the other;
+and away to the north, beyond the wide valley, are the hills of
+Inishowen--Owen's Island, if you know your Irish. I have never gazed
+upon a more superb picture of alternating lake and hill and meadow, of
+flashing mountain-top and dark green valley.
+
+But if I was to get back to Derry that night, I had need to hasten; so I
+clambered down, after one long last look. I had still my picture to
+take, and made two exposures, but they give only a faint idea of the
+majesty of this great fort, standing here on this wild, deserted
+hilltop; and then I started downwards, with long steps, past the
+cottages, with the beautiful valley before me, back to the highway, down
+and down among the trees, past the village and so to the station. The
+guard was waiting there.
+
+"Well," he said, as I sat down mopping my face, for I had covered three
+miles in half an hour, "did you see the fort?"
+
+"I did so," I answered, for I had long since fallen naturally into the
+Irish idiom; and I told him what it was like; but I think he was
+unconvinced.
+
+"Was there a man stopped you?" he asked.
+
+"There was--a man at the end of the lane right under the fort, who made
+me pay three-pence before he would let me pass."
+
+"Ah, that would be O'Donnell," said the guard, convinced at last. "He
+has been given the key to keep. Did he give you the key?"
+
+"He did not. But the iron gate was unlocked."
+
+"That was by accident, I'm thinking," said the guard. "He is not caring
+whether one can enter or not, so long as he has his three-pence."
+
+So I would advise all wayfarers to the Grainan of Aileach to make sure
+that the gate of it is unlocked, or to demand the key, before
+surrendering their three-pence to O'Donnell.
+
+When I got into the train again, I found as a fellow-passenger one of
+the men who had come out from Derry with me, and after I had described
+the cashel to him--for he had never seen it--we got to talking about
+Home Rule. In spite of its militant Protestantism, Derry has a very
+large Catholic population, and my companion said that opinion in the
+town was about equally divided for and against Home Rule.
+
+"The result is," he went on, "that whenever we have a meeting, no matter
+which side it's on, there's sure to be a shindy, and the police has
+their hands full. Most of the fellys who do the fighting don't care a
+rap about Home Rule, but they just take pleasure in layin' a stick
+against somebody's head. It's all done in a friendly spirit, and next
+day they will be workin' side by side the same as ever. The only ones
+who are really fighting Home Rule are the big landlords and
+manufacturers, who imagine they'll get the worst of it in the matter of
+taxation at the hands of a Catholic parliament, and they do everything
+they can to keep their people stirred up. That has always been their
+policy; and the big Catholic employers in the south--what few of them
+there are--aren't a whit better. They're all afraid that if the Catholic
+workingmen and the Protestant workingmen once get together they'll fix
+up some kind of a union, and demand better wages. As long as they can be
+kept fighting each other, there's no danger of that; and the poor idiots
+haven't sense enough to see how they're being made fools of. But they'll
+see it some day, and then look out!"
+
+"How about this army of Ulster the papers are so full of?"
+
+My companion laughed.
+
+"There isn't any army around here, unless you can call a few hundred
+devil-may-care boys an army. I did hear something about some drill going
+on, but as far as fighting goes that's all nonsense. The boys are ready
+enough to crack a head with a stick, but they're the first to run when
+the police arrive, and they'll think a long time before they try to
+stand up against the British army. I'll not say that they're not more in
+earnest over Belfast way; but even there, a few politicians have stirred
+up most of the talk--Sir Edward Carson and the likes of him. It's all a
+political game, that's how I look at it."
+
+I walked around Derry for a time that afternoon, and so far as public
+buildings go, Catholicism and Protestantism seem about equally
+represented--and with the strangest contrasts. Across the road from St.
+Columb's College are the Nazareth Homes; around the corner from St.
+Augustine's Church is the Apprentice Boys' Hall; a few steps farther on
+is a Presbyterian church, and the Freemasons' Hall, and then St.
+Columb's Temperance Hall, and then a convent; and if you walk back again
+to the Diamond and make some inquiries, you will find that one of the
+radiating streets is the home of militant Catholics, and the next the
+home of militant Orangemen, and you will be accommodated with a fight at
+any time if you go into the latter and shout "To hell with King Billy,"
+or into the former and shout "To hell with the Pope!" And if you buy one
+of the two papers which the town supports, you will read denunciations
+of Home Rule and contemptuous references to "croppies," while, if you
+buy the other, you will read denunciations just as fierce of Orange
+plots against Ireland.
+
+I have wondered since how much of this agitation is subsidised and how
+much is real. I have heard both Catholics and Protestants complain that
+it is kept alive in great part by professional agitators, working in
+very diverse interests but to a common selfish end--and that end, as my
+friend of the morning pointed out, the continuance and, if possible, the
+deepening of the rift between the two religions. On the other hand,
+there can be no doubt that Protestants and Catholics alike take a fierce
+joy in an occasional fight, as lending a real interest to life. But I am
+convinced that religion has really little to do with this--that it is
+just the peg upon which the quarrels are hung. If it wasn't that, it
+would probably be something else, for Irishmen have been fighting each
+other ever since history began. The fights at Donnybrook were as fierce
+as any, though there wasn't a Protestant in the crowd!
+
+The Orange Societies, of course, with their parades and taunting songs
+and flaunting banners and praise of Cromwell and "King Billy," do not
+make for peace. Usually, on such occasions, blows are exchanged; and so
+the name of Orangeman has come to be associated with riots. But, as
+another writer has pointed out, in considering these things, "you should
+not forget the common pugnacity. Only an Irishman can appreciate the
+fierce joy of shouting 'To hell with the Pope!' Many a man who had no
+claim to belong to the Orange Society has known the delight of breaking
+Catholic heads or of going down in a lost battle, outnumbered but
+damaging his foes to the last. And many who are slow to attend Mass, are
+quick to seize their cudgels when they hear the Orange bands play the
+tune of Boyne Water. Like the Crusaders, the Protestant and Catholic
+champions alike feel that by their battles they make amends for the
+errors and shortcomings of peace."
+
+So it is a mistake to take these rows too seriously. To an Irishman
+they are never serious; they are rather the innocent and natural
+diversions of a holiday, small events which add to the savour of
+existence; and, indeed, they are far less numerous and far less deadly
+than they once were. In time, if the people are let alone and old sores
+are allowed quietly to heal, they will probably cease altogether.
+
+It is a mistake, too, I think to take the Orangemen too seriously. They
+have such a habit of hyperbole that most Irishmen smile at their
+hysterics and threats of civil war as at sheer fudge. In fact, the
+Ulster controversy is so full of comic opera elements that it is
+difficult to keep from smiling at it. For instance, Sir Edward Carson's
+elder son is a member of the United Irish League because he believes in
+a united Ireland, while John Redmond's nephew and adopted son is
+enrolled among the Ulster Volunteers because he is opposed to coercion!
+Gilbert and Sullivan never invented anything more fantastic.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS
+
+
+THERE is no busier place in Derry than the stretch of quays along the
+river, and one may see ships there not only from England and Belgium and
+France, but from Australia and Argentina and India and Brazil. The river
+is wide and deep, with the channel carefully marked by a line of buoys
+extending clear out into Lough Foyle; but there are no better facilities
+here for shipping than at any one of half a dozen ports along the
+western coast, all of which are silent and deserted. For a port is of no
+use unless there is something to ship out of it in exchange for the
+things which are shipped in, or money to pay for them--and there is
+neither in the west of Ireland.
+
+And, just as there is no more dismal sight than a line of deserted
+quays, so there is no more interesting sight than a line of busy ones,
+and we loitered for a long time, next morning, along those of Derry, on
+our way to the Midland station, on the other side of the river. There is
+a big iron bridge across the river just above the quays, but that seemed
+a long way around, so when we came to a sign-board announcing a ferry we
+stopped. My first thought was that the ferry-boat was on the other side;
+then I perceived a small motor-propelled skiff moored beside the quay,
+and one of the two men in it asked me if we were looking for the ferry,
+and I said yes, and he said that that was it.
+
+So we clambered down into the boat and started off; and I scarcely think
+that that trip paid, for we were the only passengers, and the river is
+wide, and gasolene is expensive, and somebody had to pay the men their
+wages--and the fare is only a penny.
+
+The part of the town which lies east of the river is industrial and
+unattractive. There are some big distilleries there, and a lot of mills
+and a fish-market, and row upon row of dingy dwellings; but the biggest
+building of all is the workhouse--one point, at least, in which the
+towns of the north resemble those of the south. There is another point,
+too--the jail, without which no Irish town is complete. Derry has one of
+which it is very proud--the latest word in jails, in fact--a great,
+circular affair, with the cells arranged in so-called "panoptic"
+galleries, that is in such a fashion that the guards stationed in the
+centre of the jailyard can see into all of them.
+
+But we had crossed the river not to see the town which lay beyond it,
+but to take train for Portrush, and we were soon rolling northward close
+beside the bank of the river, with a splendid view of "The Maiden on her
+hill, boys," on the opposite shore, dominated by the cathedral tower and
+Walker's white monument. Just before the river begins to widen into the
+lough, the train passes the ruins of an old castle of the O'Dohertys,
+standing on a point which juts out into the water--a castle which saw
+rather more than its share of siege and sally; for this is Culmore,
+which was always the first point of attack when any expedition advanced
+against Derry.
+
+Beyond it the water widens, and on the farther shore, which is
+Inishowen, there are pretty villas, standing in luxuriant woods--the
+homes of some of Derry's wealthy citizens. Then the train turned inland
+across a stretch of country so flat and carefully cultivated that it
+might have been Holland; and then the hills began to crowd closer and
+closer to the shore, until the train was running along its very edge,
+under precipitous crags, past grotesque pinnacles of white chalk or
+black basalt, and fantastic caverns worn in the cliffs by the
+century-long action of the waves. For that stretch of blue water
+stretching away to the north, so calm and beautiful, was the Atlantic,
+and it thunders in upon this coast, sometimes, with a fury even the
+rocks cannot withstand.
+
+We turned away from it, at last, up the wide estuary of the River Bann,
+and so we came to Coleraine, chiefly connected in my mind with that
+beautiful Kitty, who, while tripping home from the fair one morning with
+a pitcher of buttermilk, looked at Barney MacCleary instead of at the
+path, and stumbled and let the pitcher drop; but, instead of crying over
+the spilt milk, accepted philosophically the kiss which Barney gave her;
+with the result that
+
+      "very soon after poor Kitty's disaster
+    The divil a pitcher was whole in Coleraine."
+
+Among the innumerable other laws for which Lloyd-George is responsible,
+there is one requiring all the shop-keepers of the United Kingdoms to
+close their places of business one afternoon every week in order to give
+their employés a short vacation; and in every town the shop-keepers get
+together and decide which afternoon it shall be; and if you arrive in
+the town on that afternoon, you will find every shop closed tight, often
+to your great inconvenience. It was Thursday afternoon when we reached
+Coleraine, and Thursday is closing day there; and we found that not only
+were the shops closed, but the train schedule was so altered that we had
+a long wait ahead of us.
+
+But we were richly compensated for the delay, for, as we started out to
+explore the town, we saw written in chalk on a wall just outside the
+station,
+
+          To hell with the pope!
+
+and under it in another hand,
+
+          To hell with King Billy!
+
+and then a third hand had added,
+
+          God save King Will! No more pope!
+
+I had heard, of course, that the accepted retort for Catholics to make,
+when the Pope was insulted, was to consign William of Orange to the
+infernal regions; but such a retort seemed so weak and ineffective that
+I could hardly believe in its reality. Yet here it was, and some
+Orangeman had paused long enough to add what is probably the usual third
+article of the controversy. What the fourth article is I can't guess;
+perhaps it is at this point that the cudgels rise and the rocks begin to
+fly. And it seems to me characteristic of Ireland that the Catholic in
+this case, instead of erasing the offending sentence, should have let it
+stand and answered it in kind.
+
+Cheered and heartened by this encounter, we walked on to look at
+Coleraine, but found it an uninteresting manufacturing town, with
+nothing in it of historical importance, for it is one of the plantations
+made by the London Companies, some time after 1613. It was closed as
+tightly, that afternoon, as on a Sunday, and we soon wearied of looking
+at ugly houses and silent factories, and made our way back to the
+station, meditating upon that black day for the Irish when this whole
+county, having been duly confiscated, was made over by royal edict to
+the hundred London adventurers, whose heirs or assigns still own it. Yet
+the conquest had one advantage: the O'Dohertys and the O'Cahans knew
+only the arts of war; the newcomers brought with them the arts of peace.
+One of them was distilling, and the Irish had never drunk such whiskey
+as the "Coleraine" which was produced here in the succeeding years.
+There is no more popular story in this region than that of the priest
+who was preaching a temperance sermon, and, after pointing out the evils
+of over-indulgence, continued with great earnestness, "And, me boys,
+'tis the bad stuff you be takin' that does the worst of the mischief. I
+niver touch a drop meself--but the best Coleraine!"
+
+We got away from Coleraine, at last, and ran northward toward the sea
+again, across uneven sand-drifts, past Port Stewart, where Charles Lever
+was once a dispensary doctor and occupied his leisure hours, which were
+many, in setting down the adventures of Harry Lorrequer; and then the
+road ran on close beside the sea to Portrush, with its pleasant beach
+and rock-bound bathing-pool, which was full of people on this holiday.
+But Portrush is a place of summer hotels, so we did not linger there,
+but transferred quickly to the electric line which runs on to the
+Giant's Causeway, fourteen miles away.
+
+This line was established in 1883, and so is the oldest electric road in
+the world; and I judge that it is still using the cars it started out
+with. At least, the two which composed the train that day were
+exceedingly primitive; one was open and the other was closed, and you
+took your choice. We chose the open one, of course, on the side
+overlooking the sea; and presently we started through the town, a man
+ringing a bell with one hand and waving a flag with the other, preceding
+us to make certain the track was clear. The bell, I suppose, is for
+blind people and the flag for deaf people, and the fact that the man is
+armed with both proves how thorough the Irish can be when they really
+put their minds to it.
+
+Although the line has been in operation for thirty years, it is still
+evidently regarded with fear and wonder by the people who live along it.
+Time was when the power was conveyed by means of the "third rail," so
+common in the United States. With us, however, the rail is only used
+along a guarded right-of-way. Here it was exposed close up by the fence
+at the roadside, and though it was well out of the way, it was
+nevertheless stumbled over by many men and beasts, with the usual
+result. There were many protests, and in the course of fifteen or twenty
+years, the Board of Trade was moved to investigate.
+
+The evidence at the hearing was most conflicting. The people of the
+neighbourhood asserted that their lives were in constant danger. The
+company, on the other hand, claimed that no sober man would ever step
+on the rail, since to get to it he had to cross the tracks. The people
+of the neighbourhood protested indignantly against this reflection upon
+their habits, and asked triumphantly if the horses and cows and other
+poor beasts that were killed were also drunk. The company retorted that,
+so far as the horses and cows were concerned, it was the practice of the
+natives, for miles around, whenever they had an animal about to die, to
+lead or, if it was unable to walk, to haul it to the railway, and prop
+it against the fence with a foot on the rail, and then to demand
+compensation for its death. There was, perhaps, a grain of truth in
+this; but the board, nevertheless, ordered the company to take up the
+rail and substitute an overhead wire for it, and this has been done.
+
+The only way the natives can get damages now is to inveigle a car to run
+into them, and this is well-nigh impossible, for the cars are run very
+slowly and carefully, and at every curve there is a signal cabin, where
+a watchful guard, armed with a red flag and a white one, keeps careful
+eyes upon the track.
+
+We were just gathering speed outside the town, when we saw in a near-by
+field an aggregation whose bills had attracted our attention, more than
+once, in our journeyings about Ireland. It was "Buff Bill's Circus," and
+the picturesqueness of its lithographs had made us most anxious to see
+it. Here it was, at last, and it consisted of three tiny tents and one
+van and three or four horses, and five or six people, who at this moment
+were eating their midday meal, seated on the ground about a sheet-iron
+stove, while the youngsters of the neighbourhood looked on. I am sorry
+we did not get to see the show, for I am sure we should have enjoyed
+it.
+
+Then the road mounted to a terrace high above the sea, and the views
+over coast and water were superb. The effects of erosion are especially
+fantastic, and the line passes fretted spires, and yawning caverns, and
+deep gullies and mighty arches, all worn in the chalk and basalt cliffs
+by the ceaseless action of the waves; and at one place there is a
+grotesque formation which does indeed, as may be seen from the picture
+opposite the next page, resemble a "Giant's Head."
+
+And there is one most picturesque ruin, for, ten miles out from
+Portrush, all that is left of Dunluce castle overhangs the sea from the
+summit of a precipitous rock, separated from the mainland by a deep
+chasm. The chasm is twenty feet wide, and in days of old there was a
+drawbridge over it; but the bridge has disappeared, and now there is
+just an arch of masonry about two feet wide and without protection of
+any sort. It takes a steady head to cross it, but the Irish are fond of
+just such breakneck bridges. The castle itself, with its roofless gables
+and jagged walls, seems a part of the rock on which it is built. It is
+said to possess a banshee, and one can well believe it!
+
+Dunluce is interesting because it was once a stronghold of the Scotch
+invaders who succeeded in conquering all this northeast coast of Ireland
+from here around to Carlingford Lough, away below Belfast. Scotland is
+only a few miles away across the North Channel--one can see its coast on
+a clear day from the cliffs above Benmore; and it was natural enough
+that there should be sailing back and forth. Owen, first lord of
+Tyrone, brought a wife from Scotland--that Aileach, after whom he named
+his fortress; and they had many children, one of whom went back to
+Scotland and became the head of that princedom whose chief afterwards
+called himself "Lord of the Isles." In Ireland, the family was
+O'Donnell; but in Scotland the members of Clandonnell were not Os but
+Macs. Angus MacDonnell married a daughter of the great house of O'Cahan,
+and by this means and by that, the Scotch gradually won a foothold on
+the Irish coast and built castles up and down it; and finally, in a
+pitched battle, defeated the Irish who held the land about Dunluce and
+had built this castle here.
+
+[Illustration: THE "GIANT'S HEAD," NEAR PORTRUSH]
+
+[Illustration: THE RUINS OF DUNLUCE CASTLE]
+
+It was besieged and captured after that, once by the Irish under Shane
+O'Neill, and once by the English under Sir John Perrot; and during the
+troubled times of the Commonwealth and Restoration fell into ruins and
+was never restored--partly, no doubt, because it was no longer safe; for
+one night in 1639, there was a great party in the castle, and a storm
+arose, and the waves dashed against the rock below it, and suddenly part
+of the rock gave way and carried the kitchen and eight servants down
+into the abyss.
+
+Just beyond the castle, the road rounds a point and runs down into the
+valley of the Bush River, where stands the little town of Bushmills,
+known all over the world because of the whiskey which is made there; and
+then it passes a great house on a cliff overlooking the sea, Runkerry
+Castle; and then high up on the slope ahead loom two big hotels, and the
+tram stops, for this is the Causeway.
+
+Both the hotels at the Causeway are owned by the same man, but each
+maintains its runner, and each runner makes a lively bid for your
+custom; and then, when you have made your choice and started toward it,
+you will suddenly be conscious of a rough voice speaking over your
+shoulder, and you will turn to find a man striding at your heels, a man
+unshaven and clad in nondescript clothes; and if you listen very
+attentively you will presently understand that he is offering to guide
+you about the Causeway.
+
+Everybody in the vicinity of the Causeway makes his living off the
+people who visit it, and the favourite profession is that of guide. Now
+a guide is wholly unnecessary, for a broad road leads directly to the
+Causeway, and once there it is simply a question of using one's eyes.
+But from the persistence of the guides, one would think there was great
+danger of getting lost, or of falling overboard, or of experiencing some
+other horrible misfortune, if one ventured there unattended. Every guide
+carries also in his waistcoat pocket one or more fossils, which he found
+himself and prizes very highly, but is willing to sell for a small sum,
+as a personal favour. When his supply is exhausted, he goes and buys
+some more from the syndicate which ships them in in quantity.
+
+For it should be remembered that the Causeway is as strictly organised
+for profit and as carefully exploited as is Killarney.
+
+As soon as we had arranged for our room, we set off for the Causeway,
+running the gauntlet of guides posted on both sides of the road. Then a
+man with a pony-cart wanted to drive us to our destination, and one
+would have thought, from the way he spoke, that it was a long and
+trying journey; then we refused three or four offers of fossils and
+postcards; and finally we found ourselves alone on a road which swept
+round the edge of a great amphitheatre of cliff; and the face of that
+cliff is worth examining, for it is formed of the lava flow from some
+long-extinct crater, and the successive flows, separated by the
+so-called ochre beds, or strata of dark-red volcanic ash, can be plainly
+distinguished. The road gradually drops, until it is quite near the sea;
+and then it passes a number of shanties, from which old women issue to
+waylay the passer-by with offers of fossils and post-cards and various
+curios; and then the visitor is confronted by a high wire fence, beyond
+which, if he looks closely, he will see a little neck of land running
+out into the water--and that is the celebrated Giant's Causeway.
+
+[Illustration: THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY]
+
+[Illustration: THE CLIFFS BEYOND THE CAUSEWAY]
+
+It is so small and so seemingly insignificant that Betty and I stared at
+it through the fence with a distinct shock of disappointment; then we
+went on to the gate, paid the sixpence which is extorted from every
+visitor, registered ourselves on the turnstile, and entered.
+
+The misfortune of the Causeway is that its fame is too great. The
+visitor, expecting to see something magnificent and grandiose, is rather
+dashed at first to find how small it is; but after a few minutes'
+wandering over the queer columns of basalt, this feeling passes, and one
+begins to realise that it is really one of the wonders of the world. I
+am not going to describe it--every one has seen photographs of it, or if
+any one hasn't, he will find some opposite this page; and the
+photographs picture it much better than I can.
+
+There are some forty thousand of the pillars, the guide-book says;
+five-sided or six-sided for the most part, averaging, I should say,
+about fifteen inches in diameter, and so close together that a lead
+pencil is too thick to be thrust between them. The pillars are divided
+into regular, worm-like segments, some six or eight inches thick, and
+there are quite a lot of segments lying about, broken off from the
+columns. The whole bed is said by geologists to be nothing but a
+lava-flow, which broke up into these columnar shapes when it cooled and
+contracted.
+
+The native Irish have a far better explanation than that. In the old
+days, the mighty Finn MacCool, annoyed at the boasting of a Caledonian
+rival on the hills across the channel, invited him to step over and see
+which was the better man. And the giant said he would be glad to come
+over and show Finn a thing or two, if it wasn't for wetting his feet. So
+Finn, in a rage, built a causeway right over to Scotland, and the Scotch
+giant came across on it; and of course Finn beat him well (for this is
+an Irish legend); but with that generosity which has always been
+characteristic of Irishmen after they have whipped their opponents, he
+permitted his humbled rival to choose a wife from the many fair girls of
+the neighbourhood, and to build him a house and settle down; which the
+Scotch giant was very glad to do; for every one knows that the Scotch
+women are rough and hard-bitten, also that Scotland is a land of mist
+and snow, not fair like Ireland, which has always been the loveliest
+country in the world. And presently, since the causeway wasn't needed
+any more and impeded navigation, Finn gave it a kick with the foot of
+him and sunk it in the sea, all but this little end against the Irish
+coast. And there it stands unto this day to witness if I lie.
+
+Whatever you think of the Causeway, you will certainly be impressed when
+you pass out between the clustered columns of the Giant's Gateway, and
+start on the walk under the beetling cliffs beyond. The narrow path
+mounts up and up, under overhanging masses of columnar stone, which all
+too evidently crashes down from time to time, for there are great piles
+of debris below, and the path is either swept away in places or recently
+repaired; so most visitors hurry past with one eye upward, and the other
+contemplating the beauty of the scene below.
+
+At least we did; and then we came out at Chimney Point, crowned with its
+chimney-like columns--a mass of basalt on top of a red ochre bed. And
+here there was a seat where we sat down to contemplate one of the most
+impressive views in Ireland--a combination of blue sea and white surf
+and black crag and columned cliff not soon to be forgotten.
+
+We went on, at last, around the point of the cliff, where the path
+overhangs the depths below and is guarded by an iron railing; on and on,
+past clusters of columns named looms or organ pipes, or whatever Irish
+fancy may have suggested; and at last we turned slowly back, and spent
+another half hour at the Causeway, hunting out the wishing-chair, and
+the giant's cannon, and Lord Antrim's parlour--all of which may easily
+be found; and then we took a drink from the giant's well, a spring of
+pure, cold water, bubbling up from among the rocks; and so back to the
+hotel and to dinner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE GLENS OF ANTRIM
+
+
+THERE are some caves at the Causeway which are said to be well worth
+visiting, but we found, next morning, that a stiff wind during the night
+had kicked up such a sea that it was impossible to get to them. So we
+spent the morning walking down to a beautiful beach some distance below
+the hotel, and building a driftwood fire there, and watching the waves
+roll in. Then, while Betty went in to read some just-arrived letters
+from home, I went on along the top of the cliffs above the Causeway.
+
+There is a path which follows the edge of the cliff closely, and a more
+magnificent view I have never seen. At Chimney Point the rollers were
+breaking in especial violence over the black rocks, on which one of the
+galleons of the Armada went to pieces. Her name was the Gerona, and some
+of her guns were rescued from the surf and added to the armament of
+Dunluce castle. Legend has it that she brought her disaster upon herself
+by running in too near the coast to fire at the chimney rocks, which she
+mistook for the towers of Dunluce. The bay where the bodies of her crew
+were washed ashore has been called Port-na-Spania ever since.
+
+A little farther on is the uttermost point of all, Pleaskin, where the
+view reaches its greatest grandeur, for one is here four hundred feet
+above the sea, and on that bright, clear, wind-swept morning, I could
+see the purple peaks of the Donegal coast stretching far to the west,
+while to the northeast loomed the misty outline of the Scottish hills,
+scarcely discernible against the sky. And all between stretched the
+white-capped waters of the North Channel, with a tossing boat here and
+there, and at my feet were the last black basalt outposts of Erin, with
+the rollers curling over them in regular, heavy rhythm. If Ireland has
+anything to show more fair I did not see it.
+
+I went slowly back, at last, along the path, over the springy heather;
+and an hour later we had said good-bye to the Causeway, and were
+rattling away along a pleasant road toward Ballycastle. We were the only
+voyagers, that day, so instead of the heavy bus, a side-car had been
+placed at our disposal. It was the first car we had mounted since our
+ride around Lough Gill; and how good it felt to settle back again into
+the corner of the seat, and swing along mile after mile!
+
+Our jarvey was an old fellow who was loquacious enough, at first, and
+who stopped to show us, in a ravine not far from the Causeway, a crevice
+in the rock which he said was used as a pulpit by the first Presbyterian
+preacher in Ulster--for it should be remembered that for many years the
+Presbyterians and other nonconformists were treated as harshly by the
+established church as the Catholics were. And then we came to a little
+village where the children were gathering for school, and our jarvey
+stopped to water the horse, which gave us the opportunity to have a word
+with the children.
+
+And fairly surprised we were when they began to talk, for they spoke a
+Scotch as broad as any to be heard in the Highlands. Their names were
+Scotch, too--Fergus and Angus; and the only thing we encountered on that
+drive which astonished us more were the sign-posts at the cross-roads,
+the directions on which are all in Gaelic. We had seen Gaelic sign-posts
+before, in the west, but they always had the direction in English, too.
+Here there was no English. It is a riddle that I have never unravelled,
+for I heard no Gaelic spoken here. Of course it is spoken; but so many
+wayfarers along this road speak only English that I cannot understand
+the contempt for them which the sign-boards indicate.
+
+I have referred already to the Irishman's love for breakneck bridges,
+and the prize one of all is at the village of Ballintoy, into which the
+road drops down the steepest of hills. A little distance away along the
+cliffs is an isolated rock some sixty feet from the shore, and spanning
+the abyss between cliff and rock is the craziest bridge ever devised by
+man. Two rings, about eighteen inches apart, have been embedded in the
+rock on either side, and between these rings two ropes have been
+stretched. These are lashed together at intervals by transverse cords,
+and to these cords short lengths of narrow plank have been tied side by
+side. For a handrail, a slender rope has been stretched between two
+rings some three feet higher than the others--and there you are. It is
+hardly correct to say that any of the ropes have been "stretched," for
+they hang in a long curve, and in the wind that was blowing that morning
+the bridge swung to and fro in the dizziest fashion. There was a crowd
+of small boys at its land end, who offered to negotiate the passage for
+a penny each, but we refused to pay for the privilege of seeing them
+risk their lives.
+
+And yet, probably, it would not have been risking them, for they were
+used to the bridge and thought nothing of crossing it. Nay, more, the
+men of the neighbourhood cross it carrying heavy burdens, for they are
+fishermen and keep all their ropes and nets and even their boats out on
+the rock, round which, at certain stages of the tide, the salmon circle,
+so that they can be caught by nets shot out from the rock. There is no
+harbour for the boats, so they have to be hoisted up to a terrace in the
+rock some twenty feet above the water by means of a windlass; and then,
+having made everything snug, the fishermen cross back over the bridge
+with the catch on their shoulders. It need scarcely be added that I, who
+had balked at the far more substantial bridges at Dromahair and Dunluce,
+never for an instant thought of crossing this one.
+
+We climbed out to the top of the cliffs again, and jogged along with the
+beautiful sea to our left, and the beautiful rolling country to our
+right, its meadows brilliant with the lush green of the young flax; and
+then we turned back inland between high hedgerows; and the bright sun
+and the soft air proved too much for our jarvey, who dropped gently to
+sleep--a fact we didn't notice until the horse, after a backward glance,
+stopped to take a few bites from the hedge. The driver woke with a start
+and jerked the horse angrily back into the middle of the road, and then
+glanced guiltily at us, but we were gazing far away into the distance;
+and then he dropped off again, and again the horse, feeling the
+slackened reins, stopped for a bite; and then, for fear that a
+motor-cycle or something might run into us, I filled my pipe and offered
+my pouch to the driver, and he filled up thankfully, and that kept him
+awake until we dropped down into the beautiful old town of Ballycastle,
+nestling under the high hills of Antrim. "Bally," which figures in so
+many Irish place-names, is from the Gaelic "baile," meaning town or
+village, and so Ballycastle is merely the Irish form of what in English
+would be prosaic Castletown.
+
+We had tea at a clean and pleasant inn, and then spent an hour wandering
+about the place--to the site of the old abbey, near a sweet little
+river, and then down to the shore, which has been desecrated with
+golf-links; but the green slopes of Rathlin Island, just off the coast,
+are very lovely, and just outside the bay the cliffs culminate in a
+mighty bluff called Fairhead; and then back to the town along an avenue
+of beautiful trees, for a visit to the "Home Industry Depot," a room
+crowded with fantastic toys and some good wood-carving, all done in the
+neighbourhood--about the only industry of any kind, so the keeper of the
+shop said, now carried on in Ballycastle.
+
+Time was when Ballycastle fancied it was destined for greatness, for a
+seam of coal was discovered in the hill above the town, and an
+enterprising Scotchman named Hugh Boyd leased the right to work it from
+the Earl of Antrim, and built foundries and tanneries and breweries to
+consume it; but unfortunately the seam turned down instead of up, Boyd
+died, and nobody was found with sufficient energy to contend against so
+many difficulties; so the whole enterprise dropped dead. I don't know
+how the inhabitants came to turn to toy-making and wood-carving; perhaps
+some expatriated Swiss settled here,--that shop certainly did remind us
+of Lucerne!
+
+There are far older memories which cluster around Ballycastle; for the
+stream which ripples past the abbey was in the old days called the
+Margy, and it was here, according to the most ancient of Irish legends,
+that the children of Lir, King of the Isle of Man, sought shelter after
+they had been turned into four white swans by their step-mother. I
+should like to tell that story, but there is no space here--besides, it
+has already been most nobly told by Mr. Rolleston. It will be found,
+with many others, in his "High Deeds of Finn," a book I most heartily
+recommend.
+
+We were not yet at the end of our day's journey, for we had still to go
+on to Cushendall, sixteen miles away, and so we went back to the hotel,
+to find a long inside-car waiting. There were two other passengers,
+women of the neighbourhood, who had come in to town to do some shopping;
+and their gossip was most entertaining; but we dropped them before long,
+and then the road mounted up and up along the valley of a little river,
+which we could see gleaming far below us; and at last we came out upon a
+bog as wild and desolate as any in Connemara. There were again the
+familiar black cuttings, the piles of turf, and here and there a group
+of men and women labouring at the wet, back-breaking work. This bog, so
+our driver said, supplied the fuel for the whole district, and nobody
+hereabouts ever thought of burning coal.
+
+The road was quite deserted, save for a cart now and then, loaded high
+with turf, lumbering heavily down toward the town; and presently even
+these ceased, and there was no single sign of life as far as the eye
+could reach--only the silent bog, desolate, vast, impressive, rolling
+away into the distance with a beauty all its own--a beauty difficult to
+express, but very poignant.
+
+How high we were upon that moor we did not realise until we came to the
+verge of one of the beautiful Glens of Antrim and saw, nestling away
+below us, the spires and roofs of Cushendall. They were perhaps half a
+mile away, but we travelled at least three miles to get down to them,
+winding back and forth along the side of the glen, crossing a great
+viaduct eighty feet high, past picturesque thatched houses, past the
+fairy thorn which no man in the village would touch for love or money,
+past a fragment of ruin which was once the castle where the MacDonnells
+stood off the English; and then we turned away to the right and began to
+climb again; and presently we had climbed out of Glendun into Glenaan,
+and I should hate to have to decide which is the more lovely.
+
+We emerged, at last, into more open country, with high hills at our
+right pierced by shadowy valleys; and then the houses became more
+frequent, and we could see the people gathering down from the fields for
+the night. Twilight was at hand; but, though it must have been nearly
+nine o'clock, we were amused to see that the ducks and chickens were
+still pecking cheerfully about the door-steps, apparently with no
+thought of retiring. Poultry, in Ireland, leads a strenuous life, for in
+summer the sun rises at three and does not set till nine. Perhaps it is
+these long hours which give Irish chickens an indolent air, and which
+explain the frequent naps one sees them taking on the family doorstep.
+
+The houses grew more and more frequent, until we were rattling down a
+wide street of them, under an avenue of lofty trees, and knew we were at
+Cushendall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some three miles west of the town, on the top of a bare and windy hill
+looking down over the Glenaan valley, is a circle of stones placed
+there, so legend asserts, to mark the grave of Ossian, son of Finn
+MacCool, and sweet singer of the Fianna of Erin; and it was to find this
+spot I set out next morning, through fine, windy weather. I knew where
+the valley of the Glenaan was, for we had passed its mouth the evening
+before, but as to the position of the grave itself I knew nothing. The
+guide-book devoted only a vague line to it; but I have a firm belief in
+my luck, and I knew I should find it somehow.
+
+For a mile or more my road lay back over the way we had come, mounting
+steadily toward the entrance to the Glenaan Valley; and I met many
+little carts coming in to market, for it was Saturday; and every one who
+wasn't going into town was taking advantage of the fine day by working
+in the fields, or putting new coats of dazzling whitewash upon their
+houses, or digging in the little flower-gardens in front of them. And
+everybody was in cheerful humour and passed the time of day with the
+heartiest good will.
+
+And then I came to the entrance of the valley, and turned westward along
+the road which traverses it. The mountains soon began to close in on
+either hand, and the houses strung along the road or perched on narrow
+plateaus grew smaller and smaller; slate gave way to thatch, stone
+floors gave way to dirt ones, and the windows shrank to a single
+immovable sash of four small panes. In a word, as the land grew poorer,
+the people grew poorer, too; and the conditions of life seemed not so
+very different from those in far Connaught. Indeed it may very well be
+that this is one of those "congested districts" which are scattered over
+the east of Ireland.
+
+I stopped, at last, and asked an old man in a blue flannel smock if he
+could tell me the way to Ossian's grave; and he told me to fare straight
+on till I came to some stepping-stones, and to cross the stones and push
+right up the hill. So I went on happily, for the air was very sweet, and
+the sun just warm enough, and the great wind was driving white clouds
+before it across the sky, and the sunshine in the faces of the people I
+met added to the beauty of the day; and at last I came to a cluster of
+thatched cottages where the little river turned in close to the road and
+rippled between a row of stepping-stones; and I asked a pleasant-faced
+woman if that was the way to Ossian's grave, and she said it was; to
+cross the stones and go right up the hill, and I would find a house
+there where I could get further directions.
+
+The road beyond the stones ran up the hill and into the yard of a
+farm-house; and in the yard there was a dog with a very savage bark; but
+there was also a blue-eyed girl who quieted him, while she stared at me
+curiously. I asked her the way to the grave, and she pointed up the
+hill, with a little motion of her hand toward the right, and I set off
+again. The road had dwindled to the merest mountain path, with a wall on
+either side of earth and stones, crested with prickly gorse; but I came
+to a break in it, at last, opening to the right, and scrambled through;
+and then, a minute later, in the midst of a heather-carpeted field on
+the very summit of the hill, I saw the grave.
+
+It is formed of standing stones, covered with lichen and crumbling under
+the storms of centuries, and the vestibule, so to speak, is a
+semi-circle some twenty feet in diameter opening toward the east. Back
+of this are two chambers, one behind the other, divided by two large
+uprights, and I suppose it was in one of these that the body of the bard
+was laid--if it was laid here at all. My own guess would be that these
+weather-beaten stones, like those others on the hill beside Lough Gill,
+antedate Ossian by at least two thousand years. But that is an
+unimportant detail; and it may be, indeed, that when the great singer
+died, his comrades could think of no more fitting place to lay him than
+within the guardian circle of this monument of an older race, looking
+down across the valley and out toward the sea.
+
+Fact and fancy have been so mingled in the Ossianic legend that it is
+impossible to disentangle them, nor is it profitable to try. It is
+fairly certain that he was born somewhere about the middle of the third
+century after Christ, and legend has it that he spent two hundred years
+in the Land of Youth with Niam of the Golden-hair. When, homesick for
+Erin, he returned to it, it was to find his father's courts overgrown
+with grass and St. Patrick preaching there, and his disputes with
+Patrick are recorded at great length in the tales of the Fenian cycle;
+for Ossian bewailed the vanished days of those mighty fighters, and
+wished for nothing better than to join them, in whatever world they
+might be, while Patrick laboured to convert him from such heathen
+fancies and to save his soul. It is to this story reference is made in
+the stanza from Lionel Johnson's "Ode to Ireland," which I quoted on
+page 221.
+
+Up there on the bleak hill-top the wind was roaring; but I found a nook
+between two of the great stones where it could not reach me, and I
+lighted my pipe and sat there and looked down over the valley and
+thought of the old days, and so spent a sweet half hour. The valley had
+changed but little, I fancied, with the rolling centuries; there were
+tiny, high-walled fields and low thatched houses on the lower slopes;
+but above them sprang the primal hills, clothed with heather, their
+bones of granite gleaming here and there, back and back over the Glens
+of Antrim, through which the red tide of tribal warfare had poured so
+many times. And over eastward lay Cushendall, nestling among its trees,
+with the gaunt, truncated mass of Lurigethan hill overshadowing it, and
+beyond that, faint and far and scarcely distinguishable from the blue
+sky, lay the blue sea.
+
+That valley and those hills belong to the Earl of Antrim--his estate
+includes some thirty-five thousand acres of Irish soil, around which he
+may build walls and post notices and set guards; and as I sat there
+gazing out at them, I realised far more keenly than I had ever done the
+absurdity of the idea that any portion of this earth's surface can
+rightfully belong to any man. Trace any title back, for a hundred years,
+or a thousand years, or two thousand years, and one finds that it
+started in a theft--theft on the part of an individual from the tribe
+which held the land in common; and the solemn farce of sale and transfer
+and inheritance after that was merely the passing on of stolen goods.
+Perhaps some day we may win through to the ideal of an earth belonging
+equally to all men, with private right only in the things man's industry
+creates.
+
+[Illustration: THE GRAVE OF OSSIAN]
+
+[Illustration: AN ANTRIM LANDSCAPE]
+
+I knocked out my pipe, at last, reluctantly enough, and took the picture
+of the stones which is opposite this page, but which gives a poor idea
+of them; and then I started downward, through the break in the hedge,
+through the farmyard, going warily for fear of the dog, and so to the
+stepping-stones; and when I looked at them, I saw what a perfect picture
+they made, with the stream rippling through, and the thatched cottages
+beyond, with the smoke whipped from their chimneys, and a single tree
+bending before the wind. That picture in miniature is opposite this
+page; but I could not snare with my camera the tang of the turf, the
+softness of the air, the glory of the sun, nor the murmur of the water.
+Those you will have to evoke for yourself, as best you can.
+
+In the road beyond I found a mail-carrier, who had completed his
+morning-round among the hillside dwellings, and who was turning back to
+Cushendall; and we went on together. He was a tall, lithe lad, as he
+had need to be to get over his daily route among these hills; and, like
+every one else, he hoped some day to win his way to America. He knew
+many of its towns from the postmarks on the letters he carried. In the
+last month, he said, there had been fully a hundred from America, and
+welcome letters they were, for nearly all of them contained a bit of
+money. Many of the dwellers in these hills--like thousands more all over
+Ireland--would find life outside the work-house impossible but for the
+help from their sons and daughters in America; and it gives one a good
+feeling at the heart to think of those devoted boys and girls putting by
+every month a portion of the money which was hard to win and harder
+still to save, to send to the old people who were left at home.
+
+By the side of the road, as we walked along, I saw a hovel more
+primitive and comfortless than most--just a tiny hut of a single room,
+dark and cold and bare; but against one end of it grew a great fuchsia
+bush, clothing it with glory. A wrinkled old woman, clad in filthy
+clothes, was standing in the doorway, and my companion passed the time
+of day with her, while I unslung my camera, for I wanted a picture of
+the tiny house and the great bush. I would have liked a picture of the
+old woman, too; but she said she was too dirty, and went in until the
+picture was taken which is opposite the next page. Then she came out and
+asked if I would send her one. It was the first time, she said, that any
+one had thought her houseen worth a picture; so I promised she should
+have one, and she gave me her name, and the postman promised it should
+reach her.
+
+We went on together, after that, and I asked him what the people of the
+neighbourhood thought about Home Rule.
+
+[Illustration: A HUMBLE HOME IN ANTRIM]
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD JAIL AT CUSHENDALL]
+
+"The truth is, sir," he answered, "that we don't know what to think,
+what with this man telling us one thing and that man another; but most
+of the poor people about here would be glad to see it, for they can't be
+worse off than they are, and a change might better them. Drilling and
+arming? Ah, there's none of that around here; there's no army of Ulster
+in these parts. That's just talk."
+
+He left me at the crossroads, for he had still a letter or two to
+deliver farther down the road, and I went on by myself toward the town.
+There were more whitewashers out, and they were splashing the lime about
+in the most reckless fashion, besprinkling the hedges and the shrubbery
+and even the road, somewhat to the danger of the passers-by; and at the
+first houses of the town I met Betty. She had been talking to the
+caretaker of the churchyard about the true shamrock; and he said that it
+did not grow wild thereabouts, but that he had some in a pot at home and
+would be glad to bring her a spray; and he told her of a ruined church
+and an old Celtic cross out along the road above the cliffs, very near,
+he said--not over eight minutes' walk at the most.
+
+So we determined to take a look at it; but first we walked about the
+town a little, and found it quite an ordinary town, except for a great
+square tower at the intersection of the principal streets--a tower
+erected, so the tablet on it says, "as a place of confinement for
+rioters and idlers." I suppose the town has a modern jail now--perhaps
+even with panoptic galleries! At any rate, the tower is no longer
+used. I took a picture of it, and if you will look at the picture
+closely, you will see a girl drawing water from the town pump just below
+the tower.
+
+We started off finally for the ruins, first to the cliffs along the sea,
+and then on along the path which runs at their very edge. The view was
+very lovely, and we didn't notice how the time was flying; but I looked
+at my watch presently and found that we had been walking twenty minutes,
+with no ruins in sight. We pushed on ten minutes longer, and had about
+given them up, when some children directed us which way to go, and we
+finally found the few remaining fragments of Layd Church, so overgrown
+with ivy and embowered in trees that they were scarcely recognisable as
+ruins at all. The cross proved to be a very modern one; and the
+graveyard is sadly neglected, with the grass knee-deep among the tombs,
+which have fallen into sorry disarray. Most of them cover some long-dead
+MacDonnell--they were all MacDonnells, in the old days, who lived in the
+Glens of Antrim.
+
+The "eight minute walk" had taken more than half an hour, and we had
+need to hasten if we were to get back to the hotel in time for lunch,
+for the car which was to take us to Larne was to start at two; but we
+made it, and when the car drove up, we found it was a long outside-car
+with room for five people on each side. We chose the forward end of the
+side next the sea; and then the car proceeded to another hotel in the
+town, where five or six more people were waiting; and the two women who
+were condemned to the landward side complained bitterly. They were
+making the trip, they said, just to see the sea, and here they would be
+compelled to sit the whole way facing the blank cliff.
+
+"Sure, there's nothing I can do, miss," said the jarvey, who had
+listened sympathetically; "I can't make the car any longer, now can I?
+Maybe you might be glancin' over your shoulder from time to time; anyway
+I'm thinkin' you'll be seein' enough of the sea before you're home
+again."
+
+And with that they had to be consoled.
+
+The road runs inland for about a mile beyond Cushendall, and then turns
+down close to the shore of Red Bay, a vast amphitheatre of red sandstone
+cliffs, in whose face the road is cut. At the deepest point of the
+circle, where the Vale of Glenariff opens up into the mountains, is
+clustered a little village of white houses; and then the road runs on
+round the base of towering precipices; and suddenly the red sandstone
+changes to chalk, and the water washing against the shore, which has
+been a lovely green, turns milky white, with outstanding pinnacles of
+chalk, worn to fantastic shapes, keeping guard above it.
+
+We had noticed an increasing crowd upon the road, all walking or riding
+southwards; and presently two barefooted boys jumped up on the footboard
+and asked if they might ride a little way; and they told us that there
+was a circus at Carnlough to which every one was going; and they each
+had the tuppence necessary for admission gripped in a grimy fist, and
+were very excited indeed. Carnlough, as we soon found, is a small town
+consisting principally of a curving beach, where a few people were
+bathing; and the white tent of Duffy's Circus--a much larger affair than
+Buff Bill's--was pitched close beside the road. The urchins dropped off
+and made for the entrance; and as we passed, we caught a strain of "The
+Stars and Stripes Forever," painfully rendered by the circus band.
+
+We rolled on around another wide bay, and came to Glenarm, where we
+paused to change horses; and then on again, under the white cliffs, past
+quarries where flint and chalk are mined for the Belfast market; and
+always at our feet lay the Irish Sea, stretching away to the dim
+horizon, its colour changing with every passing cloud. In and out the
+road circled, following the long curves of the coast; past the ruins of
+a castle which O'Halloran, a famous outlaw, built for himself on the top
+of a small rock with the sea washing round it; past another amphitheatre
+where the rocks change back from chalk to basalt; through a short tunnel
+and so to Larne.
+
+The most interesting thing about Larne is its handsome new harbour built
+for the express steamers which cross several times daily to Stranrear,
+the shortest of the routes to Scotland. Edward Bruce chose this route
+when he came over with an army of six thousand men to help the Irish
+drive the English from Ireland, as his brother Robert had driven them
+from Scotland the year before at Bannockburn. It was in May, 1315, that
+the Scotch drew up in battle array along this strand; and a year later
+Bruce was crowned King of Ireland; but though at first he drove the
+Normans before him, his own army was gradually worn down by privation
+and disease, and he himself was killed at the battle of Faughart. So
+ended one more Irish dream!
+
+We changed at Larne from road to rail, and were soon rolling southward,
+still close beside the water, past a string of seaside resorts, each of
+which added its quota of passengers--perspiring men and women and tired
+but happy children; and so we came to the old town of Carrickfergus,
+with its magnificent castle overlooking Belfast Lough. Its great square
+keep, ninety feet high, looked most imposing in the gathering
+twilight--how many assaults had it withstood in the seven centuries of
+its existence! Bruce captured it, but the MacDonnells failed. Schomberg,
+William's general, had better luck, and it was on the quay below it that
+the great Orangeman first set foot in Ireland. It has some American
+associations, too; for John Paul Jones sailed his good ship _Ranger_
+under its walls in 1778, and captured the British ship-of-war _Drake_.
+Murray, good British guide-book that it is, refers to the founder of the
+American navy as "the pirate Paul Jones." But we can afford to smile at
+that!
+
+Carrickfergus is doubtless worth a visit, though the castle is used as
+an ordnance depot now, and visitors are admitted only to the outer
+court. But even that would be worth seeing; and the town possesses an
+old church, and some fragments of its old walls, and doubtless many
+interesting old houses. I am sorry we did not spend a day there.
+
+But our train rolled on, close beside the border of Belfast Lough, and
+presently, far ahead, we saw the gleaming spires and clustered roofs of
+the citadel of Ulster.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+BELFAST
+
+
+IT had been on a Saturday evening that we first saw Dublin, and it was
+on a Saturday evening that we reached Belfast; and we had thought the
+streets of Dublin crowded, but compared with those of Belfast, they were
+nowhere. Even in our first ride up from the station, along York Street
+and Royal Avenue, it was evident that here was a town where life was
+strenuous and eager; there was no mistaking its air of alert prosperity;
+and when, after dinner, we sallied forth on foot to see more of it, we
+found the sidewalks so crowded that it was possible to move along them
+only as the crowd moved.
+
+It was a better-dressed crowd than the Dublin one, but I fancied its
+cheeks were paler and its bodies less robust. Indeed, I am inclined to
+think the average stature in Belfast an inch or so under the average
+elsewhere. Great numbers of the men and women we saw on the streets that
+night were obviously undersized. I am by no means tall; five feet eight
+inches is, here in America, about the average; but when I walked among
+that Belfast crowd, I overtopped it by half a head. It was this strange
+sensation--the sensation of being a tall man, which I had never before
+experienced--which first drew my attention to the stature of the crowd.
+
+There must be several regiments of British troops stationed at Belfast,
+for soldiers were much in evidence that evening, and in a great
+diversity of uniform. They, too, for the most part, seemed undersized,
+in spite of their erect carriage; and they were, as is the way with
+soldiers everywhere, much interested in the girls; and the girls, after
+the fashion of girls everywhere, were much interested in the
+soldiers--and there was a great deal of flirting and coquetting and
+glancing over shoulders and stopping to talk, and walking about with
+clasped hands.
+
+Next to the crowd, the most interesting feature of Belfast is the shops,
+which are very bright and attractive. The Scotch have a genius for fancy
+breads and cakes, and the bakers' shops here were extremely alluring.
+There seemed to be also an epidemic of auction sales and closing out
+sales and cut price sales, announced by great placards pasted all over
+the windows; but there were so many of them that I fancy most of them
+were fakes.
+
+One notices also in Belfast the multiplicity of bands. It seemed to me
+that night that a band, playing doggedly away, was passing all the time.
+Sometimes the band would be followed by a body of marching men,
+sometimes by men and women together, sometimes it would be just playing
+itself along without any one behind it. Nobody in the crowd paid much
+attention, not even when a big company of boy scouts marched past,
+looking very clever in their broad hats with the little chin-straps, and
+grey flannel shirts and flapping short trousers showing their bare
+knees.
+
+What I am setting down here are merely my first impressions of Belfast.
+I do not allege that they were correct impressions, or that they fairly
+describe the town, but, as we were fresh from many weeks in the south
+and west of Ireland, the sense of contrast we experienced that first
+evening is not without significance.
+
+We went back to the hotel, finally, for we had had a strenuous day; but
+for long and long we could hear the bands passing in the street below;
+and then the martial rattle of drums and scream of fifes brought us to
+the window, and we saw a great crowd of children march past, with
+banners waving and tin buckets and shovels rattling. It was a Sunday
+School picnic, just back from a day at the seashore; and the air which
+the fifes and drums were playing with a vigour that made the windows
+rattle was "Work, for the Night is Coming!" I had never before realised
+what a splendid marching tune it is!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am sorry we did not go to church, next morning, for the pulpits of
+Belfast were thundering against Home Rule, as we saw by the Monday
+papers. Instead, we walked down to the river, for a look at the harbour
+and custom house, and then about the streets to the city hall, with its
+dome and corner towers oddly reminiscent of St. Paul's Cathedral; and
+then we took a tram to the Botanical Gardens. The tram ran along a
+tree-embowered street, lined on either side with villas set in the midst
+of grounds so beautiful that any of them might have been the gardens;
+but when we reached the end of the line, we found we had come too far.
+The conductor was greatly chagrined that he had forgot to tell us where
+to get off, and sternly refused to accept any fare for the return trip.
+
+The gardens, which we finally reached, are very attractively laid out,
+but far more interesting than the flowers and the shrubs was the crowd
+which was coming home from church. There seems to be a church on every
+square in Belfast, and I judge they were all full that day--as they no
+doubt are every Sunday, for church-going is still fashionable in the
+British Isles; and the crowd which poured along the walks of the gardens
+was as well-dressed and handsome as could be seen anywhere. It was a
+crowd made up of people evidently and consciously well-to-do, and one
+distinctive characteristic was a certain severity of aspect, a certain
+prevalence of that black-coated, side-whiskered, stern-lipped type which
+was much more common in America thirty years ago than it is now. Our
+type has changed--has softened and grown more urbane; but I should judge
+that the cold steel of Calvinism is as sharp and merciless as ever in
+Belfast.
+
+The men walked slowly along in twos and threes, talking over the sermons
+they had just listened to; and the sermons, judging from the newspapers,
+were all cast in the same mould; and that mould gives so clearly the
+Orange attitude toward Home Rule, that I shall try to outline it here,
+quoting literally from the newspaper accounts.
+
+Home Rule, then, according to the Belfast preachers, is a Papal-inspired
+movement, whose object is "to thrust out of their birthright over one
+million enterprising, industrious, and peaceable citizens, whose only
+crime was their loyalty to Crown and Constitution, and to put them under
+that Papal yoke from which their sires had purchased their liberty.
+Their beloved island home had never been more prosperous. They were
+grateful and they were satisfied, but their Roman Catholic fellow
+countrymen seemed to have no sense of satisfaction or gratitude. The
+Irish Nationalists had entered into a movement to sacrifice
+Protestantism upon the altar of Home Rule, but Orangemen and Protestants
+had entered into a covenant the object of which was the maintenance of
+their rightful heritage of British citizenship, of their commercial and
+industrial progress, and of their freedom. In the same spirit of
+patriotic Protestantism as was displayed at the siege of Derry, they
+would go forth to combat the onslaughts of Rome, and they would show
+that the same spirit lived in them as in their illustrious sires." Some
+of the services concluded with singing a new version of the National
+Anthem:
+
+          Ulster will never yield;
+          God is our strength and shield,
+            On Him we lean.
+          Free, loyal, true and brave,
+          Our liberties we'll save.
+          Home Rule we'll never have.
+            God save the King.
+
+That last line is so perfunctory that it provokes a smile.
+
+I am anxious to state the case against Home Rule as fairly as I can, the
+more so because, as the readers of this book must have suspected before
+this, I have little sympathy with the die-hard Unionists. I do not
+believe that they represent Ulster in any such absolute sense as they
+claim to do, for in the first place they hold only sixteen out of the
+thirty-three Ulster seats in Parliament, and in the second place, even
+in the four counties which are largely Protestant, there is a very
+strong Nationalist sentiment. My own conviction is that the Orange
+Societies are being be-fooled by a clique of politicians and aristocrats
+whose quarrel is not with Home Rule but with the Liberal party. Nobody
+denies that the funds for the organisation and equipment of the Orange
+army have been supplied by the Conservative party, whose campaign chest
+has been sadly depleted by the immense sums needed to keep the agitation
+going. Certain leaders of that party have done their utmost to foment
+religious and racial hatred, not because of any religious convictions of
+their own, nor because of any special sympathy for Ulster, but in the
+hope of overthrowing the government and stopping the march of social
+reform. They might just as well try to stop the march of time--and some
+day, perhaps, they will realise it!
+
+          And yet--
+
+These fighting preachers, these uncompromising, wrong-headed, upright
+old Calvinists, are undoubtedly in earnest. The congregations which sat
+in grim-faced silence that day listening to this oratory, were in
+earnest, too. But I cannot believe that, in their inmost heart of
+hearts, they really dread the subversion of Protestantism. What they
+dread is, in the first place, some diminution of their supremacy in
+Irish politics, and, in the second place, some diminution of their
+control of Irish industry. In other words, the attack they really fear
+is against their pocket-books, not against their creed. And it is not
+impossible that their pocket-books may suffer; indeed, I think it
+probable that when the Home Rule Parliament has made its final
+adjustments of revenue, Ulster will be found to be bearing somewhat more
+of the burden than she now does, though perhaps not more than her just
+share. But this doesn't make the situation any the less serious, for
+ever since the world began it has been proved over and over again that
+the very surest way to drive men to frenzied resistance is to attack
+their pocket-books. As for the religious bogy, I personally believe most
+sincerely that it _is_ a bogy. Such danger to Protestantism as exists
+comes, not from the Irish Catholics, but from the politicians who are
+using it as a football.
+
+There was a sentence in one of the sermons preached that day to the
+effect that Irish Protestants laboured to help Irish Catholics to civil
+and religious liberty, when Irish Catholics were unable to help
+themselves, and this is a fact which I am sure Irish Catholics will be
+the last to forget. A century ago, Ulster was as fiercely Nationalist as
+she is fiercely Unionist to-day; it was in Belfast that the Society of
+United Irishmen was organised, and its leader was Theobald Wolfe Tone, a
+Protestant, and its first members were Presbyterians, and one of its
+objects was Catholic Emancipation. And, as a close to these disconnected
+remarks, I cannot do better than repeat an anecdote I saw the other day
+in the _Nineteenth Century_. Some sympathetic neighbours called upon the
+mother of Sir David Baird to condole with her over her son's
+misfortunes, and they told her, with bated voices, how he had been
+captured by Tippoo Sultan, and chained to a soldier and thrust into a
+dungeon. Baird's mother listened silently, and then a little smile
+flitted across her lips.
+
+"God help the laddie that's chained to my Davie!" she said softly.
+
+And anybody that's chained to Ulster will undoubtedly have a strenuous
+time!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _News-Letter_ is the great Belfast daily, and while I was looking
+through it, Monday, for fear I had missed some of the pulpit and
+platform fulminations, I chanced upon another article which interested
+me deeply, as showing the Protestant attitude toward control of the
+schools. The article in question was a long account of the awarding of
+prizes at one of the big Belfast National schools, as a result of the
+religious education examination, and it was most illuminating.
+
+The chairman began his remarks by saying that "nothing is pleasanter
+than to hear a pupil repeat faultlessly the answers to the one hundred
+and seven questions in the Shorter Catechism, without a stumble, placing
+the emphasis where it is due, and attending to the stops," and he went
+on to report that these one hundred and seven questions had been asked
+orally of each of 396 children, that there was not a single failure, and
+that practically all the children were in the first honour list--that
+is, had answered faultlessly the whole one hundred and seven.
+
+And then another speaker, a clergyman, of course, like the first, told
+impressively of the meaning of education. It was, he said, the duty of
+every child to store his mind with all manner of knowledge and to seek
+diligently to gain information from day to day. But religion was the sum
+and complement of all education. Without it, all other acquirements
+would be little better than the beautiful flush upon the consumptive's
+cheek, the precursor of sure death and decay. He reminded them that even
+the very youngest there was guilty in the sight of God, for that awful
+word sinner described them all.
+
+Then a third speaker remarked that while the staff of the school was
+doing a fine work in teaching the boys and girls to read and write and
+cast up accounts, that that wasn't nearly so fine as teaching them the
+catechism and encouraging them to study their Bibles. And then a fourth
+speaker emphasised this; and then there was a vote of thanks to all the
+speakers, and the prize Bibles were distributed, and everybody went away
+happy--at least, the adults were all happy, and I can only hope the
+children were.
+
+From all which it is evident that the Presbyterians will fight for their
+schools as hard, if not harder, than the Catholics will for theirs. But
+to me, the thought of those poor children being drilled and drilled in
+the proper answers to the 107 questions of the Catechism, until they
+could answer them all glibly and without stopping to think, is a painful
+and depressing one. I suppose that is the way good Orangemen are made;
+but the Catechism has always seemed to me a rickety ladder to climb to
+heaven by.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was fortunate enough to witness another peculiar symptom of Belfast's
+temper, that afternoon, when I went down to the Custom House, which
+stands near the river. It is a large building occupying a full block,
+and there is a wide esplanade all around it; and this esplanade has,
+from time immemorial, been the platform which any speaker, who could
+find room upon it, was privileged to mount, and where he might
+promulgate any doctrine he could get the crowd to listen to.
+
+There was a great throng of people about the place, that afternoon, and
+a liberal sprinkling of policemen scattered through it; and then I
+perceived that it wasn't one big crowd but a lot of smaller crowds, each
+listening to a different orator, whose voices met and clashed in the air
+in a most confusing manner. And I wish solemnly to assert that the list
+which follows is a true list in every detail.
+
+At the corner of the building, a reformed drunkard, with one of those
+faces which are always in need of shaving, stood, Bible in hand,
+recounting his experiences. At least, he said he had reformed; but the
+pictures he painted of the awful depravity of his past had a lurid tinge
+which held his auditors spell-bound, and it was evident from the way he
+smacked his lips over them that he was proud of having been such a devil
+of a fellow.
+
+Next to him a smartly-dressed negro was selling bottles of medicine,
+which, so far as I could judge from what I heard, was guaranteed to cure
+all the ills that flesh is heir to. The formula for this wonderful
+preparation, he asserted, had been handed down through his family from
+his great-great-grandmother, who had been a famous African voodoo
+doctor, and it could be procured nowhere else. The open-mouthed
+Belfasters listened to all this with a deference and patience which no
+American audience would have shown, and the fakir took in many
+shillings.
+
+Next to him, a company of the Salvation Army was holding a meeting after
+the explosive fashion familiar all the world over; and at the farther
+corner, a white-bearded little fellow was describing the horrors of hell
+with an unction and exactitude far surpassing Dante. I don't know what
+his formula was for avoiding these horrors, for I didn't wait to hear
+his peroration.
+
+Just around the corner, two blind men were singing dolefully, with a tin
+cup on the pavement before them, and straining their ears for the rattle
+of a copper that never came; and farther along, a sharp-faced Irishman
+was delivering a speech, which I judged to be political, but it was so
+interspersed with anecdote and invective and personal reminiscence,
+that, though I listened a long time, I couldn't make out who he was
+talking against, or which side he was on. His audience seemed to follow
+him without difficulty, however, and laughed and applauded; and then a
+little fellow with a black moustache advised the crowd, in a loud voice,
+not to listen to him, for he was a jail-bird. I saw the constables edge
+in a little closer; but the speaker took the taunt in good part,
+admitted that he had done twelve months for some offence, and thanked
+the crowd with tears in his voice because they had raised two pounds a
+week, during that time, for the support of his family. The crowd
+cheered, and the fellow who had tried to start trouble hastened to take
+himself off. Thinking over all which, now, it occurs to me that the
+speech may have been a labour speech, and not a political one at all.
+
+I gave it up, at last, and moved on to where a man was making an
+impassioned plea for contributions for an orphan asylum. He had a
+number of sample orphans of both sexes ranged about him, and he painted
+a lively picture of the good his institution was doing; but how he hoped
+to extract donations from a crowd so evidently down at heel I don't see.
+Next to him, a frightful cripple, who could stand erect only by leaning
+heavily upon two canes, was telling the crowd how exceedingly difficult
+it was for a rich man to get into heaven. Next to him, a lot of women
+were holding some sort of missionary meeting; and just around the last
+corner, a roughly-dressed man, with coarse, red-bearded face, whose
+canvas placard described him as a "Medical Herbalist," was selling
+medicines of his own concoction.
+
+He had no panacea, but a separate remedy for every ill; and I listened
+to his patter for a long time, though obviously he didn't welcome my
+presence. He proved that slippery-elm was harmless by eating some of it,
+and argued that plantain, "which ignorant people regarded as a weed,
+made the best medicine a man could put into his inside," and he proved
+this proposition by saying that it must be so because plantain had no
+other known use, and it was inconceivable that the Lord would have taken
+the trouble to create it without some purpose. He also proved that he
+was a capable doctor because he was not a doctor at all, but a
+working-man, and it was the working-man who made the world go round.
+Inconceivable as it may seem, this ignorant and maudlin talk was
+listened to seriously and even respectfully, and he sold a lot of his
+medicines. Medicine seems to be one of the dissipations of the Belfast
+folk.
+
+The largest crowd of all was gathered before a man who held the centre
+of the fourth side of the esplanade, and who was talking, or rather
+shouting, against Home Rule. He was garbed as a clergyman, and he wore
+an Orange badge, and he was listened to with religious attention as he
+painted the iniquity of the Catholic church and the horrible dangers of
+Catholic domination. His references to King Billy and the Boyne and the
+walls of Derry were many and frequent, and he had all sorts of newspaper
+clippings in his pockets, from which he read freely, and though he was
+very hoarse and bathed in perspiration, he showed no sign of stopping.
+He intimated that, once Home Rule was established, the revival of the
+inquisition would be but a matter of a short time, that no Protestant
+would be allowed to own property, that no Protestant labourer could
+expect employment anywhere until he had abjured his religion, that their
+children would be taken away from them and reared in Catholic schools,
+and he called upon them to arm and stand firm, to offer their lives upon
+the altar of their country, and not retreat a step before the
+aggressions of the Scarlet Woman. I don't know how much of this farrago
+his audience believed, but their faces were intent and serious, and I
+fear they believed much more than was good for them. I happened upon a
+song of Chesterton's the other day which brought those strained and
+intent faces vividly before me:
+
+   The folks that live in black Belfast, their heart is in their mouth;
+   They see us making murders in the meadows of the South;
+   They think a plow's a rack, they do, and cattle-calls are creeds,
+   And they think we're burnin' witches, when we're only burnin' weeds.
+
+Those lines are scarcely an exaggeration; and after I had stood there
+listening for half an hour, I began to feel uneasily that perhaps, after
+all, there is in Ulster a dour fanaticism which may lead to an ugly
+conflict. Those political adventurers who have preached armed resistance
+so savagely, without really meaning a word of it, may have raised a
+Frankenstein which they will find themselves unable to control.
+
+[Illustration: THE CITY HALL, BELFAST]
+
+[Illustration: HIGH STREET, BELFAST]
+
+As I turned away, at last, sick at heart that such things should be, I
+passed close by a little group of men who were standing on the sidewalk
+opposite, listening to the denunciations of Rome with flushed faces and
+clenched hands.
+
+"Let's have a go at him!" said one of them hoarsely; and then he caught
+my eye, as I lingered to see what would happen. "What do you think of
+that, anyway, sir?" he asked.
+
+"I think it's outrageous," I said. "But I wouldn't raise a row, if I
+were you boys; you'll just be playing into his hands if you do."
+
+Their leader considered this for a moment.
+
+"I guess you're right, sir," he agreed, at last. "Come on, boys," and
+they slouched away around the corner.
+
+But perhaps, afterwards, when they had got a few more drinks, they came
+back again. It is a peculiarity of Belfast that the public houses are
+allowed to open at two o'clock Sunday afternoon, and they are crammed
+from that time forward with a thirsty crowd.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is nothing of antiquarian interest at Belfast, and its public
+buildings, though many and various, are in no way noteworthy. The
+sycophancy of the town is evidenced by a tall memorial to Prince
+Albert, not quite so ugly however, as the one at London; while in front
+of the city hall stands a heroic figure of Victoria. There is a statue
+to the Marquis of Dufferin, and one to Harland the ship-builder, and one
+to Sir James Haslett; and many militant divines, in flowing robes, are
+immortalised in marble. But search the streets as you may, you will find
+no statue to any Irish patriot or Irish poet.
+
+Nor will you find a street named after one--yes, there is Patrick
+Street, but it is a very short and unimportant street, and may easily
+escape notice. The shadow of the Victorian Age lies deeply over the
+place. The greatest quay is Albert Quay, and the ship channel is
+Victoria Channel, and the square at the custom house is Albert Square,
+and a little farther along is Victoria Square, and just around the
+corner is Arthur Square, and the principal avenue is Royal Avenue, and
+the broad street which leads into it is York Street, and the street next
+to it is Queen Street, and leading off of that is Kent Street, and a
+little distance away is Albert Street leading up to Great Victoria
+Street, and I am sure that somewhere in the town there is a Prince
+Consort Street, though I didn't happen upon it!
+
+The churches are all modern and uninteresting, though, strangely enough,
+the Catholic ones are as large and ornate as any. You wouldn't think it
+from the way Ulster talks, but about a fourth of the population of
+Belfast is Catholic. There are two small museums, neither of which is
+worth visiting; in a word, the whole interest of Belfast is in its
+shops, its factories and its commerce.
+
+The shops are wonderfully attractive, especially, of course, in objects
+made of linen. For Belfast is the world-centre of the linen trade, whose
+foundations were laid by the Huguenots who found a refuge here after
+Louis XIV banished them from France. It was the one Irish industry which
+England did not interfere with, because England produced no linen; and
+consequently it prospered enormously, until to-day there are single
+factories at Belfast where four thousand people bend over a thousand
+looms or watch ten thousand spindles, and the annual value of the trade
+is more than sixty million dollars. There are great tobacco factories,
+too, covering acres of ground; and the biggest rope-walk in the world;
+and a distillery which covers nineteen acres and--but the list is
+interminable.
+
+The most interesting and spectacular of all these mighty industries will
+be found along the river banks, where the great ship-building yards are
+ranged, where such monsters as the _Olympic_ and the fated _Titanic_
+were built and launched, and where the rattle and clangour of steel upon
+steel tells of the labour of twenty thousand men. And surely the clang
+and clatter of honest toil which rises from Belfast on week days must be
+more pleasing to the Almighty than the clang and clatter which rises
+from it on Sunday! I should think He would be especially disgusted with
+the noises which emanate from about the Custom House!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK
+
+
+THE shops of Belfast, with their embroidered linens (duty, forty-five
+per cent!), proved a magnet too great for Betty to resist, but I hied me
+away, next day, into County Down, on a pilgrimage to the grave which is
+said to hold the three great apostles of Erin--Saint Brigid and Saint
+Patrick and Saint Columba. It is in the churchyard of the village of
+Downpatrick that the grave lies, and the thirty mile run thither from
+Belfast is through a green and fertile country covered with broad fields
+of flax. There are raths and tumuli here and there, and a few ruins
+topping the neighbouring slopes, but it is not until one reaches
+Downpatrick that one comes upon a really impressive memorial of the old
+days.
+
+The cathedral is visible long before the train reaches the town,
+standing on the edge of a high bluff overlooking the valley of the
+Quoile, and it was to it I made my way from the station, up a very steep
+street, for Downpatrick, following the fashion of Irish towns, is built
+on the side of a hill--and also follows the fashion in having an Irish
+Street and an English Street and even a Scotch Street, the surviving
+names, I suppose, of the quarters where the people of those various
+nations once lived close together for mutual protection.
+
+The cathedral was locked, as Protestant churches have a way of being;
+but the caretaker lives near by and came running when his wife told him
+that there was a strange gentleman wished to see the church. He was a
+very Scotch Irishman, and as he took me around the bare, white interior,
+he said proudly: "There's not much high church about this. Not a bit of
+flummery will we have here--no candles or vestments or anything of that
+sort. Our people wouldn't stand it--it savours too much of Romanism."
+
+"And yet," I said, "it was Saint Patrick who founded this very church,
+and you have him and Saint Brigid and Saint Columba buried in your
+churchyard."
+
+"Yes, and we're proud to have them," he retorted quickly, "for they
+weren't Romanists--they were just Christians, and good ones, too. The
+Protestants of Ireland can honour Patrick and Brigid just as much as the
+Catholics do. It wasn't till long after their day that the Irish church
+made submission to Rome."
+
+There is a modicum of truth in this, for, though it is probable that St.
+Patrick was regularly ordained a bishop and is even sometimes asserted
+to have been sent on his mission by Pope Celestine himself, the ties
+which bound Irish Catholics to Rome were for many centuries very slight
+indeed, and it was not until after the Norman conquest that the
+authority of Rome was fully acknowledged; and this independence has
+persisted, in a way, even to the present day; for while Irish Catholics,
+of course, acknowledge absolutely the supremacy of the Holy See in all
+spiritual affairs, they have always been quick to resent its
+interference in things temporal, and their tolerance toward other
+religions than their own stands almost unique in history. It is,
+perhaps, a racial characteristic, for the Pagan Irish, during all the
+years of Patrick's mission among them, never seriously persecuted him
+and never slew a Christian.
+
+Here at the spot where that mission began it is fitting that I should
+say a word of it. Of Saint Patrick himself very little is certainly
+known, for he was a man of deeds and not of words, and left no record of
+his life; but there seems no valid reason to doubt the traditional
+account of him; that he was born at Kilpatrick, in Scotland, somewhere
+about 390; that his father was a Roman citizen and a Christian; that,
+when about sixteen years of age, he was captured by a band of raiding
+Irish, carried back to Ireland as a slave, sold to an Ulster chief named
+Milcho, and for six years tended his master's flocks on the slopes of
+Slemish, one of the Antrim hills. In the end he escaped and made his way
+back to his home in Britain; but once there his thoughts turned back to
+Erin, and in his dreams he heard the cries of the Pagan Irish imploring
+him to return, bearing the torch of Christianity.
+
+The voices grew too strong to be resisted, and in 432 he was back on the
+Irish coast again, having in the meantime been ordained a bishop of the
+Catholic Church; and he sailed along the coast until he came to
+Strangford Lough, where he turned in and landed. His purpose was to go
+back to Slemish and ransom himself from the master from whom he had
+escaped, but he paused at a large sabhall, or barn, and said his first
+Mass on Irish soil. It was to that spot he afterwards returned, when the
+hand of death was upon him, to end his days; and the little village
+that stands there is Sabhall, or Saul, to this day. He went on, after
+that, to the great dun, or fort, of the kings of Ulster, which we
+ourselves shall visit presently, and from which Downpatrick takes its
+name. Then, finding his old master dead, he began his life-work. His
+success was so extraordinary that at the end of thirty years, the
+conversion of the Irish was complete.
+
+[Illustration: THE GRAVE OF PATRICK, BRIGID AND COLUMBA]
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD CROSS AT DOWNPATRICK]
+
+At last, feeling his end near, he made his way back to the sanctuary at
+Saul, died there, and was brought for burial to this bluff overlooking
+the great rath below. Legend has it that Saint Brigid wove his
+winding-sheet. She herself, when she died, was buried before the high
+altar of her church at Kildare; and there are two stories of why her
+body was removed to St. Patrick's grave. One is that, in 878, her
+followers, fearing that her grave would be desecrated by the Danes,
+removed her body to Downpatrick and buried it in the grave with the
+great apostle, where the remains of St. Columba had been brought from
+Iona and placed nearly two centuries before for the same reason. The
+other story is that the bones of St. Brigid and St. Columba both were
+brought here in 1185 by John de Courcy, to whom Ulster had been granted
+by the English king,--and who had surprised and captured Downpatrick
+eight years previously,--in the hope of conciliating the people he had
+conquered. Either story may be true; but all that need concern us now is
+that there seems to be no question that the three great apostles of
+Ireland really do lie at rest within this grave.
+
+De Courcy enlarged the cathedral, which, before that, had been a poor
+affair, dedicated it to Saint Patrick, and caused effigies of the
+three saints to be placed above the east window with a Latin couplet
+over them:
+
+          Hi tres in duno, tumulo tumulantur in uno
+          Brigida, Patritius, atque Columba pius.
+
+The stone which marks the grave is in the yard just outside the
+church--a great, irregular monolith of Mourne granite, weatherworn and
+untouched by human hand, except for an incised Celtic cross and the word
+"Patric" in rude Celtic letters--one monument, at least, in Ireland
+which is wholly dignified and worthy.
+
+One other thing of antiquarian interest there is near by, and that is an
+ancient cross, said to have stood originally on the fort of the King of
+Ulster, but removed by De Courcy and set up in front of his castle in
+the centre of the town, as a sign of his sovereignty, where it was
+knocked to pieces when the castle was. The fragments have been put
+together, and battered and worn as it is, the carvings can still be
+dimly seen--the crucifixion in the centre, with stiff representations of
+Bible scenes below. It is ruder than most, as may be seen from the
+photograph opposite page 522, for the circle which surrounds the cross
+is merely indicated and not cut through. There has been much controversy
+as to the origin of this circle, which is the distinctive feature of the
+Celtic cross; but I have never yet seen any theory which seemed anything
+more than a guess--and not a particularly good guess, either.
+
+Of the first church which was built here not a trace remains, and even
+of the structure of 1137 there is little left. For Downpatrick, with the
+priories and monasteries and hospitals and convents and other religious
+establishments which had grown up around the sacred grave of the saints,
+was one of the first objects of attack when Henry VIII began his
+suppression of the religious houses. Lord Grey marched hither at the
+head of a regiment of soldiers and plundered the place and set fire to
+it, so that only an empty shell was left. The crumbling and blackened
+ruin stood undisturbed for more than two hundred years, and when its
+restoration was finally undertaken, it was found that only five arches
+of the nave were solid enough to be retained. So the present structure
+is only about a century old, except for that one stretch of wall and a
+recessed doorway under the east window. The old effigies of Brigid and
+Patrick and Columba, which Grey pulled down and knocked to pieces, have
+been replaced in the niches above the window, but they are sadly
+mutilated. In the vestry is a portrait of Jeremy Taylor, who was Bishop
+of Down for nearly seventy years, but there is little else of interest
+in the church. The most imposing thing about it is its position at the
+edge of the high bluff, looking out across the valley of the Quoire to
+the Mourne mountains.
+
+Just to the north of this bluff and almost in its shadow, close to the
+bank of a little stream, still stands the enormous rath built two
+thousand years ago by Celtchair, one of the heroes of the Red Branch of
+Ulster, and here he and the chiefs who came after him had their
+stronghold. So great was its fame that Ptolemy, in far off Egypt, heard
+of it, and it was gradually enlarged and strengthened until there were
+few in Ireland to equal it. The sea helped to guard it, for at high tide
+the water flowed up over the flats along the Quoile and lapped against
+it; but the erection of sluice-gates farther down the stream has shut
+away the tide, and it stands now in the midst of a marsh.
+
+To get to it, one passes along the wall of the jail--one of the largest
+I had seen anywhere in Ireland, and which Murray proudly says cost
+$315,000--and scrambles down into the marsh, and there before one is the
+rath. My picture of it, the top one opposite the next page, was taken
+from close beside the jail, many hundreds of yards away, and gives no
+idea of its size, except for the thread-like path which you may perceive
+running up one end, which is two or three feet wide, and fully seventy
+feet long.
+
+The rath is an immense circular rampart of earth, nearly three quarters
+of a mile in circumference, fifty feet high, and so steep that I had
+great difficulty in getting up it, even by the path. Around it runs a
+fosse or ditch some forty feet wide and nine or ten feet deep. This, of
+course, was deeper in the old days, and would remain filled with water
+even when the tide was out. Inside the circular rampart, the ground
+drops some twenty feet into a large enclosure, near the centre of which
+a great mound, surrounded by a ditch ten feet deep, towers sixty feet
+into the air.
+
+The central mound corresponds to the keep or donjon tower of more modern
+forts, the last place of refuge and defence when the outer ramparts had
+been forced; and it was on this mound that the dwellings of the chiefs
+stood, rude enough, no doubt, though they were the palaces of kings. The
+tribal huts clustered in the enclosure about the foot of the mound; and
+so perfectly is the whole place preserved--though of course there is
+now no trace of hut or palace--that one has little difficulty in
+picturing the busy life which went on there--the throngs of men and
+women and children, the tribal council gathered on the summit of the
+great mound to listen to the chief, the departure of expeditions for war
+or for the chase, the arrival of envoys from some other chieftain or
+perhaps of some minstrel, his harp slung across his shoulder. . . .
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT RATH AT DOWNPATRICK]
+
+[Illustration: THE INNER AND OUTER CIRCLES]
+
+[Illustration: THE CENTRAL MOUND]
+
+I tore myself away, at last, for there was another place I wished to
+visit, and it was three miles distant--the Holy Wells of Struell. The
+caretaker at the cathedral had pointed out the route, so I climbed back
+past the prison, and went down through the town and up Irish Street
+beyond, and over Gallows Hill, where some unfortunate Irishmen were
+hanged during the rebellion of '98. The road beyond ran between high
+hedge-rows and under arching trees, whose shade was very grateful, for
+the day was the hottest I had experienced in Ireland; and then it
+crossed the white high-road and ran close under a long stretch of wall
+which surrounded an enormous and ornate building. I asked a passer-by
+what it was, and he answered that it was a madhouse, and big as it was,
+was none too big. Murray supplies the information that it cost half a
+million.
+
+There is a workhouse in the town which, from the look of it, must have
+cost $300,000--or say a million dollars for the three together, the
+jail, the workhouse and the asylum, every cent of it, of course, raised
+by taxation from the poorest people in the world! Sadly pondering this,
+I went on along the lane, and the heat made the way seem very long. But
+a girl I met assured me that I had not much farther to go--only past
+the farm at the foot of the hill; and presently I came to the farm, a
+handsome one, with the dwelling-house surrounded by well-built barns and
+stables, and a man there directed me to the wells, down a little
+by-road. Five minutes later, I had reached the rude stone huts which
+cover the Holy Wells of Struell.
+
+Down the middle of a pretty valley, a small stream leaps from rock to
+rock, pausing here and there in little pools, and these pools are the
+"wells." Each of them is protected by a stone-walled, stone-roofed cell,
+built in the old days when the wells were in their glory, and now
+falling to decay. Just beyond the wells is a group of thatched cottages,
+and a girl of eight or nine, seeing my approach, hurried out from one of
+them and volunteered to act as guide, scenting, of course, the chance to
+earn a penny. And she took me first to what she said was the
+drinking-well, a little grass-grown pool in a fence-corner, and though
+she seemed to expect me to drink, I didn't, for the water looked stale
+and scummy.
+
+Then we climbed a wall, and walked over to a stone cubicle, which stood
+in the middle of a potato patch. This is the eye-well, and the cell over
+it is just large enough to permit a person to enter and kneel down above
+the water and bathe the affected parts. I took a picture of it which you
+will find opposite the next page. Then she led me to the largest well of
+all, the body well, or well of sins, where it is necessary to undress
+and immerse the whole body.
+
+The stone building over the body well is divided into two parts by a
+solid wall, and one part is for men and the other for women. The
+disrobing is done in the outer chamber, which has a low stone bench
+running around three sides, and then the penitent enters a small inner
+chamber, descends some six or seven steps into the pool of water, and, I
+suppose, places himself below the stream which falls into the pool from
+the end of a pipe. As its name indicates, this well was supposed to have
+the power of washing away all disease, both physical and moral, and time
+was when it was very popular. The effect of the cold bath was so
+exhilarating, and the sudden sense of freedom from sin and disease so
+uplifting, that the penitents would sometimes rush forth to proclaim
+their blessed state without pausing to resume their garments. Naturally
+a lot of impious Orangemen would gather to see the fun; and finally both
+the secular authorities and the Catholic clergy set their faces against
+the practices, with the result that they gradually fell into disuse.
+Only single pilgrims, or small companies, at most, come now to bathe in
+the magic waters, and their behaviour is most circumspect. The cells,
+themselves, are well-nigh in ruins. A chapel to Saint Patrick, from whom
+these waters derive their efficacy, was begun during the day of their
+popularity, but was never finished, and now only a fragment of it
+remains.
+
+[Illustration: THE EYE WELL AT STRUELL]
+
+[Illustration: THE WELL OF SINS AT STRUELL]
+
+While I was manoeuvring for a photograph of the well of sins, a
+middle-aged woman came out of a near-by cottage to advise me where to
+stand. She had seen many pictures taken of the well, she said, and the
+place that made the best picture was on top of the wall around her
+garden, and I climbed up on it, and found that she was right.
+
+"'Tis a warm day," she went on, when I descended, "and your honour must
+be tired with the long walk. Will you not come in and sit a spell?"
+
+"Thank you," I said; "I'll be glad to--it _is_ hot," and I followed her
+into a lovely old kitchen, with floor of flags, and whitewashed walls
+gleaming with pots and pans, and with a tall dresser in one corner
+glittering with a brave array of china. In here it was quite cool, so
+that after the first moment, the open grate of glowing coals, with the
+usual bubbling pot above it and the usual kettle on the hob, felt very
+pleasant.
+
+I expressed surprise that she was burning coal, and she said the
+landlords of the neighbourhood had shut up the peat-bogs, in order to
+make every one buy English coal; and it was very hard indeed on the poor
+people, who had always been used to getting their fuel for the labour of
+cutting it, besides shutting them off from earning a little money by
+selling the turf to the people in the town, who would rather have it
+than coal. But the landlords were always doing things like that, and it
+did no good to complain. She had two brothers in America, she said, and
+lived here at Struell and kept house for a third. She and her brother
+were both unmarried, and would probably always remain so. Then, of
+course, she wanted to know about my condition in life, and I described
+it as freely as she had described her own. And then she asked me if I
+wouldn't like a glass of milk, and when I said I would, she hastened to
+get it from the milk-house, through which a clear little stream
+trickled, and very sweet and cool it was.
+
+And then we got to talking about Ulster's attitude toward Home Rule.
+County Down, you should remember, is one of the nine counties which form
+the Province of Ulster, and is the most strongly Protestant of all of
+them outside of Belfast and Antrim, for only about one third of its
+200,000 people are Catholic.
+
+"God knows what will happen," said my hostess, very seriously. "I have
+been hearing a lot of wild talk, but paid no heed to it, for these
+Orangemen are always talkin' about this or that, and their talk means
+nothing. But I've come to think it may be more than just talk this time.
+I heard a few days since that all the Orangemen hereabouts have been
+getting together three evenings every week in a meadow over beyont, and
+an officer of the army comes there and drills them till it is too dark
+to see. And they say, too, that there is a gun ready for each of them,
+with plenty of powder and lead to put into it; and they've sleuthered a
+lot of poor boys into joinin' with them who have not the courage to say
+no. But I'm hoping it will pass by, and that no trouble will come of it.
+I am a Catholic myself, but we have never had any trouble with the
+Protestants. We get along very well together, and why shouldn't we? Some
+of my best friends are Protestants, and I know they wish us no harm. No,
+no, we are well-placed here, though them ones in the south do be calling
+us the black north."
+
+I told her something of the destitution and misery I had seen in the
+south and west; but she showed no great sympathy--rather a contempt, I
+fancied, for people who could be so easy-going and unambitious. She
+herself seemed of a very different breed; and the shining kitchen, as
+clean as a new pin, proved what a delight and pride she took in her
+home and how energetic a housewife she was. Personally she was just as
+clean and tidy as her kitchen, with hair neatly brushed and a bit of
+white about her throat; and the apron she had on was a fresh one,
+newly-ironed--something I never saw upon any peasant woman of the south.
+She brought out an album of photographs, presently--photographs of
+herself and of her brother, and various photographs of the wells, and I
+promised to send her a print of mine, if it proved to be a good one. And
+then I bade her good-bye and started back the way I came; but I can
+still see her shrewd and kindly face, with the little wrinkles at the
+corners of the eyes, and the cool, sweet-smelling kitchen where I spent
+that pleasant hour.
+
+I walked about the steep streets of Downpatrick quite a while, after I
+reached the town, and found them unusually quaint. Like so many other
+towns in Ireland, this one is all too evidently on the down grade. The
+tall houses, which were once the residences of the well-to-do, have been
+turned into tenements, and while they are not so dirty and repulsive as
+those of Dublin and Limerick, they are still bad enough. Others of the
+houses are empty and falling into ruin. One curious thing about the
+place is that from any quarter of it the town-hall is visible, standing
+in the hollow at the bottom of the hill, for the five principal streets
+start from it--Irish Street and English Street and Scotch Street and two
+others whose names I have forgotten, but which were, perhaps, the
+neutral ground of trade.
+
+I made my way down to the station, at last, and as the train started, a
+young fellow in the same compartment with me bade a tearful farewell to
+the relatives and friends who had gathered to see him off, and sat for
+some time thereafter weeping unaffectedly into his handkerchief. When he
+was a little calmer, I asked him if he was going to America. He said no;
+he was going only to Belfast, but that was a long way!
+
+It is really only about thirty miles; but thirty miles is a great
+journey to the average Irishman. For the Irishman is no traveller; he is
+quite content to spend his life within the circle of one small horizon,
+and never so happy as when sitting at his own fireside. Indeed, he is
+apt to regard with suspicion those who have nothing better to do than
+wander about the world. Mayo tinkers have always had a bad name in
+Ireland, not because they do anything especially to deserve it, but
+merely because they make their living in an unnatural fashion by roaming
+from place to place. Surely there must be something wrong with a man who
+does that!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night, at Belfast, we went to a variety show. The Wild West film
+seems as popular here as in the rest of Ireland, for a particularly
+sensational one, where the heroine escaped from the Indians by going
+hand over hand along a rope above a deep ravine, into which the Indians
+were precipitated by the hero, who cut the rope when they started to
+cross by it, was received with great enthusiasm. There were also some
+scattered cheers when a conjuror, with carefully calculated effect,
+produced portraits of the King and Queen from somewhere and waved them
+before the audience. But the cheers were thin and forced, and by far the
+most of those present sat grimly silent and stared at the pictures with
+set faces.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE
+
+
+I HAD one other trip to make in Ireland. That was to the scene of the
+battle of the Boyne, to the tombs of the kings at Dowth and Newgrange,
+and to the ruins near-by of two of the most famous and beautiful of the
+old abbeys, Mellifont and Monasterboice. Readers of this book will
+remember that, early in the narrative, Betty and I had journeyed up from
+Dublin to Drogheda for the purpose of visiting these historic places,
+but had been prevented by a combination of unforeseen circumstances.
+
+It was, then, for Drogheda that I set out next morning, Betty having
+voted for another day in the Belfast shops; and by a singular
+coincidence it was the first day of July, the anniversary of that other
+day in 1690 when the army of William of Orange defeated the battalions
+of Irishmen who had rallied around James--and surely never had braver
+men a poorer leader! But it was not really the anniversary, for the
+change in the calendar has shifted the date to July 12th, and it is on
+that day the Orangemen celebrate.
+
+It is an eighty mile run from Belfast to Drogheda, and one of the most
+picturesque and interesting in the east of Ireland; and the weather god
+was kind to the last, for a brighter, sweeter day it would be impossible
+to imagine. As the train leaves the city, there are glimpses to the
+right of the purple hills of Antrim; and then the train pauses at the
+busy town of Lisbun, and continues on over the Ulster canal, past the
+battlefield of Moira, past the beautiful woods of Lurgan, and then
+through a prosperous and fertile country, with broad fields of grain and
+flax, and pretty villages, and so into Portadown, once the stronghold of
+the McCahans.
+
+I was travelling third that day, as always when alone, and the
+compartment had four or five people in it; and I had noticed that one of
+them, a man poorly clad and with a kit of tools in a little bag, had
+been looking anxiously from the window for some time. Finally he leaned
+over and touched me on the knee.
+
+"Can you tell me, sir, if this is the train to Derry?" he asked.
+
+"No; it's going to Dublin," I said; and just then it rumbled to a stop,
+and he opened the door and slipped hastily out.
+
+What happened to him I don't know, but he was in no way to blame for the
+mistake, which was due to the abominable custom they have in Ireland of
+starting trains for different places from the same platform, within a
+minute or two of each other. That morning, at Belfast, there had been a
+long line of coaches beside one of the platforms; no engines were as yet
+attached to them, but the front part of the line was destined for
+Dublin, and the rear portion for Derry, but there was no way to tell
+where one train ended and the other began, and no examination was made
+of the passengers' tickets before the trains started.
+
+I was wary, for I had been caught in exactly the same way once before,
+at Claremorris Junction, and had escaped being carried back to Westport
+only by stopping the train, amid great excitement, after it had started.
+So, that morning at Belfast, I had assured myself by repeated inquiry of
+various officials that the carriage I was in was going the way I wanted
+to go; but any traveller unwary or unaccustomed to the vagaries of Irish
+roads, such as this poor fellow, might easily have been caught napping.
+Where it is necessary to start two trains close together from the same
+platform, it would seem to be only ordinary precaution to examine the
+passengers' tickets before locking the doors.
+
+From Portadown, the road runs along the valley of the Bann, past the
+ruins of the old fortress of Redmond O'Hanlon, an outlaw almost as
+famous in Irish history as Robin Hood is in English; and then it passes
+Scarva, with a mighty cairn marking the grave of Fergus Fogha, who fell
+in battle here sixteen centuries ago. Here, too, are the ruins of one of
+General Monk's old castles, and on a neighbouring slope the grass-green
+walls of a great rath, the stronghold of some more ancient chieftain.
+Indeed, there are raths and cashels and ivy-draped ruins all about, the
+work of Irish and Dane and Norman and later English, for here was a pass
+across the bog from Down into Armagh, and so a chosen spot for defence
+and the exacting of tribute.
+
+Then the train is carried by a viaduct half a mile long over the deep
+and wild ravine of Craigmore, leaves Newry on the left and climbs
+steadily, with beautiful views of the Mourne mountains to the right,
+plunges at last through a deep cutting, and comes out under the shadow
+of the Forkhill mountains, with the mighty mass of Slieve Gullion
+overtopping them. Just beyond is Mowry Pass, the only pass between
+north and south, except round by the coast, and so, of course, the scene
+of many a desperate conflict.
+
+From this point on, for many miles, the scenery is very wild and
+beautiful, and every foot of it has been a battle-ground. Just before
+the train reaches Dundalk, it passes close to the hill of Faughart,
+topped by a great earthwork, and it was here that Edward Bruce was slain
+in battle a year after he had been crowned king of Ireland; and farther
+on is another rath, the Dun of Dealgan, where dwelt Cuchulain, chief of
+the Red Branch Knights, and one of the great heroes of Irish legend. It
+was from Dun Dealgan that Dundalk took its name, and Dundalk was for
+centuries the key to the road to Ulster and the northern limit of the
+English pale, which had Dublin for its centre. Merely to enumerate the
+battles which have been fought here would fill a page; but the train
+rumbles on, past a little church which uses the fragment of a round
+tower for a belfry, past the modern castle of the Bellinghams, built
+from the proceeds of a famous brewery, past a wayside Calvary, and so at
+last into Drogheda. And when I arrived there, I had completed the
+circuit of Ireland.
+
+The car which was to make the round of the Boyne valley was waiting
+outside the station, at the top of that long, ugly street which looked
+so familiar now that I saw it again; and after waiting awhile for other
+passengers and finding there was none, we drove down into the town,
+where another passenger was waiting--a clergyman with grey hair and blue
+eyes and white refined face, Church of England by his garb, and, as I
+found out afterwards, Oxford by residence.
+
+And here again it looked for a moment as though I was to be balked a
+second time of seeing Mellifont and Monasterboice, for it was Tuesday,
+and on Tuesday, it seemed, the round was by way of Slane; but the driver
+left the choice of routes to his passengers, and the clergyman said he
+didn't care where we went so we saw the Boyne battlefield; and with that
+we set off westward along the pleasant road, and soon, far ahead, we saw
+the top of the great obelisk opposite the place where Schomberg fell.
+The road dips steeply into King William's Glen, along which the centre
+of the Protestant army advanced to the river, and then we were on the
+spot where the cause of Protestant ascendency in Ireland triumphed
+finally and irrevocably and where the Cromwellian settlements were
+sealed past overthrow.
+
+William, with his English and his Dutch, had marched down from Dundalk,
+and James, with his Irish and his French, had marched up from Dublin,
+and here on either side of this placid little river, where the hills
+slope down to the Oldbridge ford, the armies took their station; and
+here, a little after ten o'clock in the morning, brave old Schomberg,
+whose tomb, you will remember, we saw in St. Patrick's at Dublin (how
+long ago that seems!), led his Dutch guards and his regiment of
+Huguenots into the water, across the ford, and up the bank on the other
+side. There, for a moment, his troops fell into disorder before the
+fierce attack of the Irish, and as he tried to rally them, a band of
+Irish horse rushed upon him, circled round him and left him dead upon
+the ground. Almost at the same moment, the white-haired Walker, who had
+exhorted the defenders of Derry never to surrender, was shot dead while
+urging on the men of Ulster. But though the Irish were able to hold
+their ground at first, and even to drive their assailants back into the
+river, a long flanking movement which William had set on foot earlier in
+the day, caught them unprepared, and they gave way, at last, before
+superior numbers and superior discipline.
+
+Long before that, King James had fled the field, and, without stopping,
+spurred on to Dublin, thirty miles away. He reached that city at ten
+o'clock that night, tired, hungry, and complaining bitterly to Lady
+Tyrconnell that the Irish had run faster than he had ever seen men do
+before. Lady Tyrconnell was an Irishwoman, and her eyes blazed. "In
+that, as in all other things," she said, "it is evident that Your
+Majesty surpasses them"; and Patrick Sarsfield, who had been placed that
+day in command of the king's bodyguard, and so had got nowhere near the
+fighting, sent back to the Protestants his famous challenge, "Change
+kings, and we will fight it over again!"
+
+Well, all that was more than two centuries ago; there is no more
+placidly beautiful spot in Ireland than this green valley, with the
+silver stream rippling past; but the staunch Protestants of the north
+still baptise their babies with water dipped from the river below the
+obelisk. And they are not altogether wrong, for that river is the river
+of their deliverance; and perhaps, in some distant day, when new justice
+has wiped out the memory of ancient wrong, Irish Catholics will agree
+with Irish Protestants that it was better William should have won that
+day than James.
+
+[Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY]
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO DOWTH TUMULUS]
+
+My clerical companion, guide-book in hand, had carefully noted every
+detail of the field, and it was evident from his shining eyes how his
+soul was stirred by the thought of that old victory. But our driver sat
+humped on his box, smoking silently, his face very grim. This job of
+driving Protestant clergymen to Boyne battlefield must be a trying one
+for the followers of Brigid and Patrick! But at last my companion had
+seen enough, and closed his book with a little sigh of happiness and
+satisfaction; and our driver whistled to his horse, and we climbed
+slowly out of the valley.
+
+We had about a mile of hedge-lined road, after that, and, looking down
+from it, we caught glimpses of wooded demesnes across the river, with
+the chimneys of handsome houses showing above the trees--and they, too,
+are the symbols of William's victory, for they are the homes of the
+conquerors, the visible signs of that social order which Boyne battle
+established, and which still endures.
+
+And then our driver, who had recovered his good-humour, pointed out to
+us a great mound in the midst of a level field--a circular mound, with
+steep sides and flat top, and a certain artificial appearance, though it
+seemed too big to be artificial. And yet it is, for it was built about
+two thousand years ago as a sepulchre for the mighty dead.
+
+For all this left bank of the river was the so-called Brugh-na-Boinne,
+the burying-ground of the old Milesian kings of Tara; and two great
+tumuli are left to show that the kings of Erin, like the kings of
+ancient Egypt and the kings of the still more ancient Moundbuilders,
+were given sepulchres worthy of their greatness. Yet there is a
+difference. The tombs of the Moundbuilders were mere earthen tumuli
+heaped above the dead; the pyramids of the Egyptians were carefully
+wrought in stone. The tumuli of the ancient Irish stand midway between
+the two. First great slabs were placed on end, and other slabs laid
+across the uprights; and in this vaulted chamber the ashes of the dead
+were laid; and then loose stones were heaped above it until it was
+completely covered. Sometimes a passage would be left, but that would be
+a secret known to few, and when the tomb was done it would seem to be
+nothing more than a great circular mound of stones. As the years passed,
+the stones would be covered gradually with earth, and then with grass
+and bushes, and trees would grow upon it, until there would be nothing
+left to distinguish it from any other hill. Only within the last half
+century have the tumuli been explored, and then it was to find that the
+Danes had spared not even these sanctuaries, but had entered them and
+despoiled the inner chambers. Nevertheless, they remain among the most
+impressive human monuments to be found anywhere.
+
+This first tumulus we came to is the tumulus of Dowth, and a woman met
+us at the gate opening into the field where it stands, gave us each a
+lighted candle, and led the way to the top of an iron ladder which ran
+straight down into the bowels of the earth. We descended some twenty
+feet into a cavity as cold as ice; then, following the light of the
+woman's candle, we squeezed along a narrow passage made of great stones
+tilted together at the top, so low in places that we had to bend double,
+so close together in others that we had to advance sideways blessing
+our slimness; and finally we came to the great central chamber where the
+dead were placed.
+
+It is about ten feet square, and its walls, like those of the passage,
+are formed by huge blocks of stone set on end. Then other slabs were
+laid a-top them, and then on one another, each slab overlapping by eight
+or ten inches the one below, until a last great stone closed the central
+aperture and the roof was done. In the centre the chamber is about
+twelve feet high. Many of the stones are carved with spirals and
+concentric circles and wheel-crosses and Ogham writing--yes, and with
+the initials of hundreds of vandals!
+
+In the centre of the floor is a shallow stone basin, about four feet
+square, used perhaps for some ceremony in connection with the
+burials--sacrifice naturally suggests itself, such as tradition connects
+with Druid worship; and opening from the chamber are three recesses,
+about six feet deep, also constructed of gigantic stones, and in these,
+it is surmised, the ashes of the dead were laid. From one of these
+recesses a passage, whose floor is a single cyclopean stone eight feet
+long, leads to another recess, smaller than the first ones. When the
+tomb was first entered, little heaps of burned bones were found, many of
+them human--for it should be remembered that the ancient Irish burned
+their dead before enclosing them in cists or burying them in tumuli.
+There were also unburned bones of pigs and deer and birds, and glass and
+amber beads, and copper pins and rings; and before the Danes despoiled
+it, there were doubtless torques of gold, and brooches set with
+jewels--but the robbers left nothing of that sort behind them.
+
+Nobody knows when this mound was built; but the men who cut the spirals
+and circles--and in one place a leaf, not incised, but standing out in
+bold relief--must have had tools of iron or bronze to work with; so the
+date of the mound's erection can be fixed approximately at about the
+beginning of the Christian era. For the rest, all is legend. But as one
+stands there in that cyclopean chamber, the wonder of the thing, its
+uncanniness, its mystery, grow more and more overwhelming, until one
+peers around nervously, in the dim and wavering candle-light, expecting
+to see I know not what. With me, that sensation passed; for I happened
+suddenly to remember how George Moore and A. E. made a pilgrimage to
+this spot, one day, and sat in this dark chamber, cross-legged like
+Yogin, trying to evoke the spirits of the Druids, and just when they
+were about to succeed, or so it seemed, the vision was shattered by the
+arrival of two portly Presbyterian preachers.
+
+There is another entrance to the tumulus, about half way up, which opens
+into smaller and probably more recent chambers; and after a glance at
+them, we clambered to the top. Far off to the west, we could see the
+hill of Tara, where the old kings who are buried here held their court
+and gave great banquets in a hall seven hundred feet long, of which
+scarce a trace remains; and a little nearer, to the north, is the hill
+of Slane, where, on that Easter eve sixteen centuries ago, St. Patrick
+lighted his first Paschal fire in Ireland, in defiance of a Druidic law
+which decreed that in this season of the Festival of Spring, no man
+should kindle a fire in Meath until the sacred beacon blazed from Tara.
+You may guess the consternation of the priests when, through the
+gathering twilight, they first glimpsed that little flame which Patrick
+had kindled on the summit of Slane, just across the valley. That, I
+think, is easily the most breathless and dramatic moment in Irish
+history. The king sent his warriors to see what this defiance meant, and
+Patrick was brought to Tara, and he came into the assembly chanting a
+verse of Scripture: "Some in chariots and some on horses, but we in the
+name of the Lord our God." And so his mission began.
+
+On the other side of the mound, across a field and beyond a wall, I
+could see what seemed to be an ivy-draped ruin, and I asked our guide
+what it might be, and she said it was the birthplace of John Boyle
+O'Reilly. It was but a short walk, and my companion said he would wait
+for me; so I hastened down the mound and across the field and over the
+wall, and found that what I had seen was indeed a tall old house, draped
+with ivy and falling into ruin. Just back of it is a church, also in
+ruins, and again its wall is a granite monument to O'Reilly, more
+remarkable for its size than for any other quality. There is a bust of
+the poet at the top, and on either side a weeping female figure, and a
+long inscription in Gaelic, which of course I couldn't read; and which
+may have been very eloquent. But if it had been for me to write his
+epitaph, I would have chosen a single verse of his as all-sufficient:
+
+          Kindness is the Word.
+
+Then, as I was wading out through the meadow to get a picture of the
+house, I met with a misadventure, for, disturbed by my passage, a bee
+started up out of the grass, struck me on the end of the nose, clung
+wildly there an instant, and then stung viciously. It was with tears of
+anguish streaming down my cheeks that I snapped the picture opposite the
+preceding page.
+
+Dowth Castle is not the ancestral home of the O'Reillys; that stood on
+Tullymongan, above the town of Cavan, of which they were lords for
+perhaps a thousand years. Dowth Castle, on the other hand, was built by
+Hugh de Lacy, as an outpost of the English pale; but it came at last
+into the hands of an eccentric Irishman who, about a century ago,
+bequeathed it and some of the land about it as a school for orphans and
+a refuge for widows. The Netterville Institution, as it was called, came
+to comprise also a National school, and of this school John Boyle
+O'Reilly's father, William David O'Reilly, was master for thirty-five
+years. He and his wife lived in the castle, here in 1844 the poet was
+born, and here he spent the first eleven years of his life. What fate
+finally overtook the castle I don't know, but only the ivy-draped outer
+walls remain. The trim modern buildings of the Institution cluster in
+its shadow.
+
+I made my way back to the car, where my companion, who was not
+interested in O'Reilly, was awaiting me somewhat impatiently, and I
+think he regarded the bee which had stung me as an agent of Providence.
+But we set off again, and the car climbed up and up to the summit of the
+ridge which overlooks the river; and presently we were rolling along a
+narrow road bordered with lofty elms, and then, in a broad pasture to
+our right, we saw another mound, far larger than the first, and knew
+that it was Newgrange.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO NEWGRANGE]
+
+[Illustration: THE RUINS OF MELLIFONT]
+
+Four mighty stones stand like sentinels before it. The largest of them
+is eight or nine feet high above the ground and at least twenty in
+girth; and they are all that are left of a ring of thirty-five similar
+monsters which once guarded the great cairn with a circle a quarter of a
+mile around. Like the tumulus of Dowth, this of Newgrange is girdled by
+a ring of great stone blocks, averaging eight or ten feet in length, and
+laid closely end to end; and on top of them is a wall of uncemented
+stones three or four feet high. Behind the wall rises the cairn,
+overgrown with grass and bushes and even trees; but below the skin of
+earth is the pile of stones, heaped above the chambers of the dead.
+
+The entrance here is a few feet above the level of the ground, and is
+the true original entrance, which the one at Dowth is not, for the level
+of the ground there has risen. This little door consists of two upright
+slabs and a transverse one. Below it is placed a great stone, covered
+with a rich design of that spiral ornamentation peculiar to the ancient
+Irish--emblematic, it is said, of eternity, without beginning and
+without end. The stone above the door is also carved, and my photograph,
+opposite this page, gives a very fair idea of how the entrance looks.
+
+We found a woman waiting for us--she had heard the rattle of our wheels
+far down the road, and had hastened from her house near by to earn
+sixpence by providing us with candles; and she led the way through the
+entrance into the passage beyond. As at Dowth, it is formed of huge
+slabs inclined against each other, but here they have given way under
+the great weight heaped upon them, and the passage grew lower and lower,
+until the woman in front of us was crawling on her hands and knees. The
+clergyman, who was behind her, examined the low passage by the light of
+his candle, and then said he didn't think he'd try it.
+
+"Oh, come along, sir," urged the woman's voice. "'Tis only a few yards,
+and then you can stand again. If you was a heavy man, now, I wouldn't be
+advisin' it; I've seen more than one who had to be pulled out by his
+feet; but for a slim man the likes of you sure it is nothing."
+
+He still held back, so I squeezed past him, and went down on hands and
+knees, and crawled slowly forward in three-legged fashion holding my
+candle in one hand, over the strip of carpet which had been laid on the
+stones to protect the clothing of visitors. As our guide had said, the
+passage soon opened up so that it was possible to stand upright again. I
+called back encouragement to my companion, and he finally crawled
+through too; and then, as I held my candle aloft, I saw that we had come
+out into a great vaulted chamber at least twenty feet high. Here, as at
+Dowth, the sides are formed of mammoth slabs, and the vault of other
+slabs laid one upon the other, each row projecting beyond the row below
+until the centre is reached. Here too there are three recesses; but
+everything is on a grander scale than at Dowth, and the ornamentation is
+much more elaborate. It consists of intricate and beautifully formed
+spirals, coils, lozenges and chevrons; and here, also, the vandal had
+been at work, scratching his initials, sometimes even his detested name,
+upon these sacred stones. There was one especially glaring set of
+initials right opposite the entrance, deeply and evidently freshly cut,
+and I asked the woman how such a thing could happen.
+
+"Ah, sir," she said, "that was done by a young man who you would never
+think would be doing such a thing. He come here one day, not long since,
+and with him was a young woman, and they were very quiet and
+nice-appearing, so after I had brought them in, I left them to
+theirselves, for I had me work to do; but when I came in later, with
+another party, that was what I saw. And I made the vow then that never
+again would I be leaving any one alone here, no matter how respectable
+they might look."
+
+We commended her wisdom, and turned back to an inspection of the
+carvings. It was noticeable that there was no attempt at any general
+scheme of decoration, for the spirals and coils were scattered here and
+there without any reference to each other, some of them in inaccessible
+corners which proved they had been made before the stones were placed in
+position. Evidently they had been carved wherever the whim of the
+sculptor suggested; and so, in spite of their delicacy and beauty, they
+are in a way supremely childish.
+
+But there is nothing childish about the tomb itself. Nobody knows from
+what forgotten quarry these great slabs were cut. Wherever it was, they
+had to be lifted out and dragged to the top of this hill and set in
+position--and many of them weigh more than a hundred tons. The passage
+from the central chamber to the edge of the mound is sixty-two feet
+long; the mound itself is eight hundred feet around and fifty high, and
+some one has estimated that the stones which compose it weigh more than
+a hundred thousand tons.
+
+For whom was it built? Perhaps for Conn, the Hundred Fighter, for
+tradition records that he was buried here, and he was worthy of such a
+tomb. If it was for Conn--and of course that is only a guess--it dates
+from about 200 A. D., for tradition has it that it was in 212 that Conn
+was treacherously slain at Tara, while preparing for the great festival
+of the Druids. Conn's son, Art, was the last of the Pagan kings to be
+buried in the Druid fashion, for Art's great son, Cormac, who came to
+the throne in 254, chose another sepulchre. He seems to have got some
+inkling of Christianity, perhaps from traders from other lands who
+visited his court. At any rate, he turned away from the Druids, and they
+put a curse upon him and caused a devil to attack him while at table, so
+that the bone of a salmon stuck in his throat and he died. But with his
+last breath he forbade his followers to bury him at Brugh-na-Boinne, in
+the tumulus with Conn and the rest, because that was a grave of
+idolaters; he worshipped another God who had come out of the East; and
+he commanded them to bury him on the hill called Rosnaree, with his face
+to the sunrise. They disregarded his command, and tried to carry his
+body across the Boyne to the tumulus; but the water rose and snatched
+the body from them, and carried it to Rosnaree; and so there it was
+buried. From Newgrange, one can see the slope of Rosnaree, just across
+the river; but there is nothing to mark the grave of the greatest of the
+early kings of Erin.
+
+          Round Cormac spring renews her buds;
+          In march perpetual by his side,
+          Down come the earth-fresh April floods,
+          And up the sea-fresh salmon glide.
+
+          And life and time rejoicing run
+          From age to age their wonted way;
+          But still he waits the risen Sun,
+          For still 'tis only dawning Day.
+
+The road to the ruins of the abbey of Mellifont runs back from the
+river, up over the hills, past picturesque villages, through a portion
+of the Balfour estate, and then dips down into the valley of the
+Mattock, on whose banks a company of Cistercians, who had come from
+Clairvaux at the invitation of the Archbishop of Armagh, chose to build
+their monastery. They called it Mellifont--"Honey Fountain"--and the
+buildings which they put up were a revelation to the Irish builders, who
+had been contented with small and unambitious churches, divided only
+into nave and chancel. Here at Mellifont was erected a great cruciform
+church, with a semi-circular chapel in each transept, as at Clairvaux;
+and to this were added cloister and chapter-house and refectory, and a
+most beautiful octagonal building which was used as a lavatory. It
+marked, in a word, the introduction of continental elaborations and
+refinements and luxuries into a land where, theretofore, austerity had
+been the ruling influence.
+
+That was in 1142, and there is not much left now of that mighty
+edifice--a portion of the old gate-tower, some fragments of the church,
+and a little more than half of the octagonal lavatory. Five of its eight
+sides remain, and they show how beautiful it must once have been--as
+you may see from the photograph opposite page 546. Another thing may be
+seen in that photograph--the corner of a huge, empty, decaying mill,
+such as dot all Ireland, symbols of her ruined industry!
+
+A clean, pleasant-faced old woman, who opened the gate for us, intimated
+that we could get lunch at her cottage, which overlooked the ruins; but
+my companion had brought his lunch in his pocket and presently sat down
+to eat it, while I made my way alone up to the cottage. There was a long
+table spread in one room, and while the tea was drawing, I told my
+hostess and her daughter about my encounter with the bee, and asked if I
+might have some hot water with which to bathe the sting. They hastened
+to get me a basin of steaming water and a clean towel, and then they
+talked together a moment in low tones, and then the old woman came
+hesitatingly forward.
+
+"If you please, sir," she said, "I have often been told that with a
+sting or bite or anything of the sort a little blueing in the water
+works wonders, and indeed I have tried it myself, and have found it very
+good. Would your honour be trying it, now, if I would get my blueing
+bag?"
+
+"Why of course I would!" I cried; "and thank you a thousand times for
+thinking of it!"
+
+Whereupon, her face beaming, she snatched the blueing bag from her
+daughter, who had it ready, and gave it to me, and I sloshed it around
+in the basin until the water was quite blue, and bathed my face in it;
+and whether it was the heat of the water or the blueing I don't know,
+but the sting bothered me very little after that, except for the
+swelling, and that was not so bad as I had feared it would be.
+
+I sat down finally to a delightful lunch of tea and bread and butter and
+cold meat and jam; and then I got out my pipe and joined my hostess on
+the bench in front of the house, and her daughter stood in the door and
+listened, and we had a long talk. As usual, it was first about herself,
+and then about myself. Her husband was dead and she suffered a great
+deal from rheumatism, which seems to be the bane of the Irish; but she
+had her little place, glory be to God, and she picked up a good many
+shillings in the summer time from visitors to the ruins, though many
+that came to see them cared nothing for them nor understood them.
+Indeed, many just came and looked at them over the gate, and then went
+away again.
+
+And just then I witnessed a remarkable confirmation of this; for a
+motor-car, with two men and two or three women in it, whirled up the
+road below and stopped at the gate outside the ruins. My hostess caught
+up her keys and started hastily down to open it, but before she had
+taken a dozen steps, the man on the front seat spoke to the chauffeur,
+and he spun the car around and in another moment it had disappeared down
+the road in a cloud of dust. I confess that I was hot with anger when my
+hostess, with a sad little smile, came back and sat down again beside
+me, for I felt somehow as though she had been affronted.
+
+I went back to the ruins presently, and my new friend came along,
+finding I was interested, and we spent half an hour wandering about
+them, while she pointed out various details which I might otherwise
+have missed. Next to the lavatory, the most interesting feature of the
+place is a beautiful pavement of decorated tiles which is preserved in
+St. Bernard's chapel. The whole church was at one time floored with
+these tiles, and a few detached ones may still be seen at the base of
+the pillars. There also remain many details of sculpture which show the
+loving labour lavished on the place when it was built--the individual
+work of the artisan, embodying something of his own soul, which gives
+these old churches a life and beauty sadly wanting in most new ones.
+
+The cemetery is near the bank of the river; but potatoes are raised
+there now, in a soil made fertile by royal as well as sacred dust; for
+here Dervorgilla, the false wife of Tiernan O'Rourke, chose to be laid
+to rest, in the hope, perhaps, that in the crowd of holy abbots and
+monks which would rise from this place, she might slip into heaven
+unobserved.
+
+Three miles away from Mellifont stand the ruins of another abbey,
+centuries older and incomparably greater in its day--an abbey absolutely
+Irish, with rude, small buildings, but with a giant round-tower and two
+of the loveliest sculptured crosses in existence on this earth.
+Monasterboice it is called--Mainister Buithe, the abbey of Boetius--and
+the way thither lies along a pleasant road, through a wooded
+valley--which, fertile as it is, is not without its traces of
+desolation, for we passed more than one vast empty mill, falling to
+decay. Then, on the slope of a hillside away ahead, we saw the round
+tower, or what is left of it, for the top of it is broken off, struck by
+lightning, perhaps. But the fragment that remains is 110 feet high! And
+seeing it thus, across the valley, with the low little church nestling
+at its base, one is inclined to think that Father Dempsey was not
+altogether wrong when he said he cared nothing about the theories of
+antiquarians concerning the round towers, for he knew what they
+were--the forefingers of the early church pointing us all to God.
+
+[Illustration: THE ROUND TOWER, MONASTERBOICE]
+
+[Illustration: THE HIGH CROSS, MONASTERBOICE]
+
+My companion and I were discussing these theories, when our jarvey saw
+the opportunity to spring a joke, which I have since discovered to be a
+time-honoured one.
+
+"Your honours are all wrong," he said, "if you will excuse my sayin' so.
+It has been proved that the round towers was built by the government."
+
+"Built by the government?" repeated my companion. "How can you prove
+that?"
+
+"Easy enough, your honour. Seein' they're no manner of use and cost a
+lot of money, who else could have built them?"
+
+And this, I take it, was his revenge for the Boyne battlefield.
+
+We stopped presently beside a stile leading over the stone wall at the
+side of the road, and here there was waiting another old woman, to
+unlock the entrance to the tower. We clambered over the stile and made
+our way up through the grass-grown, unkempt graveyard, first to the
+tower--one of the mightiest of these monuments of ancient Erin, for it
+is seventeen yards around at the base, and tapers gradually toward the
+top, and the only entrance is a small doorway six feet above the ground;
+and it takes no great effort of imagination to fancy the monks
+clambering wildly up to it, clutching the treasures of the monastery to
+their bosoms, whenever word came that the raiding Danes were in the
+neighbourhood. Ladders have been fixed so that one can climb to the top,
+but we did not essay them.
+
+No trace remains of the monastic buildings which clustered at the tower
+foot; for, unlike those at Mellifont and in England and on the
+continent, these were not wrought of stone, but were mere shacks, as in
+every truly Irish abbey, scarcely strong enough to screen from wind and
+weather the groups of scholars who gathered to study here. They lived a
+strait and austere life, and the only permanent structures they built
+were the churches. Here, as usual, they were small, the largest one
+being only forty feet in length; and the walls that remain prove how
+bare and mean they must have looked beside the carved and columned
+splendours of Mellifont.
+
+But Monasterboice has one glory, or rather two, beside which those that
+remain at Mellifont are as nothing; and these are the huge Celtic
+crosses, the most perfect and beautiful in the land. One of them is tall
+and slender and the other is short and sturdy, and both are absolute
+masterpieces.
+
+The high cross, as the tall one is called, stands near the tower-foot
+and close beside the crumbling wall of one of the old churches. It is
+twenty-seven feet high, and is composed of three stones, the shaft, the
+cross with its binding circle, and the cap. The shaft, which is about
+two feet square and eighteen feet high, is divided into seven compartments
+on either face, and in each of them is an elaborately-sculptured
+representation of some Bible scene, usually with three figures.
+Although much worn, it is still possible easily to decipher some of
+them, for there is Eve accepting the apple from the serpent while Adam
+looks mildly on, and here they are fleeing from Paradise before the
+angel with the flaming sword, and next Cain is hitting Abel on the head
+with a club while a third unidentified person watches the scene without
+offering to interfere. At the crossing there is a splendid crucifixion,
+with the usual crowded heaven and hell to left and right; the binding
+circle is beautifully ornamented with an interlacing design; and the
+cap-stone represents one of those high-pitched cells or churches, such
+as we saw at Killaloe and Glendalough.
+
+[Illustration: MUIREDACH'S CROSS, MONASTERBOICE]
+
+Beautiful as this cross is, it is surpassed by the other one,
+Muiredach's Cross, from the inscription about its base: "A prayer for
+Muiredach for whom this cross was made." That inscription gives us its
+date, at least within a century, for two Muiredachs were abbots here.
+One of them died in 844 and the other in 924, and as the latter was the
+richer and more distinguished, it is presumed that the cross is his.
+That would make its age almost exactly ten centuries.
+
+And yet, in spite of those ten centuries, the sculptures which enrich it
+from top to bottom are as beautiful to-day as they ever were. Look at
+the picture opposite this page--it is not my picture, though I took one,
+but there is an iron fence about the cross now which spoils every recent
+photograph--and you will see what a wonderful thing it is. It is a
+monolith--one single stone, fifteen feet high and six feet across the
+arms--and every inch of it is covered with ornamentation. It is the
+western face the picture shows, with the crucifixion occupying its usual
+position. Below it are three panels of extraordinary interest, for they
+show Irish warriors and clerics in the costumes of the period, all of
+them wearing fierce mustachios. In the upper panel are three clerics in
+flowing robes, the central one giving a book to one of his companions
+and a staff to the other; in the central panel are three ecclesiastics
+each holding a book; and in the lower panel a cleric in a long cloak,
+caught together at the throat with a brooch, stands staff in hand
+between two soldiers armed with Danish swords. At the foot of the shaft
+two dogs lie head to head.
+
+On the other side, the central panel shows Christ sitting in judgment,
+with a joyous devil kicking a damned soul into an already-crowded hell.
+The method of separating the blessed from the damned is shown just
+below, where a figure is carefully weighing souls in a pair of scales--a
+subject familiar to every one who has visited the Gothic cathedrals of
+France, where almost invariably a devil is trying to cheat by crouching
+below the scales and pulling down one side. The lower panels in the
+cross represent the usual Scriptural subjects--the fall of man, the
+expulsion from Eden, the adoration of the magi, and so on; and again at
+the base there are two dogs, only this time they are playing, and one is
+holding the other by the ear. All of this sculpture is done with spirit,
+with taste and with fine artistry; and another glory of the cross is the
+elaborate tracery of the side panels, and of the front, back, inside and
+outside of the circle. Of this, the photograph gives a better notion
+than any description could.
+
+          Who was he? Was he sad or glad
+            Who knew to carve in such a fashion?
+
+Those questions we may never answer. All we can say certainly is that he
+was a great artist; and his is the artist's reward:
+
+          But he is dust; we may not know
+            His happy or unhappy story:
+          Nameless, and dead these centuries,
+            His work outlives him,--there's his glory!
+
+We tore ourselves away at last from the contemplation of this consummate
+masterpiece, and drove slowly back to Drogheda, through a beautiful and
+fertile country, which, save for the thatched cottages, and
+gorse-crowned walls and hedges, did not differ greatly in appearance
+from my own. And I was very happy, for it had been a perfect day.
+Nowhere else in Ireland is it possible to crowd so much of loveliness
+and interest into so short a space. All unwittingly, I had saved the
+best for the last.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE END OF THE PILGRIMAGE
+
+
+I CAN imagine no greater contrast to the quiet and peaceful valley of
+the Boyne than was Belfast that night. The Orangemen had already begun
+to celebrate King Billy's victory, and were practising for the great
+demonstration of the twelfth, when England was to be shown, once for all
+and in a manner unmistakable, that Ulster was in earnest.
+
+As I came up on the tram from the station, we ran into a mob of people,
+marching along in the middle of the street and yelling at the tops of
+their voices, and we had to wait until they had passed. I asked a
+fellow-passenger what was going on, and he answered with a little smile
+that the Orange societies had all been given new banners that night and
+were flinging them to the breeze for the first time. I asked him who had
+given the banners, and he said he didn't know.
+
+At the hotel, I found that Betty had sought the sanctuary of our room,
+and was watching the tumult from the window. She said it reminded her of
+the French Revolution, and the comparison was natural enough. The
+especial scene she had in mind, I think, was that draggled procession of
+shrieking fishwives which escorted the king and his family in from
+Versailles.
+
+I do not know how many Orange societies there are at Belfast, but we saw
+at least a dozen march past that night, each of them headed by a band
+or drum-corps, and each with a bright new Orange banner flaunting
+proudly in the breeze. Each banner bore a painted representation of some
+Orange victory; King Billy on his white horse fording the Boyne being a
+favourite subject; and the banners were very large and fringed with gold
+lace and most expensive-looking; and before them and beside them and
+behind them trailed a mob of shrieking girls and women and ragamuffin
+boys, locked arm and arm half across the street, breaking into a clumsy
+dance now and then, or shouting the lines of some Orange ditty. There
+were many men in line, marching along more or less soberly; but these
+bacchantes outnumbered them two to one. They blocked the street from
+side to side, stopped traffic, and conducted themselves as though they
+had suddenly gone mad.
+
+Presently all the societies, which had been collecting at some
+rendezvous, marched back together, with the mob augmented a
+hundred-fold, so that, looking down from our window, we could see
+nothing but a mass of heads filling the street from side to
+side--thousands and thousands of women and girls and boys, all
+vociferous with a frenzied intoxication--and in the midst of them the
+thin stream of Orangemen trudging along behind their banners.
+
+I went down into the street to view this demonstration more closely, for
+it was evident that here at last was the spirit of Ulster unveiled for
+all to see; but at close quarters much of its impressiveness vanished,
+for the mob was composed largely of boys and girls out for a good time,
+and rejoicing in the unaccustomed privilege of yelling and hooting to
+their hearts' content. A few policemen would have been quite capable of
+dealing with that portion of it. But the men marching grimly along
+behind their banners were of different stuff; they were ready,
+apparently, for any emergency, ready for a holy war; and I wondered if
+their leaders, who had sown the wind so blithely as part of the game of
+politics, were quite prepared to reap the whirlwind which might follow.
+
+A man with whom I fell into talk said there would be a procession like
+this every evening until the twelfth; but I should think the drummers
+would be exhausted long before that. I have described the contortions of
+the Dublin drummers, but they are nowhere as compared with the drummers
+of Belfast. And, though about a fourth of Belfast's population is
+Catholic, you would never have suspected it that night, for there was no
+disorder of any kind, except the wild disorder of the Orangemen and
+their adherents. I suspect that, in Belfast, wise Catholics spend the
+early evenings of July at home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We went out, next morning, to Ardoyne village, to see one of the few
+establishments where linen is still woven by hand. A beautiful old
+factory it is, with the work-rooms grouped around an open court which
+reminded us of the Plantin-Moretus at Antwerp; and the Scotchman in
+charge of it took us through from top to bottom. I have forgotten how
+many looms there are--some thirty or forty; and it was most interesting
+to watch the weavers as they shot the shuttle swiftly back and forth
+with one hand and worked the heavy beam with the other, while with
+their feet they controlled the pattern. Nearly all the weavers were old
+men, and our guide told us it was growing more and more difficult to
+replace them, because hand-weaving had been so largely displaced by
+machine-work that it was rapidly becoming a lost art. Few young men were
+willing to undertake the long apprenticeship which was necessary before
+they could become expert weavers, and he foresaw the time when
+hand-weaving would cease altogether.
+
+Then we went upstairs, where the pattern mechanism is mounted above each
+loom; and though I understood it, in a way, after long and careful
+explanation, I am quite incapable of explaining it to anybody else,
+except to say that the threads which run down to the loom below are
+governed by a lot of stiff cards laced together into a long roll, and
+cut with many perforations, so that the roll looks something like the
+music-rolls used in mechanical piano-players.
+
+Last of all we were shown some of the finished product, and very
+beautiful it was, strong as iron--far stronger than machine-woven linen,
+for the shuttle can be thrown by hand more often to the inch than is
+possible by machine; and some of the patterns, too, were very lovely;
+one, in especial, from the Book of Kells, the interwoven Celtic
+ornamentation, the symbol of eternity.
+
+Of course we talked about Home Rule, and our Scotch host, who was
+evidently a devoted Orangeman, was very certain Ulster would fight
+before she would acquiesce. If the fight went against her, he prophesied
+that no Protestant industry which could get out of Ireland would stay
+to be taxed out of existence by a Dublin Parliament, and he said that
+many of the great factories had already secured options on English
+sites, and were prepared to move at any time.
+
+I remarked that it seemed to me the wiser plan would be to wait and see
+how Home Rule worked before plunging into revolution; then, if it was
+found that Ulster was really oppressed, it would be time enough for her
+army to take the field. And I told him something of what I had seen and
+heard in the south and west of Ireland--that, among all the people I had
+talked with, not one had expressed himself with any bitterness toward
+Ulster, and that many had said frankly that the leaders of the Irish
+people would be largely Protestant in the future, just as they had been
+in the past. But he was unconvinced, and very gloomy over the outlook.
+
+We came away finally, and took a last look about Belfast--at the busy
+streets, the bright shops, the humming factories, the clattering
+foundries; and then the hour of departure came. The jarvey who drove us
+to the boat was a jovial, loquacious son of the Church, with
+good-natured laughter for Orange excesses.
+
+"Why should we Catholics interfere wid them?" he asked. "We'd only be
+gettin' our heads broke, and all the papers would be full of the riots
+in Ulster. Sure, haven't I seen them before this treatin' a small fight
+at the corner as though it was a revolution? No, no; we'll just stay
+quiet and let them have their fun. It does good to them and no harm to
+us. They'll settle down again when the Home Rule bill is passed, and
+then we'll be Irishmen all, please God!"
+
+From the bottom of my heart I said I hoped so. Indeed, I can think of no
+better watch-word to replace "No Surrender!" and curses on King Billy
+and the Pope than "Irishmen All!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are few busier ports than Belfast, and we made our way down to the
+quay through a tangle of drays that would have done no discredit to the
+New York water-front; and at last we found our boat and got aboard. And
+presently the ropes were cast off, and we steamed slowly down the river,
+between long lines of lofty scaffolding shrouding the hulls of scores of
+mighty ships, one day to play their part in the commerce of the world.
+
+And then we were in Belfast Lough, with the grim keep of Carrickfergus
+looming on the western shore; and then the bay widened, the shores
+dropped away, and we headed out across the white-capped waters of the
+Irish Sea. For long and long in the distance, we could see the purple
+masses of the Antrim hills, growing fainter and ever fainter, until at
+last they merged into the purple of the western sky. And so we looked
+our last upon the Island of the Saints.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Abbeys, 21-22, 99-102, 108-109, 110-112, 193-196, 199, 229-233,
+        266, 269-271, 280, 285-291, 346-347, 379-382, 405, 422-423,
+        442-443, 550-558
+
+  Adare, 226-236
+
+  Aghadoe, 180, 198-200, 201
+
+  Aideen, 23
+
+  Aileach, 465, 480
+
+  Allen, Hill of, 93
+
+  Allen, Lough, 242
+
+  Allingham, William, 428-430
+
+  Allua, Lough, 141, 144
+
+  America, Irish Idea of, 24, 170-174
+
+  Annals of the Four Masters, The, 442, 465
+
+  Antrim, County, 489, 521, 530, 534, 564
+
+  Antrim, Earl of, 489, 495-496
+
+  Antrim, Glens of, 491, 495, 499
+
+  Arbutus Island, 186
+
+  Archdeckan, John, 136
+
+  Architecture, see Irish Architecture
+
+  Ardilaun, Lord, see Guinness
+
+  Ardoyne, 561-563
+
+  Armada, The, 416, 485
+
+  Armagh, 103, 536, 550
+
+  Arran, Earl of, 441
+
+  Art, see Irish Art
+
+  Ashford House, 347-348
+
+  Assaroe, Abbey, 422-423, 429
+
+  Asylums, 180, 240, 266, 375, 526
+
+  Athenry, 266, 268-272, 292
+
+  Athlone, 207, 209, 252, 259, 265, 272-285, 292, 390, 454, 456
+
+  Auburn, see Lissoy
+
+  Avoca, Vale of, 61
+
+  Avonbeg, The, 60
+
+  Avonmore, The, 59, 60
+
+
+  Baedeker, Karl, 385
+
+  Baird, Sir David, 509-510
+
+  Baker, Henry, 450, 460
+
+  Balbriggan, 85
+
+  Ballina, 351
+
+  Ballintoy, 487
+
+  Ballintra, The, 432
+
+  Ballycastle, 486, 489-490
+
+  Ballysadare, 377
+
+  Ballyshannon, 419-431, 445
+
+  Balor of the Evil Eye, 384
+
+  Banishment to Connaught, The, 331-333
+
+  Bank of Ireland, 13
+
+  Bann, The, 447, 474, 536
+
+  Bantry Bay, 139, 151, 159
+
+  Barnesmore, Gap of, 444
+
+  Beggars, 109-110, 144, 173-174, 183-184, 186, 283-284, 310, 364,
+        375, 412, 426-427
+
+  Belfast, 89, 205, 427, 469, 479, 501, 502, 503-519, 530, 532-533,
+        534, 535, 536, 559-564
+
+  Belfast Lough, 502, 564
+
+  Bird Hill, 251
+
+  Birmingham, George A., see Hannay, J. A.
+
+  Black Lough, 184
+
+  Black Valley, The, 185
+
+  Blackrock, 100
+
+  Blackwater, The, 138, 164, 203
+
+  Blarney Castle, 115-127, 190, 205
+
+  Bogs, 93, 267-268, 315-316, 370, 490-491
+
+  Book of Kells, see Kells
+
+  Boru, Brian, see Brian Boru
+
+  Boycott, Captain Charles C., 346
+
+  Boyd, Hugh, 489-490
+
+  Boyne, The, 85, 221, 454, 537, 538-540, 549, 559
+
+  Boyne, Battle of the, 31, 85, 274, 453-454, 460, 534, 538-540
+
+  Bray, 59
+
+  Breffni, Prince of, see O'Rourke, Tiernan
+
+  Brian Boru, 18-20, 34, 41, 100, 103, 107, 204, 208, 251-259,
+        273, 288, 427
+
+  Bridge End, 461, 462
+
+  Brigid, see St. Brigid
+
+  Brooke, Sir Basil, 439-441
+
+  Brown Valley, The, 165
+
+  Bruce, Edward, 208, 269, 501, 502, 537
+
+  Brugh-na-Boinne, 540-550
+
+  Bundoran, 405, 412-419
+
+  Burgo, Richard de, 271, 293, 354, 447
+
+  Burial, Ancient Irish, 38, 540-544
+
+  Bushmills, 480
+
+
+  Cairns, 345-346, 377-78, 384, 392, 417, 536, 540-550
+
+  Callanan, Jeremiah, 149
+
+  Cannera, 248
+
+  Cape Clear, 161
+
+  Cappoquin, 138
+
+  Car, see Jaunting-car
+
+  Carleton, Will, 421
+
+  Carlingford, 21, 479
+
+  Carnach, Conal, 377
+
+  Carnlough, 500-501
+
+  Carrick-a-Rede, 487-488
+
+  Carrickfergus, 502, 564
+
+  Carrowmore, 384, 385
+
+  Carson, Sir Edward, 469, 471
+
+  Casey, John Keegan, 278-279
+
+  Cashel, Rock of, 49, 94, 102-112, 148, 178, 229, 253, 254, 279
+
+  Cashels, 103, 406-408, 461, 462-467, 536
+
+  Castlebar, 375
+
+  Castleconnell, 242-251, 263-264
+
+  Castlemaine, 191
+
+  Castles, 116-125, 207, 230-234, 243, 265, 268-269, 283-285,
+        353-354, 402-403, 438-441, 479-480
+
+  Catholic Emancipation, 218, 460
+
+  Cavan, 545
+
+  Celbridge, 92
+
+  Celtchair, 524
+
+  Celtic Crosses, see Crosses
+
+  Champneys, Arthur, 110
+
+  Charles I, 86, 441, 447, 449
+
+  Charles II, 86, 210, 448
+
+  Charleville, 113-114, 461
+
+  Children, 32, 98, 106, 109-110, 320-321, 358-360
+
+  Church of Ireland, 30, 75, 411
+
+  Churches, 21-22, 30-32, 34-37, 87, 131-132, 138, 200, 206, 213,
+        233-234, 255-257, 303, 459-460, 519-524
+
+  Ciaran, see St. Kieran
+
+  Civilization, Ancient Irish, see Irish Civilization, Ancient
+
+  Claddagh, The, 298-300
+
+  Clandonnell, see MacDonnell
+
+  Clanricarde, Earls of, 269
+
+  Clara, Vale of, 60
+
+  Clare, Abbey, 266
+
+  Clare, Richard de, see Strongbow
+
+  Clare, County, 209, 258, 265-266
+
+  Claremorris, 375-377, 535
+
+  Cleeve, The Messrs., 215, 236-239
+
+  Clew Bay, 371-372
+
+  Clifden, 324-325, 331, 370
+
+  Climate, 28, 60, 128, 161-162, 179, 358, 398, 415
+
+  Clonard, 406
+
+  Clonbur, 345
+
+  Clondalkin, 42-57, 67, 75, 92
+
+  Clonmacnoise, 274, 285-291
+
+  Clonmell, Lord, 16
+
+  Clontarf, 18-20, 107, 251, 252, 254, 288
+
+  Cloyne, 138
+
+  Coleraine, 447, 474-476
+
+  Colleen Bawn, 417, 420-422
+
+  Collooney, 377
+
+  Colman, Abbot, 289
+
+  Colman's Leap, 187
+
+  Columba, see St. Columba
+
+  Cong, 339, 345, 350-352, 354, 358
+
+  Cong, Abbey of, 39, 290, 346-348
+
+  Cong, Cross of, 26, 37, 39-40, 100, 204, 346
+
+  Congested Districts Board, 331-336
+
+  Conn the Hundred Fighter, 204, 291, 549
+
+  Conn, Lough, 351
+
+  Connaught, 17, 19, 27, 178, 258, 267, 269, 274, 293, 306, 314-369,
+        375, 493
+
+  Connell of the Hy-Nial, 427-428, 465
+
+  Connemara, 200, 292, 293, 300, 314-336, 346, 414, 463, 490
+
+  Connemara Marble, 306, 316-318
+
+  Constabulary, see Royal Irish Constabulary
+
+  Convent Schools, 133-134, 163
+
+  Cook's Tours, 177-178, 182, 382-383
+
+  Cork, 114-116, 128-138, 139, 147, 149, 151, 174, 205, 214, 331,
+        352, 454
+
+  Cork, County, 19, 162
+
+  Cork, Earl of, 32
+
+  Cormac, see MacArt or MacCarthy
+
+  Cormac's Chapel, 107-108, 148
+
+  Corrib, Lough, 39, 304, 314, 346, 347, 348, 350, 351, 352-354
+
+  Corrib, River, 298, 300, 303, 314, 347
+
+  Cottages, 88, 141-144, 181, 195, 225-226, 320-321, 354-355,
+        362-363, 384-385, 497
+
+  Craigmore, 536
+
+  Cratloe, 265
+
+  Crime, 55-56, 327-328, 344
+
+  Croagh Patrick, 372-373
+
+  Cromlechs, 23, 384, 385, 386, 388-392, 417
+
+  Cromwell, Oliver, 76, 86-87, 105, 116, 118, 190, 208, 231, 270,
+        293, 331-332, 448, 470, 538
+
+  Cross of Cong, see Cong, Cross of
+
+  Crosses, Celtic, 37, 288-289, 351-352, 523, 553-558
+
+  Crowe, O'Brien, 351-352
+
+  Cuchulain, 377, 537
+
+  Cullen, Joe, 434-436
+
+  Culmore, 473
+
+  Curran, John Philpot, 134
+
+  Cushendall, 490, 492, 495, 496, 498-500
+
+  Cushendun, 491
+
+
+  Dalcassians, 253
+
+  Danes, The 17, 18-20, 22, 33, 34, 44, 50, 65, 66, 130, 147, 199,
+        204, 207, 242, 252-254, 287-288, 446-447, 465, 522, 536,
+        541, 542, 555
+
+  Dargle, The, 59
+
+  Dark Rosaleen, 14-15
+
+  Darrow, Book of, 41
+
+  Day, Length of Irish, 23, 338, 456-457, 491-492
+
+  De Courcy, John, 522-523
+
+  De Dananns, The, 346, 384
+
+  De Lacy, Hugh, 545
+
+  De Vere, Aubrey, 259
+
+  Derg, Lough, 207, 219, 242, 252, 258-259, 406, 413
+
+  Derry, 76, 397, 443, 446-461, 466, 467-474, 535, 539
+
+  Derryclare, 319
+
+  Dervorgilla, 35, 219-221, 402, 405-406, 553
+
+  D'Esterre, 92
+
+  Devil's Bit, The, 94, 106
+
+  Devil's Mother Mountain, 340
+
+  Diarmuid, 389-391
+
+  Dillisk, 296-297, 299
+
+  Dollard, James B., 436
+
+  Donegal, 413, 431, 432-443, 465
+
+  Donegal, County, 388, 427, 428, 440, 444, 466, 486
+
+  Donnybrook, 470
+
+  Doon, Rock of, 440
+
+  Doonas, Falls of, 245-246
+
+  Down, County, 519, 530, 536
+
+  Downpatrick, 519-532
+
+  Dowth, 85, 534, 540-544, 546, 547
+
+  Dowth Castle, 544-545
+
+  Drogheda, 85-89, 449, 450, 454, 534, 537, 538
+
+  Dromahair, 403-406, 488
+
+  Druids, The, 44, 542, 543-544, 549
+
+  Drummers, 24-25, 561
+
+  Dublin, 4-41, 56, 58, 59, 85, 86, 89, 92, 102, 104, 114, 115, 128,
+        137, 173, 174, 193, 205, 229, 230, 418, 439, 446, 453, 454,
+        503, 531, 534, 535, 537, 538, 539, 561
+
+  Dublin Bay, 17-18, 21
+
+  Dublin Castle, 18, 32, 33-34, 74, 327
+
+  Dundalk, 537, 538
+
+  Dunleary, 137
+
+  Dunloe, Gap of, 165, 177, 181-186, 192, 201
+
+  Dunluce Castle, 479-480, 485, 488
+
+  Dunraven, Earl of, 229, 233-234
+
+
+  Eask, Lough, 444
+
+  Eask, River, 438, 444
+
+  Education, see Schools
+
+  Emigration, 131, 138, 330-331, 418-419, 443-444
+
+  Ennis, 265-266
+
+  Enniskillen, 412-413, 449, 453
+
+  Episcopal Church, see Church of Ireland
+
+  Erne, Lough, 413, 414, 420, 427
+
+  Erne, River, 414, 417-418, 420, 428-431
+
+  Established Church, see Church of Ireland
+
+  Eugenius, see St. Eugenius
+
+  Eyre, Jane, 303
+
+
+  Famine, 93, 131, 195, 351
+
+  Faughart, 501, 537
+
+  Ffolliotts, The, 417, 420-422
+
+  Fianna, The, 23, 106, 390, 492
+
+  Fin Barre, see St. Fin Barre
+
+  Fingalla, 443
+
+  Finn MacCool, 106-107, 184, 204, 275, 389-391, 483-484, 492
+
+  Firbolgs, The, 299-300, 346, 431
+
+  Fishing, 169, 178-179, 191, 242-245, 263-264, 303-306, 326, 431
+
+  Fitzgibbon, Lord, 237
+
+  Fitzstephen, James Lynch, 301-303
+
+  Flann, High King of Erin, 288-289, 290
+
+  Flax, 445, 488, 519, 535
+
+  Flesk, The, 167, 203
+
+  Flight of the Earls, The, 440, 447
+
+  Flowers, 43, 57, 60, 152, 154, 164-165, 418
+
+  Fogha, Fergus, 536
+
+  Formorians, The, 384
+
+  Foyle, Lough, 466, 472
+
+  Foyle, River, 446, 447
+
+  Fuchsias, 152-153, 326, 497
+
+  Funerals, 194-195
+
+
+  Gaelic, 161, 242, 363, 487, 489
+
+  Gaels, The, 293, 300, 384, 466, 540-544
+
+  Galtees, The, 106, 113
+
+  Galway, 102, 292-313, 314, 317, 331, 351, 352, 445, 455
+
+  Game Preserves, 61, 345, 348-349
+
+  George II, 14, 105
+
+  George IV, 137
+
+  George V, 396, 456
+
+  Geraldines, see Kildare, Earls of
+
+  Giant's Causeway, The, 477, 480-486
+
+  Gill, Lough, 219-220, 384, 398-412, 486, 494
+
+  Ginkle, Gen. Godert de, 209, 243, 274, 285
+
+  Glenaan, 491, 492-496
+
+  Glenariff, Vale of, 500
+
+  Glenarm, 501
+
+  Glendalough, 59, 62-84, 133, 248, 286, 556
+
+  Glendining Monument, The, 370-371, 372, 375
+
+  Glendun, 491
+
+  Glenealy, 62
+
+  Glengarriff, 139, 152-162, 174, 326, 382
+
+  Goldsmith, Oliver, 274-279
+
+  Goold's Cross, 105, 113
+
+  Gougane Barra, 139, 145-149
+
+  Government, The, 34, 54-55, 74, 79, 104, 327-328, 351, 372
+
+  Grainan of Aileach, The, 461, 462-467
+
+  Gráinne, 107, 389-391
+
+  Grattan, Henry, 11
+
+  Graves, Alfred Perceval, 432-433
+
+  Grazing, 90-91, 93, 335, 419
+
+  Griffin, Gerald, 213
+
+  Guinness, Sir Benjamin, 30, 344, 345, 346, 347-349
+
+  Gwynne, Stephen, 110, 391, 437
+
+
+  Hannay, J. A., 170, 372, 373-374
+
+  Heather, 60, 399, 400, 402
+
+  Hen Castle, 353-354
+
+  Henry II, 33
+
+  Henry VII, 229
+
+  Henry VIII, 30, 230, 524
+
+  Hill of Howth, see Howth
+
+  Hinkson, Katherine Tynan, 57
+
+  Holy Cross Abbey, 98-102, 178, 440
+
+  Holy Wells, 147-148, 245-249, 262, 365, 410-411, 526-531
+
+  Home Rule, 12, 20, 56, 77, 82, 83, 89-91, 155-157, 216-218, 236,
+        404, 419, 467-469, 498, 505-510, 514-516, 529-530, 559-564
+
+  Hore Abbey, 110-112
+
+  Hospitality, 41, 45-46, 50-57, 95-96, 110, 154-155, 244, 305-309,
+        354-355, 551-552
+
+  Howth, 4, 16-18, 20-23
+
+  Howth, Lord, 22-23
+
+  Hy Many, 19
+
+  Hy-Nial, see Nial, Connell, Owen
+
+
+  Idioms, 46, 66-67, 368-369
+
+  Inagh, 319
+
+  Inchigeelagh, 141-144
+
+  Indian Corn, 154-155, 260, 309
+
+  Industrial Depression, 54-55, 212-213, 215-216, 371-372, 404-405,
+        419, 422-424, 489-490
+
+  Inebriety, 5-6, 33, 114, 196-197, 306-307
+
+  Inisfallen, 189, 199
+
+  Inishowen, 466, 474
+
+  Inis-Saimer, 431
+
+  Inns, 66-67, 94-98, 164-166, 174-175, 224, 228-229, 242-244, 315,
+        322, 326, 346, 371, 378-379, 415-416, 433-434, 480-481
+
+  Inny, The, 278
+
+  Insurance, Workman's, 52, 84, 222-223
+
+  Ireland's Eye, 21
+
+  Ireton, Gen. Henry, 208
+
+  Irish Architecture, 21-22, 101, 103, 107-108, 111-112, 193-196,
+        199, 231-233, 255-257, 261, 270-271, 285-290, 307-308
+
+  Irish Art, 26, 37-41, 288-289, 543, 547-548, 555-558
+
+  Irish Brigade, The, 210
+
+  Irish Character, 3, 37, 98, 114, 159-161, 196-197, 214-215,
+        386-389, 393-396, 404, 458-459, 470-471, 475, 532
+
+  Irish Civilization, Ancient, 18, 19, 38, 99-100, 204, 286-290,
+        525-526
+
+  Irish Girls, 41, 115, 124, 163-164, 214-215, 315, 323-324
+
+  Irish Sea, 1, 21, 35, 59, 220, 495, 500, 501, 564
+
+
+  Jails, 55-56, 240, 266, 375, 473, 525
+
+  James II, 36, 208, 210, 449-455, 534, 538-540
+
+  Jarvey, The, 29-30, 88, 129, 168, 274-275, 398, 399, 486,
+        488-489, 500, 563
+
+  Jaunting-Car, The, 8, 26-30, 60, 88, 98, 128-130, 400, 486
+
+  Johnson, Mrs. Hester, 30-31
+
+  Johnson, Lionel, 221, 495
+
+  Jones, John Paul, 502
+
+  Joyce's Country, 79, 339-357
+
+
+  Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan, 466
+
+  Kearney, Kate, 181-182
+
+  Keimaneigh, Pass of, 150-151
+
+  Kells, Book of, 26, 37, 40-41, 193, 204
+
+  Kenmare, 163, 200
+
+  Kenmare, Earl of, 198
+
+  Kenmare, River, 164, 384
+
+  Kenny, Donal, 278-279
+
+  Kerry, County, 19, 162, 197
+
+  Kevin, see St. Kevin
+
+  Kieran, see St. Kieran
+
+  Kilcrea Abbey, 140
+
+  Kildare, 522
+
+  Kildare, Curragh of, 89, 92-93
+
+  Kildare, Earls of, 229-231
+
+  Killaloe, 207, 242, 248, 250 251-263, 286, 556
+
+  Killarney, 138, 139, 165-203, 242, 319, 412, 481
+
+  Killary Bay, 326, 369
+
+  Killone Abbey, 266
+
+  Kilpatrick, 521
+
+  Kincora, 251-263, 273
+
+  Kingstown, 4, 21
+
+  Kinsale, 102, 440, 454
+
+  Knocknarea, 377-378, 384, 385, 392
+
+  Knocktow, 230
+
+  Kylemore, Pass of, 326
+
+
+  Labour Problem, 23-25, 54-55, 61-62, 83-84, 90-91, 281, 330-331,
+        332-333, 349-350, 468
+
+  Labourers' Cottages, 342, 408-410
+
+  Lace-making, 133-134, 163, 239
+
+  Land League, The, 344, 346, 352, 353
+
+  Land Problem, 90-91, 266-267, 330-336, 340-342, 348-350, 353
+
+  Landlords, 332-333, 334-336, 345, 349-350, 529
+
+  Larne, 499, 501, 502
+
+  Layd Church, 499
+
+  Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis, The, 384, 398-402, 405
+
+  Leane, Lough, 165
+
+  Lee, The, 130, 132, 140, 141, 144, 146
+
+  Leenane, 325, 326-338, 339, 352, 357, 358-369, 445
+
+  Legends, 48-49, 62-65, 68-69, 70-71, 92-93, 94, 106-107, 117, 120,
+        126, 136, 146-147, 159-162, 184-185, 187, 188, 190, 194,
+        199, 219-221, 246-247, 248-249, 275, 286-291, 292-293,
+        301-303, 346, 351-352, 353-354, 372-373, 377-378, 389-391,
+        413, 465-466, 483-484, 485, 490, 494-495, 521-522, 549
+
+  Leinster, Province, 19
+
+  Letterfrank, 326
+
+  Lever, Charles, 214, 395, 476
+
+  Liffey, The, 5, 18, 33, 59
+
+  Limerick, 76, 106, 204-227, 236-242, 243, 251, 252, 254, 264, 265,
+        274, 402, 454, 531
+
+  Limerick, Treaty of, 208-210
+
+  Limerick Junction, 113, 204, 254
+
+  Limericks, 240
+
+  Linen, 518, 519, 561-563
+
+  Lir, Children of, 490
+
+  Lisbun, 535
+
+  Lissoughter, 306, 315-320
+
+  Lissoy, 274-279
+
+  Lloyd-George, David, 158-159, 474
+
+  Loe, The, 184
+
+  Londonderry, see Derry
+
+  Lord of the Isles, The, 439, 480
+
+  Loughs, see name of each
+
+  Lover, Samuel, 214
+
+  Loyalty, 396-397, 456, 532-533
+
+  Ludlow, Gen. Edmund, 190-191
+
+  Lundy, Robert, 450, 452
+
+  Lurgan, 535
+
+  Lynch, James, 301-303
+
+  Lyons Hill, 92
+
+
+  MacArt, Cormac, 106-108, 389, 549-550
+
+  MacCarthy, Cormac, 103, 116-117, 126, 204
+
+  McCarthy, Denis A., 94
+
+  McCarthy, Dermot, 117
+
+  MacCool or MacCumhal, Finn, see Finn MacCool
+
+  MacDonnell, Angus, 480
+
+  MacDonnell, Innen Dhu, 439
+
+  MacDonnells, The, 491, 499, 502
+
+  Macgillicuddy's Reeks, 165, 184, 185
+
+  McKeown, R. H., 326-327, 368
+
+  MacLiag, 251-252
+
+  MacMurrough, Dermot, 35, 219-221, 402
+
+  MacNatfraich, Ængus, 49, 107
+
+  Maam, 354-355
+
+  Maamturk Mountains, 314, 319
+
+  Macroom, 139, 140, 382
+
+  Magrath, Milar, 104
+
+  Mahon, King of Munster, 253-254
+
+  Mahony, Francis Sylvester (Father Prout), 118, 132, 136
+
+  Mail, 330, 337-338, 496-497
+
+  Mallow, 204
+
+  Mangan, James Clarence, 14-15, 251
+
+  Marconi, Guglielmo, 325
+
+  Margy, The, 490
+
+  Markets, 98, 200, 294-297, 311
+
+  Marriage Contract, 54, 395-396
+
+  Mask, Lough, 339, 343-345, 346, 347, 350, 351, 384
+
+  Matthew, Father, 206
+
+  Mattock, The, 550
+
+  Maynooth, 3
+
+  Mayo, County, 375, 377
+
+  Meath, 19, 543
+
+  Meave, 377-378, 392
+
+  Meeting of the Waters, The, 60-61
+
+  Mellifont, 85, 178, 221, 534, 538, 550-553
+
+  Milcho, 521
+
+  Milesians, The, see Gaels
+
+  Milliken, Richard, 116, 118
+
+  Minogue, John, 105-111, 173, 279
+
+  Moira, 535
+
+  Molua, see St. Molua
+
+  Monasterboice, 37, 85, 88, 178, 534, 538, 553-558
+
+  Monasteries, 18, 19, 21-22, 65-66, 99-102, 103, 108-109, 110-112,
+        230-234, 268-271, 285-291, 379-382
+
+  Monastic Schools, 19, 38, 104, 268-269, 285-291
+
+  Monk, Gen. George, 536
+
+  Monkey Trees, 201-202
+
+  Monkstown, 136
+
+  Moore, George, 374, 543
+
+  Moore, Thomas, 14, 19, 60-61, 63-64, 219-220, 221, 248, 406
+
+  Mount Melleray, 138
+
+  Mountmorris, Lord, 352
+
+  Mourne, Lough, 445
+
+  Mourne Mountains, 524, 536
+
+  Moytura, 346, 384
+
+  Moytura, Northern, 384
+
+  Muckross Abbey, 193-196, 231-232
+
+  Muckross Lake, 165, 201
+
+  Muiredach, 556
+
+  Munster, 19, 20, 103, 107, 116, 253, 254, 465
+
+  Murray, Adam, 450, 460
+
+  Murray's Guidebook, 348, 375, 381, 385, 399, 455-456, 461, 502,
+        525, 526
+
+
+  Nafooey, Lough, 343
+
+  Nally, John, 278
+
+  National Education Board, The, 74-82
+
+  National Gallery of Ireland, The, 15-16
+
+  National Museum of Science and Art, The, 15, 37-40, 373
+
+  National Schools, see Schools
+
+  National University of Ireland, The, 306-307
+
+  Nationalists, see Home Rule
+
+  Nelson, Horatio, 6, 8, 12, 16
+
+  Netterville Institution, The, 545
+
+  Newgrange, 85, 534, 546-550
+
+  Newry, 536
+
+  Nial Garv, 439-440, 442
+
+  Nial of the Nine Hostages, 427, 464
+
+  Normans, The, 22-23, 33, 35, 38, 65, 130, 199, 207, 208, 220-221,
+        274, 288, 293, 354, 379-382, 501, 520, 536
+
+
+  O'Brien, Donall, 206, 255
+
+  O'Brien, Murtagh, 256, 465
+
+  O'Brien, Smith, 11
+
+  O'Cahans, The, 476, 480
+
+  O'Connell, Daniel, 10, 12, 20, 92, 115, 205, 217, 218, 460
+
+  O'Conor, Rory, 39, 290
+
+  O'Conor, Turlough, 39, 40, 220
+
+  O'Dee, Bishop, 306-307, 352
+
+  O'Dohertys, The, 473, 476
+
+  O'Donaghue, The, 187, 188, 190
+
+  O'Donnell, Hugh, 439
+
+  O'Donnell, Hugh Roe, 438, 443
+
+  O'Donnell, Red Hugh, 102, 269, 379, 438-440, 442
+
+  O'Donnell, Rory, 440
+
+  O'Donnells, The, 428, 432, 438-439, 480
+
+  O'Duffy, Gilbert and Nicol, 351
+
+  O'Echon, Maelisu MacBraddan, 40
+
+  O'Flaherty, Rory, 325
+
+  O'Flaherty, The, 293, 314, 339, 353-354
+
+  O'Gillan, Enoch, 290
+
+  O'Hanlon, Redmond, 536
+
+  O'Hurley, Dermot, 104
+
+  O'Malleys, The, 79, 344, 353-354
+
+  O'Neill, Hugh, 208
+
+  O'Neill, Owen Roe, 86
+
+  O'Neill, Shane, 480
+
+  O'Neills, The, 428, 440
+
+  O'Reilly, John Boyle, 544-545
+
+  O'Reilly, William David, 545
+
+  O'Rourke, Tiernan, 35, 219-221, 405-406, 553
+
+  O'Rourke's Table, 403
+
+  O'Sullivan's Punchbowl, 188
+
+  Old Age Pensions, see Pensions
+
+  Ormonde, Earl of, 100
+
+  Orangemen, 197, 458, 469, 470-471, 475, 506-508, 511, 514-516,
+        528, 530, 534, 559-564
+
+  Oscar, 23, 390
+
+  Ossian, 23, 106, 204, 221, 390, 492-495
+
+  Oughterard, 323
+
+  Owen of the Hy-Nial, 427-428, 464, 465-466, 479-480
+
+  Owengarriff, The, 201
+
+
+  Parades, 23-24, 457, 504, 505, 559-560
+
+  Parknasilla, 164, 416
+
+  Parnell, Charles Stewart, 12, 60, 217-219
+
+  Patrick, see St. Patrick
+
+  Peat, see Turf
+
+  Pembroke, Earl of, see Strongbow
+
+  Pensions, 52-54, 196-197, 223
+
+  Perrot, Sir John, 480
+
+  Pettigoe, 413
+
+  Plantation of Ulster, The, 447-448, 476
+
+  Pleaskin, 485-486
+
+  Poor Relief, 363-368
+
+  Portadown, 535, 536
+
+  Portrush, 473, 476-477
+
+  Port Stewart, 476
+
+  Potheen, 181-182, 184
+
+  Presbyterians, 75, 486, 506-509, 510-511
+
+  Price, Archbishop, 104-105
+
+  Priests, 1-3, 56-57, 74-75, 77, 89, 155-161, 217, 305-309, 395
+
+  Prout, Father, see Mahony, Francis Sylvester
+
+
+  Queen's College, Galway, 306-307, 352
+
+  Queenstown, 115, 136, 137, 138
+
+  Quoile, The, 519, 524, 525
+
+
+  Race-meetings, 113-114
+
+  Rafferty, Mr., 316-318
+
+  Railroads, 42-43, 59, 88-89, 250, 272-273, 415-416, 461-462,
+        535-536
+
+  Rain, 28, 66-67, 73, 111, 161-162, 179, 180-183, 185, 192, 224,
+        227, 406-408, 431-432
+
+  Raleigh, Sir Walter, 16
+
+  Rathdrum, 59, 60, 84
+
+  Rathlin Island, 489
+
+  Raths, 103, 258, 407, 519, 522, 524-526
+
+  Recess, 315-325, 416
+
+  Red Bay, 500
+
+  Red Branch Knights, 524, 537
+
+  Red Hugh, 423
+
+  Redmond, John, 471
+
+  Ree, Lough, 207, 273, 275, 279, 286, 377
+
+  Reilly, Willy, 180-181, 417, 420-422
+
+  Religion, 75-77, 208-210, 216-217, 257-258, 332-333, 447-455,
+        458-459, 467-471, 475, 506-509, 510-511, 520-521, 539
+
+  Repartee, 58, 68, 278, 500, 539, 554
+
+  Roads, 28, 61-62, 158-159
+
+  Rock of Cashel, see Cashel
+
+  Roe, Henry, 35
+
+  Rolleston, T. W., 490
+
+  Roman Catholic Church, The, 30, 74-75, 155, 508-509, 520-521
+
+  Roscommon, 279
+
+  Rosnaree, 549-550
+
+  Ross Castle, 177, 186, 190-191
+
+  Rosshill, 345
+
+  Ross Island, 188-189
+
+  Round Towers, 42, 43-45, 65, 83, 103, 109, 199, 288, 553-555
+
+  Royal Irish Constabulary, The, 7, 10, 17, 88, 157, 184, 327-329
+
+  Ruins, 21-22, 65, 73, 76, 83, 99-112, 115-125, 193-196, 198-200,
+        229-234, 265-266, 268-271, 285-290, 346-347, 353-354,
+        379-382, 402-403, 422-423, 438-441, 442-443, 479-480, 499,
+        536, 550-558
+
+
+  St. Anne Shandon, 131-132
+
+  St. Brigid, 92-93, 108, 446, 519, 520, 522, 540
+
+  St. Columba, 436, 446, 460, 465, 519, 520, 522
+
+  St. Eugenius, 62
+
+  St. Fin Barre, 130, 139, 145-149
+
+  St. Finian the Leper, 199
+
+  St. Kevin, 62-84, 119, 248
+
+  St. Kieran, 286-291
+
+  St. Mary's Abbey, Howth, 21-22, 230
+
+  St. Molua, 259-262, 286
+
+  St. Patrick, 30, 34, 38, 39, 48-49, 62, 103, 107, 108, 115, 146,
+        150, 184, 221, 286, 372, 410, 427, 446, 465, 495, 519,
+        520-522, 528, 540, 543-544
+
+  St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, 26, 30-32, 35
+
+  St. Patrick's Purgatory, 219, 413, 414
+
+  St. Petroc, 62
+
+  St. Senan, 245-249, 410
+
+  Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 12
+
+  Salthill, 309, 311-313
+
+  Sarsfield, Patrick, 204, 207, 208-210, 213-214, 237, 258-259,
+        454, 539
+
+  Saul, 521-522
+
+  Scarva, 536
+
+  Scattery Island, 248-249
+
+  Scenery, 42, 43, 59, 60-62, 65-66, 92-94, 99, 106-107, 113, 116,
+        145-146, 150-152, 162-166, 183-187, 195-196, 243, 266-267,
+        314-322, 325-326, 343-345, 354, 398-399, 417, 444-445,
+        466-467, 479, 482-486, 490-492, 535-537
+
+  Schomberg, Gen. Frederick Herman, 31-32, 502, 538
+
+  Schoolbooks, 359, 360-362
+
+  Schools, 46-47, 74-82, 358-363, 510-511
+
+  Scotch-Irish, The, 458-459, 479-480, 487, 520, 562-563
+
+  Shamrock, The, 46, 47-50, 67, 103, 107, 498
+
+  Shannon, The, 106, 205, 207-208, 212-213, 215, 227, 236-237, 240,
+        242-265, 273, 284, 285, 332, 333, 390, 448
+
+  Sheela-na-gig, The, 279-283
+
+  Sheen, The, 162
+
+  Shrines, see Holy Wells
+
+  Side-car, see Jaunting-car
+
+  Silken Thomas, see Kildare, Earls of
+
+  Slane, 538, 543-544
+
+  Slemish, 521
+
+  Slievenamon, 94, 106-107, 389
+
+  Sligo, 378-385, 392, 396, 406, 411-412, 421, 442
+
+  Sligo, County, 377, 428
+
+  Sligo, O'Conor, 380
+
+  Slums, 9, 32-33, 132, 210-214
+
+  Smoking, 2-3, 194-195
+
+  Snakes, 111, 146, 184-185, 372-373
+
+  Statues, 10, 15, 35-36, 213-214
+
+  Stella, see Johnson, Mrs. Hester
+
+  Stone Circles, 384, 389, 392, 406-408, 492, 494-495, 546
+
+  Strabane, 445-446, 450
+
+  Strangford, Lough, 521
+
+  Stranorlar, 445
+
+  Stranrear, 501
+
+  Strongbow, 26, 33, 34, 35-36, 220-221, 288, 447
+
+  Struell, 526-531
+
+  Suir, The, 99
+
+  Sullivan, Timothy, 221-222
+
+  Swift, Jonathan, 26, 30-32, 34, 92
+
+  Swilly, Lough, 427, 461, 466
+
+
+  Tara, 41, 107, 389, 390, 540, 543-544, 549
+
+  Taylor, Jeremy, 524
+
+  Tenements, 9, 13, 33, 210-214
+
+  Thomond, 251
+
+  Thomond, Earl of, 206, 265
+
+  Thurles, 94-99, 174
+
+  Tillage, 140, 266-267, 340-342
+
+  Timony, John, 441-442
+
+  Tipperary, Vale of, 90, 93-94, 103, 106, 113, 204
+
+  Tomies, The, 184
+
+  Tone, Theobald Wolfe, 509
+
+  Tonna, Charlotte, 453
+
+  Tore Cascade, 201-202
+
+  Trams, 16, 17, 28, 309-310
+
+  Trinity College, 10, 14, 40-41, 193, 307
+
+  Tristram, Sir Almericus, 22-23
+
+  Tuam, 2
+
+  Tullymongan, 545
+
+  Turf, 98, 142, 267-268, 300-301, 355-357, 388, 490-491, 529
+
+  Twelve Pins of Bunnabeola, The, 318, 319, 325
+
+  Tyrconnell, Earl of, 423, 440, 454
+
+  Tyrconnell, Lady, 539
+
+  Tyrconnell, Province, 427-428, 447
+
+  Tyrone, 427-428, 446, 447, 464, 465, 479
+
+
+  Ulster, 36, 86, 87, 155, 157, 197, 216-217, 424, 448, 449, 453,
+        455, 458-459, 461, 468-469, 486, 498, 502, 506-518, 521,
+        522, 529-530, 537, 539, 559-564
+
+  Union, Act of, 13, 35
+
+  Unionists, see Home Rule
+
+
+  Vanessa, 92
+
+  Victoria, Queen, 137, 166, 201, 352, 517
+
+
+  Wages, 61, 84, 90-91, 98, 143, 222, 267-268, 281, 337, 409, 419
+
+  Walker, Rev. George, 450-451, 460, 538-539
+
+  Warbeck, Perkin, 131
+
+  Waterford, 454
+
+  Weather, see Climate and Rain
+
+  Westmeath, 277, 280, 284
+
+  Westport, 369, 370-375, 377, 382, 445, 536
+
+  Wicklow, 18, 21, 59, 62
+
+  Wild West Films, 24, 396, 532
+
+  William III of Orange, 12, 76, 208-210, 294, 449-450, 453-455,
+        460, 470, 475, 502, 534, 538-540, 559
+
+  Wilson, Woodrow, 377, 441-442
+
+  Workhouses, 54-56, 84, 87, 143-144, 180, 375, 473
+
+  Workman's Insurance, see Insurance
+
+  Wyatt, Henry, 16
+
+
+  Youghal, 138
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Inconsistent hyphenation has been retained. Obvious punctuation
+errors have been corrected.
+
+Page 215, "enought" changed to "enough" (enough to meet one)
+
+Page 298, "whereever" changed to "wherever" (have been built wherever)
+
+Page 425, "celebate" changed to "celebrate" (forbidden to celebrate
+Mass)
+
+Page 517, "visting" changed to "visiting" (which is worth visiting)
+
+Page 576, "Tyrconnel" changed to "Tyrconnell" (Tyrconnell, Province)
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHARM OF IRELAND***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 35529-8.txt or 35529-8.zip *******
+
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Charm of Ireland, by Burton Egbert
+Stevenson</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Charm of Ireland</p>
+<p>Author: Burton Egbert Stevenson</p>
+<p>Release Date: March 8, 2011  [eBook #35529]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHARM OF IRELAND***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Emmy,<br />
+    and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br />
+    from page images generously made available by<br />
+    Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/toronto">http://www.archive.org/details/toronto</a>)</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See
+      <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/charmofireland00stevuoft">
+      http://www.archive.org/details/charmofireland00stevuoft</a>
+	</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class='tnote'><b>Transcriber's Note:</b> Images are linked to larger
+versions so that better detail can be seen. Click on the image to view the larger
+versions.</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 338px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="338" height="500" alt="Cover" title="" />
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>THE CHARM OF IRELAND</h1>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a>
+<a href="images/gs001-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs001.jpg" width="500" height="341" alt="TWO TINY CONNAUGHT TOILERS" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">TWO TINY CONNAUGHT TOILERS<br /><i><a href="#Page_356">See page 356</a></i></span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1><i>The<br />
+Charm of Ireland</i></h1>
+
+<div class='author'><i>By<br />
+Burton E. Stevenson</i></div>
+
+<div class='center'><i>Author of</i> "<i>The Spell of Holland</i>," "<i>The Mystery of
+<br />the Boule Cabinet</i>," <i>etc.</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>With many Illustrations from<br />
+Photographs by the Author</i><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+<br /><br /><br />
+
+<i>New York</i><br />
+<i>Dodd, Mead and Company</i><br />
+1914<br />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<div class='copyright'>
+<span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1914<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">By</span> DODD, MEAD &amp; COMPANY<br />
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class='center'>
+<i>TO</i><br />
+<br />
+J. I. B.<br />
+<br />
+<i>THIS BOOK</i><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'><span class='small'>CHAPTER</span></td><td align='right'><span class='small'>PAGE</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>I&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Dublin's Saturday Night</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>II&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Lights and Shadows of an Ancient Capital</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>III&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Art of Ancient Erin</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IV&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">On the Trail of the Shamrock</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>V&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Country of St. Kevin</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VI&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Drogheda the Dreary</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VII&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Holy Cross and Cashel of the Kings</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VIII&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Adventures at Blarney</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IX&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Cushla Ma Chree</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_128">128</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>X&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Shrine of St. Fin Barre</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_139">139</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XI&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Trip Through Wonderland</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XII&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The "Grand Tour"</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_177">177</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIII&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Round about Killarney</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_192">192</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIV&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">O'Connell, Journeyman Tailor</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_203">203</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XV&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Ruins at Adare</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_224">224</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XVI</td><td align='left'>"<span class="smcap">Where the River Shannon Flows</span>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XVII&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Lissoy and Clonmacnoise</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_265">265</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XVIII&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Galway of the Tribes</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_292">292</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIX&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Iar Connaught</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_314">314</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XX&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Joyce's Country</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_339">339</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXI&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Real Irish Problem</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_358">358</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXII&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Trials of a Conductor</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_375">375</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXIII&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_398">398</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXIV&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Winding Banks of Erne</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_415">415</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXV&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Maiden City</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_438">438</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXVI&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Grainan of Aileach</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_458">458</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXVII&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Bridge of the Giants</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_472">472</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXVIII&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Glens of Antrim</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_485">485</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXIX&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Belfast</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_503">503</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXX&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Grave of St. Patrick</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_519">519</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXXI&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Valley of the Boyne</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_534">534</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXXII&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The End of the Pilgrimage</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_559">559</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Index</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_567">567</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="List of Illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'>Two Tiny Connaught Toilers</td><td align='right'><i><a href="#frontis">Frontispiece</a></i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><span class='small'>FACING<br />PAGE</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Dublin Castle</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>O'Connell, alias Sackville, Street, Dublin</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Ruins of St. Mary's Abbey Howth</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Evolution of the Jaunting Car</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Cross of Cong</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Shrine of St. Patrick's Bell</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Glendalough and the Ruins of St. Kevin's Churches</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_66">66</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Road to St. Kevin's Seat</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The First of St. Kevin's Churches</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Round Tower, Clondalkin</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>St. Lawrence's Gate, Drogheda</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Holy Cross Abbey, from the Cloisters</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Mighty Ruins on the Rock of Cashel</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Cashel of the Kings</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Blarney Castle</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Cottage at Inchigeelagh</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Shrine of St. Fin Barre</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Bay of Glengarriff</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_164">164</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Upper Lake, Killarney, from the Kenmare Road</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_164">164</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Old Weir Bridge, Killarney</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Meeting of the Waters</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Ross Castle, Killarney</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Muckross Abbey, Killarney</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_194">194</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Cloister at Muckross Abbey</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_194">194</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Choir of the Abbey at Adare</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_232">232</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Castle of the Geraldines, Adare</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_232">232</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Shannon, near World's End</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>St. Senan's Well</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Bridge at Killaloe</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Oratory at Killaloe</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Entrance to St. Molua's Oratory</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_262">262</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Fisherman's Home</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_262">262</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Choir of the Abbey at Athenry</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_270">270</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Cottage at Athenry</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_270">270</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Goldsmith Rectory at Lissoy</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_276">276</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The "Three Jolly Pigeons"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_276">276</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>On the Road to Clonmacnoise</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_288">288</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>St. Kieran's Cathair, Clonmacnoise</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_288">288</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Market at Galway</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_296">296</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"Ould Saftie"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_296">296</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Claddagh, Galway</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_300">300</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Claddagh Home</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_300">300</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Galway Vista</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_302">302</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Memorial of a Spartan Father</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_302">302</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Connemara Marble Quarry</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_322">322</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Connemara Home</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_322">322</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>In "Joyce's Country"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_344">344</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>On the Shore of Lough Mask</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_344">344</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Cloister at Cong Abbey</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_348">348</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Monks' Fishing-house, Cong Abbey</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_348">348</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Turf-Cutters</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_356">356</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Girl of "Joyce's Country"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_356">356</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Cromlechs at Carrowmore</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_392">392</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Sligo Abbey from the Cloister</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_400">400</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_400">400</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Ruin on the Shore of Lough Gill</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_402">402</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Last Fragment of an Ancient Stronghold</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_402">402</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Cashel near Dromahair</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_408">408</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>St. Patrick's Holy Well</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_408">408</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Coast at Bundoran</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_416">416</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Home of "Colleen Bawn"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_416">416</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Birthplace of William Allingham</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_430">430</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Castle Donegal</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_430">430</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Walls of Derry</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_466">466</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Grainan of Aileach</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_466">466</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The "Giant's Head," near Portrush</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_480">480</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Ruins of Dunluce Castle</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_480">480</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Giant's Causeway</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_482">482</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Cliffs beyond the Causeway</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_482">482</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Grave of Ossian</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_496">496</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>An Antrim Landscape</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_496">496</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Humble Home in Antrim</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_498">498</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Old Jail at Cushendall</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_498">498</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The City Hall, Belfast</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_516">516</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>High Street, Belfast</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_516">516</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Grave of Patrick, Brigid and Columba</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_522">522</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Old Cross at Downpatrick</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_522">522</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Great Rath at Downpatrick</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_526">526</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Inner and Outer Circles</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_526">526</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Central Mound</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_526">526</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Eye Well at Struell</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_528">528</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Well of Sins at Struell</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_528">528</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Birthplace of John Boyle O'Reilly</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_540">540</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Entrance to Dowth Tumulus</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_540">540</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Entrance to Newgrange</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_546">546</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Ruins of Mellifont</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_546">546</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Round Tower, Monasterboice</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_554">554</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The High Cross, Monasterboice</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_554">554</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Muiredach's Cross, Monasterboice</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_556">556</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE CHARM OF IRELAND</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Twilight</span> 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.</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>There were many boats in sight&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>I was attracted at once by a rosy-faced old priest,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"You would be from America," he said, watching
+me as I filled up.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I answered. "From Ohio."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I know Ohio well," and he looked at me with
+new interest, "though for many years I have been in
+Illinois."</p>
+
+<p>"But you were born in Ireland?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was so; near Tuam. I am going back now for
+a visit."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you been away long?"</p>
+
+<p>"More than thirty years," he said, and took a few
+reflective puffs.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt you will find many changes," I ventured.</p>
+
+<p>But he shook his head. "I am thinking I shall find
+Tuam much as I left it," he said. "There are not
+many changes in Ireland, even in thirty years. 'Tis
+not like America. I am afraid I shall have to give
+up smoking while I am there," he added, with a little
+sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Give up smoking?" I echoed. "But why?"</p>
+
+<p>"They do not like their priests to smoke in Ireland."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;dictators, in
+short, no act of whose was questioned. My companion
+laughed when I told him this.</p>
+
+<p>"That is not so at all," he said. "Every priest, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+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 anything
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"You will have to take a few whiffs up the chimney
+occasionally," I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>His faded blue eyes lit up with laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>Far away, a little to the right, a strong level shaft of
+light told of a lighthouse. It was the famous Bailey<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+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&mdash;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"&mdash;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,&mdash;went down the gang-plank,
+and were in Ireland!</p>
+
+<p>There is always a certain excitement, a certain exhilaration,
+in setting foot for the first time in any country;
+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&mdash;well, it was with a mist of happiness before
+our eyes that we crossed the pier and sought seats
+in the boat-train.</p>
+
+<p>It is only five or six miles from Kingstown to Dublin,
+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 collected
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+across the shining Liffey, to the station at Amiens
+Street, which was our destination.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Here!" he called. "Take the bags for the gintleman.
+Look sharrup, now!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;maybe sixpence&mdash;perhaps
+even a shilling!</p>
+
+<p>"Where is it you'd be wantin' to go, sir?" he asked,
+and touched his cap.</p>
+
+<p>I named the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>"It's in Sackville Street," I added. "That's not
+far, is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis just a step, sir," he protested, and picked up
+the bags and was off, we after him.</p>
+
+<p>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 celebrated
+Saturday evening by taking a glass too much.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+They were not drunk&mdash;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&mdash;but they were happy and uplifted,
+and required rather more room to walk than
+they would need on Monday morning.</p>
+
+<p>Our porter, meanwhile, was ploughing through the
+crowd ahead of us like a ship through the sea, swinging
+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 Sackville
+Street, without pausing, and continued at top
+speed straight ahead. We followed him for some moments;
+but the street grew steadily darker and more
+deserted, and finally I sprinted ahead and stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," I said. "We don't want to keep on
+walking all night. How much farther is the hotel?"</p>
+
+<p>He set down the bags and mopped his dripping
+face with his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not quite sure, sir," he said, looking about him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it is up this way at all," I protested.
+"It's back there on Sackville Street."</p>
+
+<p>"It is, sir," he agreed cheerfully, and picked up the
+bags again and started back.</p>
+
+<p>"That <i>is</i> Sackville Street, isn't it?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, I don't know, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know?" I echoed, and stared at him.
+"Don't you know where the hotel is?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You see, sir, I'm a stranger in Dublin, like yourself,"
+he explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why on earth didn't you say so?" I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along," I said. "You follow me."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," he said, his face lighting up again,
+and fell in behind us.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What name was it you gave this street, sir?" he
+asked, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Sackville Street," I answered, and pointed for confirmation
+to the sign at the corner, very plain under
+the electric light.</p>
+
+<p>From the vacant look he gave it I knew he couldn't
+read; but he scratched his head perplexedly.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 certainly
+seemed a gay town.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF AN ANCIENT CAPITAL</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">I know</span> Dublin somewhat better now, and I no longer
+think of it as a gay town&mdash;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 misery.
+Cleanliness is perhaps as painful to a person
+reared in dirt as dirt is to a person reared in cleanliness;
+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.</div>
+
+
+<p>These appalling alleys are always in the background
+of my thoughts of Dublin; and yet it is not them I see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+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 portico
+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 l'Opera when one thinks of Paris, or the
+Dam and the Kalverstraat when one thinks of Amsterdam,
+or the Strand and Piccadilly when one thinks
+of London.</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 315px;">
+<a href="images/gs002-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs002.jpg" width="315" height="500" alt="DUBLIN CASTLE &copy; Underwood &amp; Underwood, N. Y." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><span class='small'>&copy; Underwood &amp; Underwood, N. Y.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; </span><br />DUBLIN CASTLE<br /><br />O'CONNELL, ALIAS SACKVILLE STREET, DUBLIN
+
+</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 almost
+at once by two things: the unusual height of Dublin
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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-possessed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+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 <i>is</i> 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 impatient.</p>
+
+<p>I mentioned this interesting fact, one evening, to a
+Dublin woman of my acquaintance, and she laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"'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."</p>
+
+<p>"Where <i>is</i> O'Connell Street?" I asked, for I had
+failed to notice it.</p>
+
+<p>"Your hotel faces it; but the government names it
+after a viceroy whom nobody has thought of for a
+hundred years."</p>
+
+<p>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'Connell
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+another leaf to O'Connell's crown of laurel. O'Connell
+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.</p>
+
+<p>At the other end of the street is a very noble memorial
+of another patriot&mdash;Charles Stewart Parnell. Parnell's
+fame burns brighter and clearer with the passing
+years, and this memorial, so simple, so dignified, and
+yet so full of meaning, is one which no American can
+contemplate without a thrill of pride, for it is the work
+of Augustus Saint-Gaudens&mdash;a consummate artist,
+American to the marrow, though Dublin-born, of a
+French father and an Irish mother.</p>
+
+<p>Midway of this great thoroughfare, rises the Nelson
+Pillar&mdash;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 signally
+honoured in the Irish capital, for there was nothing
+Irish about him, either in birth or temperament.
+Perhaps that is the reason. Stranger things have happened
+in Ireland. And indeed it is no stranger than
+the whim which set another statue to face the old Parliament
+House&mdash;a gilded atrocity representing William
+of Orange, garbed as a Roman emperor in laurel-wreath
+and toga, bestriding a sway-backed horse!</p>
+
+<p>The Home Rule Parliament will no doubt promptly
+change the street signs along the broad thoroughfare<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+which forms the heart of Dublin; but meanwhile everybody
+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 reminds
+one somewhat of the view along the Seine.
+There are many bridges, and many domed buildings,
+many boats moored to the quays&mdash;and many patient
+fishermen waiting for a bite!</p>
+
+<p>A short distance beyond the bridge is the great granite
+structure with curving fa&ccedil;ade 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 century
+and its fondness for allegorical sculpture&mdash;Erin
+supported by Fidelity and Commerce, and Fortitude
+supported by Justice and Liberty! Those seem to me
+to be mixed allegories, but never mind.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+that not even independence can bring it back to Dublin.</p>
+
+<p>It was the Irish House of Commons which, in 1752,
+provided the funds for the new home of Trinity College,
+just across the street&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;who was also born here&mdash;was posing
+before fine London ladies; and Mangan had this reward,
+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!"</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Over dews, over sands,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Will I fly for your weal:</span><br />
+Your holy, delicate white hands<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shall girdle me with steel.</span><br />
+At home in your emerald bowers,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From morning's dawn till e'en,</span><br />
+You'll pray for me, my flower of flowers,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My dark Rosaleen!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My own Rosaleen!</span><br />
+You'll think of me through daylight's hours,<br />
+My virgin flower, my flower of flowers,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My dark Rosaleen!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>A short walk down Kildare Street leads to a handsome,
+wide-flung building with a court in front, once
+the mansion of the Duke of Leinster, but now occupied
+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.</p>
+
+<p>On this Sunday morning, however, Betty and I
+walked on through to Leinster Lawn, a pleasant enclosed
+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&mdash;just such a subject as Rembrandt loved. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 presentments
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Let me add here that there is in Dublin another picture
+gallery well worth a visit. This is the Municipal
+Gallery, housed in a beautiful old mansion in Harcourt
+Street&mdash;another memorial of spacious eighteenth century
+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.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>There seems to be a considerable difference of opinion
+as to the correct pronunciation of "Howth." Perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+that is because it is a Danish word&mdash;hoved, a head&mdash;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 Connaught
+escaped the stigma. At any rate, when I asked
+a policeman which tram to take for Howth, I pronounced
+the word as it is spelt, to rhyme with "south."
+He corrected me at once.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis the Hill of Hooth ye mean," he said, making
+it rhyme with "youth," "and that's your tram yonder."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;in Ireland, as everywhere else in Europe,
+the fare is gauged by the length of the journey.</p>
+
+<p>"To the Hill of Hooth," I answered proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, the Hill of H&#333;th, is it," he said, making it
+rhyme with "both," and he picked out the correct tickets
+from the assortment he carried, punched them and
+gave them to me.</p>
+
+<p>We used the pronunciations indiscriminately, after
+that, and I never learned which is right, though I suspect
+that "H&#333;th" is.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+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 marshalled
+legions of the Danes, and broke their power
+in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>For the Danes had sailed up the Liffey a century
+before, and built a castle to command the ford, somewhere
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 alliance,
+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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the intervals of this warfare, he devoted himself
+to setting his kingdom in order, and to such good purpose
+that, as the historians tell&mdash;and Tom Moore
+rhymes&mdash;a lone woman could make the circuit of
+Erin, without fear of molestation, though decked with
+gold and jewels. Brian did more than that&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>It was in 1014 that the final great battle of Clontarf
+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&mdash;a wild host,
+with discipline of the rudest, trusting for victory not
+to strategy or tactics, but to sheer strength of arm.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Just north of Clontarf parish church stands an ancient
+yew, and tradition says that it was under this
+tree that Brian's body was laid by his men. The tradition
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 suddenly
+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.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The town of Howth consists of one long street running
+around the base of the hill and facing the harbour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+and the Irish Sea. The harbour is enclosed by impressive
+piers of granite, and was once a busy place, for it
+was the Dublin packet station until Kingstown superseded 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 sunlight,
+with a white foam-crest here and there, and to
+the south lay Dublin Bay against the background of
+the Wicklow mountains.</p>
+
+<p>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 tumbledown
+buildings at the corner as the home of the caretaker.
+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 enraptured
+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 legitimately
+by its decay, since it is four or five hundred
+years old, and has apparently never been repaired.</p>
+
+<p>Of the abbey church itself, only the walls remain,
+and they are the survivals of three distinct buildings.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+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 fa&ccedil;ade. The interior, as he
+remodelled it, consisted of a nave and one aisle, separated
+by three pointed arches. They are still there,
+very low and rude, marking the length of the Archbishop'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 doorway
+at the side, with the remains of a porch in front&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a href="images/gs003-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs003.jpg" width="500" height="337" alt="RUINS OF ST. MARY&#39;S ABBEY, HOWTH" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">RUINS OF ST. MARY&#39;S ABBEY, HOWTH</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 recumbent
+figures of the knight and his lady, the former's
+feet resting, after the usual fashion, on his dog. Considering
+the vicissitudes of weather and vandalism
+through which they have passed, both figures are surprisingly
+well preserved.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+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 towers,
+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 Saturdays.
+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.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>During the morning, we had noticed gaily-uniformed
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"You would be from America, sir, I'm thinking,"
+he began.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then you have seen Indians!"</p>
+
+<p>"Indians? Why, yes, I've seen a few."</p>
+
+<p>"On the war-path?" he cried, his eyes shining with
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>I couldn't help laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"No," I said. "They don't go on the war-path any
+more. They're quite tame now."</p>
+
+<p>His face fell.</p>
+
+<p>"But you have seen cowboys?" he persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"Only in Wild West Shows," I admitted. "That's
+where I have seen most of my Indians."</p>
+
+<p>"They're brave lads, aren't they?" and his eyes were
+shining again.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, have you seen them?" I questioned in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I have, sir, many times, in the moving-pictures,"
+he explained. "It must be a fine thing to live
+in America!"</p>
+
+<p>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 sanguinary
+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 employed
+in fighting Indians and rescuing damsels in distress.
+I tried to tell the bell-boy that life in America
+was much like life everywhere&mdash;humdrum and matter-of-fact,
+with no Indians and few adventures; but I soon
+desisted. Why should I spoil his dream?</p>
+
+<p>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 remarkable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+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 fashion,
+while the crowd stares fascinated. It is exhausting
+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.</p>
+
+<p>There were thousands of men in line, that day, members
+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&mdash;to see their rough and toil-worn
+clothing, their gnarled and twisted hands, their heavy
+hob-nailed shoes&mdash;and to think of their treadmill lives,
+without hope and without beauty&mdash;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&mdash;a living wage,
+perhaps, since that is what labour needs most in Ireland&mdash;and
+what it has not yet won!</p>
+
+<p>Our Buttons had watched the parade with the
+amused tolerance of the uniformed aristocrat.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a lot of mad people in Dublin," he remarked
+cheerfully, as we turned to go in.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Dublin</span> is by far the most fascinating town in Ireland.
+She has charm&mdash;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.</div>
+
+<p>Among her memorials and treasures, are four of absorbing
+interest&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;when one has learned the trick&mdash;comfortable
+means of locomotion. Every one, of
+course, is familiar with the appearance of a jaunting-car&mdash;or
+side-car, as it is more often called&mdash;with its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+two seats back to back, facing outwards, and a foot-rest
+overhanging each wheel.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite the next page is a series of post-card pictures
+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 mountain-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&mdash;pretty
+much the form still used all the world over&mdash;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 sitting
+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&mdash;perhaps it isn't good form!</p>
+
+<p>Thus far there is nothing essentially Irish about any
+of these vehicles; but presently it occurred to some inventive
+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&mdash;the
+addition of backs and cushions to the seats, the enlargement
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/gs004-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs004.jpg" width="400" height="623" alt="THE EVOLUTION OF THE JAUNTING CAR" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE EVOLUTION OF THE JAUNTING CAR</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;would doubtless
+consider the purchase of either a waste of money which
+could be far better spent&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 visitor
+will never have occasion to mean motor unless he
+owns one, for, outside of the trams in a few of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 millionaire,
+one must be careful to bargain in advance. Once
+the bargain is concluded, your jarvey is the most agreeable
+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.</p>
+
+<p>The Dublin jarvey is famous for his ability to turn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+a corner at top-speed. He usually does it on one
+wheel, and the person on the outside seat has the feeling
+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.</p>
+
+<p>St. Patrick's Cathedral is not an especially impressive
+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 Brewery,
+furnished the money. Like all the other old religious
+establishments, it was taken from the Catholics
+in the time of Henry VIII and given to his Established
+Church&mdash;the Episcopal Church, here called the Church
+of Ireland&mdash;and has remained in its possession ever
+since, though the church itself was disestablished some
+forty years ago.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Jonathan Swift, for thirty years Dean of this
+Cathedral, lies here, where savage indignation can
+no longer tear his heart. Go, traveller, and, if you
+can, imitate him who played a man's part as the
+champion of liberty.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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 before
+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</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">"the little wealth he had</span><br />
+To build a house for fools and mad,<br />
+And showed by one satiric touch<br />
+No nation wanted it so much."<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>There is another characteristic epitaph of Swift's on
+a tablet in the south wall, near the spot where General
+Schomberg lies&mdash;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 declined
+to contribute anything toward its cost; whereupon
+Swift and his Chapter put up this slab, paying
+tribute to the hero's virtues, and adding that his valour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+was more revered by strangers than by his own kindred.</p>
+
+<p>There are many other curious and interesting monuments
+in the place, well worth inspecting, but I shall
+refer to only one of them&mdash;the one which started the
+feud that sent Strafford to the scaffold. It is a towering
+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 unidentified
+infant. After contemplating this huge atrocity,
+one cannot but conclude that the Archbishop was right.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>We walked from the Cathedral up to the Castle,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+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&mdash;some in dark basements, some in ricketty
+attics&mdash;cooking and eating there, when they have anything
+to cook and eat; sitting there through the long
+hours; sleeping there through the foul nights; awaking
+there each morning to another hopeless day of
+misery. Think how impossible it is to be clean or decent
+amid such surroundings. Small wonder self-respect
+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 foulness
+as this is perhaps the one thing our civilisation
+has most reason to be ashamed of!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Dublin Castle is interesting only because of its history.
+It was here, by what was then the ford across
+the Liffey just above the tideway, that the Danish invaders
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+head to blacken on its tower&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Of the medi&aelig;val 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&mdash;not too haughty, however, to accept
+a tip&mdash;will show you through the state apartments,
+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 equality,
+are busts of Dean Swift and St. Peter, while over
+the east one Brian Boru occupies an exalted place between
+St. Patrick and the Virgin Mary, while on the
+corbels of the window-arches the heads of ninety sovereigns
+of Great Britain have been cut&mdash;I cannot say
+with what fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>It is but a step from the Castle to Christ Church
+Cathedral, by far the most interesting building in Dublin.
+The Danes founded it in 1038; then came
+Strongbow, who built an English cathedral atop the
+rude Danish church, which is now the crypt, and his
+transepts and one bay of his choir still survive. There
+were various additions and rebuildings, after that, but
+in 1569 the bog on which the Cathedral is built moved
+under its weight, the entire south wall of the nave
+and the vaulted roof fell in, and the debris lay where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+it fell until 1875, when Henry Roe, of Roe's Whiskey,
+furnished the money for a complete restoration.</p>
+
+<p>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 distilling
+are the only industries which have flourished in
+Dublin since the Act of Union. All others have decayed
+or withered entirely away. Wherein is food
+for thought!</p>
+
+<p>But this takes nothing from the fact that Christ
+Church is an interesting structure; and the most interesting
+thing in it is the tomb of Strongbow. Richard
+de Clare his name was, second Earl of Pembroke,
+and it was to him, so legend says, that Dermot MacMurrough,
+King of Leinster, appealed for aid, in 1166,
+after he had been driven from his kingdom and compelled
+to restore to Tiernan O'Rourke, Prince of
+Breffni, Dervorgilla&mdash;otherwise Mrs. O'Rourke&mdash;with
+whom he had eloped. It wasn't the lady that Dermot
+wanted&mdash;it was revenge, and, most of all, his kingdom&mdash;we
+shall hear more of this story later on&mdash;and
+Strongbow readily agreed to assist. He needed little
+persuasion, for the Normans had been looking longingly
+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.</p>
+
+<p>When Strongbow died, he was buried here in the
+church that he had built, and a recumbent statue in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+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 believe!</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;thousands
+upon thousands of them&mdash;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. Almost
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 fortunate
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+that so few visitors to Dublin think the church worth
+seeing. I heartily endorse his opinion of them!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Which brings us to those two wonderful masterpieces
+of ancient Irish art, the Cross of Cong and the
+Book of Kells.</p>
+
+<p>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 carvings
+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; perhaps
+he fled to the hills and became a brigand; perhaps
+he just sat philosophically down and let <i>his</i> creditors
+do the worrying.</p>
+
+<p>Just beyond the vestibule is a great court, containing
+a remarkable collection of plaster replicas of ancient
+Celtic crosses. They should be examined closely, especially
+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.</p>
+
+<p>The chief glory of the museum is its collection of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+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 Moundbuilders,
+so common in our part of Ohio. Then comes
+the Bronze Age, with a magnificent collection of ornaments
+of hammered gold, and some extraordinarily interesting
+examples of cinerary urns and food vessels&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>In the room beyond are the so-called Christian antiquities:
+that is, all the objects of art, as well as of domestic
+and military usage, which date from the time of
+St. Patrick down to the Norman conquest&mdash;roughly,
+from 400 A. D. to 1200 A. D. Before that time, Ireland
+was Pagan; after the Norman conquest, she was
+crushed and broken. It was during these eight hundred
+years, while the rest of Europe was struggling in
+ignorance and misery through the Dark Ages, that Ireland
+touched the summit of her artistic and spiritual
+development&mdash;and a lofty summit it was!</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The bells used by the early Irish saints in the celebration
+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 recovered
+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&mdash;not much to look
+at, but an evoker of visions fifteen centuries old for
+them who have eyes to see!</p>
+
+<p>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 enshrine
+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 religiously
+through the long centuries. The last Abbot
+died about a hundred years ago, and the museum acquired
+the cross by purchase.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+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 Ireland,
+there lived an artist capable of producing a masterpiece
+like this.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="two illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a href="images/gs005a-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs005a.jpg" width="300" height="402" alt="THE CROSS OF CONG" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE CROSS OF CONG</span>
+</div>
+</td><td align='left'><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a href="images/gs005b-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs005b.jpg" width="300" height="389" alt="THE SHRINE OF ST. PATRICK&#39;S BELL" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE SHRINE OF ST. PATRICK&#39;S BELL</span>
+</div>
+</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>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,</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Hac cruce crux tegitur qua passus conditor orbis,<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>"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 preserved
+the name of a great artist, who has been dust for
+eight centuries.</div>
+
+<p>The Book of Kells is even more wonderful. It is
+to the library of Trinity College we must go to see
+it&mdash;and go we must!&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+parchment, and each of its pages is framed with exquisite
+tracery and ornamentation, and with a beautiful
+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.</p>
+
+<p>There are many other things in this old library worth
+seeing&mdash;among them the Book of Darrow, thirteen
+centuries old, and ornamented with designs which, as
+Betty remarked, would make beautiful crochet patterns.
+And there is Brian Boru's harp&mdash;the very one,
+perhaps, that shed the soul of music through Tara's
+halls&mdash;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!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>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 costumes!
+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&mdash;we could have stayed and
+talked to them till morning! Indeed, we almost did!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Our</span> third day in Dublin was ushered in by a tremendous
+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.</div>
+
+<p>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 Dublin,
+we decided to go there. The ride thither gave
+us our first glimpse of rural Ireland&mdash;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&mdash;for of course the roads are
+English; at any rate, they never swerve an inch to get<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 delightful
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 principal
+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.</p>
+
+<p>The tower stands at the edge of what is now the
+main street, and is a splendid example of another peculiarly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+Irish institution. For these tall towers of
+stone, resembling nothing so much as gigantic chimneys,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>They are always of stone, and are sometimes more
+than a hundred feet high. Some of them taper toward
+the top in a way which shows the high skill of
+their builders. That they were well-built their survival
+through the centuries attests. The narrow entrance
+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.</p>
+
+<p>As to their purpose, there has been violent controversy.
+Different antiquarians have believed them to be
+fire-temples of the Druids, phallic emblems, astronomical
+observatories, anchorite towers or penitential prisons.
+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 pillaging
+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.</p>
+
+<p>I confess I do not find this theory convincing. As
+belfries the towers must have been failures, for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+small bells of those days, hung a hundred feet above
+the ground in a chamber with only four tiny openings,
+would be all but inaudible. As watch-towers
+they were ineffective, for the enemy had only to advance
+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&mdash;besides, I have no better theory to suggest.
+Whatever their purpose, there they stand, and very
+astonishing they are.</p>
+
+<p>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
+man&oelig;uvred 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.</p>
+
+<p>Betty was in a panic, for she didn't want the garden
+despoiled,&mdash;at the same time she realised that she must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"But doesn't it grow wild?" Betty asked.</p>
+
+<p>"It does, miss; but 'tis very hard to find. This was
+sent me by my brother in Tipperary. 'Tis the true
+shamrock, miss," and she broke off a spray for each of
+us.</p>
+
+<p>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 addressed
+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.</p>
+
+<p>There are not, I fancy, many visitors to Clondalkin,
+for, as we sauntered on along the street, we found ourselves
+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 outdoors,
+a group in this corner and a group in that.
+The small children were being taught by older ones,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>We examined it eagerly. It was a trefoil, the leaf<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"I am, miss," he answered promptly; "as sure as I
+am of anything."</p>
+
+<p>"But down in the village," said Betty, "a woman
+gave me this," and she took the spray from her button-hole,
+"and said <i>it</i> was the true shamrock. You see
+the leaf is quite green and larger and the blossom is
+white."</p>
+
+<p>"True for you, miss; and there be some people who
+think that the true shamrock. But it is not so&mdash;'tis
+only white clover. The true shamrock is that I have
+given you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you are a gardener," said Betty, "and ought
+to know."</p>
+
+<p>"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 asking
+them to decide which was the true shamrock!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The legend is that, about 450, St. Patrick reached<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+the Rock of Cashel, in his missionary journeyings over
+Ireland, and at once went to work to convert &AElig;ngus
+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 assembled
+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 illustration,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 nowadays
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever its colour, it is a most elusive plant and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+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 remember
+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 <i>did</i> 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 disclaimed
+any exact knowledge of where it grew.</p>
+
+<p>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 friendliness.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it a car your honour would be wantin'?" he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I said. "How did you know?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The man up at the church told me, sir. He said
+you'd be wishin' to drive to the station."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we do," I said. "It's too far to walk.
+Have you a car?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have, sir, and it's myself would be glad to carry
+you and your lady there."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," I agreed; and then, as an afterthought,
+"How much will you charge?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a penny, sir," he protested warmly. "Not a
+penny."</p>
+
+<p>I stared at him. I confess I didn't understand. He
+returned my stare with a broad smile.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's mighty kind of you," I said hesitatingly; "but
+we couldn't think of troubling you.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>"Niver a bit of trouble, sir," he broke in. "I'll be
+that proud to do it."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;and
+perhaps find some one else to talk to.</p>
+
+<p>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 telegraph-office,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+and it does the work&mdash;by means of the
+parcel-post&mdash;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 disbursed
+and the multifarious details of the workman's
+insurance act attended to.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and there's many like her&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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 shillings
+a week, receives five shillings weekly from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+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 surprisingly
+large number of people there whose income
+is under ten shillings and whose years exceed threescore
+and ten. I questioned the postmistress about this,
+and she smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>We agreed with her,&mdash;though, as I figured it out
+afterwards, Mrs. Clancy may still have been a year
+or two under seventy&mdash;and then she went on to explain
+that the pensions had been a blessing in another way,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+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 encumbrance,
+and whenever a marriage contract was
+made or a division of the property, it was always carefully
+stipulated who should look after them. Naturally
+in a land where a man was hard put to it to provide
+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&mdash;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 workhouses
+are somewhat less crowded than they used to
+be.</p>
+
+<p>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 England,
+in the past, has dealt with Irish problems,&mdash;the
+whole Irish problem, as some protest, is merely the result
+of a stupid people trying to govern a clever one!</p>
+
+<p>About eighty years ago, England realised that something
+must be done for the Irish poor. Irish industries
+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 alternatives,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+for there was no way in which they could get
+money enough to emigrate.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish themselves suggested that something be
+done to develop the industrial resources of the country,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the workhouse system was devised to provide
+for tramps&mdash;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&mdash;and how dire that need has
+been may be judged by the fact that, in 1905, for instance,
+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&mdash;but the disgrace of the workhouse was upon
+them all.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, the traveller in Ireland finds one of these
+mammoth structures in every town&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+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, workhouses
+and jails alike will be transformed into schools
+and factories, and Irish money will be spent in brightening
+and beautifying the lives of Ireland's people.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We bade good-bye, at last, to the little Clondalkin
+postmistress, with many mutual good wishes, and wandered
+forth to find the Samaritan who had offered to
+take us to the station; and finally we saw him standing
+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 parish
+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, wondering
+if we would better enter.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, then you're the gardener," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, I'm everything, sir," and he hustled us up
+the path, his face beaming with happiness. "And
+how grieved His Riverence will be when he comes back
+and learns that he missed you. If he was anywhere
+near, I'd have gone for him at once, but he went to
+Dublin to the conference and he won't be back till
+evenin'. He's a grand man, God bless him, and has
+travelled all over the world, and it's himself would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+know how to talk to you! There is the cart, sir; but
+there's no hurry. I must cut some blooms for your
+lady."</p>
+
+<p>Betty was already admiring the flowers&mdash;great scarlet
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but you mustn't cut them!" she cried. "What
+would the Father say!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, miss, if he was here, he'd make me cut twice
+as many!" he retorted, and went on cutting and cutting.
+"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!"</p>
+
+<p>We too were sorry, and said so&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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 carrying.</p>
+
+<p>"Take it, miss; take it!" she urged. "Just see how
+beautiful it is!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's not beautiful at all!" Betty protested. "It's
+faded."</p>
+
+<p>"And so am I faded, miss," came the instant retort.
+"Sure, we can't all be fresh and lovely like yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>Of course, after that, I bought the bouquet!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Dublin</span> 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&mdash;one can reach
+their foot by tram-line and some of their wildest beauties
+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.</div>
+
+<p>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&mdash;sometimes
+piercing a projecting headland, sometimes
+spanning a deep gully, sometimes skirting a sheer
+precipice&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Betty and I were the only ones who descended at
+Rathdrum, that day, and we were glad, for it is peculiarly
+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.</p>
+
+<p>The road mounted steeply for a time, passed through
+a dingy village clinging to a hillside, and then suddenly
+emerged high above the lovely Vale of Clara.
+Far down, so far it seemed the merest ribbon, the Avonmore
+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 vanquished
+on the highest slopes by the low, closely-growing
+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&mdash;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. "Unprofitably
+gay?" Betty hotly disputed it. For how
+could such beauty be unprofitable?</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;that
+"Meeting of the Waters" celebrated by Tom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"They would be putting a lad away for six months
+for the likes of that," he protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely no one would grudge you a rabbit now and
+then!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>We passed a gang of men repairing the road, and
+two or three others sitting along the roadside, breaking
+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 intervals
+to see that the work was properly done. Two
+shillings a day&mdash;fifty cents&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+now and then, if it meant a decent wage for the
+labourers!</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;and let
+me say here that the word "lough," which occurs so
+frequently in Irish geography, means lake, and is pronounced
+almost exactly like the Scotch "loch." Glendalough
+is one of the most beautiful and romantic
+spots in Ireland, and its story runneth thus:</p>
+
+<p>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 converted
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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, touching
+his hand, kissing his robe&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>There are two versions of what followed. One is
+that St. Kevin escaped by jumping into a bush of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+nettles, and cooled the damsel's ardour by beating her
+with a branch of them, whereupon she asked his pardon
+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 betook
+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:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+On the bold cliff's bosom cast,<br />
+Tranquil now he sleeps at last;<br />
+Dreams of heaven, nor thinks that e'er<br />
+Woman's smile can haunt him there.<br />
+But nor earth nor heaven is free<br />
+From her power if fond she be;<br />
+Even now while calm he sleeps,<br />
+Kathleen o'er him leans and weeps.<br />
+<br />
+Fearless she had tracked his feet<br />
+To this rocky, wild retreat,<br />
+And when morning met his view,<br />
+Her wild glances met it too.<br />
+Ah! your saints have cruel hearts!<br />
+Sternly from his bed he starts,<br />
+And, with rude, repulsive shock,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>Hurls her from the beetling rock.<br />
+<br />
+Glendalough, thy gloomy wave<br />
+Soon was gentle Kathleen's grave!<br />
+Soon the saint (but, ah! too late)<br />
+Felt her love and mourned her fate.<br />
+When he said, "Heaven rest her soul!"<br />
+Round the lake light music stole,<br />
+And her ghost was seen to glide<br />
+Smiling o'er the fatal tide.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>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 lakeside,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 disturbed.
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+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 rapidly
+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 Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;they give it such an unimpeachable
+vraisemblance!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 nestling
+between. In the foreground lay the ruins of the
+seven churches, with the round tower rising high above<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+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&mdash;like some ideal, painted scene, too lovely to be
+real&mdash;and we gazed at it in speechless enchantment
+while our jarvey drove us around the lower lake, under
+the shadow of the hills, and so to the little inn
+where we were to have lunch.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 410px;">
+<a href="images/gs006-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs006.jpg" width="410" height="600" alt="&copy; Underwood &amp; Underwood, N. Y.
+
+GLENDALOUGH AND THE RUINS OF ST. KEVIN&#39;S CHURCHES" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><span class='small'>&copy; Underwood &amp; Underwood, N. Y.</span> &nbsp;  &nbsp;  &nbsp;  &nbsp;  &nbsp;  &nbsp; <br />
+
+GLENDALOUGH AND THE RUINS OF ST. KEVIN&#39;S CHURCHES</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We were looking in delight at the inn, with its
+thatched roof and whitewashed walls, when a formidable
+figure appeared in the door&mdash;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&mdash;a sort of throw-back, I suppose, to the old Vikings
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"Can we get lunch?" I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it ready?" I ventured further, for the long drive
+had made us very hungry.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+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 welcome.
+Lunch would be ready in fifteen minutes, she
+said; meanwhile, if we wished, we could walk to the
+waterfall.</p>
+
+<p>Of course we <i>did</i> 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 abundantly
+in the damp ground along the margin of the
+stream was what Betty declared to be the true shamrock&mdash;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 gardener
+at Clondalkin. We gathered some of it, and
+then hastened back&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Your honour will be goin' to St. Kevin's bed," he
+began.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the bed?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"In the cliff beyant there, sir," and he pointed across
+the lake.</p>
+
+<p>"How do we get to it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure I'll carry your honour and your lady in me
+boat."</p>
+
+<p>I looked at the fellow, and at the wide lake, and at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 backache,
+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."</p>
+
+<p>Betty and I glanced at each other. We were
+tempted. Then I looked at our would-be guide.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you make three wishes yourself?" I
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I have, your honour."</p>
+
+<p>"Did they come true?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>My heart began to warm to him, for he was the first
+person we had met in Ireland who talked like this.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the terminal cross, as I afterwards
+learned, which marked the boundary of the old monastery.
+"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+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 deceive
+the Saint, so he confessed everything. And there
+the hoof-prints are to this day."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"What happened to the thief?" I asked. "Did the
+Saint let him go?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>As, indeed, we did; at least, there is a grave there
+covered by a stone with a large round hole in the
+middle.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, your honour," went on our guide, as we
+came to the door of the inn, "you will be wantin' me
+to row you over to the Saint's bed, I'm thinkin'."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the fare?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"As much over sixpence as you care to give, your
+honour."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"All right," I said. "We'll be ready presently."
+And we went in to lunch.</p>
+
+<p>We certainly enjoyed that meal, though I have forgotten
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that when St. Kevin was building his monastery,
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+might lie down before the sun was set; and the prayer
+was granted, and from that day to this Glendalough
+has been famous as</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"the lake whose gloomy shore</span><br />
+Skylark never warbles o'er."<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>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.</div>
+
+<p>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 clinging
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"The seat and the bed are up yonder," said our
+guide. "Them ones will help your honour up."</p>
+
+<p>I looked at the perpendicular cliff, quite smooth except
+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&mdash;as will appear more than once in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+the course of this narrative&mdash;and she promptly declared
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Of course I had to follow, if I was to escape a lifetime
+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 prevailed.</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+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 always
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+the wish to comfort the inquirer; but in this case the
+prediction happened to come true.</p>
+
+<p>When we got back to the inn, we found a new arrival,
+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.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Two illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'><div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<a href="images/gs007a-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs007a.jpg" width="250" height="459" alt="THE ROAD TO ST. KEVIN&#39;S SEAT" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE ROAD TO ST. KEVIN&#39;S SEAT</span>
+</div>
+</td><td align='left'><div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<a href="images/gs007b-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs007b.jpg" width="350" height="364" alt="THE FIRST OF ST. KEVIN&#39;S CHURCHES" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE FIRST OF ST. KEVIN&#39;S CHURCHES</span>
+</div>
+</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>The Irish schools, like everything else Irish, are controlled
+by a central board which sits at Dublin Castle.
+There are sixty-six other boards and bureaus and departments
+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 Education
+Board, and, like all the others, it is in no way
+responsible to the Irish people. In fact, it isn't responsible
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the priest if the parish is largely
+Roman Catholic, the rector if it is largely Protestant.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+If there are enough children, both Catholic and Protestant,
+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 always
+be a few pupils of the other denomination in it.
+In the villages where there is a church, as at Clondalkin,
+the school is usually connected with the church and
+in that case, if it is Roman Catholic, the teachers will
+be nuns.</p>
+
+<p>The local manager of the school has absolute authority
+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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>The secular instruction given in the schools is supposed
+not to be coloured by religion, but it is inevitable
+that it should be; and this is especially true of Ireland,
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+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 furthermore
+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 occurred
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 instruction
+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 schoolhouses,
+and you will wonder what they are doing
+there.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They are waiting for the religious instruction period
+to be ended.</p>
+
+<p>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 requires
+the teacher to notify the child's parents; and the
+result is, I fancy, very painful to the child.</p>
+
+<p>All of which, I will say frankly, seems to me absurd.
+I do not believe that religious and secular instruction
+can be combined in this way, especially with
+a mixed population, without impairing the efficiency of
+both. The first real struggle the Home Rule Parliament
+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 principle
+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.</p>
+
+<p>The General Education Board keeps in touch with
+the local schools by employing inspectors, who visit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to visit some of the schools," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"You are at perfect liberty to do so. Any orderly
+person has the right to enter any school at any time."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the poor little schools I wish to see," I added.</p>
+
+<p>"You will find plenty of them in the west of Ireland&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Something to his discredit?" I repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+would not allow Catholic children to attend them.</p>
+
+<p>"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,</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'Breathes there a man with soul so dead<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Who never to himself has said</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">This is my own, my native land,'</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>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 something
+like this:</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'I thank the goodness and the grace<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Which on my birth have smiled,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And made me in these Christian days</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A happy English child.'</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>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. Ireland
+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 English
+government was held up to admiration as the best
+and wisest that man could hope to devise.</div>
+
+<p>"Ah, well, those days are over now, and they don't
+try to make a happy English child out of an Irish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+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 schoolhouses,
+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."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<div class='hang1'>Note objections (if any) to arrangements for Religious Instruction.</div>
+
+<div class='hang1'>Have you examined the Religious Instruction Certificate Book?</div>
+
+<div class='hang1'>Are the Rules as to this book observed?</div>
+
+<div class='hang1'>Is the school <i>bona fide</i> open to pupils of all denominations?</div>
+
+<div class='hang1'>In case of Convent or Monastery schools, paid by capitation, state is the staff sufficient.</div>
+
+<p>The "Religious Instruction Certificate Book"&mdash;note
+the reverent capitals&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+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 Circumlocution
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 frequently
+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, however,
+quite powerless to do anything except raise a
+row. Another, who believed that the highest function
+of education was to develop the &aelig;sthetic consciousness,
+had the children in his school arrange rags of
+various colours in symphonies, and the people in his
+parish nearly went mad with rage.</p>
+
+<p>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 mentioned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+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&mdash;and these most
+haltingly. Twenty per cent of the people in western
+Ireland are still unable to do even that.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a Nationalist, I suppose?" I said, after I
+had finished looking through the blank.</p>
+
+<p>"I am," he assented emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Because it is bad for Ireland to be treated like a
+spoiled child. That is the way England treats us now&mdash;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 Englishman
+will be glad to get rid of us, so his government
+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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>The time had come for us to take our leave, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+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 expressions
+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 graveyard.
+All the churches are little ones&mdash;mere midgets,
+some of them&mdash;and they are in all states of preservation,
+from a few fragments of wall to the almost perfect
+"St. Kevin's Kitchen"&mdash;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 monastery,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;eked out
+by such tips as he picked up from his passengers&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>DROGHEDA THE DREARY</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">There</span> 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.</div>
+
+<p>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 everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>We blundered into the fish-market, as we were exploring
+the streets, and watched for some time the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+haggling between the dealers and the women who had
+come to market&mdash;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 microscopic;
+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, recalling
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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, under
+Owen Roe O'Neill, had, naturally enough, supported
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+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 garrison
+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 afterwards
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 preserved
+because it stands on the opposite side of the
+town from the one Cromwell attacked, and is the most
+perfect specimen of the medi&aelig;val 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.</p>
+
+<p>Having satisfied our curiosity as to Drogheda, we addressed
+ourselves to getting out to the battlefield and
+abbeys. The railroads sell combination tickets for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+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 giving
+the price of the trip we wanted to take as ten shillings
+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.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="two illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a href="images/gs008a-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs008a.jpg" width="300" height="390" alt="THE ROUND TOWER, CLONDALKIN" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE ROUND TOWER, CLONDALKIN</span>
+</div>
+</td><td align='left'><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a href="images/gs008b-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs008b.jpg" width="300" height="383" alt="ST. LAWRENCE&#39;S GATE, DROGHEDA" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">ST. LAWRENCE&#39;S GATE, DROGHEDA</span>
+</div>
+</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>"Very good, sir," he said. "I'm the lad can take ye.
+Do you and your lady get right up."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the fare?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"One pound, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"The legal fare is just half that," I pointed out.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be," he agreed pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye see it is like this, sir," he said; "there is no one
+to enforce the regulations, so the jarvies just charge
+what they please. I'm free to admit they have no
+conscience. There is one, though, who is fairly honest,"
+and he directed us to his house. "Tell him you
+come from me, and he'll treat you well."</p>
+
+<p>But that transaction was never closed. We found
+the house&mdash;grimy, dark, dirt-floored, trash-littered&mdash;with
+the man's wife and assorted children within; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"This is no day for the trip, anyway," I said.
+"Suppose we wait till we get to Belfast, and run down
+from there."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>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-&agrave;-pie against every vicissitude of weather,
+we bade our friends at the hotel good-bye (not forgetting
+the bell-boy), drove to the station, and got
+aboard a train, which presently rolled away southwards.
+It was very full&mdash;the third-class crowded
+with soldiers in khaki bound for the camp on the Curragh
+of Kildare, and our own compartment jammed
+with a variety of people.</p>
+
+<p>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 comfortable
+woman of middle age, with whom we soon
+got into talk about everything from children to Home
+Rule.</p>
+
+<p>What she had to say about Home Rule was interesting.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't them who own land, or who are buyin' a
+little farm under the purchase act that want Home
+Rule," she said. "No, no; them ones would be glad
+to let well enough alone. 'Tis the labourers, the
+farm-hands, the ditch-diggers, and such-like people,
+who have nothin' to lose, that shout the loudest for it.
+They would like a bit of land themselves, and they
+fancy that under Home Rule they'll be gettin' it; but
+where is it to come from, I'd like to know, unless off
+of them that has it now; and who would be trustin' the
+likes of them to pay for 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."</p>
+
+<p>"What wages does a labourer make?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"From ten to twelve shillin's a week."</p>
+
+<p>"All the year round?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's no work in winter, so how can one be payin'
+wages then?"</p>
+
+<p>"But how can they live on that?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"What do the labourers do then?" I asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"They move away some'rs else&mdash;to America if they
+can."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps Home Rule will make things better," I
+suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;that's what I
+think."</p>
+
+<p>Now I look back on it, that conversation seems to
+me to sum up pretty well the situation in rural Ireland&mdash;the
+small farmer, handicapped by poverty and
+primitive methods, ground down in the markets of the
+world, and in turn grinding down the labourers beneath 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&mdash;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 composed
+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 Parliament
+will somehow compel them to pay living wages<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+to their labourers. I can only say that I hope it will!</p>
+
+<p>Outside, meanwhile, rural Ireland was unfolding itself
+under our eyes, varied, beautiful&mdash;and sad. The
+first part of it we had already traversed on our excursion
+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&mdash;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:</p>
+
+<p>One time, when Brigid, who was but a poor serving-girl,
+being the daughter of a bond-woman, was minding
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"How much land would it take to give grass to the
+cow?" said he.</p>
+
+<p>"No more than my cloak would cover," said she.</p>
+
+<p>"I will give that," said the rich man.</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 horizon,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;or fancied they found&mdash;there
+was more money in grazing than in agriculture,
+they turned the people out and the sheep and cattle
+in&mdash;and the sheep and cattle are still there.</p>
+
+<p>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 Tipperary,
+and one realises it was a true vision of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+place of his birth that Denis McCarthy had when he
+wrote his lilting verses in praise of it:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Ah, sweet is Tipperary in the springtime of the year,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When the hawthorn's whiter than the snow,</span><br />
+When the feathered folk assemble and the air is all a-tremble<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With their singing and their winging to and fro;</span><br />
+When queenly Slievenamon puts her verdant vesture on<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And smiles to hear the news the breezes bring;</span><br />
+When the sun begins to glance on the rivulets that dance&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ah, sweet is Tipperary in the spring!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Slievenamon is not in sight from the train&mdash;we shall
+see it to-morrow from the Rock of Cashel; but just
+ahead is a rugged hill with a singular, half-moon depression
+at the summit, for all the world as though
+some one had taken a great bite out of it&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>And then we came to Thurles&mdash;and to earth.</p>
+
+<p>Now Thurles&mdash;the word is pronounced in two syllables,
+as though it were spelled Thurless&mdash;is a small
+town and has only two inns. We knew nothing of
+either, so we asked the advice of a bluff, farmer-looking
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+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, having
+seen us safely to the platform, called loudly for
+"Jimmy," and an old man presently shambled forward,
+to whose care, with many wishes for a pleasant
+journey, we were committed.</p>
+
+<p>The old man proved to be the driver of a very ramshackle
+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 uncomfortable,
+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&mdash;and
+then, presto! change.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>she</i>
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+with two or three habitu&eacute;s 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.</p>
+
+<p>All through the night, we were awakened at intervals
+by the tramping and neighing of the horses arriving
+for the fair.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL OF THE KINGS</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">If</span> one doesn't like bacon and eggs, one must go without
+breakfast in Ireland, unless one likes fish, or is content
+with bread and butter. Every evening Betty
+would have a colloquy with the maid, which ran something
+like this:</div>
+
+<p>"What will ye be wantin' for breakfast, miss?"</p>
+
+<p>"What can we have?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, anything ye like, miss."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what, for instance?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's bacon and eggs, miss, and there's fish."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"And will ye have coffee or tay, miss?" the maid
+would continue.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;as they are all over Ireland&mdash;and
+the tea tasted better than I had ever imagined tea
+could taste, and outside the sun was shining brightly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 represented
+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 offering
+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&mdash;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 display.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 presently
+we saw ahead a great pile of crumbling buildings&mdash;and
+then we were at Holy Cross, one of the most
+exquisite and interesting of the hundreds of ruins which
+cover Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>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 hundred
+years ago, how crowded with castles and monasteries;
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+without a certain sadness and regret&mdash;regret for the
+vanished pomp and ceremony, the cowled processions
+and torch-lit feasts, the shuffle of feet and the songs of
+minstrels&mdash;in a word, for the old order, so impressive,
+so picturesque&mdash;and so cruel!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 319px;">
+<a href="images/gs009-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs009.jpg" width="319" height="500" alt="HOLY CROSS ABBEY, FROM THE CLOISTERS" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">HOLY CROSS ABBEY, FROM THE CLOISTERS<br /><br />
+THE MIGHTY RUINS ON THE ROCK OF CASHEL</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 common
+to almost all monastic establishments: a cruciform
+church, with the altar at the east end, as nearest Jerusalem,
+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 buildings&mdash;the
+refectory, the chapter-house and the dormitories;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+and still beyond these were the granaries and
+storehouses and guest-houses and various out-buildings.
+Also, like most others, it stands on the bank of
+a river, for the monks were fond of fishing,&mdash;and had
+no mind to go hungry on Friday!</p>
+
+<p>The roof of the church has fallen in, but it is otherwise
+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 lavished
+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.</p>
+
+<p>The cloister is now a grass-grown court, and only a
+few arches remain of the colonnade which once surrounded
+it; but the square of domestic buildings about
+it is better preserved than one will find almost anywhere
+else, and deserves careful exploration.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a mould composed, so the caretaker told us in
+awestruck voice, of human dust.</p>
+
+<p>We mounted the narrow staircase to the tower roof
+and sat there for a long time, gazing down on these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+lichened and crumbling walls, restoring them in imagination
+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&mdash;that day, for instance,
+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 yonder
+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 English
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the one place in all Ireland best worth seeing.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Cashel is a rock some three hundred feet high
+dropped down among the pastures along the northern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 centuries
+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 shamrock
+to illustrate the principle of the Three-in-One;
+Brian Boru strengthened its fortifications; and in 1134
+was consecrated here that wonderful chapel of Cormac
+McCarthy, King of Munster, which still endures as a
+most convincing demonstration of the beauty of old
+Irish architecture. Then a round tower was put up,
+and then a castle, and then a great cathedral, for King
+Murtough had granted the Rock to "the religious of
+Ireland," and the Archbishop of Cashel came, before
+long, to be nearly as powerful as the great Archbishop
+of Armagh; and then a monastery was built, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 337px;">
+<a href="images/gs010-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs010.jpg" width="337" height="500" alt="CASHEL OF THE KINGS" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><span class='small'>&copy; Underwood &amp; Underwood, N.Y.</span>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+CASHEL OF THE KINGS</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 Protestantism,
+married not once, but twice. From that time
+on, the place was used as a Protestant cathedral, until,
+in 1744, Archbishop Price succeeded to the see.</p>
+
+<p>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 Parliament
+an act decreeing that, whereas, "in several
+dioceses, cathedral churches are so incommodiously situated
+that they cannot be resorted to for divine service,"
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+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 "Crummell"
+didn't make. George II was King of England
+in 1749, and Cromwell had been dead nearly a hundred
+years.</p>
+
+<p>I shall never forget my first glimpse of this stupendous
+pile of buildings, looming high in air, all turrets
+and towers, like those fairy palaces which Maxfield
+Parrish loves to paint. A short branch runs from
+Goold's Cross to Cashel, and it was from the windows
+of the rickety little train we peered, first on this side
+and then on that&mdash;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 upward
+over rock and heather, straight toward this new
+marvel. We skirted another wall, and climbed a stile&mdash;and
+then we were stopped by a high iron gate, secured
+with a chain and formidable padlock.</p>
+
+<p>But we had scarcely time to feel the shock of disappointment,
+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 moment
+later we had the pleasure of meeting John Minogue,
+the caretaker&mdash;the most accomplished caretaker,
+I venture to say, in all the length and breadth of Ireland.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+For, as we soon found, he has the history and
+legends and architectural peculiarities of Cashel at his
+tongue's end&mdash;he knows them intimately, accurately,
+in every detail, for he has lived with them all his life
+and loves them.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>At our feet lay the Vale of Tipperary&mdash;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 Mountain
+of Fair Women, and as we stood there gazing at it,
+John Minogue told us how it got its name.</p>
+
+<p>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,&mdash;whose name I shall spell hereafter
+as it is pronounced, Finn MacCool&mdash;had been declared
+by birthright and by swordright Captain of that invincible
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+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 Gr&aacute;inne, daughter of the great Cormac
+himself. The feast was set for a fortnight later, in the
+king's hall at Tara&mdash;and what happened there we shall
+hear later on.</p>
+
+<p>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 &AElig;ngus 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. &AElig;ngus 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. Perhaps
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+It nestles in between the choir and south transept of
+the later cathedral, and its entrance is the most magnificent
+doorway of its kind existing anywhere on this
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>It is round-headed, as in all Irish Romanesque, with
+five deep mouldings rich in dog-tooth and lozenge ornamentation,
+and though it is battered and weather-worn,
+it is still most beautiful and impressive.</p>
+
+<p>Inside, the chapel is divided into nave and chancel,
+both very small, but decorated with a richness and
+massiveness almost oppressive&mdash;twisted columns, arcaded
+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 serpent
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 sculptures
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+there gazing in delight at these inimitable figures, a
+party of four or five entered the church, and stood staring
+vacantly about.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Minogue shot one glance at them.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said; "they're not worth it. Now come&mdash;I
+must show you the round tower."</p>
+
+<p>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 preserved;
+but when we looked up it from the inside, we
+saw that the old masons did not succeed in getting it
+quite true.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was an hour later&mdash;or perhaps two hours later&mdash;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 understand
+a word.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it they're saying?" we asked.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>And then, as they hustled us more closely, he turned
+and shouted something at them&mdash;some magic incantation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+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&mdash;but in the end, we
+found one of our own, as you shall hear.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 Ecclesiastical
+Architecture," and with gleaming face our
+host turned to the preface and showed us where Champneys
+acknowledged his indebtedness for much valuable
+assistance to John Minogue, of the Rock of Cashel.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a town of narrow,
+crooked streets, and thatched houses, and friendly
+women leaning over their half-doors, and multitudinous
+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.</p>
+
+<p>From the top of the Rock we had seen, in the middle
+of a field not far away, a ruin which seemed very extensive,
+and Minogue told us that it was Hore Abbey,
+a Cistercian monastery built about 1272, but had added<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+that it was scarcely worth visiting after Cashel. That
+was perhaps true&mdash;few ruins can compare with Cashel&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 declined
+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 inside
+over a broken wall, and sat down on a block of
+fallen masonry to look about us.</p>
+
+<p>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 overburdened
+with the multiplicity of them.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>did</i> hurry, though
+with many a backward glance, for one is reluctant to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+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, suspended
+in air and shrouded in mist.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">It</span> 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 picturesque
+Galtees, the highest mountains in the south of
+Ireland, fissured and gullied and folded into deep ravines
+in the most romantic way.</div>
+
+<p>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 outside
+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 attracted
+a great crowd from all over the south-eastern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+part of Ireland, especially from Cork, thirty-five miles
+away.</p>
+
+<p>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-meeting
+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.</p>
+
+<p>It was a good-humoured crowd, in spite of its reverses,
+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 compartment
+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.</p>
+
+<p>We were glad when we got to Cork.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Cork is superficially a sort of smaller Dublin. It
+has one handsome thoroughfare, approached by a handsome
+bridge, and the rest of the town is composed for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+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&mdash;that is about the only difference,
+except that Cork lacks that atmosphere of charm and
+culture which makes Dublin so attractive.</p>
+
+<p>We took a stroll about the streets, that Saturday
+night after dinner, and found them thronged with people,
+as at Dublin; but here there was a large admixture
+of English soldiers and sailors, come up from
+Queenstown to celebrate. Many of them had girls
+on their arms, and those who had not were evidently
+hoping to have, and the impression one got was that
+Cork suffers a good deal from the evils of a garrison
+town. There is a tradition that the girls of Cork are
+unusually lovely; but I fear it is only a tradition. Or
+perhaps the lovely ones stay at home on Saturday
+night.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a href="images/gs011-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs011.jpg" width="500" height="330" alt="BLARNEY CASTLE" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">BLARNEY CASTLE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"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</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+The muses shed a tear when the cruel auctioneer,<br />
+With his hammer in his hand, to sweet Blarney came.<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>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 dancing
+water, even with Blarney Castle close at hand.</div>
+
+<p>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 McCarthy
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Legend has it that, once upon a time, in the spring
+of the year when the waters were running high, Cormac
+McCarthy was returning home through the blackness
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 resist
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the legend, and it may have had its origin
+in the soft, delutherin speeches with which Dermot McCarthy
+put off the English, when they called upon him
+to surrender his castle. Certain it is that it was fixed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+finally and firmly in the popular mind by the stanza
+which Father Prout added to Milliken's song:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+There is a stone there, that whoever kisses<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Oh! he never misses to grow eloquent.</span><br />
+'Tis he may clamber to a lady's chamber,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or become a member of Parliament.</span><br />
+A clever spouter he'll sure turn out, or<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">An out and outer, to be let alone;</span><br />
+Don't hope to hinder him, or to bewilder him,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sure he's a pilgrim from the Blarney Stone.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>And ever since then, troops of pilgrims have thronged
+to Blarney to kiss the stone.</div>
+
+<p>The top of the tower is reached by a narrow staircase
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 almost
+dislodged it, and it is worn and polished by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+application of thousands of lips. But to kiss it&mdash;well,
+that is another story!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>We had supposed that there would be some experienced
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Betty, at last, "there's one thing certain&mdash;I'm
+not going away from here until I've kissed
+that stone. I'd be ashamed to go home without kissing
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"So would I," I agreed; "but I'd prefer that to hanging
+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."</p>
+
+<p>So we looked at the scenery and talked of various<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss the Blarney stone?" echoed the man, who was
+an Englishman. "I should think not! It's altogether
+too risky!"</p>
+
+<p>"But it seems a shame to go away without kissing it,"
+Betty protested.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;nobody believes
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 illustrating
+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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We were just sitting here trying to screw up courage
+to do it," Betty added.</p>
+
+<p>The newcomers looked at the stone, and then at the
+abyss.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, <i>I'll</i> never do it!" they exclaimed simultaneously,
+and they contented themselves with throwing a
+kiss at it; and then <i>they</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>And then a tall, thin man came up the stair, and <i>he</i>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"Not for me," he said. "Not&mdash;for&mdash;me!"</p>
+
+<p>"We've come all the way from America," said Betty,
+"and we simply <i>can't</i> go away until we've kissed it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, <i>I've</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"It used to be a good deal more dangerous than it
+is now," I pointed out, as much for my own benefit as
+for his. "They used to take people by the ankles and
+hold them upside down outside the battlement. I suppose
+they dropped somebody over, for those spikes were
+put there along the top to stop it. If the people who
+hold your legs are steady, there really isn't any danger
+now."</p>
+
+<p>The New Zealander took another peep over into
+space.</p>
+
+<p>"No sirree!" he said. "No sir&mdash;ree!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But he didn't go away. Instead, he sat down and
+began to talk; and I fancied I could see in his eyes
+some such uneasy purpose as I saw in Betty's.</p>
+
+<p>And then a boy of twelve or fourteen came up. He
+was evidently native to the neighbourhood, and I asked
+him if he had ever kissed the stone.</p>
+
+<p>"I have, sir, many a time," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you mind doing it again, so that we can see
+just how it is done?"</p>
+
+<p>He readily consented, and lay down on his back with
+his head and shoulders over the gulf, and the New Zealander
+took one leg and I took the other. Then the
+boy reached his hands above his head and grasped the
+iron bars which ran down inside the battlement to hold
+the stone in place.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, push me down," he said.</p>
+
+<p>My heart was in my mouth as we pushed him down,
+for it seemed an awful distance, though I knew we
+couldn't drop him because he wasn't very heavy; and
+then we heard a resounding smack.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he called. "Pull me up."</p>
+
+<p>We pulled him up, and in an instant he was on his
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all there is to it," he said, and sauntered
+off.</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m-m!" grunted the New Zealander, and sat
+down again.</p>
+
+<p>I gazed at the landscape for a minute or two, my
+hands deep in my pockets.</p>
+
+<p>When I turned around, Betty had her hat and coat
+off, and was spreading her raincoat on the parapet opposite
+the stone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do?" I demanded sternly.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down on the raincoat with her back to the
+abyss.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, you two, and hold me," she commanded.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose I might have refused, but I didn't. The
+truth is, I wanted her to kiss the stone as badly as
+she wanted to; so I knelt on one side of her and the
+New Zealander knelt on the other, and we each grasped
+an ankle. She groped for the iron bars, found them
+after an instant, and drew herself toward them.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, push me down," she said.</p>
+
+<p>We did; and as soon as we heard the smack, we
+hauled her up again, her face aglow with triumph. It
+took her some minutes to get her hair fixed, for most of
+the hair-pins had fallen out. When she looked up, she
+saw that I had taken off my coat.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do?" she demanded, in much
+the same tone that I had used.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to kiss that stone," I said. "Do you
+suppose I'd go away now, without kissing it? Why,
+I'd never hear the last of it! Get hold of my legs,"
+and I sat down, keeping my eyes carefully averted from
+the hundred-and-twenty-foot drop.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but look here," she protested, "I don't know
+whether I'm strong enough to hold you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you are," I said, making sure that there was
+nothing in my trousers' pockets to fall out. "Now,
+then!"</p>
+
+<p>Just then four or five Irish girls came out upon the
+tower, and Betty, stricken with the fear of losing me,
+asked them if they wouldn't help, and they said they
+would; so, with one man and four women holding on to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+my legs, I let myself over backwards. One doesn't
+realise how much two feet is, till one tries to take it
+backwards; it seemed to me that I was hanging in midair
+by my heels, so I kissed a stone hastily and started
+to come up.</p>
+
+<p>"That wasn't it," protested one of the girls who
+had been watching me; "you've got to go farther
+down."</p>
+
+<p>So they pushed me farther down, and I saw the
+smooth, worn stone right before my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this it?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said; so I kissed it, and in a moment was
+right side up again; and I don't know when I have felt
+prouder.</p>
+
+<p>And then the New Zealander, his face grim and set,
+began to take things out of his trousers' pockets.</p>
+
+<p>"If you people will hold me," he said, "I'll do it
+too."</p>
+
+<p>So we held him, and <i>he</i> did it.</p>
+
+<p>Then he and I offered to hold the Irish girls, but
+they refused, giggling, and as there was nothing more
+to do on top of that tower, we went down again, treading
+as if on air, more elated than I can say.</p>
+
+<p>That sense of elation endures to this day, and I
+would earnestly advise every one who visits Blarney
+Castle to kiss the stone. I am not aware that I am
+any more eloquent than I ever was, and Betty never
+had any real need to kiss it, but to go to Blarney without
+doing so is&mdash;well, is like going to Paris without
+seeing the Louvre, or to the Louvre without seeing the
+Winged Victory and the Venus of Milo. Really,
+there isn't any danger, if you have two people of average<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+strength holding you; and there isn't even any very
+great sense of danger, since your back is to the abyss
+and you can't see it. My advice is to do it at once, as
+soon as you get to the top of the tower, without stopping
+to think about it too long. After that, with a
+serene mind, you can look at the view, which is very,
+very lovely, and explore the ruin, which is one of the
+most interesting and noteworthy in Ireland.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We sat down on a bench just outside the castle entrance
+to rest after our exertions. There was a young
+man and woman on the bench, and in about a minute
+we were talking together. It turned out that they
+were members of Alexander Marsh's company, then
+touring Ireland in classical repertoire, and would open
+in Cork in "The Three Musketeers" the following evening.
+I had never heard of Alexander Marsh, but they
+both pronounced his name with such awe and reverence
+that I fancied he must be a second Irving, and I
+said at once that we should have to see the play. We
+went on to talk about that high-hearted story, which I
+love; and I noticed a growing embarrassment in our
+companions.</p>
+
+<p>"See here," said the man at last, "you know the book
+so well and think so much of it, that I'm afraid the
+play will disappoint you. For one thing, we can't put
+on Richelieu. The play makes rather a fool of him,
+and the Catholics over here would get angry in a minute
+if we made a fool of a Cardinal, even on the stage.
+So we have to call him Roquefort, and leave out the
+Cardinal altogether, which, of course, spoils the whole
+point of the plot. It's a pity, too, because his robes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+are gorgeous. Of course it doesn't make so much difference
+to people who haven't read the book&mdash;and
+mighty few over here have; but I'm afraid you
+wouldn't like it."</p>
+
+<p>I was afraid so, too; so we promised we wouldn't
+come.</p>
+
+<p>And then they went on to tell us about themselves.
+They were married, it seemed, and were full of enthusiasms
+and ideals, and they spoke with that beautiful
+accent so common on the English stage; and he had
+been to New York once, and for some reason had fared
+pretty badly there; but he hoped to get to America
+again. He didn't say why, but I inferred it was because
+in America he could earn a decent salary, which
+was probably impossible in the Irish provinces.</p>
+
+<p>We left them after a while, and wandered through
+what is left of the groves of Blarney, and visited the
+caves in the cliffs under the castle, at one time used for
+dungeons, into which the McCarthys thrust such of
+their enemies as they could capture. And then we explored
+the charming little river which runs along under
+the cliff, and walked on to Blarney Lake, a pretty bit
+of water, with more than its share of traditions: for,
+at a certain season of the year, a herd of white cows
+rises from its bosom and feeds along its banks, and it
+is the home of a red trout which will not rise to the
+fly, and it was into this lake that the last of the McCarthys
+cast his great chest of plate, when his castle
+was declared forfeited to the English, and his spirit
+keeps guard every night along the shore, and the secret
+of its whereabouts will never be revealed until a McCarthy
+is again Lord of Blarney.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We walked back to the entrance, at last, and had a
+most delicious tea on the veranda of a clean tea-shop
+there, with gay little stone-chatters hopping about
+our feet, picking up the crumbs; and then we loitered
+about the quaint little village, and visited the church,
+set in the midst of a pretty park, and wandered along a
+road under lofty trees, and were wholly, completely,
+riotously happy.</p>
+
+<p>We had kissed the Blarney Stone!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>CUSHLA MA CHREE</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">It</span> was very evident, as we went back to Cork, that
+the people who live there do not regard it as an earthly
+paradise, for it seemed as though the whole population
+of the place was out in the fields. We had seen
+the same thing at Dublin the Sunday before&mdash;every
+open space near the city crowded with men and women
+and children; from which I infer that the Irish have
+sense enough&mdash;or perhaps it is an instinct&mdash;to get out
+of their slums and into the fresh, clean air whenever
+they have a chance. And the way they lie about in the
+moist grass on the damp ground is another proof of the
+amenity of the Irish climate.</div>
+
+<p>When we got back to the town, we decided we
+could spend an hour very pleasantly driving about and
+seeing the place; and, since the day was fine, we voted
+for an outside car. Be it known, there are two varieties
+of car in Cork: one the common or garden variety,
+the outside car, and the other a sort of anti-type called
+an inside car. The difference is that, in an outside
+car you sit on the inside, that is in the middle with
+your feet hanging over the wheel, while in an inside
+car you sit on the outside, that is over the wheel with
+your feet hanging down in the middle. Also the inside
+car has a top over it and side-curtains which can
+be let down in wet weather. I hope this is clear, for
+I do not know how to make it clearer without a diagram.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+Both inside and outside cars are rather more
+ramshackle in Cork than anywhere else in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>The legal rate for a car in Cork is one shilling sixpence
+per hour, and I decided in advance that, come
+what might, come what may, I would not pay more
+than twice the legal rate for the use of one. So when
+we got off the train at the Cork terminus, I passed
+under review the cars standing in the street in front of
+it, while each individual jarvey, seeing I was interested,
+stood up in his seat and bellowed at the top of
+his voice. Finally I picked out the least disreputable
+one and looked the jarvey in the eye.</p>
+
+<p>"We want to drive around for an hour or two," I
+said. "How much will you charge an hour?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jump right up, sir," he cried, and wheeled his car
+in front of me with a flourish.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to answer my question first."</p>
+
+<p>"'Twill be only five shillings an hour, sir."</p>
+
+<p>I passed on to the next driver, who had been listening
+to this colloquy with absorbed interest. His price
+was four shillings. So I passed on to the third. His
+price was three shillings. I suppose if I had passed
+once again, the price would have been two shillings;
+but three shillings was within my limit, so we mounted
+into our places and were off.</p>
+
+<p>I fear, however, that that phrase, "we were off,"
+gives a wrong idea of our exit. We did not whirl up
+the street, with our horse curvetting proudly and the
+jarvey clinging to the reins. No, nothing like that.
+The horse trotted&mdash;I convinced myself of this, from
+time to time, by looking at him&mdash;but he was one of
+those up-and-down trotters, that come down in almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+exactly the same place from which they go up. The
+jarvey encouraged him from time to time by touching
+him gently with the whip, but the horse never varied
+his gait, except that, whenever he came to a grade, he
+walked. Sometimes we would catch up with a pedestrian
+sauntering in the same direction, and then it was
+quite exciting to see how we worked our way past him,
+inch by inch. This mode of progression had one advantage:
+it was not necessary to stop anywhere to examine
+architectural details or absorb local atmosphere.
+We had plenty of time to do that as we passed. In
+fact, in some of the slum streets, we absorbed rather
+more of the atmosphere than we cared for.</p>
+
+<p>Cork is an ancient place, built for the most part on
+an island in the River Lee. St. Fin Barre started it
+in the seventh century by founding a monastery on the
+island; the Danes sailed up the river, some centuries
+later, and captured it; and then the Anglo-Normans
+took it from the Danes and managed to keep it by
+ceaseless vigilance. The Irish peril was so imminent,
+that the English had to bar the gates not only at night,
+but whenever they went to church or to their meals,
+and no stranger was suffered inside the walls until he
+had checked his sword and dagger and other lethal
+weapons with the gate-keeper.</p>
+
+<p>But the Irish have always had a way with them;
+and what they couldn't accomplish by force of arms,
+they did by blarney;&mdash;or maybe it was the girls who
+did it! At any rate, at the end of a few generations
+Cork was about the Irishest town in Ireland, and levied
+its own taxes and made its own laws and even set up
+its own mint, and when the English Parliament attempted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+to interfere, invited it to mind its own business.
+The climax came when that picturesque impostor,
+Perkin Warbeck, landed in the town, was hailed
+as a son of the Duke of Clarence and the rightful King
+of England by the mayor, and provided with new
+clothes and a purse of gold by the citizens, together
+with a force for the invasion of England. The result
+of which was that the mayor lost his head and the city
+its charter.</p>
+
+<p>Cork is a tragic word in Irish ears not because of
+this ancient history, but because of the dreadful scenes
+enacted here in the wake of the great famine of 1847.
+It was here that thousands and thousands of famished,
+hopeless, half-crazed men and women said good-bye to
+Ireland forever and embarked for the New World.
+Hundreds more, unable to win farther, lay down in the
+streets and died, and every road leading into the town
+was hedged with unburied bodies. That ghastly torrent
+of emigration has kept up ever since, though it
+reached its flood some twenty years ago, and is by no
+means so ghastly as it was. Yet every train that
+comes into the town bears its quota of rough-clad people,
+mere boys and girls most of them, with wet eyes
+and set faces, and behind it, all through the west and
+south, it leaves a wake of sobs and wails and bitter
+weeping.</p>
+
+<p>Cork possesses nothing of antiquarian interest. The
+old churches have all been swept away. The oldest
+one still standing dates only from 1722, and is worth
+a visit not because of itself, but because of some verses
+written about its bells by a poet who lies buried in its
+churchyard. St. Anne Shandon, with its tall, parti-coloured<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+tower surmounted by its fish-weathervane,
+stands on a hill to the north of the Lee. The tower
+contains a peal of eight bells, and it was their music
+which furnished inspiration for Father Prout's pleasant
+lines:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+With deep affection and recollection<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I often think of the Shandon bells,</span><br />
+Whose sounds so wild would, in the days of childhood,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fling round my cradle their magic spells.</span><br />
+On this I ponder where'er I wander,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee,&mdash;</span><br />
+With thy bells of Shandon, that sound so grand on<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The pleasant waters of the River Lee.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Of course we wanted to see St. Anne Shandon and
+to hear the bells, so, with some difficulty, we persuaded
+our driver to put his horse at the ascent. The streets
+rising up that hill are all slums, with little lanes more
+slummy still ambling away in various directions; and
+all of them were full of people, that afternoon, who
+hailed our advent as an unexpected addition to the
+pleasures and excitements of the day, and followed
+along, inspecting us curiously, and commenting frankly
+upon the details of our attire. The impression we
+made was, I think, on the whole, favourable, but there
+is a certain novelty in hearing yourself discussed as
+impersonally as if you were a statue, and after the
+first embarrassment, we rather enjoyed it. At last we
+reached the church, and stopped there in the shadow
+of the tower until the chimes rang. They are very
+sweet and melodious, and fully deserve Father Prout's
+rhapsody.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The wife of the inspector we met at Glendalough
+had told Betty of a convent at Cork where girls were
+taught lace-making, and had given her the names of
+two nuns, either of whom, she was sure, would be glad
+to show us the school. It is in the convents that most
+of the lace-making in Ireland is taught nowadays, and
+of course we wanted to see one of the schools, so Monday
+morning we sallied forth in search of this one.
+We found it without difficulty&mdash;a great barrack of a
+building opening upon a court. Both nuns were there,
+and I do not remember ever having received anywhere
+a warmer welcome. Certainly we might see the lace-makers,
+and Sister Catherine took us in charge at once,
+explaining on the way that there were not as many girls
+at work as usual that morning, because one of their
+number had been married the day before, and the whole
+crowd had stayed up very late celebrating the great
+event. And then she led us into a room where about
+twenty girls were bending over their work.</p>
+
+<p>They all arose as we entered, and then I sat down
+and watched them, while Sister Catherine took Betty
+about from one girl to the next, and explained the kind
+of lace each was making. Some of it was Carrickmacross,
+of which, it seems, there are two varieties,
+appliqu&eacute; and guipure; and some of it was needle-point,
+that aristocrat of laces of which one sees so much in
+Belgium; and some of it was Limerick, and there were
+other kinds whose names I have forgotten, but all of
+it was beautifully done. The designing is the work of
+Sister Catherine, and, while I am very far from being
+a connoisseur, some of the pieces she afterwards showed
+us were very lovely indeed. Then we were asked if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+we wouldn't like to hear the girls sing, and of course
+we said we would, so one of them, at a nod from the
+Sister, got to her feet and very gravely and earnestly
+sang John Philpot Curran's tender verses, "Cushla ma
+Chree," which is Irish for "Darling of My Heart":</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Dear Erin, how sweetly thy green bosom rises!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">An emerald set in the ring of the sea!</span><br />
+Each blade of thy meadows my faithful heart prizes,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thou queen of the west! the world's cushla ma chree!</span><br />
+<br />
+Thy gates open wide to the poor and the stranger&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">There smiles hospitality hearty and free;</span><br />
+Thy friendship is seen in the moment of danger,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the wanderer is welcomed with cushla ma chree.</span><br />
+<br />
+Thy sons they are brave; but, the battle once over,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In brotherly peace with their foes they agree;</span><br />
+And the roseate cheeks of thy daughters discover<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The soul-speaking blush that says cushla ma chree.</span><br />
+<br />
+Then flourish forever, my dear native Erin,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">While sadly I wander an exile from thee;</span><br />
+And, firm as thy mountains, no injury fearing,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">May heaven defend its own cushla ma chree!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>It is a very characteristic Irish poem of the sentimental
+sort, and it has been set to a soft and plaintive
+air also characteristically Irish, and it took on a beauty
+which the lines by themselves do not possess as we
+heard it sung that morning, with the girls, bending to
+their work, joining in the chorus. Then we were
+shown over the convent, and finally taken to the
+parlour, where Sister Bonaventura joined us, and where
+we had a very pleasant talk.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The convent's chief treasure is the great parchment
+volume in which its history is noted from day to day.
+How far back it goes I have forgotten, but I think to
+the very founding of the institution, and it is illuminated
+throughout very beautifully, while the lettering
+is superb. The great events in the life of every nun
+are recorded here, and those events are three: when
+she became a novice, when she took the final vows,
+and when she died. Those are the only events that
+concern the community, except that sometimes when
+death followed a painful and lingering illness, it was
+noted how cheerfully the pain was borne. Occasionally
+some delicate woman found the hard life more
+than she could endure, and then she was permitted to
+put aside her robes and go back into the world.</p>
+
+<p>I spent half an hour looking through the book, and
+Sister Bonaventura showed me the record of her own
+entry into the convent. It was in the year in which
+I was born, and I shivered a little at the thought that,
+during all the long time I had been growing to boyhood
+and manhood and middle age, she had been immured
+here in this convent at Cork; during all the
+years that I had been reading and writing and talking
+with men and women and knocking about the world,
+she had been doing over and over again her little round
+of daily duties; but when I looked at her bright brave
+face and quiet eyes, and listened to her calm sweet
+voice, I wondered if, after all, she hadn't got farther
+than I!</p>
+
+<p>It would be a mistake, however, to think of these
+nuns&mdash;or of any I ever met&mdash;as pious, strait-laced,
+lachrymose creatures. They were quite the reverse of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+that; they were fairly bubbling over with good humour
+and with big-hearted blarney. Some one had given
+them a victrola, and it was evidently the supreme delight
+of their lives.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't go to the opera," they said; "but the
+opera comes to us. We have a concert nearly every
+evening, and it's sorry we are when the bell rings and
+we have to go to bed."</p>
+
+<p>They showed us their austere little chapel, after that,
+and introduced us to the Mother Superior, a very delicate,
+placid, transparent woman of more than eighty,
+who reminded me of the sister of Bishop Myriel; and
+I am sure they were sorry when we had to say good-bye.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We went down to Monkstown by rail, that afternoon,
+to see Queenstown harbour. The line runs close
+to the river, passing Passage, whose charms have been
+celebrated by Father Prout, and finally reaching
+Monkstown, on the heights above which stands the famous,
+four-square castle which cost its owner only fourpence.
+The story goes that, in 1636, John Archdeckan
+marched away to the war in Flanders, and his wife
+determined to surprise him, on his return, by presenting
+him with a stately castle. So she gathered a great
+number of builders together and gave them the job on
+the condition that they would buy all their food and
+drink and clothing from her. When the castle was
+done, she balanced her accounts and found that she
+had expended fourpence more than she had received.</p>
+
+<p>At Monkstown, we took a boat and ferried across
+the harbour, past many grey men-of-war which lay at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+anchor there. Very beautiful it is, with the high,
+green-clad hills pressing about it on all sides, and
+shrouding the entrance so completely that one might
+fancy oneself in a landlocked lake. Queenstown is
+built on the side of one of these hills, and is dominated
+by the great, white cathedral, which has been building
+for fifty years, and is not yet finished.</p>
+
+<p>It is a curious coincidence that the two ports of Ireland
+by which most visitors enter and leave it should
+be named after two people whom the Irish have little
+reason to love. In 1821, when George IV embarked
+at the port of Dunleary, just below Dublin, he "graciously
+gave permission" that its name might be
+changed to Kingstown in honour of the event. In
+1849, Queen Victoria paid one of her very few visits
+to Ireland, and sailed into the Cove of Cork. As she
+herself wrote, "To give the people the satisfaction of
+calling the place Queenstown, in honour of its being
+the first spot on which I set foot on Irish ground, I
+stepped on shore amidst the roar of cannon and the
+enthusiastic shouts of the people." Forty years later,
+when the Irish had come to realise that the Queen had
+no interest in them, they had the dignity and good
+sense to put aside the servility to which they have sometimes
+been too prone, and to refuse to take part in the
+celebration of her Jubilee. But Queenstown is still
+Queenstown.</p>
+
+<p>The town consists of a single long street of public
+houses and emigrant hotels and steamship offices facing
+the water, and some steep lanes running back up
+over the hill, and the day we were there, it was crowded
+with emigrants, Swedes and Norwegians mostly, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+had been brought ashore from the stranded <i>Haverford</i>,
+and who spent their time wandering aimlessly up and
+down, trying to find out what was going to happen to
+them. There were many sailors and marines knocking
+about the grog-shops, as well as the crowd of navvies
+and longshoremen always to be found lounging about
+a water-front. This water-front is one great landing-stage,
+and it is here that perhaps a million Irish men
+and women have stepped forever off of Irish soil.</p>
+
+<p>We climbed up the hill presently to the cathedral,
+which owes not a little of its impressiveness to its
+superb site. Its exterior is handsome and imposing&mdash;good
+Gothic, though perhaps a trifle too florid for the
+purest taste; but the effect of the interior is ruined by
+the absurd columns of the nave, made of dark marble,
+and so slender that the heavy structure of white stone
+above them seems to be hanging in the air.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We had hoped to go by rail to Youghal and take
+steamer up the Blackwater to Cappoquin, and from
+there drive over to the Trappist monastery at Mt.
+Melleray; but we found that the steamer did not start
+until the fifteenth of June, so most regretfully that
+excursion had to be abandoned. Those who have
+made it tell me it is a very beautiful one. Cloyne is
+also perhaps worth visiting; but we were tired of Cork
+and hungering for Killarney, and so decided to turn
+our faces westward next day.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">There</span> are two ways of getting from Cork to Killarney,
+one by the so-called "Prince of Wales Route," because
+the late King Edward went that way in 1858,
+and the other by way of Macroom. Both routes converge
+at Glengarriff and are identical beyond that, and
+as the best scenery along the route is between Glengarriff
+and Killarney, I don't think it really matters
+much which route is chosen. The "Prince of Wales
+Route" is by rail to Bantry, and then either by boat
+or coach to Glengarriff, which is only a few miles
+away. The other route is to Macroom by rail, and
+from there there is a very fine ride by coach of nearly
+forty miles to Glengarriff. We chose the Macroom
+route because of the longer coach ride and because it
+touches Gougane Barra, the famous retreat of St. Fin
+Barre. I think, on the whole, it is the more picturesque
+of the two routes; but either is vastly preferable
+to the all-rail route. Indeed, the visitor to Killarney
+who misses the run from Glengarriff, misses some of
+the most beautiful and impressive scenery in all Ireland.</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was shortly after nine o'clock that our train pulled
+out of the station at Cork, and at first the line ran between
+small, well-tilled fields, each with its cosy cottage.
+The whole country-side had an air of content<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+and passable well-being; every wall was gay with the
+yellow gorse, and in the fields the green of potato and
+turnip was just beginning to show above the dark
+earth of the ridges in which they were planted. These
+ridged fields, which we were to see so often afterwards
+in the west of Ireland, tell of a ground so soaked with
+moisture that it must be carefully and thoroughly
+drained before anything will grow in it. The ridges,
+which run with the slope of the land, are usually about
+eighteen inches wide, and are separated by ditches a
+foot wide and a foot deep to carry off the excess moisture.
+There is always a trickle of water at the bottom
+of these ditches, and the task of keeping them open and
+free from weeds is a never-ending one.</p>
+
+<p>Presently on a high rock away to the left, appeared
+the tower which is all that is left of the old stronghold
+of the Barretts, and farther on are the green-clad ruins
+of Kilcrea Abbey, and near by is another great keep
+marking an old castle of the McCarthys. And then
+the train skirts the wild bog of Kilcrea, and then there
+are more ruins, and still more; and at last the train
+stops at its terminus, Macroom.</p>
+
+<p>The motor-coach was awaiting us, and we were relieved
+to find that, so far from being crowded, there
+was only one other couple, Americans like ourselves, to
+make the trip. The season had opened only the day
+before, and, after we got started, the driver confided
+to us that this was the first time he had ever been over
+the road. Even if he hadn't told us, we should soon
+have had every reason to suspect it.</p>
+
+<p>The road follows the valley of the Lee, which is not
+here the single clear and shining stream which we saw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+above Cork, but is broken into a score of channels between
+islands covered with low-growing brush&mdash;a sort
+of morass, of a strange and weird appearance. Here
+and there an ivied ruin towers above the trees, for this
+was the country of the O'Learys and these are the
+strongholds they built to defend it against the aggressions
+of their neighbours; and then we rattled down the
+street of a little village, and the driver brought the
+coach to a stop before the door of an inn, told us that
+this was Inchigeelagh and that there would be ten
+minutes for refreshments, and then disappeared in the
+direction of the bar.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose he got his refreshments for nothing, as a
+reward for stopping there. At least I can think of no
+other reason for stopping, since Inchigeelagh is only half
+an hour from Macroom, unless it was to give the nerves
+of the passengers a chance to quiet down a little. For
+we had already begun to realise that our driver was a
+speed-maniac. He had struck a hair-raising gait from
+the start, had sent the lumbering bus down grades and
+around turns at a rate that was decidedly disconcerting,
+and while there had been no especial danger except to
+the people we met&mdash;for the road was bordered by high
+earthen walls&mdash;the rattle and jar of the solid tires
+had been enough to make the teeth chatter.</p>
+
+<p>So we were glad when the racket stopped, and we
+could get down and stroll about a little; and we soon
+found that Inchigeelagh is a very quaint village. We
+walked down to the bridge over the Lee, and looked
+at Lough Allua stretching away to the west; and then
+we stopped at a tumbledown cottage to talk to an old
+woman who was leaning over her half-door; and she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+invited us in and asked us to sit down. It was my
+first glimpse of the interior of an Irish cottage of the
+poorer class, and it opened my eyes to the cruel lot of
+the people&mdash;and there are many, many thousands of
+them&mdash;who are compelled to live in such surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>There was just one room, perhaps eight feet by fifteen,
+lighted by two little windows about eighteen
+inches square, one on either side the door. The doorway
+was just high enough to enter without stooping,
+and ran from the ground right up to the eaves. The
+floor was of clay, and the walls inside had been daubed
+with mud to fill up the cracks and then whitewashed,
+but the damp had flaked the whitewash off in great leprous-looking
+blotches. The ceiling was formed by
+some rough boards laid on top of the joists overhead,
+so low that one feared to stand upright, and I suppose
+the dark space under the thatch was used as a sleeping-room,
+for there was a ladder leading to it, and I saw
+nothing in the room below which looked like a bed.
+There may have been a bed there, however, which, being
+new to rural Ireland, I did not recognise as such.</p>
+
+<p>At one end of the room was an open fireplace in
+which a few blocks of turf smoked and flared, with
+that pungent odour which we had already come to like,
+but which, at such close quarters, was a little over-powering.
+A black and battered pot hung on a crane
+above the fire, and some sort of mess was bubbling in
+it&mdash;potatoes I suppose. There was a rude table, and
+two or three chairs, and all sorts of rags and debris
+hung against the walls and piled in the corners, and a
+few dishes in a rough home-made dresser, and an old
+brush-broom, and some boxes and a lot of other indescribable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+trash. Three or four bedraggled chickens
+were wandering in and out, and I glanced around for
+the pig. But there was no pig&mdash;this family was far
+too poor to own one.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed impossible that a human being could live
+for any length of time in a place so bare of comfort,
+and I looked at the old woman, who had sat down
+across from us, and wondered how she managed to
+survive. I suspect she was not half so old as her
+wrinkled face and sunken eyes and shrivelled hands
+indicated. She lived there with her husband, she said,
+and had for many years. He was a labourer, and, in
+good times, could earn ten shillings a week; but most
+of the time it was impossible to find any work at all.
+She had no relatives in America to turn to, and neither
+she nor her husband was old enough to get a pension,
+so that it was a hard struggle to keep out of the workhouse.
+But they <i>had</i> kept out thus far, glory be to
+God, though the struggle was growing harder every
+year, for they were getting older and their rheumatism
+was getting worse, and neither of them could work as
+they once could.</p>
+
+<p>All this was said quite simply, in a manner not complaining,
+but resigned, as if accepting the inevitable.
+Her philosophy of life seemed to be that, since Fate
+had chosen to set herself and her husband in the midst
+of circumstances so hard, there was nothing to do but
+struggle on as long as possible, with the certainty of
+coming to the workhouse in the end. No doubt they
+would be far more comfortable in the workhouse than
+they had ever been outside of it, and yet they had that
+horror of it which is common to all Irish men and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+women. The horror, I think, is not so much at the
+abstract idea of receiving charity as at the public stigma
+which the workhouse gives. The Irish have been eager
+enough to draw their old age pensions, and many of
+them, who shrink from the workhouse as from a foul
+disgrace, do not hesitate to beg a few pennies from the
+passing stranger.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 318px;">
+<a href="images/gs012-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs012.jpg" width="318" height="500" alt="A COTTAGE AT INCHIGEELAGH" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">A COTTAGE AT INCHIGEELAGH<br /><br />THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>The old woman at Inchigeelagh, however, did not
+beg, nor intimate in any way that she desired or expected
+money, but she did not refuse the coin I slipped
+into her hand, after I had taken the picture of her and
+of her cottage, which you will find opposite this page.
+Perhaps she would have liked to do so, but the little
+coin represented a measure of potatoes or of turnips,
+and so a little less hunger, a little more strength. How
+many of us, I wonder, would be too proud to beg if
+we could find no work to do, and our backs were bare
+and our stomachs empty?</p>
+
+<p>The tooting of the horn warned us that our bus was
+ready to go on again, and we were soon skirting the
+shore of Lough Allua, with picturesque mountains
+closing in ahead. And then our driver crossed the
+bridge over the Lee, and made a wrong turning, and
+didn't know it until somebody shouted at him and set
+him right; and this small misadventure seemed completely
+to wreck his self-control, so that, when he got
+back to the main road, he rushed along in a manner
+more terrifying than ever. The fearful racket heralded
+our approach, else there must have been more than
+one bad accident; and I can yet see wild-eyed men
+leaping from their seats and springing frantically to
+their horses' heads, while the white-faced women seated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+in the carts peered out at us under their shawls as we
+brushed past, and no doubt sent a malediction after
+us. Geese, chickens and pigs scurried wildly in every
+direction, and that we did not leave the road strewn
+with their dead bodies was little less than a miracle.
+The road ran between high hedges, so that we could
+see only a little way ahead, and we got to watching the
+curves with a sort of fascination, for it seemed certain
+that we <i>must</i> run into something at the next one.</p>
+
+<p>We had been mounting gradually all this time, often
+up gradients so steep that they kept the driver busy
+with his gears, and the view had gradually widened
+and grown in impressiveness. Then we turned off a
+narrow road at the right, and I thought for a moment
+our driver had gone wrong again.</p>
+
+<p>"We're going to Gougane Barra," he explained, seeing
+my look, for I sat on the seat beside him, and in a
+few minutes we were skirting a narrow lough, hemmed
+in, on the north, by a range of precipitous mountains,
+with gullied sides patched with grey granite and dark
+heather, as bare and desolate as a mountain could be.</p>
+
+<p>There is an inn by the lake shore, and the bus
+stopped in front of it. The driver showed us with a
+gesture the little island containing the shrine of St.
+Fin Barre, and then hastened away into the inn. We
+four started for the island, and presently we heard
+heavy steps behind us, and an animated scarecrow
+armed with a big stick came running up and shouted
+something in an incomprehensible tongue, and waved
+the stick above his head, and proceeded to lead the way.
+He was evidently the guide, so we followed him along
+the border of the lake, and across the narrow strip of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+land which now connects the island with the shore, and
+all the time our guide was talking in the most earnest
+way, but not a word could any of us understand. It
+sounded remotely like English, and he evidently understood
+English, for when we asked him to repeat some
+particularly emphatic bit, he would do so with added
+emphasis, but quite in vain. I shall never forget how
+earnestly he would look in our faces, raising his voice
+as though we were deaf, and pointing with his stick,
+and gesturing with his other hand, in the effort to make
+us understand.</p>
+
+<p>We persuaded him to go and sit down, after awhile,
+and then we had a chance really to look about us.
+There is something indescribably savage and threatening
+about that dark sheet of water, shadowed by
+gloomy cliffs, bare of vegetation, and torn into deep
+gullies by the cataracts which leap down them.
+Through the hills to the east, the water from the lake
+has carved itself a narrow outlet, and the stream which
+rushes away through this gorge is the beginning of the
+River Lee. No place so grand and desolate would be
+without its legend, and this is Gougane Barra's:</p>
+
+<p>When the blessed Saint Patrick gathered together
+all the snakes in Ireland and drove them over the
+mountains and into the western sea, there was one
+hideous monster which he overlooked, so well had it
+concealed itself in this mountain-circled tarn. It was
+a winged dragon, and it kept very quiet until the Saint
+was dead, for fear of what might happen; but, once
+Patrick was gathered to his fathers, the dragon fancied
+it might do as it pleased. So it issued forth, all the
+more savage for its years of retirement, and started to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+lay waste the country. The frightened people appealed
+to their saints to help them, and among those
+who put up prayers was a holy man named Fineen
+Barre, who had a hermitage on an island in the lake,
+and so knew the dragon well. And the saints in heaven
+looked down and saw the distress of the poor people
+and pitied them, and they told Fineen Barre that they
+would give him power to slay the dragon on one condition,
+and that condition was that he should build a
+church on the spot where the waters of the lake met
+the tide of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Fineen accepted the condition gladly, and went out
+and met the monster and slew it and threw its body
+into the lake, and its black blood darkens the water to
+this day. And when that was done, he set off down the
+river, and at the spot where its waters met the tide, he
+built his church, and the city of Cork grew up about
+it. And then in place of the church, he built a great
+cathedral, and when he died his body was placed in a
+silver coffin and buried before its high altar. Then
+the city was plundered by the Danes, who dug up the
+coffin and carried it away, and what became of the
+Saint's bones no one knows.</p>
+
+<p>But the little island where he first lived has been a
+holy place from that day to this, and on the anniversary
+of his death, which comes in September, crowds
+of pilgrims journey here to say their prayers before
+the thirteen stations set apart by tradition, and to bless
+themselves with water from the Saint's well.</p>
+
+<p>The well is just at the entrance to the island, and its
+water is supposed to possess miraculous power. Our
+voluble but ununderstandable guide invited us by urgent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+gestures to test its efficacy, but the water looked
+scummy and dirty, and we declined. A few steps
+farther on is a small, stone-roofed chapel, built in the
+likeness of Cormac's chapel on the Rock of Cashel, and
+in it services are held during the days of pilgrimage to
+the shrine. There are also some remains of an old
+chapel, supposed to have been Saint Fin Barre's own;
+but by far the most interesting thing on the island is
+the stone enclosure within which the pilgrims say their
+prayers.</p>
+
+<p>The enclosure, which is surrounded by a heavy wall
+of stones laid loosely on each other, after the ancient
+Irish fashion, is about thirty feet square, and its level
+is some feet below that of the ground outside, so that
+one goes down into it by a short flight of steps. In
+the centre of the enclosure a plain wooden cross stands
+on a platform of five steps. On the flagstone at its
+foot is an inscription telling in detail how the "rounds"
+are to be performed on the vigil and forenoon of St.
+Fin Barre's feast-day. In the enclosing wall, which
+is fourteen feet thick in places, under heavy arches,
+are eight cells, which may be used as places of retreat
+by those undergoing penance. The Stations of the
+Cross are set in the upper portion of the wall, but are
+ugly modern plaster-casts. I took a picture of the
+place, which will be found opposite <a href="#Page_144">page 144</a>, and
+which gives a fairly good idea of it.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle of a scrubby grove, a little way from
+the enclosure, is a wishing-stone, which had evidently
+been much used, I hope to good purpose, for the stone
+itself was covered with trinkets and the bushes round
+about were hung thickly with rags and hairpins and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+rosaries and other tokens. I picked up somewhere,
+perhaps from the jargon of the guide, that this wishing-stone
+is the altar of Fin Barre's old chapel, but I
+haven't been able to verify this, and it may not be so;
+but the game is to put up a prayer to the Saint, and
+make your wish, and leave some token to show you
+are in earnest, and the wish will surely come true. Of
+course we made a wish and added some half-pennies to
+the collection on the altar. In turning over the
+trinkets already deposited there, we were amused to
+find two bright Lincoln cents.</p>
+
+<p>On the shore just opposite the island is a little cemetery
+held in great repute because of the holy men who
+are buried there. For the island has been the home of
+a succession of hermits from the time St. Fin Barre
+left it to build his church at Cork, and there are many
+legends of their saintly lives and wonderful deeds.
+When they died, they were buried in the cemetery,
+where there is also a cross to the memory of Jeremiah
+Callanan, a poet native to the neighbourhood, who celebrated
+the shrine in some pretty verses beginning:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+There is a green island in lone Gougane Barra,<br />
+Where Allua of songs rushes forth as an arrow;<br />
+In deep-valleyed Desmond&mdash;a thousand wild fountains<br />
+Come down to that lake, from their home in the mountains.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>But the wild honking of the horn told us it was time
+to go; our guide realised this, too, and was back at our
+heels more voluble and inarticulate than ever; not too
+inarticulate, however, to sell a knobby shillelagh to our
+companions and to accept with thanks the pennies I
+dropped into his hand. He tried to stay, hat in hand,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+until we departed, but the strain was too much for
+him, and after a moment he made off for the bar of the
+inn.</p>
+
+<p>Our chauffeur was evidently vexed that we had lingered
+so long at the shrine of the Saint, for he hurtled
+us down the rough by-road at a great rate, whirled into
+the smoother highway on two wheels, and then opened
+his throttle wide and pushed up his spark and let her
+rip. The road mounted steadily, with the view to
+the south opening more and more, and a rugged range
+of hills ahead coming closer and closer, until they lay
+flung right across the road, and then we swept around
+a sharp turn and entered the Pass of Keimaneigh.</p>
+
+<p>The guide-books assert that no pass in Europe exceeds
+it in grandeur, but this is a gross exaggeration&mdash;it
+is not nearly so fine, for instance, as the Pass of Llanberis;
+and yet it is wild and savage and very beautiful&mdash;a
+deep gorge cut right through the mountains by a
+glacier, which has left the marks of its passage on the
+rocks on either side. There is just room between the
+craggy precipices for a narrow road and the rugged
+channel of the rushing stream which drains the mountains.
+The pass is most picturesque near its eastern
+end, for there the cliffs are steepest, and the overhanging
+crags assume their most fantastic shapes. In
+every nook and cranny of the rocks ferns and heather
+and wild-flowers have found a foothold, the feathery
+plumes of London-pride being especially noticeable.
+Here in Ireland it is called St. Patrick's Cabbage, and
+no doubt there is a legend connecting the Saint with it,
+but I have never happened to run across it.</p>
+
+<p>As we plunged deeper into the pass, the walls on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+either side closed in more and more, great boulders dislodged
+from the heights above crowded the road so
+closely that more than once it was forced to turn aside
+to avoid them; the greenery of fern and colour of
+flower gave place to the sober hue of the heather and
+the dark green of the bog-myrtle; and then we were
+suddenly conscious that the stream by the roadside,
+which had been flowing back toward Cork, was flowing
+forward toward Bantry Bay, and we knew that we
+had reached the summit of the watershed dividing east
+from west. And then the hills fell back, and there,
+far below us, stretched a great rugged valley, with a
+tiny river wandering through, and white threads of
+roads curving here and there, and Lilliputian houses
+scattered among the fields.</p>
+
+<p>The car paused for an instant on the edge of this
+abyss and then plunged into it. At least, that was the
+sensation it gave its passengers. I do not know that I
+have ever travelled a steeper road, or one which wound
+more threateningly near the unguarded edges of precipices&mdash;certainly
+not in a heavy motor-bus hurtling
+along at thirty miles an hour. Perhaps the brakes
+were not holding, or perhaps the driver had had a
+drink too much; at any rate, we bounced from rock to
+rock and spun around sharp turns, only a foot or two
+from the edge of the road, which there was absolutely
+nothing to guard and which dropped sheer for hundreds
+of feet. But at last the more hair-raising of these
+turns were left behind, the road straightened out along
+the side of the hill, and then, far ahead, we saw opening
+out below us the blue waters and craggy shores of
+Bantry Bay.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Down and down we dropped, with new vistas opening
+every minute, until we were running close beside
+the border of the bay, and for ten miles we followed
+its convolutions. Then we swung away between high
+hedges, and Betty nearly fell out of the bus&mdash;for the
+hedges were of fuchsias, ten feet high and heavy with
+scarlet flowers!</p>
+
+<p>That was the crowning delight of that wonderful
+drive. We ran between high rows of fuchsias for perhaps
+half a mile; then we turned through a gate into
+beautiful grounds; and a moment later we were climbing
+out in front of the hotel at Glengarriff&mdash;half an
+hour ahead of schedule time!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">You</span> may well believe that, with such variegated loveliness
+all about us, we did not linger in the hotel a moment
+longer than was necessary, but made a hasty tea
+and sallied forth to explore the neighbourhood. First
+of all, Betty must pick some fuchsias, so we went back
+to the road, and climbed over a wall into a field surrounded
+by high hedges of the gorgeous flower. It was
+a new experience for Betty to reach up overhead and
+break off great branches which were simply masses of
+scarlet bells, until she had her arms full, and I suspect
+she went a little wobbly over it; but she was to
+have the same experience many times thereafter, for the
+fuchsia grows in great profusion throughout southern
+and western Ireland.</div>
+
+<p>I saw but one variety, however, the flower of which
+has a dark blue trumpet and scarlet bell, but this is
+perhaps the most showy of all, and nothing could be
+more gorgeous than a hedge in full bloom. In the
+woods, or in gardens where they are left untrimmed,
+the bushes will grow into veritable trees, twenty-five
+or thirty feet high.</p>
+
+<p>We went back to the hotel, when Betty had gathered
+all she could carry, and she sent the flowers up to our
+room by a maid who laughed sympathetically&mdash;I fancy
+she had seen such attacks of madness more than once
+before&mdash;and then we started along a winding path<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+which led through the woods down to the shore of the
+bay. And we soon found that fuchsias were not the
+only things which grow to giant proportions here, for
+the path was hedged with ferns four or five feet high&mdash;great,
+lordly fellows, standing stiffly upright as though
+on parade. Ferns were everywhere, even on the trees
+overhead, for the trees are padded with moss, and in
+this the ferns have found a foothold. And there were
+holly trees still scarlet with last year's berries, and hawthorn
+fragrant with bloom; and over everything the
+English ivy ran riot&mdash;rather in the same fashion, I
+thought as I looked at it, in which England herself
+has run riot over Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>We got down to the shore of the bay, at last, and I
+quite agree with Thackeray that it is a world's wonder,
+with its rock-strewn shore and emerald islands and
+pellucid water, framed in, all about, by rugged mountains.
+We wandered along its edge, gay with sea-pinks,
+for an hour or more, and then spent another
+hour loitering in the woods, and finally walked on, between
+the flaming hedges and fern-draped trees, to the
+little village, which we could smell, long before we
+came to it, by the tang of peat-smoke in the air. It is
+a mere huddle of low, thatched houses, and I judge
+that, even amid these gorgeous surroundings, life can
+be as hard and sordid as anywhere in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>A little distance from the village was a pretty, two-storied
+villa, covered with roses and climbing vines,
+and with a large garden beside it, blazing with a great
+variety of gorgeous bloom. We stopped to look at it
+over the gate, and the gardener espied us and came
+hurrying forward to ask us in to see the flowers. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+one of the plants he showed us most proudly was a
+single, sickly-looking stalk of Indian corn, about a
+foot high, growing in a pot. When we told him that,
+in the state we came from, Indian corn filled thousands
+and thousands of acres every summer, and grew from
+eight to ten feet high, he looked as though he scarcely
+believed us. But that little stalk of corn brought
+home to me, as perhaps nothing else could have done,
+the fact that my own particular corner of the earth is
+divinely favoured, too, in ways unknown even to Glengarriff.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>I had a most improving conversation, that night, in
+the smoking-room of the hotel, with a Catholic priest
+and a salesman for the British Petroleum Company.
+The priest, who must have been at least sixty-five,
+had the typical long, thin Irish face, and was intensely
+Nationalist. The salesman was younger and rather
+rubicund, and I judge that he was an Englishman and
+a Unionist. It was the priest who did most of the
+talking about Home Rule, after I got him started, and
+he protested earnestly that Ulster's fears of unfair
+treatment were utterly unfounded. The Catholics, he
+said, didn't want supremacy; all they wanted was
+equality, but they <i>did</i> want that, and felt they were
+entitled to it. England, he admitted, had made great
+strides within the past ten years toward atoning for
+her old injustice to Ireland, and was evidently trying
+hard to do what was right.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," broke in the salesman; "she's going altogether
+too far. What with old age pensions and the
+purchase act and poor relief and railway building and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+putting up labourers' houses and what not, she's spending
+twice as much on this country as she gets out of it.
+It won't do; it has got to stop."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe England spends more on Ireland
+than she gets out of us," said the priest quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is in black and white," and the other triumphantly
+slapped the paper he had been reading. "Imperial
+expenditures for Ireland, 1912-13, &pound;12,381,500;
+received from Ireland, &pound;10,850,000; deficit, &pound;1,531,500&mdash;that
+would be about seven and a half million dollars,"
+he added, for my benefit. "Over a million and
+a half pounds sterling that England has made Ireland
+a present of in the past year! What do you think of
+that?" and he turned back to the priest.</p>
+
+<p>"The figures may be true," said the latter, slowly,
+"and then again they may not. I have been told that
+England burdens Ireland with many expenditures
+which don't belong to us. But in any event, I agree
+with you that charity does us no good&mdash;it does us
+harm. We don't want charity."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m-m!" grunted the salesman sceptically.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll admit," went on the other, "that there are and
+always have been many Irishmen only too eager to
+take alms&mdash;more shame to them. There have always
+been many ready to sell themselves for a good position
+under government, and to sell their country too, if
+need be. We have our share of patriots, but we have
+more than our share of traitors, I sometimes think.
+But it isn't by them the country should be judged.
+What true Irishmen want is the right to stand alone
+like men and fight their own battles, and in fighting
+them, the north and south will forget their foolish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+quarrel and become friends again as they should be.
+They aren't half as far apart, even now, as some would
+have you believe. Most of this talk about Ulster is
+the black work of men who make their living out of
+it, who care nothing for Ireland, and take advantage of
+every little by-election to stir the fire and keep the pot
+bubbling."</p>
+
+<p>I remarked that this ceaseless agitation over elections
+was unknown in America, where all the elections
+were held on one day, after which there were no more
+elections for a year.</p>
+
+<p>The priest stared at me in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I understand you to say," he asked, "that the
+elections all over your country are held on the same
+day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I said; "on a day early in November, fixed
+by law."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how you manage it."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't hard to manage&mdash;it's really very simple."</p>
+
+<p>"But where do you get enough police?"</p>
+
+<p>"Enough police?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Here in Ireland, when we have an election,
+we have to send in the police from all the country
+round to keep the peace. If we tried to have all our
+elections on one day, there would be riots everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"What about?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;the people wouldn't know themselves,
+most likely; but there's many of them would
+welcome the chance for a shindy, if the police wasn't
+there. Isn't it the same in America?"</p>
+
+<p>I told him I had been an election officer many times,
+but had never seen any serious disorder at the polls.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Aren't there many riots next day?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," I said, "the day after election is the quietest
+day in the year. Everybody goes to work as
+though nothing had happened."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think there is much danger of riots," put
+in the salesman, "but we couldn't have your system
+over here because with us a man has a right to vote
+wherever he owns property and pays taxes, and if all
+the elections were held on one day, he couldn't get
+around."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes," nodded the priest; "I did not think of
+that. How do you manage it in America?"</p>
+
+<p>"With us," I explained, "every man has one vote
+and no more."</p>
+
+<p>Again his eyes goggled.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you be telling me," he gasped, "that your
+millionaires, your men of vast properties, have no more
+votes than the poor man?"</p>
+
+<p>And when I told him that was so, I think he was by
+way of pitying our millionaires, as men deprived of
+their just rights&mdash;as, perhaps, in some respects, they
+are.</p>
+
+<p>And then the salesman told me that he had been
+to America, as far west as Kansas, where he had visited
+some friends. He had gone over, he said, with that
+sort of good-natured contempt for everything American
+so common in England, but he had come away convinced
+that there was no country on earth to match it.</p>
+
+<p>"The only thing I saw to criticise in America were
+the roads," he added. "Why don't you take a leaf
+from Lloyd George's book? He has put a tax of
+three-pence a gallon on gasoline used by pleasure cars,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+and this tax goes into a fund for the upkeep of the
+highways, proportioned according to the number of
+cars in each county. Gasoline used in commercial
+cars pays a tax of three-ha'-pence a gallon. A great
+sum is collected in this way, and the upkeep of the highways
+is thrown upon the people who do them the most
+damage. If you'd do the same in America, your roads
+would soon be as good as ours; and nobody could complain
+that the tax was unjust."</p>
+
+<p>I agreed that it was a clever idea, and I hereby call
+it to the attention of our lawmakers.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the priest, who had been listening attentively
+to all this, "I am glad to know the truth
+about this tax. I had heard of it, and had thought it
+another English exaction laid upon Ireland. Now I
+see that I was wrong; for, as you say, it is a just tax."</p>
+
+<p>And then he told us some stories of the old days,
+of famine and persecution and eviction, of the hard
+fight for life on the rocky hillsides, while the fertile
+valleys were given over to grazing or ringed with high
+walls and turned into game preserves. There were
+lighter stories, too, of the humorous side of Irish character,
+and one of them, though I suspect it is an old
+one, I will set down here.</p>
+
+<p>The southwest coast of Ireland, of which Bantry
+Bay forms a part, is one of the most dangerous in the
+world, because of the rugged capes which stretch far
+out into the ocean and the small islands and hidden
+reefs which lie beyond. It is just the sort of coast
+where fish abound, and so little villages are scattered
+all along it, whose men-folks fish whenever the weather
+lets them, and at other times labour in the tiny potato<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+patches up on the rocky hillsides. Naturally they are
+familiar with all the twists and turnings of the coast,
+and are always on the lookout to add to their scanty
+incomes by a job of piloting.</p>
+
+<p>One day the crew of a fishing-boat perceived a big
+freighter nosing about in a light fog, rather closer inshore
+than she should have been, and at once lay alongside
+and put a man aboard.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you be wantin' a pilot, sir?" he asked the
+captain, who was anxiously pacing the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>The captain stared a moment at the dirty and tattered
+visitor.</p>
+
+<p>"Who the devil are you?" he demanded, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Me name's McCarthy, sir. I'm a pilot, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"A pilot!" and the captain looked at McCarthy
+again. "I don't believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis the truth I'm tellin' you, sir," protested McCarthy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the captain, "if it's the truth, you can
+easily prove it. Let me hear you box the compass."</p>
+
+<p>McCarthy was nonplussed. More than once, sitting
+over a pot of ale in some public house, he had heard
+old sailors proudly rattle off the points of the compass,
+but, though he remembered how the rigmarole
+sounded, he had no idea how to do it, nor even any
+very clear idea of what it meant.</p>
+
+<p>"Faith, I can't do it, sir," he admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't do it?" roared the captain. "Can't box the
+compass! And yet you call yourself a pilot."</p>
+
+<p>McCarthy did some rapid thinking, for he saw a good
+job, which he could ill afford to lose, slipping through
+his fingers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's like this, sir," he said, finally, "in our small
+place, it's the Irish we would be using, niver a word of
+English, and all the English any of us knows is just
+the little we might pick up from bein' after the ships.
+I can't box the compass in English, but I can box it in
+the Irish, sir, if that will do."</p>
+
+<p>The captain looked into the speaker's guileless eyes
+and also did some rapid thinking. He knew no Gaelic,
+but he needed a pilot badly, and he reflected that, in
+any language, it ought to be possible to tell whether
+the compass was being boxed correctly, because the
+words would have to follow each other with a certain
+similarity of sound, as north, north-and-by-east, north-north-east,
+north-east-by-north, and so on.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he growled, "go ahead and let's hear
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"My father," McCarthy began solemnly in his
+homely Gaelic; "my grandfather, my grandfather's
+grandmother, my grandmother's grandfather, my great
+grandfather, my great grandfather's grandmother, my
+great grandmother's great.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on," shouted the captain, quite convinced.
+"I see you know how. Take charge of the ship!"</p>
+
+<p>And McCarthy thereupon proved he knew how by
+getting the vessel safely past Cape Clear!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was pouring rain, next morning, a steady, driving
+rain, which looked as though it might last forever,
+and we were confronted by the problem which so often
+confronts the traveller in Ireland, whether to go or
+stay. To go meant the possibility of having the most
+beautiful drive in Ireland obscured in mist; to stay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+meant a dreary day at the hotel, with no assurance
+that the next day would be any better, or the next, or
+the next. At last we decided to go.</p>
+
+<p>Never after that was the problem so difficult, for we
+soon realised the folly of permitting Irish rain to interfere
+with any plan. In the first place, the rain is
+not an unmixed evil, for it is soft and fresh and vivifying,
+and it adds mystery and picturesqueness to the
+most commonplace landscape; and in the second place,
+it is very fickle, begins unaccountably, stops unexpectedly,
+and rarely lasts the day through. In fact, the
+crest of any ridge may take one into it, or out of it, as
+we were to find that day.</p>
+
+<p>So when, about ten o'clock, the bus came puffing up
+to the door, we climbed aboard. The road, for a little
+way, wound up the valley of the Glengarriff River, and
+then, striking off into the mountains, climbed upward
+at a gradient that tested the power of the engine. Almost
+at once we were in the mountain mist, soft and
+grey, eddying all about us, whirling aside for an instant
+now and then to give us tantalising glimpses
+down into the valleys, and then closing in again. Up
+and up we went, a thousand feet and more, and at last
+we came to the crest of the mountain range which
+divides County Cork from County Kerry. The road
+plunges under the crest through a long tunnel, and
+then winds steeply down into the valley of the Sheen.</p>
+
+<p>Again there was a series of sharp and unprotected
+turns, just as on the day before, and this time with the
+added complication of a slippery, sloppy road; but I
+have never ridden with a more careful or more accomplished
+driver than we had that day, and he nursed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+the heavy bus along so quietly and with such easy
+mastery that no one thought of danger. Gradually
+the mist lightened and cleared away, until we could see
+the wide valley far below, with the tiny winding river
+at the bottom, and the walled fields and midget houses.
+There was a succession of such valleys all the way to
+Kenmare, and we finally rolled up before the big hotel
+there just in time for lunch.</p>
+
+<p>We walked down into the village, afterwards, and
+found it more bustling and prosperous than any of the
+other small villages we had seen. This is due partly
+perhaps to the tourist traffic, for Kenmare is a famous
+bathing and fishing resort; but homespun tweeds are
+manufactured there in considerable quantities, and at
+the convent scores of girls are employed at lace-making,
+Celtic embroidery, wood-carving and leather-work.
+The school is said to be one of the best managed in
+Ireland, and I was sorry that we did not have time
+to visit it. We saw, however, some of the Kerry girls in
+the street, and they were fully handsome enough to
+give colour to the doggerel:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+'Tis sure that the lads will be goin' to Cork<br />
+When their money is gone and they're wantin' to work;<br />
+But 'tis just as sure that they'll turn back to Kerry<br />
+For a purty colleen when they're wantin' to marry.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Kerry is a poor country and always will be, for it
+consists mostly of stony hills, and though it is renowned
+for its scenery, no one except the hotel keepers can live
+on that. Such little hill farms as have been wrested
+from the rocks produce but scantily; so when there is a
+"long family," as the Irish put it&mdash;and "long families"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+are the rule&mdash;one son will stay at home to look
+after the old people, and the others will fare forth into
+the world to search for a living. I hope it is true that
+they come back when they're searching for wives.
+Otherwise the lot of the Kerry girls, hard enough
+under any circumstances, would be harder still. Nowhere
+in Ireland are there brighter eyes or redder
+cheeks.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 321px;">
+<a href="images/gs013-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs013.jpg" width="321" height="500" alt="THE BAY AT GLENGARRIFF" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE BAY AT GLENGARRIFF<br /><br />THE UPPER LAKE, KILLARNEY, FROM THE KENMARE ROAD</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The rain was quite over by the time we were ready
+to start again, and the mist had disappeared under the
+rays of the sun, so that we had the benefit of the full
+beauty of the Kenmare River, which is really a wide
+bay, as we ran close along its western bank. Then the
+road doubled back from it, and presently the driver
+stopped at a spot where a narrow footpath struck
+down into the woods, and advised us to take it, saying
+that he would wait for us at its other end. In a moment
+we found ourselves clambering down the side of
+a wildly-beautiful ravine, with the roar of rushing
+water rising from below, and trees festooned with ferns
+and ivy meeting above our heads. And then, high
+above us, we saw the arch of a stone bridge; and quite
+suddenly we came out upon the stream, the Blackwater,
+foaming over the rocks. It was at its very best,
+from the heavy rain of the morning, and we stood there
+watching it, fascinated by its beauty, as long as we
+dared.</p>
+
+<p>We went on again close beside the shore of the bay,
+and in half an hour came to Parknasilla, where there
+is another big hotel, set in the midst of beautiful
+grounds, and with superb views opening on every side.
+The climate here is sub-tropical, and the vegetation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+mounts to a climax of riotous profusion, with palms
+and calla lilies growing in the open. The bay, too, is
+very fine, with bluff, rock-strewn shores, and innumerable
+green islets speckling its sparkling waters, and
+rugged mountains closing in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>Then again we were off, mounting steadily, steadily,
+winding under beetling crags and above grey precipices;
+up and up, with the world sinking away into the valley
+at our left, and the heathery, rock-strewn heights soaring
+upward at our right; and finally, at our feet,
+opened the wonderful panorama of the Brown Valley&mdash;brown
+bog, brown rock, brown heather, mounting to
+the distant slopes of Macgillicuddy's Reeks. We
+dropped down toward it, mile after mile; then up and
+up again, to the crest of the ridge beyond&mdash;and there,
+far below us, lay the lakes of Killarney, rimmed with
+green hills and dotted with green islands&mdash;the most
+sweetly beautiful in all the world.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The loveliest general view of the lakes of Killarney
+to be had from anywhere is as one drops down toward
+them along the Kenmare road. Their individual
+beauties may, of course, be seen to better advantage
+closer at hand; but from this height, the whole wonderful
+panorama stretches before one. Right across the
+valley opens the Gap of Dunloe, with the rugged Reeks
+on one side and the green clad Purple Mountain on the
+other; below is the narrow, island-dotted, hill-encircled
+upper lake; farther away is Muckross Lake, and far in
+the distance stretch the blue waters of Lough Leane,
+the largest of them all. My advice is to take a long
+look at it, for you will never see anything more lovely.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The road soon dropped among the trees, and our
+driver pointed out with evident pride the Queen's cottage
+on the shore of the upper lake, built a good many
+years ago in order that Victoria, on her tour of the
+lakes, might have a fitting place in which to lunch,
+and which has never been occupied since. Then the
+road ran close beside the border of the middle lake,
+plunged again into the woods for a mile or two; and
+at last the bus stopped before the inn where we intended
+to stay, and we climbed down regretfully.</p>
+
+<p>The inn was a long, two-storied building, standing
+a little back from the road, and the porter who came
+running out to take our bags might have stepped
+straight out of Pickwick, he was so fat, so jolly, and
+so rubicund. I had some films I wanted developed at
+once, because I was afraid the damp weather would
+affect them, and I asked him where I could get it done.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a man just this side of the village can do it,
+sir," he said. "You will see his sign as you go along
+the road."</p>
+
+<p>"How far is it?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The village is two mile, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it's less than two miles?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is, sir."</p>
+
+<p>I turned to Betty.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got plenty of time before dinner," I said.
+"Suppose we walk in and see the town."</p>
+
+<p>And Betty, wotting little of what was before her,
+consented.</p>
+
+<p>I put my films in my pocket, and we set off eagerly
+along the pleasant road, past a little village, past a
+church with a graveyard back of it and a Celtic cross<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+high on the hillside above it, past a hotel or two, around
+one turn after another, with green-clad hills mounting
+steeply to our right and the blue lake lying low on our
+left. We met an occasional cyclist, or a donkey-cart
+being driven home from market, or a labourer trudging
+stolidly home from work, or two or three girls strolling
+along with arms interlaced, exchanging confidences.
+And the air was very sweet and the evening very cool
+and pleasant, and the sky full of glorious colour&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We must certainly have come two miles," said
+Betty. "What do you suppose is the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," I said, looking at my watch and
+noting that we had been half an hour on the road.
+"Perhaps we'll see the town around the next turn."</p>
+
+<p>But we didn't. All we saw was about half a mile
+of empty road. We covered this and came to another
+turn, and there before us lay another long stretch of
+road. Determined not to give up, we pushed on, and
+came to a bridge over a rippling little stream, which
+we learned afterward was the Flesk, and we stopped
+and looked at it awhile and rested.</p>
+
+<p>"We must be nearly there," I said encouragingly.</p>
+
+<p>"What's bothering me," explained Betty, "isn't the
+distance we have to go to get there; it's the distance
+we have to go to get back."</p>
+
+<p>There was another bend in the road just beyond the
+bridge, and we turned this, confident that the village
+would be there. But it wasn't. We saw nothing but
+the smooth highway, stretching away and away into
+the dim distance. I looked at my watch again.</p>
+
+<p>"We've been walking nearly an hour," I said. "It
+looks as though we might miss dinner, after all."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And just then there came the trot of a horse and
+the jingle of harness along the road behind us, and a
+side-car drew up with a flourish.</p>
+
+<p>"Would your honour be wantin' a car?" asked the
+jarvey, leaning toward us ingratiatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"We were told there was a photographer's just this
+side of the village. Do you know where it is?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do, your honour."</p>
+
+<p>"How far is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis just over there beyont. If you will step up
+on the car, I'll have ye there in a minute. I'm goin'
+right past it."</p>
+
+<p>Of course we got up. And, as the jarvey had said,
+the photographer's shop was just around the next bend.
+But before I got down, I made a bargain with him to
+drive us back to our hotel, and, after I had left my
+films, we set merrily off through the gathering dusk.</p>
+
+<p>"There's one thing I don't understand," I said, at
+last. "The porter at the hotel said it was only two
+miles to the village. Yet we walked for an hour
+without getting there."</p>
+
+<p>"He meant Irish miles, your honour," explained the
+jarvey, laughing. "There is an old saying that 'an
+Irish mile is a mile and a bit, and the bit is as long as
+the mile.' You see, here in ould Ireland we always
+stretch everything."</p>
+
+<p>I have found since that the Irish mile is about a mile
+and a quarter; but this is no real measure of its elasticity.
+More than once thereafter we saw one mile
+stretch out to three; and we soon came to realise that
+the Irish mind is extremely vague and inexact when it
+comes to distances and directions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We got back to the hotel to have our first view of
+what proved to be a nightly ceremony. On a stand
+in the entrance hall was a huge platter, and on the
+platter lay a huge salmon, and a card leaning against
+it announced that it weighed fourteen pounds and had
+been caught that day by Captain Gregory, and there
+were flowers all about it, so it's a proud fish it should
+have been. There were five or six other salmon on a
+lower table, each with a card giving its weight&mdash;anywhere
+from five pounds to eleven&mdash;and the whole collection
+represented the day's catch of the guests of the
+hotel.</p>
+
+<p>For the hotel, being handy to the lakes, and clean
+and comfortable and homelike, is a favourite resort of
+the fishermen who come to Killarney during the salmon
+season. Every evening while we were there, as the
+fishermen came in, tired and wet, with their boatmen
+tramping behind them carrying the fish&mdash;if there were
+any&mdash;they were met at the door by the rotund porter,
+his face beaming like a full moon&mdash;a red harvest moon!&mdash;and
+the fish would be solemnly weighed, and the biggest
+would be decorated with flowers and awarded the
+place of honour, and the others would be grouped
+around it, and after dinner, the fishermen would stand
+and look at them, their hands deep in their pockets;
+and later on there would be a great bustle as the fish
+were wrapped in straw and tied up, ready to be sent
+by parcel-post to admiring friends back home!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was a cosmopolitan crowd which gathered that
+evening after dinner about the big fireplace in the smoking-room,
+where a most welcome and comforting wood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+fire blazed and crackled. The weather had turned
+very cold, and Betty and I were dressed as warmly as
+we had been at any time during the winter, though it
+was the fifth of June, and the papers were running long
+columns about the fearful heat wave which had
+America in its grip. There was a sturdy, red-faced
+old Scotchman in carpet slippers, and a sallow, heavy-lidded
+ancient whom the others addressed as "colonel,"
+and just such a close-clipped, stiff-backed sporting
+squire as is Canon Hannay's Major Kent, of near
+Ballymoy; and there were two or three other Englishmen
+with no outstanding characteristic except their insularity;
+and the talk was of flies and rods and casts,
+and everybody was indignant at the suffragette who
+had rushed out on the track and tried to stop the Derby;
+and there was a steady emptying of tall glasses and a
+steadily-deepening cloud of tobacco smoke, and everybody
+was very comfortable and cosy. And presently
+the old Scotchman took pity on me as a mere American
+who knew nothing about the high mysteries of sport.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be a great pleasure for you to sit before
+an open fire like this," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"It is," I agreed. "There's nothing more pleasant
+than a wood fire."</p>
+
+<p>"Ye may well say so. But of course in America
+you have nothing like it."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing like it?" I repeated, looking at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why no," he said. "You never see an open fire
+in America. All you have is steam pipes running all
+around the room."</p>
+
+<p>I looked at him again to see if he was in earnest; and
+then I tried gently to disabuse his mind of that idea.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+But it was no use. Indeed, he got rather huffy when
+I said I had never seen a room with steam pipes running
+all around it.</p>
+
+<p>The savage insularity of the average Englishman is
+matter for never-ending amusement, once one has
+grown accustomed to his contempt. He believes that
+all American men are money-grubbers, and all American
+women social climbers, who chew gum and talk
+loudly, while their daughters are forward minxes who
+call their fathers "popper," and that men, women, and
+children are alike wholly lacking in culture and good-taste.
+The peculiar thing about it is that he never
+for an instant doubts his own good taste in telling one
+all this frankly to one's face.</p>
+
+<p>This is no fancy sketch. My own opinion is that
+the average Englishman has no genuine feeling of
+friendship for America, and his ignorance of things
+American is abysmal. One day, on the boat coming
+home, a well-educated Englishman whom I had got
+to know, asked me the name of a man with whom I
+had been talking.</p>
+
+<p>"That is Senator So-and-so," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"What is a senator?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>I remember that one day Betty and I and two other
+Americans happened to be driving through the Tyrol
+in a coach with two Englishmen, and they began to
+discuss American railway accidents&mdash;a favourite topic
+with Englishmen when Americans are present; and one
+of them remarked that it was no wonder there were so
+many accidents in America, since when Americans
+built a railroad all they did was to lay the ties along
+on top of the ground and spike the rails to them. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+asked him if he had ever been to America, and he said
+no, and I advised him to run over and pay us a visit
+some time. This huffed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" he said. "But what you Americans would
+give for a king!"</p>
+
+<p>"Give for a king?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; you would give anything for a king. Then
+you could have a court and an aristocracy, and some
+real society. You're sick of your limping, halting,
+make-believe government, and you know it!"</p>
+
+<p>We all four stared at him in astonishment, wondering
+if he had gone suddenly mad. Then Betty got
+her breath.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said; "you're really wrong about that.
+You see we settled the king question back in 1776."</p>
+
+<p>The rest was silence.</p>
+
+<p>But really Englishmen aren't to blame for their
+distorted ideas of America, for they get those ideas
+from the English newspapers, and the only kind of
+American news most English newspapers publish is
+freak news. During that week, for instance, almost
+the only American news in any of the papers was about
+the terrific heat-wave, about Harry Thaw's escape from
+Matteawan, and about some millionaire who had taken
+bichloride of mercury by mistake, and lived for ten days
+or so afterwards, occupying the time very cheerfully
+in closing up his affairs. After his death, one of the
+great London dailies published a column editorial about
+the affair, reasoning in the most solemn manner that
+his survival for so long a time could have been due
+only to the remarkable tonic properties of the American
+climate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With the Irish it is entirely different. In the first
+place, America is to them the haven to which a million
+Irishmen have fled from English persecution; and in
+the next place, their knowledge of the country comes
+not from newspapers but from letters written by relatives
+and friends. The letters are somewhat rosier, I
+fear, than the facts warrant, but they establish a kindly
+feeling which makes every Irishman ready to welcome
+the passing American as a friend and brother. The
+only trouble is that he is also apt to regard him as necessarily
+a millionaire.</p>
+
+<p>It is undoubtedly true that a large portion of the
+lower-class Irish consider it no disgrace to beg from
+an American. Not that they are habitual beggars,
+but when an American comes their way, they seem to
+consider it a waste of opportunity if they do not apply
+for a small donation. In tourist centres, such as Dublin
+and Killarney, they are very persistent, especially
+the children, and will follow along for minutes on end
+telling the tale of their poverty and distress in queer
+bated voices, as though they lacked the strength to
+speak aloud. But Betty accidentally discovered a
+cure for this nuisance, quite as effective as John Minogue's,
+and I take pleasure in passing it on.</p>
+
+<p>Like most other people who have lived together for
+a long time, we have developed a lot of symbols and
+pass-words, without meaning to any one but ourselves;
+and it has become a rather foolish habit of mine when
+we are together and I see something I especially admire,
+to express my admiration by uttering the single word
+"Hickenlooper." And Betty, if she agrees, says "Oppenheimer,"
+and we understand each other and pass<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+on. One day in Cork, a group of children were unusually
+annoying, and followed along and followed
+along, until Betty, losing patience, turned upon them
+sharply, pointed her finger at them, and said "Oppenheimer!"
+I shall never forget the startled look in
+their eyes, as they stopped dead in their tracks, stared
+at her for an instant, and then fled helter-skelter. We
+decided afterwards that they thought she was putting
+a curse on them. She tried it more than once thereafter,
+and it never failed to work; so, if you are annoyed
+beyond endurance by juvenile beggars in Ireland,
+turn upon them sharply, point your finger at
+them, and say "Oppenheimer!"</p>
+
+<p>And since I am giving advice, I will give one bit
+more before I close this chapter.</p>
+
+<p>Among the purchases which Betty had made in New
+York, just before we sailed, was a small electric torch.
+I had derided it as unnecessary, but she had insisted
+on bringing it along, and had put it in our travelling-bag
+when we were sorting over our luggage in Dublin.
+The first night at Thurles, in a dreary little room,
+with only the flickering candle for a light, I acknowledged
+her wisdom, for the bright glow of the torch
+was very welcome. Again at Glengarriff candles were
+the only illumination, and that night at Killarney, when
+I got to our room, I found her in animated conversation
+with the chambermaid by the light of a single tallow
+dip. They were talking about America, I think,
+and the maid's eyes were shining with excitement and
+her cheeks were flushed and the beautiful soft brogue
+was rolling off her tongue, when a sudden gust from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+the open window blew the candle out. Betty picked
+up the torch from the dresser and pressed the button.</p>
+
+<p>"Glory be to God! What's that?" cried the girl, as
+the glare flashed into her astonished eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only a torch," said Betty. "It won't hurt
+you." And then, when I had lighted the candle again,
+she showed the girl how it worked.</p>
+
+<p>"Glory be to God!" she cried again. "The wonder
+of it! You would niver be gettin' that in Ireland!"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I got it in New York."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, 'tis a wonderful place," said the girl, reverentially.
+"No place but America would be havin' such
+things as that!"</p>
+
+<p>Now this is no doubt a libel upon Ireland, for I
+suppose one can get electric torches there. At any
+rate, my advice is to get one somewhere&mdash;a good one&mdash;and
+take it along in your handbag. This advice is
+good for the continent as well as for Ireland, but it is
+especially good for the latter, and the reason is this:</p>
+
+<p>In the old days, when English prodigals wasted their
+substance on castellated palaces, the Irish squire, being
+a wiser man, spent his money on good wine and good
+horses&mdash;or, when he had no money, ran light-heartedly
+into debt for them. As to his family mansion, he contented
+himself with adding a wing from time to time,
+as it might be needed, either because of the increasing
+number of his children, or the widening circle of his
+friends. The result was a singular house, often only
+one story high, never more than two, flung wide over a
+great deal of ground, and of a most irregular plan.
+Such a house had many advantages, for, as another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+writer has pointed out, "at one end of it the ladies
+could sleep undisturbed, no matter how joyous the
+men were at the other; there were no stairs to fall
+down; and the long narrow corridors were pleasant to
+those who found it hard to direct their devious steps."</p>
+
+<p>But the time came when these hospitable Irishmen
+found themselves overwhelmed by debt, their houses
+were taken from them, and many of them, since they
+were too large for any private family, were converted
+into inns. The traveller in rural Ireland will encounter
+more than one of them, and will find those
+long, shadowy, zig-zag corridors eerie places after
+night, unless he has a torch to light his steps. The
+doors are not always fitted with locks, and if the
+window is kept open, an intruder has only to step over
+the sill. We never had any intruder; but had we had,
+I am sure one flash from the torch would have sent
+him flying.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE "GRAND TOUR"</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">There</span> are many excursions which can be made over
+and around the Killarney lakes, but the most important
+one&mdash;the "grand tour," so to speak&mdash;starts at the town,
+proceeds by car to Kate Kearney's cottage, then by
+pony through the Gap of Dunloe, then by boat the full
+length of the lakes to Ross Castle, and back to town
+again by car. This round takes a day to accomplish,
+and gives one a very fair idea of Killarney. It is
+about all most of the people who come to Killarney
+ever see of it. In fact, some of them don't see that
+much&mdash;as will presently appear.</div>
+
+<p>Now Killarney is to Ireland what the Trossachs are
+to Scotland and Niagara Falls to America&mdash;in other
+words, its most famous show-place; and so it has passed
+more or less under the control of that ubiquitous exploiter
+of show-places, Thomas Cook. Cook arranges
+all the excursions, Cook controls most of the vehicles,
+Cook's boats are the biggest and safest, and so, if you
+wish to see Killarney "in the least fatiguing manner,"
+you must resign yourself to Cook. Let me say here that
+I admire Cook; there is no place where a traveller is
+served more courteously, more fairly, or more intelligently
+than in a Cook office. No one need be ashamed
+to make intelligent use of Cook. The reason of his
+disrepute is that he has come to be used so largely by
+self-complacent people whose idea of seeing Europe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+is to gallop from place to place in charge of a conductor.
+But that isn't Cook's fault.</p>
+
+<p>Killarney is the one place in Ireland which every
+tourist wants to see, not because it is characteristically
+Irish, but because it has been very carefully exploited.
+In my own opinion, a trip to Holy Cross and Cashel,
+or to Mellifont and Monasterboice and the tombs of
+the kings, or to the congested districts of Connaught, is
+far better worth while. But the great bulk of tourist
+traffic follows the beaten path, and in Ireland the
+beaten path leads straight to Killarney.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>As we sat at breakfast next morning, we witnessed
+the ceremonial rites involved in getting the fishermen
+started off for the day's sport. The rotund porter
+acted as major-domo, and puffed and panted and hurried
+hither and yon, his brow creased with the anxieties
+of his high office.</p>
+
+<p>It is a point of honour with all true fishermen to
+wear only the most faded, rain-stained, disreputable
+of garments, and it was a weird-looking company which
+gathered in front of the hotel that morning, with their
+hats, decorated with many-coloured flies, flapping
+around their brick-red faces. There was one woman
+in the lot who was going out with her father&mdash;a short,
+square spinster, evidently hard as nails, with a face
+as red as the reddest, and boots as heavy as the heaviest.
+The wonder was that she didn't smoke a pipe
+like the others. They overhauled their tackle with
+great care&mdash;shook out the lines, tested rods and reels,
+examined the flies, and finally trudged away, the boatman
+following, laden with rain-proofs and lunch-basket<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+and gaff and landing-net, and with a broad grin on his
+face at the prospect of sharing his employer's tobacco
+and lunch, and of earning a few shillings in so pleasant
+a manner.</p>
+
+<p>When we had finished breakfast, we went out to have
+a look at the weather, and found the sun shining
+brightly, with every prospect of a pleasant day. The
+porter assured us that there was no chance of rain; but
+we had already had some experience of the fickleness of
+the Irish climate, so we went back and prepared for
+the worst, and clambered presently to the seat of the
+car Cook sent for us.</p>
+
+<p>On the way in to the village, we stopped at another
+hotel to pick up three American women who had been
+touring the continent and England, and who, by a long
+jump, had managed to squeeze in one day for Killarney
+before hastening on to Queenstown to catch their boat.
+They had arrived late the night before, and would
+leave for Cork as soon as the tour of the lakes had
+been completed, and they were jubilant because the
+day was so fine. They had feared it might rain, and
+that their long journey would be for nothing. The
+only protection against rain they had with them was
+two small umbrellas, and I could see that they were
+somewhat amused at our rain-coats and leggings.</p>
+
+<p>There was a long open coach, with seats for about
+twenty people, waiting in front of Cook's office in the
+village, and presently, as cars drove in from the
+various hotels, this was filled to overflowing, and at
+last we rumbled away. We were fortunate in having
+been assigned to the front seat with the driver, a handsome,
+good-humoured fellow, not averse to talking;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+and behind us we could hear the merry chatter of the
+happy and contented crowd. We passed the workhouse,
+which, as usual, is the biggest building in the
+place, and then the lunatic asylum, which is almost as
+big, and then we saw the ruins of Aghadoe high on
+the hillside&mdash;and then I felt a drop of rain on my cheek.
+There was another drop, and then another, and then a
+gentle patter, and then a rushing and remorseless downpour.</p>
+
+<p>We held the rubber lap-robe up under our chins and
+the water ran down it in streams. The happy chatter
+had turned to exclamations of consternation and dismay,
+and we did not need to look around to realise
+the havoc which the rain was working. The driver
+chirruped to his horses and endeavoured to divert
+his passengers with a few stanzas of a classic Irish
+drinking song, rendered in a resounding baritone:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Let the farmer praise his grounds,<br />
+Let the huntsman praise his hounds,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The shepherd his dew-scented lawn;</span><br />
+But I, more blest than they,<br />
+Spend each happy night and day<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With my charming little cruiskeen lawn, lawn, lawn,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With my charming little cruiskeen lawn.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"What does cruiskeen lawn mean?" asked a man's
+voice behind us.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it is just a term of endearment," said a woman's
+voice in answer. "Don't you remember the song about
+Willy Reilly and his dear cruiskeen lawn?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," said the man.</p>
+
+<p>I caught a twinkle in our driver's eye, but he said
+nothing. After all, Willy Reilly, being a true Irishman,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+no doubt loved his cruiskeen lawn, or little full
+jug, almost as well as his colleen bawn, or fair-haired
+lassie.</p>
+
+<p>So we rolled merrily on, and presently turned into
+a hilly lane, where a crowd of ragamuffins mounted on
+bony steeds awaited us. These were the pony-boys,
+and a wild-looking lot they were as they fell in about
+us and proceeded to act as a sort of cavalry escort. We
+took a bridge and a steep grade beyond at a gallop, and
+drew up in front of a white-washed, slate-roofed little
+house, which our driver announced was Kate Kearney's
+cottage, and his bedraggled passengers made a break
+for its welcome shelter. It was Lady Morgan who
+celebrated Kate's charms in the ingenuous verses beginning,</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Oh, did you not hear of Kate Kearney?<br />
+She lives on the banks of Killarney,<br />
+From the glance of her eye shun danger and fly,<br />
+For fatal's the glance of Kate Kearney,<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and she is supposed to have lived somewhere in this
+neighbourhood, though it is a long way from the "banks
+of Killarney." At any rate, this spick-and-span cottage,
+very unlike Kate's, has been given her name, and
+I dare say that any of the girls who tend bar inside
+would answer to it, just to keep up the local colour.</div>
+
+<p>The room into which the door opens has a bar at
+one end and an open fire at the other, and while the
+women of the party crowded about the fire, the men
+paused before the bar for a taste of potheen. There
+are many other opportunities to taste it before one gets
+through the gap, but if it is to be done at all, it would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+better be done here, for here one gets a clean glass to
+drink it out of. The whiskey is supposed to be surreptitious,
+but of course it has paid the tax like any other;
+an inch of it is poured into the bottom of the glass, and
+then the glass is filled with milk, and one drinks it and
+smacks one's lips and looks knowing. I drank a glass
+of it in the interests of this narrative, and I am free to
+say I have drunk many things I liked better.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of half an hour, everybody had managed
+to get fairly dry, and a prolonged discussion arose
+whether to go on through the gap or turn back to the
+town. The rain was still falling steadily, and there
+was no sign of break in the heavy clouds, though our
+conductor contended that they were clearing away to
+the westward. The motley crew of pony-boys, with
+their shaggy "coppaleens," were all most insistent that
+the shower would soon be over, and that it would be a
+great mistake to go back. Betty and I had already
+made up our minds: we were going to see the thing
+through whatever happened; but the rest of the crowd
+vacillated back and forth in cruel indecision, especially
+the three women who must see Killarney to-day or
+never. We advised them to risk it; but in the end,
+only one other member of the party, a little German
+Jew, decided to do so, and all the rest clambered back
+into the bus and were driven off toward the town. The
+Cook's conductor stayed with us to act as pilot.</p>
+
+<p>I wish you could have heard the chorus of commendation
+from those Irish throats as Betty mounted her
+pony. Sure she was the brave lady, she was the wise
+lady, the torrents and cataracts would be that fine; let
+the featherbed trash drive off back to the town, sure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+they were not worth a thought; the shower would soon
+pass by, and it would be a fine day, and anyway the
+Irish rain was a soft sweet rain that never did any
+harm, and the gap was the grandest sight in the whole
+world&mdash;so their tongues ran on.</p>
+
+<p>I gave my camera into the keeping of the pony-boy
+who was going along with us, and scrambled into the
+saddle. I have had mighty little equestrian experience
+since my hobby-horse days, and I cannot pretend that
+I enjoyed that ride, for the road was rough and up-and-down
+and the pony anything but a smooth stepper.
+If I had it to do again, I think I should walk. The
+distance is only about five miles, and a person not thoroughly
+at home in the saddle has far more leisure to
+survey the beauties of the gap when he is using his own
+legs than when he is bumping along on a "coppaleen."</p>
+
+<p>The accompaniments of the ride are more diverting
+than the ride itself. We had gone scarcely a dozen
+yards, when we found a photographer with his camera
+set up in the middle of the road, who took our pictures
+on the off chance that we'd buy one. Then from
+the shelter of a rock arose a battered human, with a
+still more battered cornet, which looked as though it
+had been used as a shillelagh in moments of absent-mindedness,
+and he offered to awake the echo for a
+penny. I produced the penny, but the blast he blew
+upon the horn was so faint and wavering that Echo
+slept on undisturbed. Then we came to an individual
+playing with great violence upon a wheezy accordion.
+The pony-boys said that he had been a great actor, but
+that rheumatism had overtaken him, so that he could
+strut the boards no longer, and he had finally been reduced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+to playing an accordion in the Gap of Dunloe,
+and they besought charity for him, as the most deserving
+case in the gap. And then we came to two men with
+a small cannon, which they offered to discharge for
+sixpence. And then began a long procession of barefooted
+old women, pretending to offer homeknit woollen
+socks and home-distilled potheen for sale, but really
+begging&mdash;begging most insistently, running along beside
+the ponies with their poor red feet slopping in the
+mud or slipping over the stones; voluble with their
+blessings if they got a small coin, and plainly thinking
+themselves insulted if they didn't.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, we had mounted into the gap along a
+rough and winding bridle-path, and a desolately-impressive
+place we found it. A little river, the Loe,
+runs at the bottom, and close on either side high, frowning,
+rock-strewn precipices tower steeply upwards.
+There is no sign of vegetation&mdash;except a patch of
+heather maintaining a perilous foothold here and there
+on the bare and desolate hills,&mdash;the Tomies on one
+side and McGillicuddy's Reeks on the other. And
+then, at what seemed the most desolate spot, we came
+to a substantial, two-storied house, a station of the
+Royal Irish Constabulary. What the police could find
+to do in such a desert was difficult to imagine; but we
+stopped a few minutes to talk with them, and they evidently
+welcomed the diversion.</p>
+
+<p>Legend has it that the Gap of Dunloe was cleft by
+Finn MacCool with a single blow of his great sword,
+and that it was here, in the Black Lough into which
+the River Loe presently widens, that St. Patrick imprisoned
+the last snake in Ireland, by persuading it to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+enter a box on the promise that he would release it
+to-morrow. When the morrow came, the too-trusting
+serpent reminded the Saint of his promise, and asked
+him to open the lid, but Patrick replied that it was not
+yet to-morrow, but only to-day, and so the snake is
+still there in the box on the bottom of the lake, waiting
+for to-morrow to come. It makes such a fearful
+bubbling sometimes that it scares all the fish away,
+so that, while there are fish in plenty in the other
+lakes, there is none in this. There is a bridge at one
+end of the lake, and if one makes a wish as one crosses
+it, the wish will come true.</p>
+
+<p>The road mounts steadily, curving from side to side
+of the valley, and one should stop from time to time
+and look back, or the full beauty of the place will be
+lost. We found the wind rushing along the heights,
+as we worked our way upward, and the rain fairly
+poured at times, so that the cataracts performed splendidly.
+At least I can vouch for two of them&mdash;one
+down Betty's nose and the other down mine! But
+presently, the clouds blew away, and the rain stopped
+just before we came out on the heights above the Black
+Valley.</p>
+
+<p>This is undoubtedly the most beautiful point of the
+ride. To the right a savage glen runs back into the
+very heart of the Reeks, ending in a pocket shut in by
+sheer and rugged precipices. Far below lies the valley,
+with a silver ribbon of a river winding through it,
+and to the left shine the blue waters of the upper
+lake.</p>
+
+<p>I dismounted at this point, turned my pony over to
+the boy, and went down the winding road on foot, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+I didn't want anything to distract my eyes from this
+wonderful view. And presently we were down among
+the trees, before a little lodge called for some unknown
+reason "Lord Brandon's Cottage," in which sat a man
+to whom we had to pay a shilling each before we could
+pass to the landing-place at the head of the lake, where
+the boats and lunch were waiting. Killarney is about
+the only spot in Ireland which is exploited in this
+manner, but here you will find fees exacted at every
+turn&mdash;a petty annoyance which, added to the persistent
+begging and insistent demands for tips, does much
+to interfere with the pleasure of the Killarney trip.</p>
+
+<p>At the landing we found two boats which had rowed
+up from Ross Castle during the morning&mdash;a small one
+with two oarsmen and a larger one with four. The conductor
+marshalled us into the big one, took his seat
+at the stern, got out our lunches, which had been sent
+up from the hotel, tucked us in with heavy waterproofs,
+drew the tiller-lines across his lap and gave the signal
+to start.</p>
+
+<p>The upper lake is much the most beautiful of the
+three, with its many islands, and the high hills hemming
+it in. Near its lower end is Arbutus Island, and
+it is worth pausing a moment beside it to look at the
+arbutus, that handsomest of shrubs, with ruddy stem
+and glossy leaf, which is indigenous all about Killarney,
+but reaches its height of glory on this little island.
+It is impossible to tell where the outlet of the lake is,
+until you are right upon it, but it suddenly opens out
+between two high rocks, and the boat enters the Long
+Range&mdash;the winding river some three miles in length
+which connects the upper and middle lakes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The rock on the left is called Colman's Leap, and
+the legend is that, once upon a time, this Colman, who
+was lord of the upper lake, was chased down the mountain
+by some supporters of The O'Donaghue, and took
+a flying leap across the river, in proof of which you
+may still see the print of his feet in the rock where
+he landed on the other side. Our guide offered to
+show us the foot-prints, if we required any proof of
+the story, but we assured him of our unquestioning
+belief.</p>
+
+<p>The Reach itself is quite as beautiful as any of the
+lakes, for its banks are covered with the most varied
+and luxuriant vegetation; and once, as we drifted
+quietly along, we saw a red deer browsing among the
+bracken. And then we drifted past the foot of a great
+precipice, and the channel narrowed, the current quickened,
+and the boatmen prepared to run the rapids into
+the middle lake.</p>
+
+<p>One of the boatmen was a wild-eyed old fellow, very
+nervous and fidgety, who had considerable difficulty
+in wielding an oar against the husky fellow opposite
+him, and more than once the steersman had admonished
+him to put more ginger into it. Now, as we drew near
+the rapids, his agitation increased, his eyes grew wilder
+than ever, and as the current caught us and we shot
+under the ancient arch of masonry called the Old Weir
+Bridge, he managed to strike his oar on a rock with a
+force that nearly broke it. The nose of the boat
+swerved alarmingly for an instant, but the steersman
+brought her round with a quick jerk, and in a minute
+more we were in the quiet waters of the middle lake.
+The atmosphere was far from quiet, however, as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+steersman relieved his mind. Let it be added that the
+rapids are not very terrible, as will be seen from the
+picture opposite this page, and even if the boat struck
+a rock and was ripped in two, one could get ashore
+without much difficulty.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 314px;">
+<a href="images/gs014-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs014.jpg" width="314" height="500" alt="OLD WEIR BRIDGE, KILLARNEY" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">OLD WEIR BRIDGE, KILLARNEY<br /><br />THE MEETING OF THE WATERS<br /><br />ROSS CASTLE, KILLARNEY</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Just beyond, at the "meeting of the waters," there
+is a whirlpool called O'Sullivan's Punchbowl, and
+every rock and cave along the shore has its tradition,
+many of them manufactured, I suspect, for the consumption
+of the summer visitor. Most of the traditions
+are of The O'Donaghue, Chieftain of the Glens.
+A long cave is O'Donaghue's Wine-cellar; a depression
+at its mouth is O'Donaghue's Chair; and a tall knoll
+beside it is O'Donaghue's Butler, otherwise Jockybwee.</p>
+
+<p>The boat leaves the middle lake under another massive,
+high-hipped arch of masonry&mdash;Drohid-na-Brickeen,
+"The Bridge of the Little Trout," or Brickeen Bridge,
+as it is called now&mdash;and emerges into Glena Bay, another
+place of beauty; but, as we were gazing at its
+loveliness, the boat suddenly pitched sideways, then
+tried to stand on end, and we started round to find
+ourselves in the midst of an ugly expanse of white-capped
+water. We had never thought of rough water
+on Killarney; yet here it was, and mighty rough at
+that. The lower lake is five miles long and half as
+wide, and when the wind gets a good sweep at it, it
+can kick up a sea that is not to be despised.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis just O'Donaghue's white horses out for a
+frolic," said the steersman encouragingly, and took a
+new grip of his lines. The oarsmen bent to their work,
+and we headed out into the lake, for it was necessary
+to cross to Ross Island.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We said nothing, but held tight, and grinned palely
+at each other when the boat made a peculiarly ferocious
+pitch; the spray flew in sheets, the wind dashed
+the spindrift viciously in our faces, and we would have
+been very wet indeed but for the waterproofs. But
+after the first few minutes, we began to enjoy it, for
+it was evident that the boat was a staunch one, and
+even if it went over, it wouldn't sink. I don't suppose
+there was really any danger of its going over, though
+it hung at an alarming angle on the side of a huge wave,
+once or twice; and at the end of half an hour, we swept
+under the lee of Ross Island, and our sweating boatmen
+paused to take breath. The excitable one was
+trembling so he could scarcely get his pipe between his
+teeth.</p>
+
+<p>That night at the hotel, Betty was talking to two
+Englishwomen who had hired a boatman to row them
+out to Inisfallen Island. The lake hadn't been especially
+rough when they went out, and it wasn't until
+they got out of the lee of the island on the return trip
+that they realised its fury. Their boatman, at the
+end of a few moments, found himself unable either to
+get ahead or to go back; the most he could do was to
+keep the boat's head to the waves, and for nearly an
+hour they tossed there, shipping great seas, bailing
+desperately, too frightened to be sea-sick, and finally
+giving themselves up for lost, when the wind shifted and
+their boatman managed to struggle past the point of
+Ross Island. They expressed surprise that their hair
+wasn't white, and said that they would consider all
+the remainder of their lives sheer gain, because they
+felt that, except for a miracle, they would have ended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+on June 5, 1913. No doubt they exaggerated their
+danger, but just the same I would advise any one who
+is nervous on the water to be sure that the lower lake
+is fairly smooth before attempting to cross it. We
+certainly drew a breath of relief when we stepped
+ashore in the shadow of the ivy-clad ruins of Ross Castle.</p>
+
+<p>The castle itself is not of especial interest, for all
+that is left of it is the ruin of the old keep, with some
+crumbling outworks, not nearly so imposing as Blarney.
+About the only reason to visit it is to get the view from
+the top, which is very fine. But it has some stirring
+associations, for it was the stronghold of the great
+O'Donaghue, whose legend dominates the whole district.
+The story goes that, every May morning just
+before sunrise, the old warrior, armed cap-&agrave;-pie,
+emerges from the lake, mounts his white horse, and rides
+like the wind across the waters, attended by fairies
+who strew his path with flowers.</p>
+
+<p>It was here the Royalist forces made their last stand
+against Cromwell, and they thought they were safe,
+because the castle was a strong one, and was built on
+an island, which made it unusually difficult to attack;
+and furthermore there was an old legend which said it
+would never be taken until a fleet swam upon the lake.
+Ludlow brought an army of four thousand men over
+the mountains, and started a siege, but made little
+progress; and then, one morning, as the garrison looked
+out over the battlements, they saw a fleet of boats
+bearing down upon them across the lake, and they
+rubbed their eyes and looked again, only to see the boats
+nearer, and now they could discern the pieces of ordnance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+mounted in the bows and the soldiers who
+crowded them, and they were so awed by the fulfilment
+of the prophecy that they surrendered without more
+ado. That was the end of Ross Castle, but nobody
+knows certainly to this day how Ludlow got the boats
+over the hills from Castlemaine.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>A pretty drive along the margin of the middle lake
+brought us back to the hotel, where we found all the
+fishermen assembled, for the water had been too rough
+for fishing. We hurried out of our wet things, and
+dinner certainly tasted good; and when we joined the
+others about the fire, that evening, we found that we
+had qualified for admission to their charmed circle by
+going through the gap and crossing the lake on such a
+day. We were no longer tenderfeet.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>ROUND ABOUT KILLARNEY</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">We</span> had been assured more than once, during our trip
+through the Gap of Dunloe, that the Irish rain is a
+soft, sweet rain, which does nobody any harm, and we
+found that this was true, for we felt splendidly
+next morning. The only evidence of our strenuous
+experience was a certain redness of visage, which grew
+deeper and deeper, as the days went on, until it approached
+that rich brick-red, which we had already
+noted as a characteristic of Irish fishermen.</div>
+
+<p>The day was bright and warm, and after breakfast
+we walked in to the town to take a look at our films.
+We found the road even more beautiful in the morning
+than it had been in the evening, and, since we knew
+how long it was, it did not seem long at all. But we
+were rather disappointed in the films. I had not appreciated
+how much the moisture in the atmosphere
+diminished the intensity of the sun, and so most of the
+films were under-exposed. Amateur photographers in
+Ireland will do well to remember that they must use
+an aperture twice as large or an exposure twice as long
+as is necessary anywhere else.</p>
+
+<p>We walked on in to the town, and were sauntering
+along looking in the windows, when some one
+touched me on the elbow.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, comrade," said a voice, and I swung around
+to find myself looking into the face of a tall, thin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+American whom we had met at Dublin looking at the
+Book of Kells in Trinity College Library. We had
+fallen into talk upon that occasion, and he had confided
+to us that he was from Massachusetts, that he was a
+bachelor, that he had started out by himself to see
+Europe, and that he was very lonely. He looked lonelier
+than ever, standing on this Killarney street corner,
+and he said that he was getting disgusted with Ireland,
+that it seemed to be raining all the time, that Killarney
+wasn't half as beautiful as he had been led to believe,
+and that he had about made up his mind not to go up
+the west coast, as he had intended, but to go straight
+to the continent. We remarked that we intended going
+up the west coast, and I saw his eye light with anticipation,
+but there are some sacrifices too great for
+human nature, and I didn't suggest his coming along.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Perhaps the most interesting show-place in the vicinity
+of Killarney is Muckross Abbey, and we spent
+that afternoon exploring it and its grounds. Muckross
+is far surpassed in interest by many other Irish
+ruins, but it is very beautiful, embowered as it is in
+magnificent trees and all but covered with glistening
+ivy. It is not very old, as Irish ruins go, for it dates
+only from the latter half of the fifteenth century, when
+it was founded for the Franciscans. The gem of the
+place is undoubtedly the cloister, with its arcade of
+graceful arches ranged around a court and lighting a
+finely-vaulted ambulatory. In the middle of the court
+is a giant yew, many centuries old, which spreads its
+branches from wall to wall. It is encircled with
+barbed wire, and I don't know whether this is to protect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+it from vandals, or to protect vandals from it&mdash;for
+the legend is that whoever plucks a spray of this
+tree dies within a twelvemonth.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 321px;">
+<a href="images/gs015-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs015.jpg" width="321" height="500" alt="MUCKROSS ABBEY, KILLARNEY" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">MUCKROSS ABBEY, KILLARNEY<br /><br />THE CLOISTER AT MUCKROSS ABBEY</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The adjoining graveyard is crowded with interesting
+old tombs, and as we were wandering about looking at
+them, a funeral arrived. The priest walked in front,
+reading the burial service, while his assistant walked
+beside him, holding an umbrella over him, for it had
+begun to rain. Both of them wore black and white
+scarfs draped over one shoulder and strips of black and
+white cloth tied about their hats. Behind them came
+the coffin, carried on the shoulders of four men, the
+pair in front and the pair behind gripping each other
+about the waist so as not to be thrown apart by the inequalities
+of the path. Then came the mourners, about
+a dozen men, each with a black streamer about his hat.
+A number of women came last, their shawls over their
+heads.</p>
+
+<p>The coffin was placed on the ground, and every one
+knelt in the dripping grass, bareheaded under the
+drenching rain, until the service was concluded. One
+of the mourners, at the proper moment, produced from
+beneath his coat a little black bottle which proved to
+contain the holy water, and with this the priest
+sprinkled the rude black casket, with little crosses for
+the screw-heads. Then the priest and his assistant
+went away, and the men hastened to get to their feet
+and clap on their hats, and then there was a general
+production of black clay cutties, and in a moment a
+dozen deep puffs of smoke were floating away before
+the breeze.</p>
+
+<p>The women of the party retired behind a corner of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+the abbey to eat a bite of lunch, and the men stood
+around talking and smoking; and finally the caretaker
+produced four long-handled spades, and there was an
+animated discussion as to just where the grave should
+be dug. As is usually the case with Irish graveyards,
+this one was so crowded that it was no easy matter to
+find room for a fresh grave, but at last the spot was
+fixed upon, and four of the men fell to with the spades.
+When they grew tired, four others took up the work,
+and in half an hour the shallow grave was dug, the
+coffin placed in it, and the earth heaped back upon it.
+There was no keening.</p>
+
+<p>One of the women who was with the party told us
+that the funeral procession had come all the way from
+the end of the upper lake, more than fourteen miles
+away, and that the deceased was a woman of ninety-six.
+Fancy the tragedies she must have seen! For she was
+a woman of twenty-six, married, no doubt, with children,
+in the famine of '47. How many of them died,
+I wondered, and how had she herself managed to survive
+the awful years which followed? Her home beyond
+the upper lake&mdash;I could close my eyes and see it&mdash;the
+dark little cabin with its thatched roof and dirt
+floor and single room; I could picture the rocky field
+from which she and her husband had somehow managed
+to wring a livelihood; I could see her running with her
+poor bare feet through mud and over stones beside some
+laughing tourist in the hope of getting a penny or
+two&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>But it is too tragic to think about!</p>
+
+<p>The shower passed, after a time, and we went on
+along a beautiful walk leading toward the lake&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+Friars' Walk, it is called, and it is bordered by century-old
+beeches, yews, pines and limes, the most magnificent
+trees that I have ever seen, so glorious and inspiring
+that we were lured on and on. We came to the shore
+of the lake, at last, where the waves have carved the
+rocks into beautiful and fantastic shapes, and we followed
+the shore a long way, stopping at every jutting
+headland for a long look out over the grey, wind-swept
+water. Then the path turned inland and came out
+upon the middle lake, and here we found the fishermen
+from our hotel just getting to land, in a very drenched
+and disconsolate condition, for the water had been too
+rough for good sport.</p>
+
+<p>That evening before the fire, the old Englishman, of
+whom I have already spoken, relieved his mind to me
+upon the subject of Ireland and the Irish. He said it
+was no use to try to help the Irish: in the first place,
+they didn't deserve any help; in the second place they
+took your help with one hand and bludgeoned you with
+the other; and in the third place any attempt to help
+them only made matters worse. Take the old age
+pensions, for example. They were a farce. Hundreds
+and hundreds of farmers had given their property
+to their children, so that they could go into court and
+swear they possessed nothing and claim a pension.
+Thousands more who were nowhere near seventy were
+drawing pensions because there was no way to prove
+just how old they were. And most of the pension
+money went for drink. Every pensioner had credit at
+the public houses, and his pension was usually drunk
+away long before it was received. The only effect of
+the act had been to make the Irish worse drunkards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+than ever&mdash;and they were already the worst in the
+world. That was the cause of their poverty; that was
+the reason they lived in filth and wretchedness. They
+were without ambition, without pride, without any
+sense of manhood or decency&mdash;all they wanted was
+whiskey, and they would do anything to get it. All
+this, I dare say, is the honest belief of a great many
+Englishmen; and there is in it just that small grain
+of truth which makes it sting.</p>
+
+<p>But I grew tired of listening, after a time, and went
+out to the bar, where a very loquacious Ulsterman
+with the broadest of Scotch accents was explaining his
+woes to the grinning barmaid. He had just been dismissed,
+it seemed, from some position in the neighbourhood
+because he had "been out with a few friends"
+the night before. He was convinced that his late employer
+was no gentleman, because a gentleman would
+have understood the circumstances and overlooked
+them; he pronounced Kerry the most God-forsaken of
+counties, and announced his intention of getting back
+to Ulster as soon as he could. No doubt his experience
+in the south of Ireland made him a more rabid
+Orangeman than ever, and I suppose he lost no time in
+signing the covenant and enlisting in Ulster's "army."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We had planned to spend our last day at Killarney
+walking and driving about the neighbourhood, and we
+were delighted, when we came down to breakfast that
+Saturday morning, to find the weather all that could
+be desired, with the sun shining from a brilliant sky,
+and not a cloud upon it, except high, white, fair-weather
+ones flying before the wind. So as soon as we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+had eaten, we started away on a car for a drive through
+the deer-park of the Earl of Kenmare, a walk along the
+"fairy glen" which traverses it, and then another drive
+up along the heights to the ruins of Aghadoe.</p>
+
+<p>We met many little carts driving in to Killarney, for
+it was market day&mdash;the identical type which had already
+grown so familiar: a flat cart with a man driving,
+his legs hanging down, and his women-folks
+crouched behind him under their shawls, with their
+knees drawn up to their chins, and the shaggy donkey
+which furnished the motive power, trotting briskly and
+alertly along. I don't know what the poor Irish would
+do without this serviceable little beast, long lived and
+useful in so many ways, able to exist on stones and
+nettles, and costing only a pound or two. Betty was
+so impressed with their usefulness that she wanted to
+buy one and send it home, but that speculation fell
+through.</p>
+
+<p>As we climbed higher and higher up the heights, the
+wind grew cold and cutting, but the view below us over
+the lakes to the south opened more and more&mdash;a glorious
+panorama of wood and hill and white-capped
+water, with ever-varying light and shade under the
+drifting clouds. But what a contrast between this
+smiling landscape and the one which met our eyes when
+we turned them to the north, where one bleak and
+desolate hill towered behind another, away and away
+as far as the eye could see, a wilderness of grey boulders
+and black, fissured crags.</p>
+
+<p>The car stopped at last before some stone steps leading
+over a wall, but as we started to mount them, a
+woman came running out of a near-by cottage and insisted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+on unlocking the gate for us, in the hope, of
+course, of getting a tip. She was the caretaker in
+charge of the ruins of Aghadoe, and she tried to tell us
+something about them, but the visitor who has to rely
+on her for information must content himself with very
+little.</p>
+
+<p>The story, as I piece it together, is something like
+this: About the middle of the seventh century, there
+dwelt at Killarney a very holy man named St. Finian
+the Leper, and on Inisfallen, the largest of the
+Killarney islands, he founded an abbey, whose ruins
+may yet be seen there; and here at Aghadoe, the
+Field of the Two Yews, he built a church, which became
+the seat of a bishop. As was often the case, the
+original church proved, in time, to be too small, and an
+addition was tacked on to it. A round tower was also
+built as a protection against the Danes, and a little
+farther down the slope, a rude castle was put up as a
+residence for the bishop.</p>
+
+<p>There is very little left of the castle and the round
+tower, but the walls of the church are still standing.
+The early church built by St. Finian forms the western
+part, or nave, and is entered by a beautiful round-headed
+doorway, of the familiar Celtic type. The rain
+of centuries has washed away much of the carving, but
+enough remains to show how elaborate it was. The
+windows here are also round-headed, but the later portion,
+or choir, is lighted by narrow lancet windows,
+which prove that it was built some time in the thirteenth
+century, after the Normans came. These are
+the only things of interest left in the ruins, and the
+visit to them is worth making not so much on their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+account, as for the magnificent view over the lakes.</p>
+
+<p>We drove back to Killarney along the border of the
+lower lake, through the Kenmare demesne, and past
+the many-gabled mansion of the Earl, which has since
+been destroyed by fire; and we spent a very pleasant
+hour wandering about the village. The main street
+at Killarney is unattractive enough, crowded as it is
+with shops whose principal stock in trade is post-cards
+and photographs and books of views and monstrosities
+in bog oak and Connemara marble&mdash;souvenirs, in a
+word, for Cook tourists to take home. But turn up
+any of the narrow lanes which branch off on either side,
+and there is authentic Ireland&mdash;the Ireland of plastered
+cottages and thatched roofs and half-naked children
+and gossiping women leaning over their half-doors.</p>
+
+<p>As it was market day, the lanes were more than usually
+crowded, and I explored them one after another,
+to an accompaniment of much good-humoured chaffing
+from the girls and women, especially when I unlimbered
+my camera. Then we walked out and took a
+look at the cathedral, a towering structure, still uncompleted
+as to its interior and bare and cold, but an impressive
+proof of the influence of the church which
+could raise the money to build so great an edifice in this
+poverty-stricken land; and then we stopped at some
+of the shops and looked at the Irish homespun, and
+spent a little time at an auction-sale, where the bidding
+was very slow and cautious, and finally we caught
+the omnibus back to our hotel.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>There was still one place we wished to see. That<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+was the Torc cascade, and, after tea, we set out to
+walk to it. The road lay for about a mile along the
+road skirting Muckross Lake, and then we came to a
+gate where a boy was waiting to exact a fee of nine-pence.
+Then we mounted a steep path, under magnificent
+pines, close beside the brawling Owengarriff
+River, up and up, with a lovely view of the lakes opening
+below us; and finally we came to the cascade&mdash;a
+white welter of water slithering down over the black
+rocks, very beautiful and impressive.</p>
+
+<p>We sat there for a long time, looking at it and at
+the stately wood which clothed the opposite hillside,
+and at the blue water lying far below us, and at the
+green hills away beyond, and we both agreed that, next
+to the view from the Kenmare road, this was the most
+glorious view to be had about Killarney. Subsequent
+reflection has not altered this, and, after the trip
+through the Gap of Dunloe and across the lakes, I
+should certainly place this one to the Torc cascade.
+Beside it, the view from Aghadoe is nowhere.</p>
+
+<p>We went on reluctantly, at last, mounting still
+higher until we came to a path bearing away to the
+left through the woods, and we followed this until
+we came to a mountain road which we had been told
+was there. It is called the Queen's Drive, and I suppose
+Victoria passed this way during her visit to the
+lakes; and it led us past the reservoir which supplies
+Killarney with water, and on down through magnificent
+woods whose beauty is marred only by a lot of so-called
+"monkey trees"&mdash;a monstrosity which had annoyed us
+all through Ireland, but to which I have not yet referred.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The monkey tree is a sort of evergreen, with long,
+thin branches clad with close-growing foliage, and looking
+not unlike monkeys' arms. In fact, the tree itself
+resembles in a grotesque way a lot of monkeys swinging
+in midair, and hence its name. It is a hideous thing,
+and yet a specimen grows in every dooryard. There
+was one in front of our hotel, there were others along
+the road; here they had been planted in great numbers
+and reached an unprecedented size&mdash;but we were glad
+to observe that a few were dying. The monkey tree
+seems to be to Irish homes what the rubber-plant used
+to be to American ones, and it appalled us to see how
+many little ones were being started in tiny front yards,
+which they would one day overshadow and render
+abominable. I can only hope that, in some happy
+hour, a wave of reform will sweep over Ireland and
+carry these monstrosities before it.</p>
+
+<p>We came out, at last, upon a little huddle of houses
+on the hillside above our hotel, and stopped to talk
+to some children and their mother, then went on downward,
+in the gathering dusk, very happy because of a
+beautiful and satisfying day. And just as we turned
+into the highroad, Betty saw something gleaming on
+the ground at her feet, and stooped and picked up a
+shilling. From what ragged pocket had it fallen, we
+wondered? How great a tragedy would its loss represent?
+We looked up and down the road, but there
+was no one in sight. So we decided to keep it for
+luck, and we have it yet.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">There</span> was quite a crowd on the platform, that Sunday
+morning, of travellers turning their backs on Killarney,
+and we found ourselves eventually in a compartment
+with two Americans, man and wife, who were
+plainly in no pleasant humour. The man was especially
+disgruntled about something, and I judged from
+his exclamations that he had got decidedly the worst of
+it when it came to settling the bill. It is in some such
+mood as this, I fear, that many people leave Killarney.</div>
+
+<p>But the view from the window soon made us forget
+our fellow-passengers. The road runs for a time
+close beside the Flesk, one of the prettiest of Irish
+rivers, while away to the south rose the beautiful Killarney
+hills, peak upon peak, with mighty Mangerton
+dominating all of them. And then came the Paps, two
+conical elevations separated by a deep ravine; and
+then the bleak brown slopes of the Muskerry hills, with
+a ruined castle of the McCarthys guarding the only
+pass into the valley. To the north a boggy plain
+stretched away and away, ridged with black pits, like
+long earthworks, from which the turf had been cut.</p>
+
+<p>The hills to the south grew gradually less rugged,
+and presently we dropped into the beautiful valley of
+the Blackwater, with many ruined castles perched on
+the crags which overshadow it&mdash;castles built by the
+McCarthys, the O'Callaghans, and I know not what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+other septs, memorials of the old days of raid and
+counter-raid, of warring clans and treacherous chieftains.</p>
+
+<p>And then we came to Mallow, and had to change
+into another carriage, where we found five Americans,
+who were also coming from Killarney, and
+who also believed that they had been held up. Their
+grievance was against the hotel at which they had
+stopped, and they said wildly that it was no better
+than a den of thieves. This, of course, was an exaggeration,
+and, in any event, I did not pity them much,
+for it was soon evident that their visit to Ireland had
+been a waste of time. They knew nothing of her history
+and traditions; her ruins held no meaning for
+them; her empty valleys told them nothing of her past;
+they had never heard of Cormac, or Finn the Fair, or
+Ossian, or Conn the Hundred Fighter, or even of Brian
+Boru; they had never heard of that old civilisation
+which the Danes swept away, and saw nothing very
+wonderful in the Cross of Cong or the Book of Kells.
+So to them Ireland had proved a disappointment, just
+as she will to every one who visits her in ignorance and
+indifference.</p>
+
+<p>We reached Limerick Junction, at last, and changed
+thankfully to the branch which runs to Limerick,
+twenty miles away. And almost at once we came upon
+traces of Patrick Sarsfield, of glorious memory, for a
+few miles beyond the Junction, to the left of the line,
+are the ruins of a castle, which was held by the English,
+but which he surprised one night, on one of those
+famous raids of his, and captured and blew up. And
+then the line mounted the hills which divide the Vale<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+of Tipperary from the valley of the Shannon, crossed
+them, and came out upon a land as beautiful and fertile
+as any we had seen in Ireland. Such lushness,
+such greenness, such calm, quiet loveliness can surely
+be matched in few other spots upon this earth.</p>
+
+<p>It was still early afternoon when the train rolled
+in to the station at Limerick, and on the platform we
+met the actor and his wife whom we had talked with
+at Blarney a week before. They had come to Limerick,
+where their principal was a great favourite, for a
+three weeks' engagement. I saw the actor afterwards
+on the street, and he told me that the theatre was in
+terrible shape, for some misguided enthusiasts had attempted
+to hold a Unionist meeting there, a few days
+previously, and the patriotic Limerickians had nearly
+torn the place to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>Limerick is by far the most important town of central
+or western Ireland; in fact it is surpassed in population
+only by Belfast, Dublin and Cork, and it has
+many amusing points of resemblance to the two latter.
+It is divided into two parts by a branch of the Shannon;
+it has one long, curving principal street leading
+to a bridge; the street is known officially as George
+Street, after an English king, but to all Irishmen it is
+O'Connell Street, in honour of the Liberator whose
+statue is its chief adornment; this street is a street of
+bright and attractive shops, not in itself interesting,
+but cross the bridge to the older part of the town, or
+turn up any of the little lanes which lead off from it,
+and you will find nothing more picturesque anywhere&mdash;nor
+more distressful.</p>
+
+<p>We walked along George Street, that afternoon, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+crossed the bridge to the island on which Limerick
+had its birth. The bridge is called Matthew Bridge,
+not after the Disciple, but after Ireland's great apostle
+of temperance. Beyond the bridge is a maze of narrow,
+crooked streets, and we made our way through
+them to the old cathedral, whose tower served as guide.
+We got there just as vespers were over, and we found
+the verger very willing to show us about.</p>
+
+<p>I do not imagine there are many Protestants at Limerick;
+at least, a very small portion of this impressive
+old church serves the needs of the congregation, and
+the rest of it is bare and empty&mdash;and imposing.
+Rarely indeed have I seen a more sombre interior, for
+the walls are very massive, and the windows small,
+and there is a surprising number of dark little chapels&mdash;the
+principal one, of course, being dedicated as a
+burial place for the Earls of Limerick. The carved
+miserere seats are worth examining, as are also many
+of the old tombs which clutter the interior. There
+is an elaborate one to the Earl of Thomond in the chancel,
+and a carved slab covering the grave of Donall
+O'Brien, King of Munster, who founded the cathedral
+in 1179; but among the quaintest is a slab built into
+the wall of the nave with this epitaph cut upon it:</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>MEMENTO MORY</div>
+<div class='poem'>HERE LIETH LITTELL SAMUEL<br />
+BARINGTON THAT GREAT UNDER<br />
+TAKER OF FAMOUS CITTIES<br />
+CLOCK AND CHIME MAKER<br />
+HE MADE HIS ONE TIME GOE<br />
+EARLY AND LATTER BUT NOW<br />
+HE IS RETURNED TO GOD<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>HIS CREATOR<br />
+THE 29 OF NOVEMBER THEN<br />
+HE SCEST AND FOR HIS<br />
+MEMORY THIS HERE IS PLEAST<br />
+BY HIS SON BEN<br /></div>
+<div class='center'>1693</div>
+
+
+<p>We spent a very pleasant half hour in the church,
+and then we wandered on through the crooked streets
+to the magnificent Norman castle, set up here to defend
+the passage of the Shannon. Most venerable and
+impressive it is, with its great drum towers, and curtains
+ten feet thick. Just in front of it the Shannon is
+spanned by a fine modern bridge, replacing the ancient
+one which was the scene of so many conflicts, and
+at the farther end of it, mounted on a pedestal, is the
+famous stone on which Sarsfield signed his treaty with
+the English in 1691&mdash;the treaty which guaranteed
+equal rights to Catholics, but which, as every Catholic
+Irishman somewhat too vividly remembers, resulted
+only in a more bitter persecution. Irish memory, curiously
+enough, seems always to grow clearer with the
+passing years, and the mists of two centuries accentuate,
+rather than obscure, the fame of Limerick as "The City
+of the Violated Treaty." The story runneth thus:</p>
+
+<p>The River Shannon, with its wide estuary, its many
+lakes, and its mighty current flowing between impassable
+bogs or beetling cliffs, has always been a formidable
+barrier between east and west Ireland. In the
+old days, the only doors in this barrier was the ford
+at Athlone, just below Lough Ree, and another all but
+impassable one at Killaloe, just below Lough Derg;
+but in the ninth century, the Danes sailed up from the
+sea, landed on an island at the head of the tideway,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+fortified it, and so started the city of Limerick. The
+current of the river was divided here, and the invaders
+managed in time to get a bridge across, and so
+opened another door in the Shannon barrier. Brian
+Boru drove them out, at last, and then the Normans
+came and, after their fashion everywhere, rendered
+their hold secure by erecting a great round-towered castle
+to guard the bridge. Edward Bruce captured it in
+1316, and three centuries later, Hugh O'Neill held it
+for six months against Cromwell's great general, Ireton.
+The Ironsides captured it, finally, and Ireton
+died of the plague not long afterwards in a house just
+back of the cathedral.</p>
+
+<p>But it was in the war against William of Orange that
+Limerick played its most distinguished part. I have
+already told how the Irish chose the cause of the Stuarts
+against the Parliament; how they proclaimed Charles
+II king as soon as his father's head was off, and of the
+vengeance Cromwell took. So it was inevitable that
+they should espouse the cause of James II against the
+Protestant William, whom the English had called over
+from the Netherlands to be their king. James came
+to Ireland to lead the rebellion, proved himself an
+idiot and a coward, and ended by running away and
+leaving the Irish to their fate.</p>
+
+<p>William's troops swept the country, took town after
+town and castle after castle, until Limerick remained
+nearly the last stronghold in Irish hands. So William
+marched against it, at the head of 26,000 men, but the
+position was a very strong one, and that ablest of Irish
+generals, Patrick Sarsfield, was in command of the
+town, and William was beaten back. The next year<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+another great army under General Ginkle marched
+against the place, first capturing Athlone, and so getting
+across the river. A terrific attack was concentrated on
+the fortress guarding the bridge, a breach was made,
+the fort stormed, and the garrison put to the sword, only
+about a hundred out of eight hundred escaping across
+the other branch of the river into Limerick.</p>
+
+<p>Sarsfield still held the town, but his men were disheartened
+by the loss of the castle. Ginkle, on the
+other hand, realised that to take the town would be no
+easy task. A truce was proposed, negotiations began,
+both sides were eager to end the war, and the result was
+that the famous Treaty of Limerick was signed by
+Ginkle and Sarsfield on the third day of October, 1691,
+on a stone near the County Clare end of the bridge
+over the Shannon.</p>
+
+<p>There were twelve articles in the treaty, and some
+of them were kept&mdash;the one, for instance, permitting
+all persons to leave the country who wished to do so,
+and to take their families and portable goods along;
+but one was not kept, the most important one, perhaps,
+which provided that Irish Catholics should enjoy all
+the religious rights they possessed under Charles II, and
+that all Irish still in arms, who should immediately
+submit and take the oath of allegiance, should be secured
+in the free and undisputed possession of their
+estates. In a word, the price of peace was to have been
+a general indemnity and freedom of religious worship.
+It was not an excessive price, but it was never paid.</p>
+
+<p>The Protestant colonists in Ireland protested in great
+wrath that they had been betrayed, and the Irish Parliament,
+which the colonists controlled, after a bitter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+fight, repudiated the treaty, or, at least, confirmed only
+so much of it as "consisted with the safety and welfare
+of his Majesty's subjects in Ireland," and passed a
+number of new laws aimed at Catholics, disqualifying
+them from teaching school, from sending their children
+abroad to be educated, from observing any holy day
+except those set apart by the Church of Ireland, and
+many others of the same sort, some of almost insane
+malignity. All this was, of course, quite unjustifiable,
+but "King Billy" seems to have been in no way responsible
+for it. In any event, it happened more than two
+centuries ago, all these laws have long since been repealed,
+and it seems absurd to keep their memory so
+fresh and burning.</p>
+
+<p>One word more, and I am done with history. After
+the surrender of Limerick, Sarsfield and his men were
+given the choice of enlisting in William's army or leaving
+the country. They chose the latter, and went to
+France, where the last Catholic king of England had
+sought refuge. He, of course, was unable to maintain
+them, so they enlisted under the French king, Louis
+XIV, and formed the Irish Brigade, which was afterwards
+to become so famous, and in which, during the
+next fifty years, nearly half a million Irishmen enlisted,
+as the best means of avenging themselves on
+England. The part they played at Landen, at Barcelona,
+at Cremona, at Blenheim, at Ramilles, and finally
+at Fontenoy&mdash;all this is matter of history.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We crossed the bridge again, after a look at the
+treaty stone&mdash;which, enshrined on its lofty pedestal,
+is really a monument to English perfidy&mdash;passed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+castle, and plunged into the crooked streets of "English
+Town," as this oldest part of Limerick is called,
+with its tall, foreign-looking, tumbledown houses&mdash;as
+picturesque a quarter as I have seen anywhere. For
+Limerick grew into an important city in the century
+following its capture by the English, and many wealthy
+people put up handsome town-houses, four or five stories
+high, with wide halls and sweeping stairs and beautiful
+doorways and tall windows framed in sculptured
+stone. It is these old houses which shadow the narrow
+lanes of "English Town," and they are all tenements
+now, for the well-to-do people&mdash;such of them as are
+left&mdash;have moved over to the newer, more fashionable,
+more sanitary quarter. No attempt is made to keep
+them in repair, and many of them have fallen down,
+leaving ragged gaps in the street. Others seem in imminent
+danger of falling, and the distressed look of the
+place is further heightened by the great fragments of
+the old walls which remain here and there.</p>
+
+<p>This part of Limerick is on the island where the
+town started; the part just beyond the bridge which
+leads to the mainland is called Irish Town, and it, too,
+was once included in the city walls, a long stretch of
+which is still standing back of the ancient citadel.
+Here too, especially along the quay, are handsome
+houses, long since fallen from their high estate, and
+now the homes of the poorest of the poor, a family in
+every room. It is something of a shock to see these
+ragged and distressed people climbing the beautiful
+stairways, or sitting in the handsome doorways or leaning
+out of the carved windows, very much at home in
+the place which was once the abode of wealth and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+fashion, while the noisy play of dirty and neglected
+children echoes through the rooms which once rang
+with gentle laughter and impassioned toast.</p>
+
+<p>Newtown-Pery, the newer part of the town, built on
+land reclaimed from the river by the Pery family, the
+Earls of Limerick, who still own it, contrasts strongly
+with the older part, for its streets are wide and straight
+and run regularly at right angles, and it is a bustling
+place, but quite without interest to the stranger. The
+houses are almost uniformly four stories high, and are
+built of a peculiar dark-brown brick, which makes them
+look much older than they really are. And down along
+the water-front are nearly a mile of quays, with floating
+docks and heavy cranes, and towering warehouses looking
+down upon them.</p>
+
+<p>Time was when Limerick fondly hoped to become
+the greatest port in Ireland. She had every advantage&mdash;a
+noble situation on the broad estuary of the Shannon,
+up which ships from America could sail direct to
+her wharves&mdash;but in spite of great expenditures to improve
+her harbour facilities, not only did no new trade
+come, but such as she already had withered and
+withered, until to-day her tall warehouses are empty,
+her quays almost deserted, and in the broad expanse
+of the Shannon there are few boats except excursion
+steamers and pleasure yachts.</p>
+
+<p>The cause of this decay? Irishmen assert that there
+is only one cause&mdash;unjust and discriminating laws
+passed by England to protect her own trade by destroying
+Irish industry. No doubt this is true; but
+these laws have been repealed for many years, and there
+is little evidence of the healthy revival of these industries<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+anywhere in Ireland. Such revival as there is has
+been carefully fostered by various government agencies;
+there has been no great spontaneous revival, and
+perhaps there never will be. But it is a melancholy
+sight&mdash;the empty, decaying mills, the idle factories, the
+deserted warehouses, the ruined dwellings, which the
+traveller sees all up and down the land.</p>
+
+<p>I went out for another stroll about the town, after
+tea, for I wanted to see the new Catholic cathedral,
+whose tall spire dominates the landscape for many
+miles around. And as I went, I could not but notice
+the impress the English have left on the names
+of the streets. The principal street, as I have
+said already, is George Street; then there is Cecil Street,
+and William Street, and Nelson Street, and Catherine
+Street, and George and Charlotte Quays opposite each
+other. There is one, however, named after a local celebrity
+whom all Irishmen should delight to honour&mdash;Gerald
+Griffin, an authentic poet, whose "Eileen
+Aroon" is one of the tenderest and most musical of
+lyrics.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald Griffin Street is one of the most important in
+Limerick, and it is by it that one gains the cathedral,
+an impressive building, especially as to its interior,
+dimly lighted through high, narrow lancet windows.
+And here again one admires not so much the church
+itself, as the indomitable spirit which could undertake
+the task of building such an edifice in want-stricken
+Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>The Sarsfield monument is in the cathedral square, a
+rampageous figure, charging with drawn sword off the
+top of a shaft of stone&mdash;perhaps the most ridiculous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+tribute to a great soldier and patriot to be seen anywhere
+on this earth. I, at least, have never seen any to match
+it, unless it be that imperturbable dandy, supposed to
+represent Andrew Jackson, who calmly doffs his
+chapeau from the back of a rearing horse in front of
+our own White House!</p>
+
+<p>I walked on, after that, down toward the quays,
+along little lanes of thatched houses, and then back
+into the region of the old mansions, with their chattering
+women and sprawling children; and then, suddenly,
+I became aware of the girls.</p>
+
+<p>Limerick, like Cork, is supposed to be famous for the
+beauty of its women, and the younger generation was
+out in force, that Sunday evening, rigged up in its best
+clothes, evidently ready for any harmless adventure.
+There <i>were</i> some nice-looking girls among them, no
+doubt of that, with bright eyes and red lips and glowing
+cheeks, and the advent of a stranger in their midst filled
+them with the liveliest interest, which they were at no
+pains to dissemble. I know nothing about the psychology
+of Irish girls, for I was not in a position to
+investigate or experiment; but while they are shy, at first,
+I should judge that most of them are not altogether
+averse to mild flirtation. The glance of their eye is
+not, perhaps, as fatal as Kate Kearney's, but it is very
+taking.</p>
+
+<p>I wish I could say as much for the boys; but if there
+were any witty, invincible Rory O'Mores left in Ireland,
+I didn't see them. The Irish young man seems
+very different indeed from the light-hearted, audacious,
+philandering scapegrace so dear to Lover and Lever
+and scores of lesser poets, and once so familiar upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+stage. They are not forever breaking into song, they
+do not brim with sentiment, they are not, so far as I
+could judge, full of heroic emotions and high ambitions.
+In fact, they are quite the opposite of all that&mdash;matter-of-fact,
+humdrum, rather stupid.</p>
+
+<p>Of course there are exceptions, and I was fortunate
+enough to meet one that very evening. I stopped in
+at a tobacconist's to get a paper, and fell into talk with
+the proprietor; and presently there entered a man who
+bought a pennyworth of tobacco, filled his pipe, and
+then remained for a word, seeing that I was a stranger.
+We were talking about Ireland, and in a very few minutes
+the newcomer had the centre of the stage.</p>
+
+<p>O'Connell, journeyman tailor, so he introduced himself,
+and I wish I could paint a picture of him that
+would make him live for you as he lives for me. He
+was a faded little man, of indeterminate age, with a
+straw-coloured moustache and sallow skin, but his eyes
+were very bright, and before long his face was glowing
+with an infectious enthusiasm. His clothes were worn
+and shabby, but one forgot them as he stood there and
+talked&mdash;indeed they even lent a sort of dignity to his
+lean, nervous little figure.</p>
+
+<p>First he told of how Cleeve, the big butter man, was
+trying to get the city to close the swing bridge over the
+Shannon, so that his heavy trams, which went about
+the country collecting milk, could cross it. To close
+the bridge would shut off permanently about four hundred
+yards of quay; but, so Cleeve argued, the quays
+were little used, and the town would never need that
+stretch above the bridge. But O'Connell did not believe
+it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Tis true," he said, "that England with her cruel
+laws, has killed our trade and brought us all to want;
+'tis true that we have no use for the quay at present.
+But all that will be changed when we get Home Rule.
+Then, sir, you will see our quays crowded with boats
+from end to end; you will see our mills and factories
+humming with life, you will see our warehouses piled
+with commodities from every quarter of the world.
+To shut off part of them, just because this bloated butter-maker
+wants it, would be a crime against the people
+of this town."</p>
+
+<p>"How is all this to be brought about?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis you Americans will be doing it, sir. The
+Irish in America, our brothers, God bless them, will
+rally to the ould land. Her children will come home
+to the Shan Van Vocht, once she is free of England.
+'Tis them ones will set us on our feet again. They
+will be putting their money into our industries, till in
+the whole island there will be not an idle wheel or a
+smokeless chimney."</p>
+
+<p>I told him I was afraid his dreams were too rosy;
+that the American Irish, like all other Americans, would
+be governed by dividends, not by sentiment, in the investment
+of their money. But nothing could shake his
+belief in the good time coming. I asked him what he
+thought of Ulster, and he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"The Protestants have nothing to fear from Home
+Rule," he said. "'Tis them will control this government.
+We Catholics are going to pick the best and
+strongest men in this island to man the ship, and there
+will be more Protestants than Catholics amongst them.
+We will need strong arms at the helm, and what do we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+care what their religion may be, if only they're good
+men and true? You're a Protestant, I take it, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I said; "I am."</p>
+
+<p>"And does that make me think any the less of you?
+Not a bit of it. 'Tis the same God we look at, only
+with different eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"Not even that," I corrected; "with the same eyes&mdash;just
+from a different angle."</p>
+
+<p>"You've said it, sir. I can't improve on that.
+Well then, what is it the Ulster men are afraid of?
+They say it's the priests. But how silly that is! Let
+them look back into history, and see what has happened
+when the priests interfered with things that did not concern
+them. In spiritual matters I bow to my priest; in
+everything else, I am independent of him. It is so
+with all Irishmen, and has always been. Do you remember
+what the great O'Connell said: 'I would as
+soon,' said he, 'take my politics from Stamboul as
+from Rome.' Do you remember what happened when
+Rome tried to prevent the Catholics of Ireland from
+contributing to the testimonial for the greatest patriot
+Ireland has ever had, Charles Stewart Parnell? But
+of course you don't. I'll just tell you. Why, sir, the
+whole country was on fire from end to end. 'Make
+Peter's Pence into Parnell's Pounds' was the battle-cry,
+and the money poured in like rain. Mr. Parnell's
+friends had hoped to raise fifteen thousand pounds for
+him. When they got the money counted at last, they
+had near forty thousand pounds. What do you think
+of that now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think it was fine," I said. "But why is it, then,
+Ulster is so frightened?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Ulster isn't frightened&mdash;it's just a lot of talk
+from people who live by talkin'. There's many Catholics
+who are against Home Rule, and there's many
+Protestants who are for it. They'll all be for it, after
+they've tried it a while. And we won't let the Protestants
+stay out&mdash;we can't afford to&mdash;we need them
+too much. Why, sir, our leaders have always been
+Protestants, and I'm thinking always will be."</p>
+
+<p>"There was O'Connell," I reminded him.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not forgotten him&mdash;I quoted him but a moment
+since; and 'tis true he was a great man and a
+true patriot. But he fell into grievous error when he
+chose Catholic emancipation, when he might have got
+Home Rule. What did Catholic emancipation mean
+to me and thousands like me? It meant just nothing
+at all. It meant that some Catholics of O'Connell's
+own class could hold jobs under government&mdash;that was
+all. The greatest man this island ever produced, sir,
+was a Protestant. I have mentioned him already; his
+name was Charles Stewart Parnell!"</p>
+
+<p>I wish you could have seen his shining eyes and
+heard his quivering voice as he went on to tell me about
+Parnell; and how, after the scandal which ruined his
+life&mdash;a scandal prearranged, so many think, by his
+political enemies&mdash;he had come to Limerick to address
+a meeting, with death in his face and a broken heart
+in his eyes; and there had been some in the crowd that
+hissed him and pelted him with mud; and the little
+tailor, his chest swelling at the old glorious memory,
+told how he had been one of those who rallied around
+the stricken leader and beat the crowd back and got him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+safe away. There were tears in his eyes before he had
+ended.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, woman," he went on, "'twas not only Parnell
+you ruined then, it was ould Ireland, too! And not
+for the first time! Why, sir, 'twas because of a woman
+the British first came to this island. Troy had her
+Helen, as Homer tells, and so had Erin. 'Twas the
+same story over again. Dervorgilla the lady's name
+was, and she was the wife of Tiernan O'Rourke, Prince
+of Breffni, who had his fine castle on the beautiful
+green banks of Lough Gill. It was there that Dermot
+MacMurrough, King of Leinster, saw her, and after
+that no other woman would do for him. So he courted
+her in odd corners and whispered soft honeyed words
+into her ear; and she listened, as women will, and her
+head was turned by his flattery. One day her husband,
+who was a pious man, kissed her good-bye and
+started on a pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory in
+Lough Derg; and he was there nine days; and when he
+came back, what did he find? Ah, sir, Tom Moore has
+told it far better than I can:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'The valley lay smiling before me,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Where lately I left her behind;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Yet I trembled, and something hung o'er me,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">That saddened the joy of my mind.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I looked for the lamp which, she told me,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Should shine when her Pilgrim returned;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">But, though darkness began to enfold me,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">No lamp from the battlements burned!</span><br />
+<br />
+"'I flew to her chamber&mdash;'twas lonely,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">As if the loved tenant lay dead;&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Ah, would it were death, and death only;</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">But no, the young false one had fled.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And there hung the lute that could soften</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">My very worst pains into bliss;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">While the hand, which had waked it so often,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Now throbbed to a proud rival's kiss.'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I wish I could convey the tremor of the voice with
+which O'Connell, journeyman tailor, recited these silly
+lines. I can see him yet, standing there, one hand
+against his heart, his eyes straining up to the battlements
+from which no welcoming light gleamed. I can
+see the proprietor of the little shop, as he lounged
+against his counter, smiling good-naturedly. I can see
+the two or three other men who had drifted in, listening
+with all their ears.</p>
+
+<p>And then O'Connell went on to tell how O'Rourke,
+finding his wife had fled with MacMurrough, appealed
+to his overlord, King Turlough O'Conor, and how the
+two of them so harassed MacMurrough that he was
+compelled to restore Dervorgilla to her husband and to
+flee to England, where he went to Strongbow and
+persuaded him to bring his Normans to Ireland
+to help him in his feud; and how Strongbow,
+once he got a firm grip on the land, refused to loosen
+it, and the curse of English rule had been on Ireland
+ever since.</p>
+
+<p>I looked this story up, afterwards, and found that
+legend tells it much as O'Connell did, and it is probably
+true. But, just the same, it is hardly fair to lay the
+whole blame for Ireland's woes on Dervorgilla, for the
+Normans had been looking longingly across the Irish
+Sea years before MacMurrough fled to them, and would
+no doubt have crossed it, sooner or later, without an
+invitation. The tragic point of the story is that, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+usual, the invader found the Irish divided and so unable
+to resist. We shall see the castle from which
+Dervorgilla fled, before our journey is done, and also
+the place where she lies buried, at Mellifont, in the
+valley of the Boyne.</p>
+
+<p>The quotation from Tom Moore had turned my
+little tailor's thoughts toward poetry, and he asked if
+I knew this poem and that, and when I didn't, as was
+frequently the case, he would quote a few lines, or sing
+them, if they had been set to music.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you know 'To the Dead of Ninety-eight'?"
+he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I said; "but that is not Johnson's noblest
+poem. Do you know his 'Ode to Ireland'?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not," he answered. "Let us have it, sir."</p>
+
+<p>How sorry I was that I couldn't let them have it, or
+didn't have a copy that I could read to them, for it is
+a stirring poem; I had to confess that I didn't know
+it, but I can't resist quoting one splendid stanza now&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"No swordsmen are the Christians!" Oisin cried:<br />
+"O Patrick! thine is but a little race."<br />
+Nay, ancient Oisin! they have greatly died<br />
+In battle glory and with warrior grace.<br />
+Signed with the Cross, they conquered and they fell;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sons of the Cross, they stand:</span><br />
+The Prince of Peace loves righteous warfare well,<br />
+And loves thine armies, O our Holy Land!<br />
+The Lord of Hosts is with thee, and thine eyes<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shall see upon thee rise</span><br />
+His glory, and the blessing of His Hand.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Have you heard Timothy Sullivan's 'Song from the
+Backwoods'?" he asked me finally, and when I said I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+never had, he sang it for the assembled company, and
+a splendid song I found it. Here it is:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Deep in Canadian woods we've met,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From one bright island flown;</span><br />
+Great is the land we tread, but yet<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Our hearts are with our own.</span><br />
+And ere we leave this shanty small,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">While fades the Autumn day,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">We'll toast Old Ireland!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dear Old Ireland!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ireland, boys, hurray!</span><br />
+<br />
+We've heard her faults a hundred times,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The new ones and the old,</span><br />
+In songs and sermons, rants and rhymes,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Enlarged some fifty-fold.</span><br />
+But take them all, the great and small,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And this we've got to say:&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Here's dear Old Ireland!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Good Old Ireland!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ireland, boys, hurray!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>As he went on with the song, the others in the shop
+warmed up to it and joined in the chorus so lustily
+that a crowd gathered outside; and the shopkeeper got
+a little nervous, fearing, perhaps, a visit from some
+passing constable, and he whispered in O'Connell's ear,
+when the song was done, and there were no more songs
+that evening.</p>
+
+<p>But still we sat and talked and smoked and O'Connell
+told me something of himself: of the fifteen shillings
+a week he could earn when he had steady work;
+of the three-pence a week he paid out under the insurance
+act, and how, if he was sick, he would draw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+a benefit of ten shillings a week for six months. He
+said bitterly that, if he lived in England, he would
+get free medical attendance, too, but that had been
+refused to Ireland through the machinations of the
+doctors and their friends. He told of the blessing the
+old age pension had been to many people he knew, and
+he admitted that England had been trying, of late
+years, to atone for her old injustices toward Ireland,
+and was now, perhaps, spending more money on the
+country than she got out of it.</p>
+
+<p>"But there is a saying, sir, as you know," he concluded,
+rising and knocking out his pipe, "that hell is
+paved with good intentions; and however good England's
+intentions may be, she can never govern us well,
+because she can never understand us. Besides, it's not
+charity we want, it's freedom. Better a crust of bread
+and freedom, than luxury and chains! We'll have
+some hard fights, but we'll win out. Come back in
+ten years, sir, and you'll see a new Ireland. Take my
+word for it. It's glad I am that I came in here this
+night," he added. "I was feeling downcast and disheartened;
+but that is all over now. This talk has
+been a great pleasure to me. Good-bye, sir; God save
+you!" and he disappeared into the night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE RUINS AT ADARE</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">We</span> threw back the shutters, next morning, to a cold
+and dreary day of misting rain; and after a look at it,
+Betty elected to spend it before a cosy fire in our great,
+high-ceilinged room. I have wondered since if our
+hotel at Limerick was not one of those handsome eighteenth-century
+mansions, brought by the hard necessities
+of time to the use of passing travellers. It is difficult
+to explain the gorgeousness of some of its rooms
+on any other theory. Ours was a very large one, with
+elaborate ceiling-mouldings and panelled walls and a
+mantel of carved marble, which Betty inspected longingly.
+She could see it, I fancy, in her own drawing*-room,
+and perhaps its beauties had something to do with
+her decision to spend the day in front of it.</div>
+
+<p>There were two or three pictures I wanted to take&mdash;one
+of the old castle and another of the crooked little
+lane I had wandered through the night before; so I
+set forth to get them, along busy George Street, with its
+bright shops, and then across the river to English Town,
+and so to the castle front. I found it very hard to get
+anything like a satisfactory picture of it, because the
+parapet of the new bridge is in the way, and because
+the angle of my lens was not wide enough to take in
+both the towers. I did the best I could, took a last
+look at the treaty stone, but forbore to add to its fame
+by photographing it; and then traversed again the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+quaint old streets, with their ramshackle houses, and
+so came to the little lane.</p>
+
+<p>The town, as I came through it, had been full of
+market-carts drawn by ragged donkeys and driven by
+shawled women, and I loitered about for a time, hoping
+that one of them would come this way and so add
+a touch of human interest to my picture. A painter
+was busy giving one of the thatched houses a coat of
+white-wash; only it wasn't white-wash, properly
+speaking, because a colouring-matter had been added
+to it which made it a vivid pink. This pink wash is
+very popular in Ireland, and, varied sometimes by a
+yellow wash, adds a high note to nearly every landscape.
+I talked with the man awhile, and then, the
+rain coming down more heavily, I slipped into a cobbler's
+shop for shelter.</p>
+
+<p>It would be difficult to imagine anything more comfortless
+and primitive than that interior. The shop
+occupied one of the two rooms of the family home&mdash;bare
+little rooms with dirt floors and tiny windows and
+no furniture except the most necessary. Somebody
+has said that there are two pieces of furniture always
+worthy of veneration&mdash;the table and the bed; but I
+doubt if even that philosopher could have found anything
+to venerate in the specimens which this house contained.
+The table was a rude affair of rough boards,
+with one corner supported by a box in lieu of a leg,
+and the bed was a mere pile of rags on a sort of low
+shelf in one corner. What sort of fare was set forth
+upon that table, and what sort of rest the bed afforded,
+was not difficult to imagine.</p>
+
+<p>The cobbler was tapping away at a pair of shoes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+trying to mend them, and sadly they needed it. Indeed,
+they were such shoes as no self-respecting tramp
+would wear in America, and I could not but suspect
+that the cobbler had fished them from a garbage heap
+somewhere, and was trying, as a sort of speculation, to
+make them worth a few pennies. Two or three blocks
+of turf smoked and flared in a narrow fire-place, and,
+as always, a black pot hung over them, with some sort
+of mess bubbling inside it. The cobbler's wife sat on
+a stool before the fire contemplating the boiling pot
+gloomily, and a dirty child, of undeterminable sex,
+played with the scraps of leather on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>I apologised for my intrusion; but the atmosphere
+of the place was not genial. I fancied they resented
+my presence,&mdash;as I should have done, had our positions
+been reversed&mdash;and so, as soon as the downpour
+slackened a bit, I pressed a penny into the baby's fist
+and took myself off. The cobbler, suddenly softened,
+followed me outside to see me take the picture, and
+perhaps to be in it; but that picture was a failure, all
+spotted by the rain.</p>
+
+<p>I intended going to Adare, a little town not far
+away, said to possess a most remarkable collection of
+ruins, but it was yet an hour till train time, and I
+spent it exploring the town back of the railway station.
+I found it a most picturesque collection of crooked
+streets and quaint houses, and my advent was frankly
+treated as a great event by the gossips leaning over
+their half-doors. How eager they were to talk; I
+should have liked to stop and talk to all of them; but
+when I got ready to take a picture of the very crookedest
+street, their interest in my proceedings was so urgent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+and humorously-expressed that I lost my head and forgot
+to pull the slide&mdash;a fact I didn't realise until I had
+bade them good-bye and was walking away; and then
+I was ashamed to go back and take another.</p>
+
+<p>The train for Adare was waiting beside the platform
+when I got to the station, and I carefully selected a
+vacant compartment and clambered aboard. And then
+a guard came along and laughingly told me I would
+have to get out, because that car was reserved for a
+"Mothers' Union," which was going to Adare to hold
+a meeting. So I got out and waited on the platform
+till the Union arrived&mdash;some twenty or thirty comfortable-looking
+matrons, in high spirits, which the
+miserable weather did not dampen in the least. Irish
+meetings are held, I suppose, just the same rain or
+shine. It was Simeon Ford who remarked that if the
+Scotch knew enough to go in when it rained, they would
+never get any outdoor exercise. This is equally true
+of the Irish&mdash;only in Ireland, one doesn't need to go
+in, for sure 'tis a soft rain that does nobody any
+harm!</p>
+
+<p>Adare is about ten miles from Limerick and the road
+thither runs along the valley of the Shannon, with its
+lush meadows and lovely woods, veiled that day in a
+pearly mist of rain. As usual, the station is nearly
+a mile from the town, and as I started to walk it, I
+saw a tall old man coming along behind me, and I
+waited for him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis a bad day," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"It is so," he agreed; "and it's a long walk I have
+before me, for my house would be two miles beyont the
+village."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"They tell me there are some fine ruins in the village."</p>
+
+<p>"There are so;" and then he looked at me more attentively.
+"You're not a native of these parts?" he
+asked, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"No," I said; "I'm from America."</p>
+
+<p>"From America!" he echoed, incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; from the state called Ohio."</p>
+
+<p>"Think of that, now!" he cried. "And I can understand
+every word you say! Why, glory be to God,
+you speak fairer than the old woman up here along who
+has never crossed the road!"</p>
+
+<p>I should have liked to hear more about this remarkable
+old woman, but he gave me no chance with his
+many questions about America. He had a son in New
+Jersey, he said, and the boy was doing well, and sent
+a bit of money home at Christmas and such like. It
+was a wonderful place, America. Ah, if he were not so
+old&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>So, talking in this manner, we came to the town, and
+he pointed out the inn to me, opposite a picturesque
+string of thatched cottages nestling among the trees,
+and bade me Godspeed and went on his way; and I
+suppose that night before the fire he told of his meeting
+with the wanderer from far-off America, and how well
+he could understand his language!</p>
+
+<p>I went on to the inn, which was a surprisingly pretty
+one, new and clean and well-kept; and I took off my wet
+coat and sat down in the cosy bar before a lunch which
+tasted as good as any I have ever eaten; and then I lit
+my pipe and drew up before the fire and asked the
+pretty maid who served me how to get to the ruins.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+They were all, it seemed, inside the demesne of the
+Earl of Dunraven, the entrance to which was just
+across the road, and it was necessary that I should have
+an entrance ticket, which the maid hastened to get for
+me from the proprietor of the inn. When she gave it
+to me, I asked the price, and was told there was no
+charge, as the Earl of Dunraven was always glad for
+people to come to see the ruins.</p>
+
+<p>All honour to him for that!</p>
+
+<p>So it was with a very pleasant feeling about the
+heart that I presently crossed the road and surrendered
+a portion of my ticket to a black-eyed girl at the gate-house,
+and she told me how to go to get to the ruins,
+and hoped I wouldn't be soaked through. But I didn't
+mind the rain; it only added to the beauty of the park.
+Besides, I was thinking of "Silken Thomas."</p>
+
+<p>Have you ever heard of "Silken Thomas," tenth
+Earl of Kildare? Probably not; yet he was a great
+man in his day&mdash;not so great as his grandfather, that
+greatest of the Geraldines, whose trial for treason before
+Henry VII is a thing Irishmen love to remember.</p>
+
+<p>"This man burned the cathedral at Cashel," said the
+prosecutor, "and we will prove it."</p>
+
+<p>"Spare your evidence," said the Earl. "I admit
+that I set fire to the church, but 'twas only because I
+thought the archbishop was inside."</p>
+
+<p>"All Ireland cannot rule this man!" cried one of his
+opponents.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, by God, this man shall rule all Ireland!"
+said the King, and Kildare was made lord lieutenant,
+and went back to Dublin in triumph.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the thirteenth century that Adare came into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+possession of this mighty family, and the second Earl
+built a great castle here, on the site of an older one
+which had belonged to the dispossessed O'Donovans.
+The first Earl had already built near by a monastery
+for the Augustinians; and another Earl and his pious
+wife built a yet handsomer one for the Franciscans; so
+that here was citadel and sanctuary for them, when
+they grew weary of fighting, or when the tide of battle
+went against them. It was a Kildare who led the
+northern half of Ireland against the southern, at the
+great battle of Knocktow, where Irishmen slew each
+other by thousands, while the English looked on and
+chuckled in their sleeves; and after that, the Kildares
+waxed so powerful that Wolsey, the great minister of
+the eighth Henry, took alarm at their over-vaulting
+ambition, and caused the head of the house, the ninth
+Earl, to be summoned to London. He went unwillingly,
+though he had been given every assurance of
+safety; and his misgivings proved well-founded, for
+he was at once imprisoned in the Tower.</p>
+
+<p>He left behind him in Ireland his son, "Silken"
+Thomas, so-called from the richness of his attire and
+retinue, a youth of twenty-one; and when the news
+came that the old Earl had been put to death, Silken
+Thomas, deeming it credible enough, renounced his
+allegiance to England, marched into Dublin, and threw
+down his sword of state before the Chancellor and
+Archbishop in St. Mary's Abbey, and then rode boldly
+forth again, none daring to stop him. But it came to
+naught, for a great English force wore him out in a
+long campaign, seduced his allies from him, and finally
+persuaded him to yield on condition that his life should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+be spared. He sailed for England, assured of a pardon,
+was arrested as soon as he landed, and was beheaded,
+and drawn and quartered on Tower Hill, together
+with five of his kinsmen.</p>
+
+<p>So ended the haughty Geraldines. The estate was
+confiscated, and the castle, after being besieged by
+Desmonds and O'Connells, by Irish and by English,
+was finally taken by Cromwell's men and destroyed,
+and they also, perhaps, put the finishing touches to the
+monasteries.</p>
+
+<p>That was the wild old story I was thinking of as I
+made my way along the winding road, over a beautiful
+little stream in which I could see the trout lurking, and
+then across a golf ground to the ivy-draped ruins of the
+old abbey of the Franciscans, built by the Geraldines
+in the heyday of their power. It is a beautiful cluster
+of buildings, with a graceful square tower rising high
+above them; and they are in excellent preservation,
+lacking only the roofs and a portion of gable here and
+there. Even the window tracery is, for the most part,
+intact.</p>
+
+<p>The interior of the church is of unusual richness and
+beauty, abounding in delicate detail&mdash;recessed altar-tombs,
+richly-carved sedilia, arched vaults, graceful
+mouldings, and the window traceries are very pure and
+lovely. Here, as at Muckross, the cloisters are especially
+beautiful, and are perfectly preserved. They
+are lighted on two sides by pointed arches arranged in
+groups of three, while on the side next the church the
+arches are grouped in pairs, and the fourth side is
+closed in by a lovely arcade, with double octagonal
+columns. Here, also as at Muckross, the friars planted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>
+a yew tree in the centre of the court, and it is now a
+venerable giant. Whether it is as deadly as the
+Muckross yew I do not know.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 319px;">
+<a href="images/gs016-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs016.jpg" width="319" height="500" alt="THE CHOIR OF THE ABBEY AT ADARE" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE CHOIR OF THE ABBEY AT ADARE<br /><br />THE CASTLE OF THE GERALDINES, ADARE</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Beyond the cloisters are the refectory and domestic
+offices and dormitories, all well-preserved, and repaying
+the most careful scrutiny. I don't know when I have
+been more ecstatically happy than when, after examining
+all this beauty, I sat myself down under an arch
+in the very midst of it, and smoked a pipe and gazed
+and gazed.</p>
+
+<p>I tore myself away at last, and made my way across
+the meadow to the ruins of the castle, which I could
+see looming above the trees by the river. Right on
+the bank of the river it stands, and at one time there
+was a moat all around it which the river fed. One
+can see traces of the moat, even yet, with a fosse beyond,
+and there is enough left of the castle to show how
+great and strong this citadel of the Geraldines was.
+There is a high outer wall, all battlemented, pierced
+by a single gate; and then an inner ward, also with
+a single gate, flanked by heavy defending towers.
+Within this looms the ultimate place of refuge, the
+mighty donjon, forty feet square, with walls of tremendous
+strength, and flanking towers, and every device
+for defence, so that one wonders how it was ever
+taken.</p>
+
+<p>One can still go up by the narrow stone stair, and
+from the top look down upon these walls within walls,
+and fancy oneself back in the Middle Ages, with their
+pageantries and heroisms and picturesque mummeries;
+and one can see, too, how hard and comfortless life
+was then, save for the few who held wealth and power<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+in their mailed fists. "The good old times!" Not
+much! The sad, cruel, gruesome, selfish, treacherous
+old times, whose like, thank heaven, will never be
+seen again upon this earth!</p>
+
+<p>The rain was pouring down in sheets as I left the
+castle, but I could not forbear going back again to
+the friary for a last look at it; and then I tramped
+happily back along the road to the gate; and the black-eyed
+girl was there to welcome me, and to say how
+sorry she was that the day was so bad. But I did not
+think it bad; I thought it beautiful, and said so;
+only I was afraid my photographs wouldn't be worth
+reproducing.</p>
+
+<p>And then the girl asked me if I wouldn't come in and
+sit by the fire a bit, and we had a little gossip, of
+course about America. She had a married sister in
+New York, she said, and she hoped some day to join
+her. And then she told me that the cottage next door
+was where the famous Adare cigarettes were made&mdash;an
+industry started by the Earl, who grew the tobacco on
+his place.</p>
+
+<p>I stopped in to see the factory, and found four girls
+rolling the cigarettes and a man blending the tobaccos.
+He told me that the Earl had planted twenty-five acres
+with tobacco, and that it did very well; but it was not
+used alone, as it was too dark, but blended with the
+lighter Maryland, brought from America. I bought
+a packet of the cigarettes in the interests of this narrative,
+but they did not seem to me in any way extraordinary.</p>
+
+<p>I went on again and stopped in at the parish church,
+which was at one time a Trinitarian Friary, or White<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+Abbey, founded seven hundred years ago. It was falling
+into ruins, when the Earl, who seems omnipotent in
+these parts, restored it and fitted it up as a church and
+turned it over to the Catholics. There is a big school
+attached to it now, and as I entered the grounds, a
+white-coifed nun who was sitting at a window looking
+over some papers, fled hastily. The church itself is
+chiefly remarkable for a very beautiful five-lighted
+window over the altar. Just outside is a handsome
+Celtic cross, surmounting the fountain where the villagers
+get their water.</p>
+
+<p>There was a store farther down the street, and I
+stopped in to get some postcards. It was the most
+crowded store I ever saw, the ceiling hung with tinware,
+the shelves heaped with merchandise of every
+kind, and the floor so crowded with boxes and barrels
+that there was scarcely room to squeeze between them.
+I remarked to the proprietor that he seemed to carry a
+large stock, and he explained that he tried to have
+everything anybody would want, for it was foolish to
+let any money get away. While we were talking, a
+girl came in to sell some eggs. She had them in a
+basket, and the man took them out, but instead of
+counting them, he weighed them.</p>
+
+<p>I went on back to the station, after that, through the
+driving rain, and I was very wet by the time I got
+there&mdash;wet on the outside, that is, but warm and dry
+and happy underneath. And at the station, I found
+three men, who were engaged in a heated argument
+as to whether a man weighed any more after he had
+eaten dinner than he did before. One of the men contended
+very earnestly that one could eat the heartiest of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+meals without gaining an ounce of weight if one only
+took the precaution of drinking a mug or two of beer
+or porter with the meal, since the drink lightened the
+brain and so neutralised the weight of the food in the
+stomach. He asserted that he had seen this proved
+more than once, and that he was willing to bet on it.
+He was also willing to bet that he could put twelve pennies
+into a brimming glass of stout without causing
+it to spill. As the village was a mile away, there was
+no place to get a glass of stout and try this interesting
+experiment.</p>
+
+<p>And then one of the men, looking at my wet coat
+and dripping cap, asked me if I had been fishing.</p>
+
+<p>"No," I said. "I was tramping around through the
+demesne looking at the ruins and trying to get some
+pictures of them," and I tapped my camera.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the camera and then he looked at me.</p>
+
+<p>"Where would you be from?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"From America."</p>
+
+<p>"From America?" he echoed in surprise. "Ah,
+well," he added, after a moment's thought, "that do
+seem a long way to come just to get a few photos!"</p>
+
+<p>I couldn't help laughing as I agreed that it did; but
+I had never before thought of it in just that way.</p>
+
+<p>And then he told me that he had five brothers in
+America, but he himself had been in the army, and was
+minded to enlist again. In the army, one got enough
+to eat and warm clothes to wear and a tight roof to
+sleep under, which was more than most men were able
+to do in Ireland!</p>
+
+<p>The Mothers' Union presently arrived, very wet but
+very happy. I was curious to know what they had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+discussed at their meeting, and what conclusions they
+had reached, but the train pulled in a moment later,
+and I had no time to make any inquiries. If Betty
+had been along, I think I should have persuaded her to
+attend that meeting; but I found her very warm and
+comfortable before her fire back at Limerick, and I confess
+that I was glad to get out of my wet things and
+sit down in front of it.</p>
+
+<p>At 9:25 o'clock that night, when we supposed that
+most of Limerick was in bed, we heard the sound of
+music and the tramp of many feet in the street below,
+and looked out to see a band going past, followed by a
+great crowd of men tramping silently along in the
+wet. Ordinarily, I would have rushed out to see what
+was up; but I was tired, and the fire felt very good, and
+so I sat down again in front of it. I have been sorry
+since, for I suspect it was a Home Rule meeting, and
+Limerick has a great reputation for shindies. Perhaps
+O'Connell, journeyman tailor, made a speech. If he
+did, I am sorrier still, for I am sure it was a good one!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>There was one thing more at Limerick we wished to
+see&mdash;the great butter factory of the Messrs. Cleeve, on
+the other side of the Shannon. We had already seen,
+rumbling through the streets of Limerick, the heavy
+steam trams carrying enormous iron tanks, which collect
+the milk from the country for miles around&mdash;from ten
+thousand cows some one told us&mdash;and we had seen so
+few industries in Ireland that it seemed worth while
+to inspect this one. So, next morning, we walked
+down to the water-front, past the towering, empty
+warehouses, to the swing bridge which Cleeve wants to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+close so that his trams can get across the Shannon
+without going away around by the castle.</p>
+
+<p>The bridge, a very fine one, was named originally
+after Wellesley, but has been re-christened after
+Patrick Sarsfield, in whose honour the street which leads
+up from it is also named. The swivel which allows
+boats to pass and which isn't strong enough to carry
+the weight of Cleeve's trams, is on the Limerick side,
+and just beyond it is a statue which one naturally
+thinks is Sarsfield's, until one reads the inscription at
+its base and finds it is a presentment of a certain Lord
+Fitzgibbon, who was killed in the charge of the Light
+Brigade. Beyond that, the bridge stretches away
+across the wide and rapid stream, by far the biggest
+river in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>The butter factory is not far off, and we entered the
+office and told the clerk who came forward that we
+should like to see the place. He asked for my card,
+had me write my American address on it, and then disappeared
+with it into an inner room. There was a delay
+of some minutes, and finally one of the Messrs.
+Cleeve came out, my card in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>After greeting us quite cordially, he looked at the
+camera which I had under my arm, and asked if I expected
+to take any pictures of the place.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no," I said; "I hadn't thought of doing so.
+I certainly won't if you don't want me to."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you interested in the butter business?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only as a private consumer."</p>
+
+<p>"Or in the condensed milk business??"</p>
+
+<p>"No," I said promptly, "neither of us is interested in
+that, even as consumers." And then, seeing that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+still hesitated, I explained that we were just travelling
+Americans who had heard about the factory and
+thought we should like to see it; but that if it was
+against the rules, he had only to say so, and it would
+be all right.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't against the rules," he explained. "In fact,
+we welcome visitors; only we have to be careful. We
+have some secret processes, especially with our condensed
+milk, which we wouldn't care to have our competitors
+know about. But I'm sure you're all right,"
+he added, and called a clerk and told him to show us
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>Most interesting we found it, for twenty-three million
+gallons of milk are used there every year, and are
+converted not only into butter and condensed milk,
+but into buttons and cigarette holders and all sorts of
+things for which celluloid is commonly used. It was
+in this use of one of the by-products of the business,
+casein, so our guide explained, that much of the profit
+was made, since both the butter and the condensed
+milk had to be sold on a very close margin.</p>
+
+<p>The factory is a very complete one, making everything
+it uses&mdash;its own cans and boxes, its own labels,
+its own cartons, its containers of every kind and shape,
+as well as their contents. And the machinery with
+which this is done is very intricate and ingenious.</p>
+
+<p>Our guide said that one of the principal hazards of
+the business was the likelihood that some new machine
+would be invented at any time to displace the old ones,
+and would have to be purchased in order to keep
+abreast of competition.</p>
+
+<p>We saw the long troughs into which the milk is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+poured and strained and heated to Pasteurize it, and
+then run through the separators. In the next room were
+the great churns, from which the yellow butter was being
+taken; and beyond were the mechanical kneaders,
+which worked out the superfluous water and worked in
+the salt; and then the butter was put through a machine
+which divided it into blocks weighing a pound or two
+pounds, and then each of these blocks was carefully
+weighed, to be sure that it was full weight, and if it
+wasn't a little dab of butter was added before it was
+wrapped up and placed in the carton. And during
+all these processes it was never touched by any human
+finger.</p>
+
+<p>On the floor above were the great copper retorts in
+which the milk was being condensed by boiling. We
+looked in through a little isinglassed opening, and
+could see it seething like a volcano. And still higher
+up were the machines which turned the hardened casein,
+which would otherwise be wasted, into buttons and
+novelties of various kinds. The place seemed very
+prosperous and well-managed, and, so our guide assured
+us, was doing well. We were glad to find one
+such place in southern Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Of course there are many others; and perhaps the impression
+I have given of Limerick does the town injustice,
+for it is a busy place. It is famous for its bacon,
+to the making of which ten thousand pigs are sacrificed
+weekly. It used also to be famous for its lace, worked
+by hand on fine net; but Limerick lace is made almost
+everywhere nowadays except at Limerick, although
+there is a successful school there, I believe, in one of
+the convents.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The name of the town has also passed into the language
+as that of a distinctive five-line stanza, which
+Edward Lear made famous, and of which such distinguished
+poets as Rudyard Kipling, Cosmo Monkhouse,
+George du Maurier, Gelett Burgess and Carolyn Wells
+have written famous examples. The limerick is said
+to have been originally an extempore composition, a lot
+of people getting together and composing limericks, in
+turn, as a sort of game designed to while away an
+evening. Whether this was first done at Limerick I
+don't know, but the name came from the chorus which
+was sung after every stanza in order to give the next
+person time to get his limerick into shape:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Oh, won't you come up, come up, come up,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Oh, won't you come up to Limerick?</span><br />
+Oh, won't you come up, come all the way up,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Come all the way up to Limerick?</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>At least, that is the way I heard the chorus sung once,
+many years ago, without understanding in the least
+what it meant. The invitation, of course, is for the
+passing ship to enter the wide estuary of the Shannon
+and sail up to Limerick's waiting quays. If the first
+limerick was composed at Limerick, it must have been
+a long time ago, and I doubt if any are produced there
+nowadays.</p>
+
+<p>We took a last stroll about the town, after we had
+seen the butter-making, and looked at the great artillery
+barracks, and the big market, and the mammoth
+jail and the still more mammoth lunatic asylum, where
+the inmates are decked out in bright red bonnets, which
+I should think would make them madder still. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+then we walked through an open space called the People's
+Park, whose principal ornament is a tall column
+surmounted by the statue of a man named Spring Rice.
+Betty remarked that she had heard of spring wheat, but
+never of Spring Rice, and asked who he was; but I
+didn't know; and then we came to the Carnegie Library,
+and went inside to see what it was like.</p>
+
+<p>I have seldom seen a drearier place. In the reading-room
+a few shabby men were looking over some newspapers,
+but the rest of the building was deserted, except
+for one old man, who may have been the librarian.
+There were few books, and the names of those the
+library had were arranged in a remarkable mechanism
+which resembled a lot of miniature post-office boxes;
+and when the book was in, the name was turned out toward
+you, and when it was out, the card was turned
+blank-side out. It was the most complicated thing I
+ever saw in a public library. I suppose after a while,
+when the library gets more books, this bulletin will be
+used only for the newer ones; but I don't imagine there
+is a great demand for books in Limerick. At least
+mighty few seemed to be in circulation. Where life's
+realities are so bitter, where want is always at one's
+heels, there is little time for intellectual recreation.</p>
+
+<p>How bitter those realities are we realised, as we had
+never done before, on our way back to the station; for,
+on the doorstep of a low, little house, sat a ragged girl
+of six or eight, cuddling her doll against her breast
+and crooning to it softly. And the doll was just a
+block of turf, with a scrap of dirty rag for a dress.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>"WHERE THE RIVER SHANNON FLOWS"</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">I have</span> already spoken of the wonders of the River
+Shannon, which rises in a bubbling cauldron away
+above Lough Allen, and flows down through ten counties
+to the sea; widening into lakes twenty miles long,
+or draining vast stretches of impassable bog; navigable
+for more than two hundred miles; and, finally, the great
+barrier between eastern Ireland, which the Danes and
+English over-ran and conquered, and western Ireland,
+which has never ceased to be Irish, and where the old
+Gaelic is still the language of the people.</div>
+
+<p>The most beautiful portion of the river lies between
+Lough Derg, at whose lower end stands the ancient
+town of Killaloe, and Limerick, which marks the limit
+of the tideway. In this twenty-mile stretch, the river,
+for the first and last time in its course, is crowded in
+between high hills, and runs swift and deep and strong.
+It was this stretch we started out from Limerick,
+that day, to explore, and our first stopping-place was
+Castleconnell, about halfway to Killaloe. We found
+it a perfect gem of a town, situated most romantically
+on the left bank of the river, and with one of the nicest,
+cleanest, most satisfactory little inns I have ever seen.
+It reminded us of our inn at Killarney, for it was a
+rambling, two-storied structure, and the resort of fishermen.
+Castleconnell, as the guide-book puts it, is
+the Utopia of Irish anglers. I can well believe it, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>
+the salmon we saw caught at Killarney were mere
+babies beside the ones which are captured here.</p>
+
+<p>We made straight for the river as soon as we had divested
+ourselves of our luggage, down along the winding
+village street, past the ruins of the castle which
+was once the seat of the O'Briens, kings of Thomond,
+and which Ginkle blew up during the siege of Limerick,
+thinking it too dangerous a neighbour; and then
+we turned upstream, close beside the water's edge, for
+two or three miles. The exquisite beauty of every
+vista lured us on and on&mdash;the wide, rushing river, with
+its wooded banks, broken here and there by green
+lawns and white villas, lovely, restful-looking homes,
+whose owners must find life a succession of pleasant
+days. For this portion of the valley of the Shannon
+seems to me one of the real garden spots of the world.</p>
+
+<p>The river was in flood, and so not at its best for
+fishing, but nevertheless we passed many anglers patiently
+whipping the water in the hope that, by some
+accident, a passing fish might see the fly and take it.
+And at last we came to the end of the river road&mdash;a
+place called "World's End," where we had expected
+to get tea. But the refreshment booth was closed and
+there was no sign of any one in the neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>We were very hungry therefore, when we got back to
+our inn, and our high tea tasted very good indeed,
+served in the pleasantest of dining rooms, on a table
+with snowy linen and polished dishes and shining
+silver, and by a waiter who knew his business so well
+that I judged him to be French. What a pleasure that
+meal was, after the slovenly service of the house at
+Limerick, most of whose customers were commercial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>
+travellers! Irish commercial travellers, I judge, are
+the least fastidious of men!</p>
+
+<p>Just across the street from the inn at Castleconnell
+is the place where the famous Enright rods are made,
+and after tea we went over to take a look at them. I
+know nothing about rods, but any one could appreciate
+the beauties of the masterpieces which the man in
+charge showed us. And then he asked us if we
+wouldn't like to try one of them, and insisted on lending
+us his own&mdash;hurrying home after it, and stringing
+on the line and tying on the flies, and pressing it into
+my hand in a very fever of good-nature. I confess
+I shrank from taking it. I had a vision of some mighty
+fish gobbling down the fly and dashing off with a jerk
+that would crumple up the rod in my hands, and I
+tried to decline it. But he wouldn't hear of it&mdash;besides,
+there was Betty, her eyes shining at the prospect
+of fishing in the Shannon.</p>
+
+<p>So I took the rod at last, and we went down to the
+river again, and worked our way slowly down stream,
+along a path ablaze with primroses, and cast from place
+to place for an hour or more. There were many others
+doing the same thing, and they all seemed to think that
+the fish would be sure to rise as the twilight deepened.
+But they didn't, and I saw no fish caught that day.
+This didn't in the least interfere with any one's pleasure,
+for your true angler delights quite as much in the
+mere act of fishing as in actually catching fish. But
+it was with a sigh of relief I finally returned the rod
+intact to its owner. He said that I was welcome to
+it any time I wanted it, but I did not ask for it again.</p>
+
+<p>There were five or six fishermen staying at the hotel,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+and they came in one by one, empty-handed. They
+had had no luck that day&mdash;the water was too high;
+but it was already falling, and they were looking forward
+to great sport on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>That morrow was a memorable one for us, also. It
+was a perfect day, and we set out, as soon as we had
+breakfasted, for the falls of Doonas and St. Senan's
+well, one of the most famous of the holy wells of Ireland.
+To get to it, it was necessary to cross the river,
+and the only way to get across is by a ferry, which
+consists of a flat-bottomed skiff, propelled by a man
+armed only with a small paddle. As I looked from
+the paddle to the mighty sweep of the river, rushing
+headlong past, I had some misgivings, but we clambered
+aboard, and the boatman pushed off.</p>
+
+<p>He headed almost directly upstream, and then, when
+the current caught us, managed by vigorous and skilful
+paddling to hold his boat diagonally against it, so
+that it swept us swiftly over toward the other bank,
+and we touched it exactly opposite our point of departure.
+It was an exhibition of skill which I shall not
+soon forget.</p>
+
+<p>We stepped ashore upon a beautiful meadow rolling
+up to a stately, wide-flung mansion, and turned our
+faces down the river. Already the fishermen were
+abroad, some of them casting from the bank, but the
+most out in midstream, in flat-bottomed boats like the
+one we had crossed in, which two men with paddles
+held steady in some miraculous way against the stream.
+One was at the bow and the other at the stern, and
+they did not seem to be paddling very hard, but the
+boat swung slowly and steadily back and forth above<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>
+any spot which looked promising, no matter how swift
+the current.</p>
+
+<p>It grew swifter with every moment, for we were approaching
+the rapids, and at last we came out on a
+bluff overhanging them. Above the rapids, the river
+flows in a broad stream forty feet deep, but here it is
+broken into great flurries and whirlpools by the rocky
+bed, which rises in dark irregular masses above its surface,
+and the roar and the dash and the white foam and
+flying spray are very picturesque. For nearly a mile
+the tumult continues, and then the stream quiets
+down again and sweeps on toward Limerick and the
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>We followed close beside it to a little inn called the
+"Angler's Rest," set back at the edge of a pretty garden,
+entered through a gate with three steps, on which
+were graven the words of the old Irish greeting, "Cead
+Mile Failte," a hundred thousand welcomes. We sat
+down for a time at the margin of the river and watched
+the changing water, and then set off to find St. Senan's
+well.</p>
+
+<p>There are really two wells. The first is in a graveyard,
+a few rods away, where a fragment of an old
+church is still standing. It is a tangled and neglected
+place, with the headstones tumbled every way, and
+bushes and weeds running riot, but the path that leads
+to the well shows evidence of frequent use. The well
+itself is merely a small hollow in an outcropping of
+rock&mdash;a shallow basin, about a foot in diameter, but
+always miraculously full of water. I don't know how
+the water gets into it, or whether it is true that the
+basin is always full, but it certainly was that day; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>
+the legend is that whoever bathes his forehead in that
+water will never again be troubled with headache, provided
+that he does it reverently, with full belief, and
+with the proper prayers. The well is shadowed by a
+tall hawthorn bush, and this bush is hung thick with
+cheap rosaries and rags and hairpins and bits of string
+and other tokens placed there by the true believers who
+had tested the wonderful properties of the water. We
+tested them, too, of course, and added our tokens to
+the rest.</p>
+
+<p>The principal well is a little farther up the road,
+set back in a circle of trees and approached by a short
+avenue of lindens. It is a far more important well
+than the other&mdash;is one of the most famous in Ireland,
+indeed&mdash;and is covered with a little shrine, which you
+will find pictured opposite the next page. The shrine
+is hung with rosaries and crowded with figurines and
+pictures of the Virgin and of various saints, among
+which, I suppose, the learned in such matters might
+have picked out Saint Senan, who blessed this well
+and gave it its miraculous power. The trees which
+encircle the glade in which the well stands are also
+hung with offerings&mdash;sacred pictures, rosaries, small
+vessels of gilt, and the crutches of those who came
+lame and halting and went away cured. On either side
+of the entrance is a bench where one may sit while saying
+one's prayers, and in front of the shrine is a shallow
+basin, some two feet wide and a yard long, into
+which the water from the well trickles, and where one
+may sit and wash all infirmities away. The water is
+held to be especially efficacious in curing rheumatism
+and hip disease and diseases of the joints; and I only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>
+hope the cripples who left their crutches behind them
+never had need of them again.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 315px;">
+<a href="images/gs017-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs017.jpg" width="315" height="500" alt="THE SHANNON, NEAR WORLD&#39;S END" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE SHANNON, NEAR WORLD&#39;S END<br /><br />ST. SENAN'S WELL</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>This whole valley of the Shannon, from Killaloe to
+the sea, is dominated by the patron of this well, St.
+Senan, a holy man who died in 544, and whose life
+resembled that of St. Kevin, whom we have already
+encountered at Glendalough. Like Kevin, Senan was
+persecuted by the ladies, who, in all ages, have taken
+a peculiar delight in pursuing holy men, and he was finally
+driven to take refuge on a little island at the
+mouth of the Shannon, Scattery Island, where he hoped
+to be left in peace. But he was destined to disappointment,
+for a lady named Cannera, since sainted, followed
+him and asked permission to remain. This
+scene, of course, appealed to Tom Moore, and he enshrined
+it in a poem, of which this is the final stanza:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+The Lady's prayer Senanus spurned;<br />
+The winds blew fresh, the bark returned;<br />
+But legends hint that had the maid<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Till morning's light delayed,</span><br />
+And given the Saint one rosy smile,<br />
+She ne'er had left his lonely isle.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I do not know upon what evidence Moore bases this
+slander of a holy man; but, at any rate, he stayed on
+his island, and built a monastery and collection of
+little churches there for the use of the disciples who
+soon gathered about him, and their ruins, which much
+resemble those at Glendalough, even to a tall round
+tower, may be seen to this day. Some antiquarians
+hold that St. Senan is merely a personification of the
+Shannon; but I don't see how a personification could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+build a collection of churches. It is more satisfactory,
+anyway, to think of him as a person who once existed,
+and lived a picturesque life, and built churches and
+blessed holy wells, and died at a ripe age in the odour
+of sanctity.</p>
+
+<p>We sat for a long time before his shrine, looking at
+the tokens and the crutches, and wishing we had been
+there the day they were abandoned. To be made
+whole by faith is a wonderful thing, whatever form
+the faith may take, and I should like to have seen the
+faces of the cripples as they felt the miracle working
+within them, here in this obscure place. Unlettered
+they no doubt were, unable to read or write perhaps,
+believing this flat and stable earth the centre about
+which the universe revolves; but they touched heights
+that day which such sophisticated and cynically sceptical
+persons as you and I can never reach.</p>
+
+<p>We left the shrine, at last, and made our way back
+to the river, and up along it, past the rapids, to the
+ferry. The ferryman was watching for us, and had
+us back on the Castleconnell side in short order. He
+evidently considered the sixpence I gave him a munificent
+reward for the double trip.</p>
+
+<p>When we got back up into the village, we found
+it in the throes of a great excitement over the arrival
+of three itinerant musicians, two of whom played cornets,
+while the third banged with little sticks upon a
+stringed instrument suspended in front of him. The
+cornetists paused from time to time, to make short
+excursions, cap in hand, in search of pennies, but the
+third man never stopped, but kept playing away all
+up the street and out of sight. We came across them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+again when we walked over to the station to take the
+train for Killaloe; but I judge their harvest was a
+slender one, for the people who hung out of gates and
+over doors to listen to the music, disappeared promptly
+whenever the collectors started on their rounds.</p>
+
+<p>We had a little while to wait at the station, and I
+got into talk with the signalman, who told me he had
+a brother, a Jesuit priest, in Maryland, and who wanted
+to hear about America, whither he hoped to be able to
+come some day. That it would be at best a far-off
+day I judged from the wistful way in which he said it.</p>
+
+<p>And then he saw that I was interested in the signal-system
+by which the trains on his little branch were
+managed, and he explained it to me. For each section
+of the road there is a hollow iron tube, some two feet
+long, with brass rings around it, called a staff. The
+engine-driver brings one of these staffs in with him,
+and this must be deposited in an automatic device in
+the signal-house and another received from the signalman
+before the train can proceed. When the staff is
+deposited in the machine, it automatically signals the
+next station and releases the staff in the machine there,
+ready to be given to the engineer of the approaching
+train. No staff, once placed in the machine, can be
+got out again until it is released in this way, and as no
+train can leave a station until its engineer has received
+a staff, it is practically impossible for two trains to
+be on the same section of road at the same time. The
+system is rather slow, but it is sure; and being automatic,
+it leaves nothing to chance, or to the vagaries of
+either engineer or signalman.</p>
+
+<p>The bell rang, signalling the approach of our train,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>
+the signalman carefully closed the gates across the
+highway which ran past the station, and a crowd of
+men and boys collected, to whom the arrival of the
+train was the most important and interesting event of
+the day; and then it puffed slowly in, and we climbed
+aboard. Killaloe is only ten miles or so from Castleconnell,
+but we had to change at a station called Bird
+Hill; and then the line ran close beside the Shannon,
+with lofty hills crowding down upon it, and at last we
+saw the beautiful bridge which spans the river, and beyond
+it the spires and roofs of the little town.</p>
+
+<p>Not unless one knows one's Irish history will one
+realise what a wonderful place Killaloe is; for Killaloe
+is none other than Kincora, a word to stir Irish hearts,
+the stronghold of the greatest of Irish kings, Brian
+Boru. When that great chieftain fell at Clontarf,
+MacLiag, his minstrel, wrote a lament for him in the old
+Gaelic, and James Clarence Mangan has rendered it
+into an English version, of which this is the first stanza:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+O, where, Kincora, is Brian the Great?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And where is the beauty that once was thine?</span><br />
+O, where are the princes and nobles that sate<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">At the feast in thy halls, and drank the red wine?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Where, O, Kincora?</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>It was by no mere chance that Kincora, the seat of
+the Kings of Thomond, was situated just here, for it
+was this point which controlled the valley of the lower
+Shannon. Limerick marks the head of the tideway
+navigable from the sea, then come fifteen miles of rushing
+torrent, of fall and rapid, which no boat can pass;
+and then comes the long stretch of placid lake and river<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+over which boats may go as far as the ford of Athlone,
+and farther. Between Athlone and the sea, there was
+just one ford&mdash;a treacherous and hidden one, it is true,
+possible only to those who knew every step of it, but
+still a ford&mdash;and it was here, a little above the present
+town of Killaloe, where Lough Derg begins to narrow
+between the hills.</p>
+
+<p>Brian was born here in 941. Twenty years before,
+the Danes had sailed in force up the Shannon and fortified
+the island at the head of the tideway which is
+now the oldest part of Limerick. They set themselves
+to ravage the wide and fertile valley, to sack the shrines
+of the churches, to exact tribute from every chieftain&mdash;nay,
+from every family. MacLiag, Brian's bard,
+author of that old epic, "The Wars of the Gael with
+the Gall," another Homer almost, who told the story
+of Danish oppression down to their final defeat at
+Clontarf, thus described the burden under which, in
+those days, the people of Ireland groaned:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Such was the oppressiveness of the tribute and the rent
+of the foreigners over all Erin, that there was a king from
+them over every territory, a chief over every chieftaincy, an
+abbot over every church, a steward over every village, and
+a soldier in every house, so that no man of Erin had power
+to give even the milk of his cow, nor as much as the clutch
+of eggs of one hen, in succour or in kindness to an aged man,
+or to a friend, but was forced to keep them for the foreign
+steward or bailiff or soldier. And though there were but
+one milk-giving cow in the house, she durst not be milked
+for an infant of one night, nor for a sick person, but must
+be kept for the foreigner; and however long he might be
+absent from the house, his share or his supply durst not be
+lessened."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Brian had an elder brother, Mahon, who was king
+of South Munster, and dwelt at Cashel, and the two
+did what they could against the invaders, killing them
+off "in twos and in threes, in fives and in scores"; but
+always fresh hordes poured in, and at last Mahon grew
+disheartened at the seemingly endless struggle against
+these stark, mail-clad warriors; while as for Brian, his
+force was reduced to a mere tattered handful, hiding
+in the hills. Then it was that he and Mahon met to
+discuss the future.</p>
+
+<p>"But where hast thou left thy followers?" Mahon
+asked, looking at the men, only a score in number,
+standing behind their chief.</p>
+
+<p>"I have left them," answered Brian, "on the field of
+battle."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said Mahon, sadly. "Is it so? You see how
+little we can do against these foreigners."</p>
+
+<p>"Little as it is," said Brian, "it is better than peace."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is folly to keep on fighting," said Mahon.
+"We can not conquer these shining warriors, clad in
+their polished corselets. The part of wisdom is to
+make terms with them, and leave no more of our men
+dead upon the field."</p>
+
+<p>"It is natural for men to die," answered Brian
+calmly; "but it is neither the nature nor the inheritance
+of the Dalcassians to submit to injury and outrage.
+And yet I have no wish to lead any unwilling man to
+battle. Let the question of war or peace be left to the
+whole clan."</p>
+
+<p>So it was done, and "the voice of hundreds as of one
+man answered for war."</p>
+
+<p>Mahon abode loyally by this decision, and there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>
+was a great muster, and a fierce battle near the spot
+where Limerick Junction now stands, and the Danes
+were routed, "and fled to the ditches, and to the valleys,
+and to the solitudes of that great sweet-flowery
+plain," and the Irish pursued them all through the
+night, and with the morning, came to Limerick, and
+stormed and took the island fortress; plundered it,
+and reduced it "to a cloud of smoke and red fire afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>Then Mahon was murdered by some such treachery
+as stains so many pages of Irish history, and Brian became
+king of all Munster. His first work was to
+punish his brother's murderers, which he did with grim
+celerity, so that, as the chronicler puts it, they soon
+found that he "was not a stone in place of an egg, nor
+a wisp in place of a club, but a hero in place of a
+hero, and valour in place of valour." After that, with
+new energy, he turned against the Danes, and harried
+them and was himself harried, defeated them and was
+himself defeated, but fought on undaunted year after
+year, until the final great victory at Clontarf, where he
+himself was slain. And during all the years that he
+was king of Munster, he ruled it, not from Cashel, but
+from Kincora, his well-beloved castle here at the ford
+of the Shannon.</p>
+
+<p>The ford is no longer there, for an elaborate system
+of sluice-gates and weirs has been constructed to hold
+the water back and regulate the supply to the lower
+reaches of the river, and one crosses to the town upon
+a beautiful stone bridge of thirteen arches, between
+which the water swirls and eddies, forming deep pools,
+where great salmon love to lurk. At its other end is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+the town, with its houses mounting the steep slope from
+the river, and dominated by the square tower of its old
+cathedral.</p>
+
+<p>It was to the cathedral we went first, and a venerable
+pile we found it, dating from the twelfth century, and
+attributed to that same Donall O'Brien, King of Munster,
+who built the one at Limerick. But, alas, it is
+venerable only from without; as one steps through the
+doorway, all illusion of age vanishes, for the interior
+has been "improved" to suit the needs of a small Church
+of Ireland congregation.</p>
+
+<p>The Protestants in this parish are so few that the
+choir of the cathedral is more than ample for them; so
+it has been closed off from the rest of the church by a
+glass screen with hideous wooden "tracery"&mdash;there is
+a rose window (think of it!) sawed out of boards; and
+beyond this screen an ugly pavement of black and yellow
+tiles has been laid over the beautiful grey flags of
+the old pavement, and pews have been installed. One
+of the transepts is used as a robing-room; in the other
+an elaborate combination of steam-engine, dynamo and
+storage-batteries has been placed to furnish heat and
+light&mdash;and this, mind you, in the church which was
+once the royal burying-place of the Kings of Munster!</p>
+
+<p>It seems foolish to maintain a great church like this
+for the use of so small a congregation as worships here,
+and yet the same thing is done all over Ireland, though
+it would seem to be only common sense to give the big
+churches to the big congregations, and to provide small
+churches for the small ones. But I suppose no one in
+Ireland would dare make such a suggestion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I am surprised that the energetic vicar of this parish
+has not decided that the church is too dark and hired
+some workmen to knock out the lancet windows.
+These windows are one of its chief beauties, they are
+so tall, so narrow, so deeply splayed&mdash;the very earliest
+form, before the builders gathered courage to cut any
+but the smallest openings in their walls. And in the
+wall of the nave, blocked up and with use unexplained,
+is a magnificent Irish-Romanesque doorway. Tradition
+has it that it was the entrance to the tomb of
+King Murtough O'Brien, and its date is placed at the
+beginning of the twelfth century. The man who built
+it was an artist, for nothing could be more graceful
+than its four semi-circular arches, rising one beyond
+the other and covered with ornamentation&mdash;spiral and
+leaf work, grotesque animals with tails twined into
+the hair of human heads, flowers and lozenges, and the
+familiar dog-tooth pattern, of which the Irish were so
+fond.</p>
+
+<p>Interesting as the church is, or would be but for the
+"improvements," it is far outranked by a tiny stone
+structure just outside&mdash;the parish church of Brian Boru
+himself. It is less than thirty feet long, and the walls
+are nearly four feet thick, and the two narrow windows
+which light it, one on either side, are loopholes rather
+than windows; and the doorway by which it is entered,
+narrower at the top than at the bottom, is a veritable
+gem; and the high-pitched roof of fitted blocks of stone
+is twice as high as the walls;&mdash;and on the stone slabs
+of its pavement Brian Boru was wont to kneel in
+prayer, five centuries before Columbus sailed out of
+Palos!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of course I wanted a picture of this shrine; but there
+were difficulties, for it stands in a little depression
+which conceals part of it, and the high wall around
+the churchyard prevented my getting far enough away
+to get all of the high-pitched roof on the film. The
+caretaker, who was most interested in my man&oelig;uvres,
+brought a ladder at last, and I mounted to the top of
+the wall, and took the picture opposite the next page;
+but, even then, I didn't get it all.</p>
+
+<p>The graveyard about these churches is a large one,
+but it is crowded with tombs; and the north half of
+it is mown and orderly, and the south half is almost
+impenetrable because of the rank and matted grass and
+weeds and nettles. This is the result of an old quarrel,
+more foolish than most. For, like Ireland itself, this
+graveyard is divided between Protestants and Catholics,
+the Protestants to the north and the Catholics to the
+south of the church; and the Protestants consider their
+duty done when they have cared for the graves in their
+own half; while the Catholics hold that, since the Protestants
+claim the cathedral, they are bound to look
+after its precincts; and the result is that the visitor to
+those precincts is half the time floundering knee-deep
+in weeds.</p>
+
+<p>The most interesting tomb in the place is in the midst
+of this tangle, therefore a Catholic's. It bears the date
+1719, and is most elaborately decorated with carved
+figures&mdash;one kneeling above the legend, "This is the
+way to Blis"; another, a man with crossed arms, inquiring,
+"What am I? What is man?"&mdash;two questions
+which have posed the greatest of philosophers.
+One panel bears this sestet:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+How sweetly rest Christ's saints in love<br />
+That in his presence bee.<br />
+My dearest friends with Christ above<br />
+Thim wil I go and see<br />
+And all my friends in Christ below<br />
+Will post soon after me.<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+<a href="images/gs018-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs018.jpg" width="320" height="500" alt="THE BRIDGE AT KILLALOE" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE BRIDGE AT KILLALOE<br /><br />THE ORATORY AT KILLALOE</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>We left the place, at last, and walked on along the
+street, peeping in between the bars of an iron gate at
+the beautiful grounds of the Bishop's palace; and then
+up a steep and narrow lane to the little plateau which
+is now the town's market-place, but where, in the old
+days, Brian's palace of Kincora stood. Not a stone
+is left of that palace now, for the wild men of Connaught
+swept down from the mountains, in the twelfth
+century, while the English were trying to hold the castle
+and so control the destinies of Clare, and drove the
+intruders out, and tore the castle stone from stone, and
+threw timber and stone alike into the Shannon. Just
+beyond the square stands the Catholic church&mdash;a barn-like
+modern structure, hastily thrown together to shelter
+the swarming congregation, for which the cathedral
+would be none too large.</p>
+
+<p>We went on down the hill, past the canal, with the
+roaring river beyond, and the purple vistas of Lough
+Derg opening between the hills in the distance, along
+an avenue of noble trees, and there before us lay a
+great double rath, sloping steeply to the river, built
+here to guard the ford. The ford lies there before it&mdash;a
+ford no longer, since the sluices back up the water;
+but in the old days this was the key to County Clare,
+this was the path taken by the men of Connaught in
+raid and foray; and here it was that Sarsfield, with four<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+hundred men, followed Hogan the rapparee, on that
+night expedition which resulted in the destruction of
+the English ammunition-train. Aubrey de Vere has
+told the story in a spirited little poem, beginning,</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Sarsfield went out the Dutch to rout,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And to take and break their cannon;</span><br />
+To Mass went he at half past three,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And at four he crossed the Shannon.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>We had hoped to go to Athlone by way of Lough
+Derg, but we had already learned that that was not to
+be, for we had been told, back at the bridge, that the
+passenger service across the lake would not start until
+the sixteenth of June. And we were sorry, for, from
+the summit of this old rath, the lake, stretching away
+into the misty distance, looked very beautiful and inviting.</p>
+
+<p>We made our way back to the village and stopped
+in at a nice little hotel just below the bridge, and had
+tea, served most appetizingly by a clean, bright-eyed
+maid; and then, while Betty sat down to rest, I sallied
+forth to see, if possible, the greatest curiosity of
+all about Killaloe&mdash;the original church or oratory of
+St. Molua, on an island near the left bank of the Shannon,
+about half a mile downstream.</p>
+
+<p>Now to get back to St. Molua, one has to go a long
+way indeed, for he died three hundred years before
+Brian Boru was born. He was the first bishop of
+Killaloe, which is named after him, "cill" meaning
+church, and Killaloe being merely a contraction of Cill
+Molua, the church of Molua. The little oratory on
+the island, to which he retired for contemplation, after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+the manner of Irish saints, was built not later than the
+year 600.</p>
+
+<p>You will understand, therefore, why I was so eager
+to see it, and I went into the bar to consult with the
+barmaid as to the best manner of getting to it. I had
+been told that it was possible to reach it from the left
+bank of the river without the aid of a boat, but the
+maid assured me this could be done only when the river
+was low, and was out of the question in the present
+stage of the water. So she went to the door and called
+to a passing boatman, and explained my wishes, and
+he at once volunteered to ferry me over to the island.
+His house, he said, was just opposite the island, and
+his boat was tied up at the landing there; so we walked
+down to it, along the bank of the canal which parallels
+the river.</p>
+
+<p>A little way down the canal was a mill, and a boat
+was tied up in front of it unloading some grain, and
+when I looked into the boat, I saw that the grain was
+shelled Indian corn! It was not from America, however,
+but from Russia, and my companion told me that
+quite a demand for cornmeal was growing up in the
+neighbourhood, and that it was used mixed with flour.
+And then he listened, his eyes round with wonder, while
+I told him how corn grows. He had never seen it on
+the ear, and did not know the meaning of the word
+"cob," except as applied to a horse.</p>
+
+<p>"And of course you have seen bananas growing!" he
+said, when I had finished, and I think he scarcely believed
+me when I tried to explain that a country warm
+enough for corn might still be too cold for bananas.</p>
+
+<p>We finally reached his house&mdash;a little hovel built on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>
+a bluff overhanging the river&mdash;and went down some
+rude stone steps to the water's edge; and he unchained
+his boat, and whistled to his dog, and pushed off. It
+was quite an exciting paddle, for the current was very
+swift; but we got across to the island at last, after
+some hair-raising scrapings against rocks and over submerged
+reefs. We found the island a tangle of weeds
+and briars, but we broke our way through, and after
+some searching, found the tiny church, almost hidden
+by the bushes about it. They were so thick that I
+found it quite impossible to get a picture of the whole
+church, but by breaking down some of them, I finally
+managed to get a picture of the narrow inclined
+doorway, with my guide's dog posing on the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>The oratory is built solidly of stone, with walls three
+feet thick, and a steep stone roof. Its inside measurements
+are ten feet by six! There is a single window,
+with a round head cut out of a block of stone, and in the
+wall on either side just below it is a shallow recess.
+The ceiling has fallen in, but one can still see the holes
+in the walls where the supporting beams rested. Above
+it, under the steep roof, was a croft, where perhaps
+the saint slept.</p>
+
+<p>Consider, for a moment, what was going on in the
+world when this little church was built. It takes us
+back to the age of legend&mdash;the age of King Arthur and
+his knights&mdash;to that dim period when the Saxons were
+conquering England, and the Frankish kingdom was
+falling to pieces, and Mohammed was preaching his
+gospel in Arabia. A century and a half would elapse
+before Charlemagne was born, and two centuries before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+the first Norse boat, driving westward before the
+tempest, touched the New England coast!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 318px;">
+<a href="images/gs019-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs019.jpg" width="318" height="500" alt="ENTRANCE TO ST. MOLUA&#39;S ORATORY" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">ENTRANCE TO ST. MOLUA&#39;S ORATORY<br /><br />A FISHERMAN'S HOME</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>There is, of course, a holy well on the island&mdash;the
+one at which St. Molua drank; and we found it after
+a long search, but the river was so high that it was
+under two or three feet of water. There were some
+rags and other tokens hanging on the neighbouring
+bushes, but not many, and I judge that few people ever
+come to this historic spot.</p>
+
+<p>At last I was ready to go, and we climbed into the
+boat and started for the mainland; and once I thought
+we were surely going to capsize, for the boat got out
+of control and banged into a rock; but we finally
+stemmed the current, and the boatman dropped his
+paddle and snatched up a pole, and pushed along so
+close to the shore that the overhanging branches slapped
+us in the face, and the dog, thinking we were going to
+land, made a wild leap for the bank, fell short, and
+nearly drowned.</p>
+
+<p>When we were safe again at the landing-place, and
+the boat tied up, I asked my companion how much I
+owed him for his trouble.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a penny, sir," he said, warmly. "It's glad I
+am to oblige a pleasant gentleman like yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but look here," I protested, "that won't do,"
+and I fished through my pockets and was appalled to
+find that I had only nine-pence in change. "Wait till
+we get back to the hotel," I said, "and I'll get some
+money."</p>
+
+<p>"What is that you have in your hand, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's only nine-pence."</p>
+
+<p>"That would be far too much, sir," he said; and when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+I hesitatingly gave it to him, he as hesitatingly took
+it, and I really believe he was in earnest in thinking
+it too much.</p>
+
+<p>On our way back to the town, he expounded to me his
+theory of life, which was to give faithful service to
+one's employer, and help one's fellow-men when possible,
+and never bother unduly about the future, which
+was never as black as it looked. And I agreed with
+him that trouble always came butt-end first, and that,
+after it had passed, it frequently dwindled to a pinpoint&mdash;the
+which has been said in verse somewhere, by
+Sam Walter Foss I think, but I can't put my hand on
+it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We got back to Castleconnell just as the fishermen
+were coming in, and it was far from empty-handed
+they were this time. The array of salmon stretched
+out on the floor of the bar, when they had all arrived,
+was a very noble one. And everybody stood around
+and looked at them proudly, and told of the enormous
+flies that had been used, and how one monster had
+whipped the boat around and towed it right down
+through the rapids, and lucky it was that the water
+was high or it would infallibly have been ripped
+to pieces, but the boatmen kept their heads and managed
+to get it through, and when the salmon came out
+in the quiet river below and found itself still fast, it
+gave up and let itself be gaffed without any further
+fuss.</p>
+
+<p>And again after dinner, we saw the familiar sight
+of the catch being wrapped in straw to be sent by
+parcel post back to England, as proof of the anglers'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+prowess; and I can guess how those battles on Shannon
+water were fought over again when the angler got back
+to the bosom of his family. As for me, I have only
+to close my eyes to see again that noble stream sweeping
+along between its green, flower-sprinkled banks,
+foaming over the weirs, brawling past the rapids, hurrying
+between the quays of Limerick, and widening
+into the great estuary where it meets the sea.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Into the West, where, o'er the wide Atlantic,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The lights of sunset gleam,</span><br />
+From its high sources in the heart of Erin<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flows the great stream.</span><br />
+<br />
+Yet back in stormy cloud or viewless vapour<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wandering waters come,</span><br />
+And faithfully across the trackless heaven<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Find their old home.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Since</span> we could not get to Athlone by water, we must
+needs get there by rail; so, most regretfully, next morning,
+we bade good-bye to Castleconnell and took train
+for Limerick. Half an hour later, we pulled out of
+the Limerick terminus, circled about the town, crossed
+the Shannon by a long, low bridge, and were in County
+Clare.</div>
+
+<p>Ruins are more numerous here than almost anywhere
+else in Ireland, for this western slope of the Shannon
+valley, so fertile and coveted, was famous fighting-ground.
+There are one or two in sight all the time,
+across the beautiful rolling meadows. Near Cratloe
+there are three, their great square keeps looming above
+the trees, and looking out across the wide Shannon
+estuary. A little farther on is the famous seat of the
+Earls of Thomond, Bunratty Castle, a fine old fortress,
+with all the approved medi&aelig;val trimmings of
+moat, guard-room, banqueting-hall, dungeons and torture-chamber,
+and I am sorry we did not get to visit it.
+Indeed, there are many places in the neighbourhood
+worth a visit&mdash;but if one is going to visit every Irish
+ruin, he will need ten years for the task. Only it does
+cause a pang of the heart to pass any of them by.</p>
+
+<p>We must have passed at least fifty by, that day;
+but I found that the train stopped for a while at Ennis,
+the chief town of Clare, and I hurried out to see what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+I could of it. It is certainly a picturesque place, with
+narrow winding streets, and queer little courts, and
+houses painted pink or washed with yellow ochre. I
+glanced in at the new Catholic cathedral, whose most
+impressive feature is a rather good picture of the ascension
+over the high altar; and then spent a few minutes
+among the ruins of the Franciscan friary, a queer jumble
+of buildings which I did not have time to untangle.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, the two biggest buildings in the town are
+the jail and the lunatic asylum, and I passed them both
+on my way back to the station. Some of the lunatics
+were languidly hoeing a big potato patch that day,
+with five or six guards looking on. I have never looked
+up the statistics of lunacy in Ireland, but if all the asylums
+are full, the rate must be very high.</p>
+
+<p>About half a mile beyond Ennis, the train passes
+a most imposing ruin, very close to the railway. It is
+the ruin of Clare Abbey, and is dominated by a great
+square tower, which must be visible for many miles
+around. There is still another ruin, that of Killone
+Abbey, only a few miles away, and for a connoisseur
+in ruins, Ennis would be an excellent place to spend
+a few days.</p>
+
+<p>From Ennis, we turned almost due northward toward
+Athenry, and the landscape became the rockiest I have
+ever seen. Every little field was surrounded by a high
+stone wall, and as these walls did not begin to exhaust
+the supply, there were great heaps of rocks in every
+available corner&mdash;every one of them dug from the shallow
+soil with almost incredible labour. The fact that
+any one would try to reclaim such land speaks volumes
+for the hard necessities of the people who settled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+here. I don't suppose they enjoyed the labour, but
+they had no choice&mdash;at least, their only choice was to
+wrest a living from these rocky fields or starve. No
+doubt many of them did starve, but the rest kept labouring
+on, with insect-like industry, reclaiming this
+corner and that, adding to the soil of their fields inch
+by inch.</p>
+
+<p>There is an old saying that in this district, and in
+others like it in Connaught, the first three crops are
+stones, and I can well believe it. The green appearance
+of these hillsides is a delusion and a snare, for it
+is nothing but a skin of turf over the rocks, and these
+rocks must be dug away to the depth of two feet,
+sometimes, before the soil is reached. In any other
+part of the world, a man who would attempt to convert
+such a hillside into an arable field would be thought
+insane; here, in the west of Ireland, it is the usual
+thing. Most tragic of all, after it was fit for tillage,
+it did not belong to the man whose labour had made it
+so, but to his English landlord, who promptly proceeded
+to raise the rent!</p>
+
+<p>We ran out of this rocky land, at last, and crossed a
+vast bog, scarred with long, black, water-filled ditches,
+from which the turf had been taken. There were a
+few people here and there cutting it, but a woman who
+had got into the compartment with us said that the
+continued wet weather had made the work very difficult
+and dangerous. All the people hereabouts, she added,
+lived by the turf cutting, at which they could earn,
+perhaps, ten-pence a day; but in bad seasons they were
+soon close to starvation. I remarked that, with such
+wages, they must be close to it all the time, and she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>
+smiled sadly and said that that was true. Only, of
+course, in the bogs the children can work, as well as
+the men and women, and that helps. Indeed, we saw
+them many times&mdash;little boys and girls who should
+have been at school or running free, gaining health and
+strength for the hard years to come, tugging at the
+heavy, water-soaked blocks of peat, and laying them
+out in the sun to dry. It takes a month of sun to dry
+the peat; in wet weather it won't dry at all, and so isn't
+salable. Truly, the lives of the poor Irish hang on
+slender threads!</p>
+
+<p>There are ruins of castles and monasteries and raths
+and cashels all through this region, and a lot of them
+cluster about the dirty little town of Athenry, which
+can boast a castle, two monasteries, city walls and an
+old gate. Such richness was not to be passed by, and
+we left the train, checked our luggage at the parcel
+office, fought off a jarvey who was determined to drive
+us to the ruins which we could see quite plainly just
+across the track, crossed the road by the overhead
+bridge, and came out in the streets of the village.</p>
+
+<p>Athenry is typically Irish, with streets running every
+way, houses built any way, and their inhabitants leaning
+over the half-doors, or braced against the walls at
+the street corners, or going slowly about such business
+as they have. Life has stood still here for at least a
+century; and yet Athenry was once a royal town&mdash;"The
+Ford of the Kings" its name signifies&mdash;and a
+royal court was held here in the great castle, and a
+beautiful monastery was built near by at the express
+wish of St. Dominick himself, and it became a famous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+place of learning, to which scholars flocked from all
+over Europe. Alas and alack!</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Vanished, those high conceits! Desolate and forlorn,<br />
+We hunger against hope for that lost heritage.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>For the red tide of war swept over Athenry more
+than once, and left it but smoking ruins. Eleven
+thousand Connaughtmen lay piled about the walls one
+summer day in 1316, all that was left of the army that
+tried to make Edward Bruce king of Ireland; two centuries
+later, when the Earls of Clanricarde swept Connaught
+with fire and sword, Athenry fell before them,
+and was left in ashes; and when it struggled to its feet
+again, it was only to fall before the destroying hand
+of Red Hugh O'Donnell, who left scarcely one stone
+upon another, and from that blow it never rallied.</p>
+
+<p>One of the old gates still survives, well preserved in
+spite of war and weather, and near it is a quaint old
+market cross, with the Virgin and Child on one side
+and Christ on the other. All that is left of the thirteenth
+century castle is the gabled keep, looming high
+on a rock just back of the town, and some fragments
+of the battlemented curtains. All the floors have
+fallen in, and its four massive walls are open to the
+heavens. Red Hugh, when he destroyed it, did his
+work well!</p>
+
+<p>The ruins of the abbey nestle in the shadow of the
+rock on which the castle stands, and we made our way
+down to them, along disordered streets swarming with
+geese, ducks, dogs, chickens and children, only to find
+the way closed by an iron gate, securely padlocked.
+But a passer-by told us that the village blacksmith had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+the key, and indicated vaguely the way to his shop,
+which we found after some circuitous wanderings. The
+smith was a gnarled little man, quite the reverse of
+Longfellow's, and as soon as we had made our errand
+known, he snatched down the keys and hastened to lead
+the way to the ruins, leaving his work without pausing
+to remove his apron, and without a backward glance
+at his helper, who stood open-mouthed by the forge.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 317px;">
+<a href="images/gs020-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs020.jpg" width="317" height="500" alt="THE CHOIR OF THE ABBEY AT ATHENRY" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE CHOIR OF THE ABBEY AT ATHENRY<br /><br />A COTTAGE AT ATHENRY</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>There were three gates to unlock before we reached
+the ruins, and then the blacksmith hurried back to his
+work, leaving his daughter to keep an eye on us. The
+church is all that is left of the monastery, for the domestic
+buildings, and even the cloisters have been swept
+entirely away by the rude hand of time, and the far
+ruder ones of the villagers who needed stone for their
+houses. The church itself has suffered more than most,
+for not only is the roof gone, but the tower and one
+transept and most of the window-tracery, and the whole
+interior has been swept by a savage storm, the tombs
+hacked and hewed, and the carved decorations knocked
+to fragments. Doubtless if we had questioned the girl
+who stood staring at us, she would have said that
+"Crummell did it," and in this case, history would
+bear her out, for the Puritan soldiery <i>did</i> do a lot of
+damage here. They and the sans-culottes suffered from
+the same mania&mdash;a sort of vertigo of destructiveness
+before memorials of kings or Catholics!</p>
+
+<p>But they couldn't destroy everything, and what is
+left in this old church is well worth seeing, for there
+are some graceful pointed windows, and six narrow lancets
+in a lovely row along the north wall of the choir,
+and a fine arcade in the north transept, and many details<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+of decoration beautiful in spite of mutilation.
+The place is crowded with tombs, for this was the burial
+place of the Dalys and the Lynchs and the De Burgos,
+and is still in use as such. The tomb of the "noble
+family of De Burgh" is in one corner, and there are
+many mural tablets, with inscriptions in French and
+Latin and Gaelic, as well as English. In fact one of
+them announces in French and Latin and English,
+presumably so that every one except the Irish might
+read, that "here is the antient Sepulchre of the Sept of
+the Walls of Droghty late demolished by the Cromellians."</p>
+
+<p>We went back through the town, at last, and while I
+was man&oelig;uvring for the picture opposite <a href="#Page_270">page 270</a>,
+Betty got into talk with a girl who was leaning over a
+half-door, and found, marvellous to relate, that she had
+once lived in Brookline, Mass. We asked her why she
+had come back to Ireland, and after a moment's thought
+she said it was because "America wasn't fair." We
+thought of aristocratic Brookline, the abode of millionaires,
+and then we looked about us&mdash;at the ragged
+donkey standing across the way, at the pig wandering
+down the middle of the dirty street, at the low little
+houses and the shabby people&mdash;and perhaps we
+smiled, but be sure it was in sympathy, not in derision.</p>
+
+<p>We crossed over to the railway hotel, finally, and
+had lunch, and when we came out, the woman who
+managed the place waylaid us at the front door for a
+chat. She told us of a woman from the village who
+was on the <i>Titanic</i>, but was saved, and discussed various
+scandals in high life, which she had gleaned from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+the half-penny press; and then we spoke of the girl we
+had met in the village, and she deplored the high-and-mighty
+airs which some of the girls who come home
+from America give themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"But I once heard one of them put well in her place,"
+she added, "when she came back with her hat full of
+flowers and her petticoat full of flounces, and walked
+about the town as though we were all dirt beneath her
+feet. Well, one day an old man stopped her for a
+word, a friend of the family who wished her well, but
+she put up her nose at him&mdash;and perhaps he was not
+very clean&mdash;and was for going past. But he put out
+his hand and caught her by the arm. 'You're after
+bein' a fine lady now,' says he, 'but I mind the time,
+and that but a few years since, when I've seen ye
+sittin' on your bare-backed ass, with your naked legs
+hangin' down&mdash;yes, and I can be tellin' ye more than
+that, if so be ye wish to hear it!' She didn't stay long
+in the village after that," added the speaker, with a
+chuckle of relish.</p>
+
+<p>Our train came along, presently, and we were soon
+running over as dreary, bleak and miserable a land as
+any we had seen in Ireland. Vast boggy plains, bare
+rocky hillsides, with scarcely a house to be seen anywhere&mdash;only
+a ruin, now and then, marking the site of
+some ancient stronghold; and so, in the first dusk of
+the evening, we came to Athlone.</p>
+
+<p>One would have thought that, with so important a
+town, the station would have been placed somewhere
+near it; but habit was too strong for the builders of
+the line, and so they put the station about a mile away,
+at the end of a dreary stretch of road, beyond a great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+barrack, along the river, past the castle, and over the
+bridge.</p>
+
+<p>Athlone has been famous for its widows ever since
+the days of Molly Malone, ohone! who</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Melted the hearts</span><br />
+Of the swains in them parts;<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and we found that the best hotel in the place, which
+was not as good as it might have been, was managed
+by a widow, who might well have posed for the lovely
+Molly. She had not been a widow long, and I judged
+would not be if the swains of the town had any voice
+in the matter, for the bar was very popular when she
+was behind it.</div>
+
+<p>We went out, after dinner, to see the town, and
+found it one of the most ugly and depressing we had
+yet encountered&mdash;a sort of cross between a town and
+a village, but with the attractions of neither. The
+water-front is its most interesting part, for a fragment
+of the old castle which was built to guard the second
+of the all-important fords of the Shannon still stands
+there. Kincora, you will remember, guarded the other.
+But Kincora was three days' march to the southward;
+and for two days' march to the northward there was
+no other place where the Shannon could be crossed; and
+so here at the ford just below Lough Ree, in the old
+days, a franklin named Luan set up a rude little inn,
+and the place came to be known as Ath Luan, Luan's
+Ford&mdash;Athlone. Here in the year 1001, hostages were
+sent from all Ireland to meet Brian Boru and proclaim
+him High King; and here, a century later, the O'Conors
+built a rath and a tower to guard the ford and levy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>
+tribute upon all who used it. In another hundred
+years, the Normans had seized it, and put up the strong,
+round-towered castle, parts of which still remain; and
+for seven centuries after that, the English power "sat
+astride the passage of Connaught," save for the brief
+time, after the battle of the Boyne, it was held by the
+Irish. But Ginkle captured it, as he was soon to capture
+Limerick, and a few years later, most of what was
+left of the town was destroyed when the magazine of
+the castle blew up during a thunderstorm.</p>
+
+<p>But though there is little in Athlone to delay the
+visitor, there are two places in the neighbourhood worth
+seeing. Nine miles to the north is Lissoy, made immortal
+by Goldsmith as</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain;<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and ten miles to the south, on the bank of the Shannon,
+are the ruins of Clonmacnoise, whither, twelve
+centuries ago, men in search of knowledge turned their
+faces from all the corners of Europe.</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was for Lissoy we started next morning, on a car
+for which I had bargained the night before. Our jarvey
+was a loquacious old fellow, who talked unceasingly,
+but in so broken a brogue that it was only with
+the greatest difficulty we could follow him. He had
+known some people who had gone down on the <i>Titanic</i>,
+and he told us all about them; but most of his talk
+was a lament for the hard times, the sorrowful state
+of the country, the paucity of tourists, and the vagaries
+of the landlady, of whom he spoke in the most mournful
+and pessimistic way. She was not, I gathered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+a native of Athlone, but a Dublin woman whose ideas
+were new-fangled and highfalutin, and who, I inferred,
+did not look kindly upon the careless habits of her
+"help."</p>
+
+<p>The road lay through a pleasant, rolling country,
+with glimpses of Lough Ree to the left, and on a hill
+to the right a tall shaft which our jarvey told us
+marked the exact centre of Ireland. When one looks
+at the map, one sees that it is at least somewhere near
+the centre. But it has been explained to other passers-by
+in many ways: as the remains of a round tower,
+as a tower which a rich man built in order to mount
+to the top of it every day to count his sheep, as a pole
+for his tent put up by Finn MacCool, as a wind-mill
+in the old days, and as a dozen other things&mdash;anything,
+in fact, that happened to occur to the man who
+was asked the question. One answer, you may be sure,
+he never made, and that was that he didn't know!</p>
+
+<p>There <i>are</i> some remains of old windmills in the
+neighbourhood&mdash;we saw one or two on near-by hillsides,
+close enough to recognise them; and if I had
+known at the time what a divergence of opinion there
+was about that lonely tower in the distance, I would
+have driven over to it and investigated it on my own
+hook. But our jarvey's answer was so positive that
+it left no room for doubt, so we drove on through a village
+of tiny thatched houses, with the smoke of the
+turf giving a pleasant tang to the air; then up a long
+hill, to the left at a cross-roads, and at last our jarvey
+drew up before a five-barred gate. We looked at him
+questioningly, for there was no village in sight.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis here it was, sir," he said, "sweet Auburn, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>
+loveliest village of the plain. 'Twas up that path
+yonder the village preacher's modest mansion rose,
+though there is little enough left of it now; and over
+yonder, behind that wall with the yellow furze atop
+it, unprofitably gay, was where the village master
+taught his little school, and there is nothing at all left
+of that; and a little furder on is the 'Three Jolly
+Pigeons,' where news much older than the ale went
+round."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+<a href="images/gs021-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs021.jpg" width="320" height="500" alt="THE GOLDSMITH RECTORY AT LISSOY" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE GOLDSMITH RECTORY AT LISSOY<br /><br />THE "THREE JOLLY PIGEONS"</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>I looked at him wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you pick up all that patter?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>He snickered.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you would not be the first gintleman I have
+driven out here, sir," he explained; "and many of them
+would be speakin' parts of the poem."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose ale is still to be obtained at the 'Three
+Jolly Pigeons'?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is, sir, if so be your honour would be wantin'
+some. And they have one of the big stones of the old
+mill for a doorstep," he added, as an extra inducement
+not to pass it by.</p>
+
+<p>We got down from our seats, went through the gate,
+and up the path which Goldsmith and his father trod
+so many times; for, whether or not Lissoy was really
+Auburn, there can be no doubt that the elder Goldsmith
+was really vicar here, and that he lived in the
+house, the rectory of Kilkenny West, of which only a
+fragment of the front wall remains, and that Oliver
+was a boy here. The ash trees which shadowed the
+path have disappeared, but there are still plenty of
+gabbling geese around, and a file of them went past as
+I took a picture of the remnant of the rectory. A shed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>
+with a hideous roof of corrugated iron has been built
+behind it, and near by is a two-storied house where the
+present tenant lives. We found an old woman, for
+all the world like Goldsmith's "widowed, solitary
+thing," carding wool in an outhouse, and she showed us
+the old well, deep in the ground, walled around and
+approached by a steep flight of steps.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing more to see, so we went back to
+the gate, escorted by three friendly pigs, and clambered
+up to our seats again, and looked out over the valley.
+There is nothing in that valley but gently-rolling pastures,
+and nothing lives there now but sheep and cattle.
+And it sends a chill up the spine to realise that
+once a village stood there, and that it has melted away
+into the earth. Not a stone is left of its houses, not a
+sod of its walls, not a flower of its gardens.</p>
+
+<p>But that village was Lissoy, not Auburn. No such
+village as Auburn ever existed in Ireland, where the
+young folks sported on the village green, and the swain
+responsive to the milkmaid sung, and the village master
+taught his school during the day, and argued with
+the preacher in the evening, and a jolly crowd gathered
+every night at the inn to drink the nut-brown
+ale. There is not a single Irish detail in that picture;
+it is all English, just as Goldsmith intended it should
+be, for it was of "England's griefs" he was writing,
+not of Ireland's. In that day, few people here in Westmeath
+spoke anything but Irish; the village children
+knew nothing of schools, except hedge-row ones, taught
+by some fugitive priest; the "honest rustics" had no
+"decent churches," but only hidden caves in dark valleys,
+where Mass was said secretly and at the risk of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>
+life; and, rest assured, when any inhabitant of this
+valley had money to spend for drink, he wasted it on
+no such futile beverage as nut-brown ale!</p>
+
+<p>I am sure that little of it is sold to-day at the "Three
+Jolly Pigeons," where we presently arrived, a low wayside
+tavern with thatched roof and plastered wall, kept
+by John Nally, who welcomed us most kindly, and grew
+enthusiastic when I proposed to take a picture. There
+was a rickety donkey-cart standing by the door, and
+its owner came out to be in the picture, too&mdash;raggeder
+even than his donkey, disreputable, dirty, gin-soaked,
+and with only a jagged tooth or two in his expansive
+mouth, but carefree and full of mirth.</p>
+
+<p>Betty, who had been admiring the supreme raggedness
+of the donkey, asked its name.</p>
+
+<p>"Top o' the Mornin', miss," answered the man, with
+a shout of laughter, and I am sure the name was the
+inspiration of the moment.</p>
+
+<p>And then, while our jarvey drank his whiskey, I had
+a talk with Mr. Nally, who, of course, for reasons of
+trade perhaps, is firmly of the belief that Auburn is
+Lissoy and no other. And he told me of another poet
+who was born down on the banks of the Inny, a mile
+or two away, and who, in the old days, spent many an
+evening at the Pigeons&mdash;Johnny Casey he called him,
+and it turned out to be that same John Keegan Casey,
+who wrote "The Rising of the Moon," and "Maire
+my Girl," and "Gracie og Machree," and "Donal
+Kenny,"&mdash;Irish subjects all, and most of them local
+ones, as well. Donal Kenny, for instance, was a bold
+blade, a clever hand with the snare and the net, who
+turned the heads of all the girls in the neighbourhood,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>
+and broke those of most of the boys, until it was glad
+they were when he went off with himself to America.
+I have looked up the poem since, and I fear that Casey
+enveloped the parting scene with exaggerated sentiment;
+yet the verses have a swing to them:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Come, piper, play the "Shaskan Reel,"<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or else the "Lasses on the Heather,"</span><br />
+And, Mary, lay aside your wheel<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Until we dance once more together.</span><br />
+At fair and pattern oft before<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of reels and jigs we've tripped full many;</span><br />
+But ne'er again this loved old floor<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Will feel the foot of Donal Kenny.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>We tore ourselves away, at last, taking a road which
+ran along the border of the lake&mdash;a beautiful sheet of
+bluest water, dotted with greenest islands, with the
+rolling plains of Roscommon rising beyond. And then,
+from the top of a long hill, we saw below us the spires
+of Athlone, and soon we were rattling down into the
+town.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>That morning, while looking through our guide-book,
+we had encountered a sentence which piqued our curiosity.
+It was this:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Some of the walls of St. Peter's Abbey remain, in which
+can be seen one of those curious figures called 'Sheela-na-gig."</p></div>
+
+<p>I remembered dimly that, back at Cashel, John
+Minogue had called our attention to a grotesque figure
+with twisted legs and distorted visage carved on a
+stone, and had called it something that sounded like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+Sheela-na-gig; but I wasn't sure, and so we started
+out blithely to find this one.</p>
+
+<p>Right at the start, we met with unexpected difficulties,
+for nobody at the hotel, not even the ancient jarvey,
+had ever heard of the Sheela-na-gig. The barmaid,
+however, said that St. Peter's Abbey was on
+the other side of the river, past the castle, so we went
+over there, and found that part of the town much more
+dilapidated and picturesque than the more modern portion
+on the Westmeath side. We wandered around for
+quite a while, asking the way of this person and that,
+and finally we wound up at St. Peter's church, a new
+structure and one singularly uninteresting. It was
+evident that there was no Sheela-na-gig there; and at
+this point Betty surrendered, and went back to the
+hotel to write some letters.</p>
+
+<p>But I had started out on the quest of the Sheela-na-gig,
+and I was determined to find it. I thought possibly
+it might be somewhere among the ruins of the
+Franciscan Abbey, which stand close to the other side
+of the river, so I crossed the river again, and after
+walking about a mile along a high wall through a
+dirty lane, reached a gate, only to find it locked.
+There was a man inside, raking a gravelled walk, but
+he said nobody was admitted to the ruins, and anyway
+he was quite positive that there was no such thing as
+a Sheela-na-gig among them. He added that a portion
+of the ruins had been torn down to make room for
+an extension of the Athlone Woolen Mills, and perhaps
+they had the Sheela-na-gig there.</p>
+
+<p>I had no faith in this suggestion, but for want of
+something better to do, I turned in at the office of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>
+mills, and was warmly welcomed by the manager, who
+invited me to inspect the place. It is an exceedingly
+rambling and haphazard structure, but it gives employment
+to hundreds of people, mostly girls and
+women, whose pale faces and drooping figures bore
+testimony to the wearing nature of the work. The mill
+gets the wool in the raw state, straight from the grower,
+and the processes by which it is cleaned and carded and
+spun into thread, and dyed, and woven into cloth, and
+inspected, and weighed, and finally rolled up ready for
+the market, are many and intricate. The manager
+told me that the mill turned out thirty thousand yards
+of tweed a week, and he hoped to turn out even more,
+as soon as a reduction of the tariff permitted him to
+get into the American market. Even with a duty of
+forty-five per cent., he could compete with American
+tweeds, and with a lower duty he could undersell them.</p>
+
+<p>It needed only a glance at the shabby, toil-worn men
+and women working in his factory to understand why
+this was true. I didn't ask him what wages his women
+earned, but I <i>did</i> ask as to their hours of labour. They
+go to work at 6:30 in the morning and work till six in
+the evening, with a three-quarter hour interval for
+breakfast and the same for lunch. I saw groups of
+them, afterwards, strolling about the streets in the twilight,
+and sad and poor and spiritless they looked.
+Yet they are eager for the work, for at least it keeps
+them alive, and one can scarcely blame the manager
+for sticking to the market price, and so doing his best
+to meet a remorseless competition. I confess that such
+economic problems as this are too stiff for me.</p>
+
+<p>As I was about to leave, I casually mentioned my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
+search for the Sheela-na-gig&mdash;and he knew where it
+was! It was over on the other bank, it seemed, not far
+from the river-front, and he directed me with great detail
+how to get to it; but, alas, in such a town of
+crooked streets, definite direction was impossible.
+However, with hope springing eternal, I crossed the
+bridge a third time, turned up-stream close beside the
+river, wandered into a board-yard, extricated myself,
+got into a blind alley that ended in a high wall and had
+to retrace my steps; asked man after man, who only
+stared vacantly and shook their heads; and finally
+found a boy who knew, and who eagerly left his work
+to conduct me to the spot.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine with what a feeling of triumph I stood at
+last before the Sheela-na-gig!</p>
+
+<p>It is carved over the wide arch of the entrance to
+what was once an abbey, but what I think is now a
+laundry&mdash;an impish, leering figure, clasping its knees
+up under its chin, and peering down to see who passes.
+Underneath the imp are the words "St. Peter's Port,"
+and underneath the words is a grotesque head. On
+either side of the arch is a sculptured plaque, that to
+the left bearing the words "May Satan never enter,"
+and that to the right, "Wilo Wisp &amp; Jack the Printer,"&mdash;the
+two, of course, forming a couplet.</p>
+
+<p>While I was staring at these remarkable inscriptions
+and trying to puzzle out some meaning for them, an
+old woman, who had been watching me with interest
+from the door of her house, came out and tried to tell
+me the history of the gate. But she spoke so incoherently
+that I could make nothing of it beyond the
+fact that the inscriptions originated in two men's rivalry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>
+for possession of the property; so somebody else
+will have to untangle that legend.</p>
+
+<p>A little way up the street there was a shop which,
+among other things, had post-cards displayed for sale,
+and I stopped in, thinking I might get a picture of the
+gate and perhaps learn something more of its story.
+But when I asked for such a card, the proprietor stared
+at me in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no such gate hereabouts," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"But there is," I protested; "right there at the end
+of the street. Do you mean to say you have never
+seen the Sheela-na-gig, nor read that line about Wilo
+Wisp and Jack the Printer?"</p>
+
+<p>He rubbed his head dazedly.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not," he admitted. "Look at that, now,"
+he went on; "here have I been going past that gate for
+years, and you come all the way from America and see
+more in one minute than I have seen in me whole life!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he asked me if I had been up on top the castle,
+which was just opposite his shop, and I replied that I
+had not.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor have I," he said; "but I am told there is a
+grand view from up there."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not go up with me now?" I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"I might," he agreed; and then he looked at the tall
+keep of the castle and shook his head. "'Tis not to-day
+I can be doing it; you see, I must stay with the
+shop."</p>
+
+<p>So I left him there, and essayed the heights of the
+castle by myself. Only for a little way, however, was
+I by myself, for some families connected with the garrison
+live there, and they are all prolific; so I soon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>
+found myself surrounded by a horde of ragged children,
+who begged for ha'pennies in the queer bated voice
+which seems to go with begging in Ireland. I distributed
+a few, but that was a mistake; for when they
+found I not only had some ha'pennies but was actually
+willing to part with them, they grew almost ferocious;
+I said "Oppenheimer!" in vain, and I was only saved
+at last by a husky woman who issued forth from one of
+the towers and swept down upon them, vi et armis, and
+drove them headlong out of sight. She was red-headed
+and curious, and she stopped for a bit of talk. (I
+pass over the part about America.)</p>
+
+<p>"How do you like living in the old castle?" I asked
+her, finally.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, 'tis a grand place, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you ever see any ghosts?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ghosts? Niver a one, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor hear any banshees?"</p>
+
+<p>"Banshees is it? Sure, they niver come to this place,
+sir, 'tis that healthy, bein' so high."</p>
+
+<p>And it must, indeed, be healthier than the narrow,
+gloomy, squalid streets below. I could look down into
+them from the top of the tower, to which I presently
+mounted, and see their swarming life&mdash;men and women
+idling about, a girl drawing water from the public
+pump, a boy skinning some eels at the corner, small
+children playing in the gutters. On the other side lay
+the river, empty save for a few small launches, and
+beyond it the roofs of the newer part of the town, and
+beyond the town the beautiful Westmeath hills.</p>
+
+<p>Just at my feet was the bridge across the Shannon,
+connecting east and west Ireland. It is a modern one,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
+but it stands on the site of the old one, built while
+Elizabeth was queen, and the scene of a desperate
+conflict when Ginkle stormed the town. Of the castle
+itself, only the keep is old. The drum-towers, which
+frown down upon the river, are of later date, though
+one would never suspect it to look at them; but when
+one gets to the top of them, one finds embrasures for
+artillery, and the approach is up a graded way along
+which the guns can be taken. The old drawbridge and
+portcullis which guarded the entrance to the keep are
+still in place, but there is little else of interest.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The ruins of the ancient abbey of Clonmacnoise lie
+close beside the Shannon, some ten miles below Athlone,
+and the road thither winds through a rolling country
+down to the broad river, which here flows lazily between
+flat banks. One would expect so noble a stretch
+of water to be crowded with commerce, but it was quite
+empty that morning, save for an occasional rude, flat-bottomed
+punt, loaded high with turf, which a man
+and a boy would be poling slowly upstream toward
+Athlone.</p>
+
+<p>It was a desolate scene; and Clonmacnoise looked
+desolate, too, with its gaunt grey towers, and huddle of
+little buildings, and cluttered graveyard. It seemed
+incredible that this obscure corner of the world was
+once a centre of learning toward which scholars turned
+their faces from the far ends of Europe, to which
+Charlemagne sent gifts, and within whose walls princes
+and nobles were reared in wisdom and piety. Yet such
+it was&mdash;the nearest to being a national university
+among all the abbeys, for it was not identified with any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>
+class or province, but chose its abbots from all Ireland,
+and welcomed its students from all the world.</p>
+
+<p>The abbey was founded by St. Kieran in 548. St.
+Kieran belonged to what is known as the Second Order
+of Irish Saints, founders of monasteries and of great
+co-operative communities, as distinguished from the
+First Order&mdash;St. Patrick and his immediate successors&mdash;who
+were bishops and missionaries and founders of
+churches, and the Third Order, who were hermits,
+dwelling in desert places, often in small stone cells, just
+as St. Molua did in his little cell near Killaloe. St.
+Kieran had already started an abbey on an island in
+Lough Ree, but grew dissatisfied with it, for some reason,
+and he and eight companions got on board a boat
+and floated down the river, rejecting this place and that
+as not suited to their purpose, and finally reaching this
+sloping meadow, where their leader bade them stop.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us remain here," he said, "for many souls will
+ascend to heaven from this spot."</p>
+
+<p>So the abbey was started, and, though Kieran himself
+died in the following year, it grew rapidly in importance.
+Let me try to picture the place as it was
+then. The students lived in small huts crowded about
+the precincts; the classes were held in the open air;
+only for purposes of worship were permanent buildings
+built. Here, as at Glendalough, there was not one
+large church, but seven small ones; and the students
+seem to have attended divine service in the groups in
+which they studied. It was a self-supporting community,
+tilling its own lands, spinning its own wool,
+weaving its own cloth, and building its own churches;
+and its life, while not austere, was of the simplest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The students, at times, numbered as many as three
+thousand. The teaching was free, but from every student
+a certain amount of service was required in the
+interest of the community. The principal study, of
+course, was that of religion, but from the very first
+the heathen classics and the Irish language, arithmetic,
+rhetoric, astronomy and natural science were taught
+side by side with theology.</p>
+
+<p>The life at Clonmacnoise was typical of that at all
+the other monastic schools with which Ireland was then
+so thickly dotted; and it is the more interesting because
+the whole continent of Europe, at that time, was groping
+through the very darkest period of the Middle
+Ages. Culture there was at its lowest ebb&mdash;knowledge
+of Greek, for instance, had so nearly vanished that any
+one who knew Greek was assumed at once to have
+come from Ireland, where it was taught in all the
+schools. Those schools sent forth swarms of missionaries,
+"the most fearless spiritual knights the world has
+known," to spread the light over Europe; they established
+centres at Cambrai, at Rheims, at Soissons, at
+Laon, at Li&eacute;ge; they founded the great monastery at
+Ratisbon; they built others at Wurzburg, at Nuremberg,
+at Constanz, at Vienna&mdash;and then came the Vikings,
+and put an end to Irish learning. For the Vikings
+were Pagans, and the shrines of the churches, the
+treasuries of the monasteries and schools, were the first
+objects of onslaught.</p>
+
+<p>For two centuries, the Danes made of Ireland "spoil-land
+and sword-land and conquered land, ravaged her
+chieftaincies and her privileged churches and her sanctuaries,
+and rent her shrines and her reliquaries and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+her books, and demolished her beautiful ornamented
+temples&mdash;in a word, though there were an hundred
+sharp and ready tongues in each head, and an hundred
+loud, unceasing voices from each tongue, they could
+never enumerate all the Gael suffered, both men and
+women, laity and clergy, noble and ignoble, from these
+wrathful, valiant, purely-pagan people." The Danes
+aimed to destroy all learning, which they hated and
+distrusted, and they very nearly succeeded.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 315px;">
+<a href="images/gs022-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs022.jpg" width="315" height="500" alt="ON THE ROAD TO CLONMACNOISE" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">ON THE ROAD TO CLONMACNOISE<br /><br />ST. KIERAN'S CATHAIR, CLONMACNOISE</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>I have already told how, under Brian Boru, the Irish
+drew together, and finally managed to defeat the Danes
+at Clontarf; and for a century and a half after that,
+ancient Erin seemed rising from her ashes. The books
+destroyed by the Danes were re-written, churches and
+monasteries rebuilt, schools re-opened&mdash;and then came
+Strongbow at the head of his Normans, and that dream
+was ended. There was civilisation in Ireland after
+that, but it was a civilisation dominated by England;
+there was education, but not for the native Irish; there
+were great monasteries, but they were built by French
+or Norman monks&mdash;by Franciscans or Cistercians or
+Augustinians; and finally even these were swept away
+with the coming of the Established Church.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>I shall not attempt to describe the ruins of the seven
+churches of Clonmacnoise, except to say that, though
+they are all small, they are crowded with interesting
+detail; and there are two round towers, somewhat squat
+and rude, as a witness to the danger of Danish raiders;
+but the glory of the place is the magnificent sculptured
+cross, erected a thousand years ago over the grave of
+Flann, High King of Erin, and still standing as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>
+witness to Irish craftsmanship. It is ten feet high, cut
+from a single block of stone, and elaborately carved
+from top to bottom, and its date is fixed by an Irish
+inscription which can still be deciphered: "A prayer
+for Colman who made this cross on the King Flann."
+It was Flann who built the largest of the stone churches,
+near which the cross stands, about 909, and at that time
+Colman was Abbot of Clonmacnoise. Flann died five
+years later, and Colman honoured his memory with this
+magnificent tribute.</p>
+
+<p>Its maker's name is lost, but there can be no doubt
+he was a great artist. On one side he has represented
+scenes from the founding of Clonmacnoise, and on the
+other scenes from the Passion of the Saviour. The
+crucifixion, as usual, is depicted at the intersection,
+while hell and heaven are shown on the arms themselves,
+crowded with the damned or the blessed, as the
+case may be. There is another cross in the graveyard
+scarcely less interesting, though no one knows on whose
+grave it stands, and there is the shaft of a third. And
+all about them are crowded the lichened tombstones
+marking the graves of the fortunate ones who won
+sepulture in St. Kieran's cathair, and who, on the last
+day, will be borne straight to heaven with him.</p>
+
+<p>For this enclosure was once the very holiest in Ireland.
+It was here that Kieran was laid, and then his
+prophecy was remembered that many souls would
+ascend to heaven from this spot; and the belief gradually
+grew that no one interred "in the graveyard
+of noble Kieran" would ever be adjudged to damnation.
+In consequence, so many people wanted to be
+buried there that there wasn't room for all of them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>
+and in the end, even powerful kings and princes were
+forced to contend with great gifts for a place of sepulture.
+Here Flann was laid; and hither was borne the
+body of Rory O'Conor, the last who claimed the kingship
+of all Ireland, after his death at Cong. The great
+abbey at Cong served well enough as the retreat for his
+declining years, but it was only at Clonmacnoise, in
+the sacred cathair of Kieran, that he would be buried.
+And, as I closed the chapter on the Shannon with some
+verses of one of Ireland's truest poets, I cannot do better
+than close this one with his lovely rendering of the
+lament which Enock O'Gillan wrote many centuries
+ago for</p>
+
+
+<p>THE DEAD AT CLONMACNOISE</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+In a quiet-watered land, a land of roses,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Stands St. Kieran's city fair,</span><br />
+And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Slumber there.</span><br />
+<br />
+There beneath the dewy hillside sleep the noblest<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of the clan of Conn,</span><br />
+Each below his stone with name in branching Ogham<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the sacred knot thereon.</span><br />
+<br />
+There they laid to rest the seven kings of Tara,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">There the sons of Cairbr&eacute; sleep&mdash;</span><br />
+Battle-banners of the Gael that in Kieran's plain of crosses<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Now their final hosting keep.</span><br />
+<br />
+And in Clonmacnoise they laid the men of Teffia,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And right many a lord of Bregh;</span><br />
+Deep the sod above Clan Creid&eacute; and Clan Conaill,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kind in hall and fierce in fray.</span><br />
+<br />
+Many and many a son of Conn the Hundred-fighter<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the red earth lies at rest;</span><br />
+Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Many a swan-white breast.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>GALWAY OF THE TRIBES</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">It</span> was in the dusk of early evening that our train
+started westward from Athlone, and we soon found
+ourselves traversing again the dreary bogs which we had
+crossed on our way from Athenry. I have seldom seen
+a more beautiful sunset than the one that evening, and
+we watched the changing sky and the flaming west for
+long hours; and then, just as darkness came, the great
+reaches of Galway Bay opened before us, and we were
+at our journey's end&mdash;Galway of the Tribes, the beautiful
+old town which is the gateway to Connemara.</div>
+
+<p>There is a good hotel connected with the railway,
+and we had dinner there, and then went forth to see
+the town. We were struck at once by its picturesqueness,
+its foreign air. The narrow curving streets do
+not somehow look like Irish streets, nor do the houses
+look like Irish houses; rather might one fancy oneself in
+some old town of France or Belgium. We were fascinated
+by it, and wandered about for a long time,
+along dim lanes, into dark courts, looking at the
+shawled women and listening to the soft talk of the
+strolling girls.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Nobody knows certainly how Galway got its name.
+Some say it was because a woman named Galva was
+drowned in the river; others maintain that the name
+was derived from the Gall&aelig;ci of Spain, who used to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>
+trade here; and still others think that it came from
+the Gaels, who eventually occupied it in the course
+of their conquest of Ireland. Whatever the origin of
+the name, the town was but a poor place, a mere trading
+village of little importance, until the English came.
+Richard de Burgo was granted the county of Connaught
+by the English king in 1226, and six years
+later he entered Galway, rebuilt and enlarged the castle
+which had been put up by the Connaught men, threw
+a wall around the town, and so established another of
+those centres of Norman power, which were soon to
+overshadow the whole of Ireland. It was a very English
+colony, at first, with a deep-seated contempt for
+the wild Irish. Over the west gate, which looked toward
+Connemara, was the inscription,</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+FROM THE FURY OF THE O'FLAHERTIES<br />
+GOOD LORD DELIVER US.<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and one of the by-laws of the town was that no citizen
+should receive into his house at Christmas or on any
+other feast day any of the Burkes, MacWilliamses, or
+Kelleys, and that "neither O' nor Mac shalle strutte
+ne swaggere thro the streetes of Gallway."</div>
+
+<p>The years wore away this animosity, as they have a
+fashion of doing in Ireland, and by Cromwell's time,
+the citizens of the town had become so Irish that they
+were contemptuously called "the tribes of Galway" by
+the Puritan soldiers. But, as was the case of the Beggars
+in Holland, a name given in contempt was adopted
+as a badge of honour, and the "Tribes of Galway" became
+a mark of distinction for men who had suffered
+and fought and had never been conquered. There were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>
+thirteen of these tribes; and the Blakes and Lynches
+and Joyces and Martins who still form the greater part
+of the old town's population are their descendants&mdash;but
+how fallen from their high estate!</p>
+
+<p>For many years, Galway had a practical monopoly
+of the trade with Spain, there was always a large Spanish
+colony here, and it is to this long-continued intercourse
+that many persons attribute the foreign air of
+the town. I have even seen it asserted that the people
+are of a decided Spanish type; but we were unable to
+discern it, and I am inclined to think the Spanish influence
+has been much exaggerated. Its period of prosperity
+ended with the coming of the Parliamentary
+army, which took the place and plundered it; and the
+final blow was struck forty years later, when the army
+of William of Orange, fresh from its victories to the
+east, laid siege to it and captured it in two days. The
+old families found themselves ruined, trade utterly
+ceased, the great warehouses fell to decay, and the mansions
+of the aristocracy, no longer able to maintain
+them, were given over to use as tenements. There is
+to-day about Galway an air of ruin and decay such
+as I have seen equalled in few other Irish towns;
+but there are also some signs of reawakening, and
+it may be that, after three centuries, the tide has
+turned.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We found the streets crowded, next morning, with
+the most picturesque people we had seen anywhere in
+Ireland, for it was Saturday and so market day, and the
+country-folk had gathered in from many miles around.
+The men were for the most part buttoned up in cutaways<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>
+of stiff frieze, nearly as hard and unyielding as
+iron; and the women, almost without exception, wore
+bright red skirts, made of fuzzy homespun flannel,
+which they had themselves woven from wool dyed with
+the rich crimson of madder. The shaggier the flannel,
+the more it is esteemed, and some of the skirts we saw
+had a nap half an inch deep. They are made very full
+and short, somewhat after the fashion of the Dutch;
+but the resemblance ended there, for most of these
+women were barefooted, and strode about with a disregard
+of cobbles and sharp paving-stones which proved
+the toughness of their soles.</p>
+
+<p>Galway, as well as most other Irish towns, boasts a
+number of millinery stores, with windows full of befeathered
+and beribboned hats; but one wonders where
+their customers come from, for hats are a luxury unknown
+to most Irish women, who habitually go either
+bareheaded, or with the head muffled in a shawl. All
+the women here in Galway were shawled, and beautiful
+shawls they were, of a delicate fawn-colour, and
+very soft and thick.</p>
+
+<p>We went at once to the market, and found the country
+women ranged along the curb, with great baskets
+in front of them containing eggs and butter and other
+products of the farm. How far they had walked, that
+morning, carrying these heavy burdens, I did not like
+to guess, but we met one later who had eight miles to
+go before she would be home again. A few had carts
+drawn by little grey donkeys; and the old woman in
+one of these was so typical that I wanted to get her
+picture. She was sitting there watching the crowd with
+her elbows on her knees, and a chicken in her hands,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>
+but when she saw me unlimbering my camera, she
+shook her head menacingly.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 318px;">
+<a href="images/gs023-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs023.jpg" width="318" height="500" alt="THE MARKET AT GALWAY" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE MARKET AT GALWAY<br /><br />"OULD SAFTIE"</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>There was a constable in the crowd, and he offered
+to clear the bystanders away, so that I could get a good
+picture of her. I remarked that she seemed to object,
+and he said that he didn't see why that made any
+difference, and that it wouldn't do her any harm. But
+I preferred diplomacy to force, and finally I asked a
+quaint-looking old man standing by if I might take
+his picture.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye may, and welcome," was the prompt response.</p>
+
+<p>So I stood him up in front of the cart and got my
+focus.</p>
+
+<p>"Will ye be seein' the ould saftie!" cried the woman.
+"Look at the ould saftie standin' there to get his picter
+took." And she went on to say other, and presumably
+much less complimentary things, in Irish; but my subject
+only grinned pleasantly and paid no heed. If you
+will look at the picture opposite this page, you can almost
+see the scornful invectives issuing from her lips.
+My subject was very proud indeed when I promised him
+a print; and I hope it reached him safely.</p>
+
+<p>Eggs are sold by the score in Galway, and the price
+that day was one shilling twopence, or about twenty-eight
+cents&mdash;which is not as cheap as one would expect
+them to be in a country where wages are so low.
+But perhaps it is only labour that is cheap in Ireland!</p>
+
+<p>One row of women were offering for sale a kind
+of seaweed, whose Celtic name, as they pronounced it,
+I could not catch, but which in English they called
+dillisk; a red weed which they assured us they had gathered
+from the rocks along the beach that very morning,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>
+and which many people were buying and stuffing into
+their mouths and chewing with the greatest relish. It
+did not look especially inviting, but the women insisted,
+with much laughter, that we sample it, and we finally
+did, somewhat gingerly. The only taste I detected in
+it was that of the salt-water in which it had been
+soaked; but it is supposed to be very healthy, and to be
+especially efficacious in straightening out a man who
+has had a drop too much. No matter how tangled
+his legs may be, so the women assured us, a few mouthfuls
+of dillisk will set him right again; and no man
+with a pocketful of dillisk was ever known to go astray
+or spend the night in a ditch. I regret that we were
+not able to experiment with this interesting plant; but
+if it really possesses this remarkable property, it deserves
+a wider popularity than it now enjoys.</p>
+
+<p>While I was talking to the women and the constable&mdash;who
+was a Dublin man and very lonesome among
+these Irish-speaking people, who regarded him with
+scorn and derision&mdash;Betty had been exploring the junk-shops
+of the neighbourhood, and presently came back
+with the news that she had discovered a Dutch masterpiece.
+Now we are both very fond of Dutch art, so I
+hastened to look at the picture; and, indeed, it may
+have been an Ostade, for it was a small panel showing
+two boors drinking, and it seemed to me excellently
+painted; but when the keeper of the shop saw that we
+were interested, he named a price out of all reason, and
+I was not certain enough of my own judgment to back
+it to that extent. I intended to go back later on and
+do a little bargaining; but I didn't; and the first connoisseur
+who goes to Galway should take a look at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+the picture&mdash;it is in a little shop just a few doors from
+the cathedral&mdash;and he may pick up a bargain.</p>
+
+<p>We went on down the street, and crossed the Corrib
+River to the Claddagh&mdash;a picturesque huddle of
+thatched and whitewashed cottages, the homes of fishermen
+and their families, Irish of the Irish, who, from
+time immemorial have formed a unique community, almost
+a race apart. Galway, within its walls on the
+other side of the river, was very, very English; here on
+this strip of land next to the bay, the despised Irish
+built their cabins, and formed a colony which made its
+own laws, which was always ruled by one of its own
+members, where no strangers were permitted to dwell,
+and whose people always intermarried with each other.
+That old semi-feudal condition is, of course, no longer
+strictly maintained; but the Claddagh people still keep
+to themselves, the men follow the sea for a living just
+as they have always done, and the women peddle the
+catch about the streets of Galway, as has been their
+custom ever since the English settled there. They
+wear a quaint and distinctive costume, one feature of
+which is the red petticoat I have already described, and
+common to all Connemara women. But in addition
+to this is a blue mantle, and a white kerchief bound
+tightly round the head, and then over this, if the woman
+is unusually well-to-do, a fawn-coloured shawl. The
+feet are usually bare, and so are the sturdy legs, some
+inches of which, very red and rough from exposure to
+every weather, are visible below the short skirts.</p>
+
+<p>The houses of the Claddagh have been built wherever
+fancy dictated, and in consequence form a most
+confusing jumble, for one man's back door usually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>
+opens into another man's front yard. How a man gets
+home from the tavern on a dark night I don't know,
+but I suspect that the consumption of dillisk is large.
+We stopped to talk to a woman leaning over a half-door;
+and her children, who had been playing in the
+dirt, gathered around, and there is a picture of her
+quaint little house opposite the next page. Then while
+I foraged for more pictures, Betty sat down on a stone,
+and a perfect horde of children soon assembled to stare
+at her. They were very shy at first and perfectly well-behaved;
+but gradually they grew bolder, and finally,
+under careful encouragement, their tongues loosened,
+until they were chattering away like magpies.</p>
+
+<p>The people of the Claddagh are said to be a very
+moral and religious race, who never go to sea or even
+away from home on any Sunday or religious holiday;
+and these dirty, unkempt, neglected, but chubby and
+red-cheeked children were capital illustrations of Kipling's
+lines:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+By a moon they all can play with&mdash;grubby and grimed and unshod&mdash;<br />
+Very happy together, and very near to God.<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>They were certainly happy enough; and, whether they
+were near to God or not, they had all evidently
+been taught their catechism with great care, for when
+Betty took from one of them a little picture of the
+Madonna and asked who it was, they answered in
+chorus, without an instant's hesitation, "The blessed
+Virgin, miss."</div>
+
+<p>The Claddagh people are dark as a rule, though here
+and there one sees a genuine Titian blond, and Spanish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>
+blood has been ascribed to them; but they probably
+date much farther back than the Spaniards&mdash;back, indeed,
+to that ancient, original Irish race, "men of the
+leathern wallet," antedating the Milesians or Gaels
+who now form the bulk of the Irish people. The older
+race took refuge in the bleak Connemara hills before
+the stronger invaders, to come creeping down again and
+found their colony here at the mouth of the Corrib
+when the invaders had swept on eastward to the kindlier
+and more fertile country there. Their whole life
+is bound up in this topsy-turvy little settlement, where
+they live just as they have lived for centuries, undisturbed
+by the march of civilisation.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 318px;">
+<a href="images/gs024-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs024.jpg" width="318" height="500" alt="THE CLADDAGH, GALWAY" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE CLADDAGH, GALWAY<br /><br />A CLADDAGH HOME</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>We tore ourselves away, at last, from this primeval
+place, and recrossed the river to the turf market, with
+its familiar little carts piled high with the dark fuel.</p>
+
+<p>"The bogs are very wet this year, are they not?" I
+asked an old man.</p>
+
+<p>"They are, sir, God save ye," he replied, his wrinkled
+face lighting up at the chance to talk to a stranger.
+"There never was such a year for rain. I'm sixty
+year, God bless ye, and I've never seen such another."
+And then he went on to relate the story of his life, with
+a "God save ye" to every clause. A hearty old fellow
+he was, in spite of his sixty years; and he had driven
+his cart of turf down ten miles out of the mountains,
+that morning, and would drive ten miles back that
+night; and if he was lucky he would get half a crown&mdash;sixty
+cents&mdash;for the load of turf which had taken a
+hard day's labour to cut, and numerous turnings during
+a month to dry.</p>
+
+<p>We went on past some fragments of the old walls,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>
+with a most romantic arched gateway, and through the
+fish market, over which the red-skirted women from the
+Claddagh presided&mdash;great strapping creatures, with
+broad hips and straight backs and shining, good-humoured
+faces. Most of them were selling an ugly,
+big-mouthed, unappetising-looking fish, whose name I
+couldn't catch; but they told us it was a fish for poor
+people, not for the likes of us, God bless ye&mdash;full of
+bones and scarcely worth the trouble of eating, but
+plentiful and therefore cheap.</p>
+
+<p>The principal street of Galway is called Shop Street&mdash;a
+name so singularly lacking in imagination that it
+would prove the English origin of the town at once,
+were any proof needed&mdash;and about midway of this
+stands a beautiful four-storied building, known as
+Lynch's Castle, once a fine mansion but now a
+chandler's shop. The walls are ornamented with
+carved medallions, and there is a row of sculptured supports
+for a vanished balcony sticking out like gargoyles
+all around the top; and over the door there is the stone
+figure of a monkey holding a child, commemorating the
+saving of one of the Lynch children from a fire, by a
+favourite monkey, some centuries ago.</p>
+
+<p>The Lynches were great people in old Galway, and
+another memorial of them exists just around the corner&mdash;a
+fragment of wall, with a doorway below and a
+mullioned window above, and it was from this window,
+so legend says, that James Lynch Fitzstephen, sometime
+mayor of Galway, hanged his son with his own hands.
+The principal inscription reads:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This memorial of the stern and unbending justice of the
+chief magistrate of this city, James Lynch Fitzstephen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
+elected mayor A. D. 1493, who condemned and executed his
+own guilty son, Walter, on this spot, has been restored to its
+ancient site A. D. 1854, with the approval of the Town Commissioners,
+by their Chairman, Very Rev. Peter Daly, P. P.,
+and Vicar of St. Nicholas.</p></div>
+
+<p>Below the window is a skull and crossbones, with a
+much more interesting inscription:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+1524<br />
+REMEMBER DEATHE VANITI OF VANITI<br />
+AND AL IS BUT VANITI<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 316px;">
+<a href="images/gs025-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs025.jpg" width="316" height="500" alt="A GALWAY VISTA" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">A GALWAY VISTA<br /><br />THE MEMORIAL OF A SPARTAN FATHER</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The story of the very upright Fitzstephen runs in
+this wise: He was a merchant, prominent in the
+Spanish trade, and fortunate in everything except in
+his only son, Walter, who was as bad a nut as was to
+be found anywhere. But he had shown some fondness
+for a Galway lady of good family, and it was hoped
+she might reform him; when, unhappily, she looked,
+or was thought to look, too favourably upon a handsome
+young hidalgo, who had come from Spain as the
+guest of the elder Fitzstephen. So young Walter
+waited for him one night at a dark corner, thrust a
+knife into his heart, and then gave himself up to his
+father, as the town's chief magistrate.</p>
+
+<p>Walter, as is often the way with rake-hellies, was a
+great favourite in the town, and everybody interceded
+for his pardon, but his father condemned him to death.
+Whereupon a number of young bloods organised a rescue
+party, but just as they were breaking into the house,
+the inexorable parent put a noose about his son's neck,
+and hanged him from the window mullion above the
+crowd's head&mdash;the same mullion, I suppose, which you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>
+can see in the picture opposite the preceding page.</p>
+
+<p>Just behind the reminder of this fifteenth-century
+Brutus, stands the fourteenth-century church of St.
+Nicholas, a venerable and beautiful structure, with
+good windows and splendid doorways, and containing
+some interesting tombs&mdash;one of them in honour of
+Mayor Lynch, the hero of the tragedy I have just
+related. On the south wall is a large tablet to "Jane
+Eyre, relict of Edward Eyre," (I wonder if Charlotte
+Bront&euml; ever heard of her), who died in 1760, aged 88.
+At the bottom of the slab the fact is commemorated that
+"The sum of 300L was given by the Widow Jane
+Eyre to the Corporation of Galway for the yearly sum
+of 24L to be distributed in bread to 36 poor objects,
+on every Sunday forever." The sexton told us that the
+yearly income from this bequest was now thirty-six
+pounds, but that the weekly distribution of bread had
+occasioned so much disturbance that it had been discontinued,
+and the income of the bequest was now
+divided equally among twelve deserving families.</p>
+
+<p>As we stood there, the peal of bells in the tower
+began to ring for service, but their musical invitation
+went quite unheeded by the crowd in the market-place
+outside, all of whom, of course, were Catholics. One
+woman, clad in black, slipped into a pew just before
+the curate began to read the lesson. We waited a
+while to see if any one else would come, but no one did,
+and at last we quietly took ourselves off.</p>
+
+<p>There was one other sight in Galway we wanted to
+see&mdash;the most famous of its kind in Ireland&mdash;and that
+was the salmon making their way up the Corrib River
+from the sea to spawn in the lake above; and the place<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>
+to see them is from the bridge which leads from the
+courthouse on the east bank of the river to the great
+walled jail on the west bank. Just above the bridge
+is the weir which backs up the water from Lough Corrib
+to afford power for some dozen mills&mdash;though all the
+mills, so far as I could see, are decayed and ruined and
+empty. But below this weir the salmon gather in such
+numbers that sometimes they lie side by side solidly
+clear across the bed of the stream.</p>
+
+<p>A number of fishermen were flogging the water, and
+we sat down under the trees on the eastern bank to
+watch them for a while before going out on the bridge.
+Two or three of them were stationed on a narrow plank
+platform built out over the water just in front of us,
+and the others were on the farther bank, in the shadow
+of the grey wall of the jail. This is supposed to be
+the very best place in all Ireland to catch salmon, and,
+in the season, more anglers than the short stretch of
+shore can accommodate are eager to pay the fifteen shillings,
+which is the fee for a day's fishing there. They
+fish quite close together, which is somewhat awkward,
+but has its advantages occasionally; as, for instance, on
+that day, not very long ago, when one enthusiast, having
+hooked a noble fish, dropped dead in the act of
+playing it. The long account of this sad event which
+the Galway paper published, concluded with the following
+paragraph:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Our readers will be glad to learn that the rod which Mr.
+Doyle dropped was immediately taken up by our esteemed
+townsman, Mr. Martin, who found the fish still on, and after
+ten minutes' play, succeeded in landing it&mdash;a fine clean-run
+salmon of fifteen pounds.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One cannot but admire the quick wit of Mr. Martin,
+who, seeing at a glance that his fellow-townsman was
+past all human aid, realised that the only thing to do
+was to save the fish, and saved it!</p>
+
+<p>But no fish were caught while we were there. We
+had rather expected to see one hooked every minute,
+but we watched for half an hour, and there was not
+even a rise; so at last we walked out on the bridge to
+see if there were really any fish in the stream.</p>
+
+<p>The bridge has a high parapet, worn glassy-smooth
+by the coat-sleeves of countless lookers-on, and there
+are convenient places to rest the feet, so we leaned over
+and looked down. The water was quite clear, and we
+could see the stones on the bottom plainly&mdash;but no
+fish.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, there's one," said a voice at my elbow, and
+following the pointing finger, I saw a great salmon, his
+greenish back almost exactly the colour of the water,
+poised in the stream, swaying slowly from side to side,
+exerting himself just enough to hold his place against
+the current. Then the finger pointed to another and
+another, and we saw that the river was alive with fish&mdash;and
+then I looked around to see whose finger it was,
+and found myself gazing into the smiling eyes of a
+young priest&mdash;not exactly young, either, for his hair
+was sprinkled with grey; but his face was fresh and
+youthful.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you're from America," he said. "One
+can see that." And when I nodded assent, he added,
+"Well, you Americans brag like hell, but you have good
+reason to."</p>
+
+<p>I glanced at him again, thinking perhaps I had mistaken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+his vocation; but there was no mistaking his
+rabat.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been to America," he went on. "I went
+there as a beggar for a church here; and after my mission
+was done, I rested and enjoyed myself; and I want
+to say that there is no country like America."</p>
+
+<p>The words were said with an earnestness that warmed
+my heart; and of course I agreed with him; and then,
+when he learned we were from Ohio, he told us how
+he had crossed our State on his way to San Francisco,
+and that seemed to establish a kind of relationship;
+and when we were satisfied with looking at the fish, he
+insisted on taking us through the marble works, just
+across the river, where some great columns of Connemara
+marble were being polished. It comes from a
+quarry high on Lissoughter, which we were soon to
+visit&mdash;though we didn't know it then!&mdash;and it is
+very beautiful indeed, usually a deep green, but
+sometimes a warm brown, and always gorgeously
+veined.</p>
+
+<p>And then he asked us if we wouldn't like to see
+Queen's College, the Galway branch of the National
+University of Ireland; and of course we said we would,
+and so we started for it, he pushing his wheel before
+him; and on the way, we met a handsome old man, who
+stopped when he saw us, and smilingly asked for an
+introduction. It proved to be Bishop O'Dee, and even
+in the short chat we had with him, it was easy to see
+that he deserved his reputation for culture and scholarship.
+He has two pet aversions, so our guide told us,
+as we went on together, bribery and drunkenness. I
+don't imagine there is much bribery in Connaught, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>
+I fear the Bishop has a formidable antagonist in John
+Barleycorn.</p>
+
+<p>We came to the college presently&mdash;a fine Gothic
+building, with a good quadrangle, and we went through
+its somewhat heterogeneous museum and looked in at
+some of the halls. There are now about a hundred
+and forty pupils, so our guide said, and the new seminary,
+which drew students from all the west of Ireland,
+and which was just getting nicely started, was certain
+to increase this number greatly.</p>
+
+<p>The National University of Ireland was established
+in 1908, as I understand it, for the purpose of affording
+Catholic youth an opportunity for higher education.
+The act provides that "no test whatever of religious
+belief shall be imposed on any person as a condition
+of his becoming or continuing to be a professor,
+lecturer, fellow, scholar or student" of the college;
+nevertheless it is well understood that its spirit and atmosphere
+are Catholic, and such Protestant youth as
+desire higher education usually enter Trinity College,
+Dublin, or Queen's College, Belfast. There are three
+colleges in the National University of Ireland&mdash;University
+College, Dublin, which is the parent institution,
+Queen's College, Cork, and Queen's College, Galway.
+All of them are maintained by state grants.</p>
+
+<p>I am not quite clear as to the maintenance of the new
+seminary, to which our guide next conducted us; but
+it is a mammoth building, with queer squat towers,
+giving it an aspect quite oriental. Our guide said that
+the architecture was Irish-Romanesque, but it reminded
+me of nothing so much as of the pictures I had seen of
+the temples of ancient Syria and Egypt. The seminary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>
+is really an intermediate school, and is planned on
+a very extensive scale. Its promoters are hoping great
+things for it, which I trust will come to pass. We
+mounted to the top of the main tower, and looked out
+over the bay and the hills, and talked of America and
+of Ireland, and of many other things, and then our
+guide asked us if we wouldn't come and have tea with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I hope you will come," he urged, seeing that we
+hesitated. "When I was in America, the welcome I
+got was so warm and open-hearted, that I feel I am
+forever indebted to all Americans, and it is a great
+pleasure to me when I am able to repay a little of that
+kindness. It's few opportunities I have, and I hope
+you won't refuse me this one."</p>
+
+<p>So we accepted the invitation, telling him how kind
+we thought it, and started back through the streets,
+with the women and children courtesying to our guide
+as we passed, and he never failing to give them a
+pleasant word.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis not to my own quarters I'll be taking you,"
+he explained, "but to those of a brother priest, who
+will be proud to have them put to this use," and he
+stopped in front of a row of little houses, called St.
+Joseph's Terrace, and opened the door of one of them,
+and ushered us in, and called the old servant, and bade
+her get us tea.</p>
+
+<p>It was served in a bare little dining-room&mdash;with
+bread and butter and jam and cake&mdash;and very good it
+tasted, though the tea was far too strong for us, and
+we had to ask for some hot water with which to weaken
+it. Our host laughed at us; he drank his straight, without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
+milk or sugar, and he told us about the first time
+he ordered tea in New York. When he started to pour
+it, he thought the cook had forgot to put any tea in
+the pot, so he called the waiter and sent it back; and
+the waiter, who was Irish and understood, laughed and
+took the pot back and put some more tea in.</p>
+
+<p>"It was still far too weak," went on our host; "but
+I was ashamed to say anything more, so I drank it,
+though I might as well have been drinking hot water.
+Indeed, I got no good tea in America. And I nearly
+burnt my mouth off me once, trying to eat ice-cream.
+I took a great spoonful, without knowing what it
+would be like, and I thought it would be the death
+of me. And I shall never forget the first time they
+served Indian corn. It was in great long ears, such as
+I had never seen before; and I had no idea how to eat
+it, so I said it didn't agree with me; and then I was
+astonished to see the other people at the table&mdash;educated,
+cultured people they were, too&mdash;pick it up in
+their fingers and gnaw it off just as an animal would!
+Ah, that was a strange sight!"</p>
+
+<p>I do not know when I have spent a pleasanter half-hour;
+but he had to bid us good-bye, at last, for he was
+due at some service; and he wrung our hands and
+wished us Godspeed, and sprang on his bicycle and
+pedalled off down the road, turning at the corner to
+wave his hat to us. And I am sure his heart was
+light at thought of the good deed he had done that day!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Galway possesses a tram-line, which starts at the
+head of Shop Street and runs out to a suburb called
+Salthill; and as this happens to pass St. Joseph's Terrace,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
+we walked slowly on until a tram should come
+along. And in a moment a woman stopped us&mdash;a
+woman so ragged and forlorn and with such a tale of
+woe that, in spite of my dislike for beggars and suspicion
+of them, I gave her sixpence; and she fairly
+broke down and wept at sight of that bit of silver, and
+we walked on followed by her blessings and thinking
+sadly of the want and misery of Ireland's people.</p>
+
+<p>We had another instance of it, before long, for after
+we had got on the tram, an old man stopped it and
+tried to clamber aboard, but the conductor put him
+off, after a short sharp altercation, and he followed us
+along the sidewalk, shaking his stick and, I suppose,
+hurling curses after us. The conductor explained that
+the old fellow had no money to pay for a ticket, but
+had proposed to pay for it after he had collected some
+money which was due him in Galway. This he no
+doubt considered an entirely reasonable proposition,
+and he was justly incensed when the conductor refused
+to extend the small necessary credit.</p>
+
+<p>"Them ones gave us trouble enough at first," the
+conductor added. "They thought because the trams
+were owned by the town that they should all ride free,
+and that only strangers should be made to pay. Even
+yet, they think it downright savage of us to put them
+off just because they haven't the price of a ticket. It
+costs us no more, they say, to take them than to leave
+them, and so, out of kindness and charity, we ought
+to take them. Och, but they're a thick-headed people!"
+he concluded, and retired to the rear platform to
+ruminate upon the trials of his position.</p>
+
+<p>We got down at the head of Shop Street, and Betty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>
+went on to the hotel to rest, while I spent a pleasant
+half-hour wandering about the streets and through the
+calf-market. There were numbers of little red calves,
+cooped up in tiny pens, and groups of countrymen
+standing about looking at them, their hands under their
+coat-tails and their faces quite destitute of expression.
+At long intervals there would be a little bargaining;
+which, if the would-be purchaser was in earnest, grew
+sharper and sharper, sometimes ending in mutual recriminations,
+and sometimes in an agreement, in which
+case buyer and seller struck hands on it. Then the
+calf in question would be caught and his legs tied
+together, and a piece of gunny-sack wrapped about him,
+and he would be carried away by his new owner. Or
+perhaps he might be sent somewhere by parcel-post.
+Calves tied up in gunny-sacks with their heads sticking
+out form a considerable portion of the Irish mail&mdash;how
+often have I seen the postmen lifting them on and
+off the cars or lugging them away to the parcel-room!</p>
+
+<p>Betty rejoined me, after a time, and we got on the
+tram to ride out to Salthill. Curiously enough, when
+we had climbed to the top of it, we found sitting there
+the old man whom we had seen put off earlier in the
+afternoon. I don't know whether he recognised us;
+but he at once proceeded to relate to us the story of
+that misadventure, with great warmth and in minutest
+detail&mdash;just as he would relate it, no doubt, to every
+listener for a month to come.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, God bless ye, sir, I told the felly he should
+have his penny," he explained, with the utmost earnestness.
+"There was a man in the town would be owin'
+me eight shillin's, and he had promised to pay me this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>
+very evenin'&mdash;but it was no use; he put me off into the
+road, bad cess to him, and it was in my mind to lay
+my stick across his head. But he can't put me off
+now," he added triumphantly, and held up his ticket
+for us to see.</p>
+
+<p>And then he told us how he had five miles to walk
+beyond the end of the tram-line before he would be
+home; but he seemed to think nothing of having had
+to walk ten or twelve miles to collect his wages. Indeed,
+most Irish regard such a walk as not worth thinking
+of; which is as well, since many children have to
+walk four or five miles to school, and men and women
+alike will trudge twice that distance in going from one
+tiny field to another to do a bit of cultivating. Our
+new-found friend seemed quite taken with us, for when
+the tram came to a stop, he asked us if we wouldn't
+have a drink with him; and when we declined, bade us
+a warm good-bye, with many kind wishes, and then
+shambled over to the public-house for a last drink by
+himself. Twenty minutes later, we saw him go past
+along the road, his face to the west, on the long walk
+to his tiny home among the hills.</p>
+
+<p>Salthill is a popular summer resort, and has a picturesque
+beach. The view out over Galway Bay is
+very beautiful, and the wide stretch of water seems to
+offer a perfect harbour; but there were no ships riding
+at anchor there. Time was when the people of the
+town fancied their bay was to become a world-famous
+port because of its nearness to America, and a steamship
+company was formed, and the government was
+persuaded to build a great breakwater and half a mile
+of quays and a floating dock five acres in extent. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>
+the company's life was a short one, for one of its
+boats sank and another burned, and the other companies
+all preferred to go on to Liverpool or London
+or Southampton, and the docks and quays and harbour
+of Galway were left deserted, save for the little hookers
+of the Claddagh fishermen.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>IAR CONNAUGHT</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">We</span> were ready to say good-bye to Galway and to fare
+westward into far Connaught, most primitive of Irish
+provinces; but on Sunday there is only a single train
+each way, and the westbound one leaves Galway at six
+in the morning. We managed to catch it, somewhat to
+our surprise, crossed the Corrib River on a long bridge
+and viaduct, and were at once in Iar Connaught&mdash;West
+Connaught, the domain of the wild O'Flaherties, from
+whom the dwellers in Galway every Sunday besought
+the Lord to deliver them.</div>
+
+<p>The train skirts the shore of Lough Corrib, and one
+has beautiful glimpses of the lake and the hills beyond;
+and then it plunges into a wild and desolate country,
+strewn with great glacial boulders, some of them poised
+so precariously on hill-side and cliff-edge that it seems
+the rattle of every passing train would bring them
+crashing down.</p>
+
+<p>And then we came out upon wide moors, crossed by
+innumerable little streams, and then ahead of us the
+great Connemara mountains began to loom against the
+sky&mdash;gigantic masses of grey granite, bare of vegetation,
+even of the skin of turf which can find foothold
+almost anywhere, but which is powerless against these
+masses of solid rock. The Maamturk Mountains are
+the first to be seen, rugged giants two thousand feet
+high, and the road mounts toward them over a pass,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
+and then dips rapidly to the station at Recess, which
+was our stopping-point.</p>
+
+<p>It was still so early that there was nobody about,
+and when we got to the hotel we found it locked; but
+the porter hastened to open the door in answer to our
+ring, and we found ourselves in one of the nicest hotels
+we had encountered anywhere in Ireland. We had already
+made up our minds to spend that Sunday climbing
+Lissoughter, a mountain just back of the hotel,
+famous for the view from its top; and so, as soon as we
+had disposed of our luggage and eaten a most appetising
+breakfast, we inquired how to get to it. And Sheila
+was summoned to tell us&mdash;Sheila with a complexion
+like peach-bloom, and the brightest of blue eyes, and
+the fluffiest of brown hair, fit to pose as the prototype
+of Sweet Peggy, or Kathleen Bawn, or Kitty Neil, or
+any other of the lovely girls the Irish poets delighted
+to sing. Not the least of the attractions of this hotel
+at Recess are the girls who work there&mdash;as bright and
+blooming a lot of Irish lasses as one could wish to see&mdash;and
+Sheila, I think, was the flower of them all. She
+told us how to go, and we set off happily through the
+soft, bright air of the morning.</p>
+
+<p>Our road, at first, lay along the margin of a placid
+lake, then turned off sharply to the right, and the climb
+began. It was an easy climb, with beautiful views over
+bogs and lakes and mountains opening at every step.
+There was a wet bog on either side the road, and at a
+place where the peat was being cut, we walked out to
+take a closer look at it. And as we stood there gazing
+down into the black excavation, we felt the ground
+trembling beneath our feet; and when we looked up,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>
+there was a man striding upward toward us, two hundred
+feet away, but at every stride shaking the bog so
+that we could feel the tremor distinctly. The bog
+shook more and more as he approached and passed us;
+and then the tremor grew fainter and fainter as
+he went on his way. Unless I had felt it, I would
+never have believed that the footsteps of a single man
+could have created so wide a disturbance, and I understood
+how serious were the difficulties the railways had
+to face in getting across the bogs of central Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Half a mile farther on, we came to a cluster of little
+cabins clinging to the hillside, and we paused to ask the
+way of a man who was pottering about them; and,
+after a moment, we found that we were talking to Mr.
+Rafferty, who with his brother, both bachelors, own
+the only quarry in the world which produces Connemara
+marble; and when he offered to show it to us,
+you may well believe we assented.</p>
+
+<p>From the very first moment, I had perceived an air
+about Mr. Rafferty which puzzled me. He was undoubtedly
+Irish, and yet his manner of speaking was
+not precisely the Irish manner I had grown accustomed
+to; his intonation was not precisely the Irish intonation,
+his choice of words and acquaintance with slang was
+surprisingly wide for a man born and reared in Connemara,
+and there was a certain alertness about him
+which was not Irish at all. And then, when he started
+to tell us his story, I understood, for he had been born
+in New York and spent the first fifteen or twenty years
+of his life there. Not until then did I realise in how
+many subtle, scarcely recognisable ways does the American
+Irishman differ from the Irish Irishman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His father was a Connemara man who had gone to
+America in the decade following the great famine and
+settled in New York, where the son who was talking
+to us was born. The father had come back to Connemara,
+again, for some reason, and had settled at Recess,
+and, by mere accident, one day discovered the vein of
+marble high on the side of Lissoughter. There was
+no railroad in the valley then, and nobody supposed
+the vein would ever be of any value, so he managed to
+get control of it, and his sons came back from America
+to help him work it. Its development was very slow
+and difficult, for the only way of getting the marble
+to market was to haul it along the mountain roads
+to Galway, forty miles distant.</p>
+
+<p>But since the coming of the railroad, all that is
+changed. Some primitive machinery has been installed,
+larger blocks can be handled, and already
+more than one office building in New York has its
+vestibule embellished with the beautiful green stone.
+Even the fragments are carefully saved and worked up
+into small ornaments and novelties to sell to tourists&mdash;round
+towers and Celtic crosses and such things.</p>
+
+<p>We were at the entrance to the quarry by this time,
+and he took us through and explained its workings to
+us. It is a surface vein, as you will see from the
+photograph opposite <a href="#Page_322">page 322</a>, which I took next day,
+and no one knows its depth or its extent. Enough has
+been uncovered to last for many years, at the present
+rate of quarrying. Of course if it was in America, a
+great company would be formed to exploit it, and
+modern machinery installed, and it would be yanked
+out by the thousands of tons a day; but since it is in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>
+Ireland, I doubt if the rate of production will ever be
+largely increased.</p>
+
+<p>We bade Mr. Rafferty good-bye at last, and took
+up the climb again toward the summit of the mountain
+which loomed before us; up and up, with the view opening
+more and more. Away at the bottom of the valley
+ran the white ribbon of a road, with a cluster of
+thatched roofs huddled near it, here and there; and
+beyond the valley towered the granite sides of the
+Twelve Pins of Bunnabeola, the loftiest and most
+picturesque mountains in these western highlands.</p>
+
+<p>We came to a cabin, presently, away up there by
+itself on the mountain side, and we stopped long enough
+to leave the specimens of marble which Mr. Rafferty
+had given us, for they threatened to become embarrassingly
+heavy before the climb was ended. The
+family who lived there came out to show us the best
+way up the hill, and stood watching us as we climbed
+on. The path for a time lay along the bottom of a
+brook; then we came out upon the bare hillside, with an
+outcrop of granite here and there and dripping bog between,
+and no living thing in sight except agile, black-faced
+sheep, who peered down at us curiously from
+every crag. The way grew steeper and steeper and
+the stretches of bog more wet and treacherous; but always
+the view was more magnificent, especially to the
+west, where the Twelve Pins were, and to the south,
+where the plain stretched away, gleaming with innumerable
+little lakes. I never saw so many lakes at one
+time as I saw that day&mdash;there must have been two or
+three hundred of them between us and the far horizon,
+each of them gleaming in the sun like a polished mirror.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After an hour of this steep and slippery work, Betty
+declared that she had had enough; but the last grey
+escarpment of the mountain loomed just over our heads,
+and I hated to give up with the goal so near. She said
+she would wait for me while I went up alone, so, leaving
+her cosily seated in a niche in the cliff, I scrambled
+on, along the granite wall, on hands and knees sometimes;
+and at last I came out upon the very summit,
+with one of the most beautiful views in all Ireland at
+my feet.</p>
+
+<p>Lissoughter stands exactly at the end of a great
+transverse valley, with the Maamturk Mountains on
+one side and the Twelve Pins on the other, and at the
+bottom of this valley gleam the waters of Inagh and
+Derryclare; and the granite hills stretch away as far as
+the eye can see, one behind the other, rugged and bleak,
+without a sign of vegetation&mdash;far more impressive than
+the green-clad hills about Killarney. The day was
+gloriously clear, and I sat there for a long time, gazing
+first this way and then that, and I can shut my eyes
+now and see again that glorious landscape. The top
+of Lissoughter is a ring of granite, with a bog in the
+depression in the centre; and on the highest point of
+this ring some one had heaped up a little cairn of
+stones. Feeling something like Peary at the north pole,
+I tore a leaf from my note-book, wrote my name and
+address upon it, with greetings to the next comer, and
+placed it under the topmost stone of this cairn. I did
+not suppose that it would ever be discovered, but when
+I got home, I found a postal awaiting me from an Irish
+girl, who had climbed Lissoughter with a party a week
+later, and found my note where I had left it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When we got down again to the cottage where we
+had left our marble, we found the man of the house
+out in front, and stopped for a chat with him. Yes, it
+was a fine day; very wet it had been, but a few more
+such days as this would do the potatoes a world of
+good, and one could get into the bogs again to cut the
+winter fuel. As we talked, children gathered from
+various directions, until there were ten standing about
+staring at us, and Betty asked him if they were the
+neighbours' children.</p>
+
+<p>"They are not, miss," he answered, grinning.
+"They're all mine."</p>
+
+<p>"All yours!" echoed Betty, and counted them again.</p>
+
+<p>The man turned to the eldest girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary Agnes, go bring the baby," he said; and
+Mary Agnes disappeared indoors, and came out presently
+with number eleven.</p>
+
+<p>How they manage to live I don't know; but they do
+live, and, so far at least as the children are concerned,
+even grow fat. Their bright eyes and red cheeks spoke
+of anything but undernourishment, and it must take a
+large pot to hold enough to satisfy that family! How
+the pot is filled is the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>Their home was typical of Connaught&mdash;and of the
+poorer part of all Ireland, indeed: a low cabin, built
+of stones and whitewashed, with two rooms, a dirt
+floor, a few pieces of rude furniture, a pile of straw and
+rags for a bed, and hardly enough clothes to go around.
+In fact, below the age of ten or twelve, it was impossible
+to tell the boys from the girls, for they were all
+dressed alike in a single garment, a sort of shift made
+of homespun flannel, and usually, I judge, cut out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span>
+the mother's old red petticoats; and boys and girls
+alike have their hair cropped close. All through
+Connemara we saw this fashion&mdash;a single rudely-made
+garment of wool, worn by the children of both sexes
+all the year round, without undergarment of any kind,
+without shoes or stockings. The flannel the garments
+are made of is practically indestructible, and I fancy
+they are taken off only when outgrown and passed on
+to the next youngest member of the family. When a
+boy outgrows it and is privileged to put on trousers,
+it is a proud day for him, for he ceases to be a mere
+petticoated "malrach" and becomes a "gossure."</p>
+
+<p>Mary Agnes, the oldest member of this particular
+family, was a girl of sixteen, who was soon to leave
+for America to try her fortune; I don't know by what
+miracles of self-denial the money for her passage had
+been scraped together! She was an ugly girl, with bad
+teeth and stupid expression, and I am afraid she will
+find life no bed of roses, even here in America. The
+rest of the children went to school; and the nearest
+schoolhouse was five Irish miles away!</p>
+
+<p>We went on at last, down past the other cabins,
+which are occupied by the men employed in the quarry.
+They were all faithful replicas of the one I have described,
+and they were all swarming with children. I
+never ceased to be astonished at these children, for
+though they were dirty and half-naked, they all seemed
+plump and healthy. Potatoes, I suppose, is the main
+article of their diet, for every cabin had its deep-trenched
+patch, won by back-breaking toil from the
+rocks of the hillside. That leisurely walk down into
+the green valley is unforgettable, the day was so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>
+bright, the air so fresh and sweet, the view so lovely.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 313px;">
+<a href="images/gs026-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs026.jpg" width="313" height="500" alt="THE CONNEMARA MARBLE QUARRY" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE CONNEMARA MARBLE QUARRY<br /><br />A CONNEMARA HOME</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>We spent the remainder of the afternoon playing
+clock golf, and exploring the beautiful garden attached
+to the hotel; and that night we sat in front of a great
+open fire-place where a wood fire crackled, and luxuriated
+in the pleasant fatigue of a well-spent day. If I
+had known as much then as I do now, we would have
+spent other evenings there, for Recess is as good a point
+as any from which to explore Connaught, and the hotel
+there is immeasurably superior to any other in that section
+of Ireland&mdash;clean and bright and comfortable and
+well-managed, with food that was a pleasant variant
+from the unimaginative dishes we had grown so weary
+of. It has been built by the railroad company to encourage
+tourist traffic, and I don't see how it can pay;
+but, for the sake of travellers in that part of Ireland,
+I hope it will never be closed.</p>
+
+<p>I said something of this, that evening, to the manager
+and to Sheila; and added to the latter that if she would
+tell me the secret of her complexion, I would make a
+fortune for both of us.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis just the air," she laughed. "Send your lady
+friends out here to us, and we'll soon have them
+blooming like roses."</p>
+
+<p>So there is another reason for a stay at Recess.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>I clambered back up to the quarry, next morning,
+for I wanted some pictures of it, and of the quaint
+cabins along the way. I found Mr. Rafferty there,
+and a gang of men busy loading some blocks of marble
+upon a cart, preparatory to taking them down the
+mountain. Just back of the quarry, two red-skirted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>
+women were digging in a potato patch, and they looked
+so picturesque and Millet-like that I asked them if I
+might take their picture. They held a quick consultation,
+and then said I might provided I paid them two
+shillings first!</p>
+
+<p>But I <i>did</i> want a picture of one of those poor little
+mountain cabins, and on my way back, I saw a woman
+standing at the door of one of them, and she passed the
+time of day so amiably that I stopped to talk. The
+year had been very hard, she said&mdash;as what year is not,
+in such a place!&mdash;and her husband was even then at
+Oughterard, trying to find work. Meanwhile, she was
+left with the children, to do the best she could, and
+what they found to live on I don't know; but she was
+glad for me to take a picture of her little place, with
+herself and the children and the dog standing in front
+of it, and I am sure the coin I slipped into the baby's
+fist was very welcome. That picture is opposite page
+322, and it gives a better idea than any mere description
+could of these damp, dark, comfortless mountain
+homes, with their low walls, and tiny windows, and
+leaky, grass-grown thatch, tied on with ropes. Both
+the boys in the picture wear the red flannel garment
+common to all Connemara children. The girl has just
+outgrown it.</p>
+
+<p>Farther on, I came upon a woman and her daughter,
+a girl of about sixteen, working in a potato patch; and
+the girl was really pretty, although at the moment she
+was engaged in spreading manure with her hands about
+the roots of the plants. Her skirt was kilted high,
+revealing her graceful and rounded legs, and when she
+smiled her teeth were very white. That was the finishing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>
+touch, for teeth are bad in Ireland, and most pretty
+girls need only smile to disillusion one. So, after
+some talk about the weather, and about America, I
+asked the mother if I might not take the girl's picture;
+and the girl was willing enough, for she hastily let
+down her skirt, blushing with pleasure; but her mother
+shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not the first one to be askin' that," she
+said; "but I have said no to all of them, for I would
+not have her growing vain."</p>
+
+<p>"She has a right to be vain," I pointed out, "for she
+is very pretty; and it wouldn't hurt her to have her
+picture taken."</p>
+
+<p>"Handsome is as handsome does," said her mother;
+"and she is not as good as she looks."</p>
+
+<p>No doubt with a little more blarney I could have
+won her consent; but in my heart of hearts I knew she
+was right, and I didn't try to persuade her. It was not
+the first time I realised I was not cut out for a photographer!
+She said the girl would be going to America
+before long, and I advised her to take care of her teeth,
+and bade them good-bye and went on my way. I
+have regretted since that I didn't try the blarney, for
+that picture would certainly have embellished the pages
+of this book!</p>
+
+<p>I had thought that the fine weather would bring out
+the turf cutters in force, and I had hoped to get a
+picture of them at work; but the cuttings were all
+empty, for some reason, and at last, after a final long
+look at the beautiful valley, I made my way back to
+the hotel, and an hour later we were faring westward
+toward Clifden.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The road ran for many miles with the granite masses
+of the Twelve Pins towering on the right, springing
+sheer two thousand feet from the bogs around them&mdash;great
+cones rising one behind the other, their summits
+gleaming so white in the sun that they seemed crowned
+with snow. We ran away from them, at last, across a
+dreary moor, down to the sea, and so to Clifden.</p>
+
+<p>Clifden is a little modern town with a single wide
+street overlooking the bay; but we had time for only
+a glance at it, for the motor-bus was waiting which was
+to take us to Leenane,&mdash;which is pronounced to rhyme
+with "fan," as though it had no final "e"&mdash;and we
+were soon climbing out of the town, with a beautiful
+view of the bay to the left, and on a cliff close to the
+shore the great masts of the Marconi station, which is
+in touch with the coast of Newfoundland. No contrast
+could have been more complete&mdash;this latest and
+greatest of the achievements of science, set down in a
+country where nothing has altered for five centuries;
+a country to which the description penned by Rory
+O'Flaherty, more than a century before our Revolution,
+applies as closely and completely as it did when
+it was written. Another contrast, just as great, is that
+between the handsome young Italian who set those
+masts here and the men who live in the little cottages
+along the sea under them. And yet Marconi himself
+is half Irish&mdash;for his mother was Irish, and he has
+married an Irish girl; and I fancy he is glad that one
+of the greatest of his stations should be here on the Irish
+coast.</p>
+
+<p>We mounted steadily along a winding road, and at
+every turn the scenery grew more superb&mdash;great sweeps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span>
+of rugged landscape, of bog and rocky field and granite
+mountain, rousing the soul like a blare of martial music.
+Beyond Letterfrank, the road dips into the lovely Pass
+of Kylemore; and again, as back at Glengarriff, it was
+bordered with fuchsia hedges, gay with scarlet flowers.
+And presently we were running close beside Kylemore
+Lake, with the white towers of the castle gleaming
+above the trees on the other side&mdash;a magnificent structure,
+now owned by the Duke of Manchester&mdash;financed
+by his Cincinnati father-in-law!</p>
+
+<p>And then we came out upon a wide moor, and the
+road climbed up and up&mdash;and all at once, we came to
+the top of the pass, and there, far below us lay Killary
+Bay, a narrow arm of the Atlantic running back into
+the very heart of the Connemara mountains, which
+press upon it so closely that there is barely room
+for the road between rock and water. We dropped
+down toward it, passed a tiny mountain village, came
+out upon the shore, and sped along at the very edge of
+the water, until, far ahead, we saw the cluster of houses
+which is Leenane; and in another moment we had
+stopped before the rambling building which is McKeown's
+Hotel.</p>
+
+<p>McKeown himself is a bearded giant of a man,
+with bronzed face and the sunniest of smiles, and his
+hotel is a sort of paradise for fishermen. To others it
+is not so attractive; but in surroundings it could hardly
+be surpassed. Right at its door stretches Killary Bay;
+back of it tower the steep hills, and across the inlet
+grey and purple giants spring two thousand feet into
+the air, right up from the water's edge.</p>
+
+<p>A few looms have been set up by Mr. McKeown in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>
+building adjoining the hotel, and tweeds are woven
+there from yarn spun in the neighbourhood, forming a
+small industry which gives employment to a number of
+persons; and a few yards farther down the road is a
+station of the constabulary, and it looked so bright and
+inviting that I stopped in for a chat with the men.</p>
+
+<p>I have already spoken of the Royal Irish Constabulary&mdash;the
+force which polices the country; slim,
+soldierly men, governed from Dublin Castle, and really
+constituting an army, eleven thousand strong, armed
+with carbines, sword bayonets and revolvers, and ready
+to be concentrated instantly wherever there is trouble.
+They are nearly all Irishmen, so it is not a foreign army,
+but they are seldom assigned to the districts where they
+were born and reared; and the men who command them
+from Dublin Castle are English army officers, who are
+in no way responsible to the public. All, in fact, that
+Ireland has to do with the Royal Irish Constabulary is
+to foot the bills.</p>
+
+<p>Because of this fact, because in the old days they
+were called out to assist at every eviction and at every
+political or religious arrest, because their services are
+still required at every trial and mass-meeting and fair
+and market, and finally because their demeanour is sometimes
+rather top-lofty, the Irish generally regard them
+with a suspicion and dislike which seem to me undeserved.
+So far as I came into contact with them, I
+found them courteous and kindly men, and apparently
+as good Irishmen as any one could desire. But there
+is one cause for complaint which has a real basis, and
+that is that, in a country which is as free of crime as
+Ireland now is, a police force should be maintained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span>
+which averages one to every 394 of the population, and
+which costs annually about $7,500,000. In the old
+days of evictions and coercion acts and political and
+religious strife, some such force may have been necessary;
+but that need has passed. Crime is to-day
+much less frequent and serious in Ireland than in
+England, yet in Ireland the per capita cost of the
+police is $1.64, while in England it is only fifty-six
+cents.</p>
+
+<p>But the members of the constabulary are not to
+blame for this, and one grows accustomed to seeing
+them everywhere&mdash;at the Dublin crossings, at the street
+corners of every little village, walking briskly in pairs
+along the loneliest of mountain roads, stationed in the
+wilds of the hills or amid the desolation of the bogs,
+often with no house in sight except the barrack in
+which they live.</p>
+
+<p>I certainly got a warm welcome, that day, from the
+sergeant in charge of the Leenane barrack, and from
+the one constable who happened to be on duty there.
+They showed me all through the place, clean and bare
+and Spartan-like, with their kits along the wall, ready
+to be caught up at a moment's notice, for a call to duty
+may come at any time, and there must be no delay.
+It was a real barrack, too, with heavy bars across the
+windows, and a door that would resist any mob.</p>
+
+<p>And then they showed me their equipment. To the
+belt which they all wear a leather case is suspended for
+the baton, and a square leather pouch which contains
+a pair of handcuffs. At the back is the ammunition
+pouch, and on the side opposite the baton hangs the
+sword-bayonet, which can also be used as a knife or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span>
+dagger. The small carbine they carry weighs only six
+and a half pounds, but is wonderfully compact and
+efficient, with a six-shot magazine, and a graduated
+sight up to two thousand yards. No man in this
+station had ever had occasion to use his rifle, and they
+all said earnestly that they hoped they never would.</p>
+
+<p>They have a beat of twelve miles along the mountain
+roads, and they cover it twice every day and once
+every night. I asked them the reason for so much
+vigilance, for I could not imagine any serious crime
+back in these hills among this simple and kindly people;
+and they said that there was really very little
+crime; but a sheep would be missing now and then, or
+a bit of poaching would be done, or perhaps a quarrel
+would arise between some farmer and his labourers and
+a horse would be lamed&mdash;it was such things as those
+they had to be on the lookout for. The position of
+constable is a good one&mdash;for Ireland; and I imagine
+that most of those who enter the service stay in it till
+retired, for it carries an increase of pay every five
+years, with a pension after twenty-five years' service, or
+in case of disability.</p>
+
+<p>We sat and talked for a long time about America
+and Ireland, and intelligent fellows I found them,
+though perhaps with a little of the soldier's contempt
+for the shiftless civilian. And then I walked on to
+the village which nestles at the head of the bay, a single
+street of slated houses. Everybody wanted to talk,
+and I remember one old granny, with face incredibly
+wrinkled, who sat in front of her door knitting a stocking
+without once glancing at it, and who told me she
+was eighty-five and had nine children in America.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span>
+And I met the girl who, with her brother, teaches the
+village school, and she asked me if I wouldn't come in,
+before I left, and see the school, and I promised her I
+would.</p>
+
+<p>Then I noticed that one of the little shops had the
+name "Gaynor" over the door, and I stopped in to ask
+the proprietor if he knew that was also the name of the
+mayor of New York. He did&mdash;indeed, he knew as
+much about Mayor Gaynor as I did. There were two
+other men sitting there, and they asked me to sit down.
+One of them was a mail carrier, and he told me something
+of his trips back up into the hills, and how almost
+all the letters he delivered were from America, each
+with a bit of money in it.</p>
+
+<p>"When there is bad times in America," he went on,
+"and when men are out of work there, it pinches us
+here just as hard as it pinches them there&mdash;harder,
+maybe, for if the money don't come, there is nothing
+for it but the work-house. A man can't make a living
+on these poor hill farms, no matter how hard he
+tries, and there is no work to be had about here, save a
+little car driving and such like in the summer for
+visitors like yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do they stay here?" I asked. "Why don't
+they go away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where would they go? There's no place for them
+to go in Ireland&mdash;America is the only place, and every
+one that can raise the money does go there, you may be
+sure. Them that's left behind are too poor or too old
+to cross the sea; and then, however bad it is, there is
+some that will not leave the little home they was born
+in, so long as they can stay there and keep the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>
+soul in their body. There be some so wrongheaded
+that they won't even move down into the valley farms
+which they might be getting from the Congested Districts
+Board."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>I have been fighting shy of the Congested Districts
+Board ever since I left Cork; but here, in the very heart
+of the worst of the congested districts, I may as well
+explain what the words mean.</p>
+
+<p>No one, travelling from Galway to Clifden and then
+on to Leenane, as we had done, would have thought of
+the district as "congested," for, while the little huddles
+of thatched roofs which mark a village are fairly frequent,
+they are scarcely noticeable in the great stretches
+of hill and bog and rocky meadow among which they
+nestle. And, indeed, "congested," in this sense, does
+not mean crowded with people; it means exceptionally
+poor; and there is no district of Ireland poorer than
+Connaught, that land of bog and granite, where every
+inch of ground must be either elaborately drained or
+wrested from the rock, and where, even after years of
+labour, the fields are still either so wet that a little extra
+rain ruins them, or so full of stones that the reaping
+must be done with the hook. In Connaught, even
+the poorest man has a right to be proud of his home,
+because, however small and mean it may be, it represents
+infinite toil.</p>
+
+<p>But how does it come that any one lives in these
+hills, where life is such a constant and heartrending
+struggle? The answer is that Connaught is the Irish
+pale. After Cromwell had subdued Ireland, the Puritan
+Parliament announced that it was "Not their intention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span>
+to extirpate the whole nation," as many people had
+been led, not unreasonably, to believe; and a year later,
+they proved their humanitarian intentions by enacting
+that such Irish as survived should be permitted to live
+thereafter between the Atlantic and the Shannon, certain
+portions of which were set aside, as the Parliament
+said in unintentional rhyme,</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"For the habitation<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">of the Irish nation."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>It was stipulated, however, that they should not
+settle within four miles of the sea, within four miles
+of a town, nor within two miles of the Shannon; they
+were given until the first of May, 1654, to get into
+their new homes, after which date, any found outside
+of Connaught were to be treated as outlaws and killed
+out of hand. The misery and sufferings of the little
+bands of terror-stricken people, wandering in the depth
+of winter westward along unknown roads to an unknown,
+inhospitable country, will not bear thinking of&mdash;or,
+thinking of it, one can understand something
+of Irish hate for Cromwell's memory. As a matter of
+fact, the edict sounds worse than it was, as such edicts
+usually do, for it was impossible for it to be literally
+carried out. All the Irish were not banished to
+Connaught, for many of them preferred to face death
+where they had always lived rather than among the
+Connemara hills; and they were not murdered out of
+hand, but given work, for the new landlords were glad
+to employ them at menial labour, since no other
+labourers were to be had. But from that time on, it
+was usually the Protestant Englishman who lived in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span>
+the mansion house, and the Irish Catholic whose home
+was roofed with thatch and floored with dirt.</p>
+
+<p>Let us be careful not to grow sentimental over the
+wrongs of Ireland, nor to magnify them. They are
+not unique, for they have been paralleled many times
+in history. We should be careful, too, not to judge
+a seventeenth-century Parliament by twentieth-century
+ideals. There is this to be said for it: that its only
+hope of existence lay in stamping out rebellion, and
+the only way, apparently, to stamp out rebellion in
+Ireland was to kill the rebels. That the Parliament
+chose to banish them rather than kill them is so much
+to its credit, and I doubt not that, after the vote had
+been taken, many of those old Puritans went home with
+the feeling that they had done a merciful and Christian
+deed. Nor should we forget that the wars of religion
+were as bitter on one side as on the other: St. Bartholomew
+was far more bloody than Drogheda, and the removal
+of the Irish to Connaught was matched by the
+banishment of the Huguenots from France, thirty years
+later. It did not seem possible, in that day, that Protestant
+and Catholic could ever live side by side in peace
+and friendship, and that narrow bigotry alone would
+strive to keep alive the memory of those mistaken, centuries-old
+feuds and persecutions.</p>
+
+<p>The best portions of Connaught were already fully
+settled, as the fugitive Irish found when they got there;
+furthermore, although the broad Shannon formed a
+natural moat which would hold safely the Irish who
+had crossed it, it was further strengthened by giving
+to Cromwell's soldiers all the broad belt of fertile land
+along the river, as well as the rich valleys running back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span>
+into the hills. All that was left for the newcomers
+were the bleak moors and rocky mountain-sides, where
+no one else would live; and since these, for the most
+part, were quite unfit to be cultivated, there was every
+reason to believe that the people condemned to live
+among them would soon cease from troubling.</p>
+
+<p>But they didn't&mdash;at least, all of them didn't. They
+built rude shelters of rock for their families, and the
+cabins one sees to-day throughout Connemara are the
+direct descendants of those early ones, with scarcely
+an altered feature. They set to work to reclaim the
+hillsides, and though, every year, the spade turned up
+a new crop of stones, the fields slowly grew capable of
+producing a little food. Before that time, of course,
+many of the people had starved, but those that were
+left were all the better off, and it looked, for a while,
+as though they might some day be able to open the
+door without seeing the wolf there.</p>
+
+<p>But the end was not yet. It should be remembered
+that these mountain farms did not belong to the people
+who had created them, and who laboured constantly
+to improve them, but were part of the "plantation"
+of some court favourite or adventurer, so that rent
+must be paid for them; and as the farm improved the
+rent was raised, although the improvement resulted
+from the labour of the man who paid the rent, so that,
+in the end, it was not the tenant who was richer, but
+the landlord. If the rent was raised to a point where
+the tenant couldn't pay it, or if the landlord wanted
+the land, the tenant was evicted with absolutely no
+compensation for the improvements he had made.
+Then it was a question either of going to America, or,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span>
+if there wasn't money enough for that, as was usually
+the case, of taking up some other stretch of rocky hillside,
+and beginning the weary struggle all over again.
+The craze for grazing, which started some forty or
+fifty years ago, resulted in the eviction of many thousands
+from farms their own industry had made, and
+to-day, as one drives through Connaught, one sees great
+stretches of land given over to sheep which were once
+part of such farms, and one can tell it is so by the faint
+ridges which mark the old tillage.</p>
+
+<p>So evolution proceeded, but for the Irish peasantry
+it was devolution, for every step was a step downward;
+and millions of them left the land in despair,
+and millions of those that remained were unable to
+make enough to live on; and the workhouses kept getting
+bigger and bigger, and the people poorer and
+poorer; until finally, a few English statesmen, with a
+somewhat broader outlook than the average, saw that
+something had to be done, and set about doing it.
+There is no need for me to enumerate the steps that
+were taken&mdash;some of them wise, many of them foolish;
+but the greatest of all was the enactment of legislation
+permitting and assisting tenants to become the owners
+of the land on which they lived.</p>
+
+<p>This was in 1891, when the Congested Districts
+Board was established, with wide powers, which have
+since been made wider still; but the kernel of it all is
+this: in the west of Ireland, where the need is greatest,
+the board has power to condemn and purchase at a fair
+valuation the fertile land of the great land-owners,
+except the demesne, which is the park about the mansion
+house, and can then re-sell this land to small<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span>
+farmers, giving them about sixty years to pay for it,
+the payments being figured on the basis of the cost
+price, plus interest at the rate of four per cent. Such
+condemnation and re-selling is necessarily slow, but it
+is going steadily forward, and must in the end, change
+the whole face of western Ireland. Indeed, there are
+some who think it has already done so.</p>
+
+<p>The Congested Districts Board has done much more
+than buy and re-sell land; it has aided and developed
+agriculture, improved the breeding of stock, encouraged
+the establishment of industries, developed the
+fisheries along the western coast, established technical
+schools&mdash;in short, it has assumed a sort of paternal
+oversight of the districts committed to its care.</p>
+
+<p>All of the "congested districts" aren't in the west of
+Ireland&mdash;there are districts in the east and south where
+the holdings are "uneconomic"&mdash;that is, where the income
+possible to be derived from them is not enough
+to support a family&mdash;sometimes not enough even to
+pay the rent. But conditions are worst in Connaught,
+and remain worst, in spite of the work of the board.
+It is here that life has sunk to its lowest terms, where
+the usual home is a hovel unfit for habitation, sheltering
+not only the family, but the chickens and the pigs and
+the donkey; it is here that manure is piled habitually
+just outside the door, and where fearful epidemics
+sweep the countryside. At the time we were at
+Leenane, there was an outbreak of typhus a few miles
+back in the mountains. It had been announced with
+hysterical scare-heads by the Dublin papers, but the
+people of the neighbourhood thought little of it&mdash;they
+had seen typhus so often!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Which brings me back to Gaynor's general store, and
+the mail-carrier who was telling me about the letters
+from America.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Gaynor put in, "and about the only letters
+that go out from here are for America&mdash;and well I
+know what is inside them! There was a time when I
+sold stamps to the poor people, or gave credit to them
+when they couldn't pay, and the only stamps I ever
+thought of buying was the tuppence-ha'penny ones,
+which we used to have to put on American letters.
+And many is the letter I have written for poor starving
+people praying for a little help from the son or daughter
+who had gone to the States, and who was maybe
+forgetting how hard life is back here in Connaught."</p>
+
+<p>"Not many of them do be forgetting," said the mail-carrier,
+puffing his pipe slowly; "I will say that for
+them. There be many away from here now," he went
+on, "just for the summer&mdash;gone to England or Scotland
+to help with the harvest. It is a hard life, but
+they make eighteen shillings a week there, and the
+money they bring back with them will help many a
+family through the winter. There be thousands and
+thousands here in Connaught who could not live but
+for the money they make every year in this way."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped to watch Gaynor weigh out a shilling's
+worth of flour&mdash;American flour!&mdash;for a girl who had
+come in with a dingy basket, into which the flour was
+dumped; and then he went on to tell me something
+about his trips up over the hills&mdash;for no house in Ireland
+is too poor or too remote for the mail-carrier to
+reach. Talk about rural delivery! With us, a man
+must have his mail-box down by the highroad, where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span>
+the carrier can reach it easily; in Ireland, the carrier
+climbs to every man's very door, and puts the letter
+into his hand&mdash;and I can imagine the joy that it brings.
+Irish mail-carriers play Santa Claus all the year round!</p>
+
+<p>I tore myself away, at last, from this absorbing conversation,
+and started back to the hotel. The sun had
+not yet set; but suddenly the thought came to me
+that it must be very late, and I snatched out my watch
+and looked at it. It was half-past eight&mdash;an hour
+after the hotel's dinner time! However, in a fishing
+hotel, they are accustomed to the vagaries of their
+guests; and I found that dinner had been kept hot for
+me.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>An hour later, as we sat on the balcony in front of
+our room, gazing out across the moonlit water, we
+heard the tread of quick feet along the road, and, looking
+down, saw pass two constables, starting out upon
+their night patrol. And whenever I think of Leenane,
+I see those two slim, erect figures marching vigorously
+away into the darkness along the lonely road.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>JOYCE'S COUNTRY</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Twenty-five</span> miles away to the eastward from Leenane,
+across a wild stretch of hill and bog known as
+Joyce's Country, are the ruins of the old abbey of
+Cong, and thither we set out, next morning, behind a
+little black mare who would need all her staying powers
+for the trip that day, and on a car driven, as was
+fitting, by a man named Joyce&mdash;as perhaps half the
+men are who live in this neighbourhood. "Jyce" is
+the local pronunciation; and the Joyces are one of
+the handsomest and fiercest breeds of mountaineers to
+be met with anywhere&mdash;fit companions for those of
+Kentucky and Tennessee.</div>
+
+<p>The original Joyces were Welshmen, so it is said,
+who came to Ireland about 1300, and, with the permission
+of the all-powerful O'Flaherties, settled in this
+country between Lough Mask and the sea. Why they
+should have chosen so inhospitable a region I don't
+know&mdash;perhaps because no one else wanted it. Certainly
+the O'Flaherties didn't; for they preferred to
+live along the sea, where fish was plentiful. But the
+Joyces were an agricultural people; they turned as
+much of the hillside as they could into arable land,
+cultivated with the spade to this day and reaped with
+the hook. On the rest of it, they grazed their flocks,
+and they still graze them there.</p>
+
+<p>It was a beautiful, warm day, with fleecy clouds in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span>
+the sky and a blue haze about the hills, and everybody
+was out enjoying the sunshine as we drove through the
+village and turned up along the shoulder of the Devil's
+Mother Mountain. The fine weather had brought the
+men and women out to work in the potato fields&mdash;such
+of the men, that is, as hadn't yet left for England or
+Scotland to spend the summer in the fields there. Usually
+there were five or six women to one man, each of
+them armed with a spade or a fork, and it was pitiful
+to see the poor little patches in which they were working.
+Almost always they were on a steep hillside&mdash;there
+isn't much else but hillside hereabouts which can
+be cultivated, for even where there happens to be a
+little level land in the valley, it is almost always wet
+bog in which nothing can be grown. The patches
+were very, very small, and each of them was surrounded
+by a high wall built of the stones which had been dug
+from the ground; and at the bottom of every slope was
+a pile of surplus stones which had been rolled there out
+of the way.</p>
+
+<p>The potatoes were planted in drills about two feet
+wide, and then between the drills a deep trench was dug
+to carry off the water, for even on the hillsides the
+ground is very wet; and these trenches must be kept
+clear of weeds so that the water will run off freely, and
+of course the drills must be kept clear of weeds too;
+and the ground is so poor that manure must be freely
+used, and the only way to get it where it is needed
+is to place it there by hand. And almost every time
+the spade is driven into the ground, it brings up more
+stones which must be carried away, until it sometimes
+becomes quite a problem what to do with them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As many as possible are built into the fences; and
+the dominant feature of every Connemara landscape is
+the zig-zag tapestry of stone walls which covers it.
+They run in every direction&mdash;up the sides of hills so
+steep that it seems a miracle they don't slide off, around
+fields so small that the ground can't be seen above the
+fence, along the tops of high ridges where they form
+grotesque patterns against the sky which shines through
+every chink, in places where there seems to be no need
+whatever for a wall and yet to which the stones have
+been carried with prodigious labour.</p>
+
+<p>But do not suppose that, even with all this toil, the
+fields are cleared of stones. Everywhere there are outcroppings
+of solid rock which the tiller of the field
+has been unable to dislodge, and around which he must
+sow and reap. In consequence, there are practically no
+fields in which it would be possible to drive a plow,
+and few indeed in which it is possible to swing a
+scythe. The fields themselves are so small that one
+wonders anybody should trouble to cultivate them at
+all. I have seen scores and scores not more than fifty
+feet square, each surrounded with its high wall; I have
+seen many less than that, with just space enough for
+a two-roomed hovel, where the family must take the
+stock into the house with them, because there is no place
+for an out-building, and where the manure must be
+heaped against the wall, because to throw it a foot away
+would be to put it on land belonging to some one else.
+The land which the family itself cultivated might lie
+in twenty different places, miles away.</p>
+
+<p>This complication, which is unparalleled elsewhere
+in the world, arose in this way: Half a century ago a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span>
+man would lease some acres of ground and by terrific
+labour convert it into tillable land. As his sons grew
+up and his daughters married, he would sub-let to each
+of his sons and sons-in-law small portions of his holding,
+and their other relatives would do the same, so
+that, while each of them might be the tenant of four or
+five acres, they would be scattered in a dozen different
+places. A second generation further complicated
+things. An acre field would be split up between ten
+different tenants, each with his stone wall around his
+portion; and one of the biggest jobs the Congested
+Districts Board has had to tackle is that of so redistributing
+the land that each tenant shall have a compact
+portion.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine the small farmers of any neighbourhood
+called together for the purpose of redistribution, each
+of them suspicious and jealous of all the others, each
+of them believing that his scattered bits of land are
+quite exceptionally valuable, each of them remembering
+the bitter labour by which he reclaimed each rood;
+and then imagine the patience and tact which are needed
+to convince them that they are not being cheated, and
+to persuade them to agree to the proposed re-allotment.
+Talk about the labours of Hercules! Why they were
+child's play compared with this!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We drove on, that morning, down a wide valley, past
+these tiny walled fields and thatched houses, now and
+then passing one of the neat little slated cottages which
+the County Council builds where it can, but which are
+distressingly few and far between; and then we came
+out into the grazing country, with stone walls running<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span>
+right up the thousand-foot hillsides to the very top,
+and the white sheep dotted over the green turf; and
+then we turned off along a side-road, which speedily
+mounted through a narrow pass, across a wide bog, and
+so to the head of a deep gorge where, far below us,
+stretched the blue waters of Lough Nafooey, lying in
+a deep cup of granite mountains.</p>
+
+<p>I have never seen a steeper road than that which
+zig-zags down into this valley, and I was very glad
+indeed to get off and walk, not only because of the
+steepness, but also because on foot I could stop whenever
+I chose and look at the beautiful scene below&mdash;the
+long, narrow lake, crowded in on the south by steep,
+bare mountains, and with a white ribbon of road running
+along its northern edge, past a cluster of houses
+built close beside it, and with the furrowed fields behind
+them mounting steeply upwards. The whole
+village was out at work in the fields, and the red petticoats
+of the women gave the scene just that added
+touch of colour it needed.</p>
+
+<p>The mountains on the southern shore grew less rugged
+presently, and as soon as the ground grew level enough
+for tillage, it presented such a complicated pattern of
+stone walls as must be unique, even here in this bewalled
+district. For more than a mile we drove along
+opposite them; and then we reached the end of the lake,
+and struck off along another valley toward Lough
+Mask. We were soon on another desolate moor,
+dotted with the black stumps of bog oak; and then the
+road sank into a pass, as the hills closed in on either
+side, and skirted a dancing brook, and then before us
+opened the lower part of Lough Mask.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 322px;">
+<a href="images/gs027-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs027.jpg" width="322" height="500" alt="IN &quot;JOYCE&#39;S COUNTRY&quot;" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">IN &quot;JOYCE&#39;S COUNTRY&quot;<br /><br />ON THE SHORE OF LOUGH MASK</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>I have said that these Irish mountaineers are fierce,
+and I must explain now what I meant by that, for a
+kindlier people, one more eager to bid you welcome or
+help you on your way, you will find nowhere. The
+same is true of the Kentucky mountaineers; and yet
+they do not hesitate to put a bullet through any man
+they regard as an enemy. So with the Joyces and the
+O'Malleys. It was here among these hills that the "Invincibles"
+and the "Moonlighters" ranged in the days
+of the Land League; their notions of right and wrong
+were, and still are, the old primitive ones. They believe
+in the Mosaic law of an eye for an eye; murder
+after murder has been done here, and no one disapproved;
+and yet a man with a purse filled with gold,
+or a woman with no protection save her chastity, might
+walk these roads unharmed and unafraid on the darkest
+night.</p>
+
+<p>Just before one reaches the bridge over the narrow
+stream through which the upper lake flows into the
+lower, the road passes close to a cluster of houses, and
+it was in one of them that two bailiffs of Lord Ardilaun
+were beaten to death, and their bodies placed in sacks
+weighted with stones; and then they were carried down
+to the lake, and every one along the road was made to
+lend a hand to carrying them. That was but one
+tragedy of many such&mdash;outbreaks of the feud which
+started six centuries ago, and which only within the
+past decade has shown any sign of being outlived and
+forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know when I have been more impressed and
+astonished than when I stood on the bridge over the
+river below Lough Mask, and gazed out upon that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span>
+noble sheet of water, stretching away to the north like
+an inland sea. It was dotted with beautiful islands,
+but no farther shore was visible, not even when we
+mounted a bold crag overhanging the water in order
+to get a wider view. We went on again, with the lake
+at our left, and then the road turned away between
+high stone walls&mdash;only these walls were solidly built
+of dressed stones laid in mortar, and were surmounted
+with broken glass set in cement. There was a gate here
+and there, through which we could catch glimpses of
+wild and unkempt woods, a-riot with a luxuriant vegetation
+bearing witness to the richness of the soil.</p>
+
+<p>The wall must have been ten feet high, and after we
+had gone on for half an hour with no sign of it coming
+to an end, we asked the driver what it was, and he
+told us that it was the wall surrounding part of the
+estate of Lord Ardilaun, which stretches clear on to
+Cong, a distance of six or eight miles&mdash;the very choicest
+land of the whole district. Some of it is let to
+tenants, so our driver said, at rents which are almost
+prohibitive; but the most part is walled in, with many
+notices against trespassing posted about it&mdash;a preserve
+for woodcock.</p>
+
+<p>We dropped through the little town of Rosshill, once
+the seat of the Earl of Leitrim (but now owned by
+Lord Ardilaun), and then into Clonbur (also owned
+by Lord Ardilaun), where the wall stopped for a while
+to make room for the houses, but began again as
+soon as the village ended; and then we passed a curious
+collection of cairns on a plateau at the side of the road,
+some of them surmounted by weather-blackened wooden
+crosses; and then on a hill to the right we saw another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span>
+great cairn; and then we suddenly realised that we
+were on the battlefield of Moytura, which raged for
+five days over this peninsula between Lough Corrib
+and Lough Mask, so long ago that nobody knows exactly
+when it was, though it has been roughly dated at
+two thousand years before Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The contestants in that battle were the Firbolgs, the
+men of the leathern wallets, who had come from the
+south to Ireland five days before the flood, and the De
+Dananns, a tall, fair, blue-eyed race of magicians from
+the north, who had "settled on the Connemara mountains
+in the likeness of a blue mist." The De Dananns
+were the victors, and the cairns we saw that day were
+the monuments they raised over the burial places of
+their dead warriors.</p>
+
+<p>There was another famous battle on this same peninsula,
+not so many years ago, for over there on the
+shore of Lough Mask lived Captain Boycott, whose
+name has passed into the language as that of the silent
+and effective weapon which the peasantry forged
+against him, in Land League days.</p>
+
+<p>Half a mile farther, and a sharp turn of the road
+brought us into the village of Cong, a single street of
+drab houses, whose principal attraction is the ruins of
+the abbey where the Cross of Cong was fashioned; but
+the long drive had made us hungry, and so first of all
+we stopped at a clean little inn and had tea, and
+it was set forth in a service of old silver lustre which
+Betty marvelled over so warmly that she almost forgot
+to eat. And then we started for the abbey, which,
+of course, like everything else hereabouts, belongs to
+Lord Ardilaun.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From the road, all that one can see of it is a portion
+of the wall of the church, so overgrown with ivy that
+even the windows are covered; but we managed to
+rout out a boy, who took us around to the cloister side,
+which is very beautiful indeed, with its lovely broken
+arcades, its rounded arches, its clustered pillars, and
+round-headed windows&mdash;some glimpse of which will
+be found in the photograph opposite <a href="#Page_346">page 346</a>. There
+is not much of interest left in the church, but in one
+corner is a small, dark, stone-roofed charnel house, still
+heaped high with the whitened skulls of the monks who
+were entombed there.</p>
+
+<p>The abbey stands close to the bank of that wonderful
+white river which, coming underground from Lough
+Mask, bursts from the earth in a deep chasm a mile
+above Cong, and sweeps, deep and rapid, down into
+Lough Corrib. And the monks at Cong were more
+ingenious than most, for there, on a little island in the
+middle of the river, stand the ruins of their fishing-house,
+constructed over a narrow channel into which
+the nets were dropped, and they were so arranged
+that when a fish was captured, its struggles rang a
+bell back at the abbey, and some one would hasten to
+secure it. We made our way through an orchard of
+beautiful old apple trees bearded with lichen, waist-deep
+in grass, to the very edge of the stream, that I
+might get the picture of this labour-saving edifice,
+which you will find opposite the preceding page.</p>
+
+<p>Then the boy asked us if we would care to see Ashford
+House, the seat of Lord Ardilaun; and for the
+benefit of those of my readers who are wondering from
+what ancient family Lord Ardilaun is descended, I may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span>
+as well state here that he is none other than Guinness,
+of Guinness's Stout, and takes his title of Baron Ardilaun
+from a little island out in Lough Corrib. We
+said, of course, that we should like to see Ashford
+House, and we walked for half a mile through the
+beautiful woods of the demesne, up to the great mansion
+of limestone and granite, set at the edge of a
+terrace sloping down to the lake. The entrance to it
+is under a square tower with drawbridge and portcullised
+gateway, and the house itself is a mammoth
+affair, with turrets and battlements and towers and
+machicolations and other medi&aelig;valities, quite useless
+and meaningless on a modern residence, and there are
+acres and acres of elaborately-planted grounds, with
+sunken gardens and fountains and long shady avenues
+stretching away into dim distance.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 319px;">
+<a href="images/gs028-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs028.jpg" width="319" height="500" alt="THE CLOISTER AT CONG ABBEY" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE CLOISTER AT CONG ABBEY<br /><br />THE MONKS' FISHING-HOUSE, CONG ABBEY</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>But nobody lives here except a few caretakers, for
+Lord Ardilaun, an old man of seventy-three, prefers the
+south of France, so that Ashford House is deserted
+from year's end to year's end, except for a few days
+now and then when a shooting-party of more than
+usual importance comes to kill the woodcock. For the
+ordinary party, another mansion, farther down the lake
+on Doon Hill, suffices; but when the king comes, as he
+did in 1905, of course the great house has to be opened.</p>
+
+<p>One reads in Murray, which is a very British guide-book,
+how, on that occasion, the king and his party
+killed ninety brace of woodcock in a single day; and
+how, five years later, 587 brace were bagged in five
+days; but it will be quite impossible for you to understand,
+unless you are also British, the peculiar veneration
+with which such coverts as these are regarded by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span>
+British sportsmen, and the peculiar cast of mind
+which deems it right and proper that thousands of fertile
+acres should be maintained as game preserves in a
+land where most of the people are forced to wring their
+livelihood from the rocky hillsides.</p>
+
+<p>It is only for such great parties that Lord Ardilaun
+returns to do the honours; and he hastens away again,
+as soon as the parties are over. He knows nothing of
+his tenants; he leaves the collection of his rents to a
+factor, and the preservation of his coverts to a force
+of gamekeepers, and any one caught inside the wall may
+expect to be prosecuted to the limit of the law.</p>
+
+<p>Now I have no quarrel with Lord Ardilaun. The
+stout he sells is honest stout, and he got possession of
+this estate by honest purchase, which is more than can
+be said for most great estates in Ireland. But he
+presents an example of that absentee landlordism which
+has been the chief and peculiar curse of this unfortunate
+country. With landlords who lived on their estates
+and looked after their properties and got acquainted
+with their tenants and took some human interest
+in their welfare, the tenants themselves seldom
+had any quarrel. It was the landlords who lived in
+England or on the continent, who entrusted the collection
+of rents to agents, and whose only interest in
+their Irish estates was to get the largest possible returns
+from them&mdash;it was these men who kept the country in
+an uproar of eviction and persecution.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, I believe that if all Irish landlords were resident
+landlords, the Irish labourer would be better off
+without the land purchase act; for there are no more
+grasping and exacting masters in the world than the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span>
+small farmers to whom the great estates are passing.
+The old owners might be despotic, but they were not
+mean; and where they lived among their people and
+came to know them, their despotism was usually a
+benevolent despotism, tempered with mercy. The rule
+of the small farmer will be a despotism, too, but there
+will be no mercy about it. Joyce, our driver, voiced
+all this in a sentence, as we were driving back.</p>
+
+<p>"Land purchase, is it?" he said, puffing his short
+pipe, and staring out across the hills. "Yes, I have
+heard much of it; but I'm thinking it will be a cruel
+time for the poor."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The neighbourhood of Cong is remarkable for its
+natural curiosities, for the ground to the north toward
+Lough Mask is honeycombed with caves, made by the
+water working its way through to Lough Corrib.
+Geologists explain it learnedly, and doubtless to their
+own satisfaction, by saying that the peninsula is composed
+of carboniferous limestone which has been perforated
+and undermined by the solvent action of the
+free carbonic acid in the river water; but I prefer to
+believe, with the residents of the neighbourhood, that it
+was the work of the Little People.</p>
+
+<p>The lofty tunnel through which the sunken river
+flows is accessible in several places, and one of these,
+called the Pigeon Hole, is not far from the village and
+is worth visiting. It is in the centre of a field, and is
+a perpendicular hole some sixty feet deep, clothed with
+ferns and moss and very damp indeed, and the steps by
+which one goes down are very slippery, so that some
+caution is necessary; but there at the bottom is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span>
+vaulted cavern through which the river sweeps. The
+girl who has come along, carrying a wisp of straw,
+lights it and walks away into the depths of the cavern,
+but the effect is not especially dazzling and the smoke
+from the straw is most offensive. They order these
+things better in France&mdash;at the Grotto of Han, for instance!</p>
+
+<p>Another curiosity of the peninsula is not a natural
+but an artificial one&mdash;a canal dug during famine times
+with government money to connect Lough Corrib with
+Lough Mask. This was expected to be a great blessing
+to the west of Ireland, extending navigation from
+Galway clear up across Lough Mask and Lough Conn
+to Ballina; but, alas, when it was finished, it was
+found that the canal wouldn't hold water, for the rock
+through which it was cut was so porous that the water
+ran through it like a sieve, and left the canal as dry as
+a bone. So there it remains to this day, and one may
+walk from end to end of it dryshod and ponder on the
+marvels of English rule in Ireland!</p>
+
+<p>One thing more at Cong is worth inspecting, and that
+is the old cross which stands at the intersection of the
+street with the road to the abbey. It was erected centuries
+ago to the memory of two abbots, Nicol and
+Gilbert O'Duffy, whose names may yet be read on its
+base; and it is a cross that can work miracles. Here
+is one of them:</p>
+
+<p>There was a boy here at Cong, once, who was stupid
+and could learn nothing, but spent all his time wandering
+along the river or climbing the hills or lying in the
+fields staring up at the sky. Everybody said he would
+come to a bad end; but one day he sat down on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span>
+base of this cross, and fell asleep with his head against
+it; and that night, when he went home, he took up the
+newspaper which his father was reading and read aloud
+every word that was on it; and they took him to the
+priest, thinking a spell was on him, and there was not
+a book the priest had, in Latin or Irish or any language
+whatever, but the boy he could read it at a glance;
+and they sent him down to Cork to the college there,
+but there was nothing his masters could teach him
+that he did not know already; and the fame of him
+became so great that when Queen Victoria was looking
+about her for a man to put at the head of the new college
+at Galway, she hit upon him, and so he was given
+charge of Queen's College, and his name was O'Brien
+Crowe, and he made that college a great college, and
+he taught things there that no other man in Ireland had
+ever so much as dreamed of!</p>
+
+<p>I am sorry I had not heard this tale when I was at
+Galway; I should have liked to ask Bishop O'Dee how
+much of it is true.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We returned to Leenane by a different road, which
+lay for some miles close beside the shore of Lough
+Corrib, white-capped now under a stiff wind which had
+arisen, and studded with lovely green islands. It is
+undoubtedly one of the most beautiful of the Irish
+lakes, but even here the shadow of Land League days
+still lingers, for close by the shore is Ebor Hall, which
+was the residence of Lord Mountmorris, who was
+beaten to death near by; and as we drove on, our jarvey
+pointed out the scenes of similar if less famous tragedies,
+whose details I have forgotten. But all that was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span>
+thirty years ago; the problem which the Land League
+tried to solve has been solved in another fashion; the
+peasantry of Ireland have won the fight for fair rent,
+fixed hold, and free sale, and can afford to forget the
+past.</p>
+
+<p>Just beyond the Doon peninsula, the road opens up
+the long expanse of the narrow arm of the lake which
+runs back many miles into the mountains, and on an
+island a little distance from the shore, towers the keep
+of a ruined castle&mdash;Caisle&aacute;n-na-Circe, or Hen Castle in
+the prosaic vernacular. Islands, as you will have remarked
+before this, were a favourite place in Ireland
+for castles and monasteries, and the deeper the water
+about them the better, for it was a welcome defence in
+the days when midnight raids were the favourite pastime
+of every chief, and no sport was so popular with
+the English as that of hunting the Irish "wolves."</p>
+
+<p>There are many legends to explain the name of
+this castle in Lough Corrib. One is that the castle
+was built in a single night by an old witch and her hen,
+and she gave it and the hen to The O'Flaherty, telling
+him that, if the castle was ever besieged, he need not
+worry about provisions, since the hen would lay eggs
+enough to keep the garrison from want. It was not
+long before a force of O'Malleys ferried over from the
+mainland and camped down about the walls, and
+O'Flaherty, forgetting the witch's words, killed the
+hen and was soon starved out. Another legend is that
+the castle was held during a long siege by the formidable
+Gr&aacute;inne, wife of Donell O'Flaherty, and that her
+husband was so proud of her that he named the place
+Hen Castle in her honour. Still another is that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span>
+Joyces were holding it against the O'Flaherties, but
+were about to surrender, when the famous Grace
+O'Malley marched a party of her clansmen over the
+mountains from the sea and drove the O'Flaherties off,
+and so it was named after her. These are examples
+of what the Irish imagination can do when it turns
+itself loose; for the fact is that the castle, at least as
+it stands now, was built by Richard de Burgo, that first
+old doughty Norman ruler of Connaught, to hold the
+pass from the isthmus of Cong into the wilds of Connemara.
+The keep is plainly Anglo-Norman, flanked
+by great square towers of cut limestone.</p>
+
+<p>A few miles farther on is the village of Maam, set
+in the midst of magnificent scenery at the intersection
+of two valleys, one running to the west and one to the
+south, closed in by the wildest, bleakest, ruggedest of
+mountains. Our driver drew up here to water and
+wind the horse, and I wandered about the village for
+a while, and stopped at last at the open door of a little
+cottage where an old woman and some children were
+sitting before a flaring fire of turf, and a hen was hovering
+some chickens in a basket in one corner. Three
+or four others were wandering about the dirt floor, looking
+for crumbs as a matter of habit, though they must
+have known perfectly well that there were no crumbs
+there.</p>
+
+<p>I was welcomed heartily and invited to sit down
+before the fire, with that instinctive courtesy and open-heartedness
+which is characteristic of the Irish peasantry.
+Let the traveller take shelter anywhere, pause
+before any door, and he will be greeted warmly. There
+is an old Irish riddle which runs something like this:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+From house to house it goes,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A wanderer frail and slight,</span><br />
+And whether it rains or snows,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It bides outside in the night.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>It is the footpath the Irish mean; and if they could
+bring it in out of the rain and the snow, I am sure they
+would, just as they bring their chickens and cats and
+dogs and pigs and donkeys in, to share the warmth of
+the fire.</div>
+
+<p>So in this little cottage a stool was at once vacated
+for me and set in a good place, and a ring of smiling
+faces closed around me, and the rain of eager questions
+began as to whence I came and whither I was going.
+I wish I could give you some idea of the tangle
+of trash that littered the single room of that hovel&mdash;old
+clothes, old boards, broken baskets, a pile of turf
+in one corner but scattered all about where the chickens
+had been scratching at it, a low shelf piled with rags
+and straw for a bed, a rude dresser displaying some
+chipped dishes&mdash;but I despair of picturing it. And
+the dirty, ragged children, with their bright eyes and
+red cheeks; and the old woman, wrinkled and toil-worn,
+but obviously thinking life not so bad, after
+all.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>A whistle from Joyce told me that he was ready to
+start, and we were soon climbing out of the valley,
+emerging at last upon a vast moor, with great mountain
+masses away to the south, their summits veiled in
+mist. We could see groups of people working in the
+bog here and there, and at last we came upon two men
+and two boys cutting turf close to the road. I asked
+them if I might take their picture, and they laughed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span>
+and agreed, and it is opposite this page, but the sun
+was setting and the light was not good enough to give
+me a sharp negative. Still one can see the man at the
+bottom of the ditch cutting the peat with a sharp-edged
+instrument like a narrow spade and throwing
+the water-soaked bricks out on the edge, where the boys
+picked them up and laid them out at a little distance
+to dry.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 321px;">
+<a href="images/gs029-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs029.jpg" width="321" height="500" alt="THE TURF-CUTTERS" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE TURF-CUTTERS<br /><br />A GIRL OF "JOYCE'S COUNTRY"</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>"There's one would make a picture," said Joyce,
+about ten minutes later, and I turned to see him pointing
+with his whip at a little girl unloading turf from
+the panniers of a donkey by the side of the road.</p>
+
+<p>Needless to say, I was out of my seat in an instant,
+and Betty, scarcely less excited, was asking the girl if
+I might not take her picture; and then Joyce said
+something to her in the Irish, and then from across the
+bog came her mother's voice telling her, also in Irish,
+to hold still and do as the gentleman wished.</p>
+
+<p>She was a child of eight or ten, with dark hair and
+eyes, and slighter and frailer than the average Irish
+child; and she wore the characteristic garment fashioned
+from red flannel which all the poor children in
+Connemara wear; and she was bare-headed and barefooted;
+and her task was to drive the ragged little
+donkey out into the bog and fill the panniers with the
+bricks, and drive it back again to the side of the road,
+and pile the turf there, ready for the cart which would
+take it away. From the place where the turf was being
+cut to the roadside was at least a quarter of a mile,
+and how often that child had travelled that road that
+day I did not like to think. From the pile of turf that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span>
+lay at the side of the road, it was evident she had not
+idled!</p>
+
+<p>She was not without her vanity, for she had her skirt
+kilted up, and let it quickly down as soon as she realised
+what I wanted; and then she let me pose her as I
+wished. You should have seen her astonishment when
+I pressed a small coin into her hand, as some slight
+recompense for the trouble I had given her; you should
+have seen her shining eyes and trembling lips.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>Up we went and up, with the mists of evening deepening
+about us; and at last we reached the summit of
+the pass, and dropped rapidly down toward Leenane.
+Half an hour later, we trotted briskly up to the hotel,
+the little mare apparently as fresh as ever, in spite of
+the fifty miles, up hill and down, she had covered that
+day.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">It</span> was well we went to Cong when we did, for the
+next day was cold and rainy, with a clammy mist in
+the air which settled into the valleys and soaked everything
+it touched. I walked over to the village, after
+breakfast, to keep my promise to the school-teacher.
+The school is a dingy frame building with two rooms
+and two teachers, a man for the older pupils and a
+woman for the younger ones. They are brother and
+sister, and from their poor clothes and half-fed appearance,
+I judge that teachers are even worse paid in Ireland
+than elsewhere. But they both welcomed me
+warmly, and the man hastened to set out for me the
+only chair in the place, carefully dusting it beforehand.</div>
+
+<p>He called the roll, and it was delightful to hear the
+soft, childish voices answer "Prisent, sorr," "Prisent,
+sorr." Then he counted heads to be sure, I suppose,
+that some child hadn't answered twice, once for himself
+and once for some absent friend. There were about
+thirty children present, ranging in age from six to fifteen;
+and they were all barefoot, of course, and such
+clothing as they had was very worn and ragged, and
+most of them had walked four or five miles, that
+morning, down out of the hills. The teacher said
+sadly that the attendance should be twice as large, but
+there was no way of enforcing the compulsory education
+law, though the priest did what he could.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I wish I could paint you a picture of that school,
+so that you could see it, as I can, when I close
+my eyes. In the larger room there was a little furniture&mdash;a
+chair and cheap desk for the teacher, some rude
+forms for the children, and a small blackboard; but
+the other room was absolutely bare, and the children
+sat around on the floor in a circle, with their legs sticking
+out in front of them, red with cold, while the
+teacher stood in their midst to hear them recite. Each
+of them had over his shoulder a cheap little satchel,
+usually tied together with string; and in this he carried
+his two or three books&mdash;thin, paper-covered affairs,
+which cost a penny each; and all the children, large
+and small, had to carry their books about with them all
+the time they were in school because there was no place
+to put them.</p>
+
+<p>The reading lesson had just started when I entered
+the room where the smaller children were, and it was
+about the advantages of an education. It brought
+tears to the eyes to hear them, in their soft voices and
+sweet dialect, read aloud with intense earnestness what
+a great help education is in the battle of life and in
+how many ways it is useful. When the reading was
+done, the teacher asked them the meaning of the longest
+words, and had them tell again in their own way what
+the lesson had said, to be certain that they understood
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Poor kiddies! As I looked at them, I could see in
+my mind's eye our schoolhouses back home, heated and
+ventilated by the best systems&mdash;there was ventilation
+enough here, heaven knows, for the door was wide open,
+but no heat, though the day was very raw and chilly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span>
+and the children were shivering&mdash;equipped with expensive
+furniture and the latest devices of charts and
+maps; and I could see the well-fed, well-clothed children,
+with their beautiful costly books which make
+teachers almost unnecessary, languidly reading some
+such lesson as was being read here in Connaught, on
+the advantages of an education! It would not have
+been read so earnestly, be sure of that, nor with such
+poignant meaning.</p>
+
+<p>And in that moment, I thrilled with a realisation of
+Ireland's greatest and truest need. It is not land purchase,
+or reform of the franchise, or temperance, or
+home rule, though these needs are great enough; it is
+education. It is education only that can solve her
+industrial problems and her labour problems; and,
+however she may prosper under the favouring laws of
+a new political r&eacute;gime, it is only by education, by the
+banishment of ignorance and illiteracy, that she can
+hope to take her place among the nations of the world.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sort of vision I had, standing there in that
+bare little room, of a new Ireland, dotted with schools
+and colleges, as she was a thousand years ago, illumined
+with the white light of knowledge; but here, meanwhile,
+were these eager, bright-eyed, ragged little children,
+stumbling along the path of knowledge as well
+as they could; but a rocky path they find it, and how
+deserving of help they are! I wish you could have
+seen those soiled, thumbed little readers, which cost,
+as I have said, only a penny each, and which, if they
+had cost more, would have been beyond the reach of
+the average Connaught family.</p>
+
+<p>I bought a few of them, afterwards, to bring home<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span>
+with me, and when I looked through them, I found
+them very primitive indeed. Here, for instance, is
+Lesson Six in the primer:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Pat has a cat.<br />
+It is fat. It is on the mat.<br />
+The cat ran at the rat.<br />
+It bit the fat cat.<br />
+Pat hit the rat.<br />
+The rat ran. The cat ran at it.<br />
+The rat bit the fat cat.<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>Cats and rats used, I remember, to be favourite subjects
+in the readers of my own early school days; and
+so were dogs. It is still so in Ireland, as Lesson Eight
+will show:</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Is it a dog?<br />
+It is a fox.<br />
+Was the fox in a box?<br />
+The dog was in the box.<br />
+He was in the mud.<br />
+Rub the mud off the dog.<br />
+He ran at the fox in the mud.<br />
+The dog ran at the fox and bit it.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>My principal objection to this is that it is nonsense:
+how, for example, if the dog was in the box, could it
+have been also in the mud? These questions occur
+to children even more readily than to adults, and to
+teach them nonsense is wrong and unjust. Also these
+lessons tell no story; they have no continuity; they
+ask questions without answering them; they change the
+subject almost as often as the dictionary. Here, for
+instance, is the first lesson of the second term:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Tom put the best fish in a dish.<br />
+The cat sat near it on a rug.<br />
+Let the hen rest in her nest.<br />
+Frank rode a mile on an ass.<br />
+He went so fast he sent up the dust.<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>The last sentence shows it was an Irishman made this
+book; but why, in this lesson, did he not continue with
+the story of the fish in the dish, which the cat was
+plainly watching from the rug with malicious intent,
+instead of branching off to a wholly irrelevant remark
+about a hen, and then to an account of Frank's adventure
+with an ass? Perhaps the first step to be made in
+educational reform in Ireland is the adoption of better
+school-books, and there is no reason why this step should
+be delayed.</div>
+
+<p>I went back, presently, to the other room where the
+larger boys and girls were reciting in small sections,
+standing shrinkingly before the shrivelled little teacher,
+whose fierceness, I am sure, was assumed for the occasion,
+and he got out for me a sheaf of compositions
+which the boys and girls had written on the subject,
+"My Home," and of which he was evidently very
+proud. They were written in the round, laborious
+penmanship of the copy-book, and the homes which
+they described were, for the most part, those poor little
+cabins clinging to the rocky hillsides, which I have
+tried to picture; but here the picture was drawn sharply
+and simply, with few strokes, without any suspicion
+that it was a tragic one. For instance, this is John
+Kerrigan's picture of</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />My Home.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>My home is in County Galway and is placed in Ganaginula.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span>
+It is built on a height near the roadside. The
+length of it is eighteen feet and the breadth is six feet. It
+is about ten feet high. The covering is timber and
+thatch. It is built with stones and mortar. There are
+four windows, two in the kitchen and two in the room.
+The floor is made of sand and gravel.</p></div>
+
+<p>That was all that John Kerrigan found to describe
+about his home, and I dare say there wasn't much
+more; but it is easy to picture it standing there on the
+bleak hillside, with its low walls of rubble and its roof
+of thatch, and its two little rooms, nine feet by six,
+with dirt floor and tiny windows. And at one end
+of the kitchen there would be an open fireplace, with
+some blocks of turf smoking in it, and above the turf
+there would be hanging a black pot, where the potatoes
+are boiling which is all John will have for supper.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>I put the compositions aside, for a lesson in Gaelic
+had begun. The teacher wrote on the little blackboard
+some sentences composed of the strangest-looking
+words imaginable, and the pronunciation of them was
+stranger still. But the lesson proceeded rapidly, and
+it was evident that most of the children understood
+Gaelic quite as well as they did English. That, of
+course, is not saying very much; and I fancy that about
+all these children can be expected to learn is to read
+and write. Indeed, it is a wonder that they learn
+even that, for the odds against them are almost overwhelming.</p>
+
+<p>I bade them good-bye at last, and returned pensively
+to the hotel, and there I found the district physician
+making some repairs to his motor-cycle. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span>
+probably needs them often, for the roads up into the
+hills are trying for anything on wheels; but he said it
+was surprising where it would go and how much knocking
+about it would stand. And then, naturally enough,
+we fell into talk about his work.</p>
+
+<p>Every poor person in Ireland is, as I understand it,
+entitled to free medical attendance. The country is
+divided into districts, in each of which a doctor is stationed,
+paid partially by the government and depending
+for the remainder of his income on his private
+practice. Before a person is entitled to free attendance,
+he must secure a ticket from one of the poor-law
+guardians, who have the management of the charities
+in each district; and no physician is compelled to give
+free attendance, unless the person asking for it can
+produce one of these tickets.</p>
+
+<p>"Even then," continued the doctor at Leenane, who
+was explaining all this to me, "I don't put myself out,
+if I think the person presenting the ticket can afford
+to pay. I look him over, of course, and give him some
+medicine, with instructions how to take it&mdash;the law
+compels me to do that; but I don't bother myself to
+see whether the instructions are carried out. And if
+he's really sick, he soon realises that if he wants me to
+be interested, he's got to pay for it, and he manages
+to find a guinea or so. This sounds hard-hearted, perhaps;
+but it's astonishing how many beggars there
+are in this country, and how the poor-law guardians
+let themselves be imposed on. Why, people come
+to me with cards and try to get free attendance who
+could buy and sell me ten times over! I don't bite
+my tongue telling them what I think of them, you may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span>
+well believe. The trouble is, the poor-law guardians
+are natives of the district and they all have some axe
+to grind; so the doctor, who is a stranger for whom
+they care nothing, gets the worst of it. This is about
+the worst district in Ireland, anyway, so big and poor
+and full of hills. A man has to work himself to death
+to make three hundred pounds a year out of it."</p>
+
+<p>Various reflections occurred to me while he was talking.
+One was that three hundred pounds a year is
+many, many times the income of the average dweller in
+Connaught; and another was that, to leave any discretion
+to the physician in regard to the treatment of charity
+patients is not without its dangers; and still a
+third was that, in any sudden emergency, such as might
+occur at any time, many valuable minutes would be lost
+if the poor-law guardians had to be hunted up and a
+card obtained before the doctor could be summoned. I
+suppose, in such cases, the doctor is summoned first, and
+the card secured when there is time to do so.</p>
+
+<p>It is probably only in cases of dire need that the district
+doctor is summoned at all. The fact that he is
+a stranger and a government appointee is enough to
+make a large section of the Irish peasantry distrust him.
+This one told me that he is never called for confinement
+cases, because every old Irish woman considers herself
+competent to handle them, and usually is; and that
+other cases are treated with "home remedies" or visits
+to holy wells, until they get so bad that the doctor is
+turned to as a last resort.</p>
+
+<p>"The ignorance of the people is past all belief," he
+went on. "They haven't any idea of what causes
+disease; they never heard of germs; they don't know it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span>
+is unhealthy to have a stinking heap of manure and
+human excrement under the window or in front of the
+door; they don't believe there is any reason why a person
+dying with consumption shouldn't sleep in the same
+bed with other people, and eat out of the same dishes,
+and spit all about the place. And so we have typhus,
+and tuberculosis&mdash;you Americans are partially responsible
+for that."</p>
+
+<p>"In what way?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The people born and reared in these western highlands,
+with lungs adapted through long generations to
+this soft, moist climate, can't stand the American atmosphere.
+When they are poor and live crowded together
+in your towns, consumption gets them; and then,
+when they're too far gone to work, they come back
+home to cough their lives out and poison all their
+friends. They lie in these dark cabins without a window,
+which soon become perfect plague-spots; and
+the children, playing on the filthy, infected floor, get
+the infection in their lungs; or perhaps they cut their
+knees and rub it into the sore. Ugh! it makes one sick
+to think about it. There ought to be a law preventing
+any such infected person landing in Ireland&mdash;you won't
+let such a one land in America."</p>
+
+<p>I had to admit that that would be one way of dealing
+with the mischief; and I suggested that another
+way would be to try to educate the people to some
+knowledge of the simpler facts of hygiene. But the
+doctor snorted.</p>
+
+<p>"Educate them!" he echoed. "You can't educate
+them! Why, you haven't any conception of the depths
+of their ignorance. And they're superstitious, too; they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span>
+don't believe in science; they think it's something irreligious,
+something against their faith. If prayers to
+the Virgin won't cure them, or a visit to some holy well
+or other, why nothing will. If I do cure them, I don't
+get the credit&mdash;they simply believe they've got on the
+good side of one of their saints. What is a man to do
+against such ignorance as that? The only reason they
+don't all die is because this country is so full of little
+streams that the running water carries off most of their
+filth, and the turf smoke which fills their houses helps
+to disinfect them."</p>
+
+<p>I agreed that his was a hard task; and left him still
+tinkering with his motor-cycle, and went over to smoke
+a pipe with the men at the stables. Joyce, our driver
+of the day before, was there, and he smiled as he pointed
+his pipe-stem toward the doctor, with whom he had
+seen me talking.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a hard one, he is," he said. "Not a word of
+advice nor a sup of medicine do you get out of that one,
+if he thinks you've got a shillin' about you. He thinks
+we're all liars and thieves, which is natural enough, for
+he's an Englishman&mdash;and I'm not sayin' but what it
+may be true of some of us," and he grinned around at
+his companions.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell the gintleman about the other one," one of
+them suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Mister O'Beirn, that was," said Joyce; "a Galway
+man, born to the Irish. How he got the app'intment,
+I don't know; but he did stir this district up&mdash;went
+about givin' long talks, he did, about how we're
+made and why we get sick, and such like; and he went
+into the houses and made the women wash the childer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span>
+and set things to rights, and they bore with him because
+they knew he meant them no harm. He wore
+himself to a bone, he did, and we were all fond of him;
+but I'm not sayin' it wasn't a relief when he was moved
+to another district, and we could make ourselves comfortable
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt the children are glad, too," I ventured.</p>
+
+<p>"They are, sir; and why should one bother washin'
+them when they get dirty again right away? Sure the
+women have enough to do without that!"</p>
+
+<p>But it would be a mistake to suppose that the lives of
+the women and girls are all work and no play. Betty
+chanced to remark to the girl who waited on our table
+at the hotel that she must find the winters very lonesome.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not at all, miss," she protested. "We have a
+very good time in the winter with a dance every week;
+and at Christmas Mr. McKeown do be givin' us a big
+party here at the hotel. Then there will be maybe two
+or three weddings, and as many christenings, and some
+of the girls who have been to America will come home
+for a visit and there will be dances for them, so there
+is always plenty to do."</p>
+
+<p>So Leenane has its social season, just the same as
+New York and Paris and London; and I suppose the
+same is true of every Irish village. The Irish are said
+to be great dancers, but we were never fortunate
+enough to see them at it.</p>
+
+<p>You may perhaps have noticed that in such Irish
+conversations as I have given in these pages, I have contented
+myself with trying to indicate the idiom, without
+attempting to imitate the brogue; and this is because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span>
+it is impossible to imitate it with any degree of
+accuracy. Such imitation would be either a burlesque
+or would be unreadable. For example, while we were
+talking to the waitress at Leenane, Betty asked her
+what a very delicious jam which she served with our
+tea was made of.</p>
+
+<p>"Black t&ouml;rn, miss," she answered&mdash;at least, that is
+what it sounded like.</p>
+
+<p>"Black t&ouml;rn?" repeated Betty. "What is it? A
+berry or a fruit?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl tried to describe it, but not recognisably.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you spell it?" asked Betty at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I can, miss; b-l-a-c-k, black, c-u-r-r-a-n-t, t&ouml;rn," answered
+the girl.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We bade good-bye to Leenane, that afternoon, taking
+the motor-bus for Westport, and my friends of the
+constabulary were out to see me off and shake hands,
+and Gaynor sent a "God speed ye" after us from the
+door of his little shop, and the schoolmaster and his
+sister waved to us from the door of the school. It was
+almost like leaving old friends; and indeed, I often
+think of them as such, and of that drab little town
+crouching at the head of Killary, and of how serious
+a thing life is to those who dwell there. We looked
+back for a last glimpse of it, as we turned up the road
+out of the valley&mdash;the row of dingy houses, the grey
+mountains rising steeply behind them, the broad sheet
+of blue water in front&mdash;how plainly I recall that picture!</p>
+
+<p>There were three other passengers on the bus&mdash;an
+elderly man and woman, rather obese and grumpy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span>
+and a younger man with clean-shaven eager face; and
+we were puzzled for a time to determine their relationship,
+for the younger man was most assiduous in attending
+to the wants of his companions and pointing
+out the places of interest along the road. And then, finally,
+it dawned upon us&mdash;here was a personally conducted
+party; a man and wife who had brought a guide
+along to see them safely through the wilds of Ireland!</p>
+
+<p>The road from Leenane to Westport is not nearly
+so picturesque as that from Clifden, for we soon ran
+out of the hills, and for miles and miles sped across a
+wild bog, without a sign of life except a few sheep
+grazing here and there. We met a flock of them upon
+the road, and the way the shepherd's dog, at a sharp
+whistle from him, herded his charges to one side out of
+the way was beautiful to see.</p>
+
+<p>Then at last, far below us, at the bottom of a valley,
+we saw the roofs of Westport, and we started down the
+road into it&mdash;a steep and dangerous road, for we came
+within an ace of running down a loaded cart that was
+labouring up; and when we came to the foot of the
+hill, we were startled by a remarkable monument looming
+high in the middle of the principal street&mdash;a
+tall, fluted shaft, with two seated women at its base,
+rising from an octagonal pedestal, and surmounted by
+a heroic figure in knee breeches and trailing robe&mdash;without
+question the very ugliest monument I ever
+saw. It was so extraordinarily ugly that we came back
+next day to look at it, and discovered the following
+inscription:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+To the Memory of<br />
+GEORGE GLENDINING<br />
+Born in Westport 1770<br />
+Died in Westport 1845<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>If the deceased had any other claim to fame except that
+he was born in Westport, and also ended his days there,
+it does not appear upon his monument.</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Westport has only one hotel, and it is probably the
+worst in Ireland. When we had been ushered along
+its dark and dirty corridors, into a room as dingy as
+can be imagined, and had found that it was the best
+room to be had, and that there was nothing to do but
+grin and bear it, we sat down and looked at each other,
+and I could see in Betty's disgusted face some such
+thought as Touchstone voiced: "So here I am in
+Arden. The more fool I. When I was at home, I
+was in a better place."</p>
+
+<p>"'Travellers must be content,'" I said. "Let's get
+out of here and look at the town."</p>
+
+<p>Betty agreed with alacrity; but we soon found that
+it is a dull and uninteresting place, offering no diversion
+except a stroll through Lord Sligo's demesne.
+The gate was open, so we entered and plodded along a
+sticky road, past the square, unimpressive mansion-house,
+out to the head of Clew Bay. We walked on,
+past the longest line of deserted quays and empty warehouses
+we had encountered in Ireland. There must be
+half a mile of quays, and the warehouses are towering,
+four-storied structures, with vast interiors given
+over to rats and spiders; and all along that dreary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span>
+vista, there was just one boat&mdash;a small one, unloading
+lumber.</p>
+
+<p>It was government money, I suppose, which built
+the quay, and a government board which authorised
+it; and looking at it, one realises where Canon Hannay
+got the local colour for the descriptions of the activities
+of government boards which are scattered through his
+Irish stories. For Canon Hannay, whose pen name
+is George A. Birmingham, lives here at Westport; and
+the bay which faces it is the scene of most of his tales.</p>
+
+<p>It is a beautiful bay, dotted with the greenest of
+islands; and it was among those islands that the irrepressible
+Meldon sailed in quest of Spanish gold; it
+was there the Major's niece had her surprising adventures;
+and I have wondered since if the grotesque statue
+back in the town may not have suggested that of the
+mythical General John Regan.</p>
+
+<p>And there, in the distance, towering above the bay,
+is Croagh Patrick, the great hill, falling steeply into
+the water from a height of 2500 feet, down which
+Saint Patrick one fine morning drove all the snakes and
+toads and poisonous creatures in Ireland, to their death
+in the sea below. Indeed, the marks of their passage
+are still plainly to be seen, for the precipice down which
+they fell is furrowed and scraped in the most convincing
+manner:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+The Wicklow hills are very high,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And so's the Hill of Howth, sir;</span><br />
+But there's a hill much bigger still,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Much higher nor them both, sir;</span><br />
+'Twas on the top of this high hill<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">St. Patrick preached his sarmint</span><br />
+That drove the frogs into the bogs<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And banished all the varmint.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The legend is that St. Patrick, who had spent forty
+days on the mountain in fasting and prayer, stood at
+the edge of the precipice and rang his little bell&mdash;the
+same bell we have seen in the museum at Dublin&mdash;and
+all the snakes and toads in Ireland, attracted by the
+sound, plunged over the cliff and so down into the sea.</p>
+
+<p>From a distance, Croagh Patrick seems to end in a
+sharp point; but there is really a little plateau up there,
+some half-acre in extent, and a small church has been
+built there, and on the last Sunday in July, pilgrims
+gather from all over Ireland and proceed to the mountain
+on foot and toil up its rugged sides and attend
+Mass on the summit and then make the rounds of the
+stations on their knees, just as has been done from time
+immemorial. For Croagh Patrick is a very holy place,
+since Ireland's great apostle prayed and fasted there,
+and those who pray and fast there likewise shall not
+go unrewarded.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>I heard the click of a typewriter, as I went up the
+walk to the rectory, that evening, to spend a few hours
+with Canon Hannay, and it must be only by improving
+every minute that he gets through the immense amount
+of work he manages to accomplish. He had just arranged
+for an American lecture tour in the following
+October, and both he and his wife were pleasantly excited
+at the prospect of encountering American sleeping-cars
+and soft-shelled crabs and corn on the cob,
+and other such novelties, some of which they had heard
+were very dreadful. I reassured them as well as I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span>
+could; and then we talked awhile about George Moore's
+inimitable reminiscences, and Canon Hannay's own
+books; but the gist of the evening was the discussion
+of Ireland and Irish problems which occupied the
+greater part of it. It was very late indeed when I
+arose to say good-night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">We</span> took a last look about the town, next morning, not
+forgetting the Glendining monument, which has the
+fascination supreme ugliness sometimes possesses; and
+then we walked on down to the station, where a loquacious
+old woman accosted Betty with a tale of woe
+which culminated in an appeal for aid; and it was suddenly
+borne in on me that not once in the whole of
+Connaught had we encountered a beggar. Not even a
+child had held out its hand or indicated in any way that
+it desired or expected alms. And I do not know that I
+can pay any greater compliment to the people of that
+distressful province than by setting down this fact.
+We were in Mayo now&mdash;and Mayo is different!</div>
+
+<p>The first town out of Westport is Castlebar, which,
+as Murray puts it, "has all the buildings usual in a
+county town, viz. Asylum, Gaol, Court-house and Barracks,"
+and they can be seen looming up above the
+other buildings as the train passes, some half mile away.
+Beyond Castlebar, the line crosses the so-called plains
+of Mayo, a vast expanse of naked limestone rock, very
+ugly and sinister; and then to the left is a village dominated
+by a round tower; and finally we came to Claremorris,
+where we were to change cars.</p>
+
+<p>Claremorris, no doubt, also has an asylum, a jail,
+a court-house and a barracks; but we didn't go out to
+see, for nobody seemed to know just when our train<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span>
+might be expected, and we were afraid to run any risks.
+So we sat down on the platform, and Betty fell into
+talk with a clean, nice-looking old man, who was carefully
+gathering up all the dodgers and posters and old
+newspapers that were lying around, and folding them
+up and putting them in his pocket, I suppose to read at
+leisure after he got home. And he told about where
+he lived, and how many children he had, and described
+the disposition of each of them; and then he questioned
+Betty about her condition in life, and age, and size of
+family, and all the time he was looking intently at her
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, miss," he said, at last, "is them your own
+teeth you've got?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed they are," laughed Betty, and clashed them
+to prove it.</p>
+
+<p>"I would hardly believe it," he went on, and looked
+closer. "I niver saw any like them."</p>
+
+<p>"They're strong as iron," and Betty clashed them
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"And white as snow. I wish my daughter was here,
+for she will not believe me when I tell her."</p>
+
+<p>Good teeth, as I have remarked before, are the exception
+in Ireland; and most of those that appear good
+at first glance, turn out, at second glance, to be fabrications
+of the dentist. Perhaps it has always been so.
+Irish poets are fond of dwelling on the glories of Irish
+hair, and it is still glorious; they tell over and over
+again of the brightness of Irish eyes, and they are still
+bright; they describe how many times the beauty of
+Irish complexions, and there is none to match them anywhere
+else in the world; but I do not remember that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span>
+any of them refer to Irish teeth. It is a pity, for many
+a pretty face is ruined by the ugly teeth a smile discloses.</p>
+
+<p>We got away from Claremorris, finally, after narrowly
+escaping being carried back to Westport, and
+proceeded northward over a new line which has been
+built across the plains of County Mayo. There were
+few passengers, and we had a compartment to ourselves,
+except for two priests who rode with us for a short distance,
+and who wanted to know all about President
+Wilson, of whom they had heard many splendid things.
+Just where we crossed into County Sligo I don't know;
+but we were in it at Collooney, a village more prosperous
+than most, with a number of mills; and then we
+came to Ballysadare, where there are some famous
+salmon fisheries.</p>
+
+<p>As we ran on past Ballysadare, a hill like a truncated
+cone loomed up on the left, and in the centre of the level
+top was something that looked like a huge bump, and
+as we drew nearer, we saw that it was a great cairn
+of loose stones piled on top of each other. The hill
+was Knocknarea, and the cairn, which is six hundred
+feet around and thirty-five feet high, is said to have
+been piled over the body of Meave, Queen of Connaught,
+by her tribesmen, in the first century after
+Christ. Meave was killed while bathing in Lough
+Ree by Conal Carnach, who, angry at her share in the
+death of the mighty Cuchulain, put a stone into a sling
+and cast it at her with such sure aim that he inflicted
+a mortal wound. There is some dispute as to whether
+she was really borne to the top of Knocknarea for
+burial; but the cairn is called "Miscan Meave," or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span>
+"Meave's Heap," and if it does not actually cover her
+body, it probably commemorates her death. She lived
+so long ago that her name has passed into folk-lore&mdash;in
+England as Queen Mab.</p>
+
+<p>Knocknarea, with its strange shape, dominates the
+whole landscape, and is in sight all the way to Sligo,
+for the train describes a half-circle around it. Sligo
+itself is a considerable town, with more bustle about
+its streets than is usual in western Ireland, and the
+proprietor of its principal hotel is a canny individual
+who follows the precept, once so popular with American
+railroads, of charging all the traffic will bear. When
+I asked the price of a double room, he looked me over,
+and then he said ten shillings the night.</p>
+
+<p>"Ten shillings a night!" I echoed, in some surprise,
+for I had not expected to encounter rates so metropolitan
+on the west coast of Ireland; and then I asked to see
+the room, thinking it might be something palatial.
+But it was quite an ordinary room; clean and airy
+and comfortable enough; but I judged the usual charge
+for it was about five shillings. There are few things
+I detest more than being overcharged. "Come along,"
+I said to Betty. "There's another hotel in this town;
+we'll have a look at it."</p>
+
+<p>The proprietor was waiting nervously in the lobby.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" he asked, as we came down.
+"Isn't the room all right?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's right enough," I said; "but I'm not going
+to pay two prices for it."</p>
+
+<p>"But this is the best hotel in Sligo," he protested.
+"There's an American millionaire and his wife staying
+here right now."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm not a millionaire," I said; "and even if
+I were, I wouldn't pay ten shillings for that room,"
+and I started to walk out, for I didn't want to argue
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>But he followed me to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"What would you pay, now?" he asked, ingratiatingly.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at him in surprise, for I hadn't had any idea
+of fixing his rates for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Five shillings," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"You may have it for six," he countered.</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated. I didn't like the man; but it was a
+nice room, and the dining-room looked clean. Probably
+we should fare worse if we went farther.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," I agreed finally; and I am bound to
+admit that he never showed any malice, but treated us
+as nicely as possible during all our stay in Sligo. Perhaps
+he is a retired jarvey, and this is just his way of
+doing business.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Sligo, with its well-built houses and bustling streets,
+has every appearance of being prosperous, and I have
+been told that it is one of the few towns in Ireland
+which is growing in population. It has had its share
+of battles and sieges, for Red Hugh O'Donnell captured
+it from the English, and then the English captured
+it from Red Hugh, and camped in the monastery
+and did what they could to destroy it; but enough of it
+remains to make a most interesting ruin, and we set out
+at once to see it.</p>
+
+<p>It is a Norman foundation, dating from 1252, but
+a good deal of the existing structure is later than that.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span>
+The most interesting feature, to my mind, is the row of
+eight narrow lancet windows lighting the choir of the
+church. I like these early lancets, and I am inclined
+to question whether the wide windows and elaborate
+tracery of later Gothic are as dignified and severely
+beautiful. There is a grace and simplicity about these
+tall, narrow openings, with their pointed arches, which
+cannot be surpassed.</p>
+
+<p>There are some interesting monuments, too, in the
+choir, notably a most elaborate one to O'Conor Sligo
+against the south wall. O'Conor and his wife, life-size,
+kneel facing each other in two niches, over and
+below and on either side of which are sculptured cherubs
+and saints and skulls and swords and drums and
+spades and hooks and hour-glasses, together with the
+arms of the family and an appropriate motto or two.
+From the choir, a low door gives access to the charnel-house,
+and beyond that is the graveyard; while from
+the nave there is an entrance to the cloisters, three sides
+of which are very well preserved, though the level of
+the ground almost touches the base of the pillars.</p>
+
+<p>It is, I should say, at least four feet higher than it
+was when the cloisters were built, and this accretion is
+mostly human dust, for the graveyard has been in
+active use for a good many centuries. Burials grew
+so excessive, at last, that before one body could be
+placed in the ground, another had to be dug out of it;
+and gruesome stories are told of the ruthless way in
+which old skeletons were torn from the graves and
+thrown out upon the ground and allowed to lie there,
+a scandal to the whole county. All that has changed
+now, and there wasn't a bone in sight the day we visited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[381]</a></span>
+the place. Indeed, the old caretaker waxed very indignant
+about the way he had been wronged.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis in that book you have in your hand the slander
+is," he said, and nodded toward my red-bound
+Murray, and I read the sentence aloud:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The exposure of human remains, and the general neglect
+here and in other church ruins, are a scandal to the
+local authorities."</p></div>
+
+<p>"Now, I ask ye to look around, sir," continued the
+caretaker, excitedly, "and tell me if ye see anywhere
+aught to warrant such words as them ones. Human
+remains, indeed! Ye see, sir, it was like this. The
+day the felly was here who wrote that book, I had just
+picked up a bone which had got uncovered on me, and
+slipped it under a tomb temporary like, till I could find
+time to bury it decent; and then he come by, and saw
+it, and that was what he writ. The bones do be
+workin' up to the surface all the time&mdash;and how can
+that be helped, I should like to know? But I put
+them under again as soon as I see them. As for neglect&mdash;look
+about ye and tell me if ye see neglect."</p>
+
+<p>I assured him that everything seemed to be in good
+shape, for the grass had just been cut and everything
+was very tidy. And then he told me that he and his
+helper had been working on the place for a week past,
+because, in a few days, the Irish Antiquarian Society
+was to meet at Sligo, and its members would be poking
+their noses about everywhere. From which I inferred
+that, perhaps, at ordinary times, the place may be
+rather ragged, and that an occasional bone <i>may</i> escape
+the guardian's watchful eye.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[382]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When we got back to the hotel and entered the dining-room
+for dinner, we were amused to find that the
+American millionaire and wife, of whom the proprietor
+had boasted, were no other than the personally-conducted
+couple who had come with us on the coach from
+Leenane to Westport. They were eating grumpily,
+while their guide, who ate with them, was doing his
+best to impart an air of cheerfulness to the meal by
+chattering away about the country. The head-waiter
+hovered near in a tremor of anxiety, and almost
+jumped out of his skin whenever the guide raised his
+finger.</p>
+
+<p>I went into the smoking-room, later on, to write
+some letters; and presently the door opened, and the
+guide slipped in, and closed the door carefully, and sat
+down with a sigh, and got out a pipe and filled and
+lighted it, and rang for a whiskey and soda. And
+then I caught his eye, and I couldn't help smiling at its
+expression, and in a minute we were talking. He was
+a special Cook guide, he told me, and the two people
+with him were from Chicago.</p>
+
+<p>"I fancied," he went on, "when I took this engagement,
+that I was going to have an easy time of it with
+just two people, but I have never worked so hard in
+my life. The man is all right; but all the woman
+wants to do is to keep moving on. You know Glengarriff?
+Well, then you know what a jolly place it
+is, and what a splendid trip it is over the hills from
+Macroom. Would you believe me, that woman would
+not even turn her head to look at that view. I would
+say to her, 'Now, Mrs. Blank, isn't that superb!' and
+she would just bat her eyelids; and when we got to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[383]</a></span>
+Glengarriff, she raised a most awful row because we
+had to stay there over night, and because there was
+no light but candles in the bedrooms.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why such people travel at all," he
+went on wearily. "Yes I do, too&mdash;she travels just to
+buy post-cards and send them back home. She buys a
+hundred at every stop, and as soon as she gets them addressed
+and posted, she is ready to start on. Ruins?
+Why she won't look at ruins. She wouldn't even get
+out of the carriage at Muckross Abbey&mdash;but she thinks
+that new Catholic cathedral at Killarney a marvel of
+beauty. It is the only thing she has grown enthusiastic
+about since she has been in Ireland. We had
+planned to stay at Killarney four days, but she wanted
+to go on before she had been there four hours. I tell
+you, sir, it's disheartening."</p>
+
+<p>I asked him how long he had been conducting for
+Cook, and he said only for a short time, for he was an
+actor by profession, and hoped to return to the stage
+some day. But by a run of bad luck, he had been involved
+in three or four failures, and had been driven to
+Cook's to make a living. He had been to America,
+and he told me with what company, but I have forgotten,
+and then he was going on to tell me what r&ocirc;les
+he had played and which of them had been his greatest
+successes, and the worn, harassed look left his face&mdash;and
+just then the door opened and the Chicagoan
+stuck his head in, and frowned when he saw us talking
+and laughing together; and my companion grew suddenly
+sober, and went out to see what was wanted, and
+I didn't see him again. I suppose they were on their
+way at daybreak.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[384]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sligo is the centre of one of the most interesting districts
+in Ireland for the antiquarian. There is that
+great cairn on the top of Knocknarea, and on the plain
+of Carrowmore near the mountain's foot is such a collection
+of megalithic remains as exists nowhere else in
+the British Isles, while on the summit of a hill overshadowing
+Lough Gill is a remarkable enclosure, resembling
+Stonehenge, but far more extensive.</p>
+
+<p>It was for Carrowmore we set off on foot, next morning,
+determined to spend the day, which was beautifully
+bright and warm, in a leisurely ramble over the
+plain, which, four thousand years ago, was the scene
+of a great battle, in which the De Dananns were again
+the victors, as they were at Moytura, below Lough
+Mask. This battle is known as Northern Moytura,
+and here the De Dananns met and conquered Balor of
+the Evil Eye and his Formorians, and after that they
+were undisputed masters of Erin for a thousand years,
+until the Milesians, or Gaels, sailing from south-western
+Europe, beached their boats upon the shore of Kenmare
+Bay. It was to mark the graves of the warriors
+who fell in that dim-distant fray that the circles and
+cromlechs which dot its site were probably erected;
+but the Irish have another theory, which we shall hear
+presently.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not soon forget that walk, at first through
+the busy streets of the town, past solid, well-built
+houses of brick, with bright shops on the lower floor
+and living-rooms above; then into the poorer and
+quainter quarter, where the houses are all one-storied,
+built of rubble, roofed with straw, and, as we could
+see through the open doors, stuffed with trash, as all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[385]</a></span>
+these little Irish houses seem to be; and finally out
+along the country road, between fragrant hedges, occasionally
+passing a pretty villa, set in the midst of handsome
+grounds&mdash;and then we came to a place where
+the road branched, and we stopped.</p>
+
+<p>Our guide-book gave no definite directions as to how
+to get to Carrowmore. "On Carrowmore," it says,
+with magnificent vagueness, "within three miles
+south-west of Sligo, is a large and most interesting
+series of megalithic remains"; nor does it tell how far
+the remains are apart, or how to find them. If it
+had been Baedeker, now, we would not have stood there
+hesitant at the cross-roads, because he would not only
+have told us which way to turn, but would have provided
+a diagram, and led us step by step from one
+cromlech to the other. There is no Baedeker for Ireland,
+which is a pity, for I have never yet found a
+guide to equal that painstaking German.</p>
+
+<p>There was no one to ask, so we took the road which
+led toward Knocknarea; but after we had gone some distance,
+a telegraph-boy came by on his wheel, and told
+us that we should have taken the other road; so we
+walked back to the branch and turned up it. The road
+mounted steadily, and after about a mile of up-hill
+work, we came to a cluster of thatched houses, and I
+went up to one of them to ask the way of a woman who
+was leaning over her half-door.</p>
+
+<p>I think I have already said somewhere that Irish
+directions are the vaguest in the world&mdash;perhaps this
+is the reason Murray is so vague, since it is written
+by an Irishman!&mdash;and the conversation on this occasion
+ran something like this:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[386]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good morning," I began. "It is a fine day, isn't
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is so, glory be to God."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you tell me how to get to the cromlechs?"</p>
+
+<p>"The cromlechs? What might that be?"</p>
+
+<p>"The big stone monuments that are back here in the
+fields somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;so it is the big stones you would be after?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Can you tell me how to get to them?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might," said the woman cautiously. She had
+been looking at me all this time with the brightest of
+eyes, and then she looked at Betty, who had remained
+behind at the gate. "Is yon one your wife?" she asked,
+with a nod in Betty's direction.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You would be from America."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you people hereabouts?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; we haven't any relatives in Ireland."</p>
+
+<p>"And would you be comin' all this way just to see
+the big stones?"</p>
+
+<p>"We want to see everything," I explained. "The
+stones are near here, aren't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are so. Just a step up yonder lane, and you
+are right among them."</p>
+
+<p>She was preparing to ask further questions; but this
+direction seemed definite enough, so I thanked her
+and fled, and Betty and I proceeded to take a step up
+the lane. We took many steps without seeing any
+stones; and finally we turned up a narrow by-lane, and
+came to a tiny cottage, hidden in the trees. We were
+greeted by a noisy barking, and then a man hurried out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[387]</a></span>
+of the cottage and quieted the dog and told us not to
+be alarmed. We told him we were looking for the
+stones.</p>
+
+<p>"There be some just a small step from here," he
+said; "but you would never find them by yourselves,
+so I will go with you. You are from America, I'm
+thinking?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I admitted, wondering, with sinking heart, if
+it was going to begin all over again.</p>
+
+<p>"I have four brothers in America, and all doing well,
+glory be to God, though seldom it is that I hear from
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you happen to stay in Ireland?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"One must stay with the mother," he explained
+simply. "I was the oldest, so that was for me to do."</p>
+
+<p>He was a nice-looking man of middle age, with a
+kindly, intelligent face, and eyes very bright; and
+while his clothes were old and worn, they were clean.</p>
+
+<p>"She is dead now, God rest her soul," he added, with
+a little convulsion of the face I didn't understand till
+later, "and I am alone here."</p>
+
+<p>"What," I said; "not married?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," he answered, with a smile, "there's just
+Tricker and me."</p>
+
+<p>"Tricker?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure that's the dog, and a great help he is to me.
+Come here, Tricker, and show the lady and gentleman
+what you can do." The shaggy black dog came and
+sat down in front of him, looking up at him with shining
+eyes. "You would hardly believe it, miss, but
+Tricker gathers all my eggs for me, and he can tell a
+duck egg from a hen egg. If I do be having a bit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[388]</a></span>
+of company, I will tell Tricker to go out and bring in
+some duck eggs, and I have never known him to make
+a mistake. Or perhaps I will be wanting some water
+from the spring, and I just give Tricker the bucket and
+send him for it. Or perhaps I will be wanting some
+coal, and then I just tell Tricker to fetch it."</p>
+
+<p>There was a little pile of coal lying in one corner of
+the yard, and I had noticed it with some surprise, for
+we had seen nothing but turf in the west of Ireland;
+but our host told us that the coal came from Donegal
+and that it was better than turf and even cheaper in
+the long run.</p>
+
+<p>"Tricker," he said, "take in some coal!"</p>
+
+<p>Tricker ran to the coal and picked up a lump in his
+jaws and trotted through the open door of the house
+and laid the lump down on the hearth inside; then he
+came back and took in another lump, and then a third,
+and finally his master stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>"He would be taking it all in if I left him to himself,"
+he said. "He is not very well, for he was kicked
+by the mare the other day, and I thought for a time he
+was going to die on me. But he did not, glory be to
+God, and I think he will soon be well again. And
+now, if you will come this way, I will be showing you
+the stones."</p>
+
+<p>He led the way across a field, which he said was his,
+and then over a stone wall into another; and in the
+middle of it was a depressed tomb with slabbed sides,
+in which, I suppose, at some far-off time, the body of
+some chieftain had been laid; and then our guide
+showed us the path which we must follow to get to the
+cromlechs; and then I put my hand in my pocket.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[389]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ah, no," he protested, drawing back.</p>
+
+<p>"For Tricker," I said; "to get him some dainty, because
+he's ill."</p>
+
+<p>His face softened.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well, sir," he said, "if you put it like that, I'll
+take it, and Tricker and I both thank ye kindly; and
+you, miss. God speed ye," and he stood watching us
+for quite a while, as we made our way up toward the
+road which ran along the edge of the ridge above us.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as we gained it, we saw the first of the
+cromlechs; and then, in a farther field, we saw another&mdash;great
+stones, standing upright in a circle of smaller
+ones, with a mighty covering slab on top, grey and
+lichened, and most impressive. They are supposed, as
+I have said, to mark the graves of warriors who fell
+in battle four thousand years ago; but the Irish peasantry
+explain them in a more romantic way, as the
+beds which Diarmuid prepared nightly for his mistress,
+Gr&aacute;inne, during the year they fled together up
+and down Ireland to escape the wrath of her husband,
+the mighty Finn MacCool.</p>
+
+<p>Gr&aacute;inne, you will remember, was the daughter of
+King Cormac, and she it was who won that race up
+Slievenamon for the honour of Finn's hand. There
+was a splendid wedding at Tara; but as Gr&aacute;inne sat
+at the feast, she looked at the man she had just married,
+and saw that the weight of years was on him; and then
+she looked about the board and noticed a "freckled,
+sweet-worded man, who had the curling, dusky black
+hair, and cheeks berry-red," and she asked who he was,
+and she was told that he was Diarmuid, "the white-toothed,
+of lightsome countenance, the best lover of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[390]</a></span>
+women and of maidens that was in the whole world."
+And Gr&aacute;inne looked on him again, and her heart melted
+in her bosom; and she mixed a drink and sent it about
+the board, until there came upon all the company "a
+stupor of sleep and deep slumber."</p>
+
+<p>Then she arose from her seat and went straight to
+Diarmuid, and laid a bond upon him that he should
+take her away; and Diarmuid, who was leal to Finn,
+asked his comrades what he should do, and they all
+said he must bide by the bond she had laid on him, for
+he was bound to refuse no woman, though his death
+should come of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that the counsel of you all to me?" asked Diarmuid.</p>
+
+<p>"It is," said Ossian and Oscar and all the rest; and
+then Diarmuid rose from his place, and his eyes were
+wet with tears, and he said farewell to his comrades,
+for he knew that from that day he was no longer a
+member of the goodly company of the Fianna, but only
+a hunted man.</p>
+
+<p>And he and Gr&aacute;inne fled from Tara to Athlone, and
+crossed the Shannon by the ford there, with Finn's
+trackers close behind them; and for a year and a day
+they travelled through the length and breadth of Ireland;
+and every night Diarmuid built for his love a
+chamber of mighty stones, and carpeted it with sweet
+grass, and crept softly in beside her and held her
+in his arms till morning, so that no hurt might come
+to her. And there the chambers remain to this day,
+366 of them, to prove the story true.</p>
+
+<p>I wish I could tell the remainder of the legend, but
+there is no space here; besides you will find it and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[391]</a></span>
+many others like it very beautifully told in one of the
+most fascinating Irish books I know&mdash;Stephen
+Gwynne's "Fair Hills of Ireland"; a book which I have
+pillaged remorselessly, and which I recommend to every
+one planning to visit the Island of the Saints.</p>
+
+<p>There are really more than 366 of the cromlechs,
+though nobody knows the exact number; and they are
+the most venerable monuments reared by man in Ireland.
+The growth of peat around certain of them
+proves that they have stood where they now stand for
+at least four thousand years. How the huge covering
+stones, sometimes weighing hundreds of tons, were
+lifted into place, no one knows, just as no one knows
+how the Egyptians raised their great monoliths from
+the quarry.</p>
+
+<p>There are two most impressive cromlechs at Carrowmore,
+quite close together, and my pictures of them are
+opposite the next page. The first one we came to
+stands near the road in a pasture, and it was merely a
+question of clambering over a wall to get to it; but to
+reach the other, it was necessary to cross a newly-cultivated
+field; and as there were some men working in it,
+I asked permission to do so.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said one of them, "so it is the big stones you
+have come to see. You're very welcome. I only wish
+you could take them with you."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I," I said. "We haven't anything like them
+in America. Everybody would want to see them."</p>
+
+<p>"That is just the trouble here. There are always
+people coming to see them, and they tramp about over
+my field, with no thought of the damage they will be
+doing, and without asking my leave, as you have done.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[392]</a></span>
+And then it is at least half an acre of good land that
+the stones make good for naught, and good land is not
+that plentiful in Ireland that we can afford to waste
+any of it. And then there's the trouble of ploughing
+around them."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 318px;">
+<a href="images/gs030-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs030.jpg" width="318" height="500" alt="CROMLECHS AT CARROWMORE" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">CROMLECHS AT CARROWMORE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The farmer was right, in a way, for a half acre of
+good land would have been of far more value to
+him than this beautiful cromlech in the midst of its
+circle of stones; but how happy I would have been to
+give it half an acre, if I could have wafted it home to
+America! The circle is considerably more than a hundred
+feet in diameter, and the stones which compose
+it are great boulders, four or five feet high, set on end.
+The cromlech itself is very imposing, with massive
+side supports, six or seven feet high, and a mighty
+covering stone, flat on the under side. It is like a
+giant bestriding the landscape; and Betty remarked
+that it reminded her of the legs of Uncle Pumblechook,
+with several miles of open country showing between
+them. My picture of it has Knocknarea in the background,
+and if you look closely, you will see the little
+bump in the middle of its summit which is the cairn
+of Queen Meave.</p>
+
+<p>The hill was only a mile or so away, and I proposed
+going over to it, but Betty vetoed that, for it meant
+some stiff climbing, and we had already walked a good
+many miles; so we started back slowly along the road
+to Sligo, and a beautiful road it was, with the purple
+hills in the distance, and the green rolling fields on
+either side, and the whitewashed cottages gathered
+close beside it. And the doors of all of them were
+wide open, and the people who lived in them, hearing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[393]</a></span>
+our footsteps, came out to pass the time of day and
+make some comment on the weather; and one old
+woman, who had been hoeing her potatoes, was so
+eager to talk that we stopped and sat down on the low
+wall in front of her cottage, and stayed for half an
+hour.</p>
+
+<p>She began with the usual questions&mdash;where we were
+from, if we were married, how old we were, and so
+on; and then she started to tell us about herself, omitting
+no detail, however intimate.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been to America," she said; "for seven years
+I lived there, and a grand place it is; and you will be
+wondering why I ever came back to County Sligo.
+'Twas because of this bit of land, which would be
+mine, and this houseen, which is a poor one, but I was
+born there, and I will die there, glory be to God. I
+would ask you in, but it is that dirty, I am ashamed of
+it. There is so much to be done in the field that I have
+had no time for the house; besides, I am getting old
+and my legs are very bad. I got a bottle from the
+doctor, and I do be taking a sip of it now and then,
+but it does me no good. I am thinking there is nothing
+will cure me.</p>
+
+<p>"We were not always down in the world like this,"
+she rattled on. "There was a time when we were
+well off. That was before my man was hurted. He
+was a county councillor, then, and as handsome a
+man as you would be seeing in a day's walk; and
+many's the time he has gone to Dublin with a flower in
+his button-hole, and me looking after him with pride,
+for he was always a good head to me. But a horse
+kicked him, and broke his leg and his arm, and he has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[394]</a></span>
+not had the right use of either since; and so we started
+going down; and when one starts doing that, there's
+no stopping.</p>
+
+<p>"That's himself going there," she added, indicating
+an unkempt figure limping painfully along the road
+with the help of a heavy cane. "He's ashamed for
+you to see him, he's that dirty;" but curiosity proved
+stronger than pride, in the end, and he finally came
+hobbling up to us, a wreck of a man with dirty clothes
+and unkempt hair and unshaven face and battered
+derby hat&mdash;and yet one could see that he had been a
+handsome fellow once.</p>
+
+<p>We mentioned our stopping at the house of the
+bachelor who owned Tricker, and both our companions
+grew serious.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, poor boy," said the woman, "he does be havin'
+a hard time. There was no one but his mother&mdash;all
+the others had gone to America; and he looked after
+her as careful as a daughter could; but she was very
+feeble, and he come home from the field one day to
+find her dead on the hearth. She had fallen in the
+fire and burned, bein' too weak to get up. It was a
+great shock to him, her dyin' in a way so painful and
+without a priest; and we all felt for him, though he
+was to blame for not marryin' some girl who could
+have looked after the old woman. He is well off, but
+there's no girl could put the comether on him, though
+many have tried,&mdash;nice girls, too, as nice as ever put
+a shawl across their heads."</p>
+
+<p>I remarked that we had been surprised at the number
+of bachelors in Ireland; we had supposed that all Irishmen
+married and had "long families," but it was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[395]</a></span>
+so at all. Some were too poor to marry, and that we
+could understand; but many that were not poor preferred
+to stay single. There were the Rafferty
+brothers, owners of the Connemara marble quarry;
+there was the proprietor of the hotel at Castleconnell;
+and now here was this man.</p>
+
+<p>"It is so," the old woman agreed. "There be many
+bachelors hereabouts&mdash;men too who could well afford
+to take a wife. The priest gets very warm over it.
+Not long ago, he said some words about it in the church&mdash;he
+said if it was left to him, he would be puttin' all
+these bachelors in a boat with a rotten bottom, and
+sendin' them out to sea, and sink or swim, small loss it
+would be whatever happened. For he said they were
+poor creatures, who thought of nothing but their own
+pleasure, who wasted their money in Dublin, instead
+of raising a family with it, and who would come to no
+good end. And I'm thinking that was nothing to what
+he had been saying to them in private. For of course,
+before he said anything in public, he had been after
+them to let him speak to the fathers of some of the
+nice girls there be about here."</p>
+
+<p>Among the Irish, especially the Irish peasantry, marriage
+is still largely a matter of arrangement between
+the families of the young people; though I doubt if
+it is ever quite so carelessly done as in one of Lever's
+books, where, after the bargain has been made, the
+father of three daughters asks the suitor which one it
+is he wants, and the suitor has them all brought in so
+that he may inspect them before he makes up his mind.
+It is always a solemn occasion, however, with the
+suitor's relatives ranged along one side of a table, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[396]</a></span>
+the bride's relatives along the other&mdash;male relatives, be
+it understood, for it is not lucky for a woman to take
+part in a match-making; and the bargaining is very
+shrewd and quite without sentiment; but the marriages
+thus arranged usually turn out well. For, if
+they are without romance, they are also without illusion.
+The woman knows beforehand what will be expected
+of her as wife and mother; the man is quite
+aware that matrimony has its rough side; and so there
+is no rude awakening for either. It is really a partnership,
+in which both are equal, and which both work
+equally hard to make successful.</p>
+
+<p>But I suspect that, in Ireland as elsewhere, marriage
+is not the inevitable thing it once was, especially
+for the men. It may be, as the priest said, that they
+have grown selfish and think only of their own comfort;
+or it may be that their needs have become more
+complex and their ideals harder to satisfy. Whatever
+the cause, Ireland certainly has her full share of
+bachelors.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We went to a picture-show at Sligo, that night, and
+I have never seen a livelier audience. There was, of
+course, a cowboy film which was received with the keenest
+pleasure; and there was a lurid melodrama, which
+culminated in the hero flinging the villain over a high
+cliff, at which those present rose to their feet and
+stamped and cheered; and then King George was
+shown reviewing the Life Guards, and the crowd
+watched in moody silence&mdash;a silence that was painful
+and threatening. As the troops marched past, gallant
+and glittering, a sight to stir the blood, there was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[397]</a></span>
+the suspicion of a cheer or hand-clap&mdash;just a strange,
+breathless silence. We were to witness the same thing
+thereafter in "loyal" Derry&mdash;the most convincing evidence
+imaginable of the feeling toward England which
+every Irishman, Protestant or Catholic, carries deep
+in his heart.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[398]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">We</span> wanted to drive around Lough Gill, a distance of
+about twenty-five miles, and I had mentioned this
+project to our landlord the day before, and asked the
+price of a car. He said it was a long trip and a trying
+one on a horse, and that the price would be twenty
+shillings, and I saw the same glitter in his eye which
+had been there when he named the price of a room.</div>
+
+<p>That afternoon, I happened to see a sign over a shop
+announcing that posting was done in all its branches.
+Remembering the glitter in the landlord's eye, I stopped
+in and asked the woman in charge if a car could be
+had for the trip around Lough Gill. She said it might,
+and the price would be twelve shillings, including the
+driver. I closed with her on the spot, and told her to
+have the car ready at nine o'clock next morning; and
+somewhat to my surprise it was; and we set forth on
+what was to prove one of the most beautiful and adventurous
+excursions we had had in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>It was a bright, warm day, and our jarvey, a picturesque
+old fellow, was quite certain it would not
+rain; but we put our rain-coats and all our other waterproof
+paraphernalia in the well of the car, so as to be
+prepared for the worst; and we elected to go out by
+the northern shore and come back by the southern one.
+For a mile or two our road lay through beautiful fragrant
+woods, and then we came out high above the lake.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[399]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is no prettier lake in Ireland than Lough
+Gill, with its green islands, and its blue water reflecting
+the blue sky and the fleecy clouds, and its banks
+covered with a vegetation almost as varied and luxuriant
+as that about Killarney, and the purple mountains
+crowding down upon it&mdash;only it is hardly fair to call
+them purple, for they are of many colours&mdash;the grey
+granite of their towering escarpments gleaming in the
+sun, the wide stretches of heather just showing a flush
+of lavender, the clumps of dark woodland clothing the
+glens, the broad spread of green pastures along their
+lower slopes, all combining in a picture not soon forgotten.
+For two or three miles we trotted on with this
+fairy scene stretched before us, and then we turned back
+into the hills, for we wanted to see the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis,
+the Stone of Conn the Son of Rush, set up on a
+neighbouring hilltop as a warning and a sign.</p>
+
+<p>At least, Murray calls it the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis,
+but our driver had never heard of it, though he protested
+that he knew every foot of the neighbourhood.
+Perhaps he did not recognise the words as I pronounced
+them, and as he could not read, it did no good for me to
+show them to him in the book. So I described it to
+him as well as I was able, never having seen it myself
+and having only the vaguest idea what it looked like,
+as a collection of great standing stones on top of a hill
+not far away; and still he had never heard of it. He
+was inclined to turn back to the lake, but I persisted;
+and finally he stopped a man who was driving a cart
+in to Sligo, and they talked together awhile in Irish,
+and then our driver turned up another road, not very
+hopefully.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[400]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 321px;">
+<a href="images/gs031-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs031.jpg" width="321" height="500" alt="SLIGO ABBEY FROM THE CLOISTER" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">SLIGO ABBEY FROM THE CLOISTER<br /><br />THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>It was a very hilly road, and our horse developed an
+alarming propensity to gallop&mdash;a propensity which the
+driver encouraged rather than strove to check, so that
+we felt, a good part of the time, as though we were
+riding to a fire at break-neck speed. The jaunting-car,
+it should be remembered, is a two-wheeled vehicle, and
+when the animal between the shafts takes it into his
+head to gallop, it describes violent arcs through the air.
+But we hung grimly on, and finally our driver drew up
+at a house near the roadside.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis here," he said.</p>
+
+<p>We got down and looked around, but saw nothing
+that resembled the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis; and then a
+woman came out of the house, and we asked her if she
+knew where it was, and, wonder of wonders! she did.
+Most wonderful of all, she had been to see it herself,
+so she knew where it was not vaguely but precisely,
+and she told us just how to go. It was on the hill
+back of the house, and she showed us the path which
+we must follow, and told us to look out for the rabbit-warrens,
+or we might sprain an ankle; and we set off
+through knee-deep heather up over the hill. It was
+quite a climb, and when we got to the top we saw
+no standing stones, and I wondered if we were going to
+miss them, after all; but we pressed on, and then, as
+we topped the next rise, my heart gave a leap&mdash;for
+there before us was the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis&mdash;the
+most remarkable stone enclosure I have seen anywhere,
+with the exception of Stonehenge&mdash;and Stonehenge is
+more remarkable only because its stones are larger.</p>
+
+<p>In every other way&mdash;in extent and in complexity&mdash;this
+enclosure far outranks Stonehenge. Great upright<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[401]</a></span>
+rocks, lichened and weatherbeaten by the rains and
+winds of forty centuries, form a rude oblong, about a
+hundred and fifty feet in length by fifty feet across. It
+stretches east and west, and at the western end is a
+square projection like a vestibule, divided into two
+chambers; while at the eastern end are two smaller
+oblongs some ten or twelve feet square, and their doorways
+are two trilithons&mdash;that is to say, two great rocks
+set on end with another rock laid across them, just as
+at Stonehenge. I despair of trying to picture it in
+words, but I took two photographs, one of which is opposite
+the preceding page, and gives some idea of the
+appearance of this remarkable monument&mdash;at least of
+the trilithons. But it gives no idea of its shape or its
+extent. There was no vantage point from which I
+could get a photograph that would do that.</p>
+
+<p>Its effect, here on this bleak hilltop, with other bleak
+hills all around as far as the eye could see, was tremendously
+impressive. Nobody knows who built it,
+nor when it was built, nor why. That it was a shrine
+of some sort, a holy place, seems evident; and to me
+it seemed also evident that the holy of holies were those
+two little chambers back of the trilithic doorways;
+and it seemed to me also significant that they should
+be at the east end, nearest the sunrise, just as the altars
+in Gothic churches are, and that there should be
+a vestibule or entrance at the west end. Surely it was
+built with some reference to the sun; and I tried to
+picture the horde of panting men, who had, with incredible
+labour, hacked out these giant stones from
+some quarry now unknown, and pulled them up the
+steep hillside and somehow man&oelig;uvred them into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[402]</a></span>
+place. Some powerful motive must have actuated
+them, and I can think of none powerful enough except
+the motive of religion&mdash;the motive of building a great
+temple to the God they worshipped, in the hope of
+pleasing Him and winning His favour.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 318px;">
+<a href="images/gs032-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs032.jpg" width="318" height="500" alt="A RUIN ON THE SHORE OF LOUGH GILL" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">A RUIN ON THE SHORE OF LOUGH GILL<br /><br />THE LAST FRAGMENT OF AN ANCIENT STRONGHOLD</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>What strange rites, I wondered, had these old stones
+witnessed; what pageantries, what sacrifices, what incantations?
+Of all that ancient people there remains
+on earth not a single trace, except in such silent monuments
+of stone as this, so mighty the passing centuries
+have been powerless to destroy them, more mysterious,
+more inscrutable than the Sphinx.</p>
+
+<p>We tore ourselves away, at last, and went silently
+down through the heather, which was fairly swarming
+with rabbits; and we mounted our car and headed back
+toward the lake. We came out presently close beside
+the shore, and followed it around its upper end. Just
+there, out at the end of a point of land, stands the
+fragment of a tower, and our jarvey told us it was all
+that was left of the castle from which Dervorgilla
+eloped with Dermot MacMurrough&mdash;a tale already
+told by the little tailor of Limerick.</p>
+
+<p>Of course I wanted a picture of it, and after much
+man&oelig;uvring, I managed to get the one opposite this
+page, which I include only because of the beautiful
+Japanesy branch across one corner; for this wasn't
+Breffni's castle at all, as we were presently to find. A
+little farther on, and quite near the road, was another
+ruin, and a most imposing one, with drum towers
+at the four corners, and a dilapidated cottage hugging
+its wall; and I took a peep within the square enclosure,
+used now as a kind of barnyard. There were little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[403]</a></span>
+turrets looking out over the lake, and a spiral stair in
+one corner, and mullioned windows and tall chimneys
+and yawning fireplaces; and it looked a most important
+place, but I have not been able to discover anything
+of its history. Then we went on again, with beautiful
+views of the lake at our right, and high on our left the
+flat-topped mountain called O'Rourke's Table, where,
+once upon a time, as told by the old ballad,
+"O'Rourke's Noble Feast" was spread:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+O'Rourke's noble fare will ne'er be forgot<br />
+By those who were there, or those who were not.<br />
+His revels to keep, we sup and we dine<br />
+On seven score sheep, fat bullocks and swine,<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and so on. It is, indeed, a table fit for such a celebration&mdash;a
+rock plateau with sheer escarpments of grey
+granite dropping away from it, and a close cover of
+purple heather for a cloth.</div>
+
+<p>The road curved on along the lake; then turned away
+from it through a beautiful ravine; and then a sparkling
+river was dashing along at our right, and beyond
+it loomed the grey walls of a most extensive ruin; and
+then we dropped steeply down into the town of Dromahair,
+and stopped at a pretty inn to bait the horse.</p>
+
+<p>I wanted to get closer to the ruins, and I asked if
+there was a bridge across the river, and was told that
+there was, just behind the hotel. So I made my way
+down to it, to find that the "bridge" was a slender
+plank, without handrail or guard, spanning some ugly-looking
+rapids. I looked at the plank, and I looked at
+the swirling water, and I looked at the grey ruins on
+the farther shore, and I hesitated for a long time; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[404]</a></span>
+I wasn't equal to it; and I turned away at last and
+made my way back to the village in the hope of finding
+some more stable bridge there.</p>
+
+<p>The dominating feature of the village is not the
+workhouse or lunatic asylum, but an enormous mill,
+five stories high, built of black stone as hard as flint,
+to endure for all eternity, but forlorn and deserted;
+and while I was gazing at it and wondering where the
+money had come from to build it, a man came out of
+the house attached to it and spoke to me. He was an
+Englishman, he said, who was spending his vacation
+at Dromahair. I asked him if there was any other
+bridge across the river except the slender plank, and he
+said there was not; and that it was characteristic of
+the Irish that there should not be, for a more careless,
+shiftless, happy-go-lucky race did not exist anywhere
+on earth.</p>
+
+<p>I asked him about the mill, and he said that it was
+just another example of Irish inefficiency and wrong-headedness;
+that it had been erected at great expense
+and equipped with the most costly machinery to grind
+American grain, which was to be brought up Sligo Bay
+from the sea, and up the river and across the lake; and
+then, when all was ready, there was no grain to grind&mdash;or
+none, at least, which could be brought to the
+mill without prohibitive expense. Furthermore, the
+power was so poor and costly that it would have been
+impossible to operate the mill profitably even if there
+had been plenty of grain. But the owner of the mill,
+with some sort of dim faith in the power of Home
+Rule to produce the grain, was preparing to install a
+turbine to run the machinery, and had already started<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[405]</a></span>
+to build a big aqueduct to bring the water in from above
+the rapids.</p>
+
+<p>The rapids are just above the mill, and are quite imposing;
+and there, just beyond them, is the abbey. I
+was near enough to see it fairly well, though not, of
+course, in detail as I should have liked to do; but I
+comforted myself with the thought that it is a comparatively
+modern one, dating from the sixteenth century,
+when Margaret, the wife of another O'Rourke,
+having, perhaps, like Dervorgilla, done something she
+regretted, built it for the Franciscans.</p>
+
+<p>I had another comfort, too; for I asked the Englishman
+if he had seen the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis; and he
+said that he had been hunting for it for a week, but
+hadn't been able to find it, as none of the people thereabouts
+seemed to know where it was; and he was astonished
+when I told him that we had found it, and
+commented with envy upon the energy of Americans.
+He asked me where it was, and I told him as nearly as
+I could; and then he wanted me to come in and have
+tea, and was for sending up to the hotel for Betty;
+but I had to decline that invitation. I think he was
+lonely and glad to find some one to talk to, for he
+was unusually expansive for an Englishman; and he
+said he would send his car in to Sligo after us, if we
+would come out next day; but I told him we were going
+on to Bundoran.</p>
+
+<p>And then I left him and went back up the hill to
+the ivy-covered ruin which was really the castle of
+Tiernan O'Rourke. It stands on the edge of the hill
+overlooking the valley&mdash;the same valley which lay
+smiling before him that evening he came back from his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[406]</a></span>
+pilgrimage to Lough Derg; and up there was the battlement
+from which no light burned. It was battered
+down in the sixteenth century, in some obscure fight,
+and all that is left of the castle now is the shell of its
+walls.</p>
+
+<p>I am afraid Tom Moore, as well as O'Connell, journeyman
+tailor, has invested the story with a glamour
+which did not belong to it; for Tiernan O'Rourke was
+a one-eyed bandit who had sacked the abbey of Clonard
+a few years before, and who certainly had need of pilgrimages
+to shrive him from his sins; and Dervorgilla,
+so far from being a "young false one," was forty-two
+years old; and MacMurrough took care to carry off, not
+only the lady's person, but all her movable property,
+and most of her husband's, as well.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The clouds were gathering in the west as we set out
+from Dromahair, and presently the rain began to slant
+down, slowly and softly at first, and then in a regular
+torrent. I do not know when I have seen it rain
+harder; but we were soon fixed for it and didn't mind.
+Dromahair is about twelve miles from Sligo, and they
+are hilly miles, so we knew that we had at least three
+hours of this wet work ahead of us; but the people
+working in the fields or plodding along the road paid
+no attention to the rain, so why should we? In fact,
+most of them, though without any sort of protection,
+seemed to be quite unconscious that it was raining at
+all.</p>
+
+<p>And then, just when the rain was hardest, I saw to
+the left a circle of stones crowning a little hill, and I
+knew it was a cashel. A cashel, as I have explained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[407]</a></span>
+already, is a fort made of stones, just as a rath is a
+fort made of earth, both being in the form of a circle;
+and I knew I could get pictures of raths without much
+difficulty, but I didn't know when I would see another
+cashel; so I made the driver stop, and got my camera
+out of the well, and started off through a field to get
+a picture of this one, not heeding Betty's anxious inquiry
+if I had suddenly gone mad.</p>
+
+<p>That field into which I plunged was thigh-deep with
+dripping grass, and I didn't realise how wet it was until
+I was well into it, and then there was nothing to do
+but go on. So I scrambled up the hill and took two
+pictures, shielding my lens, as well as I could, against
+the driving rain; and I hadn't any idea that the pictures
+would be good ones, but they were, and one of them is
+opposite the next page.</p>
+
+<p>There was no vantage point from which I could take
+a picture which would show the circular shape of the
+cashel; but it had been built in a perfect circle about
+sixty feet in diameter. It was on top of a steep hillock,
+of which it occupied nearly the whole summit.
+The walls, pierced only by a single narrow entrance,
+were about six feet high, and four or five feet thick,
+and the lower stones were very massive, as the picture
+shows. They had been roughly dressed and laid without
+mortar&mdash;the ancient Irish knew nothing of mortar,
+apparently, for all these old stone circles are uncemented;
+but they had been so nicely fitted that they
+were still in place after many centuries, though the
+clambering ivy was doing its best to pull them
+down.</p>
+
+<p>Right in the middle of the circle was a great stone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[408]</a></span>
+slab, flush with the ground. The only use I could imagine
+for it was as a base for a shrine or altar; but as
+I went down to the road again, an old man came out
+of a little house to talk, and he said that some antiquarians
+from Sligo, who believed the slab covered the
+entrance to a secret passage, had taken it up and found
+beneath it, not a passage, but a beautifully fitted pavement;
+and that the parish priest, investigating on his
+own account, had dug up some wood ashes, and so
+decided that this was the place where the fire was
+built.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 318px;">
+<a href="images/gs033-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs033.jpg" width="318" height="500" alt="A CASHEL NEAR DROMAHAIR" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">A CASHEL NEAR DROMAHAIR<br /><br />ST. PATRICK'S HOLY WELL</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>"But no one knows," my informant rambled on.
+"Maybe some day some wise man like yourself will be
+able to tell us what it was for."</p>
+
+<p>I remarked that the man who did so would have to
+be far wiser than I; but he protested that he knew a
+wise man when he saw one; and I suspect that there is
+a blarney stone in some of these ruins, which the general
+public doesn't know about.</p>
+
+<p>I was sorry it was raining, for there was another
+cashel on a hill to the right, and a great rath a little
+farther off, and I should have liked to explore both of
+them; but really the weather was too bad, so I went
+back reluctantly to the car, which our jarvey had driven
+close under a clump of trees for shelter, and we were
+soon jogging contentedly on again.</p>
+
+<p>The valley which slopes down here to Lough Gill
+seems very fertile, and the little farms have a more
+prosperous look than is usual in Ireland. This is
+partly due to the fact that a number of neat labourers'
+cottages have been built to replace the usual tumbledown
+hovels, and still more are going up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[409]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This erection of labourers' cottages, which is going
+on to-day all over Ireland, seems to me almost as important
+as land purchase. If there is any class of Irish
+more deserving of pity than another, it is the agricultural
+labourer. He is worse off than the tenants; he
+has no land, however poor, to cultivate, except perhaps
+a tiny patch in front of his door; he has no means of
+livelihood except the unskilled labour of his hands; if
+he can manage to earn ten shillings a week he is unusually
+fortunate. In most cases, his average income
+throughout the year will be scarcely half that. So
+naturally the labourers and their families live in the
+most wretched of all the wretched hovels, in want, discomfort
+and peril of disease.</p>
+
+<p>It is for the relief of these unfortunate people that
+the new houses are being built. They are very plain;
+but they have large windows which can be opened,
+and stone floors which can be cleaned, and tight slate
+roofs, and sanitary outbuildings; and each of them has
+a half acre or so of garden, where vegetables enough
+to support the family can be raised during the summer;
+and they rent for from two to three shillings a week&mdash;just
+enough to pay interest on the amount invested
+in the house, with a small sinking fund for upkeep and
+repairs. The money needed is borrowed from the
+government by the county council, and the council has
+control of the houses, decides where they shall be
+built, what rent shall be asked for them, and exercises
+a general supervision over the tenants.</p>
+
+<p>The same thing is being done in the towns, where the
+insanitary dwellings of the poorer artisans are being
+replaced by comfortable houses, rented at a very low<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[410]</a></span>
+rate. Nearly a hundred thousand of these cottages
+have been built within the past ten years, replacing
+as many insanitary shacks, which, for the most part,
+have been torn down. The shacks were much more
+picturesque, but nobody regrets them. And the severely
+utilitarian aspect of the new dwellings will no
+doubt soon be masked with vines and climbing roses.</p>
+
+<p>It was such cottages as this, then, that gave the valley
+sloping down to Lough Gill an unusually prosperous
+appearance, and many more were in course of
+erection throughout the neighbourhood. We padded
+past them, along the road above the lake, between
+beautiful hedgerows, gay with climbing roses; and then
+we turned away through a luxuriant wood, where the
+bracken was almost waist-high and the trees were
+draped with moss and ferns, just as we had seen them
+along the southern coast. And then we passed through
+a gate and jolted down a very rough and narrow lane;
+and finally our driver stopped at the edge of a wood,
+and pointed to a path running away under the trees.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis the path to St. Patrick's holy well," he said;
+and we clambered down, and made our way under the
+trees and up the hillside, and there before us was the
+well.</p>
+
+<p>It is a lively spring, which bubbles up from the
+ground in considerable volume, fills a deep basin, and
+then sparkles away down into the valley. A wall has
+been built around it, with an opening on one side, and
+steps by which one may descend and drink of the magic
+water. Just above it on the hillside is a shrine, something
+like the one we had seen at St. Senan's well&mdash;really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[411]</a></span>
+an altar, where, I suppose, Mass may be celebrated;
+and it was crowded with figurines of the Virgin
+and small crucifixes and rosaries and sacred pictures,
+and the bushes all about were tied with rags and
+strings and other tokens which the pilgrims to the
+shrine had left behind.</p>
+
+<p>This well is a very famous one, and the number of
+pilgrims who come to it prove how general is the belief
+in its powers. It is really a belief in the power
+of prayer, for prayer is always necessary. I tried to
+get a picture of the well and the shrine above it, but
+it was very dark under the trees, and there was no
+place where I could rest my camera for a time exposure;
+but the photograph opposite <a href="#Page_408">page 408</a>, is better
+than I had any reason to expect.</p>
+
+<p>We found that the rain had ceased when we came
+out from under the trees, and we jogged happily back
+to the highroad and on towards Sligo; and presently
+far ahead the bay opened out, rimmed by romantic
+hills, green nearly to the summit, and then culminating
+in steep escarpments of grey rock; and beneath us
+in the valley lay the roofs and spires of the town, and
+we were soon rattling through its streets.</p>
+
+<p>We went back to the hotel to change out of our wet
+things and get a cup of hot chocolate; and then we
+took a last stroll about the streets, and stopped to see
+the church of St. John, said to be older than the abbey,
+but recently restored and now used by a Church of Ireland
+congregation. The graveyard about it is full of
+interesting tombs, and the street it fronts is one of the
+most romantic in the town. Indeed, the whole town<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[412]</a></span>
+is interesting; its greatest drawback for the visitor
+being the beggars who infest it, and who are nearly as
+pertinacious as those at Killarney.</p>
+
+<p>We went back to the hotel, at last, and told the
+proprietor that we were going to Bundoran by the four
+o'clock train.</p>
+
+<p>"You will make a great mistake," he protested, "to
+leave Sligo without going around Lough Gill."</p>
+
+<p>It was then I had my revenge.</p>
+
+<p>"We have been around Lough Gill," I explained
+sweetly. "That's where we were this morning."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It is no easy task to travel along the west coast of
+Ireland. The great bays which indent it, running far
+inland, and the mountain ranges which tower one behind
+the other, make it impossible to follow anything
+like a straight line. The only thing to do is to zig-zag
+around them. Our journey, that afternoon, was
+a striking example of this. Bundoran lies twenty-two
+miles north along the coast from Sligo; but to get
+there by rail, it was necessary to travel ninety-two&mdash;forty-eight
+miles north-eastward to Enniskillen, and
+then forty-four miles westward to the coast again.</p>
+
+<p>The road to Enniskillen parallels Lough Gill, though
+it is so hemmed in by hills that we caught no glimpse
+of the water; and then proceeds across a dreary bog,
+climbing up and up with a wide valley opening to the
+south; and then runs into woodland and even orchards&mdash;the
+first, I think, that we had seen in Ireland; and
+then drops down toward Enniskillen, whose name lives
+in English history as that of one of the most famous
+of its regiments. It is said to be a pretty town, nestling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[413]</a></span>
+between two lakes and entirely water-girt; but we did
+not stop to see it.</p>
+
+<p>We changed instead to the Bundoran line, which runs
+along the northern shore of Lough Erne; and we found
+the train crowded with people, on their way to spend
+the week-end at that famous resort; at least so we
+supposed, but when we got to Pettigoe, there was a
+crowd on the platform, waving flags and shouting, and
+as the train stopped somebody set off a series of bombs;
+and most of the passengers piled out of the train to
+take part in the celebration; and then we saw a man
+and woman standing rather sheepishly in front of
+another man, who was evidently delivering an address
+of welcome. We asked the guard what it was all
+about, and he said that the citizens of Pettigoe were
+welcoming home a fellow-townsman who had gone to
+Australia and won a fortune and also a wife&mdash;or perhaps
+I should put it the other way around&mdash;and had
+come back to Pettigoe to live.</p>
+
+<p>I was half-inclined to get off there myself, in order
+to visit St. Patrick's Purgatory, a famous place of pilgrimage
+on an island in Lough Derg, five miles away;
+but from the map it looked as though it would be
+possible to drive over from Donegal, which would be
+much more convenient. I found out afterwards that
+there is a mountain range between Donegal and Lough
+Derg, and no direct road over it; so we did not get to
+visit the island where, so legend says, St. Patrick had a
+vision of purgatory, and which became so celebrated
+that pilgrims flocked to it from all over Europe. The
+time prescribed for the ceremonies is from the first of
+June to the middle of August, and the island is often<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[414]</a></span>
+so crowded with penitents performing the rounds that
+visitors are not permitted to land.</p>
+
+<p>Our train moved on, after the address of welcome
+was concluded, and we could see the blue waters of
+Lough Erne stretching away to the south, while westward
+the sun was setting in a glory of crimson clouds;
+and presently the broad estuary of the Erne opened below
+us, hemmed in with high banks of yellow sand;
+and then we were at Bundoran&mdash;a bathing resort, consisting
+of a single street of boarding-houses facing the
+sea; and a little farther on, a great hotel, built on a
+projecting point of the cliffs. As we paused at its door
+to look about us, we realised that we had come very
+far indeed from primitive Connemara, for the first
+thing which met our eyes was a huge sign:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<span class="smcap">Beware of Golf Balls!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[415]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE WINING BANKS OF ERNE</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">The</span> weather god was certainly good to us in Ireland.
+The occasional showers and two or three heavy downpours
+were merely short interludes, and by no means
+unpleasant ones, in the long succession of sweetly
+beautiful days which I remember when I run my mind
+back over those delightful weeks. That day at Bundoran
+was one of them, soft and fragrant and altogether
+perfect.</div>
+
+<p>There is nothing Irish about Bundoran except its
+climate&mdash;not, at least, if one stays at the hotel which
+has been built there by the Great Northern Railroad,
+and which is one of the most satisfactory hotels I was
+ever in. And perhaps it would be as well to say a
+word here about Irish hotels.</p>
+
+<p>The small, friendly inn, which is one of the delights
+of European travel, does not exist in Ireland; or, if it
+does, it is so carelessly managed that it is not endurable.
+Commercial hotels are also apt to be inferior.
+The only hotels that are sure to be pleasant and
+satisfactory are the large ones which cater to tourist
+traffic. In the more important towns, of course, there
+is never any difficulty in finding a good hotel; in the
+smaller towns, the only safe rule is to go to the best in
+the place, and if there is one managed by the railway,
+that is usually the one to choose.</p>
+
+<p>Some years ago, the Irish railways realised that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[416]</a></span>
+the surest way to encourage tourist traffic in the west
+and south was to provide attractive hotel accommodations,
+and they set about doing this with the result that
+the traveller in Ireland is now well provided for.
+Such hotels as those at Bundoran, Recess and Parknasilla&mdash;and
+there are many others like them, handsome
+buildings, splendidly equipped, set in the midst
+of beautiful surroundings&mdash;leave nothing to be desired.
+Nor are their rates excessive, considering the excellent
+service they offer, averaging a little over three dollars a
+day. In the smaller towns, the tariff is considerably
+less than this, though the service is almost as good. In
+places where the railroad does not itself own or manage
+a hotel, it usually sees to it that at least one under
+private management is kept up to a satisfactory standard.
+So no one wishing to explore Ireland need hesitate
+on account of the hotels. They will be found,
+with a few exceptions, surprisingly good.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 343px;">
+<a href="images/gs034-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs034.jpg" width="343" height="500" alt="THE COAST AT BUNDORAN" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE COAST AT BUNDORAN<br /><br />THE HOME OF "COLLEEN BAWN"</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>The hotel at Bundoran is set close to the edge of
+the scarred and weather-beaten cliffs, which look right
+out over the Atlantic toward America. It was along
+the top of these cliffs that we set out, that Sunday
+morning, and below us lay the strand where three
+galleons of the Spanish Armada went to pieces, as they
+were staggering homewards from the battle in the Channel.
+From time to time, an effort is made to find these
+"treasure ships," but, though cannon and anchors and
+such-like gear have been recovered, no one as yet has
+found any treasure.</p>
+
+<p>The great waves which roll right in from the
+Atlantic, and which proved too much for the galleons, have
+worn the cliffs into the most fantastic shapes; and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[417]</a></span>
+little way above the hotel there is a natural arch, called
+the Fairy Bridge, some twenty-five feet wide, which
+the water has cut in the rocks. When the tide comes
+in, it may be seen boiling and bubbling below the
+bridge, as in a witch's cauldron. Most beautiful of
+all is a wide yellow strand, a little farther on, with
+the rollers breaking far out and sweeping in, in white-topped
+majesty. We sat for a long time watching
+them, rolling in in long lines one behind the other;
+and then we scrambled down to the beach through the
+bare and shifting dunes. Seen thus from below, the
+black cliffs are most impressive.</p>
+
+<p>We went on again, at last, over the upland toward
+a wide-flung camp, where the Fourth Inniskillens were
+getting their summer practice; and one of the men directed
+us how to find a cromlech and a cairn, which we
+knew were there somewhere, but which we were unable
+to see amid the innumerable ridges. From the cairn,
+which crowns a little eminence overlooking the Erne estuary,
+there was supposed to be, so our acquaintance
+said, an underground passage to the other side of the
+river, where stands the old castle of the Ffolliotts; but
+as the estuary is at least a mile wide, I doubt if this ever
+existed except in the imagination of the country-side.
+The castle is there, however,&mdash;we could see its towers
+looming above the trees; but there was no way to get
+to it, that day, for the river lay between. I was determined
+to see it closer before we left the neighbourhood,
+because it was from that castle that the fair Colleen
+Bawn eloped with Willy Reilly.</p>
+
+<p>Farther down the stream, a two-masted schooner
+lay wrecked beside a sand-bank, and across from us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[418]</a></span>
+some soldiers were fishing in tiny boats, while a company
+was going through some man&oelig;uvres on the shore,
+so far away they looked like a company of ants deploying
+this way and that. For a long time we
+watched them; then we bade our companion good-bye,
+and went slowly back through the bracken, where Betty
+picked a great bouquet of primroses and violets and
+blue-bells; and we stumbled upon another ancient burial-place;
+and stopped at the ruins of an old church;
+and got back finally to the hotel to find the golf-links
+full of industrious players.</p>
+
+<p>Betty got into talk with the owner of a shaggy English
+sheep-dog&mdash;shaggy clear to its feet, and looking
+for all the world like Nana, the accomplished nurse
+of the Darling children; and I went on down to the
+beach to watch the tide come in. It was swirling
+threateningly about the black rocks; and out at the
+farthest point of them I found a man sitting. He invited
+me to sit down beside him, and we fell into talk.
+He was a handsome old fellow, a barrister from Dublin,
+who had come clear across Ireland (which isn't
+as far as it sounds) to get a breath of sea air. There
+was no air like the Bundoran air, he said, and two or
+three days of it did him a world of good. And then
+we began to talk about Ireland; and I was guilty of
+the somewhat banal remark that, before Ireland could
+make any real progress, life there would have to be
+made attractive enough to keep her young people at
+home, for she could never hope to get ahead as long
+as her best blood was drained away from her.</p>
+
+<p>He pooh-poohed the idea.</p>
+
+<p>"The best advice you can give any Irish man or Irish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[419]</a></span>
+girl," he said, "is to leave the country the first chance
+they get; and that will always be good advice, because
+there will never be anything here for them to do. All
+this talk about the revival of industry is foolish. You
+can't revive what's dead; and industry here has been
+dead for three hundred years. Besides this is an agricultural
+country, and it will never be anything else;
+and over wide stretches of it, grazing pays better than
+tillage will ever do, so grazing there will be. Home
+Rule will make no difference&mdash;how can it? I suppose
+we're going to get it, and I'll be glad to see it
+come, if only to stop this ceaseless agitation; but as for
+its reviving any industries, or increasing wages, or
+making Ireland a place for ambitious young people to
+live in&mdash;I don't believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't foresee a roseate future, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not for Ireland. All these schemes for land purchase
+and new cottages and pensions and so on may
+make life here a little more comfortable than it has
+been; but this country has been in a lethargy for centuries,
+and it will never be shaken off. The Irish have
+no ambition; they just live along from day to day
+without any thought for the future; and they will always
+be like that. It's their nature."</p>
+
+<p>He would doubtless have said more to the same effect,
+for he was very much in earnest, but the rising
+tide drove us in, and I did not see him again.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The picturesque old town of Ballyshannon is only a
+few miles from Bundoran, and we took train for it
+next morning, after a last stroll along the cliffs and a
+look at the "rock-pool," a treasure-house of fossils and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[420]</a></span>
+marine growths of every kind. First of all, we wanted
+to see the Colleen Bawn castle, so we got a car at the
+station, and set out.</p>
+
+<p>Ballyshannon, after the fashion of Irish towns, is
+built on the side of a hill, and no horse unaccustomed
+to mountaineering could have got up the street which
+leads from the river; but our horse had been reared
+in the town, so he managed to scramble up; and then
+we turned to the left and followed along the river to
+the falls&mdash;a dashing mass of spray, where the whole
+body of water which rushes down from Lough Erne
+sweeps roaring over a cliff some thirty feet high. Two
+or three miles along country roads brought us to a
+gate; and here our driver, looking a little anxious,
+had a short conference with a woman who lived in a
+neat labourer's cottage near by; and finally he opened
+the gate and drove through.</p>
+
+<p>Half a mile along this lane brought us to another
+gate; and there our driver stopped, and showed us the
+castle just ahead, and said that was all the farther he
+could go, and that we would have to walk the rest of
+the way. There was a certain constraint in his manner
+which I did not understand till afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>We went on through the gate, and across what had
+once been the demesne, but had been swept bare of
+trees, and was now divided between a meadow and a
+stable-yard, and in a few minutes we stood before the
+castle which was the scene of a romance very dear to
+Irish hearts. It is not really a castle, but merely a tall
+and ugly house, with three bays and a low terrace in
+front, and it is not very old, since it dates only from
+1739, when it was built as the home of the Ffolliotts,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[421]</a></span>
+a powerful English family into whose hands this whole
+neighbourhood had fallen. The Ffolliotts, of course,
+were Protestants, and Willy Reilly was a Catholic; but
+Helen Ffolliott was so ill-advised as to fall in love
+with him, and one night packed up her jewels and
+eloped. A hue and cry was raised after them, and they
+were soon captured, and Reilly was thrown into Sligo
+jail, and it looked for a while as though he might be
+"stretched," for all this happened about 1745, when
+the penal laws against Catholics were most severe.
+But the fair Helen came to the rescue, and swore at
+the trial that she had been the leader in the affair, not
+Reilly, and so he escaped with a sentence of banishment.
+What happened thereafter history does not
+state; but Will Carleton, who wove a poor romance
+about the affair, manages to reunite the lovers in the
+end.</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be wondered at that Reilly became a
+popular hero. Here was a young and handsome Catholic,
+who, in the most daring way, had captured the
+heart of a great Protestant heiress, the daughter of a
+persecutor of Catholics, and, in addition, a girl so
+lovely that she was the toast of the whole country-side.
+The ballad which celebrated the affair had an
+immense vogue. It is a real ballad, rough and halting,
+but rudely eloquent. You remember how it starts:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Oh! rise up, Willy Reilly, and come alongst with me,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I mean for to go with you and leave this countrie,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To leave my father's dwelling, his houses and fine lands;"</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And away goes Willy Reilly and his dear Colleen Bawn.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>In the ballad, the family is called Folliard, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[422]</a></span>
+is the way the name is still pronounced in the neighbourhood;
+but the old mansion is now occupied by a
+tenant. And pretty soon we understood our jarvey's
+uneasiness, for first a man came to the front door and
+looked at us, and then went quickly in again; and then
+an old woman opened the side door, and glared at us,
+and when we asked if we might have a glimpse of
+the interior, slammed the door in our faces. I must
+give her credit, however, for restraining a particularly
+savage-looking dog eager to be at us. But it was
+evident we weren't wanted there, for even the turkey
+gobbler resented our visit, and strutted fiercely about
+us, trying to scare us out. So we went back to the car,
+and our jarvey breathed a sigh of relief when he saw
+us.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, I didn't know whether you'd come back alive
+or not," he said. "The master is away from home the
+day, and the woman that does work for him wouldn't
+be above settin' the dog on you. But it's all right,
+glory be to God," and he climbed up to his box and
+drove us back to Ballyshannon.</p>
+
+<p>We left our luggage at the station of the Donegal
+narrow-gauge railway, and then walked down into the
+town. We found it a quaint place, with the friendliest
+of people; and we were fortunate in discovering a
+clean inn on the main street, where we had the nicest
+of lunches, after which we set off to see the abbey.</p>
+
+<p>The road to the abbey lies through a deep, romantic
+dell, at the bottom of which we found a grain mill
+working, its great wheel turned by the brook which
+rushes through the glen; and a little farther on were
+four or five other mills, all fallen to decay, their wheels<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[423]</a></span>
+mere skeletons, and their machinery red with rust.
+Just beyond, a little higher up the hill, stands all that
+is left of the abbey, a few shattered fragments of the
+old walls. Yet the abbey was, in its day, a great foundation,
+patronised by the mighty Prince of Tyrconnell,
+and taking its name of Assaroe from the falls in the
+river&mdash;Eas Aedha Ruaidh, the Waterfall of Red Hugh,
+who was High King of Erin about three centuries before
+Christ, and who was swept over the falls and
+drowned while trying to cross the ford above them. A
+boy who played about the ruins described them, when
+he grew to manhood, in a musical stanza:</p>
+
+<div class='poem2'>
+Grey, grey is Abbey Assaroe, by Ballyshanny town,<br />
+It has neither door nor window, the walls are broken down;<br />
+The carven stones lie scattered in briars and nettle-bed;<br />
+The only feet are those that come at burial of the dead.<br />
+A little rocky rivulet runs murmuring to the tide,<br />
+Singing a song of ancient days, in sorrow, not in pride;<br />
+The bore-tree and the lightsome ash across the portal grow,<br />
+And heaven itself is now the roof of Abbey Assaroe.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>We had heard certain legends of underground passages,
+which could still be explored, and we asked an old
+man who was cutting grass in the graveyard if he knew
+anything about them, and he said that he did not. We
+remarked that it was a hard task cutting the grass
+around the gravestones; and he said it was so, and
+would not be worth doing but that the grass was given
+to him for the cutting; but the guardians were unreasonable
+men who wanted it cut long before it was
+ready&mdash;it ought really to stand a week longer, now,
+but them ones would not wait!</p>
+
+<p>We went back past the mill, and met a man in flour-besprinkled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[424]</a></span>
+clothes, who bade us good-day and stopped
+to talk; and it proved to be the miller. He invited
+us in to see the mill, which was grinding Russian corn,
+very red and hard, into yellow meal which was used
+for feeding cattle. We tried to tell him something of
+the delights of corn-bread and griddle-cakes, but he
+was plainly sceptical.</p>
+
+<p>He was an Ulster man, and had been running the
+mill for three years, but he said it was a hard struggle
+to make both ends meet. If it was not that his power
+cost him nothing, he would have had to give it up long
+ago. Power apart, I could imagine no poorer place
+for a mill, for it was at least two miles from the railway,
+and the road into the hollow was so steep that it
+must be a terrific struggle to get a loaded wagon into
+or out of it. There had been a number of mills in the
+neighbourhood at one time, but they had all given up
+the struggle long ago, except one flour mill, which had
+somehow managed to survive.</p>
+
+<p>We told him that we had seen the ruins of some of
+them as we went to the abbey.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you been to the abbey?" he asked. "Did
+you see the underground passages?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are there really some?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come along, and I'll show you."</p>
+
+<p>We protested that we didn't want him to leave his
+work, but he said the mill could take care of itself for
+awhile; and we started off together up the hill, through
+a gate to the right, and then knee-deep through the
+grass to the brook which ran at the bottom of the ravine,
+under the walls of the monastery. And there,
+sure enough, was the mouth of a passage cut in the solid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[425]</a></span>
+rock of the bank. It was about six feet high by three
+wide, and ran in about a hundred feet, for all the world
+like the entrance to a mine. How much farther it extended
+I don't know, for an iron gate had been put
+across it to keep out explorers; but there can be no doubt
+that, at one time, it connected with the abbey itself, and
+formed a secret means of ingress and egress, which was
+no doubt often very convenient.</p>
+
+<p>And then our guide showed us something else, which
+was far more interesting. In the penal days, Catholic
+priests were forbidden to celebrate Mass under the severest
+penalties; but nevertheless they managed to hold
+a service now and then in some out of the way place,
+carefully concealed, with sentries posted all about to
+guard against surprise. A short distance down stream
+from the entrance to the secret passage was a shallow
+cave in the cliff, so overhung with ivy that it could
+scarcely be seen, and here, many times, the Catholics of
+the neighbourhood had gathered at word that a priest
+would celebrate Mass. On the heights all about lookouts
+would be placed, and then the men and women
+would kneel before the mouth of the little cave and
+take part in the sacrament.</p>
+
+<p>At the back of the cave, the shelf of rock which
+served as the altar still remains, and at one side of it
+is a rude piscina&mdash;a basin hollowed in the rock, with a
+small hole in the bottom to drain it; and it was here
+the vessels used in the celebration of the Mass were
+washed, after the service was over. I wanted mightily
+to get a picture of this cave, but it had started to
+shower, and though I got under the umbrella and made
+an exposure, the picture was a failure.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[426]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We bade our guide good-bye, with many thanks for
+his kindness, and went slowly back along the highroad
+toward Ballyshannon; and presently from a tiny cottage
+beside the road two old women issued and greeted
+us with great cordiality. They were clean and neatly
+dressed, and the younger one, who did most of the
+talking, seemed to be quite unusually interested in our
+private history and solicitous for our welfare, and the
+blarney with which her tongue plastered us was the
+most finished I have ever listened to. We thanked
+her for her good wishes, and were about to go on, much
+pleased at this new demonstration of Irish cordiality,
+when we had a rude awakening.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, your honour," she said, "would you not be giving
+me something for my poor sister here? You see
+she is all twisted with rheumatism, and can scarcely
+walk, and the medicine do be costing so much that she
+often must go without it. Just a small coin, God bless
+ye."</p>
+
+<p>I didn't want to give her anything, for I suspected
+that she made a practice of waylaying passers-by and
+begging from them; and then I looked at the older
+woman, who was standing by with her hands crossed
+before her, and I saw how the fingers were twisted and
+withered and how the face was drawn with pain&mdash;so I
+compromised by dropping sixpence into the outstretched
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"If your honour would only be makin' it eightpence
+now," the woman said quickly; "we can get three bottles
+of castor-oil for eightpence&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But the other woman stopped her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[427]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, no," she protested; "take shame to yourself
+for askin' the kind gentleman for more. We thank
+your honour, and God bless ye, and may He bring ye
+safe home."</p>
+
+<p>And the other woman joined in the blessings too,
+and they continued to bless us, considerably to our
+embarrassment, until we were out of ear-shot.</p>
+
+<p>Betty had had enough of Ballyshannon; besides, the
+showers were coming with increasing force and frequency;
+so she elected to go back to the railway station
+and rest, while I wandered about for a last look
+at the town. And now, I suppose, I shall have to
+say a word about its history.</p>
+
+<p>All this country to the north of Lough Erne is
+Tyrone&mdash;Tir Owen, the Province of Owen&mdash;and was
+once a great principality, which stretched eastward
+clear to the shore of the Channel about Belfast.
+Northwest of it, answering roughly to the present
+county of Donegal, was Tyrconnell&mdash;Tir Connell, the
+Province of Connell; and Connell and Owen were
+brothers, sons of Nial of the Nine Hostages, who was
+King of Ireland from 379 to 405, and whose eight sons
+cut Ireland up between them into the principalities
+which were, in time, by their own internecine warfare,
+to make Ireland incapable of defending herself against
+the invader. Saint Patrick, about 450, found Connell
+in his castle on Lough Erne and baptised him; and
+then he journeyed north to Owen's great fortress, which
+we shall see before long on a hill overlooking Lough
+Swilly, and baptised him.</p>
+
+<p>Five centuries later, when Brian Boru had brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[428]</a></span>
+all Ireland to acknowledge his kingship, he decreed
+that every family should take a surname from some distinguished
+ancestor, and so began the era of the O's
+and the Macs. The two great clans of Tyrone and
+Tyrconnell chose the names of O'Neill and O'Donnell,
+and the river Erne was the frontier of the O'Donnell
+domain. There was a ford here at Ballyshannon, and
+so, of course, a castle to guard it, and many were the
+herds of lifted cattle which the O'Donnells, sallying
+south into Sligo, drove back before them into Donegal.
+Cattle was the principal form of property in those old
+days&mdash;about the only kind, at least, that could be stolen&mdash;and
+so it was always cattle that the raiders went
+after.</p>
+
+<p>The English brought a great force against the place
+in 1597, and for three days besieged the castle and tried
+unavailingly to carry it by assault; and then the
+O'Donnell clans poured down from the hills, and the
+English, seeing themselves trapped, tried to cross the
+river at the ford just above the falls; and the strongest
+managed to get across, but the women and the
+wounded and the weak were swept away.</p>
+
+<p>There is no trace remaining of the castle, but just
+below the graceful bridge of stone which crosses the
+river is the ford over which the English poured that
+day, and an ugly ford it is, for the water runs deep and
+strong, quickening at its lower edge into the rapids
+above the falls. From the centre of this bridge, some
+twenty-five years ago, the ashes of one of Ireland's
+truest poets were scattered on the swift, smooth-running
+water and carried down to the sea, and a tablet
+marks the spot:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[429]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+WILLIAM ALLINGHAM<br />
+A Native of This Town<br />
+Born 1824; died 1889.<br />
+</div><div class='poem'>
+Here once he roved, a happy boy,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Along the winding banks of Erne,</span><br />
+And now, please God, with finer joy,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A fairer world his eyes discern.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>It is certainly a halting quatrain, quite unworthy the
+immortality of marble. A couplet from Allingham's
+own poem in praise of his birthplace would have been
+far more fitting; but I suppose that the lines on the
+tablet were composed by some local dignitary, and that
+nobody dared tell him how bad they were. I know
+of no more graceful tribute to any town than Allingham
+paid to Ballyshannon in his "Winding Banks of
+Erne." The first stanza gives a savour of its quality:</p>
+
+<div class='poem2'>
+Adieu to Ballyshanny, where I was bred and born;<br />
+Go where I may, I'll think of you, as sure as night and morn:<br />
+The kindly spot, the friendly town, where everyone is known,<br />
+And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own;<br />
+There's not a house or window, there's not a field or hill,<br />
+But east or west, in foreign lands, I'll recollect them still;<br />
+I leave my warm heart with you, though my back I'm forced to turn&mdash;<br />
+Adieu to Ballyshanny, and the winding banks of Erne.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>You will note that the savour is the same as that of
+the lines I have already quoted describing Abbey Assaroe,
+and of course the same hand wrote them. I
+wish I could quote the whole poem to Ballyshannon,
+for it is worth quoting, but one more stanza must suffice,
+the last one:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[430]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem2'>
+If ever I'm a moneyed man, I mean, please God, to cast<br />
+My golden anchor in the place where youthful years were passed;<br />
+Though heads that now are black or brown must meanwhile gather grey,<br />
+New faces rise by every hearth, and old ones drop away&mdash;<br />
+Yet dearer still that Irish hill than all the world beside;<br />
+It's home, sweet home, where'er I roam, through lands and waters wide.<br />
+And if the Lord allows me, I surely will return<br />
+To my native Ballyshanny, and the winding banks of Erne.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>His birthplace is not far away&mdash;one of a row of
+plain old stone houses standing in the Mall, with a
+tablet:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+WILLIAM ALLINGHAM<br />
+Poet<br />
+Born in This House<br />
+19th March, 1824<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I walked on past it, down to the river below the falls,
+where, close to the water's edge, a seat has been placed
+under a rustic canopy, and I sat there for a long time
+and watched the foaming water rushing over the cliff,
+with a crash and roar which, as Allingham says, is the
+voice of the town, "solemn, persistent, humming
+through the air day and night, summer and winter.
+Whenever I think of that town, I seem to hear the
+voice. The river which makes it, runs over rocky
+ledges into the tide. Before, spreads a great ocean
+in sunshine or storm; behind stretches a many-islanded
+lake. On the south runs a wavy line of blue mountains;
+and on the north, over green, rocky hills, rise
+peaks of a more distant range."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 319px;">
+<a href="images/gs035-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs035.jpg" width="319" height="500" alt="BIRTHPLACE OF WILLIAM ALLINGHAM" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">BIRTHPLACE OF WILLIAM ALLINGHAM<br /><br />CASTLE DONEGAL</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[431]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is up from the ocean the salmon come in the spring,
+seeking a place to spawn, and before they can get into
+the "many-islanded lake," they have to pass the falls.
+It is a ten-foot leap, even at flood-tide; but they take
+it, and a beautiful sight it must be to see them do it.
+But I saw none that day. Just below the falls is a
+little island, Inis-Saimer, said to be the spot where the
+Firbolgs, the earliest inhabitants of Ireland, first
+touched foot to Irish soil. It is given over now to
+some small buildings connected with the fishery, which
+is very valuable. There were a number of boats out,
+that day, with fishermen in them patiently whipping
+the water, but I did not see any fish caught.</p>
+
+<p>Ballyshannon is not, I judge, so prosperous as it once
+was, for across the river from where I sat were a number
+of tall mills and warehouses, empty and evidently
+dropping to decay. But it is more bustling than many
+other towns in Ireland, and has perhaps not sunk quite
+so deeply into the Slough of Despond. And then
+again, as the towering mass of the Belfast Bank in the
+main street warned me as I walked back through the
+village, we were getting nearer to the hustling north!</p>
+
+<p>The little train we were to take for Donegal backed
+up to the platform soon after I reached the station.
+It is a narrow-gauge road, and the coaches are miniature
+affairs, scarcely high enough to stand up in, as we
+found when we entered. And just then the heavens
+opened, and the rain poured down in sheets. We
+closed door and windows, and congratulated ourselves
+that we were snug and dry&mdash;and then the other passengers
+began to arrive, soaked through and dripping
+wet; and as the train consisted of only two coaches, our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[432]</a></span>
+compartment was soon invaded by two women and
+two girls, whose gowns were fairly plastered to them.
+They dried themselves as well as they could, but little
+streams of water continued to trickle off of them for
+half an hour.</p>
+
+<p>The road runs through a bare, bleak valley for the
+first part of the way, clinging perilously to the hillside,
+and then climbs steeply over the watershed into the
+valley of the Ballintra, which is green and smiling and
+apparently prosperous; and at last winds down along
+the shore of Donegal Bay, through a district of orchards
+and lush meadows and beautiful hedges and comfortable
+houses, and so into the picturesque town&mdash;Dunna-Gall,
+the Fort of the Strangers&mdash;the ancient seat of
+the O'Donnells; but to me Donegal, town and county,
+has one connotation which overshadows all others, and
+that is with Father O'Flynn. Just where he lived I
+don't know, but the tribute which Alfred Perceval
+Graves paid him is the most eloquent ever paid in
+rhyme to any priest&mdash;and, as a comment upon the
+efforts of selfish politicians to fan the flame of religious
+bigotry in Ireland, it is worth remembering that it was
+written by a Protestant! Do you know the poem?
+Well, if you do, you will be glad to read it again, and
+if you do not, you will have every reason to thank me
+for introducing you to it; so, just to give myself the
+pleasure of writing it, I am going to quote it entire, for
+it would be a crime to leave out a line of it.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>FATHER O'FLYNN</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Of priests we can offer a charmin' variety,<br />
+Far renowned for larnin' and piety;<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[433]</a></span>Still, I'd advance ye widout impropriety,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Father O'Flynn as the flower of them all.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Sl&aacute;inte</i> and <i>sl&aacute;inte</i> and <i>sl&aacute;inte</i> agin;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Powerfulest preacher, and</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tinderest teacher, and</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Kindliest creature in ould Donegal.</span><br />
+<br />
+Don't talk of your Provost and Fellows of Trinity,<br />
+Famous forever at Greek and Latinity,<br />
+Faix! and the divels and all at Divinity&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Father O'Flynn'd make hares of them all!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Come, I vinture to give ye my word,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Niver the likes of his logic was heard,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Down from mythology</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Into thayology,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Troth! and conchology if he'd the call.</span><br />
+<br />
+Och! Father O'Flynn, you've the wonderful way wid you,<br />
+All ould sinners are wishful to pray wid you,<br />
+All the young childer are wild for to play wid you,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">You've such a way wid you, Father avick!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Still, for all you've so gentle a soul,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Gad, you've your flock in the grandest control,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Checking the crazy ones,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Coaxin' onaisy ones,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Liftin' the lazy ones on wid the stick.</span><br />
+<br />
+And, though quite avoidin' all foolish frivolity,<br />
+Still, at all seasons of innocent jollity,<br />
+Where was the play-boy could claim an equality<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">At comicality, Father, wid you?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Once the Bishop looked grave at your jest,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Till this remark set him off wid the rest:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">"Is it lave gaiety</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">All to the laity?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Cannot the clargy be Irishmen too?"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>There is a quaint old inn in Donegal, with dining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[434]</a></span>
+and sitting rooms crowded with "curiosities" gathered
+from the four quarters of the globe by the proprietor,
+who was once a soldier; and his daughter looks after
+the comfort of the guests; and we had there that night
+a most satisfying dinner. And then, as it was still
+quite light, I filled my pipe and started out to stroll
+about the town; but I hadn't gone far when I heard a
+bell being rung with great violence, and when I looked
+again, I saw the small boy who was ringing it; and
+when he passed me, I asked him what the matter was,
+and he handed me a poster, printed most gorgeously in
+red and black, and these were the first lines of it:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+TOWN HALL, DONEGAL<br />
+<br />
+Monday Evg., June 23rd, 1913<br />
+<br />
+MONSTER ATTRACTION<br />
+<br />
+Powerful Performance!<br />
+For the Benefit of Mr. Joe Cullen,<br />
+The Donegal Old Favourite<br />
+On which occasion the ladies and<br />
+gentlemen of the Donegal Amateur<br />
+Dramatic and Variety Club will<br />
+Appear.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Then followed the programme. There were to be
+four scenes from "The Ever Popular Play Entitled
+Robert Emmet," also "The Laughable Sketch Entitled
+The Cottage by the Sea," also "The Irish Farce, Miss
+Muldowedy from Ireland," the whole to be interspersed
+with variety turns by members of the club, as well as
+Mr. Cullen. "Don't Miss This Treat," the poster
+concluded. "Motto, 'Fun without Vulgarity.'"</p>
+
+<p>Blessing the chance which had brought us to Donegal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[435]</a></span>
+upon this day, I hastened back to the hotel, showed the
+poster to Betty, and three minutes later, we were sallying
+forth in quest of the town-hall, whose entrance
+proved to be up a little court just across the street.
+The prices of admission, so the bill announced, were
+"2s., 1s. and 6d.," and I consulted with the abashed
+young man at the door as to which seats we should take.
+He advised the shilling ones, and we thereupon paid
+and entered. I wondered afterwards where the two
+shilling seats were, for the shilling ones were the best
+in the house.</p>
+
+<p>Although it was nearly time for the performance to
+begin, we were almost the first arrivals; but we soon
+heard heavy feet mounting the stair, and quite a crowd
+of men and boys began to file into the sixpenny seats
+at the rear. A few girls and women came forward into
+the shilling seats; but from the look of them, I suspected
+that they were deadheads, and I fear that Mr.
+Cullen did not reap a great fortune from that benefit!</p>
+
+<p>There was a tiny stage at one end of the hall, and the
+stage-manager, after the habit of all such, was having
+his troubles, for he could not get the footlights&mdash;a
+strip of gas-pipe with holes in it&mdash;to work. We
+thought for a while that he was going to blow himself
+up, and the whole house along with him; but he gave
+up the struggle, at last; the pianist played an overture,
+and the curtain rose.</p>
+
+<p>I have never seen the whole of "Robert Emmet,"
+but from what I saw of it that night, I judge that it
+must have been written for a star, for nobody does
+much talking except Emmet himself. He, however,
+does a lot; and it was fortunate that, in this instance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[436]</a></span>
+he was impersonated by Mr. Cullen, for I am sure none
+of the other actors could have learned the part. Mr.
+Cullen proved to be a hatchet-faced old gentleman
+without any teeth; but he had a pleasing voice, and
+Emmet's grandiloquent speech from the dock was
+greeted with applause.</p>
+
+<p>Of the two farces I will say nothing, except that they
+were really not so bad as one would expect, once the
+actors had recovered from their embarrassment when
+they perceived two strangers present; but the feature of
+the evening was the songs, which were many and various
+and well-rendered. I remember only one of them,
+which we then heard for the first time, but which we
+were to hear many times thereafter, a lilting, catchy
+air, in which the audience assisted with the chorus,
+which ran something like this:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+It's a long way to Tipperary,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It's a long way to go;</span><br />
+It's a long way to Tipperary,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The sweetest land I know.</span><br />
+Good-bye, Piccadilly,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Farewell, Leicester Square;</span><br />
+It's a long, long way to Tipperary,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But my heart is there.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>It is the old, old theme of the Irish exile longing for
+home; the theme of I know not how many poems, from
+the time of St. Columba, banished overseas and "thinking
+long" of</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Derry mine, my own oak grove,<br />
+Little cell, my home, my love;<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>down through Father Dollard's lilting "Song of the
+Little Villages":</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[437]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+The pleasant little villages that grace the Irish glynns<br />
+Down among the wheat-fields&mdash;up amid the whins;<br />
+The little white-walled villages, crowding close together,<br />
+Clinging to the Old Sod in spite of wind and weather:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ballytarsney, Ballymore, Ballyboden, Boyle,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ballingarry, Ballymagorry by the Banks of Foyle,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ballylaneen, Ballyporeen, Bansha, Ballysadare,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ballybrack, Ballinalack, Barna, Ballyclare,</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>to the tender verses by Stephen Gwynne with which I
+will close this already, perhaps, too-poetical chapter:</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Ireland, oh, Ireland! centre of my longings,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Country of my fathers, home of my heart,</span><br />
+Overseas you call me, "Why an exile from me?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wherefore sea-severed, long leagues apart?"</span><br />
+<br />
+As the shining salmon, homeless in the sea-depths,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hears the river call him, scents out the land,</span><br />
+Leaps and rejoices in the meeting of the waters,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Breasts weir and torrent, nests him in the sand;</span><br />
+<br />
+Lives there and loves; yet with the year's returning,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rusting in his river, pines for the sea;</span><br />
+Sweeps down again to the ripple of the tideway,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Roamer of the ocean, vagabond and free.</span><br />
+<br />
+Wanderer am I, like the salmon of thy rivers;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">London is my ocean, murmurous and deep,</span><br />
+Tossing and vast; yet through the roar of London<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Reaches me thy summons, calls me in sleep.</span><br />
+<br />
+Pearly are the skies in the country of my fathers,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Purple are thy mountains, home of my heart:</span><br />
+Mother of my yearning, love of all my longings,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Keep me in remembrance, long leagues apart.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[438]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE MAIDEN CITY</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">As</span>s far back as its history goes, Donegal was the seat of
+the O'Donnells, that powerful clan of which the choicest
+flowers were Hugh Roe and Red Hugh, and here
+they had their castle, on a small bluff overlooking the
+waters of the River Eask. It still stands there, remarkably
+well-preserved considering its vicissitudes,
+one of the handsomest semi-fortified buildings in existence
+anywhere. It is by far the most interesting thing
+to be seen in the town of Donegal, and we set out for
+it immediately after breakfast next morning.</div>
+
+<p>Donegal we found by daylight to be a pleasant little
+town, with a single street of two-storied houses curving
+down over the hill toward the river, and a few narrow
+lanes branching off from it, after the traditional
+fashion of the Irish village. The castle is nestled in
+a bend of the river, which defends it on two sides,
+and there is still a trace of the moat which used to
+defend the other two. The best view of it is from the
+bridge crossing the river, and surprisingly beautiful
+it is, with its gabled towers and square bartizan turrets
+and mullioned windows. The picture opposite this
+page shows how the castle looks from the land side,
+with one of the square turrets, perfectly preserved; but
+the mullioned windows are the most striking feature
+of this side of the building, which was the domestic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[439]</a></span>
+side, and so had larger openings than the one overlooking
+the river, which was more open to attack.</p>
+
+<p>Just when the castle was built no one knows, but it
+was thoroughly restored and largely added to by Sir
+Basil Brooke, to whom it was granted after the confiscation
+in 1610, when the power of the O'Donnells
+was finally broken. Red Hugh was really the last
+of the line, and his short life of twenty-eight years was
+more crowded with adventure than that of most heroes
+of romance.</p>
+
+<p>He was the son of Hugh O'Donnell, head of the
+clan, and of a high-spirited daughter of the Lord of the
+Isles, Innen Dhu Mac Donnell, whom Hugh of the Red
+Hair resembled in more ways than one. He was kidnapped
+by the English when only thirteen, and taken
+to Dublin and imprisoned in the castle there, as a
+hostage for his father's good behaviour. A year later,
+he managed to escape; was recaptured, escaped again;
+and, by remarkable cunning and daring, eluded the
+pursuers who were close after him, and got through to
+Donegal.</p>
+
+<p>He arrived there to find a great force of English
+camped about the place; but, half dead with exposure
+as he was, he mustered a force of his clansmen, marched
+on the English and put them to rout&mdash;a good beginning
+for a boy of fourteen. From that time forward,
+he was the firebrand which kept all Ireland alight
+against the invaders; but at last, as has happened so
+frequently in Irish history, a traitor in his own camp
+overthrew him&mdash;his cousin and brother-in-law, Nial
+Garv the Fierce, who, being older than Hugh, thought
+that he should have had the O'Donnellship and been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[440]</a></span>
+crowned at the Rock of Doon, and so grew jealous of
+the red haired lad, and ended by going over to the
+English.</p>
+
+<p>There was red battle between them after that, and
+the English were treated to the pleasant spectacle of
+Irishmen slaying each other; but Hugh was called
+away to Kinsale to join the Spaniards, stopping at
+Holy Cross on the way, as we have seen, for the Abbot's
+blessing, and then going on to a ruinous defeat.
+He went to Spain, after that, to plead for more help,
+and died there, of poison it is said, at the age of twenty-eight,
+and lies buried at Valladolid.</p>
+
+<p>His brother, Rory O'Donnell, was recognised by the
+English and made Earl of Tyrconnell, but at the end
+of a year or two he found himself so surrounded with
+intrigue that, in fear for his life, he gathered up such of
+his belongings as he could and fled the country.
+O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, fled with him, and this "flight
+of the earls" was the end of Irish power in the north
+of Ireland, for their estates were declared forfeit, and
+divided among adherents of the English court. Nial
+Garv, who had contributed so much to the O'Donnells'
+overthrow, put in a claim for their estates, but was
+arrested and sent to the Tower of London and left to
+rot there till he died. Such was the end of Donegal
+as the seat of a Celtic Princedom, for the new prince
+was an Englishman, Sir Basil Brooke.</p>
+
+<p>It is his imprint you will see upon the castle as it
+exists to-day&mdash;particularly in the great sculptured
+chimney-piece which stands in what was once the banqueting
+hall, and which is a marvel of elaborate,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[441]</a></span>
+though not very finished, carving. Brooke was a
+Catholic and a royalist, a supporter of Charles I, and
+after the fall of that unlucky monarch, was imprisoned
+in the Tower and his estate declared forfeited to
+the Parliament. The old castle, now the property of
+the Earl of Arran, fell gradually to ruin, until to-day
+only the shell remains.</p>
+
+<p>Next to the chimney-piece, the most interesting feature
+of the interior is the vaulting of the lower rooms,
+which are lighted only by narrow slits like loopholes.
+This vaulting is made of flat stones, an inch or two in
+thickness, set on edge, and though rough enough, is as
+firm to-day as the day it was put in place.</p>
+
+<p>As we came out of the grounds, we were accosted
+by an old man with a flowing white beard, who suggested
+that we visit his tweed depot, just across the
+street, and see for ourselves what Donegal tweeds really
+were. He was so pleasant about it that we couldn't
+refuse; and to say that we were astonished when we
+stepped inside his shop would be putting it mildly, for
+there, in that village of twelve hundred people, was
+the largest stock of tweeds and other Irish weaves that
+I have ever seen. The place was fairly jammed with
+great rolls of cloth; and when we said we weren't especially
+interested in tweeds, but might be in a steamer-rug,
+he led us up to a wide balcony and produced rug
+after rug; beautiful rugs, soft and thick, pure wool in
+ever fibre. Of course we succumbed!</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Timony, for such was the old man's name, was
+very proud of his shop, as he had a right to be, and of
+his American custom. He told us that President<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[442]</a></span>
+Woodrow Wilson and William Randolph Hearst had
+both been among his visitors, and he evidently considered
+them equally distinguished!</p>
+
+<p>It had begun to shower again by the time we tore
+ourselves away from Mr. Timony, and Betty elected to
+return to the hotel; but I wanted to see the ruins of the
+old abbey, a little way down the river, and walked out
+to it. There is scarcely more left of it than there is
+of Assaroe&mdash;just some fragments of ivy-clad wall
+standing in the midst of a graveyard, as may be seen
+from the picture opposite page 438. The graveyard is
+still used, and when I got there, I found three men trying
+to decide on the site for a grave, while the diggers
+stood by, with their long-handled spades, waiting the
+word to begin. They had a hard time finding a place,
+for the graveyard is crowded, like most Irish ones, and
+they wandered about from place to place for quite a
+while.</p>
+
+<p>That so little is left of the abbey is due to the fact
+that in 1601, Nial Garv took possession of the place,
+and Red Hugh besieged him there, and in some way
+Garv's store of gunpowder exploded and tore the buildings
+to pieces. All of which is told in that priceless
+volume of Irish history which was written here, the
+"Annals of the Four Masters," a book of eleven hundred
+quarto pages, which, by some miracle of luck, has
+been preserved. The "four masters" were four monks
+of the abbey, and it is largely to their labours we owe
+what history we have of the times in which they lived.</p>
+
+<p>There are a few arches of the cloisters still standing,
+and they resemble those at Sligo not only in shape and
+character, but also in the fact that repeated burials<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[443]</a></span>
+have raised the ground about them many feet above
+its ancient level, so that what was once a lofty arched
+doorway can now be passed only by stooping low.
+Hugh Roe O'Donnell and his wife, Fingalla, who
+founded the monastery for the Franciscans in 1474,
+are said to be buried here, but I did not find their
+graves. There is also a legend that castle and abbey
+were at one time connected by a secret passage, but I
+scarcely believe it, for they are a long way apart.</p>
+
+<p>The rain was sheeting down in earnest when I
+finally left the place, but the gravediggers were bending
+to their task, quite oblivious of the downpour.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We bade good-bye to Donegal that afternoon, and
+took train for Londonderry and the "Black North."
+And it was not long before we realised that we had
+turned our backs upon the Ireland of the Irish and entered
+the Ireland of the English and the Scotch&mdash;a very
+different country!</p>
+
+<p>Just outside of Donegal, we witnessed one of those
+leave-takings, which have occurred a million times in
+Ireland during the past fifty years. As the train
+stopped at a little station, we saw that the platform was
+crowded, and then we perceived the cause. A boy and
+two girls, some seventeen or eighteen years old, were
+setting out for Derry to take ship for America, and
+their relatives and friends had come down to see them
+off. There were tears in every eye, and if blessings
+have any virtue, enough were showered on that trio
+that afternoon to see them safely through life.</p>
+
+<p>The guard came along presently, and hustled them
+into the compartment ahead of ours&mdash;he had seen such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[444]</a></span>
+scenes a hundred times, I suppose, and had long since
+ceased to be impressed by them&mdash;and then the three
+children hung out of the door and took a last look at
+their people; and then the engine whistled and the
+train started slowly, and one man, his face working
+convulsively, began to run along beside it, then suddenly
+recollected himself, and stopped with a jerk.</p>
+
+<p>The whole country-side must have known that the
+three were going, for every house for miles had a group
+of men and women out to wave at them as the train
+passed; and the exiles waved and waved back, and
+leaned out and gazed at the country they were leaving,
+as though to impress its every feature on their minds.</p>
+
+<p>And indeed it is a beautiful country, for the road
+follows the valley of the Eask, and presently Lough
+Eask opened before us, lying in a deep basin at the
+foot of lofty hills&mdash;such hills as cover the whole of
+Donegal and make it one of the most picturesque of
+Irish counties. Beyond the lake, the line traverses one
+of the wildest valleys we had seen in Ireland, the Gap
+of Barnesmore&mdash;a bleak, rock-strewn defile, with a
+little stream running at the bottom and the post-road
+following its windings; but the railway line has been
+laid, most perilously it seemed, right along the face of
+the mountain. There were evidences of land-slips here
+and there, and it was plain that great boulders were always
+rolling down, so I should fancy that a sharp watch
+has to be kept on those five miles of road-bed. But we
+got across without accident, and the views out over the
+valley and the Donegal mountains were superb&mdash;I
+only wish we had had time to explore them more thoroughly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[445]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Just beyond the gap, the line passes Lough Mourne,
+a melancholy little lake set in a framework of bleak
+hills, and then runs on across a still bleaker moor; but
+gradually, as the hills are left behind, the character of
+the country changes, the houses become more numerous,
+the fields larger and less stony, one sees an orchard
+here and there&mdash;and then, quite suddenly, the whole
+landscape becomes prosperous and pastoral, and we
+caught our first glimpse of wide fields covered with a
+light and vivid green, which we knew was the green of
+flax. After that, there was no time, until we left
+Ireland, that this new and lovely tint was not among
+the other tints of whatever landscape we might be
+looking at.</p>
+
+<p>We paused for a moment at the prosperous little
+town of Stranorlar, and then went on northwards, past
+one village after another, along the valley of the Finn,
+to Strabane&mdash;like Leenane, pronounced to rhyme with
+"fan." We had an hour or two to wait here, so we
+walked up into the town, and had lunch at a pleasant
+inn, and then took a look about the place; and I think
+it was then we began to realise that the picturesque
+part of Ireland was behind us. Certainly there is nothing
+picturesque about Strabane, although it resembles
+most other Irish towns in having a huge workhouse
+and jail. But it has also some large shirt-factories,
+whence came the whirr of machinery, and where we
+could see the girls and women in long rows bending to
+their tasks; and it has great ware-houses, not falling to
+ruin like those of Galway and Westport and Ballyshannon,
+but filled with merchandise and busy with
+men and drays. We were so unaccustomed to such a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[446]</a></span>
+sight that we stopped and looked at it for quite a while.</p>
+
+<p>It is a fifteen mile run from Strabane to Derry, for
+the most part along the bank of the Foyle, through a
+beautiful and prosperous country, with many villages
+clustered among the trees; and at six o'clock we reached
+the "Maiden City,"&mdash;by far the busiest town we had
+seen since Dublin. In fact, as we turned up past the
+old walls and came to the centre of the town, the bustle
+of business and roar of traffic seemed to me to surpass
+Dublin; and more than once, when we were settled in
+our room, the unaccustomed noise drew us to the window
+to see what was going on. We went out, presently,
+to see that portion of the town which stands
+within the ancient walls; but before I describe that
+excursion, I shall have to tell something of what those
+walls stand for.</p>
+
+<p>Fourteen hundred years ago&mdash;in 546, to be exact&mdash;Columba,
+greatest of Irish saints after Patrick and
+Brigid, passed this way, and stopping in the oak grove
+which clothed the hill on which the town now stands,
+was so impressed with the lovely situation, that he
+founded an abbey there, which was known as Daire-Columbkille&mdash;Columba's
+Oak-grove.</p>
+
+<p>There was another reason, perhaps, besides the beauty
+of the spot, which persuaded the Saint to choose this
+site for his monastery, and that was the nearness of
+the great fort on Elagh mountain, the stronghold of
+the Lord of Tyrone. He doubtless hoped that, in the
+shadow of that mighty cashel, his abbey would be safe
+from spoliation; but in this he was disappointed, for its
+position on a navigable river, so close to the sea, made
+it easy prey to the Danes and the Saxons, and they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[447]</a></span>
+sailed up to it time and again and laid it waste. But
+it grew in importance in spite of repeated burnings,
+and it held off the English longer than most, for,
+though it was plundered by Strongbow's men in 1195,
+and included in the grant to Richard de Burgo, the Red
+Earl of Ulster, in 1311, it was not until 1609, two
+years after that "flight of the earls" which left Tyrone
+and Tyrconnell confiscated to the English, that it was
+really conquered.</p>
+
+<p>In confiscating this vast domain, as in all previous
+and subsequent confiscations in Ireland, the English
+crown proceeded upon the theory that all the land a
+chief ruled over belonged to that chief; but in Ireland
+this was not at all the case, for there the land belonged,
+and always had belonged, not to the chief but to his
+people. This, however, was not allowed to interfere
+in any way with its re-apportionment among court
+favourites and companies of adventurers; and Derry,
+together with a vast tract of land about it, was granted
+to the Corporation of London, which thereupon proceeded
+to re-name it Londonderry, in token of its subserviency.
+Three years later, the Irish Society for the
+New Plantation in Ulster was formed, and to it was
+granted the towns of Coleraine and Londonderry, with
+seven thousand acres of land and the fisheries of the
+Foyle and the Bann. The society was pledged to enclose
+Derry with walls, and these were laid out and
+built in 1617. They were strong and serviceable, as
+may be seen to this day, and so wide that a carriage and
+four could drive along the top of them.</p>
+
+<p>The new colonists were mostly Protestants, and in
+the war which soon followed between King Charles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[448]</a></span>
+and the Parliament naturally chose the Republican
+side, so that Derry quickly became the centre of resistance
+to royalty in Ulster. The town prospered under
+the Commonwealth, but the ups and downs of Irish
+politics after the Restoration kept it in a perpetual turmoil.</p>
+
+<p>I have already told how, after the fall of Charles I,
+Cromwell's army conquered Ireland, drove the Irish
+to the hills west of the Shannon, and divided the fertile
+land among the Puritan soldiers and the adherents of
+the Parliament. When Charles II was restored to the
+throne, part of the price exacted from him for that restoration
+was the so-called Act of Settlement, in which
+this division of the land among its Protestant conquerors
+was confirmed. That the Irish should protest
+against the injustice of this was natural enough; and
+that, once seated on the throne, the king should give
+ear to the protestations was natural too, since the Irish
+had been his father's allies and had lost their lands
+in fighting his battles for him. So, while Irish
+Catholic Ireland brought heavy pressure to bear on the
+king, English Protestant Ireland was on pins and
+needles through fear of what might happen. Finally
+the Cromwellians agreed to surrender a third of the
+estates in their possession, and on this basis peace of a
+sort was patched up.</p>
+
+<p>That was in 1665, and it looked for a while as
+though Protestant and Catholic would thereafter be
+able to live together in amity, for there was a general
+revival of industry which resulted in a prosperity the
+country had seldom known, and a consequent abatement
+of religious discord. But Charles died, and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[449]</a></span>
+brother, James II, at once proceeded to remodel the
+Irish army upon a Catholic basis, even going so far as
+partially to disarm the Protestants, who of course immediately
+concluded that they were all going to be
+massacred in revenge for Drogheda.</p>
+
+<p>But James soon found himself facing a rebellion in
+England, and in 1688 a large force of Irish troops were
+transported to England to help him hold his throne.
+Among these troops was the regiment which had been
+stationed at Derry; and when, alarmed at the attitude
+of the town, the king attempted to throw another
+garrison into it, rebellion flamed up swift and fierce,
+and some apprentice boys seized the keys of the city
+gates and closed and locked them in the face of the
+royal army. Enniskillen followed suit, and everywhere
+throughout the north of Ireland, the Protestants
+began to form town companies and to arm and drill
+for their own defence. Thus was organised the first
+"army of Ulster"! It was soon to be needed&mdash;as I
+hope and believe the latest one will never be!</p>
+
+<p>Certain English leaders, determined to get rid of
+James at any cost, had invited William Prince of
+Orange to bring an army to England to restore liberty
+and rescue Protestantism from the destruction which
+seemed to threaten it. William, it should be remembered,
+stood very near the English throne, for his
+mother was the eldest daughter of Charles I, and his
+wife was his own cousin, the eldest daughter of
+Charles's son, James II. William, who had been expecting
+such an invitation, at once gathered a great
+army together and landed in England in November.
+James, finding himself detested and deserted by all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[450]</a></span>
+parties, fled to France; and William and Mary were
+proclaimed King and Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Ireland, of course, was still in rebellion. There is
+no more pathetic page of Irish history than that which
+tells of Irish loyalty to the Stuarts; for the Stuarts
+cared nothing for Ireland, but only for themselves,
+and used the Irish merely as pawns in their selfish
+struggle for power. The poor Irish stood firm for
+James, and got a great army together; and James came
+over from France with a small French force, and together
+they marched against Derry, which the Protestants
+still held, but which James expected to capture
+with little difficulty. The commander at Derry was
+a man named Robert Lundy, a Protestant and soldier
+of some experience, but he seems to have been a Jacobite
+at heart for, after one skirmish near Strabane, he
+held a council of war, recommended immediate surrender,
+ordered that there should be no firing, and
+sent word to James that the city was ready to submit.
+But he had reckoned without Derry's militant spirit;
+for when news of his decision got abroad, the people
+sprang to arms, and Lundy escaped with his life only
+by fleeing in disguise.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the Rev. George Walker and Major
+Henry Baker and Captain Adam Murray, three militants
+to the backbone, took charge of affairs and put
+Derry in the best state of defence possible; but the outlook
+was not bright. Military opinion was agreed that
+the town could not hold out against such an army as
+James was bringing against it; it seemed likely that
+to defend it would be to invite another Drogheda;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[451]</a></span>
+and while the debate in the town council was still
+raging, James appeared under the walls expecting an
+immediate surrender.</p>
+
+<p>Negotiations were begun; but the sight of the Catholic
+army was the last thing needed to inflame the townsmen.
+A group of them managed to get a cannon
+pointed in the king's direction and touched it off.
+The ball is said to have passed so close to him that the
+wind of it blew off his hat; at any rate, the negotiations
+ended then and there, and with a shout of
+"No surrender!" Derry prepared for the struggle.</p>
+
+<p>That was the eighteenth day of April, 1689, and
+for fifteen weeks the town held out against a strict
+siege, which nothing could break. There were assaults
+and sallies, a bombardment which killed many people&mdash;all
+the accompaniments of a siege, with the final
+accompaniment of famine. It was the old story of
+horseflesh, mice and rats and even salted hides being
+greedily devoured; of a garrison thinning wofully
+from death and disease; but though there seemed to
+be no choice except starvation or surrender, nobody
+thought of surrender. And then, on Sunday, July
+28th, a relief fleet which had been hovering uncertainly
+at the mouth of the harbour for some weeks, ran
+the batteries, broke the boom across the river, swept up
+to the city, and the siege was ended.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the siege of Derry. A thousand incidents,
+impossible to set down here, are treasured in the minds
+of every inhabitant; and, lest the great event should
+ever be forgotten, two anniversaries connected with it
+are celebrated every year, on December 18th the Closing
+of the Gates against the King's Army, and on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[452]</a></span>
+August 12th the Raising of the Siege. There are processions
+and meetings and speeches of a very Protestant
+character, and at the December festival the effigy of
+the perfidious Lundy is hanged and burnt&mdash;not without
+some little rioting, for rather more than half the population
+of Derry is Catholic and Nationalist. One of
+the popular airs upon these occasions is, of course,
+"Boyne Water," and another is about Derry herself.
+It is called</p>
+
+
+<p>THE MAIDEN CITY</p>
+
+<div class='poem2'>
+Where Foyle his swelling waters rolls northward to the main,<br />
+Here, Queen of Erin's daughters, fair Derry fixed her reign;<br />
+A holy temple crowned her, and commerce graced her street,<br />
+A rampart wall was round her, the river at her feet;<br />
+And here she sat alone, boys, and, looking from the hill,<br />
+Vowed the Maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.<br />
+<br />
+From Antrim crossing over, in famous eighty-eight,<br />
+A plumed and belted lover came to the Ferry Gate:<br />
+She summoned to defend her our sires&mdash;a beardless race&mdash;<br />
+They shouted "No Surrender!" and slammed it in his face.<br />
+Then, in a quiet tone, boys, they told him 'twas their will<br />
+That the Maiden on her throne, boys, should be a Maiden still.<br />
+<br />
+Next, crushing all before him, a kingly wooer came<br />
+(The royal banner o'er him blushed crimson deep for shame);<br />
+He showed the Pope's commission, nor dreamed to be refused;<br />
+She pitied his condition, but begged to stand excused.<br />
+In short, the fact is known, boys, she chased him from the hill,<br />
+For the Maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.<br />
+<br />
+On our peaceful sires descending, 'twas then the tempest broke,<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[453]</a></span>Their peaceful dwellings rending, 'mid blood and flame and smoke.<br />
+That hallowed graveyard yonder swells with the slaughtered dead&mdash;<br />
+O brothers! pause and ponder&mdash;it was for us they bled;<br />
+And while their gift we own, boys&mdash;the fane that tops our hill&mdash;<br />
+Oh! the Maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still!<br />
+<br />
+Nor wily tongue shall move us, nor tyrant arm affright,<br />
+We'll look to One above us who ne'er forsook the right;<br />
+Who will, may crouch and tender the birthright of the free,<br />
+But, brothers, "No Surrender!" no compromise for me!<br />
+We want no barrier stone, boys, no gates to guard the hill,<br />
+Yet the Maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still!<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>There is a good marching song, if there ever was
+one&mdash;a song to make the heart leap and the spirit sing,
+when a thousand voices roar it in unison; and it very
+fairly represents the spirit of Derry and of the whole of
+Protestant Ulster&mdash;a spirit which is admirable, though
+often mistaken, and sometimes made use of for base and
+selfish ends. The song was written by a woman, a
+native of Derry, of course, Charlotte Tonna, some
+sixty years ago; and it is a song of which Ireland,
+north and south, should be proud.</p>
+
+<p>Let me tell here, as briefly as may be, the rest of the
+story of that ill-fated rebellion, of which Derry wrote
+one terrific chapter, for unless we know it, it will be
+impossible for us to understand Ulster.</p>
+
+<p>The relief of the Maiden City was followed by the
+complete defeat of the royal army before Enniskillen,
+and no further attempt was made to subjugate the
+north of Ireland. James took up headquarters at Dublin,
+and every nerve was strained to recruit an army
+capable of withstanding the one which William was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[454]</a></span>
+certain to bring into Ireland. The king of France
+sent seven thousand veterans, with a park of artillery
+and large stores of arms and ammunition, every device
+of religious and racial hatred was employed to persuade
+Irishmen to enlist; so that when, on June 30,
+1690, the Protestant and Catholic armies stood facing
+each other on either side Boyne River, a few miles
+above Drogheda, the Protestants had no very great
+numerical advantage. In discipline and general efficiency,
+however, their advantage was immense, and the
+odds against James were so great that it was folly for
+him to risk a battle; but he could not make up his mind
+what to do, and in consequence, when William threw
+his troops across the river, he caught the Irish unprepared,
+and defeated them after a brisk engagement.</p>
+
+<p>James was the first to gallop from the field. He
+reached Dublin that night, snatched a few hours' rest,
+and then pressed on to Waterford, where he took ship
+for France. Deprived of their cowardly leader, and
+perhaps with some comprehension of how they had been
+betrayed, the Irish would have been glad to lay down
+their arms on terms of a general amnesty, which William,
+for his part, was willing to grant. But the
+English settlers intervened. They had been compelled
+to restore to the Irish a third of the estates which the
+Commonwealth had confiscated; there were thousands
+of other fertile acres which the settlers coveted; and,
+as a result of their influence, the amnesty, when finally
+published, was confined to the tenant and the landless
+man. In consequence, the Irish army was held
+together by Tyrconnell and Sarsfield, and the rebellion
+did not end until Athlone, Cork, Kinsale, Limerick,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[455]</a></span>
+and finally Galway had been captured by the English.
+The Irish troops were permitted to go to France and
+enlist in the king's army, as has been told already;
+and so ended the hope of placing a Catholic monarch
+on the English throne. So ended, too, for more than
+two centuries, Catholic liberty in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>It is this Protestant triumph which is so dear to
+Ulster, and which the walls of Derry have been preserved
+to commemorate. Their preservation is a great
+inconvenience to the inhabitants of that town, but
+any one who proposed to remove them would be treated
+as a traitor. They circle the steep hill upon which the
+oldest part of the town is built, and when one wishes
+to enter it, one must go around to one of the gates.
+There are seven gates, now, instead of the original
+four; but it takes quite a walk, sometimes, to get to
+one, for the walls are something over a mile around.
+But no patriotic resident would think of objecting to
+this&mdash;indeed, the walk gives him time to meditate upon
+his city's glory and to thank the Lord that he was born
+there. I suspect that the Catholics of Derry are just
+as proud of the walls as the Protestants are.</p>
+
+<p>It so happened that there was a gate not far from
+our hotel, so we passed through it, and found ourselves
+confronted by one of the steepest streets I have ever
+seen. The hill on which the old citadel was built
+slopes very abruptly on this side toward the river,
+and no attempt has been made to cut it down. We
+managed to climb it, and came out upon the so-called
+Diamond&mdash;the square at the centre of the town where
+the old town hall once stood, but which has now, to
+quote Murray, "been converted into a pleasant garden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[456]</a></span>
+by the London Companies." For it should be remembered
+that the grant made to the London Companies
+three hundred years ago is still in force.</p>
+
+<p>The Diamond is the heart of the town, and from it
+four arteries radiate, running to the four original gates;
+other smaller streets zig-zag away in various directions,
+and everywhere is the vigorous flow of life and trade.
+The shops are bright and attractive, and that evening
+crowds of girls, freed from the day's labour in the
+factories, were loitering past them, arm in arm, staring
+in at the windows and chattering among themselves.
+They were distinctly livelier than the factory girls of
+Athlone, and I judge that life is easier for them and
+that they are better paid.</p>
+
+<p>We walked about for a long time, and then, for
+want of something better to do, went to a moving-picture
+show. I have forgotten all the pictures but
+two&mdash;a meeting of the Knights of the Garter at Windsor
+and a review of a body of English cavalry. In the
+former, King George and Queen Mary twice passed
+slowly before the audience; in the latter, the king, on
+a spirited horse, cantered down the field and then took
+his station in the foreground while his troops galloped
+past. It was a stirring scene; but the audience watched
+it in stony, almost breathless silence, without the
+shadow of applause&mdash;and this in "loyal Derry"! I
+am inclined to think that, with reference to England,
+the north of Ireland and the south of Ireland are
+"sisters under their skins."</p>
+
+<p>We had been wondering, during the final reel, how
+we were going to find our way back to the hotel through
+the dark and unfamiliar streets, for it was nearly ten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[457]</a></span>
+o'clock; and we came out into them with a start of
+astonishment, for it was still quite light, with the
+street lights not yet on. So we loitered about for half
+an hour longer; and then, from the balcony in front
+of our window, sat watching for an hour more the
+fascinating life flowing past below us.</p>
+
+<p>One feature of it was a boy quartette,&mdash;one of the
+boys with a clear, high soprano voice,&mdash;which sang
+very sweetly, "It's a long way to Tipperary"; and then,
+just as we began to think everybody had gone to bed,
+there came a blast of martial music down the street,
+and the tramp of feet, and a company of men swung
+past, going heaven knows where; but the fife-and-drum
+corps which marched at their head was making the
+windows rattle with</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"The Maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still!"<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>It was the first of many such processions we were
+to see during our remaining weeks in Ireland.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[458]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Derry</span> has a charm&mdash;the charm of the hive&mdash;for it is
+a busy town, and a cheerful one. It is only on mooted
+anniversaries, I fancy, or when some fire-brand politician
+comes to town, that the Protestants and Catholics
+amuse themselves by breaking each other's heads. At
+other times they must work amicably side by side. At
+least, I saw nobody idle; and Catholics and Protestants
+alike were plainly infected by the same spirit of hustle.</div>
+
+<p>The cause of the difference between the north and
+south of Ireland has been hotly debated for a hundred
+years. Why is the north energetic and prosperous, while
+the south is lazy and poverty-stricken? Some say it is
+the difference in climate, others the difference in religion.
+I could perceive no great difference in the climate,
+and as for religion&mdash;strange as it may seem to
+those who think of Ulster only in the light of Orange
+manifestoes&mdash;there are almost as many Catholics as
+Protestants in the north of Ireland. My own opinion is
+that the Celt is easy-going in the south and industrious
+in the north because of the environment. "Canny" is
+undoubtedly the best of all adjectives to apply to the
+Scotch&mdash;they are congenitally thrifty and industrious.
+The Celt, on the other hand, is congenitally easy-going
+and unambitious. Left to himself, among his own
+people, weighted with centuries of repression, he falls
+into a lethargy from which it is impossible to awaken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[459]</a></span>
+him&mdash;from which, I sometimes think, he will never be
+awakened. But put him in another environment, and
+he soon catches its spirit. At least, his children catch
+it, and their children are confirmed in it&mdash;and there
+you are. Put them back in the old environment, and
+in another generation or two they will have slipped
+back into the old habits of carelessness and improvidence.
+This, it seems to me, is the Irishman's history
+not only in the north of Ireland, but here in America.
+He is adaptable, impressionable, and plastic.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It would be absurd for any one to go to Derry without
+making a circuit of the walls, and this we proceeded
+to do next morning. We mounted them at the New
+Gate, where they are at least twenty-five feet high.
+There is a promenade on top about fifteen feet wide, and
+along the outer edge the old cannon given by the London
+companies still frown down through the embrasures
+of the battlement. Outside the wall there was originally
+a moat, but this has disappeared, and so have many
+of the old bastions. A few of them still remain&mdash;the
+double bastion where the fruitful gallows stood, and
+from which the noisy old gun, affectionately christened
+"Roaring Meg," still points out over the town. And
+back of the cathedral, the old wall stands as it stood
+during the siege, with its high protecting parapet,
+crowned with little loop-holed turrets.</p>
+
+<p>The cathedral itself is a quaint, squat structure, with
+pinnacled tower, standing in the midst of a crowded
+graveyard, the most prominent object in which is an
+obelisk erected over the bodies of those who fell in
+the siege. The inscription, as is fitting, is long and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[460]</a></span>
+eloquent. The church itself is comparatively modern
+and uninteresting, but it is filled with trophies of the
+siege&mdash;a bomb-shell containing a summons to surrender
+which fell in the cathedral yard, the flags taken
+from the French during a sally, memorials of the Rev.
+Mr. Walker, and so on. It is still called after St.
+Columba, although the abbey built by the Saint stood
+outside the present walls.</p>
+
+<p>A little distance past the cathedral is another bastion
+which has been turned into a foundation for the great
+monument to Walker&mdash;a fluted column ninety feet
+high, surmounted by a statue of the hero, his Bible in
+one hand. Time was when he held a sword in the
+other, but legend has it that the sword fell with a
+crash on the day that O'Connell won Catholic emancipation
+for Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>A fierce controversy has raged about the part Walker
+really played in the siege; and it is probable that he
+at least shared the honours with Murray and Baker.
+However that may be, he must have been an inspiring
+figure, as he walked about the walls, with his white
+hair and impassioned face and commanding vigour&mdash;a
+vigour which his seventy-two years seem nowise to have
+impaired; and his end was inspiring, too, for he did not
+rest quietly at home, content with his laurels, as most
+men would have done. Instead, he joined William's
+army, was in the forefront at the Battle of the Boyne,
+and managed to get killed there while exhorting the
+troops to do their duty.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The town of Derry has long since outgrown the old
+walls, but there is little else worth seeing there, unless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[461]</a></span>
+one is interested in a busy port, or in humming factories,
+or rumbling mills, or clattering foundries. Of
+these there is full store. But a few miles to the west,
+on the summit of a hill looking down upon Lough
+Swilly, is the cashel which was once the stronghold of
+the Kings of Ulster, and for it I set out that afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Murray, with that vagueness delightful in the Irish
+but exasperating in a guide-book, remarks that "it can
+be reached from Bridge End Station on the Buncrana
+line," so I proceeded to the station of the Buncrana
+line on the outskirts of the town, and bought a ticket
+to Bridge End Station. The ticket seller had apparently
+never heard of the Grainan of Aileach, as the
+cashel is called, and seemed rather to doubt if such a
+thing existed at all; but I determined to trust to luck,
+and took my seat in the little train which presently
+backed in along the platform.</p>
+
+<p>The Buncrana line is, I judge, a small affair; at any
+rate, the train was very primitive, and the two men
+who shared the compartment with me complained bitterly
+of the poor service the railroads give the people
+of Ireland. They said it was a shame and a disgrace,
+and that no free people would put up with the insults
+and ignominy which the railroads heap upon the Irish,
+and much more to the same effect. I had heard this
+complaint before and have read it in more than one
+book; but I never had any real cause of complaint
+myself. Beyond a tendency to let the passengers look
+out for themselves, the guards are as courteous as
+guards anywhere; and only once, on the occasion of
+the race-meeting at Charleville, did we suffer from
+crowding. This was not because we travelled first,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[462]</a></span>
+because we didn't&mdash;we travelled second; and when I
+was alone, I always travelled third, as I would advise
+any one to do who wishes really to meet the people.</p>
+
+<p>Bridge End Station is only a few minutes' run from
+Derry, and when I got off there, I asked the man who
+took my ticket if he could direct me to the cashel.</p>
+
+<p>"I can," he said; "but it is a long way from here,
+and a stiff climb. Do you see that hill yonder?" and
+he pointed to a lofty peak some miles away. "It is
+there you will find the fort, right on the very top."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever been there?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not, though I'm thinking I will go some day,
+for them that have seen it tell me it is a wonderful
+sight. But 'tis a long walk."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm going to try for it," I said, and hitched
+my camera under my arm. "How do I start?"</p>
+
+<p>"By that road yonder; and turn to your right at the
+village. Good luck to you, sir."</p>
+
+<p>I could see he didn't really believe I would get to
+the cashel; but I set off happily along the road, between
+high hedges; and presently I passed a village, and
+turned to the right, as he had told me; and then two
+barefooted children caught up with me, on their way
+home from school. They knew the way to the cashel
+very well, though they had never been there either;
+and presently they left me and struck off across the
+fields; and then I came to a place where the road
+forked, and stopped to ask a man who was wheeling
+manure from a big stable which way to go. He too
+was astonished that any one should start off so carelessly
+on such an expedition; but he directed me up a
+narrow by-way, which soon began to climb steeply;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[463]</a></span>
+and then the valley beneath me opened more and more,
+and finally I saw to my right the summit I was aiming
+for, and struck boldly toward it along a boggy path.</p>
+
+<p>The path led me to the rear of a thatched cottage,
+where two men were stacking hay. They assured me
+that I was on the right road, and I pushed on again for
+the summit, past another little house, from which a
+man suddenly emerged and hailed me.</p>
+
+<p>"Where be you going?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"To the fort," I said. "It's up this way, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It might be."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I trespassing?" I asked, for there seemed to be
+an unfriendly air about him.</p>
+
+<p>"You are so," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," I stammered; "if there's another
+way&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no other way."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, I'll have to go this way," I said. "I'll
+not do any harm."</p>
+
+<p>"That's as may be. You must pay three-pence if
+you wish to pass."</p>
+
+<p>I paid the three-pence rather than waste time in
+argument, which, of course, wouldn't have done any
+good; and his countenance became distinctly more
+pleasant when the pennies were in his hand, and he
+directed me how to go; and I started up again, over
+springy heather now, along a high wall of stones gathered
+from the field; and then the ground grew wet and
+boggy, just as it is on the mountains of Connemara,
+and I had to make a detour&mdash;the man who directed me,
+probably thought nothing of a little bog! A ploughman
+in a neighbouring field stopped work to watch me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[464]</a></span>
+with interest until I passed from sight, and two red
+calves also came close to investigate the stranger; and
+then I crested the last ridge and saw towering before
+me the stronghold where Owen, son of Nial the Great,
+established himself to rule over his province, Tyrone.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment I was fairly startled at the huge apparition,
+grey and solitary and impressive, for I had expected
+no such monster edifice&mdash;a cyclopean circle of
+stone, looking like the handiwork of some race of giants,
+three hundred feet around and eighteen feet high, with
+a wall fourteen feet in thickness!</p>
+
+<p>The outer face of the wall is inclined slightly inwards,
+and is very smooth and regular. It is made
+of flat, hammer-dressed stones of various sizes, carefully
+fitted together, but uncemented, as with all these
+old forts. The stones are for the most part quite
+small, very different from the great blocks used in the
+other cashels I had seen. There is a single entrance,
+a doorway some five feet high by two wide, slightly
+inclined inward toward the top, and looking very tiny
+indeed in that great stretch of wall; and then my heart
+stood still with dismay, for there was an iron gate
+across the entrance, and I thought for a moment that
+it was locked. With a sigh of relief I found that the
+padlock which held it was not snapped shut, and I
+opened it and entered.</p>
+
+<p>It was as though I had stepped into some old Roman
+amphitheatre, for the terraces which run around it
+from top to bottom have the appearance of tiers of
+seats. They mount one above the other to the narrow
+platform at the top, which is guarded by a low parapet.
+Two flights of steps run up the slope, but an active<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[465]</a></span>
+man would have no need of them. On either side of
+the entrance door a gallery runs away in the thickness
+of the wall, opening some distance away on the interior,
+and designed, I suppose, to enable an extra force
+to defend the entrance.</p>
+
+<p>Of the castle which once stood within that stone
+circle not a trace remains, and the circle itself, as it
+stands to-day, is largely a restoration, for Murtagh
+O'Brien captured it in 1101 and did his best to destroy
+it, and the storms of the centuries that followed beat
+it down stone by stone. But these fragments have all
+been gathered up and put back into place, so that the
+great fort stands to-day much as it did in the days of its
+glory, except that the outworks of earth and stone
+which formed the first lines of defence, have disappeared.
+The cashel was to this great fortification what
+the donjon tower was to the later Norman castle&mdash;the
+ultimate place of refuge for the garrison.</p>
+
+<p>"Grainan" means a royal seat, and "Aileach," so
+say the Four Masters of Donegal, was a Scotch princess,
+"modest and blooming," who lost her heart to
+Owen of the Hy-Nial, and followed him back to Erin.
+After the division of the north of Ireland with his
+brother Connell, he set up his palace here&mdash;Connell's
+you will remember was at Donegal&mdash;and so this became
+the royal seat of the rulers of Tyrone. Hither came
+St. Patrick to baptise Owen and his family; hither
+came St. Columba before his exile to Iona; hither captive
+Danes were dragged in triumph. But at last
+Murtagh O'Brien, King of Munster, led a great raid to
+the north, and defeated the army of Tyrone and captured
+the mighty fortress, and made each of his soldiers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[466]</a></span>
+carry away a stone of it in token of his triumph.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 323px;">
+<a href="images/gs036-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs036.jpg" width="323" height="500" alt="THE WALLS OF DERRY" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE WALLS OF DERRY<br /><br />THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>That ended its earthly glory, but it remains glorious
+in legend; for it is beneath its old grey walls that
+the Knights of the Gael stand deathless and untiring,
+each beside his steed with his hand upon the saddlebow,
+waiting the trumpet-call that shall break the
+charm that binds them, and release them to win back
+their heritage in Erin. In the caves within the hill
+the knights stand waiting&mdash;great vaulted chambers
+whose entrance no man knows. Nor does any man
+know when their release will come, whether to-morrow
+or not till centuries hence, for 'tis Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan
+herself who must choose the day and hour.</p>
+
+<div class='poem2'>
+Sore disgrace it is to see the Arbitress of thrones<br />
+Vassal to a Saxoneen of cold and sapless bones!<br />
+Bitter anguish wrings our souls; with heavy sighs and groans<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We wait the Young Deliverer of Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Glorious is the view from the top of those old walls.
+To the right is Lough Foyle, to the left Lough Swilly,
+with the hills of Donegal, draped in silver mist, beyond&mdash;wild,
+grey crags, rising one behind the other; and
+away to the north, beyond the wide valley, are the hills
+of Inishowen&mdash;Owen's Island, if you know your Irish.
+I have never gazed upon a more superb picture of alternating
+lake and hill and meadow, of flashing mountain-top
+and dark green valley.</p>
+
+<p>But if I was to get back to Derry that night, I had
+need to hasten; so I clambered down, after one long
+last look. I had still my picture to take, and made two
+exposures, but they give only a faint idea of the majesty
+of this great fort, standing here on this wild,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[467]</a></span>
+deserted hilltop; and then I started downwards, with
+long steps, past the cottages, with the beautiful valley
+before me, back to the highway, down and down among
+the trees, past the village and so to the station. The
+guard was waiting there.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, as I sat down mopping my face,
+for I had covered three miles in half an hour, "did you
+see the fort?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did so," I answered, for I had long since fallen
+naturally into the Irish idiom; and I told him what
+it was like; but I think he was unconvinced.</p>
+
+<p>"Was there a man stopped you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"There was&mdash;a man at the end of the lane right under
+the fort, who made me pay three-pence before he
+would let me pass."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that would be O'Donnell," said the guard,
+convinced at last. "He has been given the key to
+keep. Did he give you the key?"</p>
+
+<p>"He did not. But the iron gate was unlocked."</p>
+
+<p>"That was by accident, I'm thinking," said the
+guard. "He is not caring whether one can enter or
+not, so long as he has his three-pence."</p>
+
+<p>So I would advise all wayfarers to the Grainan of
+Aileach to make sure that the gate of it is unlocked, or
+to demand the key, before surrendering their three-pence
+to O'Donnell.</p>
+
+<p>When I got into the train again, I found as a fellow-passenger
+one of the men who had come out from
+Derry with me, and after I had described the cashel to
+him&mdash;for he had never seen it&mdash;we got to talking about
+Home Rule. In spite of its militant Protestantism,
+Derry has a very large Catholic population, and my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[468]</a></span>
+companion said that opinion in the town was about
+equally divided for and against Home Rule.</p>
+
+<p>"The result is," he went on, "that whenever we have
+a meeting, no matter which side it's on, there's sure to
+be a shindy, and the police has their hands full. Most
+of the fellys who do the fighting don't care a rap about
+Home Rule, but they just take pleasure in layin' a
+stick against somebody's head. It's all done in a
+friendly spirit, and next day they will be workin' side
+by side the same as ever. The only ones who are
+really fighting Home Rule are the big landlords and
+manufacturers, who imagine they'll get the worst of
+it in the matter of taxation at the hands of a Catholic
+parliament, and they do everything they can to keep
+their people stirred up. That has always been their
+policy; and the big Catholic employers in the south&mdash;what
+few of them there are&mdash;aren't a whit better.
+They're all afraid that if the Catholic workingmen and
+the Protestant workingmen once get together they'll
+fix up some kind of a union, and demand better wages.
+As long as they can be kept fighting each other, there's
+no danger of that; and the poor idiots haven't sense
+enough to see how they're being made fools of. But
+they'll see it some day, and then look out!"</p>
+
+<p>"How about this army of Ulster the papers are so
+full of?"</p>
+
+<p>My companion laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't any army around here, unless you can
+call a few hundred devil-may-care boys an army. I
+did hear something about some drill going on, but as
+far as fighting goes that's all nonsense. The boys are
+ready enough to crack a head with a stick, but they're<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[469]</a></span>
+the first to run when the police arrive, and they'll
+think a long time before they try to stand up against
+the British army. I'll not say that they're not more
+in earnest over Belfast way; but even there, a few politicians
+have stirred up most of the talk&mdash;Sir Edward
+Carson and the likes of him. It's all a political game,
+that's how I look at it."</p>
+
+<p>I walked around Derry for a time that afternoon,
+and so far as public buildings go, Catholicism and
+Protestantism seem about equally represented&mdash;and
+with the strangest contrasts. Across the road from St.
+Columb's College are the Nazareth Homes; around
+the corner from St. Augustine's Church is the Apprentice
+Boys' Hall; a few steps farther on is a Presbyterian
+church, and the Freemasons' Hall, and then St.
+Columb's Temperance Hall, and then a convent; and
+if you walk back again to the Diamond and make some
+inquiries, you will find that one of the radiating streets
+is the home of militant Catholics, and the next the
+home of militant Orangemen, and you will be accommodated
+with a fight at any time if you go into the
+latter and shout "To hell with King Billy," or into
+the former and shout "To hell with the Pope!" And
+if you buy one of the two papers which the town supports,
+you will read denunciations of Home Rule and
+contemptuous references to "croppies," while, if you
+buy the other, you will read denunciations just as fierce
+of Orange plots against Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>I have wondered since how much of this agitation is
+subsidised and how much is real. I have heard both
+Catholics and Protestants complain that it is kept alive
+in great part by professional agitators, working in very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[470]</a></span>
+diverse interests but to a common selfish end&mdash;and that
+end, as my friend of the morning pointed out, the continuance
+and, if possible, the deepening of the rift between
+the two religions. On the other hand, there can
+be no doubt that Protestants and Catholics alike take
+a fierce joy in an occasional fight, as lending a real interest
+to life. But I am convinced that religion has
+really little to do with this&mdash;that it is just the peg upon
+which the quarrels are hung. If it wasn't that, it
+would probably be something else, for Irishmen have
+been fighting each other ever since history began. The
+fights at Donnybrook were as fierce as any, though
+there wasn't a Protestant in the crowd!</p>
+
+<p>The Orange Societies, of course, with their parades
+and taunting songs and flaunting banners and praise
+of Cromwell and "King Billy," do not make for peace.
+Usually, on such occasions, blows are exchanged; and
+so the name of Orangeman has come to be associated
+with riots. But, as another writer has pointed out,
+in considering these things, "you should not forget the
+common pugnacity. Only an Irishman can appreciate
+the fierce joy of shouting 'To hell with the Pope!'
+Many a man who had no claim to belong to the Orange
+Society has known the delight of breaking Catholic
+heads or of going down in a lost battle, outnumbered
+but damaging his foes to the last. And many who are
+slow to attend Mass, are quick to seize their cudgels
+when they hear the Orange bands play the tune of
+Boyne Water. Like the Crusaders, the Protestant and
+Catholic champions alike feel that by their battles they
+make amends for the errors and shortcomings of peace."</p>
+
+<p>So it is a mistake to take these rows too seriously.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[471]</a></span>
+To an Irishman they are never serious; they are rather
+the innocent and natural diversions of a holiday, small
+events which add to the savour of existence; and, indeed,
+they are far less numerous and far less deadly
+than they once were. In time, if the people are let
+alone and old sores are allowed quietly to heal, they
+will probably cease altogether.</p>
+
+<p>It is a mistake, too, I think to take the Orangemen
+too seriously. They have such a habit of hyperbole
+that most Irishmen smile at their hysterics and threats
+of civil war as at sheer fudge. In fact, the Ulster
+controversy is so full of comic opera elements that it
+is difficult to keep from smiling at it. For instance,
+Sir Edward Carson's elder son is a member of the
+United Irish League because he believes in a united
+Ireland, while John Redmond's nephew and adopted
+son is enrolled among the Ulster Volunteers because
+he is opposed to coercion! Gilbert and Sullivan never
+invented anything more fantastic.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[472]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">There</span> is no busier place in Derry than the stretch
+of quays along the river, and one may see ships there
+not only from England and Belgium and France, but
+from Australia and Argentina and India and Brazil.
+The river is wide and deep, with the channel carefully
+marked by a line of buoys extending clear out into
+Lough Foyle; but there are no better facilities here for
+shipping than at any one of half a dozen ports along
+the western coast, all of which are silent and deserted.
+For a port is of no use unless there is something to ship
+out of it in exchange for the things which are shipped
+in, or money to pay for them&mdash;and there is neither in
+the west of Ireland.</div>
+
+<p>And, just as there is no more dismal sight than a
+line of deserted quays, so there is no more interesting
+sight than a line of busy ones, and we loitered for a
+long time, next morning, along those of Derry, on our
+way to the Midland station, on the other side of the
+river. There is a big iron bridge across the river just
+above the quays, but that seemed a long way around,
+so when we came to a sign-board announcing a ferry
+we stopped. My first thought was that the ferry-boat
+was on the other side; then I perceived a small
+motor-propelled skiff moored beside the quay, and one
+of the two men in it asked me if we were looking for
+the ferry, and I said yes, and he said that that was it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[473]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So we clambered down into the boat and started off;
+and I scarcely think that that trip paid, for we were
+the only passengers, and the river is wide, and gasolene
+is expensive, and somebody had to pay the men
+their wages&mdash;and the fare is only a penny.</p>
+
+<p>The part of the town which lies east of the river is
+industrial and unattractive. There are some big distilleries
+there, and a lot of mills and a fish-market, and
+row upon row of dingy dwellings; but the biggest building
+of all is the workhouse&mdash;one point, at least, in
+which the towns of the north resemble those of the
+south. There is another point, too&mdash;the jail, without
+which no Irish town is complete. Derry has one of
+which it is very proud&mdash;the latest word in jails, in
+fact&mdash;a great, circular affair, with the cells arranged
+in so-called "panoptic" galleries, that is in such a fashion
+that the guards stationed in the centre of the jailyard
+can see into all of them.</p>
+
+<p>But we had crossed the river not to see the town
+which lay beyond it, but to take train for Portrush, and
+we were soon rolling northward close beside the bank
+of the river, with a splendid view of "The Maiden on
+her hill, boys," on the opposite shore, dominated by the
+cathedral tower and Walker's white monument. Just
+before the river begins to widen into the lough, the
+train passes the ruins of an old castle of the O'Dohertys,
+standing on a point which juts out into the
+water&mdash;a castle which saw rather more than its share
+of siege and sally; for this is Culmore, which was always
+the first point of attack when any expedition
+advanced against Derry.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond it the water widens, and on the farther shore,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[474]</a></span>
+which is Inishowen, there are pretty villas, standing
+in luxuriant woods&mdash;the homes of some of Derry's
+wealthy citizens. Then the train turned inland across
+a stretch of country so flat and carefully cultivated that
+it might have been Holland; and then the hills began
+to crowd closer and closer to the shore, until the train
+was running along its very edge, under precipitous
+crags, past grotesque pinnacles of white chalk or black
+basalt, and fantastic caverns worn in the cliffs by the
+century-long action of the waves. For that stretch of
+blue water stretching away to the north, so calm and
+beautiful, was the Atlantic, and it thunders in upon
+this coast, sometimes, with a fury even the rocks cannot
+withstand.</p>
+
+<p>We turned away from it, at last, up the wide estuary
+of the River Bann, and so we came to Coleraine, chiefly
+connected in my mind with that beautiful Kitty, who,
+while tripping home from the fair one morning with a
+pitcher of buttermilk, looked at Barney MacCleary
+instead of at the path, and stumbled and let the pitcher
+drop; but, instead of crying over the spilt milk, accepted
+philosophically the kiss which Barney gave her;
+with the result that</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"very soon after poor Kitty's disaster</span><br />
+The divil a pitcher was whole in Coleraine."<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Among the innumerable other laws for which Lloyd-George
+is responsible, there is one requiring all the
+shop-keepers of the United Kingdoms to close their
+places of business one afternoon every week in order
+to give their employ&eacute;s a short vacation; and in every
+town the shop-keepers get together and decide which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[475]</a></span>
+afternoon it shall be; and if you arrive in the town on
+that afternoon, you will find every shop closed tight,
+often to your great inconvenience. It was Thursday
+afternoon when we reached Coleraine, and Thursday is
+closing day there; and we found that not only were
+the shops closed, but the train schedule was so altered
+that we had a long wait ahead of us.</p>
+
+<p>But we were richly compensated for the delay, for,
+as we started out to explore the town, we saw written
+in chalk on a wall just outside the station,</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+To hell with the pope!<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and under it in another hand,</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+To hell with King Billy!<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and then a third hand had added,</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+God save King Will! No more pope!<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I had heard, of course, that the accepted retort for
+Catholics to make, when the Pope was insulted, was to
+consign William of Orange to the infernal regions;
+but such a retort seemed so weak and ineffective that
+I could hardly believe in its reality. Yet here it was,
+and some Orangeman had paused long enough to add
+what is probably the usual third article of the controversy.
+What the fourth article is I can't guess; perhaps
+it is at this point that the cudgels rise and the
+rocks begin to fly. And it seems to me characteristic
+of Ireland that the Catholic in this case, instead of erasing
+the offending sentence, should have let it stand and
+answered it in kind.</p>
+
+<p>Cheered and heartened by this encounter, we walked
+on to look at Coleraine, but found it an uninteresting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[476]</a></span>
+manufacturing town, with nothing in it of historical
+importance, for it is one of the plantations made by
+the London Companies, some time after 1613. It was
+closed as tightly, that afternoon, as on a Sunday, and
+we soon wearied of looking at ugly houses and silent
+factories, and made our way back to the station, meditating
+upon that black day for the Irish when this
+whole county, having been duly confiscated, was made
+over by royal edict to the hundred London adventurers,
+whose heirs or assigns still own it. Yet the conquest
+had one advantage: the O'Dohertys and the O'Cahans
+knew only the arts of war; the newcomers brought with
+them the arts of peace. One of them was distilling,
+and the Irish had never drunk such whiskey as the
+"Coleraine" which was produced here in the succeeding
+years. There is no more popular story in this region
+than that of the priest who was preaching a temperance
+sermon, and, after pointing out the evils of
+over-indulgence, continued with great earnestness,
+"And, me boys, 'tis the bad stuff you be takin' that
+does the worst of the mischief. I niver touch a drop
+meself&mdash;but the best Coleraine!"</p>
+
+<p>We got away from Coleraine, at last, and ran northward
+toward the sea again, across uneven sand-drifts,
+past Port Stewart, where Charles Lever was once a dispensary
+doctor and occupied his leisure hours, which
+were many, in setting down the adventures of Harry
+Lorrequer; and then the road ran on close beside the
+sea to Portrush, with its pleasant beach and rock-bound
+bathing-pool, which was full of people on this holiday.
+But Portrush is a place of summer hotels, so we did
+not linger there, but transferred quickly to the electric<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[477]</a></span>
+line which runs on to the Giant's Causeway, fourteen
+miles away.</p>
+
+<p>This line was established in 1883, and so is the oldest
+electric road in the world; and I judge that it is
+still using the cars it started out with. At least, the
+two which composed the train that day were exceedingly
+primitive; one was open and the other was closed,
+and you took your choice. We chose the open one, of
+course, on the side overlooking the sea; and presently
+we started through the town, a man ringing a bell with
+one hand and waving a flag with the other, preceding
+us to make certain the track was clear. The bell, I
+suppose, is for blind people and the flag for deaf
+people, and the fact that the man is armed with both
+proves how thorough the Irish can be when they really
+put their minds to it.</p>
+
+<p>Although the line has been in operation for thirty
+years, it is still evidently regarded with fear and wonder
+by the people who live along it. Time was when
+the power was conveyed by means of the "third rail," so
+common in the United States. With us, however, the
+rail is only used along a guarded right-of-way. Here it
+was exposed close up by the fence at the roadside, and
+though it was well out of the way, it was nevertheless
+stumbled over by many men and beasts, with the usual
+result. There were many protests, and in the course
+of fifteen or twenty years, the Board of Trade was
+moved to investigate.</p>
+
+<p>The evidence at the hearing was most conflicting.
+The people of the neighbourhood asserted that their
+lives were in constant danger. The company, on the
+other hand, claimed that no sober man would ever step<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[478]</a></span>
+on the rail, since to get to it he had to cross the tracks.
+The people of the neighbourhood protested indignantly
+against this reflection upon their habits, and asked triumphantly
+if the horses and cows and other poor beasts
+that were killed were also drunk. The company retorted
+that, so far as the horses and cows were concerned,
+it was the practice of the natives, for miles
+around, whenever they had an animal about to die, to
+lead or, if it was unable to walk, to haul it to the railway,
+and prop it against the fence with a foot on the
+rail, and then to demand compensation for its death.
+There was, perhaps, a grain of truth in this; but the
+board, nevertheless, ordered the company to take up the
+rail and substitute an overhead wire for it, and this has
+been done.</p>
+
+<p>The only way the natives can get damages now is
+to inveigle a car to run into them, and this is well-nigh
+impossible, for the cars are run very slowly and
+carefully, and at every curve there is a signal cabin,
+where a watchful guard, armed with a red flag and a
+white one, keeps careful eyes upon the track.</p>
+
+<p>We were just gathering speed outside the town, when
+we saw in a near-by field an aggregation whose bills
+had attracted our attention, more than once, in our
+journeyings about Ireland. It was "Buff Bill's Circus,"
+and the picturesqueness of its lithographs had
+made us most anxious to see it. Here it was, at last,
+and it consisted of three tiny tents and one van and
+three or four horses, and five or six people, who at this
+moment were eating their midday meal, seated on
+the ground about a sheet-iron stove, while the youngsters
+of the neighbourhood looked on. I am sorry we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[479]</a></span>
+did not get to see the show, for I am sure we should
+have enjoyed it.</p>
+
+<p>Then the road mounted to a terrace high above the
+sea, and the views over coast and water were superb.
+The effects of erosion are especially fantastic, and the
+line passes fretted spires, and yawning caverns, and
+deep gullies and mighty arches, all worn in the chalk
+and basalt cliffs by the ceaseless action of the waves;
+and at one place there is a grotesque formation which
+does indeed, as may be seen from the picture opposite
+the next page, resemble a "Giant's Head."</p>
+
+<p>And there is one most picturesque ruin, for, ten miles
+out from Portrush, all that is left of Dunluce castle
+overhangs the sea from the summit of a precipitous
+rock, separated from the mainland by a deep chasm.
+The chasm is twenty feet wide, and in days of old
+there was a drawbridge over it; but the bridge has disappeared,
+and now there is just an arch of masonry
+about two feet wide and without protection of any
+sort. It takes a steady head to cross it, but the
+Irish are fond of just such breakneck bridges. The
+castle itself, with its roofless gables and jagged walls,
+seems a part of the rock on which it is built. It is
+said to possess a banshee, and one can well believe it!</p>
+
+<p>Dunluce is interesting because it was once a stronghold
+of the Scotch invaders who succeeded in conquering
+all this northeast coast of Ireland from here around
+to Carlingford Lough, away below Belfast. Scotland
+is only a few miles away across the North Channel&mdash;one
+can see its coast on a clear day from the cliffs above
+Benmore; and it was natural enough that there should
+be sailing back and forth. Owen, first lord of Tyrone,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[480]</a></span>
+brought a wife from Scotland&mdash;that Aileach, after
+whom he named his fortress; and they had many children,
+one of whom went back to Scotland and became
+the head of that princedom whose chief afterwards
+called himself "Lord of the Isles." In Ireland, the
+family was O'Donnell; but in Scotland the members of
+Clandonnell were not Os but Macs. Angus MacDonnell
+married a daughter of the great house of O'Cahan,
+and by this means and by that, the Scotch gradually
+won a foothold on the Irish coast and built castles up
+and down it; and finally, in a pitched battle, defeated
+the Irish who held the land about Dunluce and had
+built this castle here.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 319px;">
+<a href="images/gs037-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs037.jpg" width="319" height="500" alt="THE &quot;GIANT&#39;S HEAD,&quot; NEAR PORTRUSH" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE &quot;GIANT&#39;S HEAD,&quot; NEAR PORTRUSH<br /><br />THE RUINS OF DUNLUCE CASTLE</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It was besieged and captured after that, once by the
+Irish under Shane O'Neill, and once by the English
+under Sir John Perrot; and during the troubled times
+of the Commonwealth and Restoration fell into ruins
+and was never restored&mdash;partly, no doubt, because it
+was no longer safe; for one night in 1639, there was a
+great party in the castle, and a storm arose, and the
+waves dashed against the rock below it, and suddenly
+part of the rock gave way and carried the kitchen and
+eight servants down into the abyss.</p>
+
+<p>Just beyond the castle, the road rounds a point and
+runs down into the valley of the Bush River, where
+stands the little town of Bushmills, known all over
+the world because of the whiskey which is made there;
+and then it passes a great house on a cliff overlooking
+the sea, Runkerry Castle; and then high up on the
+slope ahead loom two big hotels, and the tram stops,
+for this is the Causeway.</p>
+
+<p>Both the hotels at the Causeway are owned by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[481]</a></span>
+same man, but each maintains its runner, and each
+runner makes a lively bid for your custom; and then,
+when you have made your choice and started toward
+it, you will suddenly be conscious of a rough voice
+speaking over your shoulder, and you will turn to find
+a man striding at your heels, a man unshaven and clad
+in nondescript clothes; and if you listen very attentively
+you will presently understand that he is offering
+to guide you about the Causeway.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody in the vicinity of the Causeway makes
+his living off the people who visit it, and the favourite
+profession is that of guide. Now a guide is wholly
+unnecessary, for a broad road leads directly to the
+Causeway, and once there it is simply a question of
+using one's eyes. But from the persistence of the
+guides, one would think there was great danger of getting
+lost, or of falling overboard, or of experiencing
+some other horrible misfortune, if one ventured there
+unattended. Every guide carries also in his waistcoat
+pocket one or more fossils, which he found himself
+and prizes very highly, but is willing to sell for a small
+sum, as a personal favour. When his supply is exhausted,
+he goes and buys some more from the syndicate
+which ships them in in quantity.</p>
+
+<p>For it should be remembered that the Causeway is
+as strictly organised for profit and as carefully exploited
+as is Killarney.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as we had arranged for our room, we set off
+for the Causeway, running the gauntlet of guides
+posted on both sides of the road. Then a man
+with a pony-cart wanted to drive us to our destination,
+and one would have thought, from the way he spoke,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[482]</a></span>
+that it was a long and trying journey; then we refused
+three or four offers of fossils and postcards; and finally
+we found ourselves alone on a road which swept round
+the edge of a great amphitheatre of cliff; and the face
+of that cliff is worth examining, for it is formed of the
+lava flow from some long-extinct crater, and the successive
+flows, separated by the so-called ochre beds, or
+strata of dark-red volcanic ash, can be plainly distinguished.
+The road gradually drops, until it is quite
+near the sea; and then it passes a number of shanties,
+from which old women issue to waylay the passer-by
+with offers of fossils and post-cards and various curios;
+and then the visitor is confronted by a high wire fence,
+beyond which, if he looks closely, he will see a little
+neck of land running out into the water&mdash;and that is
+the celebrated Giant's Causeway.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 326px;">
+<a href="images/gs038-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs038.jpg" width="326" height="500" alt="THE GIANT&#39;S CAUSEWAY" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE GIANT&#39;S CAUSEWAY<br /><br />THE CLIFFS BEYOND THE CAUSEWAY</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>It is so small and so seemingly insignificant that
+Betty and I stared at it through the fence with a distinct
+shock of disappointment; then we went on to the
+gate, paid the sixpence which is extorted from every
+visitor, registered ourselves on the turnstile, and entered.</p>
+
+<p>The misfortune of the Causeway is that its fame is
+too great. The visitor, expecting to see something
+magnificent and grandiose, is rather dashed at first to
+find how small it is; but after a few minutes' wandering
+over the queer columns of basalt, this feeling passes,
+and one begins to realise that it is really one of the
+wonders of the world. I am not going to describe it&mdash;every
+one has seen photographs of it, or if any one
+hasn't, he will find some opposite this page; and the
+photographs picture it much better than I can.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[483]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are some forty thousand of the pillars, the
+guide-book says; five-sided or six-sided for the most
+part, averaging, I should say, about fifteen inches in
+diameter, and so close together that a lead pencil is
+too thick to be thrust between them. The pillars are
+divided into regular, worm-like segments, some six or
+eight inches thick, and there are quite a lot of segments
+lying about, broken off from the columns. The whole
+bed is said by geologists to be nothing but a lava-flow,
+which broke up into these columnar shapes when it
+cooled and contracted.</p>
+
+<p>The native Irish have a far better explanation than
+that. In the old days, the mighty Finn MacCool, annoyed
+at the boasting of a Caledonian rival on the hills
+across the channel, invited him to step over and see
+which was the better man. And the giant said he
+would be glad to come over and show Finn a thing or
+two, if it wasn't for wetting his feet. So Finn, in a
+rage, built a causeway right over to Scotland, and the
+Scotch giant came across on it; and of course Finn
+beat him well (for this is an Irish legend); but with
+that generosity which has always been characteristic
+of Irishmen after they have whipped their opponents,
+he permitted his humbled rival to choose a wife from
+the many fair girls of the neighbourhood, and to build
+him a house and settle down; which the Scotch giant
+was very glad to do; for every one knows that the
+Scotch women are rough and hard-bitten, also that
+Scotland is a land of mist and snow, not fair like Ireland,
+which has always been the loveliest country in
+the world. And presently, since the causeway wasn't
+needed any more and impeded navigation, Finn gave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[484]</a></span>
+it a kick with the foot of him and sunk it in the sea,
+all but this little end against the Irish coast. And
+there it stands unto this day to witness if I lie.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever you think of the Causeway, you will certainly
+be impressed when you pass out between the clustered
+columns of the Giant's Gateway, and start on
+the walk under the beetling cliffs beyond. The narrow
+path mounts up and up, under overhanging masses of
+columnar stone, which all too evidently crashes down
+from time to time, for there are great piles of debris
+below, and the path is either swept away in places or
+recently repaired; so most visitors hurry past with one
+eye upward, and the other contemplating the beauty of
+the scene below.</p>
+
+<p>At least we did; and then we came out at Chimney
+Point, crowned with its chimney-like columns&mdash;a mass
+of basalt on top of a red ochre bed. And here there
+was a seat where we sat down to contemplate one of
+the most impressive views in Ireland&mdash;a combination
+of blue sea and white surf and black crag and columned
+cliff not soon to be forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>We went on, at last, around the point of the cliff,
+where the path overhangs the depths below and is
+guarded by an iron railing; on and on, past clusters of
+columns named looms or organ pipes, or whatever Irish
+fancy may have suggested; and at last we turned slowly
+back, and spent another half hour at the Causeway,
+hunting out the wishing-chair, and the giant's cannon,
+and Lord Antrim's parlour&mdash;all of which may easily be
+found; and then we took a drink from the giant's well,
+a spring of pure, cold water, bubbling up from among
+the rocks; and so back to the hotel and to dinner.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[485]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE GLENS OF ANTRIM</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">There</span> are some caves at the Causeway which are said
+to be well worth visiting, but we found, next morning,
+that a stiff wind during the night had kicked up such
+a sea that it was impossible to get to them. So we
+spent the morning walking down to a beautiful beach
+some distance below the hotel, and building a driftwood
+fire there, and watching the waves roll in. Then,
+while Betty went in to read some just-arrived letters
+from home, I went on along the top of the cliffs above
+the Causeway.</div>
+
+<p>There is a path which follows the edge of the cliff
+closely, and a more magnificent view I have never seen.
+At Chimney Point the rollers were breaking in especial
+violence over the black rocks, on which one of the galleons
+of the Armada went to pieces. Her name was
+the Gerona, and some of her guns were rescued from
+the surf and added to the armament of Dunluce castle.
+Legend has it that she brought her disaster upon herself
+by running in too near the coast to fire at the
+chimney rocks, which she mistook for the towers of
+Dunluce. The bay where the bodies of her crew were
+washed ashore has been called Port-na-Spania ever
+since.</p>
+
+<p>A little farther on is the uttermost point of all,
+Pleaskin, where the view reaches its greatest grandeur,
+for one is here four hundred feet above the sea, and on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[486]</a></span>
+that bright, clear, wind-swept morning, I could see the
+purple peaks of the Donegal coast stretching far to the
+west, while to the northeast loomed the misty outline
+of the Scottish hills, scarcely discernible against the
+sky. And all between stretched the white-capped waters
+of the North Channel, with a tossing boat here and
+there, and at my feet were the last black basalt outposts
+of Erin, with the rollers curling over them in regular,
+heavy rhythm. If Ireland has anything to show more
+fair I did not see it.</p>
+
+<p>I went slowly back, at last, along the path, over
+the springy heather; and an hour later we had said
+good-bye to the Causeway, and were rattling away
+along a pleasant road toward Ballycastle. We were
+the only voyagers, that day, so instead of the heavy
+bus, a side-car had been placed at our disposal. It
+was the first car we had mounted since our ride around
+Lough Gill; and how good it felt to settle back again
+into the corner of the seat, and swing along mile after
+mile!</p>
+
+<p>Our jarvey was an old fellow who was loquacious
+enough, at first, and who stopped to show us, in a ravine
+not far from the Causeway, a crevice in the rock
+which he said was used as a pulpit by the first Presbyterian
+preacher in Ulster&mdash;for it should be remembered
+that for many years the Presbyterians and other nonconformists
+were treated as harshly by the established
+church as the Catholics were. And then we came to a
+little village where the children were gathering for
+school, and our jarvey stopped to water the horse, which
+gave us the opportunity to have a word with the children.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">[487]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And fairly surprised we were when they began to
+talk, for they spoke a Scotch as broad as any to be heard
+in the Highlands. Their names were Scotch, too&mdash;Fergus
+and Angus; and the only thing we encountered
+on that drive which astonished us more were the sign-posts
+at the cross-roads, the directions on which are all
+in Gaelic. We had seen Gaelic sign-posts before, in
+the west, but they always had the direction in English,
+too. Here there was no English. It is a riddle that
+I have never unravelled, for I heard no Gaelic spoken
+here. Of course it is spoken; but so many wayfarers
+along this road speak only English that I cannot understand
+the contempt for them which the sign-boards
+indicate.</p>
+
+<p>I have referred already to the Irishman's love for
+breakneck bridges, and the prize one of all is at the
+village of Ballintoy, into which the road drops down
+the steepest of hills. A little distance away along
+the cliffs is an isolated rock some sixty feet from the
+shore, and spanning the abyss between cliff and rock
+is the craziest bridge ever devised by man. Two rings,
+about eighteen inches apart, have been embedded in
+the rock on either side, and between these rings two
+ropes have been stretched. These are lashed together at
+intervals by transverse cords, and to these cords short
+lengths of narrow plank have been tied side by side.
+For a handrail, a slender rope has been stretched between
+two rings some three feet higher than the others&mdash;and
+there you are. It is hardly correct to say that
+any of the ropes have been "stretched," for they hang
+in a long curve, and in the wind that was blowing that
+morning the bridge swung to and fro in the dizziest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">[488]</a></span>
+fashion. There was a crowd of small boys at its land
+end, who offered to negotiate the passage for a penny
+each, but we refused to pay for the privilege of seeing
+them risk their lives.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, probably, it would not have been risking
+them, for they were used to the bridge and thought
+nothing of crossing it. Nay, more, the men of the
+neighbourhood cross it carrying heavy burdens, for
+they are fishermen and keep all their ropes and nets and
+even their boats out on the rock, round which, at certain
+stages of the tide, the salmon circle, so that they
+can be caught by nets shot out from the rock. There
+is no harbour for the boats, so they have to be hoisted
+up to a terrace in the rock some twenty feet above the
+water by means of a windlass; and then, having made
+everything snug, the fishermen cross back over the
+bridge with the catch on their shoulders. It need
+scarcely be added that I, who had balked at the far
+more substantial bridges at Dromahair and Dunluce,
+never for an instant thought of crossing this one.</p>
+
+<p>We climbed out to the top of the cliffs again, and
+jogged along with the beautiful sea to our left, and
+the beautiful rolling country to our right, its meadows
+brilliant with the lush green of the young flax; and
+then we turned back inland between high hedgerows;
+and the bright sun and the soft air proved too much
+for our jarvey, who dropped gently to sleep&mdash;a fact
+we didn't notice until the horse, after a backward
+glance, stopped to take a few bites from the hedge.
+The driver woke with a start and jerked the horse
+angrily back into the middle of the road, and then
+glanced guiltily at us, but we were gazing far away into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[489]</a></span>
+the distance; and then he dropped off again, and again
+the horse, feeling the slackened reins, stopped for a
+bite; and then, for fear that a motor-cycle or something
+might run into us, I filled my pipe and offered my
+pouch to the driver, and he filled up thankfully, and
+that kept him awake until we dropped down into the
+beautiful old town of Ballycastle, nestling under the
+high hills of Antrim. "Bally," which figures in so
+many Irish place-names, is from the Gaelic "baile,"
+meaning town or village, and so Ballycastle is merely
+the Irish form of what in English would be prosaic
+Castletown.</p>
+
+<p>We had tea at a clean and pleasant inn, and then
+spent an hour wandering about the place&mdash;to the site
+of the old abbey, near a sweet little river, and then
+down to the shore, which has been desecrated with golf-links;
+but the green slopes of Rathlin Island, just off
+the coast, are very lovely, and just outside the bay the
+cliffs culminate in a mighty bluff called Fairhead; and
+then back to the town along an avenue of beautiful
+trees, for a visit to the "Home Industry Depot," a
+room crowded with fantastic toys and some good wood-carving,
+all done in the neighbourhood&mdash;about the only
+industry of any kind, so the keeper of the shop said,
+now carried on in Ballycastle.</p>
+
+<p>Time was when Ballycastle fancied it was destined
+for greatness, for a seam of coal was discovered in the
+hill above the town, and an enterprising Scotchman
+named Hugh Boyd leased the right to work it from
+the Earl of Antrim, and built foundries and tanneries
+and breweries to consume it; but unfortunately the seam
+turned down instead of up, Boyd died, and nobody<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[490]</a></span>
+was found with sufficient energy to contend against so
+many difficulties; so the whole enterprise dropped dead.
+I don't know how the inhabitants came to turn to toy-making
+and wood-carving; perhaps some expatriated
+Swiss settled here,&mdash;that shop certainly did remind us
+of Lucerne!</p>
+
+<p>There are far older memories which cluster around
+Ballycastle; for the stream which ripples past the abbey
+was in the old days called the Margy, and it was here,
+according to the most ancient of Irish legends, that
+the children of Lir, King of the Isle of Man, sought
+shelter after they had been turned into four white swans
+by their step-mother. I should like to tell that story,
+but there is no space here&mdash;besides, it has already been
+most nobly told by Mr. Rolleston. It will be found,
+with many others, in his "High Deeds of Finn," a book
+I most heartily recommend.</p>
+
+<p>We were not yet at the end of our day's journey, for
+we had still to go on to Cushendall, sixteen miles away,
+and so we went back to the hotel, to find a long inside-car
+waiting. There were two other passengers, women
+of the neighbourhood, who had come in to town to do
+some shopping; and their gossip was most entertaining;
+but we dropped them before long, and then the road
+mounted up and up along the valley of a little river,
+which we could see gleaming far below us; and at last
+we came out upon a bog as wild and desolate as any in
+Connemara. There were again the familiar black
+cuttings, the piles of turf, and here and there a group
+of men and women labouring at the wet, back-breaking
+work. This bog, so our driver said, supplied the fuel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[491]</a></span>
+for the whole district, and nobody hereabouts ever
+thought of burning coal.</p>
+
+<p>The road was quite deserted, save for a cart now
+and then, loaded high with turf, lumbering heavily
+down toward the town; and presently even these ceased,
+and there was no single sign of life as far as the eye
+could reach&mdash;only the silent bog, desolate, vast, impressive,
+rolling away into the distance with a beauty
+all its own&mdash;a beauty difficult to express, but very
+poignant.</p>
+
+<p>How high we were upon that moor we did not realise
+until we came to the verge of one of the beautiful
+Glens of Antrim and saw, nestling away below us, the
+spires and roofs of Cushendall. They were perhaps
+half a mile away, but we travelled at least three miles
+to get down to them, winding back and forth along
+the side of the glen, crossing a great viaduct eighty feet
+high, past picturesque thatched houses, past the fairy
+thorn which no man in the village would touch for
+love or money, past a fragment of ruin which was once
+the castle where the MacDonnells stood off the English;
+and then we turned away to the right and began
+to climb again; and presently we had climbed out of
+Glendun into Glenaan, and I should hate to have to
+decide which is the more lovely.</p>
+
+<p>We emerged, at last, into more open country, with
+high hills at our right pierced by shadowy valleys; and
+then the houses became more frequent, and we could
+see the people gathering down from the fields for the
+night. Twilight was at hand; but, though it must have
+been nearly nine o'clock, we were amused to see that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">[492]</a></span>
+the ducks and chickens were still pecking cheerfully
+about the door-steps, apparently with no thought of
+retiring. Poultry, in Ireland, leads a strenuous life,
+for in summer the sun rises at three and does not set
+till nine. Perhaps it is these long hours which give
+Irish chickens an indolent air, and which explain the
+frequent naps one sees them taking on the family doorstep.</p>
+
+<p>The houses grew more and more frequent, until we
+were rattling down a wide street of them, under an
+avenue of lofty trees, and knew we were at Cushendall.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Some three miles west of the town, on the top of a
+bare and windy hill looking down over the Glenaan
+valley, is a circle of stones placed there, so legend
+asserts, to mark the grave of Ossian, son of Finn MacCool,
+and sweet singer of the Fianna of Erin; and it
+was to find this spot I set out next morning, through
+fine, windy weather. I knew where the valley of the
+Glenaan was, for we had passed its mouth the evening
+before, but as to the position of the grave itself I knew
+nothing. The guide-book devoted only a vague line
+to it; but I have a firm belief in my luck, and I knew
+I should find it somehow.</p>
+
+<p>For a mile or more my road lay back over the way
+we had come, mounting steadily toward the entrance
+to the Glenaan Valley; and I met many little carts
+coming in to market, for it was Saturday; and every
+one who wasn't going into town was taking advantage
+of the fine day by working in the fields, or putting new
+coats of dazzling whitewash upon their houses, or digging
+in the little flower-gardens in front of them. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">[493]</a></span>
+everybody was in cheerful humour and passed the time
+of day with the heartiest good will.</p>
+
+<p>And then I came to the entrance of the valley, and
+turned westward along the road which traverses it.
+The mountains soon began to close in on either hand,
+and the houses strung along the road or perched on
+narrow plateaus grew smaller and smaller; slate gave
+way to thatch, stone floors gave way to dirt ones, and
+the windows shrank to a single immovable sash of four
+small panes. In a word, as the land grew poorer, the
+people grew poorer, too; and the conditions of life
+seemed not so very different from those in far Connaught.
+Indeed it may very well be that this is one
+of those "congested districts" which are scattered over
+the east of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>I stopped, at last, and asked an old man in a blue
+flannel smock if he could tell me the way to Ossian's
+grave; and he told me to fare straight on till I came
+to some stepping-stones, and to cross the stones and
+push right up the hill. So I went on happily, for the
+air was very sweet, and the sun just warm enough, and
+the great wind was driving white clouds before it
+across the sky, and the sunshine in the faces of the people
+I met added to the beauty of the day; and at last I
+came to a cluster of thatched cottages where the little
+river turned in close to the road and rippled between
+a row of stepping-stones; and I asked a pleasant-faced
+woman if that was the way to Ossian's grave, and she
+said it was; to cross the stones and go right up the hill,
+and I would find a house there where I could get further
+directions.</p>
+
+<p>The road beyond the stones ran up the hill and into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">[494]</a></span>
+the yard of a farm-house; and in the yard there was a
+dog with a very savage bark; but there was also a blue-eyed
+girl who quieted him, while she stared at me curiously.
+I asked her the way to the grave, and she
+pointed up the hill, with a little motion of her hand
+toward the right, and I set off again. The road had
+dwindled to the merest mountain path, with a wall on
+either side of earth and stones, crested with prickly
+gorse; but I came to a break in it, at last, opening to
+the right, and scrambled through; and then, a minute
+later, in the midst of a heather-carpeted field on the
+very summit of the hill, I saw the grave.</p>
+
+<p>It is formed of standing stones, covered with lichen
+and crumbling under the storms of centuries, and the
+vestibule, so to speak, is a semi-circle some twenty feet
+in diameter opening toward the east. Back of this are
+two chambers, one behind the other, divided by two
+large uprights, and I suppose it was in one of these that
+the body of the bard was laid&mdash;if it was laid here at
+all. My own guess would be that these weather-beaten
+stones, like those others on the hill beside Lough Gill,
+antedate Ossian by at least two thousand years. But
+that is an unimportant detail; and it may be, indeed,
+that when the great singer died, his comrades could
+think of no more fitting place to lay him than within
+the guardian circle of this monument of an older race,
+looking down across the valley and out toward the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Fact and fancy have been so mingled in the Ossianic
+legend that it is impossible to disentangle them, nor is
+it profitable to try. It is fairly certain that he was
+born somewhere about the middle of the third century
+after Christ, and legend has it that he spent two hundred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">[495]</a></span>
+years in the Land of Youth with Niam of the
+Golden-hair. When, homesick for Erin, he returned
+to it, it was to find his father's courts overgrown with
+grass and St. Patrick preaching there, and his disputes
+with Patrick are recorded at great length in the tales
+of the Fenian cycle; for Ossian bewailed the vanished
+days of those mighty fighters, and wished for nothing
+better than to join them, in whatever world they might
+be, while Patrick laboured to convert him from such
+heathen fancies and to save his soul. It is to this
+story reference is made in the stanza from Lionel Johnson's
+"Ode to Ireland," which I quoted on <a href="#Page_221">page 221</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Up there on the bleak hill-top the wind was roaring;
+but I found a nook between two of the great stones
+where it could not reach me, and I lighted my pipe and
+sat there and looked down over the valley and thought
+of the old days, and so spent a sweet half hour. The
+valley had changed but little, I fancied, with the rolling
+centuries; there were tiny, high-walled fields and
+low thatched houses on the lower slopes; but above
+them sprang the primal hills, clothed with heather,
+their bones of granite gleaming here and there, back
+and back over the Glens of Antrim, through which
+the red tide of tribal warfare had poured so many
+times. And over eastward lay Cushendall, nestling
+among its trees, with the gaunt, truncated mass of
+Lurigethan hill overshadowing it, and beyond that,
+faint and far and scarcely distinguishable from the blue
+sky, lay the blue sea.</p>
+
+<p>That valley and those hills belong to the Earl of Antrim&mdash;his
+estate includes some thirty-five thousand
+acres of Irish soil, around which he may build walls<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">[496]</a></span>
+and post notices and set guards; and as I sat there gazing
+out at them, I realised far more keenly than I had
+ever done the absurdity of the idea that any portion of
+this earth's surface can rightfully belong to any man.
+Trace any title back, for a hundred years, or a thousand
+years, or two thousand years, and one finds that it
+started in a theft&mdash;theft on the part of an individual
+from the tribe which held the land in common; and the
+solemn farce of sale and transfer and inheritance after
+that was merely the passing on of stolen goods. Perhaps
+some day we may win through to the ideal of an
+earth belonging equally to all men, with private right
+only in the things man's industry creates.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 345px;">
+<a href="images/gs039-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs039.jpg" width="345" height="500" alt="THE GRAVE OF OSSIAN" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE GRAVE OF OSSIAN<br /><br />AN ANTRIM LANDSCAPE</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>I knocked out my pipe, at last, reluctantly enough,
+and took the picture of the stones which is opposite
+this page, but which gives a poor idea of them; and
+then I started downward, through the break in the
+hedge, through the farmyard, going warily for fear of
+the dog, and so to the stepping-stones; and when I
+looked at them, I saw what a perfect picture they made,
+with the stream rippling through, and the thatched cottages
+beyond, with the smoke whipped from their chimneys,
+and a single tree bending before the wind. That
+picture in miniature is opposite this page; but I could
+not snare with my camera the tang of the turf, the softness
+of the air, the glory of the sun, nor the murmur of
+the water. Those you will have to evoke for yourself,
+as best you can.</p>
+
+<p>In the road beyond I found a mail-carrier, who had
+completed his morning-round among the hillside dwellings,
+and who was turning back to Cushendall; and
+we went on together. He was a tall, lithe lad, as he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">[497]</a></span>
+had need to be to get over his daily route among these
+hills; and, like every one else, he hoped some day to
+win his way to America. He knew many of its towns
+from the postmarks on the letters he carried. In the
+last month, he said, there had been fully a hundred
+from America, and welcome letters they were, for nearly
+all of them contained a bit of money. Many of the
+dwellers in these hills&mdash;like thousands more all over
+Ireland&mdash;would find life outside the work-house impossible
+but for the help from their sons and daughters
+in America; and it gives one a good feeling at the
+heart to think of those devoted boys and girls putting
+by every month a portion of the money which was
+hard to win and harder still to save, to send to the old
+people who were left at home.</p>
+
+<p>By the side of the road, as we walked along, I saw
+a hovel more primitive and comfortless than most&mdash;just
+a tiny hut of a single room, dark and cold and bare;
+but against one end of it grew a great fuchsia bush,
+clothing it with glory. A wrinkled old woman, clad
+in filthy clothes, was standing in the doorway, and
+my companion passed the time of day with her, while
+I unslung my camera, for I wanted a picture of the tiny
+house and the great bush. I would have liked a picture
+of the old woman, too; but she said she was too dirty,
+and went in until the picture was taken which is opposite
+the next page. Then she came out and asked if
+I would send her one. It was the first time, she said,
+that any one had thought her houseen worth a picture;
+so I promised she should have one, and she gave me her
+name, and the postman promised it should reach her.</p>
+
+<p>We went on together, after that, and I asked him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">[498]</a></span>
+what the people of the neighbourhood thought about
+Home Rule.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 318px;">
+<a href="images/gs040-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs040.jpg" width="318" height="500" alt="A HUMBLE HOME IN ANTRIM" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">A HUMBLE HOME IN ANTRIM<br /><br />THE OLD JAIL AT CUSHENDALL</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>"The truth is, sir," he answered, "that we don't know
+what to think, what with this man telling us one thing
+and that man another; but most of the poor people
+about here would be glad to see it, for they can't be
+worse off than they are, and a change might better
+them. Drilling and arming? Ah, there's none of
+that around here; there's no army of Ulster in these
+parts. That's just talk."</p>
+
+<p>He left me at the crossroads, for he had still a letter
+or two to deliver farther down the road, and I went on
+by myself toward the town. There were more whitewashers
+out, and they were splashing the lime about in
+the most reckless fashion, besprinkling the hedges and
+the shrubbery and even the road, somewhat to the danger
+of the passers-by; and at the first houses of the
+town I met Betty. She had been talking to the caretaker
+of the churchyard about the true shamrock; and
+he said that it did not grow wild thereabouts, but that
+he had some in a pot at home and would be glad to
+bring her a spray; and he told her of a ruined church
+and an old Celtic cross out along the road above the
+cliffs, very near, he said&mdash;not over eight minutes' walk
+at the most.</p>
+
+<p>So we determined to take a look at it; but first we
+walked about the town a little, and found it quite an
+ordinary town, except for a great square tower at the
+intersection of the principal streets&mdash;a tower erected,
+so the tablet on it says, "as a place of confinement for
+rioters and idlers." I suppose the town has a modern
+jail now&mdash;perhaps even with panoptic galleries! At<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">[499]</a></span>
+any rate, the tower is no longer used. I took a picture
+of it, and if you will look at the picture closely,
+you will see a girl drawing water from the town pump
+just below the tower.</p>
+
+<p>We started off finally for the ruins, first to the cliffs
+along the sea, and then on along the path which runs
+at their very edge. The view was very lovely, and
+we didn't notice how the time was flying; but I looked
+at my watch presently and found that we had been
+walking twenty minutes, with no ruins in sight. We
+pushed on ten minutes longer, and had about given
+them up, when some children directed us which way to
+go, and we finally found the few remaining fragments
+of Layd Church, so overgrown with ivy and embowered
+in trees that they were scarcely recognisable as ruins
+at all. The cross proved to be a very modern one;
+and the graveyard is sadly neglected, with the grass
+knee-deep among the tombs, which have fallen into
+sorry disarray. Most of them cover some long-dead
+MacDonnell&mdash;they were all MacDonnells, in the old
+days, who lived in the Glens of Antrim.</p>
+
+<p>The "eight minute walk" had taken more than half
+an hour, and we had need to hasten if we were to get
+back to the hotel in time for lunch, for the car which
+was to take us to Larne was to start at two; but we
+made it, and when the car drove up, we found it was a
+long outside-car with room for five people on each side.
+We chose the forward end of the side next the sea; and
+then the car proceeded to another hotel in the town,
+where five or six more people were waiting; and the
+two women who were condemned to the landward
+side complained bitterly. They were making the trip,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">[500]</a></span>
+they said, just to see the sea, and here they would be
+compelled to sit the whole way facing the blank cliff.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, there's nothing I can do, miss," said the jarvey,
+who had listened sympathetically; "I can't make
+the car any longer, now can I? Maybe you might be
+glancin' over your shoulder from time to time; anyway
+I'm thinkin' you'll be seein' enough of the sea before
+you're home again."</p>
+
+<p>And with that they had to be consoled.</p>
+
+<p>The road runs inland for about a mile beyond
+Cushendall, and then turns down close to the shore of
+Red Bay, a vast amphitheatre of red sandstone cliffs,
+in whose face the road is cut. At the deepest point of
+the circle, where the Vale of Glenariff opens up into
+the mountains, is clustered a little village of white
+houses; and then the road runs on round the base of
+towering precipices; and suddenly the red sandstone
+changes to chalk, and the water washing against the
+shore, which has been a lovely green, turns milky white,
+with outstanding pinnacles of chalk, worn to fantastic
+shapes, keeping guard above it.</p>
+
+<p>We had noticed an increasing crowd upon the road,
+all walking or riding southwards; and presently two
+barefooted boys jumped up on the footboard and asked
+if they might ride a little way; and they told us that
+there was a circus at Carnlough to which every one was
+going; and they each had the tuppence necessary for
+admission gripped in a grimy fist, and were very excited
+indeed. Carnlough, as we soon found, is a small
+town consisting principally of a curving beach, where a
+few people were bathing; and the white tent of Duffy's
+Circus&mdash;a much larger affair than Buff Bill's&mdash;was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">[501]</a></span>
+pitched close beside the road. The urchins dropped
+off and made for the entrance; and as we passed, we
+caught a strain of "The Stars and Stripes Forever,"
+painfully rendered by the circus band.</p>
+
+<p>We rolled on around another wide bay, and came to
+Glenarm, where we paused to change horses; and then
+on again, under the white cliffs, past quarries where flint
+and chalk are mined for the Belfast market; and always
+at our feet lay the Irish Sea, stretching away to the dim
+horizon, its colour changing with every passing cloud.
+In and out the road circled, following the long curves
+of the coast; past the ruins of a castle which O'Halloran,
+a famous outlaw, built for himself on the top
+of a small rock with the sea washing round it; past
+another amphitheatre where the rocks change back
+from chalk to basalt; through a short tunnel and so to
+Larne.</p>
+
+<p>The most interesting thing about Larne is its handsome
+new harbour built for the express steamers which
+cross several times daily to Stranrear, the shortest
+of the routes to Scotland. Edward Bruce chose this
+route when he came over with an army of six
+thousand men to help the Irish drive the English
+from Ireland, as his brother Robert had driven
+them from Scotland the year before at Bannockburn.
+It was in May, 1315, that the Scotch drew up in battle
+array along this strand; and a year later Bruce was
+crowned King of Ireland; but though at first he drove
+the Normans before him, his own army was gradually
+worn down by privation and disease, and he himself
+was killed at the battle of Faughart. So ended one
+more Irish dream!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">[502]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We changed at Larne from road to rail, and were
+soon rolling southward, still close beside the water,
+past a string of seaside resorts, each of which added
+its quota of passengers&mdash;perspiring men and women and
+tired but happy children; and so we came to the old
+town of Carrickfergus, with its magnificent castle overlooking
+Belfast Lough. Its great square keep, ninety
+feet high, looked most imposing in the gathering twilight&mdash;how
+many assaults had it withstood in the seven
+centuries of its existence! Bruce captured it, but the
+MacDonnells failed. Schomberg, William's general,
+had better luck, and it was on the quay below it that
+the great Orangeman first set foot in Ireland. It has
+some American associations, too; for John Paul Jones
+sailed his good ship <i>Ranger</i> under its walls in 1778,
+and captured the British ship-of-war <i>Drake</i>. Murray,
+good British guide-book that it is, refers to the founder
+of the American navy as "the pirate Paul Jones." But
+we can afford to smile at that!</p>
+
+<p>Carrickfergus is doubtless worth a visit, though the
+castle is used as an ordnance depot now, and visitors
+are admitted only to the outer court. But even that
+would be worth seeing; and the town possesses an old
+church, and some fragments of its old walls, and doubtless
+many interesting old houses. I am sorry we did
+not spend a day there.</p>
+
+<p>But our train rolled on, close beside the border of
+Belfast Lough, and presently, far ahead, we saw the
+gleaming spires and clustered roofs of the citadel of
+Ulster.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">[503]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>BELFAST</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">It</span> had been on a Saturday evening that we first saw
+Dublin, and it was on a Saturday evening that we
+reached Belfast; and we had thought the streets of Dublin
+crowded, but compared with those of Belfast, they
+were nowhere. Even in our first ride up from the
+station, along York Street and Royal Avenue, it was
+evident that here was a town where life was strenuous
+and eager; there was no mistaking its air of alert prosperity;
+and when, after dinner, we sallied forth on
+foot to see more of it, we found the sidewalks so
+crowded that it was possible to move along them only
+as the crowd moved.</div>
+
+<p>It was a better-dressed crowd than the Dublin one,
+but I fancied its cheeks were paler and its bodies less
+robust. Indeed, I am inclined to think the average stature
+in Belfast an inch or so under the average elsewhere.
+Great numbers of the men and women we saw
+on the streets that night were obviously undersized. I
+am by no means tall; five feet eight inches is, here in
+America, about the average; but when I walked among
+that Belfast crowd, I overtopped it by half a head.
+It was this strange sensation&mdash;the sensation of being
+a tall man, which I had never before experienced&mdash;which
+first drew my attention to the stature of the
+crowd.</p>
+
+<p>There must be several regiments of British troops<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">[504]</a></span>
+stationed at Belfast, for soldiers were much in evidence
+that evening, and in a great diversity of uniform.
+They, too, for the most part, seemed undersized, in
+spite of their erect carriage; and they were, as is the
+way with soldiers everywhere, much interested in the
+girls; and the girls, after the fashion of girls everywhere,
+were much interested in the soldiers&mdash;and there
+was a great deal of flirting and coquetting and glancing
+over shoulders and stopping to talk, and walking
+about with clasped hands.</p>
+
+<p>Next to the crowd, the most interesting feature of
+Belfast is the shops, which are very bright and attractive.
+The Scotch have a genius for fancy breads
+and cakes, and the bakers' shops here were extremely
+alluring. There seemed to be also an epidemic
+of auction sales and closing out sales and cut price
+sales, announced by great placards pasted all over the
+windows; but there were so many of them that I fancy
+most of them were fakes.</p>
+
+<p>One notices also in Belfast the multiplicity of bands.
+It seemed to me that night that a band, playing doggedly
+away, was passing all the time. Sometimes the
+band would be followed by a body of marching men,
+sometimes by men and women together, sometimes it
+would be just playing itself along without any one
+behind it. Nobody in the crowd paid much attention,
+not even when a big company of boy scouts marched
+past, looking very clever in their broad hats with the
+little chin-straps, and grey flannel shirts and flapping
+short trousers showing their bare knees.</p>
+
+<p>What I am setting down here are merely my first
+impressions of Belfast. I do not allege that they were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">[505]</a></span>
+correct impressions, or that they fairly describe the
+town, but, as we were fresh from many weeks in the
+south and west of Ireland, the sense of contrast we experienced
+that first evening is not without significance.</p>
+
+<p>We went back to the hotel, finally, for we had had
+a strenuous day; but for long and long we could hear
+the bands passing in the street below; and then the
+martial rattle of drums and scream of fifes brought us
+to the window, and we saw a great crowd of children
+march past, with banners waving and tin buckets and
+shovels rattling. It was a Sunday School picnic, just
+back from a day at the seashore; and the air which the
+fifes and drums were playing with a vigour that made
+the windows rattle was "Work, for the Night is Coming!"
+I had never before realised what a splendid
+marching tune it is!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>I am sorry we did not go to church, next morning,
+for the pulpits of Belfast were thundering against
+Home Rule, as we saw by the Monday papers. Instead,
+we walked down to the river, for a look at the
+harbour and custom house, and then about the streets
+to the city hall, with its dome and corner towers oddly
+reminiscent of St. Paul's Cathedral; and then we took
+a tram to the Botanical Gardens. The tram ran along
+a tree-embowered street, lined on either side with villas
+set in the midst of grounds so beautiful that any of
+them might have been the gardens; but when we
+reached the end of the line, we found we had come too
+far. The conductor was greatly chagrined that he had
+forgot to tell us where to get off, and sternly refused
+to accept any fare for the return trip.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">[506]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The gardens, which we finally reached, are very attractively
+laid out, but far more interesting than the
+flowers and the shrubs was the crowd which was coming
+home from church. There seems to be a church on
+every square in Belfast, and I judge they were all full
+that day&mdash;as they no doubt are every Sunday, for
+church-going is still fashionable in the British Isles;
+and the crowd which poured along the walks of the
+gardens was as well-dressed and handsome as could be
+seen anywhere. It was a crowd made up of people evidently
+and consciously well-to-do, and one distinctive
+characteristic was a certain severity of aspect, a certain
+prevalence of that black-coated, side-whiskered,
+stern-lipped type which was much more common in
+America thirty years ago than it is now. Our type
+has changed&mdash;has softened and grown more urbane;
+but I should judge that the cold steel of Calvinism is
+as sharp and merciless as ever in Belfast.</p>
+
+<p>The men walked slowly along in twos and threes,
+talking over the sermons they had just listened to;
+and the sermons, judging from the newspapers, were
+all cast in the same mould; and that mould gives so
+clearly the Orange attitude toward Home Rule, that I
+shall try to outline it here, quoting literally from the
+newspaper accounts.</p>
+
+<p>Home Rule, then, according to the Belfast preachers,
+is a Papal-inspired movement, whose object is "to
+thrust out of their birthright over one million enterprising,
+industrious, and peaceable citizens, whose only
+crime was their loyalty to Crown and Constitution, and
+to put them under that Papal yoke from which their
+sires had purchased their liberty. Their beloved island<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">[507]</a></span>
+home had never been more prosperous. They were
+grateful and they were satisfied, but their Roman
+Catholic fellow countrymen seemed to have no sense
+of satisfaction or gratitude. The Irish Nationalists
+had entered into a movement to sacrifice Protestantism
+upon the altar of Home Rule, but Orangemen and
+Protestants had entered into a covenant the object of
+which was the maintenance of their rightful heritage
+of British citizenship, of their commercial and industrial
+progress, and of their freedom. In the same spirit
+of patriotic Protestantism as was displayed at the siege
+of Derry, they would go forth to combat the onslaughts
+of Rome, and they would show that the same spirit
+lived in them as in their illustrious sires." Some of the
+services concluded with singing a new version of the
+National Anthem:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Ulster will never yield;<br />
+God is our strength and shield,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On Him we lean.</span><br />
+Free, loyal, true and brave,<br />
+Our liberties we'll save.<br />
+Home Rule we'll never have.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">God save the King.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>That last line is so perfunctory that it provokes a
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>I am anxious to state the case against Home Rule as
+fairly as I can, the more so because, as the readers of
+this book must have suspected before this, I have little
+sympathy with the die-hard Unionists. I do not believe
+that they represent Ulster in any such absolute
+sense as they claim to do, for in the first place they
+hold only sixteen out of the thirty-three Ulster seats<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">[508]</a></span>
+in Parliament, and in the second place, even in the
+four counties which are largely Protestant, there is
+a very strong Nationalist sentiment. My own conviction
+is that the Orange Societies are being be-fooled
+by a clique of politicians and aristocrats whose quarrel
+is not with Home Rule but with the Liberal party.
+Nobody denies that the funds for the organisation and
+equipment of the Orange army have been supplied by
+the Conservative party, whose campaign chest has been
+sadly depleted by the immense sums needed to keep the
+agitation going. Certain leaders of that party have
+done their utmost to foment religious and racial hatred,
+not because of any religious convictions of their own,
+nor because of any special sympathy for Ulster, but
+in the hope of overthrowing the government and
+stopping the march of social reform. They might just
+as well try to stop the march of time&mdash;and some day,
+perhaps, they will realise it!</p>
+
+<p>And yet&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>These fighting preachers, these uncompromising,
+wrong-headed, upright old Calvinists, are undoubtedly
+in earnest. The congregations which sat in grim-faced
+silence that day listening to this oratory, were in earnest,
+too. But I cannot believe that, in their inmost
+heart of hearts, they really dread the subversion of
+Protestantism. What they dread is, in the first place,
+some diminution of their supremacy in Irish politics,
+and, in the second place, some diminution of their control
+of Irish industry. In other words, the attack they
+really fear is against their pocket-books, not against
+their creed. And it is not impossible that their
+pocket-books may suffer; indeed, I think it probable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">[509]</a></span>
+that when the Home Rule Parliament has made its
+final adjustments of revenue, Ulster will be found to
+be bearing somewhat more of the burden than she now
+does, though perhaps not more than her just share.
+But this doesn't make the situation any the less serious,
+for ever since the world began it has been proved over
+and over again that the very surest way to drive men
+to frenzied resistance is to attack their pocket-books.
+As for the religious bogy, I personally believe most sincerely
+that it <i>is</i> a bogy. Such danger to Protestantism
+as exists comes, not from the Irish Catholics, but from
+the politicians who are using it as a football.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sentence in one of the sermons preached
+that day to the effect that Irish Protestants laboured
+to help Irish Catholics to civil and religious liberty,
+when Irish Catholics were unable to help themselves,
+and this is a fact which I am sure Irish Catholics will
+be the last to forget. A century ago, Ulster was as
+fiercely Nationalist as she is fiercely Unionist to-day;
+it was in Belfast that the Society of United Irishmen
+was organised, and its leader was Theobald Wolfe
+Tone, a Protestant, and its first members were Presbyterians,
+and one of its objects was Catholic Emancipation.
+And, as a close to these disconnected remarks, I
+cannot do better than repeat an anecdote I saw the
+other day in the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>. Some sympathetic
+neighbours called upon the mother of Sir David
+Baird to condole with her over her son's misfortunes,
+and they told her, with bated voices, how he had been
+captured by Tippoo Sultan, and chained to a soldier
+and thrust into a dungeon. Baird's mother listened
+silently, and then a little smile flitted across her lips.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">[510]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"God help the laddie that's chained to my Davie!"
+she said softly.</p>
+
+<p>And anybody that's chained to Ulster will undoubtedly
+have a strenuous time!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The <i>News-Letter</i> is the great Belfast daily, and
+while I was looking through it, Monday, for fear I
+had missed some of the pulpit and platform fulminations,
+I chanced upon another article which interested
+me deeply, as showing the Protestant attitude toward
+control of the schools. The article in question was a
+long account of the awarding of prizes at one of the
+big Belfast National schools, as a result of the religious
+education examination, and it was most illuminating.</p>
+
+<p>The chairman began his remarks by saying that
+"nothing is pleasanter than to hear a pupil repeat
+faultlessly the answers to the one hundred and seven
+questions in the Shorter Catechism, without a stumble,
+placing the emphasis where it is due, and attending to
+the stops," and he went on to report that these one
+hundred and seven questions had been asked orally of
+each of 396 children, that there was not a single failure,
+and that practically all the children were in the first
+honour list&mdash;that is, had answered faultlessly the whole
+one hundred and seven.</p>
+
+<p>And then another speaker, a clergyman, of course,
+like the first, told impressively of the meaning of education.
+It was, he said, the duty of every child to
+store his mind with all manner of knowledge and to
+seek diligently to gain information from day to day.
+But religion was the sum and complement of all education.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">[511]</a></span>
+Without it, all other acquirements would be
+little better than the beautiful flush upon the consumptive's
+cheek, the precursor of sure death and decay.
+He reminded them that even the very youngest there
+was guilty in the sight of God, for that awful word
+sinner described them all.</p>
+
+<p>Then a third speaker remarked that while the staff
+of the school was doing a fine work in teaching the
+boys and girls to read and write and cast up accounts,
+that that wasn't nearly so fine as teaching them the
+catechism and encouraging them to study their Bibles.
+And then a fourth speaker emphasised this; and then
+there was a vote of thanks to all the speakers, and the
+prize Bibles were distributed, and everybody went away
+happy&mdash;at least, the adults were all happy, and I can
+only hope the children were.</p>
+
+<p>From all which it is evident that the Presbyterians
+will fight for their schools as hard, if not harder, than
+the Catholics will for theirs. But to me, the thought
+of those poor children being drilled and drilled in the
+proper answers to the 107 questions of the Catechism,
+until they could answer them all glibly and without
+stopping to think, is a painful and depressing one. I
+suppose that is the way good Orangemen are made;
+but the Catechism has always seemed to me a rickety
+ladder to climb to heaven by.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>I was fortunate enough to witness another peculiar
+symptom of Belfast's temper, that afternoon, when I
+went down to the Custom House, which stands near the
+river. It is a large building occupying a full block,
+and there is a wide esplanade all around it; and this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">[512]</a></span>
+esplanade has, from time immemorial, been the platform
+which any speaker, who could find room upon it,
+was privileged to mount, and where he might promulgate
+any doctrine he could get the crowd to listen to.</p>
+
+<p>There was a great throng of people about the place,
+that afternoon, and a liberal sprinkling of policemen
+scattered through it; and then I perceived that it
+wasn't one big crowd but a lot of smaller crowds, each
+listening to a different orator, whose voices met and
+clashed in the air in a most confusing manner. And
+I wish solemnly to assert that the list which follows
+is a true list in every detail.</p>
+
+<p>At the corner of the building, a reformed drunkard,
+with one of those faces which are always in need of
+shaving, stood, Bible in hand, recounting his experiences.
+At least, he said he had reformed; but the pictures
+he painted of the awful depravity of his past had
+a lurid tinge which held his auditors spell-bound, and
+it was evident from the way he smacked his lips over
+them that he was proud of having been such a devil
+of a fellow.</p>
+
+<p>Next to him a smartly-dressed negro was selling
+bottles of medicine, which, so far as I could judge from
+what I heard, was guaranteed to cure all the ills that
+flesh is heir to. The formula for this wonderful preparation,
+he asserted, had been handed down through his
+family from his great-great-grandmother, who had been
+a famous African voodoo doctor, and it could be procured
+nowhere else. The open-mouthed Belfasters
+listened to all this with a deference and patience which
+no American audience would have shown, and the
+fakir took in many shillings.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">[513]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Next to him, a company of the Salvation Army was
+holding a meeting after the explosive fashion familiar
+all the world over; and at the farther corner, a white-bearded
+little fellow was describing the horrors of hell
+with an unction and exactitude far surpassing Dante.
+I don't know what his formula was for avoiding these
+horrors, for I didn't wait to hear his peroration.</p>
+
+<p>Just around the corner, two blind men were singing
+dolefully, with a tin cup on the pavement before them,
+and straining their ears for the rattle of a copper that
+never came; and farther along, a sharp-faced Irishman
+was delivering a speech, which I judged to be political,
+but it was so interspersed with anecdote and invective
+and personal reminiscence, that, though I listened a
+long time, I couldn't make out who he was talking
+against, or which side he was on. His audience seemed
+to follow him without difficulty, however, and laughed
+and applauded; and then a little fellow with a black
+moustache advised the crowd, in a loud voice, not to
+listen to him, for he was a jail-bird. I saw the constables
+edge in a little closer; but the speaker took the
+taunt in good part, admitted that he had done twelve
+months for some offence, and thanked the crowd with
+tears in his voice because they had raised two pounds
+a week, during that time, for the support of his family.
+The crowd cheered, and the fellow who had tried to
+start trouble hastened to take himself off. Thinking
+over all which, now, it occurs to me that the speech
+may have been a labour speech, and not a political one
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>I gave it up, at last, and moved on to where a man
+was making an impassioned plea for contributions for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">[514]</a></span>
+an orphan asylum. He had a number of sample
+orphans of both sexes ranged about him, and he painted
+a lively picture of the good his institution was doing;
+but how he hoped to extract donations from a crowd so
+evidently down at heel I don't see. Next to him, a
+frightful cripple, who could stand erect only by leaning
+heavily upon two canes, was telling the crowd how
+exceedingly difficult it was for a rich man to get into
+heaven. Next to him, a lot of women were holding
+some sort of missionary meeting; and just around the
+last corner, a roughly-dressed man, with coarse, red-bearded
+face, whose canvas placard described him as
+a "Medical Herbalist," was selling medicines of his
+own concoction.</p>
+
+<p>He had no panacea, but a separate remedy for every
+ill; and I listened to his patter for a long time, though
+obviously he didn't welcome my presence. He proved
+that slippery-elm was harmless by eating some of it, and
+argued that plantain, "which ignorant people regarded
+as a weed, made the best medicine a man could put into
+his inside," and he proved this proposition by saying
+that it must be so because plantain had no other known
+use, and it was inconceivable that the Lord would have
+taken the trouble to create it without some purpose.
+He also proved that he was a capable doctor because he
+was not a doctor at all, but a working-man, and it was
+the working-man who made the world go round. Inconceivable
+as it may seem, this ignorant and maudlin
+talk was listened to seriously and even respectfully,
+and he sold a lot of his medicines. Medicine seems
+to be one of the dissipations of the Belfast folk.</p>
+
+<p>The largest crowd of all was gathered before a man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515">[515]</a></span>
+who held the centre of the fourth side of the esplanade,
+and who was talking, or rather shouting, against Home
+Rule. He was garbed as a clergyman, and he wore an
+Orange badge, and he was listened to with religious
+attention as he painted the iniquity of the Catholic
+church and the horrible dangers of Catholic domination.
+His references to King Billy and the Boyne and the
+walls of Derry were many and frequent, and he had
+all sorts of newspaper clippings in his pockets, from
+which he read freely, and though he was very hoarse
+and bathed in perspiration, he showed no sign of stopping.
+He intimated that, once Home Rule was established,
+the revival of the inquisition would be but
+a matter of a short time, that no Protestant would be
+allowed to own property, that no Protestant labourer
+could expect employment anywhere until he had abjured
+his religion, that their children would be taken
+away from them and reared in Catholic schools, and he
+called upon them to arm and stand firm, to offer their
+lives upon the altar of their country, and not retreat
+a step before the aggressions of the Scarlet Woman.
+I don't know how much of this farrago his audience
+believed, but their faces were intent and serious, and I
+fear they believed much more than was good for them.
+I happened upon a song of Chesterton's the other day
+which brought those strained and intent faces vividly
+before me:</p>
+
+<div class='poem2'>
+The folks that live in black Belfast, their heart is in their mouth;<br />
+They see us making murders in the meadows of the South;<br />
+They think a plow's a rack, they do, and cattle-calls are creeds,<br />
+And they think we're burnin' witches, when we're only burnin' weeds.<br />
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">[516]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Those lines are scarcely an exaggeration; and after
+I had stood there listening for half an hour, I began
+to feel uneasily that perhaps, after all, there is in
+Ulster a dour fanaticism which may lead to an ugly
+conflict. Those political adventurers who have
+preached armed resistance so savagely, without really
+meaning a word of it, may have raised a Frankenstein
+which they will find themselves unable to control.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/gs041-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs041.jpg" width="400" height="480" alt="THE CITY HALL, BELFAST" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE CITY HALL, BELFAST<br /><br />HIGH STREET, BELFAST</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>As I turned away, at last, sick at heart that such
+things should be, I passed close by a little group of
+men who were standing on the sidewalk opposite, listening
+to the denunciations of Rome with flushed faces
+and clenched hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have a go at him!" said one of them hoarsely;
+and then he caught my eye, as I lingered to see what
+would happen. "What do you think of that, anyway,
+sir?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's outrageous," I said. "But I wouldn't
+raise a row, if I were you boys; you'll just be playing
+into his hands if you do."</p>
+
+<p>Their leader considered this for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you're right, sir," he agreed, at last. "Come
+on, boys," and they slouched away around the corner.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps, afterwards, when they had got a few
+more drinks, they came back again. It is a peculiarity
+of Belfast that the public houses are allowed to open
+at two o'clock Sunday afternoon, and they are crammed
+from that time forward with a thirsty crowd.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>There is nothing of antiquarian interest at Belfast,
+and its public buildings, though many and various,
+are in no way noteworthy. The sycophancy of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">[517]</a></span>
+town is evidenced by a tall memorial to Prince Albert,
+not quite so ugly however, as the one at London;
+while in front of the city hall stands a heroic figure of
+Victoria. There is a statue to the Marquis of Dufferin,
+and one to Harland the ship-builder, and one
+to Sir James Haslett; and many militant divines,
+in flowing robes, are immortalised in marble. But
+search the streets as you may, you will find no statue
+to any Irish patriot or Irish poet.</p>
+
+<p>Nor will you find a street named after one&mdash;yes,
+there is Patrick Street, but it is a very short and unimportant
+street, and may easily escape notice. The
+shadow of the Victorian Age lies deeply over the place.
+The greatest quay is Albert Quay, and the ship channel
+is Victoria Channel, and the square at the custom
+house is Albert Square, and a little farther along is
+Victoria Square, and just around the corner is Arthur
+Square, and the principal avenue is Royal Avenue, and
+the broad street which leads into it is York Street, and
+the street next to it is Queen Street, and leading off of
+that is Kent Street, and a little distance away is Albert
+Street leading up to Great Victoria Street, and I
+am sure that somewhere in the town there is a Prince
+Consort Street, though I didn't happen upon it!</p>
+
+<p>The churches are all modern and uninteresting,
+though, strangely enough, the Catholic ones are as large
+and ornate as any. You wouldn't think it from the
+way Ulster talks, but about a fourth of the population
+of Belfast is Catholic. There are two small museums,
+neither of which is worth visiting; in a word, the whole
+interest of Belfast is in its shops, its factories and its
+commerce.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">[518]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The shops are wonderfully attractive, especially, of
+course, in objects made of linen. For Belfast is the
+world-centre of the linen trade, whose foundations were
+laid by the Huguenots who found a refuge here after
+Louis XIV banished them from France. It was the
+one Irish industry which England did not interfere
+with, because England produced no linen; and consequently
+it prospered enormously, until to-day there
+are single factories at Belfast where four thousand
+people bend over a thousand looms or watch ten thousand
+spindles, and the annual value of the trade is
+more than sixty million dollars. There are great
+tobacco factories, too, covering acres of ground; and
+the biggest rope-walk in the world; and a distillery
+which covers nineteen acres and&mdash;but the list is interminable.</p>
+
+<p>The most interesting and spectacular of all these
+mighty industries will be found along the river banks,
+where the great ship-building yards are ranged, where
+such monsters as the <i>Olympic</i> and the fated <i>Titanic</i>
+were built and launched, and where the rattle and
+clangour of steel upon steel tells of the labour of
+twenty thousand men. And surely the clang and
+clatter of honest toil which rises from Belfast on week
+days must be more pleasing to the Almighty than the
+clang and clatter which rises from it on Sunday! I
+should think He would be especially disgusted with the
+noises which emanate from about the Custom House!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519">[519]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">The</span> shops of Belfast, with their embroidered linens
+(duty, forty-five per cent!), proved a magnet too great
+for Betty to resist, but I hied me away, next day, into
+County Down, on a pilgrimage to the grave which is
+said to hold the three great apostles of Erin&mdash;Saint
+Brigid and Saint Patrick and Saint Columba. It is in
+the churchyard of the village of Downpatrick that the
+grave lies, and the thirty mile run thither from Belfast
+is through a green and fertile country covered with
+broad fields of flax. There are raths and tumuli here
+and there, and a few ruins topping the neighbouring
+slopes, but it is not until one reaches Downpatrick that
+one comes upon a really impressive memorial of the
+old days.</div>
+
+<p>The cathedral is visible long before the train reaches
+the town, standing on the edge of a high bluff overlooking
+the valley of the Quoile, and it was to it I
+made my way from the station, up a very steep street,
+for Downpatrick, following the fashion of Irish towns,
+is built on the side of a hill&mdash;and also follows the
+fashion in having an Irish Street and an English
+Street and even a Scotch Street, the surviving names,
+I suppose, of the quarters where the people of those
+various nations once lived close together for mutual
+protection.</p>
+
+<p>The cathedral was locked, as Protestant churches<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520">[520]</a></span>
+have a way of being; but the caretaker lives near by
+and came running when his wife told him that there
+was a strange gentleman wished to see the church. He
+was a very Scotch Irishman, and as he took me
+around the bare, white interior, he said proudly:
+"There's not much high church about this. Not a bit
+of flummery will we have here&mdash;no candles or vestments
+or anything of that sort. Our people wouldn't
+stand it&mdash;it savours too much of Romanism."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet," I said, "it was Saint Patrick who
+founded this very church, and you have him and
+Saint Brigid and Saint Columba buried in your churchyard."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and we're proud to have them," he retorted
+quickly, "for they weren't Romanists&mdash;they were just
+Christians, and good ones, too. The Protestants of
+Ireland can honour Patrick and Brigid just as much
+as the Catholics do. It wasn't till long after their
+day that the Irish church made submission to Rome."</p>
+
+<p>There is a modicum of truth in this, for, though it is
+probable that St. Patrick was regularly ordained a
+bishop and is even sometimes asserted to have been
+sent on his mission by Pope Celestine himself, the ties
+which bound Irish Catholics to Rome were for many
+centuries very slight indeed, and it was not until after
+the Norman conquest that the authority of Rome was
+fully acknowledged; and this independence has persisted,
+in a way, even to the present day; for while
+Irish Catholics, of course, acknowledge absolutely the
+supremacy of the Holy See in all spiritual affairs, they
+have always been quick to resent its interference in
+things temporal, and their tolerance toward other religions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521">[521]</a></span>
+than their own stands almost unique in history.
+It is, perhaps, a racial characteristic, for the Pagan
+Irish, during all the years of Patrick's mission among
+them, never seriously persecuted him and never slew
+a Christian.</p>
+
+<p>Here at the spot where that mission began it is fitting
+that I should say a word of it. Of Saint Patrick
+himself very little is certainly known, for he was a man
+of deeds and not of words, and left no record of his
+life; but there seems no valid reason to doubt the traditional
+account of him; that he was born at Kilpatrick,
+in Scotland, somewhere about 390; that his father was
+a Roman citizen and a Christian; that, when about sixteen
+years of age, he was captured by a band of raiding
+Irish, carried back to Ireland as a slave, sold to an
+Ulster chief named Milcho, and for six years tended
+his master's flocks on the slopes of Slemish, one of the
+Antrim hills. In the end he escaped and made his
+way back to his home in Britain; but once there his
+thoughts turned back to Erin, and in his dreams he
+heard the cries of the Pagan Irish imploring him to
+return, bearing the torch of Christianity.</p>
+
+<p>The voices grew too strong to be resisted, and in
+432 he was back on the Irish coast again, having in
+the meantime been ordained a bishop of the Catholic
+Church; and he sailed along the coast until he came to
+Strangford Lough, where he turned in and landed.
+His purpose was to go back to Slemish and ransom himself
+from the master from whom he had escaped, but he
+paused at a large sabhall, or barn, and said his first
+Mass on Irish soil. It was to that spot he afterwards
+returned, when the hand of death was upon him, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522">[522]</a></span>
+end his days; and the little village that stands there is
+Sabhall, or Saul, to this day. He went on, after that,
+to the great dun, or fort, of the kings of Ulster, which
+we ourselves shall visit presently, and from which
+Downpatrick takes its name. Then, finding his old
+master dead, he began his life-work. His success was
+so extraordinary that at the end of thirty years, the
+conversion of the Irish was complete.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 319px;">
+<a href="images/gs042-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs042.jpg" width="319" height="500" alt="THE GRAVE OF PATRICK, BRIGID AND COLUMBA" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE GRAVE OF PATRICK, BRIGID AND COLUMBA<br /><br />THE OLD CROSS AT DOWNPATRICK</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>At last, feeling his end near, he made his way back
+to the sanctuary at Saul, died there, and was brought
+for burial to this bluff overlooking the great rath below.
+Legend has it that Saint Brigid wove his winding-sheet.
+She herself, when she died, was buried before
+the high altar of her church at Kildare; and there are
+two stories of why her body was removed to St. Patrick's
+grave. One is that, in 878, her followers, fearing
+that her grave would be desecrated by the Danes,
+removed her body to Downpatrick and buried it in
+the grave with the great apostle, where the remains of
+St. Columba had been brought from Iona and placed
+nearly two centuries before for the same reason. The
+other story is that the bones of St. Brigid and St.
+Columba both were brought here in 1185 by John de
+Courcy, to whom Ulster had been granted by the English
+king,&mdash;and who had surprised and captured Downpatrick
+eight years previously,&mdash;in the hope of conciliating
+the people he had conquered. Either story may be
+true; but all that need concern us now is that there
+seems to be no question that the three great apostles of
+Ireland really do lie at rest within this grave.</p>
+
+<p>De Courcy enlarged the cathedral, which, before
+that, had been a poor affair, dedicated it to Saint Patrick,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523">[523]</a></span>
+and caused effigies of the three saints to be placed
+above the east window with a Latin couplet over them:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Hi tres in duno, tumulo tumulantur in uno<br />
+Brigida, Patritius, atque Columba pius.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The stone which marks the grave is in the yard just
+outside the church&mdash;a great, irregular monolith of
+Mourne granite, weatherworn and untouched by human
+hand, except for an incised Celtic cross and the word
+"Patric" in rude Celtic letters&mdash;one monument, at
+least, in Ireland which is wholly dignified and worthy.</p>
+
+<p>One other thing of antiquarian interest there is near
+by, and that is an ancient cross, said to have stood originally
+on the fort of the King of Ulster, but removed
+by De Courcy and set up in front of his castle in the
+centre of the town, as a sign of his sovereignty, where
+it was knocked to pieces when the castle was. The
+fragments have been put together, and battered and
+worn as it is, the carvings can still be dimly seen&mdash;the
+crucifixion in the centre, with stiff representations of
+Bible scenes below. It is ruder than most, as may be
+seen from the photograph opposite <a href="#Page_522">page 522</a>, for the
+circle which surrounds the cross is merely indicated and
+not cut through. There has been much controversy
+as to the origin of this circle, which is the distinctive
+feature of the Celtic cross; but I have never yet seen
+any theory which seemed anything more than a guess&mdash;and
+not a particularly good guess, either.</p>
+
+<p>Of the first church which was built here not a trace
+remains, and even of the structure of 1137 there is little
+left. For Downpatrick, with the priories and
+monasteries and hospitals and convents and other religious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524">[524]</a></span>
+establishments which had grown up around the
+sacred grave of the saints, was one of the first objects
+of attack when Henry VIII began his suppression of
+the religious houses. Lord Grey marched hither at the
+head of a regiment of soldiers and plundered the place
+and set fire to it, so that only an empty shell was left.
+The crumbling and blackened ruin stood undisturbed
+for more than two hundred years, and when its restoration
+was finally undertaken, it was found that only five
+arches of the nave were solid enough to be retained.
+So the present structure is only about a century old,
+except for that one stretch of wall and a recessed doorway
+under the east window. The old effigies of Brigid
+and Patrick and Columba, which Grey pulled down
+and knocked to pieces, have been replaced in the niches
+above the window, but they are sadly mutilated. In
+the vestry is a portrait of Jeremy Taylor, who was
+Bishop of Down for nearly seventy years, but there is
+little else of interest in the church. The most imposing
+thing about it is its position at the edge of the high
+bluff, looking out across the valley of the Quoire to the
+Mourne mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Just to the north of this bluff and almost in its
+shadow, close to the bank of a little stream, still stands
+the enormous rath built two thousand years ago by
+Celtchair, one of the heroes of the Red Branch of
+Ulster, and here he and the chiefs who came after him
+had their stronghold. So great was its fame that
+Ptolemy, in far off Egypt, heard of it, and it was gradually
+enlarged and strengthened until there were few
+in Ireland to equal it. The sea helped to guard it, for
+at high tide the water flowed up over the flats along the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_525" id="Page_525">[525]</a></span>
+Quoile and lapped against it; but the erection of sluice-gates
+farther down the stream has shut away the tide,
+and it stands now in the midst of a marsh.</p>
+
+<p>To get to it, one passes along the wall of the jail&mdash;one
+of the largest I had seen anywhere in Ireland, and
+which Murray proudly says cost $315,000&mdash;and scrambles
+down into the marsh, and there before one is the
+rath. My picture of it, the top one opposite the next
+page, was taken from close beside the jail, many hundreds
+of yards away, and gives no idea of its size, except
+for the thread-like path which you may perceive
+running up one end, which is two or three feet wide,
+and fully seventy feet long.</p>
+
+<p>The rath is an immense circular rampart of earth,
+nearly three quarters of a mile in circumference, fifty
+feet high, and so steep that I had great difficulty in
+getting up it, even by the path. Around it runs a fosse
+or ditch some forty feet wide and nine or ten feet
+deep. This, of course, was deeper in the old days, and
+would remain filled with water even when the tide was
+out. Inside the circular rampart, the ground drops
+some twenty feet into a large enclosure, near the centre
+of which a great mound, surrounded by a ditch ten feet
+deep, towers sixty feet into the air.</p>
+
+<p>The central mound corresponds to the keep or donjon
+tower of more modern forts, the last place of refuge
+and defence when the outer ramparts had been forced;
+and it was on this mound that the dwellings of the
+chiefs stood, rude enough, no doubt, though they were
+the palaces of kings. The tribal huts clustered in the
+enclosure about the foot of the mound; and so perfectly
+is the whole place preserved&mdash;though of course<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_526" id="Page_526">[526]</a></span>
+there is now no trace of hut or palace&mdash;that one has
+little difficulty in picturing the busy life which went
+on there&mdash;the throngs of men and women and children,
+the tribal council gathered on the summit of the great
+mound to listen to the chief, the departure of expeditions
+for war or for the chase, the arrival of envoys
+from some other chieftain or perhaps of some minstrel,
+his harp slung across his shoulder.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 319px;">
+<a href="images/gs043-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs043.jpg" width="319" height="500" alt="THE GREAT RATH AT DOWNPATRICK" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE GREAT RATH AT DOWNPATRICK<br /><br />THE INNER AND OUTER CIRCLES<br /><br />THE CENTRAL MOUND</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>I tore myself away, at last, for there was another
+place I wished to visit, and it was three miles distant&mdash;the
+Holy Wells of Struell. The caretaker at the
+cathedral had pointed out the route, so I climbed back
+past the prison, and went down through the town and
+up Irish Street beyond, and over Gallows Hill, where
+some unfortunate Irishmen were hanged during the
+rebellion of '98. The road beyond ran between high
+hedge-rows and under arching trees, whose shade was
+very grateful, for the day was the hottest I had experienced
+in Ireland; and then it crossed the white
+high-road and ran close under a long stretch of wall
+which surrounded an enormous and ornate building.
+I asked a passer-by what it was, and he answered that
+it was a madhouse, and big as it was, was none too big.
+Murray supplies the information that it cost half a
+million.</p>
+
+<p>There is a workhouse in the town which, from the
+look of it, must have cost $300,000&mdash;or say a million
+dollars for the three together, the jail, the workhouse
+and the asylum, every cent of it, of course, raised by
+taxation from the poorest people in the world! Sadly
+pondering this, I went on along the lane, and the heat
+made the way seem very long. But a girl I met assured<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527">[527]</a></span>
+me that I had not much farther to go&mdash;only past
+the farm at the foot of the hill; and presently I came to
+the farm, a handsome one, with the dwelling-house
+surrounded by well-built barns and stables, and a man
+there directed me to the wells, down a little by-road.
+Five minutes later, I had reached the rude stone huts
+which cover the Holy Wells of Struell.</p>
+
+<p>Down the middle of a pretty valley, a small stream
+leaps from rock to rock, pausing here and there in little
+pools, and these pools are the "wells." Each of them
+is protected by a stone-walled, stone-roofed cell, built
+in the old days when the wells were in their glory, and
+now falling to decay. Just beyond the wells is a group
+of thatched cottages, and a girl of eight or nine, seeing
+my approach, hurried out from one of them and
+volunteered to act as guide, scenting, of course, the
+chance to earn a penny. And she took me first to what
+she said was the drinking-well, a little grass-grown
+pool in a fence-corner, and though she seemed to expect
+me to drink, I didn't, for the water looked stale and
+scummy.</p>
+
+<p>Then we climbed a wall, and walked over to a stone
+cubicle, which stood in the middle of a potato patch.
+This is the eye-well, and the cell over it is just large
+enough to permit a person to enter and kneel down
+above the water and bathe the affected parts. I took
+a picture of it which you will find opposite the next
+page. Then she led me to the largest well of all, the
+body well, or well of sins, where it is necessary to undress
+and immerse the whole body.</p>
+
+<p>The stone building over the body well is divided into
+two parts by a solid wall, and one part is for men and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528">[528]</a></span>
+the other for women. The disrobing is done in the
+outer chamber, which has a low stone bench running
+around three sides, and then the penitent enters a small
+inner chamber, descends some six or seven steps into the
+pool of water, and, I suppose, places himself below the
+stream which falls into the pool from the end of a
+pipe. As its name indicates, this well was supposed
+to have the power of washing away all disease, both
+physical and moral, and time was when it was very
+popular. The effect of the cold bath was so exhilarating,
+and the sudden sense of freedom from sin and disease
+so uplifting, that the penitents would sometimes
+rush forth to proclaim their blessed state without pausing
+to resume their garments. Naturally a lot of
+impious Orangemen would gather to see the fun; and
+finally both the secular authorities and the Catholic
+clergy set their faces against the practices, with the
+result that they gradually fell into disuse. Only single
+pilgrims, or small companies, at most, come now to
+bathe in the magic waters, and their behaviour is most
+circumspect. The cells, themselves, are well-nigh in
+ruins. A chapel to Saint Patrick, from whom these
+waters derive their efficacy, was begun during the day
+of their popularity, but was never finished, and now
+only a fragment of it remains.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 319px;">
+<a href="images/gs044-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs044.jpg" width="319" height="500" alt="THE EYE WELL AT STRUELL" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE EYE WELL AT STRUELL<br /><br />THE WELL OF SINS AT STRUELL</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>While I was man&oelig;uvring for a photograph of the
+well of sins, a middle-aged woman came out of a
+near-by cottage to advise me where to stand. She had
+seen many pictures taken of the well, she said, and
+the place that made the best picture was on top of the
+wall around her garden, and I climbed up on it, and
+found that she was right.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_529" id="Page_529">[529]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Tis a warm day," she went on, when I descended,
+"and your honour must be tired with the long walk.
+Will you not come in and sit a spell?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," I said; "I'll be glad to&mdash;it <i>is</i> hot,"
+and I followed her into a lovely old kitchen, with
+floor of flags, and whitewashed walls gleaming with
+pots and pans, and with a tall dresser in one corner
+glittering with a brave array of china. In here it was
+quite cool, so that after the first moment, the open
+grate of glowing coals, with the usual bubbling pot
+above it and the usual kettle on the hob, felt very
+pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>I expressed surprise that she was burning coal, and
+she said the landlords of the neighbourhood had shut
+up the peat-bogs, in order to make every one buy English
+coal; and it was very hard indeed on the poor people,
+who had always been used to getting their fuel for
+the labour of cutting it, besides shutting them off from
+earning a little money by selling the turf to the people
+in the town, who would rather have it than coal. But
+the landlords were always doing things like that, and
+it did no good to complain. She had two brothers in
+America, she said, and lived here at Struell and kept
+house for a third. She and her brother were both unmarried,
+and would probably always remain so. Then,
+of course, she wanted to know about my condition in
+life, and I described it as freely as she had described
+her own. And then she asked me if I wouldn't like a
+glass of milk, and when I said I would, she hastened
+to get it from the milk-house, through which a clear
+little stream trickled, and very sweet and cool it was.</p>
+
+<p>And then we got to talking about Ulster's attitude<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_530" id="Page_530">[530]</a></span>
+toward Home Rule. County Down, you should remember,
+is one of the nine counties which form the
+Province of Ulster, and is the most strongly Protestant
+of all of them outside of Belfast and Antrim, for only
+about one third of its 200,000 people are Catholic.</p>
+
+<p>"God knows what will happen," said my hostess,
+very seriously. "I have been hearing a lot of wild
+talk, but paid no heed to it, for these Orangemen are
+always talkin' about this or that, and their talk means
+nothing. But I've come to think it may be more than
+just talk this time. I heard a few days since that all
+the Orangemen hereabouts have been getting together
+three evenings every week in a meadow over beyont,
+and an officer of the army comes there and drills them
+till it is too dark to see. And they say, too, that there
+is a gun ready for each of them, with plenty of powder
+and lead to put into it; and they've sleuthered a lot
+of poor boys into joinin' with them who have not the
+courage to say no. But I'm hoping it will pass by, and
+that no trouble will come of it. I am a Catholic myself,
+but we have never had any trouble with the Protestants.
+We get along very well together, and why
+shouldn't we? Some of my best friends are Protestants,
+and I know they wish us no harm. No, no,
+we are well-placed here, though them ones in the south
+do be calling us the black north."</p>
+
+<p>I told her something of the destitution and misery
+I had seen in the south and west; but she showed no
+great sympathy&mdash;rather a contempt, I fancied, for people
+who could be so easy-going and unambitious. She
+herself seemed of a very different breed; and the shining
+kitchen, as clean as a new pin, proved what a delight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_531" id="Page_531">[531]</a></span>
+and pride she took in her home and how energetic
+a housewife she was. Personally she was just as clean
+and tidy as her kitchen, with hair neatly brushed and
+a bit of white about her throat; and the apron she had
+on was a fresh one, newly-ironed&mdash;something I never
+saw upon any peasant woman of the south. She
+brought out an album of photographs, presently&mdash;photographs
+of herself and of her brother, and various
+photographs of the wells, and I promised to send her
+a print of mine, if it proved to be a good one. And
+then I bade her good-bye and started back the way I
+came; but I can still see her shrewd and kindly face,
+with the little wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, and
+the cool, sweet-smelling kitchen where I spent that
+pleasant hour.</p>
+
+<p>I walked about the steep streets of Downpatrick
+quite a while, after I reached the town, and found them
+unusually quaint. Like so many other towns in Ireland,
+this one is all too evidently on the down grade.
+The tall houses, which were once the residences of the
+well-to-do, have been turned into tenements, and while
+they are not so dirty and repulsive as those of Dublin
+and Limerick, they are still bad enough. Others of
+the houses are empty and falling into ruin. One curious
+thing about the place is that from any quarter of
+it the town-hall is visible, standing in the hollow at
+the bottom of the hill, for the five principal streets
+start from it&mdash;Irish Street and English Street and
+Scotch Street and two others whose names I have forgotten,
+but which were, perhaps, the neutral ground of
+trade.</p>
+
+<p>I made my way down to the station, at last, and as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_532" id="Page_532">[532]</a></span>
+the train started, a young fellow in the same compartment
+with me bade a tearful farewell to the relatives
+and friends who had gathered to see him off, and sat for
+some time thereafter weeping unaffectedly into his
+handkerchief. When he was a little calmer, I asked
+him if he was going to America. He said no; he
+was going only to Belfast, but that was a long way!</p>
+
+<p>It is really only about thirty miles; but thirty miles
+is a great journey to the average Irishman. For the
+Irishman is no traveller; he is quite content to spend
+his life within the circle of one small horizon, and
+never so happy as when sitting at his own fireside.
+Indeed, he is apt to regard with suspicion those who
+have nothing better to do than wander about the world.
+Mayo tinkers have always had a bad name in Ireland,
+not because they do anything especially to deserve it,
+but merely because they make their living in an unnatural
+fashion by roaming from place to place.
+Surely there must be something wrong with a man who
+does that!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>That night, at Belfast, we went to a variety show.
+The Wild West film seems as popular here as in the rest
+of Ireland, for a particularly sensational one, where the
+heroine escaped from the Indians by going hand over
+hand along a rope above a deep ravine, into which the
+Indians were precipitated by the hero, who cut the
+rope when they started to cross by it, was received with
+great enthusiasm. There were also some scattered
+cheers when a conjuror, with carefully calculated effect,
+produced portraits of the King and Queen from somewhere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_533" id="Page_533">[533]</a></span>
+and waved them before the audience. But the
+cheers were thin and forced, and by far the most of
+those present sat grimly silent and stared at the pictures
+with set faces.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_534" id="Page_534">[534]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">I had</span> one other trip to make in Ireland. That was
+to the scene of the battle of the Boyne, to the tombs
+of the kings at Dowth and Newgrange, and to the
+ruins near-by of two of the most famous and beautiful
+of the old abbeys, Mellifont and Monasterboice.
+Readers of this book will remember that, early in the
+narrative, Betty and I had journeyed up from Dublin
+to Drogheda for the purpose of visiting these historic
+places, but had been prevented by a combination of unforeseen
+circumstances.</div>
+
+<p>It was, then, for Drogheda that I set out next morning,
+Betty having voted for another day in the Belfast
+shops; and by a singular coincidence it was the
+first day of July, the anniversary of that other day
+in 1690 when the army of William of Orange defeated
+the battalions of Irishmen who had rallied around
+James&mdash;and surely never had braver men a poorer
+leader! But it was not really the anniversary, for
+the change in the calendar has shifted the date to July
+12th, and it is on that day the Orangemen celebrate.</p>
+
+<p>It is an eighty mile run from Belfast to Drogheda,
+and one of the most picturesque and interesting in the
+east of Ireland; and the weather god was kind to the
+last, for a brighter, sweeter day it would be impossible
+to imagine. As the train leaves the city, there are
+glimpses to the right of the purple hills of Antrim;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_535" id="Page_535">[535]</a></span>
+and then the train pauses at the busy town of Lisbun,
+and continues on over the Ulster canal, past the battlefield
+of Moira, past the beautiful woods of Lurgan,
+and then through a prosperous and fertile country,
+with broad fields of grain and flax, and pretty villages,
+and so into Portadown, once the stronghold of the
+McCahans.</p>
+
+<p>I was travelling third that day, as always when
+alone, and the compartment had four or five people in
+it; and I had noticed that one of them, a man poorly
+clad and with a kit of tools in a little bag, had been
+looking anxiously from the window for some time.
+Finally he leaned over and touched me on the knee.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you tell me, sir, if this is the train to Derry?"
+he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No; it's going to Dublin," I said; and just then it
+rumbled to a stop, and he opened the door and slipped
+hastily out.</p>
+
+<p>What happened to him I don't know, but he was in
+no way to blame for the mistake, which was due to the
+abominable custom they have in Ireland of starting
+trains for different places from the same platform,
+within a minute or two of each other. That morning,
+at Belfast, there had been a long line of coaches beside
+one of the platforms; no engines were as yet attached
+to them, but the front part of the line was
+destined for Dublin, and the rear portion for Derry,
+but there was no way to tell where one train ended and
+the other began, and no examination was made of the
+passengers' tickets before the trains started.</p>
+
+<p>I was wary, for I had been caught in exactly the
+same way once before, at Claremorris Junction, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_536" id="Page_536">[536]</a></span>
+had escaped being carried back to Westport only by
+stopping the train, amid great excitement, after it had
+started. So, that morning at Belfast, I had assured
+myself by repeated inquiry of various officials that the
+carriage I was in was going the way I wanted to go; but
+any traveller unwary or unaccustomed to the vagaries
+of Irish roads, such as this poor fellow, might easily
+have been caught napping. Where it is necessary to
+start two trains close together from the same platform,
+it would seem to be only ordinary precaution to examine
+the passengers' tickets before locking the doors.</p>
+
+<p>From Portadown, the road runs along the valley of
+the Bann, past the ruins of the old fortress of Redmond
+O'Hanlon, an outlaw almost as famous in Irish history
+as Robin Hood is in English; and then it passes Scarva,
+with a mighty cairn marking the grave of Fergus
+Fogha, who fell in battle here sixteen centuries ago.
+Here, too, are the ruins of one of General Monk's old
+castles, and on a neighbouring slope the grass-green
+walls of a great rath, the stronghold of some more
+ancient chieftain. Indeed, there are raths and cashels
+and ivy-draped ruins all about, the work of Irish and
+Dane and Norman and later English, for here was a
+pass across the bog from Down into Armagh, and so a
+chosen spot for defence and the exacting of tribute.</p>
+
+<p>Then the train is carried by a viaduct half a mile
+long over the deep and wild ravine of Craigmore,
+leaves Newry on the left and climbs steadily, with
+beautiful views of the Mourne mountains to the right,
+plunges at last through a deep cutting, and comes out
+under the shadow of the Forkhill mountains, with the
+mighty mass of Slieve Gullion overtopping them. Just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_537" id="Page_537">[537]</a></span>
+beyond is Mowry Pass, the only pass between north
+and south, except round by the coast, and so, of course,
+the scene of many a desperate conflict.</p>
+
+<p>From this point on, for many miles, the scenery is
+very wild and beautiful, and every foot of it has been
+a battle-ground. Just before the train reaches Dundalk,
+it passes close to the hill of Faughart, topped by
+a great earthwork, and it was here that Edward Bruce
+was slain in battle a year after he had been crowned
+king of Ireland; and farther on is another rath, the
+Dun of Dealgan, where dwelt Cuchulain, chief of the
+Red Branch Knights, and one of the great heroes of
+Irish legend. It was from Dun Dealgan that Dundalk
+took its name, and Dundalk was for centuries the key to
+the road to Ulster and the northern limit of the English
+pale, which had Dublin for its centre. Merely to
+enumerate the battles which have been fought here
+would fill a page; but the train rumbles on, past a little
+church which uses the fragment of a round tower for a
+belfry, past the modern castle of the Bellinghams, built
+from the proceeds of a famous brewery, past a wayside
+Calvary, and so at last into Drogheda. And when I
+arrived there, I had completed the circuit of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>The car which was to make the round of the Boyne
+valley was waiting outside the station, at the top of
+that long, ugly street which looked so familiar now that
+I saw it again; and after waiting awhile for other
+passengers and finding there was none, we drove down
+into the town, where another passenger was waiting&mdash;a
+clergyman with grey hair and blue eyes and white
+refined face, Church of England by his garb, and, as
+I found out afterwards, Oxford by residence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_538" id="Page_538">[538]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And here again it looked for a moment as though I
+was to be balked a second time of seeing Mellifont and
+Monasterboice, for it was Tuesday, and on Tuesday,
+it seemed, the round was by way of Slane; but the
+driver left the choice of routes to his passengers, and
+the clergyman said he didn't care where we went so
+we saw the Boyne battlefield; and with that we set off
+westward along the pleasant road, and soon, far ahead,
+we saw the top of the great obelisk opposite the place
+where Schomberg fell. The road dips steeply into
+King William's Glen, along which the centre of the
+Protestant army advanced to the river, and then we
+were on the spot where the cause of Protestant ascendency
+in Ireland triumphed finally and irrevocably and
+where the Cromwellian settlements were sealed past
+overthrow.</p>
+
+<p>William, with his English and his Dutch, had
+marched down from Dundalk, and James, with his
+Irish and his French, had marched up from Dublin,
+and here on either side of this placid little river, where
+the hills slope down to the Oldbridge ford, the armies
+took their station; and here, a little after ten o'clock
+in the morning, brave old Schomberg, whose tomb, you
+will remember, we saw in St. Patrick's at Dublin (how
+long ago that seems!), led his Dutch guards and his
+regiment of Huguenots into the water, across the ford,
+and up the bank on the other side. There, for a moment,
+his troops fell into disorder before the fierce attack
+of the Irish, and as he tried to rally them, a band
+of Irish horse rushed upon him, circled round him
+and left him dead upon the ground. Almost at the
+same moment, the white-haired Walker, who had exhorted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_539" id="Page_539">[539]</a></span>
+the defenders of Derry never to surrender, was
+shot dead while urging on the men of Ulster. But
+though the Irish were able to hold their ground at first,
+and even to drive their assailants back into the river,
+a long flanking movement which William had set on
+foot earlier in the day, caught them unprepared, and
+they gave way, at last, before superior numbers and
+superior discipline.</p>
+
+<p>Long before that, King James had fled the field,
+and, without stopping, spurred on to Dublin, thirty
+miles away. He reached that city at ten o'clock that
+night, tired, hungry, and complaining bitterly to Lady
+Tyrconnell that the Irish had run faster than he had
+ever seen men do before. Lady Tyrconnell was an
+Irishwoman, and her eyes blazed. "In that, as in all
+other things," she said, "it is evident that Your Majesty
+surpasses them"; and Patrick Sarsfield, who had been
+placed that day in command of the king's bodyguard,
+and so had got nowhere near the fighting, sent back
+to the Protestants his famous challenge, "Change kings,
+and we will fight it over again!"</p>
+
+<p>Well, all that was more than two centuries ago;
+there is no more placidly beautiful spot in Ireland
+than this green valley, with the silver stream rippling
+past; but the staunch Protestants of the north still
+baptise their babies with water dipped from the river
+below the obelisk. And they are not altogether wrong,
+for that river is the river of their deliverance; and perhaps,
+in some distant day, when new justice has wiped
+out the memory of ancient wrong, Irish Catholics will
+agree with Irish Protestants that it was better William
+should have won that day than James.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_540" id="Page_540">[540]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 316px;">
+<a href="images/gs045-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs045.jpg" width="316" height="500" alt="THE BIRTHPLACE OF JOHN BOYLE O&#39;REILLY" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE BIRTHPLACE OF JOHN BOYLE O&#39;REILLY<br /><br />ENTRANCE TO DOWTH TUMULUS</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>My clerical companion, guide-book in hand, had
+carefully noted every detail of the field, and it was
+evident from his shining eyes how his soul was stirred
+by the thought of that old victory. But our driver
+sat humped on his box, smoking silently, his face very
+grim. This job of driving Protestant clergymen to
+Boyne battlefield must be a trying one for the followers
+of Brigid and Patrick! But at last my companion
+had seen enough, and closed his book with a little sigh
+of happiness and satisfaction; and our driver whistled
+to his horse, and we climbed slowly out of the valley.</p>
+
+<p>We had about a mile of hedge-lined road, after that,
+and, looking down from it, we caught glimpses of
+wooded demesnes across the river, with the chimneys
+of handsome houses showing above the trees&mdash;and they,
+too, are the symbols of William's victory, for they are
+the homes of the conquerors, the visible signs of that
+social order which Boyne battle established, and which
+still endures.</p>
+
+<p>And then our driver, who had recovered his good-humour,
+pointed out to us a great mound in the midst
+of a level field&mdash;a circular mound, with steep sides and
+flat top, and a certain artificial appearance, though it
+seemed too big to be artificial. And yet it is, for it
+was built about two thousand years ago as a sepulchre
+for the mighty dead.</p>
+
+<p>For all this left bank of the river was the so-called
+Brugh-na-Boinne, the burying-ground of the old
+Milesian kings of Tara; and two great tumuli are left
+to show that the kings of Erin, like the kings of ancient
+Egypt and the kings of the still more ancient
+Moundbuilders, were given sepulchres worthy of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_541" id="Page_541">[541]</a></span>
+greatness. Yet there is a difference. The tombs of
+the Moundbuilders were mere earthen tumuli heaped
+above the dead; the pyramids of the Egyptians were
+carefully wrought in stone. The tumuli of the ancient
+Irish stand midway between the two. First great
+slabs were placed on end, and other slabs laid across
+the uprights; and in this vaulted chamber the ashes of
+the dead were laid; and then loose stones were heaped
+above it until it was completely covered. Sometimes
+a passage would be left, but that would be a secret
+known to few, and when the tomb was done it would
+seem to be nothing more than a great circular mound of
+stones. As the years passed, the stones would be covered
+gradually with earth, and then with grass and
+bushes, and trees would grow upon it, until there would
+be nothing left to distinguish it from any other hill.
+Only within the last half century have the tumuli been
+explored, and then it was to find that the Danes had
+spared not even these sanctuaries, but had entered
+them and despoiled the inner chambers. Nevertheless,
+they remain among the most impressive human
+monuments to be found anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>This first tumulus we came to is the tumulus of
+Dowth, and a woman met us at the gate opening into
+the field where it stands, gave us each a lighted candle,
+and led the way to the top of an iron ladder which
+ran straight down into the bowels of the earth. We
+descended some twenty feet into a cavity as cold as ice;
+then, following the light of the woman's candle, we
+squeezed along a narrow passage made of great stones
+tilted together at the top, so low in places that we had
+to bend double, so close together in others that we had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_542" id="Page_542">[542]</a></span>
+to advance sideways blessing our slimness; and finally
+we came to the great central chamber where the dead
+were placed.</p>
+
+<p>It is about ten feet square, and its walls, like those of
+the passage, are formed by huge blocks of stone set on
+end. Then other slabs were laid a-top them, and then
+on one another, each slab overlapping by eight or ten
+inches the one below, until a last great stone closed
+the central aperture and the roof was done. In the
+centre the chamber is about twelve feet high. Many
+of the stones are carved with spirals and concentric
+circles and wheel-crosses and Ogham writing&mdash;yes, and
+with the initials of hundreds of vandals!</p>
+
+<p>In the centre of the floor is a shallow stone basin,
+about four feet square, used perhaps for some ceremony
+in connection with the burials&mdash;sacrifice naturally suggests
+itself, such as tradition connects with Druid worship;
+and opening from the chamber are three recesses,
+about six feet deep, also constructed of gigantic stones,
+and in these, it is surmised, the ashes of the dead were
+laid. From one of these recesses a passage, whose
+floor is a single cyclopean stone eight feet long, leads
+to another recess, smaller than the first ones. When
+the tomb was first entered, little heaps of burned bones
+were found, many of them human&mdash;for it should be remembered
+that the ancient Irish burned their dead before
+enclosing them in cists or burying them in tumuli.
+There were also unburned bones of pigs and deer and
+birds, and glass and amber beads, and copper pins and
+rings; and before the Danes despoiled it, there were
+doubtless torques of gold, and brooches set with jewels&mdash;but
+the robbers left nothing of that sort behind them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_543" id="Page_543">[543]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nobody knows when this mound was built; but the
+men who cut the spirals and circles&mdash;and in one place
+a leaf, not incised, but standing out in bold relief&mdash;must
+have had tools of iron or bronze to work with;
+so the date of the mound's erection can be fixed approximately
+at about the beginning of the Christian era.
+For the rest, all is legend. But as one stands there in
+that cyclopean chamber, the wonder of the thing, its
+uncanniness, its mystery, grow more and more overwhelming,
+until one peers around nervously, in the dim
+and wavering candle-light, expecting to see I know not
+what. With me, that sensation passed; for I happened
+suddenly to remember how George Moore and A. E.
+made a pilgrimage to this spot, one day, and sat in
+this dark chamber, cross-legged like Yogin, trying to
+evoke the spirits of the Druids, and just when they
+were about to succeed, or so it seemed, the vision was
+shattered by the arrival of two portly Presbyterian
+preachers.</p>
+
+<p>There is another entrance to the tumulus, about half
+way up, which opens into smaller and probably more
+recent chambers; and after a glance at them, we clambered
+to the top. Far off to the west, we could see the
+hill of Tara, where the old kings who are buried here
+held their court and gave great banquets in a hall seven
+hundred feet long, of which scarce a trace remains; and
+a little nearer, to the north, is the hill of Slane, where,
+on that Easter eve sixteen centuries ago, St. Patrick
+lighted his first Paschal fire in Ireland, in defiance of a
+Druidic law which decreed that in this season of the
+Festival of Spring, no man should kindle a fire in
+Meath until the sacred beacon blazed from Tara. You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_544" id="Page_544">[544]</a></span>
+may guess the consternation of the priests when,
+through the gathering twilight, they first glimpsed that
+little flame which Patrick had kindled on the summit
+of Slane, just across the valley. That, I think, is
+easily the most breathless and dramatic moment in
+Irish history. The king sent his warriors to see what
+this defiance meant, and Patrick was brought to Tara,
+and he came into the assembly chanting a verse of
+Scripture: "Some in chariots and some on horses, but
+we in the name of the Lord our God." And so his
+mission began.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side of the mound, across a field and
+beyond a wall, I could see what seemed to be an ivy-draped
+ruin, and I asked our guide what it might be,
+and she said it was the birthplace of John Boyle
+O'Reilly. It was but a short walk, and my companion
+said he would wait for me; so I hastened down the
+mound and across the field and over the wall, and found
+that what I had seen was indeed a tall old house, draped
+with ivy and falling into ruin. Just back of it is a
+church, also in ruins, and again its wall is a granite
+monument to O'Reilly, more remarkable for its size
+than for any other quality. There is a bust of the
+poet at the top, and on either side a weeping female
+figure, and a long inscription in Gaelic, which of course
+I couldn't read; and which may have been very eloquent.
+But if it had been for me to write his epitaph,
+I would have chosen a single verse of his as all-sufficient:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Kindness is the Word.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Then, as I was wading out through the meadow to
+get a picture of the house, I met with a misadventure,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_545" id="Page_545">[545]</a></span>
+for, disturbed by my passage, a bee started up out of
+the grass, struck me on the end of the nose, clung
+wildly there an instant, and then stung viciously. It
+was with tears of anguish streaming down my cheeks
+that I snapped the picture opposite the preceding page.</p>
+
+<p>Dowth Castle is not the ancestral home of the
+O'Reillys; that stood on Tullymongan, above the town
+of Cavan, of which they were lords for perhaps a
+thousand years. Dowth Castle, on the other hand,
+was built by Hugh de Lacy, as an outpost of the English
+pale; but it came at last into the hands of an
+eccentric Irishman who, about a century ago, bequeathed
+it and some of the land about it as a school
+for orphans and a refuge for widows. The Netterville
+Institution, as it was called, came to comprise
+also a National school, and of this school John Boyle
+O'Reilly's father, William David O'Reilly, was master
+for thirty-five years. He and his wife lived in the
+castle, here in 1844 the poet was born, and here he
+spent the first eleven years of his life. What fate
+finally overtook the castle I don't know, but only
+the ivy-draped outer walls remain. The trim
+modern buildings of the Institution cluster in its
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>I made my way back to the car, where my companion,
+who was not interested in O'Reilly, was awaiting
+me somewhat impatiently, and I think he regarded the
+bee which had stung me as an agent of Providence.
+But we set off again, and the car climbed up and up
+to the summit of the ridge which overlooks the river;
+and presently we were rolling along a narrow road
+bordered with lofty elms, and then, in a broad pasture<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_546" id="Page_546">[546]</a></span>
+to our right, we saw another mound, far larger than
+the first, and knew that it was Newgrange.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 316px;">
+<a href="images/gs046-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs046.jpg" width="316" height="500" alt="ENTRANCE TO NEWGRANGE" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">ENTRANCE TO NEWGRANGE<br /><br />THE RUINS OF MELLIFONT</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>Four mighty stones stand like sentinels before it.
+The largest of them is eight or nine feet high above
+the ground and at least twenty in girth; and they are
+all that are left of a ring of thirty-five similar monsters
+which once guarded the great cairn with a circle a
+quarter of a mile around. Like the tumulus of Dowth,
+this of Newgrange is girdled by a ring of great stone
+blocks, averaging eight or ten feet in length, and laid
+closely end to end; and on top of them is a wall of uncemented
+stones three or four feet high. Behind the
+wall rises the cairn, overgrown with grass and bushes
+and even trees; but below the skin of earth is the pile
+of stones, heaped above the chambers of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>The entrance here is a few feet above the level of
+the ground, and is the true original entrance, which
+the one at Dowth is not, for the level of the ground
+there has risen. This little door consists of two upright
+slabs and a transverse one. Below it is placed
+a great stone, covered with a rich design of that spiral
+ornamentation peculiar to the ancient Irish&mdash;emblematic,
+it is said, of eternity, without beginning and without
+end. The stone above the door is also carved, and
+my photograph, opposite this page, gives a very fair
+idea of how the entrance looks.</p>
+
+<p>We found a woman waiting for us&mdash;she had heard
+the rattle of our wheels far down the road, and had
+hastened from her house near by to earn sixpence by
+providing us with candles; and she led the way through
+the entrance into the passage beyond. As at Dowth,
+it is formed of huge slabs inclined against each other,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_547" id="Page_547">[547]</a></span>
+but here they have given way under the great weight
+heaped upon them, and the passage grew lower and
+lower, until the woman in front of us was crawling on
+her hands and knees. The clergyman, who was behind
+her, examined the low passage by the light of his
+candle, and then said he didn't think he'd try it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come along, sir," urged the woman's voice.
+"'Tis only a few yards, and then you can stand again.
+If you was a heavy man, now, I wouldn't be advisin'
+it; I've seen more than one who had to be pulled out
+by his feet; but for a slim man the likes of you sure it
+is nothing."</p>
+
+<p>He still held back, so I squeezed past him, and went
+down on hands and knees, and crawled slowly forward
+in three-legged fashion holding my candle in one hand,
+over the strip of carpet which had been laid on the
+stones to protect the clothing of visitors. As our
+guide had said, the passage soon opened up so that it
+was possible to stand upright again. I called back
+encouragement to my companion, and he finally crawled
+through too; and then, as I held my candle aloft, I saw
+that we had come out into a great vaulted chamber at
+least twenty feet high. Here, as at Dowth, the sides
+are formed of mammoth slabs, and the vault of other
+slabs laid one upon the other, each row projecting beyond
+the row below until the centre is reached. Here
+too there are three recesses; but everything is on a
+grander scale than at Dowth, and the ornamentation is
+much more elaborate. It consists of intricate and beautifully
+formed spirals, coils, lozenges and chevrons; and
+here, also, the vandal had been at work, scratching his
+initials, sometimes even his detested name, upon these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_548" id="Page_548">[548]</a></span>
+sacred stones. There was one especially glaring set of
+initials right opposite the entrance, deeply and evidently
+freshly cut, and I asked the woman how such
+a thing could happen.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, sir," she said, "that was done by a young man
+who you would never think would be doing such a
+thing. He come here one day, not long since, and with
+him was a young woman, and they were very quiet and
+nice-appearing, so after I had brought them in, I left
+them to theirselves, for I had me work to do; but when
+I came in later, with another party, that was what I
+saw. And I made the vow then that never again would
+I be leaving any one alone here, no matter how respectable
+they might look."</p>
+
+<p>We commended her wisdom, and turned back to an
+inspection of the carvings. It was noticeable that
+there was no attempt at any general scheme of decoration,
+for the spirals and coils were scattered here
+and there without any reference to each other, some
+of them in inaccessible corners which proved they had
+been made before the stones were placed in position.
+Evidently they had been carved wherever the whim of
+the sculptor suggested; and so, in spite of their delicacy
+and beauty, they are in a way supremely childish.</p>
+
+<p>But there is nothing childish about the tomb itself.
+Nobody knows from what forgotten quarry these great
+slabs were cut. Wherever it was, they had to be lifted
+out and dragged to the top of this hill and set in position&mdash;and
+many of them weigh more than a hundred
+tons. The passage from the central chamber to the
+edge of the mound is sixty-two feet long; the mound<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_549" id="Page_549">[549]</a></span>
+itself is eight hundred feet around and fifty high, and
+some one has estimated that the stones which compose
+it weigh more than a hundred thousand tons.</p>
+
+<p>For whom was it built? Perhaps for Conn, the
+Hundred Fighter, for tradition records that he was
+buried here, and he was worthy of such a tomb. If it
+was for Conn&mdash;and of course that is only a guess&mdash;it
+dates from about 200 A. D., for tradition has it that
+it was in 212 that Conn was treacherously slain at
+Tara, while preparing for the great festival of the
+Druids. Conn's son, Art, was the last of the Pagan
+kings to be buried in the Druid fashion, for Art's great
+son, Cormac, who came to the throne in 254, chose another
+sepulchre. He seems to have got some inkling of
+Christianity, perhaps from traders from other lands
+who visited his court. At any rate, he turned away
+from the Druids, and they put a curse upon him and
+caused a devil to attack him while at table, so that the
+bone of a salmon stuck in his throat and he died. But
+with his last breath he forbade his followers to bury
+him at Brugh-na-Boinne, in the tumulus with Conn and
+the rest, because that was a grave of idolaters; he worshipped
+another God who had come out of the East;
+and he commanded them to bury him on the hill called
+Rosnaree, with his face to the sunrise. They disregarded
+his command, and tried to carry his body across
+the Boyne to the tumulus; but the water rose and
+snatched the body from them, and carried it to Rosnaree;
+and so there it was buried. From Newgrange,
+one can see the slope of Rosnaree, just across the river;
+but there is nothing to mark the grave of the greatest
+of the early kings of Erin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_550" id="Page_550">[550]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Round Cormac spring renews her buds;<br />
+In march perpetual by his side,<br />
+Down come the earth-fresh April floods,<br />
+And up the sea-fresh salmon glide.<br />
+<br />
+And life and time rejoicing run<br />
+From age to age their wonted way;<br />
+But still he waits the risen Sun,<br />
+For still 'tis only dawning Day.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The road to the ruins of the abbey of Mellifont runs
+back from the river, up over the hills, past picturesque
+villages, through a portion of the Balfour estate, and
+then dips down into the valley of the Mattock, on
+whose banks a company of Cistercians, who had come
+from Clairvaux at the invitation of the Archbishop of
+Armagh, chose to build their monastery. They called
+it Mellifont&mdash;"Honey Fountain"&mdash;and the buildings
+which they put up were a revelation to the Irish builders,
+who had been contented with small and unambitious
+churches, divided only into nave and chancel.
+Here at Mellifont was erected a great cruciform church,
+with a semi-circular chapel in each transept, as at Clairvaux;
+and to this were added cloister and chapter-house
+and refectory, and a most beautiful octagonal
+building which was used as a lavatory. It marked, in
+a word, the introduction of continental elaborations
+and refinements and luxuries into a land where, theretofore,
+austerity had been the ruling influence.</p>
+
+<p>That was in 1142, and there is not much left now of
+that mighty edifice&mdash;a portion of the old gate-tower,
+some fragments of the church, and a little more than
+half of the octagonal lavatory. Five of its eight sides<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_551" id="Page_551">[551]</a></span>
+remain, and they show how beautiful it must once have
+been&mdash;as you may see from the photograph opposite
+<a href="#Page_546">page 546</a>. Another thing may be seen in that photograph&mdash;the
+corner of a huge, empty, decaying mill, such
+as dot all Ireland, symbols of her ruined industry!</p>
+
+<p>A clean, pleasant-faced old woman, who opened the
+gate for us, intimated that we could get lunch at her
+cottage, which overlooked the ruins; but my companion
+had brought his lunch in his pocket and presently sat
+down to eat it, while I made my way alone up to the
+cottage. There was a long table spread in one room,
+and while the tea was drawing, I told my hostess and
+her daughter about my encounter with the bee, and
+asked if I might have some hot water with which to
+bathe the sting. They hastened to get me a basin of
+steaming water and a clean towel, and then they talked
+together a moment in low tones, and then the old
+woman came hesitatingly forward.</p>
+
+<p>"If you please, sir," she said, "I have often been
+told that with a sting or bite or anything of the sort a
+little blueing in the water works wonders, and indeed
+I have tried it myself, and have found it very good.
+Would your honour be trying it, now, if I would get
+my blueing bag?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why of course I would!" I cried; "and thank you a
+thousand times for thinking of it!"</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon, her face beaming, she snatched the blueing
+bag from her daughter, who had it ready, and gave
+it to me, and I sloshed it around in the basin until the
+water was quite blue, and bathed my face in it; and
+whether it was the heat of the water or the blueing I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_552" id="Page_552">[552]</a></span>
+don't know, but the sting bothered me very little after
+that, except for the swelling, and that was not so bad
+as I had feared it would be.</p>
+
+<p>I sat down finally to a delightful lunch of tea and
+bread and butter and cold meat and jam; and then I
+got out my pipe and joined my hostess on the bench in
+front of the house, and her daughter stood in the door
+and listened, and we had a long talk. As usual, it was
+first about herself, and then about myself. Her husband
+was dead and she suffered a great deal from rheumatism,
+which seems to be the bane of the Irish; but
+she had her little place, glory be to God, and she picked
+up a good many shillings in the summer time from visitors
+to the ruins, though many that came to see them
+cared nothing for them nor understood them. Indeed,
+many just came and looked at them over the gate, and
+then went away again.</p>
+
+<p>And just then I witnessed a remarkable confirmation
+of this; for a motor-car, with two men and two or
+three women in it, whirled up the road below and
+stopped at the gate outside the ruins. My hostess
+caught up her keys and started hastily down to open
+it, but before she had taken a dozen steps, the man on
+the front seat spoke to the chauffeur, and he spun the
+car around and in another moment it had disappeared
+down the road in a cloud of dust. I confess that I was
+hot with anger when my hostess, with a sad little smile,
+came back and sat down again beside me, for I felt
+somehow as though she had been affronted.</p>
+
+<p>I went back to the ruins presently, and my new friend
+came along, finding I was interested, and we spent half
+an hour wandering about them, while she pointed out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_553" id="Page_553">[553]</a></span>
+various details which I might otherwise have missed.
+Next to the lavatory, the most interesting feature of
+the place is a beautiful pavement of decorated tiles
+which is preserved in St. Bernard's chapel. The whole
+church was at one time floored with these tiles, and a
+few detached ones may still be seen at the base of the
+pillars. There also remain many details of sculpture
+which show the loving labour lavished on the place
+when it was built&mdash;the individual work of the artisan,
+embodying something of his own soul, which gives
+these old churches a life and beauty sadly wanting in
+most new ones.</p>
+
+<p>The cemetery is near the bank of the river; but potatoes
+are raised there now, in a soil made fertile by
+royal as well as sacred dust; for here Dervorgilla, the
+false wife of Tiernan O'Rourke, chose to be laid to rest,
+in the hope, perhaps, that in the crowd of holy abbots
+and monks which would rise from this place, she might
+slip into heaven unobserved.</p>
+
+<p>Three miles away from Mellifont stand the ruins of
+another abbey, centuries older and incomparably greater
+in its day&mdash;an abbey absolutely Irish, with rude, small
+buildings, but with a giant round-tower and two of the
+loveliest sculptured crosses in existence on this earth.
+Monasterboice it is called&mdash;Mainister Buithe, the abbey
+of Boetius&mdash;and the way thither lies along a pleasant
+road, through a wooded valley&mdash;which, fertile as it
+is, is not without its traces of desolation, for we passed
+more than one vast empty mill, falling to decay.
+Then, on the slope of a hillside away ahead, we saw
+the round tower, or what is left of it, for the top of it
+is broken off, struck by lightning, perhaps. But the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_554" id="Page_554">[554]</a></span>
+fragment that remains is 110 feet high! And seeing it
+thus, across the valley, with the low little church nestling
+at its base, one is inclined to think that Father
+Dempsey was not altogether wrong when he said he
+cared nothing about the theories of antiquarians concerning
+the round towers, for he knew what they were&mdash;the
+forefingers of the early church pointing us all to
+God.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Two illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'><div class="figcenter" style="width: 229px;">
+<a href="images/gs047a-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs047a.jpg" width="229" height="316" alt="THE ROUND TOWER, MONASTERBOICE" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE ROUND TOWER, MONASTERBOICE</span>
+</div></td><td align='left'><div class="figcenter" style="width: 257px;">
+<a href="images/gs047b-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs047b.jpg" width="257" height="318" alt="THE HIGH CROSS, MONASTERBOICE" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">THE HIGH CROSS, MONASTERBOICE</span>
+</div></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+<p>My companion and I were discussing these theories,
+when our jarvey saw the opportunity to spring a joke,
+which I have since discovered to be a time-honoured
+one.</p>
+
+<p>"Your honours are all wrong," he said, "if you will
+excuse my sayin' so. It has been proved that the round
+towers was built by the government."</p>
+
+<p>"Built by the government?" repeated my companion.
+"How can you prove that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Easy enough, your honour. Seein' they're no manner
+of use and cost a lot of money, who else could have
+built them?"</p>
+
+<p>And this, I take it, was his revenge for the Boyne
+battlefield.</p>
+
+<p>We stopped presently beside a stile leading over the
+stone wall at the side of the road, and here there was
+waiting another old woman, to unlock the entrance to
+the tower. We clambered over the stile and made our
+way up through the grass-grown, unkempt graveyard,
+first to the tower&mdash;one of the mightiest of these monuments
+of ancient Erin, for it is seventeen yards around
+at the base, and tapers gradually toward the top, and
+the only entrance is a small doorway six feet above
+the ground; and it takes no great effort of imagination<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_555" id="Page_555">[555]</a></span>
+to fancy the monks clambering wildly up to it, clutching
+the treasures of the monastery to their bosoms,
+whenever word came that the raiding Danes were in
+the neighbourhood. Ladders have been fixed so that
+one can climb to the top, but we did not essay them.</p>
+
+<p>No trace remains of the monastic buildings which
+clustered at the tower foot; for, unlike those at Mellifont
+and in England and on the continent, these were
+not wrought of stone, but were mere shacks, as in every
+truly Irish abbey, scarcely strong enough to screen from
+wind and weather the groups of scholars who gathered
+to study here. They lived a strait and austere life,
+and the only permanent structures they built were the
+churches. Here, as usual, they were small, the largest
+one being only forty feet in length; and the walls that
+remain prove how bare and mean they must have looked
+beside the carved and columned splendours of Mellifont.</p>
+
+<p>But Monasterboice has one glory, or rather two,
+beside which those that remain at Mellifont are as
+nothing; and these are the huge Celtic crosses, the most
+perfect and beautiful in the land. One of them is tall
+and slender and the other is short and sturdy, and both
+are absolute masterpieces.</p>
+
+<p>The high cross, as the tall one is called, stands near
+the tower-foot and close beside the crumbling wall of
+one of the old churches. It is twenty-seven feet high,
+and is composed of three stones, the shaft, the cross
+with its binding circle, and the cap. The shaft, which
+is about two feet square and eighteen feet high, is divided
+into seven compartments on either face, and in
+each of them is an elaborately-sculptured representation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_556" id="Page_556">[556]</a></span>
+of some Bible scene, usually with three figures.
+Although much worn, it is still possible easily to decipher
+some of them, for there is Eve accepting the
+apple from the serpent while Adam looks mildly on,
+and here they are fleeing from Paradise before the angel
+with the flaming sword, and next Cain is hitting Abel
+on the head with a club while a third unidentified person
+watches the scene without offering to interfere. At
+the crossing there is a splendid crucifixion, with the
+usual crowded heaven and hell to left and right; the
+binding circle is beautifully ornamented with an interlacing
+design; and the cap-stone represents one of those
+high-pitched cells or churches, such as we saw at Killaloe
+and Glendalough.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 317px;">
+<a href="images/gs048-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs048.jpg" width="317" height="500" alt="MUIREDACH&#39;S CROSS, MONASTERBOICE" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">MUIREDACH&#39;S CROSS, MONASTERBOICE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Beautiful as this cross is, it is surpassed by the other
+one, Muiredach's Cross, from the inscription about its
+base: "A prayer for Muiredach for whom this cross
+was made." That inscription gives us its date, at least
+within a century, for two Muiredachs were abbots here.
+One of them died in 844 and the other in 924, and as
+the latter was the richer and more distinguished, it is
+presumed that the cross is his. That would make its
+age almost exactly ten centuries.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, in spite of those ten centuries, the sculptures
+which enrich it from top to bottom are as beautiful
+to-day as they ever were. Look at the picture opposite
+this page&mdash;it is not my picture, though I took one, but
+there is an iron fence about the cross now which spoils
+every recent photograph&mdash;and you will see what a
+wonderful thing it is. It is a monolith&mdash;one single
+stone, fifteen feet high and six feet across the arms&mdash;and
+every inch of it is covered with ornamentation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_557" id="Page_557">[557]</a></span>
+It is the western face the picture shows, with the crucifixion
+occupying its usual position. Below it are three
+panels of extraordinary interest, for they show Irish
+warriors and clerics in the costumes of the period, all
+of them wearing fierce mustachios. In the upper
+panel are three clerics in flowing robes, the central one
+giving a book to one of his companions and a staff to the
+other; in the central panel are three ecclesiastics each
+holding a book; and in the lower panel a cleric in a long
+cloak, caught together at the throat with a brooch,
+stands staff in hand between two soldiers armed with
+Danish swords. At the foot of the shaft two dogs lie
+head to head.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side, the central panel shows Christ
+sitting in judgment, with a joyous devil kicking a
+damned soul into an already-crowded hell. The
+method of separating the blessed from the damned is
+shown just below, where a figure is carefully weighing
+souls in a pair of scales&mdash;a subject familiar to every one
+who has visited the Gothic cathedrals of France, where
+almost invariably a devil is trying to cheat by crouching
+below the scales and pulling down one side. The lower
+panels in the cross represent the usual Scriptural subjects&mdash;the
+fall of man, the expulsion from Eden, the
+adoration of the magi, and so on; and again at the base
+there are two dogs, only this time they are playing, and
+one is holding the other by the ear. All of this sculpture
+is done with spirit, with taste and with fine artistry;
+and another glory of the cross is the elaborate tracery
+of the side panels, and of the front, back, inside and
+outside of the circle. Of this, the photograph gives a
+better notion than any description could.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_558" id="Page_558">[558]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+Who was he? Was he sad or glad<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who knew to carve in such a fashion?</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Those questions we may never answer. All we can
+say certainly is that he was a great artist; and his is the
+artist's reward:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+But he is dust; we may not know<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His happy or unhappy story:</span><br />
+Nameless, and dead these centuries,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His work outlives him,&mdash;there's his glory!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>We tore ourselves away at last from the contemplation
+of this consummate masterpiece, and drove slowly
+back to Drogheda, through a beautiful and fertile country,
+which, save for the thatched cottages, and gorse-crowned
+walls and hedges, did not differ greatly in appearance
+from my own. And I was very happy, for
+it had been a perfect day. Nowhere else in Ireland is
+it possible to crowd so much of loveliness and interest
+into so short a space. All unwittingly, I had saved the
+best for the last.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_559" id="Page_559">[559]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE END OF THE PILGRIMAGE</div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">I can</span> imagine no greater contrast to the quiet and
+peaceful valley of the Boyne than was Belfast that
+night. The Orangemen had already begun to celebrate
+King Billy's victory, and were practising for
+the great demonstration of the twelfth, when England
+was to be shown, once for all and in a manner unmistakable,
+that Ulster was in earnest.</div>
+
+<p>As I came up on the tram from the station, we ran
+into a mob of people, marching along in the middle of
+the street and yelling at the tops of their voices, and we
+had to wait until they had passed. I asked a fellow-passenger
+what was going on, and he answered with a
+little smile that the Orange societies had all been given
+new banners that night and were flinging them to the
+breeze for the first time. I asked him who had given
+the banners, and he said he didn't know.</p>
+
+<p>At the hotel, I found that Betty had sought the
+sanctuary of our room, and was watching the tumult
+from the window. She said it reminded her of the
+French Revolution, and the comparison was natural
+enough. The especial scene she had in mind, I think,
+was that draggled procession of shrieking fishwives
+which escorted the king and his family in from Versailles.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how many Orange societies there are
+at Belfast, but we saw at least a dozen march past<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_560" id="Page_560">[560]</a></span>
+that night, each of them headed by a band or drum-corps,
+and each with a bright new Orange banner
+flaunting proudly in the breeze. Each banner bore a
+painted representation of some Orange victory; King
+Billy on his white horse fording the Boyne being a
+favourite subject; and the banners were very large and
+fringed with gold lace and most expensive-looking;
+and before them and beside them and behind them
+trailed a mob of shrieking girls and women and ragamuffin
+boys, locked arm and arm half across the street,
+breaking into a clumsy dance now and then, or shouting
+the lines of some Orange ditty. There were many
+men in line, marching along more or less soberly; but
+these bacchantes outnumbered them two to one. They
+blocked the street from side to side, stopped traffic,
+and conducted themselves as though they had suddenly
+gone mad.</p>
+
+<p>Presently all the societies, which had been collecting
+at some rendezvous, marched back together, with
+the mob augmented a hundred-fold, so that, looking
+down from our window, we could see nothing but a
+mass of heads filling the street from side to side&mdash;thousands
+and thousands of women and girls and boys,
+all vociferous with a frenzied intoxication&mdash;and in the
+midst of them the thin stream of Orangemen trudging
+along behind their banners.</p>
+
+<p>I went down into the street to view this demonstration
+more closely, for it was evident that here at last
+was the spirit of Ulster unveiled for all to see; but at
+close quarters much of its impressiveness vanished, for
+the mob was composed largely of boys and girls out
+for a good time, and rejoicing in the unaccustomed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_561" id="Page_561">[561]</a></span>
+privilege of yelling and hooting to their hearts' content.
+A few policemen would have been quite capable
+of dealing with that portion of it. But the men
+marching grimly along behind their banners were of
+different stuff; they were ready, apparently, for any
+emergency, ready for a holy war; and I wondered if
+their leaders, who had sown the wind so blithely as
+part of the game of politics, were quite prepared to
+reap the whirlwind which might follow.</p>
+
+<p>A man with whom I fell into talk said there would
+be a procession like this every evening until the twelfth;
+but I should think the drummers would be exhausted
+long before that. I have described the contortions of
+the Dublin drummers, but they are nowhere as compared
+with the drummers of Belfast. And, though
+about a fourth of Belfast's population is Catholic, you
+would never have suspected it that night, for there
+was no disorder of any kind, except the wild disorder
+of the Orangemen and their adherents. I suspect that,
+in Belfast, wise Catholics spend the early evenings of
+July at home.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We went out, next morning, to Ardoyne village, to
+see one of the few establishments where linen is still
+woven by hand. A beautiful old factory it is, with
+the work-rooms grouped around an open court which
+reminded us of the Plantin-Moretus at Antwerp; and
+the Scotchman in charge of it took us through from
+top to bottom. I have forgotten how many looms there
+are&mdash;some thirty or forty; and it was most interesting
+to watch the weavers as they shot the shuttle swiftly
+back and forth with one hand and worked the heavy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_562" id="Page_562">[562]</a></span>
+beam with the other, while with their feet they controlled
+the pattern. Nearly all the weavers were old
+men, and our guide told us it was growing more and
+more difficult to replace them, because hand-weaving
+had been so largely displaced by machine-work that it
+was rapidly becoming a lost art. Few young men were
+willing to undertake the long apprenticeship which was
+necessary before they could become expert weavers, and
+he foresaw the time when hand-weaving would cease
+altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Then we went upstairs, where the pattern mechanism
+is mounted above each loom; and though I understood
+it, in a way, after long and careful explanation,
+I am quite incapable of explaining it to anybody else,
+except to say that the threads which run down to the
+loom below are governed by a lot of stiff cards laced
+together into a long roll, and cut with many perforations,
+so that the roll looks something like the music-rolls
+used in mechanical piano-players.</p>
+
+<p>Last of all we were shown some of the finished
+product, and very beautiful it was, strong as iron&mdash;far
+stronger than machine-woven linen, for the shuttle
+can be thrown by hand more often to the inch than is
+possible by machine; and some of the patterns, too,
+were very lovely; one, in especial, from the Book of
+Kells, the interwoven Celtic ornamentation, the symbol
+of eternity.</p>
+
+<p>Of course we talked about Home Rule, and our
+Scotch host, who was evidently a devoted Orangeman,
+was very certain Ulster would fight before she would
+acquiesce. If the fight went against her, he prophesied
+that no Protestant industry which could get out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_563" id="Page_563">[563]</a></span>
+Ireland would stay to be taxed out of existence by a
+Dublin Parliament, and he said that many of the great
+factories had already secured options on English sites,
+and were prepared to move at any time.</p>
+
+<p>I remarked that it seemed to me the wiser plan
+would be to wait and see how Home Rule worked before
+plunging into revolution; then, if it was found
+that Ulster was really oppressed, it would be time
+enough for her army to take the field. And I told him
+something of what I had seen and heard in the south
+and west of Ireland&mdash;that, among all the people I had
+talked with, not one had expressed himself with any
+bitterness toward Ulster, and that many had said
+frankly that the leaders of the Irish people would be
+largely Protestant in the future, just as they had been
+in the past. But he was unconvinced, and very gloomy
+over the outlook.</p>
+
+<p>We came away finally, and took a last look about
+Belfast&mdash;at the busy streets, the bright shops, the humming
+factories, the clattering foundries; and then the
+hour of departure came. The jarvey who drove us to
+the boat was a jovial, loquacious son of the Church,
+with good-natured laughter for Orange excesses.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should we Catholics interfere wid them?" he
+asked. "We'd only be gettin' our heads broke, and
+all the papers would be full of the riots in Ulster.
+Sure, haven't I seen them before this treatin' a small
+fight at the corner as though it was a revolution? No,
+no; we'll just stay quiet and let them have their fun.
+It does good to them and no harm to us. They'll settle
+down again when the Home Rule bill is passed,
+and then we'll be Irishmen all, please God!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_564" id="Page_564">[564]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From the bottom of my heart I said I hoped so. Indeed,
+I can think of no better watch-word to replace
+"No Surrender!" and curses on King Billy and the
+Pope than "Irishmen All!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>There are few busier ports than Belfast, and we
+made our way down to the quay through a tangle of
+drays that would have done no discredit to the New
+York water-front; and at last we found our boat and
+got aboard. And presently the ropes were cast off,
+and we steamed slowly down the river, between long
+lines of lofty scaffolding shrouding the hulls of scores
+of mighty ships, one day to play their part in the commerce
+of the world.</p>
+
+<p>And then we were in Belfast Lough, with the grim
+keep of Carrickfergus looming on the western shore;
+and then the bay widened, the shores dropped away,
+and we headed out across the white-capped waters of
+the Irish Sea. For long and long in the distance, we
+could see the purple masses of the Antrim hills, growing
+fainter and ever fainter, until at last they merged
+into the purple of the western sky. And so we looked
+our last upon the Island of the Saints.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>THE END</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_567" id="Page_567">[567]</a></span></p>
+<h2>INDEX</h2>
+
+
+<div>
+Abbeys, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>-<a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>-<a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>-<a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-<a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>-<a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>-<a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>-<a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>-<a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>-<a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>-<a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>, <a href="#Page_422">422</a>-<a href="#Page_423">423</a>, <a href="#Page_442">442</a>-<a href="#Page_443">443</a>, <a href="#Page_550">550</a>-<a href="#Page_558">558</a><br />
+<br />
+Adare, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>-<a href="#Page_236">236</a><br />
+<br />
+Aghadoe, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>-<a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a><br />
+<br />
+Aideen, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br />
+<br />
+Aileach, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>, <a href="#Page_480">480</a><br />
+<br />
+Allen, Hill of, <a href="#Page_93">93</a><br />
+<br />
+Allen, Lough, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br />
+<br />
+Allingham, William, <a href="#Page_428">428</a>-<a href="#Page_430">430</a><br />
+<br />
+Allua, Lough, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br />
+<br />
+America, Irish Idea of, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>-<a href="#Page_174">174</a><br />
+<br />
+Annals of the Four Masters, The, <a href="#Page_442">442</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a><br />
+<br />
+Antrim, County, <a href="#Page_489">489</a>, <a href="#Page_521">521</a>, <a href="#Page_530">530</a>, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>, <a href="#Page_564">564</a><br />
+<br />
+Antrim, Earl of, <a href="#Page_489">489</a>, <a href="#Page_495">495</a>-<a href="#Page_496">496</a><br />
+<br />
+Antrim, Glens of, <a href="#Page_491">491</a>, <a href="#Page_495">495</a>, <a href="#Page_499">499</a><br />
+<br />
+Arbutus Island, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br />
+<br />
+Archdeckan, John, <a href="#Page_136">136</a><br />
+<br />
+Architecture, see <a href="#Irish_Architecture">Irish Architecture</a><br />
+<br />
+Ardilaun, Lord, see <a href="#Guinness">Guinness</a><br />
+<br />
+Ardoyne, <a href="#Page_561">561</a>-<a href="#Page_563">563</a><br />
+<br />
+Armada, The, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>, <a href="#Page_485">485</a><br />
+<br />
+Armagh, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_536">536</a>, <a href="#Page_550">550</a><br />
+<br />
+Arran, Earl of, <a href="#Page_441">441</a><br />
+<br />
+Art, see <a href="#Irish_Art">Irish Art</a><br />
+<br />
+Ashford House, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>-<a href="#Page_348">348</a><br />
+<br />
+Assaroe, Abbey, <a href="#Page_422">422</a>-<a href="#Page_423">423</a>, <a href="#Page_429">429</a><br />
+<br />
+Asylums, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_526">526</a><br />
+<br />
+Athenry, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>-<a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a><br />
+<br />
+Athlone, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>-<a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_454">454</a>, <a href="#Page_456">456</a><br />
+<br />
+Auburn, see <a href="#Lissoy">Lissoy</a><br />
+<br />
+Avoca, Vale of, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<br />
+Avonbeg, The, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
+<br />
+Avonmore, The, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Baedeker, Karl, <a href="#Page_385">385</a><br />
+<br />
+Baird, Sir David, <a href="#Page_509">509</a>-<a href="#Page_510">510</a><br />
+<br />
+Baker, Henry, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a><br />
+<br />
+Balbriggan, <a href="#Page_85">85</a><br />
+<br />
+Ballina, <a href="#Page_351">351</a><br />
+<br />
+Ballintoy, <a href="#Page_487">487</a><br />
+<br />
+Ballintra, The, <a href="#Page_432">432</a><br />
+<br />
+Ballycastle, <a href="#Page_486">486</a>, <a href="#Page_489">489</a>-<a href="#Page_490">490</a><br />
+<br />
+Ballysadare, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br />
+<br />
+Ballyshannon, <a href="#Page_419">419</a>-<a href="#Page_431">431</a>, <a href="#Page_445">445</a><br />
+<br />
+Balor of the Evil Eye, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Banishment to Connaught, The, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>-<a href="#Page_333">333</a><br />
+<br />
+Bank of Ireland, <a href="#Page_13">13</a><br />
+<br />
+Bann, The, <a href="#Page_447">447</a>, <a href="#Page_474">474</a>, <a href="#Page_536">536</a><br />
+<br />
+Bantry Bay, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a><br />
+<br />
+Barnesmore, Gap of, <a href="#Page_444">444</a><br />
+<br />
+Beggars, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>-<a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>-<a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>-<a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>-<a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>-<a href="#Page_427">427</a><br />
+<br />
+Belfast, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>, <a href="#Page_469">469</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a>, <a href="#Page_501">501</a>, <a href="#Page_502">502</a>, <a href="#Page_503">503</a>-<a href="#Page_519">519</a>, <a href="#Page_530">530</a>, <a href="#Page_532">532</a>-<a href="#Page_533">533</a>, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>, <a href="#Page_535">535</a>, <a href="#Page_536">536</a>, <a href="#Page_559">559</a>-<a href="#Page_564">564</a><br />
+<br />
+Belfast Lough, <a href="#Page_502">502</a>, <a href="#Page_564">564</a><br />
+<br />
+Bird Hill, <a href="#Page_251">251</a><br />
+<br />
+Birmingham, George A., see <a href="#Hannay">Hannay, J. A.</a><br />
+<br />
+Black Lough, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br />
+<br />
+Black Valley, The, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br />
+<br />
+Blackrock, <a href="#Page_100">100</a><br />
+<br />
+Blackwater, The, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
+<br />
+Blarney Castle, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>-<a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br />
+<br />
+Bogs, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>-<a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>-<a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_490">490</a>-<a href="#Page_491">491</a><br />
+<br />
+Book of Kells, see <a href="#Kells_Book_of">Kells</a><br />
+<br />
+Boru, Brian, see <a href="#Brian_Boru">Brian Boru</a><br />
+<br />
+Boycott, Captain Charles C., <a href="#Page_346">346</a><br />
+<br />
+Boyd, Hugh, <a href="#Page_489">489</a>-<a href="#Page_490">490</a><br />
+<br />
+Boyne, The, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_454">454</a>, <a href="#Page_537">537</a>, <a href="#Page_538">538</a>-<a href="#Page_540">540</a>, <a href="#Page_549">549</a>, <a href="#Page_559">559</a><br />
+<br />
+Boyne, Battle of the, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_453">453</a>-<a href="#Page_454">454</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a>, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>, <a href="#Page_538">538</a>-<a href="#Page_540">540</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_568" id="Page_568">[568]</a></span>Bray, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
+<br />
+Breffni, Prince of, see <a href="#ORourke_Tiernan">O'Rourke, Tiernan</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Brian_Boru" id="Brian_Boru"></a>Brian Boru, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>-<a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_427">427</a><br />
+<br />
+Bridge End, <a href="#Page_461">461</a>, <a href="#Page_462">462</a><br />
+<br />
+Brigid, see <a href="#St_Brigid">St. Brigid</a><br />
+<br />
+Brooke, Sir Basil, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>-<a href="#Page_441">441</a><br />
+<br />
+Brown Valley, The, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br />
+<br />
+Bruce, Edward, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_501">501</a>, <a href="#Page_502">502</a>, <a href="#Page_537">537</a><br />
+<br />
+Brugh-na-Boinne, <a href="#Page_540">540</a>-<a href="#Page_550">550</a><br />
+<br />
+Bundoran, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>-<a href="#Page_419">419</a><br />
+<br />
+Burgo, Richard de, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_447">447</a><br />
+<br />
+Burial, Ancient Irish, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_540">540</a>-<a href="#Page_544">544</a><br />
+<br />
+Bushmills, <a href="#Page_480">480</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Cairns, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>-<a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>-<a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>, <a href="#Page_536">536</a>, <a href="#Page_540">540</a>-<a href="#Page_550">550</a><br />
+<br />
+Callanan, Jeremiah, <a href="#Page_149">149</a><br />
+<br />
+Cannera, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><br />
+<br />
+Cape Clear, <a href="#Page_161">161</a><br />
+<br />
+Cappoquin, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br />
+<br />
+Car, see <a href="#Jaunting-Car">Jaunting-car</a><br />
+<br />
+Carleton, Will, <a href="#Page_421">421</a><br />
+<br />
+Carlingford, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a><br />
+<br />
+Carnach, Conal, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br />
+<br />
+Carnlough, <a href="#Page_500">500</a>-<a href="#Page_501">501</a><br />
+<br />
+Carrick-a-Rede, <a href="#Page_487">487</a>-<a href="#Page_488">488</a><br />
+<br />
+Carrickfergus, <a href="#Page_502">502</a>, <a href="#Page_564">564</a><br />
+<br />
+Carrowmore, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a><br />
+<br />
+Carson, Sir Edward, <a href="#Page_469">469</a>, <a href="#Page_471">471</a><br />
+<br />
+Casey, John Keegan, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>-<a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Cashel" id="Cashel"></a>Cashel, Rock of, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>-<a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+Cashels, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>-<a href="#Page_408">408</a>, <a href="#Page_461">461</a>, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>-<a href="#Page_467">467</a>, <a href="#Page_536">536</a><br />
+<br />
+Castlebar, <a href="#Page_375">375</a><br />
+<br />
+Castleconnell, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>-<a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>-<a href="#Page_264">264</a><br />
+<br />
+Castlemaine, <a href="#Page_191">191</a><br />
+<br />
+Castles, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>-<a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>-<a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>-<a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>-<a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>-<a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>-<a href="#Page_403">403</a>, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>-<a href="#Page_441">441</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a>-<a href="#Page_480">480</a><br />
+<br />
+Catholic Emancipation, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a><br />
+<br />
+Cavan, <a href="#Page_545">545</a><br />
+<br />
+Celbridge, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+<br />
+Celtchair, <a href="#Page_524">524</a><br />
+<br />
+Celtic Crosses, see <a href="#Crosses">Crosses</a><br />
+<br />
+Champneys, Arthur, <a href="#Page_110">110</a><br />
+<br />
+Charles I, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_441">441</a>, <a href="#Page_447">447</a>, <a href="#Page_449">449</a><br />
+<br />
+Charles II, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_448">448</a><br />
+<br />
+Charleville, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>-<a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_461">461</a><br />
+<br />
+Children, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>-<a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>-<a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>-<a href="#Page_360">360</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Church_of_Ireland" id="Church_of_Ireland"></a>Church of Ireland, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a><br />
+<br />
+Churches, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>-<a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>-<a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>-<a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>-<a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>-<a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>-<a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_459">459</a>-<a href="#Page_460">460</a>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>-<a href="#Page_524">524</a><br />
+<br />
+Ciaran, see <a href="#St_Kieran">St. Kieran</a><br />
+<br />
+Civilization, Ancient Irish, see <a href="#Irish_Civilization">Irish Civilization, Ancient</a><br />
+<br />
+Claddagh, The, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>-<a href="#Page_300">300</a><br />
+<br />
+Clandonnell, see <a href="#MacDonnells_The">MacDonnell</a><br />
+<br />
+Clanricarde, Earls of, <a href="#Page_269">269</a><br />
+<br />
+Clara, Vale of, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
+<br />
+Clare, Abbey, <a href="#Page_266">266</a><br />
+<br />
+Clare, Richard de, see <a href="#Strongbow">Strongbow</a><br />
+<br />
+Clare, County, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>-<a href="#Page_266">266</a><br />
+<br />
+Claremorris, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>-<a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <a href="#Page_535">535</a><br />
+<br />
+Cleeve, The Messrs., <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>-<a href="#Page_239">239</a><br />
+<br />
+Clew Bay, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>-<a href="#Page_372">372</a><br />
+<br />
+Clifden, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>-<a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Climate" id="Climate"></a>Climate, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>-<a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>, <a href="#Page_415">415</a><br />
+<br />
+Clonard, <a href="#Page_406">406</a><br />
+<br />
+Clonbur, <a href="#Page_345">345</a><br />
+<br />
+Clondalkin, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>-<a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+<br />
+Clonmacnoise, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>-<a href="#Page_291">291</a><br />
+<br />
+Clonmell, Lord, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+Clontarf, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a><br />
+<br />
+Cloyne, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br />
+<br />
+Coleraine, <a href="#Page_447">447</a>, <a href="#Page_474">474</a>-<a href="#Page_476">476</a><br />
+<br />
+Colleen Bawn, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>-<a href="#Page_422">422</a><br />
+<br />
+Collooney, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br />
+<br />
+Colman, Abbot, <a href="#Page_289">289</a><br />
+<br />
+Colman's Leap, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br />
+<br />
+Columba, see <a href="#St_Columba">St. Columba</a><br />
+<br />
+Cong, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>-<a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
+<br />
+Cong, Abbey of, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>-<a href="#Page_348">348</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Cong_Cross_of" id="Cong_Cross_of"></a>Cong, Cross of, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>-<a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a><br />
+<br />
+Congested Districts Board, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>-<a href="#Page_336">336</a><br />
+<br />
+Conn the Hundred Fighter, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_549">549</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_569" id="Page_569">[569]</a></span>Conn, Lough, <a href="#Page_351">351</a><br />
+<br />
+Connaught, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>-<a href="#Page_369">369</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_493">493</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Connell_of_the_Hy-Nial" id="Connell_of_the_Hy-Nial"></a>Connell of the Hy-Nial, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>-<a href="#Page_428">428</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a><br />
+<br />
+Connemara, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>-<a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>, <a href="#Page_463">463</a>, <a href="#Page_490">490</a><br />
+<br />
+Connemara Marble, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>-<a href="#Page_318">318</a><br />
+<br />
+Constabulary, see <a href="#Royal_Irish_Constabulary">Royal Irish Constabulary</a><br />
+<br />
+Convent Schools, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>-<a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
+<br />
+Cook's Tours, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>-<a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>-<a href="#Page_383">383</a><br />
+<br />
+Cork, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>-<a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>-<a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_454">454</a><br />
+<br />
+Cork, County, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br />
+<br />
+Cork, Earl of, <a href="#Page_32">32</a><br />
+<br />
+Cormac, see <a href="#MacArt">MacArt</a> or <a href="#MacCarthy">MacCarthy</a><br />
+<br />
+Cormac's Chapel, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>-<a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br />
+<br />
+Corrib, Lough, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>-<a href="#Page_354">354</a><br />
+<br />
+Corrib, River, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br />
+<br />
+Cottages, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>-<a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>-<a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>-<a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>-<a href="#Page_355">355</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>-<a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>-<a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_497">497</a><br />
+<br />
+Craigmore, <a href="#Page_536">536</a><br />
+<br />
+Cratloe, <a href="#Page_265">265</a><br />
+<br />
+Crime, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>-<a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Croagh Patrick, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>-<a href="#Page_373">373</a><br />
+<br />
+Cromlechs, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>-<a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a><br />
+<br />
+Cromwell, Oliver, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>-<a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>-<a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_448">448</a>, <a href="#Page_470">470</a>, <a href="#Page_538">538</a><br />
+<br />
+Cross of Cong, see <a href="#Cong_Cross_of">Cong, Cross of</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Crosses" id="Crosses"></a>Crosses, Celtic, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>-<a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>-<a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_523">523</a>, <a href="#Page_553">553</a>-<a href="#Page_558">558</a><br />
+<br />
+Crowe, O'Brien, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>-<a href="#Page_352">352</a><br />
+<br />
+Cuchulain, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <a href="#Page_537">537</a><br />
+<br />
+Cullen, Joe, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>-<a href="#Page_436">436</a><br />
+<br />
+Culmore, <a href="#Page_473">473</a><br />
+<br />
+Curran, John Philpot, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<br />
+Cushendall, <a href="#Page_490">490</a>, <a href="#Page_492">492</a>, <a href="#Page_495">495</a>, <a href="#Page_496">496</a>, <a href="#Page_498">498</a>-<a href="#Page_500">500</a><br />
+<br />
+Cushendun, <a href="#Page_491">491</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Dalcassians, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+Danes, The 17, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>-<a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>-<a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>-<a href="#Page_447">447</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>, <a href="#Page_522">522</a>, <a href="#Page_536">536</a>, <a href="#Page_541">541</a>, <a href="#Page_542">542</a>, <a href="#Page_555">555</a><br />
+<br />
+Dargle, The, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
+<br />
+Dark Rosaleen, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>-<a href="#Page_15">15</a><br />
+<br />
+Darrow, Book of, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
+<br />
+Day, Length of Irish, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_456">456</a>-<a href="#Page_457">457</a>, <a href="#Page_491">491</a>-<a href="#Page_492">492</a><br />
+<br />
+De Courcy, John, <a href="#Page_522">522</a>-<a href="#Page_523">523</a><br />
+<br />
+De Dananns, The, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+De Lacy, Hugh, <a href="#Page_545">545</a><br />
+<br />
+De Vere, Aubrey, <a href="#Page_259">259</a><br />
+<br />
+Derg, Lough, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>-<a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Derry" id="Derry"></a>Derry, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>, <a href="#Page_443">443</a>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>-<a href="#Page_461">461</a>, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>, <a href="#Page_467">467</a>-<a href="#Page_474">474</a>, <a href="#Page_535">535</a>, <a href="#Page_539">539</a><br />
+<br />
+Derryclare, <a href="#Page_319">319</a><br />
+<br />
+Dervorgilla, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>-<a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>-<a href="#Page_406">406</a>, <a href="#Page_553">553</a><br />
+<br />
+D'Esterre, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+<br />
+Devil's Bit, The, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
+<br />
+Devil's Mother Mountain, <a href="#Page_340">340</a><br />
+<br />
+Diarmuid, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>-<a href="#Page_391">391</a><br />
+<br />
+Dillisk, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>-<a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a><br />
+<br />
+Dollard, James B., <a href="#Page_436">436</a><br />
+<br />
+Donegal, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>, <a href="#Page_431">431</a>, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>-<a href="#Page_443">443</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a><br />
+<br />
+Donegal, County, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>, <a href="#Page_428">428</a>, <a href="#Page_440">440</a>, <a href="#Page_444">444</a>, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>, <a href="#Page_486">486</a><br />
+<br />
+Donnybrook, <a href="#Page_470">470</a><br />
+<br />
+Doon, Rock of, <a href="#Page_440">440</a><br />
+<br />
+Doonas, Falls of, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>-<a href="#Page_246">246</a><br />
+<br />
+Down, County, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>, <a href="#Page_530">530</a>, <a href="#Page_536">536</a><br />
+<br />
+Downpatrick, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>-<a href="#Page_532">532</a><br />
+<br />
+Dowth, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>, <a href="#Page_540">540</a>-<a href="#Page_544">544</a>, <a href="#Page_546">546</a>, <a href="#Page_547">547</a><br />
+<br />
+Dowth Castle, <a href="#Page_544">544</a>-<a href="#Page_545">545</a><br />
+<br />
+Drogheda, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>-<a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_449">449</a>, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>, <a href="#Page_454">454</a>, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>, <a href="#Page_537">537</a>, <a href="#Page_538">538</a><br />
+<br />
+Dromahair, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>-<a href="#Page_406">406</a>, <a href="#Page_488">488</a><br />
+<br />
+Druids, The, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_542">542</a>, <a href="#Page_543">543</a>-<a href="#Page_544">544</a>, <a href="#Page_549">549</a><br />
+<br />
+Drummers, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>-<a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_561">561</a><br />
+<br />
+Dublin, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>, <a href="#Page_453">453</a>, <a href="#Page_454">454</a>, <a href="#Page_503">503</a>, <a href="#Page_531">531</a>, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>, <a href="#Page_535">535</a>, <a href="#Page_537">537</a>, <a href="#Page_538">538</a>, <a href="#Page_539">539</a>, <a href="#Page_561">561</a><br />
+<br />
+Dublin Bay, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>-<a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br />
+<br />
+Dublin Castle, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>-<a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_570" id="Page_570">[570]</a></span>Dundalk, <a href="#Page_537">537</a>, <a href="#Page_538">538</a><br />
+<br />
+Dunleary, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br />
+<br />
+Dunloe, Gap of, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>-<a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a><br />
+<br />
+Dunluce Castle, <a href="#Page_479">479</a>-<a href="#Page_480">480</a>, <a href="#Page_485">485</a>, <a href="#Page_488">488</a><br />
+<br />
+Dunraven, Earl of, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>-<a href="#Page_234">234</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Eask, Lough, <a href="#Page_444">444</a><br />
+<br />
+Eask, River, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>, <a href="#Page_444">444</a><br />
+<br />
+Education, see <a href="#Schools">Schools</a><br />
+<br />
+Emigration, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>-<a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>-<a href="#Page_419">419</a>, <a href="#Page_443">443</a>-<a href="#Page_444">444</a><br />
+<br />
+Ennis, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>-<a href="#Page_266">266</a><br />
+<br />
+Enniskillen, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>-<a href="#Page_413">413</a>, <a href="#Page_449">449</a>, <a href="#Page_453">453</a><br />
+<br />
+Episcopal Church, see <a href="#Church_of_Ireland">Church of Ireland</a><br />
+<br />
+Erne, Lough, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>, <a href="#Page_427">427</a><br />
+<br />
+Erne, River, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>-<a href="#Page_418">418</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>, <a href="#Page_428">428</a>-<a href="#Page_431">431</a><br />
+<br />
+Established Church, see <a href="#Church_of_Ireland">Church of Ireland</a><br />
+<br />
+Eugenius, see <a href="#St_Eugenius">St. Eugenius</a><br />
+<br />
+Eyre, Jane, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Famine, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a><br />
+<br />
+Faughart, <a href="#Page_501">501</a>, <a href="#Page_537">537</a><br />
+<br />
+Ffolliotts, The, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>-<a href="#Page_422">422</a><br />
+<br />
+Fianna, The, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_492">492</a><br />
+<br />
+Fin Barre, see <a href="#St_Fin_Barre">St. Fin Barre</a><br />
+<br />
+Fingalla, <a href="#Page_443">443</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Finn_MacCool" id="Finn_MacCool"></a>Finn MacCool, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>-<a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>-<a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_483">483</a>-<a href="#Page_484">484</a>, <a href="#Page_492">492</a><br />
+<br />
+Firbolgs, The, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>-<a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_431">431</a><br />
+<br />
+Fishing, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>-<a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>-<a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>-<a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>-<a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_431">431</a><br />
+<br />
+Fitzgibbon, Lord, <a href="#Page_237">237</a><br />
+<br />
+Fitzstephen, James Lynch, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>-<a href="#Page_303">303</a><br />
+<br />
+Flann, High King of Erin, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>-<a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br />
+<br />
+Flax, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>, <a href="#Page_488">488</a>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>, <a href="#Page_535">535</a><br />
+<br />
+Flesk, The, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
+<br />
+Flight of the Earls, The, <a href="#Page_440">440</a>, <a href="#Page_447">447</a><br />
+<br />
+Flowers, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>-<a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a><br />
+<br />
+Fogha, Fergus, <a href="#Page_536">536</a><br />
+<br />
+Formorians, The, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Foyle, Lough, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>, <a href="#Page_472">472</a><br />
+<br />
+Foyle, River, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>, <a href="#Page_447">447</a><br />
+<br />
+Fuchsias, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>-<a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_497">497</a><br />
+<br />
+Funerals, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>-<a href="#Page_195">195</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Gaelic, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_487">487</a>, <a href="#Page_489">489</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Gaels" id="Gaels"></a>Gaels, The, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>, <a href="#Page_540">540</a>-<a href="#Page_544">544</a><br />
+<br />
+Galtees, The, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a><br />
+<br />
+Galway, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>-<a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>, <a href="#Page_455">455</a><br />
+<br />
+Game Preserves, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>-<a href="#Page_349">349</a><br />
+<br />
+George II, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
+<br />
+George IV, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br />
+<br />
+George V, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>, <a href="#Page_456">456</a><br />
+<br />
+Geraldines, see <a href="#Kildare_Earls_of">Kildare, Earls of</a><br />
+<br />
+Giant's Causeway, The, <a href="#Page_477">477</a>, <a href="#Page_480">480</a>-<a href="#Page_486">486</a><br />
+<br />
+Gill, Lough, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>-<a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>-<a href="#Page_412">412</a>, <a href="#Page_486">486</a>, <a href="#Page_494">494</a><br />
+<br />
+Ginkle, Gen. Godert de, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a><br />
+<br />
+Glenaan, <a href="#Page_491">491</a>, <a href="#Page_492">492</a>-<a href="#Page_496">496</a><br />
+<br />
+Glenariff, Vale of, <a href="#Page_500">500</a><br />
+<br />
+Glenarm, <a href="#Page_501">501</a><br />
+<br />
+Glendalough, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-<a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_556">556</a><br />
+<br />
+Glendining Monument, The, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>-<a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a><br />
+<br />
+Glendun, <a href="#Page_491">491</a><br />
+<br />
+Glenealy, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<br />
+Glengarriff, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>-<a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a><br />
+<br />
+Goldsmith, Oliver, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>-<a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+Goold's Cross, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a><br />
+<br />
+Gougane Barra, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>-<a href="#Page_149">149</a><br />
+<br />
+Government, The, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>-<a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>-<a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a><br />
+<br />
+Grainan of Aileach, The, <a href="#Page_461">461</a>, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>-<a href="#Page_467">467</a><br />
+<br />
+Gr&aacute;inne, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>-<a href="#Page_391">391</a><br />
+<br />
+Grattan, Henry, <a href="#Page_11">11</a><br />
+<br />
+Graves, Alfred Perceval, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>-<a href="#Page_433">433</a><br />
+<br />
+Grazing, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>-<a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a><br />
+<br />
+Griffin, Gerald, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Guinness" id="Guinness"></a>Guinness, Sir Benjamin, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>-<a href="#Page_349">349</a><br />
+<br />
+Gwynne, Stephen, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_437">437</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Hannay" id="Hannay"></a>Hannay, J. A., <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>-<a href="#Page_374">374</a><br />
+<br />
+Heather, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>, <a href="#Page_402">402</a><br />
+<br />
+Hen Castle, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>-<a href="#Page_354">354</a><br />
+<br />
+Henry II, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br />
+<br />
+Henry VII, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
+<br />
+Henry VIII, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_524">524</a><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_571" id="Page_571">[571]</a></span><br />
+Hill of Howth, see <a href="#Howth">Howth</a><br />
+<br />
+Hinkson, Katherine Tynan, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
+<br />
+Holy Cross Abbey, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>-<a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_440">440</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Holy_Wells" id="Holy_Wells"></a>Holy Wells, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>-<a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>-<a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>, <a href="#Page_410">410</a>-<a href="#Page_411">411</a>, <a href="#Page_526">526</a>-<a href="#Page_531">531</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Home_Rule" id="Home_Rule"></a>Home Rule, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>-<a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>-<a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>-<a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a>, <a href="#Page_467">467</a>-<a href="#Page_469">469</a>, <a href="#Page_498">498</a>, <a href="#Page_505">505</a>-<a href="#Page_510">510</a>, <a href="#Page_514">514</a>-<a href="#Page_516">516</a>, <a href="#Page_529">529</a>-<a href="#Page_530">530</a>, <a href="#Page_559">559</a>-<a href="#Page_564">564</a><br />
+<br />
+Hore Abbey, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-<a href="#Page_112">112</a><br />
+<br />
+Hospitality, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>-<a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>-<a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>-<a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>-<a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>-<a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>-<a href="#Page_355">355</a>, <a href="#Page_551">551</a>-<a href="#Page_552">552</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Howth" id="Howth"></a>Howth, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>-<a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>-<a href="#Page_23">23</a><br />
+<br />
+Howth, Lord, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>-<a href="#Page_23">23</a><br />
+<br />
+Hy Many, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Hy-Nial, see <a href="#Nial_Garv">Nial</a>, <a href="#Connell_of_the_Hy-Nial">Connell</a>, <a href="#Owen_of_the_Hy-Nial">Owen</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Idioms, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>-<a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>-<a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+Inagh, <a href="#Page_319">319</a><br />
+<br />
+Inchigeelagh, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>-<a href="#Page_144">144</a><br />
+<br />
+Indian Corn, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>-<a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a><br />
+<br />
+Industrial Depression, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>-<a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>-<a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>-<a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>-<a href="#Page_372">372</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>-<a href="#Page_405">405</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a>, <a href="#Page_422">422</a>-<a href="#Page_424">424</a>, <a href="#Page_489">489</a>-<a href="#Page_490">490</a><br />
+<br />
+Inebriety, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>-<a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-<a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>-<a href="#Page_307">307</a><br />
+<br />
+Inisfallen, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a><br />
+<br />
+Inishowen, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>, <a href="#Page_474">474</a><br />
+<br />
+Inis-Saimer, <a href="#Page_431">431</a><br />
+<br />
+Inns, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>-<a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>-<a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>-<a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>-<a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>-<a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>-<a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>-<a href="#Page_379">379</a>, <a href="#Page_415">415</a>-<a href="#Page_416">416</a>, <a href="#Page_433">433</a>-<a href="#Page_434">434</a>, <a href="#Page_480">480</a>-<a href="#Page_481">481</a><br />
+<br />
+Inny, The, <a href="#Page_278">278</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Insurance_Workmans" id="Insurance_Workmans"></a>Insurance, Workman's, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>-<a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+Ireland's Eye, <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br />
+<br />
+Ireton, Gen. Henry, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Irish_Architecture" id="Irish_Architecture"></a>Irish Architecture, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>-<a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>-<a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>-<a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>-<a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>-<a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>-<a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>-<a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>-<a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>-<a href="#Page_308">308</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Irish_Art" id="Irish_Art"></a>Irish Art, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>-<a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_543">543</a>, <a href="#Page_547">547</a>-<a href="#Page_548">548</a>, <a href="#Page_555">555</a>-<a href="#Page_558">558</a><br />
+<br />
+Irish Brigade, The, <a href="#Page_210">210</a><br />
+<br />
+Irish Character, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>-<a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-<a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>-<a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>-<a href="#Page_389">389</a>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>-<a href="#Page_396">396</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>, <a href="#Page_458">458</a>-<a href="#Page_459">459</a>, <a href="#Page_470">470</a>-<a href="#Page_471">471</a>, <a href="#Page_475">475</a>, <a href="#Page_532">532</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Irish_Civilization" id="Irish_Civilization"></a>Irish Civilization, Ancient, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>-<a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>-<a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_525">525</a>-<a href="#Page_526">526</a><br />
+<br />
+Irish Girls, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>-<a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>-<a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>-<a href="#Page_324">324</a><br />
+<br />
+Irish Sea, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_495">495</a>, <a href="#Page_500">500</a>, <a href="#Page_501">501</a>, <a href="#Page_564">564</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Jails, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_473">473</a>, <a href="#Page_525">525</a><br />
+<br />
+James II, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_449">449</a>-<a href="#Page_455">455</a>, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>, <a href="#Page_538">538</a>-<a href="#Page_540">540</a><br />
+<br />
+Jarvey, The, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>-<a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>-<a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_486">486</a>, <a href="#Page_488">488</a>-<a href="#Page_489">489</a>, <a href="#Page_500">500</a>, <a href="#Page_563">563</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Jaunting-Car" id="Jaunting-Car"></a>Jaunting-Car, The, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>-<a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>-<a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>, <a href="#Page_486">486</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Johnson_Mrs_Hester" id="Johnson_Mrs_Hester"></a>Johnson, Mrs. Hester, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>-<a href="#Page_31">31</a><br />
+<br />
+Johnson, Lionel, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_495">495</a><br />
+<br />
+Jones, John Paul, <a href="#Page_502">502</a><br />
+<br />
+Joyce's Country, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>-<a href="#Page_357">357</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan, <a href="#Page_466">466</a><br />
+<br />
+Kearney, Kate, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>-<a href="#Page_182">182</a><br />
+<br />
+Keimaneigh, Pass of, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>-<a href="#Page_151">151</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Kells_Book_of" id="Kells_Book_of"></a>Kells, Book of, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
+<br />
+Kenmare, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+Kenmare, Earl of, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
+<br />
+Kenmare, River, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Kenny, Donal, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>-<a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+Kerry, County, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+Kevin, see <a href="#St_Kevin">St. Kevin</a><br />
+<br />
+Kieran, see <a href="#St_Kieran">St. Kieran</a><br />
+<br />
+Kilcrea Abbey, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br />
+<br />
+Kildare, <a href="#Page_522">522</a><br />
+<br />
+Kildare, Curragh of, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>-<a href="#Page_93">93</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Kildare_Earls_of" id="Kildare_Earls_of"></a>Kildare, Earls of, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>-<a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+Killaloe, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a> 251-<a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_556">556</a><br />
+<br />
+Killarney, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>-<a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>, <a href="#Page_481">481</a><br />
+<br />
+Killary Bay, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+Killone Abbey, <a href="#Page_266">266</a><br />
+<br />
+Kilpatrick, <a href="#Page_521">521</a><br />
+<br />
+Kincora, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>-<a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a><br />
+<br />
+Kingstown, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br />
+<br />
+Kinsale, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_440">440</a>, <a href="#Page_454">454</a><br />
+<br />
+Knocknarea, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>-<a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a><br />
+<br />
+Knocktow, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_572" id="Page_572">[572]</a></span>Kylemore, Pass of, <a href="#Page_326">326</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Labour Problem, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>-<a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>-<a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>-<a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>-<a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>-<a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>-<a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>-<a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>-<a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_468">468</a><br />
+<br />
+Labourers' Cottages, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>-<a href="#Page_410">410</a><br />
+<br />
+Lace-making, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>-<a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a><br />
+<br />
+Land League, The, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a><br />
+<br />
+Land Problem, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>-<a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>-<a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>-<a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>-<a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>-<a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a><br />
+<br />
+Landlords, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>-<a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>-<a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>-<a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_529">529</a><br />
+<br />
+Larne, <a href="#Page_499">499</a>, <a href="#Page_501">501</a>, <a href="#Page_502">502</a><br />
+<br />
+Layd Church, <a href="#Page_499">499</a><br />
+<br />
+Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis, The, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>-<a href="#Page_402">402</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a><br />
+<br />
+Leane, Lough, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br />
+<br />
+Lee, The, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br />
+<br />
+Leenane, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>-<a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>-<a href="#Page_369">369</a>, <a href="#Page_445">445</a><br />
+<br />
+Legends, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>-<a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-<a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>-<a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>-<a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>-<a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>-<a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>-<a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>-<a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>-<a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>-<a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>-<a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>-<a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>-<a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>-<a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>-<a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>-<a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>-<a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>-<a href="#Page_373">373</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>-<a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>-<a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>-<a href="#Page_466">466</a>, <a href="#Page_483">483</a>-<a href="#Page_484">484</a>, <a href="#Page_485">485</a>, <a href="#Page_490">490</a>, <a href="#Page_494">494</a>-<a href="#Page_495">495</a>, <a href="#Page_521">521</a>-<a href="#Page_522">522</a>, <a href="#Page_549">549</a><br />
+<br />
+Leinster, Province, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Letterfrank, <a href="#Page_326">326</a><br />
+<br />
+Lever, Charles, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>, <a href="#Page_476">476</a><br />
+<br />
+Liffey, The, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
+<br />
+Limerick, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>-<a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>-<a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>, <a href="#Page_454">454</a>, <a href="#Page_531">531</a><br />
+<br />
+Limerick, Treaty of, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>-<a href="#Page_210">210</a><br />
+<br />
+Limerick Junction, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
+<br />
+Limericks, <a href="#Page_240">240</a><br />
+<br />
+Linen, <a href="#Page_518">518</a>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>, <a href="#Page_561">561</a>-<a href="#Page_563">563</a><br />
+<br />
+Lir, Children of, <a href="#Page_490">490</a><br />
+<br />
+Lisbun, <a href="#Page_535">535</a><br />
+<br />
+Lissoughter, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>-<a href="#Page_320">320</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Lissoy" id="Lissoy"></a>Lissoy, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>-<a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+Lloyd-George, David, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>-<a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_474">474</a><br />
+<br />
+Loe, The, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br />
+<br />
+Londonderry, see <a href="#Derry">Derry</a><br />
+<br />
+Lord of the Isles, The, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>, <a href="#Page_480">480</a><br />
+<br />
+Loughs, see name of each<br />
+<br />
+Lover, Samuel, <a href="#Page_214">214</a><br />
+<br />
+Loyalty, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>-<a href="#Page_397">397</a>, <a href="#Page_456">456</a>, <a href="#Page_532">532</a>-<a href="#Page_533">533</a><br />
+<br />
+Ludlow, Gen. Edmund, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>-<a href="#Page_191">191</a><br />
+<br />
+Lundy, Robert, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>, <a href="#Page_452">452</a><br />
+<br />
+Lurgan, <a href="#Page_535">535</a><br />
+<br />
+Lynch, James, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>-<a href="#Page_303">303</a><br />
+<br />
+Lyons Hill, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="MacArt" id="MacArt"></a>MacArt, Cormac, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>-<a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>, <a href="#Page_549">549</a>-<a href="#Page_550">550</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="MacCarthy" id="MacCarthy"></a>MacCarthy, Cormac, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>-<a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
+<br />
+McCarthy, Denis A., <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
+<br />
+McCarthy, Dermot, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br />
+<br />
+MacCool or MacCumhal, Finn, see <a href="#Finn_MacCool">Finn MacCool</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="MacDonnell_Angus" id="MacDonnell_Angus"></a>MacDonnell, Angus, <a href="#Page_480">480</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="MacDonnell_Innen_Dhu" id="MacDonnell_Innen_Dhu"></a>MacDonnell, Innen Dhu, <a href="#Page_439">439</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="MacDonnells_The" id="MacDonnells_The"></a>MacDonnells, The, <a href="#Page_491">491</a>, <a href="#Page_499">499</a>, <a href="#Page_502">502</a><br />
+<br />
+Macgillicuddy's Reeks, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br />
+<br />
+McKeown, R. H., <a href="#Page_326">326</a>-<a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a><br />
+<br />
+MacLiag, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>-<a href="#Page_252">252</a><br />
+<br />
+MacMurrough, Dermot, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>-<a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_402">402</a><br />
+<br />
+MacNatfraich, &AElig;ngus, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br />
+<br />
+Maam, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>-<a href="#Page_355">355</a><br />
+<br />
+Maamturk Mountains, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a><br />
+<br />
+Macroom, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a><br />
+<br />
+Magrath, Milar, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br />
+<br />
+Mahon, King of Munster, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>-<a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Mahony_Francis_Sylvester" id="Mahony_Francis_Sylvester"></a>Mahony, Francis Sylvester (Father Prout), <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a><br />
+<br />
+Mail, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>-<a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_496">496</a>-<a href="#Page_497">497</a><br />
+<br />
+Mallow, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
+<br />
+Mangan, James Clarence, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>-<a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a><br />
+<br />
+Marconi, Guglielmo, <a href="#Page_325">325</a><br />
+<br />
+Margy, The, <a href="#Page_490">490</a><br />
+<br />
+Markets, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>-<a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a><br />
+<br />
+Marriage Contract, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>-<a href="#Page_396">396</a><br />
+<br />
+Mask, Lough, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>-<a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Matthew, Father, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
+<br />
+Mattock, The, <a href="#Page_550">550</a><br />
+<br />
+Maynooth, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Mayo, County, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br />
+<br />
+Meath, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_543">543</a><br />
+<br />
+Meave, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>-<a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a><br />
+<br />
+Meeting of the Waters, The, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_573" id="Page_573">[573]</a></span><br />
+Mellifont, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>, <a href="#Page_538">538</a>, <a href="#Page_550">550</a>-<a href="#Page_553">553</a><br />
+<br />
+Milcho, <a href="#Page_521">521</a><br />
+<br />
+Milesians, The, see <a href="#Gaels">Gaels</a><br />
+<br />
+Milliken, Richard, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a><br />
+<br />
+Minogue, John, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>-<a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+Moira, <a href="#Page_535">535</a><br />
+<br />
+Molua, see <a href="#St_Molua">St. Molua</a><br />
+<br />
+Monasterboice, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>, <a href="#Page_538">538</a>, <a href="#Page_553">553</a>-<a href="#Page_558">558</a><br />
+<br />
+Monasteries, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>-<a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>-<a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>-<a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>-<a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-<a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>-<a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>-<a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>-<a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>-<a href="#Page_382">382</a><br />
+<br />
+Monastic Schools, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>-<a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>-<a href="#Page_291">291</a><br />
+<br />
+Monk, Gen. George, <a href="#Page_536">536</a><br />
+<br />
+Monkey Trees, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>-<a href="#Page_202">202</a><br />
+<br />
+Monkstown, <a href="#Page_136">136</a><br />
+<br />
+Moore, George, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>, <a href="#Page_543">543</a><br />
+<br />
+Moore, Thomas, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>-<a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>-<a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_406">406</a><br />
+<br />
+Mount Melleray, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br />
+<br />
+Mountmorris, Lord, <a href="#Page_352">352</a><br />
+<br />
+Mourne, Lough, <a href="#Page_445">445</a><br />
+<br />
+Mourne Mountains, <a href="#Page_524">524</a>, <a href="#Page_536">536</a><br />
+<br />
+Moytura, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Moytura, Northern, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Muckross Abbey, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>-<a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>-<a href="#Page_232">232</a><br />
+<br />
+Muckross Lake, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a><br />
+<br />
+Muiredach, <a href="#Page_556">556</a><br />
+<br />
+Munster, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a><br />
+<br />
+Murray, Adam, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a><br />
+<br />
+Murray's Guidebook, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_455">455</a>-<a href="#Page_456">456</a>, <a href="#Page_461">461</a>, <a href="#Page_502">502</a>, <a href="#Page_525">525</a>, <a href="#Page_526">526</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Nafooey, Lough, <a href="#Page_343">343</a><br />
+<br />
+Nally, John, <a href="#Page_278">278</a><br />
+<br />
+National Education Board, The, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>-<a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
+<br />
+National Gallery of Ireland, The, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>-<a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+National Museum of Science and Art, The, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>-<a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a><br />
+<br />
+National Schools, see <a href="#Schools">Schools</a><br />
+<br />
+National University of Ireland, The, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>-<a href="#Page_307">307</a><br />
+<br />
+Nationalists, see <a href="#Home_Rule">Home Rule</a><br />
+<br />
+Nelson, Horatio, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+Netterville Institution, The, <a href="#Page_545">545</a><br />
+<br />
+Newgrange, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>, <a href="#Page_546">546</a>-<a href="#Page_550">550</a><br />
+<br />
+Newry, <a href="#Page_536">536</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Nial_Garv" id="Nial_Garv"></a>Nial Garv, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>-<a href="#Page_440">440</a>, <a href="#Page_442">442</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Nial_of_the_Nine_Hostages" id="Nial_of_the_Nine_Hostages"></a>Nial of the Nine Hostages, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>, <a href="#Page_464">464</a><br />
+<br />
+Normans, The, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>-<a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>-<a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>-<a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_501">501</a>, <a href="#Page_520">520</a>, <a href="#Page_536">536</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+O'Brien, Donall, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Brien, Murtagh, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Brien, Smith, <a href="#Page_11">11</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Cahans, The, <a href="#Page_476">476</a>, <a href="#Page_480">480</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Connell, Daniel, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Conor, Rory, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Conor, Turlough, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Dee, Bishop, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>-<a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Dohertys, The, <a href="#Page_473">473</a>, <a href="#Page_476">476</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Donaghue, The, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Donnell, Hugh, <a href="#Page_439">439</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Donnell, Hugh Roe, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>, <a href="#Page_443">443</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Donnell, Red Hugh, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>-<a href="#Page_440">440</a>, <a href="#Page_442">442</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Donnell, Rory, <a href="#Page_440">440</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Donnells, The, <a href="#Page_428">428</a>, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>-<a href="#Page_439">439</a>, <a href="#Page_480">480</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Duffy, Gilbert and Nicol, <a href="#Page_351">351</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Echon, Maelisu MacBraddan, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Flaherty, Rory, <a href="#Page_325">325</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Flaherty, The, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>-<a href="#Page_354">354</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Gillan, Enoch, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Hanlon, Redmond, <a href="#Page_536">536</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Hurley, Dermot, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Malleys, The, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>-<a href="#Page_354">354</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Neill, Hugh, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Neill, Owen Roe, <a href="#Page_86">86</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Neill, Shane, <a href="#Page_480">480</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Neills, The, <a href="#Page_428">428</a>, <a href="#Page_440">440</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Reilly, John Boyle, <a href="#Page_544">544</a>-<a href="#Page_545">545</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Reilly, William David, <a href="#Page_545">545</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="ORourke_Tiernan" id="ORourke_Tiernan"></a>O'Rourke, Tiernan, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>-<a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>-<a href="#Page_406">406</a>, <a href="#Page_553">553</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Rourke's Table, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
+<br />
+O'Sullivan's Punchbowl, <a href="#Page_188">188</a><br />
+<br />
+Old Age Pensions, see <a href="#Pensions">Pensions</a><br />
+<br />
+Ormonde, Earl of, <a href="#Page_100">100</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_574" id="Page_574">[574]</a></span>Orangemen, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_458">458</a>, <a href="#Page_469">469</a>, <a href="#Page_470">470</a>-<a href="#Page_471">471</a>, <a href="#Page_475">475</a>, <a href="#Page_506">506</a>-<a href="#Page_508">508</a>, <a href="#Page_511">511</a>, <a href="#Page_514">514</a>-<a href="#Page_516">516</a>, <a href="#Page_528">528</a>, <a href="#Page_530">530</a>, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>, <a href="#Page_559">559</a>-<a href="#Page_564">564</a><br />
+<br />
+Oscar, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a><br />
+<br />
+Ossian, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_492">492</a>-<a href="#Page_495">495</a><br />
+<br />
+Oughterard, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Owen_of_the_Hy-Nial" id="Owen_of_the_Hy-Nial"></a>Owen of the Hy-Nial, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>-<a href="#Page_428">428</a>, <a href="#Page_464">464</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>-<a href="#Page_466">466</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a>-<a href="#Page_480">480</a><br />
+<br />
+Owengarriff, The, <a href="#Page_201">201</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Parades, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>-<a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_457">457</a>, <a href="#Page_504">504</a>, <a href="#Page_505">505</a>, <a href="#Page_559">559</a>-<a href="#Page_560">560</a><br />
+<br />
+Parknasilla, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a><br />
+<br />
+Parnell, Charles Stewart, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>-<a href="#Page_219">219</a><br />
+<br />
+Patrick, see <a href="#St_Patrick">St. Patrick</a><br />
+<br />
+Peat, see <a href="#Turf">Turf</a><br />
+<br />
+Pembroke, Earl of, see <a href="#Strongbow">Strongbow</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Pensions" id="Pensions"></a>Pensions, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>-<a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-<a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+Perrot, Sir John, <a href="#Page_480">480</a><br />
+<br />
+Pettigoe, <a href="#Page_413">413</a><br />
+<br />
+Plantation of Ulster, The, <a href="#Page_447">447</a>-<a href="#Page_448">448</a>, <a href="#Page_476">476</a><br />
+<br />
+Pleaskin, <a href="#Page_485">485</a>-<a href="#Page_486">486</a><br />
+<br />
+Poor Relief, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>-<a href="#Page_368">368</a><br />
+<br />
+Portadown, <a href="#Page_535">535</a>, <a href="#Page_536">536</a><br />
+<br />
+Portrush, <a href="#Page_473">473</a>, <a href="#Page_476">476</a>-<a href="#Page_477">477</a><br />
+<br />
+Port Stewart, <a href="#Page_476">476</a><br />
+<br />
+Potheen, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>-<a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br />
+<br />
+Presbyterians, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_486">486</a>, <a href="#Page_506">506</a>-<a href="#Page_509">509</a>, <a href="#Page_510">510</a>-<a href="#Page_511">511</a><br />
+<br />
+Price, Archbishop, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>-<a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
+<br />
+Priests, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>-<a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>-<a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>-<a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>-<a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>-<a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a><br />
+<br />
+Prout, Father, see <a href="#Mahony_Francis_Sylvester">Mahony, Francis Sylvester</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Queen's College, Galway, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>-<a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a><br />
+<br />
+Queenstown, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br />
+<br />
+Quoile, The, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>, <a href="#Page_524">524</a>, <a href="#Page_525">525</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Race-meetings, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>-<a href="#Page_114">114</a><br />
+<br />
+Rafferty, Mr., <a href="#Page_316">316</a>-<a href="#Page_318">318</a><br />
+<br />
+Railroads, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>-<a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>-<a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>-<a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_415">415</a>-<a href="#Page_416">416</a>, <a href="#Page_461">461</a>-<a href="#Page_462">462</a>, <a href="#Page_535">535</a>-<a href="#Page_536">536</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Rain" id="Rain"></a>Rain, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>-<a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>-<a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>-<a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>-<a href="#Page_408">408</a>, <a href="#Page_431">431</a>-<a href="#Page_432">432</a><br />
+<br />
+Raleigh, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+Rathdrum, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br />
+<br />
+Rathlin Island, <a href="#Page_489">489</a><br />
+<br />
+Raths, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>, <a href="#Page_522">522</a>, <a href="#Page_524">524</a>-<a href="#Page_526">526</a><br />
+<br />
+Recess, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>-<a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a><br />
+<br />
+Red Bay, <a href="#Page_500">500</a><br />
+<br />
+Red Branch Knights, <a href="#Page_524">524</a>, <a href="#Page_537">537</a><br />
+<br />
+Red Hugh, <a href="#Page_423">423</a><br />
+<br />
+Redmond, John, <a href="#Page_471">471</a><br />
+<br />
+Ree, Lough, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br />
+<br />
+Reilly, Willy, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>-<a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>-<a href="#Page_422">422</a><br />
+<br />
+Religion, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>-<a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>-<a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>-<a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>-<a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>-<a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_447">447</a>-<a href="#Page_455">455</a>, <a href="#Page_458">458</a>-<a href="#Page_459">459</a>, <a href="#Page_467">467</a>-<a href="#Page_471">471</a>, <a href="#Page_475">475</a>, <a href="#Page_506">506</a>-<a href="#Page_509">509</a>, <a href="#Page_510">510</a>-<a href="#Page_511">511</a>, <a href="#Page_520">520</a>-<a href="#Page_521">521</a>, <a href="#Page_539">539</a><br />
+<br />
+Repartee, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_500">500</a>, <a href="#Page_539">539</a>, <a href="#Page_554">554</a><br />
+<br />
+Roads, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>-<a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>-<a href="#Page_159">159</a><br />
+<br />
+Rock of Cashel, see <a href="#Cashel">Cashel</a><br />
+<br />
+Roe, Henry, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Rolleston, T. W., <a href="#Page_490">490</a><br />
+<br />
+Roman Catholic Church, The, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>-<a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_508">508</a>-<a href="#Page_509">509</a>, <a href="#Page_520">520</a>-<a href="#Page_521">521</a><br />
+<br />
+Roscommon, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+Rosnaree, <a href="#Page_549">549</a>-<a href="#Page_550">550</a><br />
+<br />
+Ross Castle, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>-<a href="#Page_191">191</a><br />
+<br />
+Rosshill, <a href="#Page_345">345</a><br />
+<br />
+Ross Island, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>-<a href="#Page_189">189</a><br />
+<br />
+Round Towers, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>-<a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_553">553</a>-<a href="#Page_555">555</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Royal_Irish_Constabulary" id="Royal_Irish_Constabulary"></a>Royal Irish Constabulary, The, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>-<a href="#Page_329">329</a><br />
+<br />
+Ruins, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>-<a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>-<a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>-<a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>-<a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>-<a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>-<a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>-<a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>-<a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>-<a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>-<a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>-<a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>-<a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>-<a href="#Page_403">403</a>, <a href="#Page_422">422</a>-<a href="#Page_423">423</a>, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>-<a href="#Page_441">441</a>, <a href="#Page_442">442</a>-<a href="#Page_443">443</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a>-<a href="#Page_480">480</a>, <a href="#Page_499">499</a>, <a href="#Page_536">536</a>, <a href="#Page_550">550</a>-<a href="#Page_558">558</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="St_Anne_Shandon" id="St_Anne_Shandon"></a>St. Anne Shandon, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>-<a href="#Page_132">132</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="St_Brigid" id="St_Brigid"></a>St. Brigid, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>-<a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>, <a href="#Page_520">520</a>, <a href="#Page_522">522</a>, <a href="#Page_540">540</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="St_Columba" id="St_Columba"></a>St. Columba, <a href="#Page_436">436</a>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>, <a href="#Page_520">520</a>, <a href="#Page_522">522</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="St_Eugenius" id="St_Eugenius"></a>St. Eugenius, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="St_Fin_Barre" id="St_Fin_Barre"></a>St. Fin Barre, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>-<a href="#Page_149">149</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="St_Finian_the_Leper" id="St_Finian_the_Leper"></a>St. Finian the Leper, <a href="#Page_199">199</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="St_Kevin" id="St_Kevin"></a>St. Kevin, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-<a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="St_Kieran" id="St_Kieran"></a>St. Kieran, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>-<a href="#Page_291">291</a><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_575" id="Page_575">[575]</a></span><br />
+St. Mary's Abbey, Howth, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>-<a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="St_Molua" id="St_Molua"></a>St. Molua, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>-<a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="St_Patrick" id="St_Patrick"></a>St. Patrick, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>-<a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>, <a href="#Page_410">410</a>, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>, <a href="#Page_495">495</a>, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>, <a href="#Page_520">520</a>-<a href="#Page_522">522</a>, <a href="#Page_528">528</a>, <a href="#Page_540">540</a>, <a href="#Page_543">543</a>-<a href="#Page_544">544</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>-<a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Patrick's Purgatory, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Petroc, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Senan, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>-<a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_410">410</a><br />
+<br />
+Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, <a href="#Page_12">12</a><br />
+<br />
+Salthill, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>-<a href="#Page_313">313</a><br />
+<br />
+Sarsfield, Patrick, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>-<a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>-<a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>-<a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_454">454</a>, <a href="#Page_539">539</a><br />
+<br />
+Saul, <a href="#Page_521">521</a>-<a href="#Page_522">522</a><br />
+<br />
+Scarva, <a href="#Page_536">536</a><br />
+<br />
+Scattery Island, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>-<a href="#Page_249">249</a><br />
+<br />
+Scenery, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>-<a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>-<a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>-<a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>-<a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>-<a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>-<a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>-<a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>-<a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>-<a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>-<a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>-<a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>-<a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>-<a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>-<a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>, <a href="#Page_444">444</a>-<a href="#Page_445">445</a>, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>-<a href="#Page_467">467</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a>, <a href="#Page_482">482</a>-<a href="#Page_486">486</a>, <a href="#Page_490">490</a>-<a href="#Page_492">492</a>, <a href="#Page_535">535</a>-<a href="#Page_537">537</a><br />
+<br />
+Schomberg, Gen. Frederick Herman, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>-<a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_502">502</a>, <a href="#Page_538">538</a><br />
+<br />
+Schoolbooks, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>-<a href="#Page_362">362</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Schools" id="Schools"></a>Schools, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>-<a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>-<a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>-<a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_510">510</a>-<a href="#Page_511">511</a><br />
+<br />
+Scotch-Irish, The, <a href="#Page_458">458</a>-<a href="#Page_459">459</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a>-<a href="#Page_480">480</a>, <a href="#Page_487">487</a>, <a href="#Page_520">520</a>, <a href="#Page_562">562</a>-<a href="#Page_563">563</a><br />
+<br />
+Shamrock, The, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>-<a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_498">498</a><br />
+<br />
+Shannon, The, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>-<a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>-<a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>-<a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>-<a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_448">448</a><br />
+<br />
+Sheela-na-gig, The, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>-<a href="#Page_283">283</a><br />
+<br />
+Sheen, The, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br />
+<br />
+Shrines, see <a href="#Holy_Wells">Holy Wells</a><br />
+<br />
+Side-car, see <a href="#Jaunting-Car">Jaunting-car</a><br />
+<br />
+Silken Thomas, see <a href="#Kildare_Earls_of">Kildare, Earls of</a><br />
+<br />
+Slane, <a href="#Page_538">538</a>, <a href="#Page_543">543</a>-<a href="#Page_544">544</a><br />
+<br />
+Slemish, <a href="#Page_521">521</a><br />
+<br />
+Slievenamon, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>-<a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a><br />
+<br />
+Sligo, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>-<a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>-<a href="#Page_412">412</a>, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>, <a href="#Page_442">442</a><br />
+<br />
+Sligo, County, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <a href="#Page_428">428</a><br />
+<br />
+Sligo, O'Conor, <a href="#Page_380">380</a><br />
+<br />
+Slums, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>-<a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>-<a href="#Page_214">214</a><br />
+<br />
+Smoking, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>-<a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>-<a href="#Page_195">195</a><br />
+<br />
+Snakes, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>-<a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>-<a href="#Page_373">373</a><br />
+<br />
+Statues, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>-<a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>-<a href="#Page_214">214</a><br />
+<br />
+Stella, see <a href="#Johnson_Mrs_Hester">Johnson, Mrs. Hester</a><br />
+<br />
+Stone Circles, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>-<a href="#Page_408">408</a>, <a href="#Page_492">492</a>, <a href="#Page_494">494</a>-<a href="#Page_495">495</a>, <a href="#Page_546">546</a><br />
+<br />
+Strabane, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>-<a href="#Page_446">446</a>, <a href="#Page_450">450</a><br />
+<br />
+Strangford, Lough, <a href="#Page_521">521</a><br />
+<br />
+Stranorlar, <a href="#Page_445">445</a><br />
+<br />
+Stranrear, <a href="#Page_501">501</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Strongbow" id="Strongbow"></a>Strongbow, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>-<a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>-<a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_447">447</a><br />
+<br />
+Struell, <a href="#Page_526">526</a>-<a href="#Page_531">531</a><br />
+<br />
+Suir, The, <a href="#Page_99">99</a><br />
+<br />
+Sullivan, Timothy, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>-<a href="#Page_222">222</a><br />
+<br />
+Swift, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>-<a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+<br />
+Swilly, Lough, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>, <a href="#Page_461">461</a>, <a href="#Page_466">466</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Tara, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_540">540</a>, <a href="#Page_543">543</a>-<a href="#Page_544">544</a>, <a href="#Page_549">549</a><br />
+<br />
+Taylor, Jeremy, <a href="#Page_524">524</a><br />
+<br />
+Tenements, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>-<a href="#Page_214">214</a><br />
+<br />
+Thomond, <a href="#Page_251">251</a><br />
+<br />
+Thomond, Earl of, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a><br />
+<br />
+Thurles, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>-<a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a><br />
+<br />
+Tillage, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>-<a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>-<a href="#Page_342">342</a><br />
+<br />
+Timony, John, <a href="#Page_441">441</a>-<a href="#Page_442">442</a><br />
+<br />
+Tipperary, Vale of, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>-<a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
+<br />
+Tomies, The, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br />
+<br />
+Tone, Theobald Wolfe, <a href="#Page_509">509</a><br />
+<br />
+Tonna, Charlotte, <a href="#Page_453">453</a><br />
+<br />
+Tore Cascade, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>-<a href="#Page_202">202</a><br />
+<br />
+Trams, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>-<a href="#Page_310">310</a><br />
+<br />
+Trinity College, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a><br />
+<br />
+Tristram, Sir Almericus, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>-<a href="#Page_23">23</a><br />
+<br />
+Tuam, <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+Tullymongan, <a href="#Page_545">545</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name="Turf" id="Turf"></a>Turf, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>-<a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>-<a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>-<a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_490">490</a>-<a href="#Page_491">491</a>, <a href="#Page_529">529</a><br />
+<br />
+Twelve Pins of Bunnabeola, The, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a><br />
+<br />
+Tyrconnell, Earl of, <a href="#Page_423">423</a>, <a href="#Page_440">440</a>, <a href="#Page_454">454</a><br />
+<br />
+Tyrconnell, Lady, <a href="#Page_539">539</a><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_576" id="Page_576">[576]</a></span><br />
+Tyrconnell, Province, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>-<a href="#Page_428">428</a>, <a href="#Page_447">447</a><br />
+<br />
+Tyrone, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>-<a href="#Page_428">428</a>, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>, <a href="#Page_447">447</a>, <a href="#Page_464">464</a>, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>, <a href="#Page_479">479</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ulster, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>-<a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_424">424</a>, <a href="#Page_448">448</a>, <a href="#Page_449">449</a>, <a href="#Page_453">453</a>, <a href="#Page_455">455</a>, <a href="#Page_458">458</a>-<a href="#Page_459">459</a>, <a href="#Page_461">461</a>, <a href="#Page_468">468</a>-<a href="#Page_469">469</a>, <a href="#Page_486">486</a>, <a href="#Page_498">498</a>, <a href="#Page_502">502</a>, <a href="#Page_506">506</a>-<a href="#Page_518">518</a>, <a href="#Page_521">521</a>, <a href="#Page_522">522</a>, <a href="#Page_529">529</a>-<a href="#Page_530">530</a>, <a href="#Page_537">537</a>, <a href="#Page_539">539</a>, <a href="#Page_559">559</a>-<a href="#Page_564">564</a><br />
+<br />
+Union, Act of, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Unionists, see <a href="#Home_Rule">Home Rule</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Vanessa, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+<br />
+Victoria, Queen, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_517">517</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Wages, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>-<a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>-<a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a><br />
+<br />
+Walker, Rev. George, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>-<a href="#Page_451">451</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a>, <a href="#Page_538">538</a>-<a href="#Page_539">539</a><br />
+<br />
+Warbeck, Perkin, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br />
+<br />
+Waterford, <a href="#Page_454">454</a><br />
+<br />
+Weather, see <a href="#Climate">Climate</a> and <a href="#Rain">Rain</a><br />
+<br />
+Westmeath, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a><br />
+<br />
+Westport, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>-<a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>, <a href="#Page_536">536</a><br />
+<br />
+Wicklow, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<br />
+Wild West Films, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>, <a href="#Page_532">532</a><br />
+<br />
+William III of Orange, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>-<a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_449">449</a>-<a href="#Page_450">450</a>, <a href="#Page_453">453</a>-<a href="#Page_455">455</a>, <a href="#Page_460">460</a>, <a href="#Page_470">470</a>, <a href="#Page_475">475</a>, <a href="#Page_502">502</a>, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>, <a href="#Page_538">538</a>-<a href="#Page_540">540</a>, <a href="#Page_559">559</a><br />
+<br />
+Wilson, Woodrow, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <a href="#Page_441">441</a>-<a href="#Page_442">442</a><br />
+<br />
+Workhouses, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>-<a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_473">473</a><br />
+<br />
+Workman's Insurance, see <a href="#Insurance_Workmans">Insurance</a><br />
+<br />
+Wyatt, Henry, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Youghal, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class='tnote'><b>Transcriber's Note:</b><br />
+<br />
+Inconsistent hyphenation has been retained. Obvious punctuation
+errors have been corrected.<br />
+<br />
+Page 215, "enought" changed to "enough" (enough to meet one)<br />
+<br />
+Page 298, "whereever" changed to "wherever" (have been built wherever)<br />
+<br />
+Page 425, "celebate" changed to "celebrate" (forbidden to celebrate
+Mass)<br />
+<br />
+Page 517, "visting" changed to "visiting" (which is worth visiting)<br />
+<br />
+Page 576, "Tyrconnel" changed to "Tyrconnell" (Tyrconnell, Province)
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHARM OF IRELAND***</p>
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+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Charm of Ireland, by Burton Egbert
+Stevenson
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Charm of Ireland
+
+
+Author: Burton Egbert Stevenson
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 8, 2011  [eBook #35529]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHARM OF IRELAND***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Emmy, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
+available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the numerous original illustrations.
+      See 35529-h.htm or 35529-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35529/35529-h/35529-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35529/35529-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/charmofireland00stevuoft
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      An o with a macron is represented in the text by [=o].
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CHARM OF IRELAND
+
+
+[Illustration: TWO TINY CONNAUGHT TOILERS
+
+_See page 356_]
+
+
+THE CHARM OF IRELAND
+
+by
+
+BURTON E. STEVENSON
+
+Author of "The Spell of Holland," "The Mystery of the Boule
+Cabinet," etc.
+
+With Many Illustrations from Photographs by the Author
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Dodd, Mead and Company
+1914
+
+Copyright, 1914
+By Dodd, Mead & Company
+
+
+
+
+             _TO_
+
+           J. I. B.
+
+          _THIS BOOK_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                         PAGE
+       I DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT                     1
+      II LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF AN ANCIENT CAPITAL    9
+     III THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN                    26
+      IV ON THE TRAIL OF THE SHAMROCK               42
+       V THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN                   59
+      VI DROGHEDA THE DREARY                        85
+     VII HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL OF THE KINGS         97
+    VIII ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY                     113
+      IX CUSHLA MA CHREE                           128
+       X THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE               139
+      XI A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND                 153
+     XII THE "GRAND TOUR"                          177
+    XIII ROUND ABOUT KILLARNEY                     192
+     XIV O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR              203
+      XV THE RUINS AT ADARE                        224
+     XVI "WHERE THE RIVER SHANNON FLOWS"           242
+    XVII LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE                   265
+   XVIII GALWAY OF THE TRIBES                      292
+     XIX IAR CONNAUGHT                             314
+      XX JOYCE'S COUNTRY                           339
+     XXI THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM                    358
+    XXII THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR                 375
+   XXIII THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS                   398
+    XXIV THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE                 415
+     XXV THE MAIDEN CITY                           438
+    XXVI THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH                    458
+   XXVII THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS                  472
+  XXVIII THE GLENS OF ANTRIM                       485
+    XXIX BELFAST                                   503
+     XXX THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK                  519
+    XXXI THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE                   534
+   XXXII THE END OF THE PILGRIMAGE                 559
+         INDEX                                     567
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  Two Tiny Connaught Toilers                  _Frontispiece_
+                                                    FACING
+                                                     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                                   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
+  The Shannon, near World's End                      248
+  St. Senan's Well                                   248
+  The Bridge at Killaloe                             258
+  The Oratory at Killaloe                            258
+  Entrance to St. Molua's Oratory                    262
+  A Fisherman's Home                                 262
+  The Choir of the Abbey at Athenry                  270
+  A Cottage at Athenry                               270
+  The Goldsmith Rectory at Lissoy                    276
+  The "Three Jolly Pigeons"                          276
+  On the Road to Clonmacnoise                        288
+  St. Kieran's Cathair, Clonmacnoise                 288
+  The Market at Galway                               296
+  "Ould Saftie"                                      296
+  The Claddagh, Galway                               300
+  A Claddagh Home                                    300
+  A Galway Vista                                     302
+  The Memorial of a Spartan Father                   302
+  The Connemara Marble Quarry                        322
+  A Connemara Home                                   322
+  In "Joyce's Country"                               344
+  On the Shore of Lough Mask                         344
+  The Cloister at Cong Abbey                         348
+  The Monks' Fishing-house, Cong Abbey               348
+  The Turf-Cutters                                   356
+  A Girl of "Joyce's Country"                        356
+  Cromlechs at Carrowmore                            392
+  Sligo Abbey from the Cloister                      400
+  The Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis                            400
+  A Ruin on the Shore of Lough Gill                  402
+  The Last Fragment of an Ancient Stronghold         402
+  A Cashel near Dromahair                            408
+  St. Patrick's Holy Well                            408
+  The Coast at Bundoran                              416
+  The Home of "Colleen Bawn"                         416
+  Birthplace of William Allingham                    430
+  Castle Donegal                                     430
+  The Walls of Derry                                 466
+  The Grainan of Aileach                             466
+  The "Giant's Head," near Portrush                  480
+  The Ruins of Dunluce Castle                        480
+  The Giant's Causeway                               482
+  The Cliffs beyond the Causeway                     482
+  The Grave of Ossian                                496
+  An Antrim Landscape                                496
+  A Humble Home in Antrim                            498
+  The Old Jail at Cushendall                         498
+  The City Hall, Belfast                             516
+  High Street, Belfast                               516
+  The Grave of Patrick, Brigid and Columba           522
+  The Old Cross at Downpatrick                       522
+  The Great Rath at Downpatrick                      526
+  The Inner and Outer Circles                        526
+  The Central Mound                                  526
+  The Eye Well at Struell                            528
+  The Well of Sins at Struell                        528
+  The Birthplace of John Boyle O'Reilly              540
+  Entrance to Dowth Tumulus                          540
+  Entrance to Newgrange                              546
+  The Ruins of Mellifont                             546
+  The Round Tower, Monasterboice                     554
+  The High Cross, Monasterboice                      554
+  Muiredach's Cross, Monasterboice                   556
+
+
+
+
+THE CHARM OF IRELAND
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DUBLIN'S SATURDAY NIGHT
+
+
+TWILIGHT was at hand when the little steamer, slender as a greyhound,
+cast loose from the pier at Holyhead, made its way cautiously out past
+the breakwater, and then, gathering speed, headed away across the Irish
+Sea, straight toward the setting sun.
+
+The boat showed many evidences that the Irish Sea can be savage when it
+chooses. Everything movable about the decks was carefully lashed down;
+there were railings and knotted ropes everywhere to cling to; and in the
+saloon the table-racks were set ready at hand, as though they had just
+been used, and might be needed again at any moment. But, on this
+Saturday evening in late May, the sea was in a pleasant, even a jovial,
+mood, with just enough swell to send a thin shower of spray across the
+deck from time to time, and lend exhilaration to the rush of the fleet
+little turbine.
+
+There were many boats in sight--small ones, for the most part, rolling
+and pitching apparently much worse than we; and then the gathering
+darkness obscured them one by one, and presently all that was left of
+them were the bobbing white lights at their mastheads. A biting chill
+crept into the air, and Betty finally sought refuge from it in the
+saloon, while I made my way back to the smoking-room, hoping for a
+friendly pipe with some one.
+
+I was attracted at once by a rosy-faced old priest, 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 long?"
+
+"More than thirty years," he said, and took a few reflective puffs.
+
+"No doubt you will find many changes," I ventured.
+
+But he shook his head. "I am thinking I shall find Tuam much as I left
+it," he said. "There are not many changes in Ireland, even in thirty
+years. 'Tis not like America. I am afraid I shall have to give up
+smoking while I am there," he added, with a little sigh.
+
+"Give up smoking?" I echoed. "But 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 companion laughed when I told
+him this.
+
+"That is not so at all," he said. "Every priest, of 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 anything 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 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 exhilaration, in setting
+foot for the first time in any country; 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 before our eyes that we
+crossed the pier and sought seats in the boat-train.
+
+It is only five or six miles from Kingstown to Dublin, 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 collected 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 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 gintleman. 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 sixpence--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 celebrated Saturday evening by taking a glass too much.
+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 uplifted, 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, swinging 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 Sackville Street, without pausing, and
+continued at top speed straight ahead. We followed him for some moments;
+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 protested. "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?"
+
+"You see, sir, I'm a stranger in Dublin, like yourself," he explained.
+
+"Well, why on earth didn't you say so?" I demanded.
+
+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.
+
+"What name was it you gave this street, sir?" he asked, at last.
+
+"Sackville Street," I answered, and pointed for confirmation 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 certainly 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
+misery. Cleanliness is perhaps as painful to a person reared in dirt as
+dirt is to a person reared in cleanliness; 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.
+
+[Illustration: DUBLIN CASTLE
+
+(C) Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.]
+
+[Illustration: O'CONNELL, ALIAS SACKVILLE STREET, DUBLIN]
+
+These appalling alleys are always in the background of my thoughts of
+Dublin; and yet it is not them I see 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 portico 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 l'Opera
+when one thinks of Paris, or the Dam and the Kalverstraat when one
+thinks of Amsterdam, 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 almost at once by two things: the unusual height of
+Dublin 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-possessed. 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 impatient.
+
+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'Connell 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
+another leaf to O'Connell's crown of laurel. O'Connell 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 memorial of another
+patriot--Charles Stewart Parnell. Parnell's fame burns brighter and
+clearer with the passing years, and this memorial, so simple, so
+dignified, and yet so full of meaning, is one which no American can
+contemplate without a thrill of pride, for it is the work of Augustus
+Saint-Gaudens--a consummate artist, American to the marrow, though
+Dublin-born, of a French father and an Irish mother.
+
+Midway of this great thoroughfare, rises the Nelson Pillar--a fluted
+column springing a hundred and fifty feet into the air, dominating the
+whole town. I do not understand why Nelson should have been so signally
+honoured in the Irish capital, for there was nothing Irish about him,
+either in birth or temperament. Perhaps that is the reason. Stranger
+things have happened in Ireland. And indeed it is no stranger than the
+whim which set another statue to face the old Parliament House--a gilded
+atrocity representing William 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 which forms the heart of Dublin; but
+meanwhile everybody 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 reminds 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 granite structure with
+curving facade 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 century 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 that not even independence can bring it
+back to Dublin.
+
+It was the Irish House of Commons which, in 1752, provided the funds for
+the new home of Trinity College, 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 posing before fine London ladies; and
+Mangan had this reward, 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:
+          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 handsome, wide-flung
+building with a court in front, once the mansion of the Duke of
+Leinster, but now occupied 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 enclosed 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 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 presentments 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 picture gallery well
+worth a visit. This is the Municipal Gallery, housed in a beautiful old
+mansion in Harcourt Street--another memorial of spacious eighteenth
+century days, where that famous judge and duellist, Lord Clonmell,
+lived. The house itself would be worth seeing, even if there were no
+pictures in it, for it is a splendid example of Georgian domestic
+architecture; but there are, besides some beautiful examples of the
+Barbizon school, a number of modern Irish paintings which promise much
+for the future of Irish art.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day was so bright and warm that it seemed a pity to spend the whole
+of it in town, so, after lunch, we took a tram for the Hill of Howth.
+Most of the tram lines of the city start from the Nelson Pillar, so we
+had only to cross the street to the starting point.
+
+There seems to be a considerable difference of opinion as to the correct
+pronunciation of "Howth." Perhaps 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 Connaught escaped the stigma. At any rate, when
+I asked a policeman which tram to take for Howth, I pronounced 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 yonder."
+
+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 Europe,
+the fare is gauged by the length of the journey.
+
+"To the Hill of Hooth," I answered proudly.
+
+"Ah, the Hill of H[=o]th, is it," he said, making it rhyme with "both,"
+and he picked out the correct tickets 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 suspect that "H[=o]th" 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 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 marshalled 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, somewhere 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
+alliance, 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.
+
+In the intervals of this warfare, he devoted himself to setting his
+kingdom in order, and to such good purpose 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 Clontarf 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.
+
+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 ancient yew, and
+tradition says that it was under this tree that Brian's body was laid by
+his men. The tradition 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 suddenly
+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 running around the base of
+the hill and facing the harbour and the Irish Sea. The harbour is
+enclosed by impressive piers of granite, and was once a busy place, for
+it was the Dublin packet station until Kingstown superseded 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 sunlight, 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
+tumbledown buildings at the corner as the home of the caretaker. 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 enraptured 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 legitimately 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. The west front is part of the
+original Danish church, built in 1042, and is pierced by a small
+round-headed doorway, above which rises an open bell-turret. In 1235,
+the Archbishop of Dublin rebuilt the Danish church, retaining only its
+facade. The interior, as he remodelled it, consisted of a nave and one
+aisle, separated by three pointed arches. They are still there, very low
+and rude, marking the length of the Archbishop'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 doorway 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.
+
+[Illustration: RUINS OF ST. MARY'S ABBEY, HOWTH]
+
+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 recumbent figures of the knight and his lady, the former's feet
+resting, after the usual fashion, on his dog. Considering the
+vicissitudes of weather and vandalism through which they have passed,
+both figures are surprisingly 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 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 towers, 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 Saturdays. 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-uniformed 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.
+
+"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 surprise.
+
+"Ah, I have, sir, many times, in the moving-pictures," 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
+sanguinary 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 employed in fighting Indians and rescuing
+damsels in distress. 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 remarkable 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 fashion, while the crowd stares
+fascinated. It is exhausting 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, members 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 Ireland--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 remarked cheerfully, as we
+turned to go in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ART OF ANCIENT ERIN
+
+
+DUBLIN is by far the most fascinating town in Ireland. 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 absorbing 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 two seats back to back, facing outwards,
+and a foot-rest overhanging each wheel.
+
+Opposite the next page is a series of post-card pictures 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 mountain-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 sitting 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 inventive 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 enlargement 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 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE EVOLUTION OF THE JAUNTING CAR]
+
+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 visitor will never have occasion to
+mean motor unless he owns one, for, outside of the trams in a few of
+the 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
+millionaire, one must be careful to bargain in advance. Once the bargain
+is concluded, your jarvey is the most agreeable 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 a corner at
+top-speed. He usually does it on one wheel, and the person on the
+outside seat has the feeling 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 impressive 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 Brewery, furnished the money. Like
+all the other old religious establishments, it was taken from the
+Catholics in the time of Henry VIII and given to his Established
+Church--the Episcopal Church, here called the Church of Ireland--and has
+remained in its possession ever since, though the church itself was
+disestablished some forty years ago.
+
+By far the most interesting fact about St. Patrick's is that Jonathan
+Swift was for thirty-two years its Dean, and now lies buried there
+beside that "Stella" whom he made immortal. A brass in the pavement
+marks the spot where they lie side by side, and on the wall not far away
+is the marble slab which enshrines the epitaph he himself wrote. It is
+in Latin, and may be Englished thus:
+
+          Jonathan Swift, for thirty years Dean of this
+          Cathedral, lies here, where savage indignation can
+          no longer tear his heart. Go, traveller, and, if
+          you can, imitate him who played a man's part as
+          the champion of liberty.
+
+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 before 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 declined to contribute
+anything toward its cost; whereupon Swift and his Chapter put up this
+slab, paying tribute to the hero's virtues, and adding that his valour
+was more revered by strangers than by his own kindred.
+
+There are many other curious and interesting monuments in the place,
+well worth inspecting, but I shall refer to only one of them--the one
+which started the feud that sent Strafford to the scaffold. It is a
+towering 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 unidentified 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, 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 anything to cook and
+eat; sitting there through the long hours; sleeping there through the
+foul nights; awaking there each morning to another hopeless day of
+misery. Think how impossible it is to be clean or decent amid such
+surroundings. Small wonder self-respect 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 foulness as this is perhaps the one
+thing our civilisation has most reason to be ashamed of!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dublin Castle is interesting only because of its history. It was here,
+by what was then the ford across the Liffey just above the tideway, that
+the Danish invaders 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 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 accept a tip--will
+show you through the state apartments, 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 equality, are busts of Dean Swift and St.
+Peter, while over the east one Brian Boru occupies an exalted place
+between St. Patrick and the Virgin Mary, while on the corbels of the
+window-arches the heads of ninety sovereigns 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 Dublin. The Danes founded it in 1038; then
+came Strongbow, who built an English cathedral atop the rude Danish
+church, which is now the crypt, and his transepts and one bay of his
+choir still survive. There were various additions and rebuildings, after
+that, but in 1569 the bog on which the Cathedral is built moved under
+its weight, the entire south wall of the nave and the vaulted roof fell
+in, and the debris lay where 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 distilling are the only
+industries which have flourished in Dublin since the Act of Union. All
+others have decayed 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 interesting thing in it is the tomb
+of Strongbow. Richard de Clare his name was, second Earl of Pembroke,
+and it was to him, so legend says, that Dermot MacMurrough, King of
+Leinster, appealed for aid, in 1166, after he had been driven from his
+kingdom and compelled to restore to Tiernan O'Rourke, Prince of Breffni,
+Dervorgilla--otherwise Mrs. O'Rourke--with whom he had eloped. It wasn't
+the lady that Dermot wanted--it was revenge, and, most of all, his
+kingdom--we shall hear more of this story later on--and Strongbow
+readily agreed to assist. He needed little persuasion, for the Normans
+had been looking longingly 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 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 believe!
+
+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. Almost 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 fortunate 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 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 masterpieces 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 carvings 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; perhaps 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, especially 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 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 Moundbuilders, so common in
+our part of Ohio. Then comes the Bronze Age, with a magnificent
+collection of ornaments of hammered gold, and some extraordinarily
+interesting 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 antiquities: that is, all
+the objects of art, as well as of domestic 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, Ireland was Pagan; after
+the Norman conquest, she was crushed and broken. It was during these
+eight hundred years, while the rest of Europe was struggling in
+ignorance and misery through the Dark Ages, that Ireland 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 bells used by the early Irish saints in the celebration 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 recovered 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 enshrine 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 religiously through the long centuries. The last Abbot died
+about a hundred years ago, and the museum acquired 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 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 Ireland, there lived an artist capable of producing
+a masterpiece like this.
+
+[Illustration: THE CROSS OF CONG]
+
+[Illustration: THE SHRINE OF ST. PATRICK'S BELL]
+
+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 preserved 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 parchment, and each of
+its pages is framed with exquisite tracery and ornamentation, and with a
+beautiful 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 patterns. 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 costumes! 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 tremendous 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 Dublin, 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 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 delightful 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
+principal 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 peculiarly Irish institution. For these
+tall towers of stone, resembling nothing so much as gigantic chimneys,
+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 toward the top in a way which shows the high
+skill of their builders. That they were well-built their survival
+through the centuries attests. The narrow entrance 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 controversy. Different
+antiquarians have believed them to be fire-temples of the Druids,
+phallic emblems, astronomical observatories, anchorite towers or
+penitential prisons. 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
+pillaging 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 small bells of those days, hung a
+hundred feet above the ground in a chamber with only four tiny openings,
+would be all but inaudible. As watch-towers they were ineffective, for
+the enemy had only to advance 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 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. 'Tis the true shamrock, miss," and she broke off a
+spray for each of us.
+
+Let me say here that she knew perfectly well Betty was a married woman;
+her first question had been as to our relationship. But all over
+Ireland, women, whether married or single, are habitually addressed as
+"miss," just as, conversely, in France they are addressed 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 ourselves 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
+outdoors, a group in this corner and a group in that. The small children
+were being taught by older ones, 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 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 asking 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 the Rock of Cashel,
+in his missionary journeyings over Ireland, and at once went to work to
+convert Aengus 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 assembled 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 illustration, 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 nowadays 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 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
+remember 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 disclaimed 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 friendliness.
+
+"Is it a car your honour would be wantin'?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," I said. "How did you know?"
+
+"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 telegraph-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 disbursed 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 shillings a week, receives five shillings
+weekly from the 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 surprisingly large number of people
+there whose income is under ten shillings and whose years exceed
+threescore 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, 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 encumbrance, and whenever a marriage contract was made or
+a division of the property, it was always carefully stipulated who
+should look after them. Naturally in a land where a man was hard put to
+it to provide 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 workhouses 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 England, in
+the past, has dealt with Irish problems,--the whole Irish problem, as
+some protest, is merely the result of a stupid people trying to govern a
+clever one!
+
+About eighty years ago, England realised that something must be done for
+the Irish poor. Irish industries 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 alternatives, 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 country, 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
+instance, 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. 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, workhouses and jails alike will be transformed into schools
+and factories, and Irish money will be spent in brightening 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 wandered forth to find the Samaritan who
+had offered to take us to the station; and finally we saw him standing
+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
+parish 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, wondering if we would better enter.
+
+"Come in, sir; come in, miss!" cried our new-found friend. "The Father
+is away from home the day, worse luck, but he'd never forgive me if I
+didn't make you welcome."
+
+"Oh, then you're the gardener," I said.
+
+"Sure, I'm everything, sir," and he hustled us up the path, his face
+beaming with happiness. "And how grieved His Riverence will be when he
+comes back and learns that he missed you. If he was anywhere near, I'd
+have gone for him at once, but he went to Dublin to the conference and
+he won't be back till evenin'. He's a grand man, God bless him, and has
+travelled all over the world, and it's himself would 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 scarlet 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 cutting. "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.
+
+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
+carrying.
+
+"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 beauties 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.
+
+Betty and I were the only ones who descended at Rathdrum, that day, and
+we were glad, for it is peculiarly 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 suddenly emerged high above the lovely
+Vale of Clara. Far down, so far it seemed the merest ribbon, the
+Avonmore 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
+vanquished on the highest slopes by the low, closely-growing 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. "Unprofitably 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 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, breaking 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 intervals 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
+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 pronounced almost
+exactly like the Scotch "loch." Glendalough 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 converted 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, touching 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 nettles, and cooled the damsel's ardour by
+beating her with a branch of them, whereupon she asked his pardon 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 betook 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.
+
+          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 lakeside,
+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 disturbed. 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 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 rapidly 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 Ireland.
+
+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 unimpeachable
+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 nestling
+between. In the foreground lay the ruins of the seven churches, with the
+round tower rising high above 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, under the
+shadow of the hills, and so to the little inn where we were to have
+lunch.
+
+[Illustration: (C) Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
+
+GLENDALOUGH AND THE RUINS OF ST. KEVIN'S CHURCHES]
+
+We were looking in delight at the inn, with its thatched roof and
+whitewashed walls, when a formidable figure appeared in the door--a
+towering young woman, with eyes terrifically keen and a thick shock of
+the reddest hair I ever saw. She was a singularly pure specimen, as I
+afterwards learned, of the red Irish--a sort of throw-back, I suppose,
+to the old Vikings 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 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 welcome. 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
+abundantly in the damp ground along the margin of the stream was what
+Betty declared to be the true shamrock--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 gardener 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 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
+backache, 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 monastery.
+"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 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
+deceive the Saint, so he confessed everything. And there the hoof-prints
+are to this day."
+
+They certainly bore some resemblance to hoof-prints, and I could not but
+admire the ingenuity of the tale which had been invented to explain
+them.
+
+"What happened to the thief?" I asked. "Did the Saint let him go?"
+
+"He did not, your honour, for it was the law that he must be hanged. But
+before he died, he asked the Saint to grant him one favour, and the
+Saint told him to name it; and the man asked that he be buried in the
+same graveyard with the Saint himself, and that on his grave a stone be
+placed with a hole in the middle, so that, if a horse stepped over his
+grave, he might put out his hand and pull it in. The Saint kept his
+promise, and in the graveyard yonder you may see the stone."
+
+As, indeed, we did; at least, there is a grave there covered by a stone
+with a large round hole in the middle.
+
+"And now, your honour," went on our guide, as we came to the door of the
+inn, "you will be wantin' me to row you over to the Saint's bed, I'm
+thinkin'."
+
+"What is the fare?" I asked.
+
+"As much over sixpence as you care to give, your honour."
+
+"All right," I said. "We'll be ready presently." And we went in to
+lunch.
+
+We certainly enjoyed that meal, though I have forgotten 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 monastery, 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 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 clinging 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 except 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 the course of this narrative--and she promptly declared 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 lifetime 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 prevailed.
+
+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 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 always 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 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 arrival, 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE ROAD TO ST. KEVIN'S SEAT]
+
+[Illustration: THE FIRST OF ST. KEVIN'S CHURCHES]
+
+The Irish schools, like everything else Irish, are controlled by a
+central board which sits at Dublin Castle. There are sixty-six other
+boards and bureaus and departments 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
+Education Board, and, like all the others, it is in no way responsible
+to the Irish people. In fact, it isn't responsible 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. If there are
+enough children, both Catholic and Protestant, 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 always be a few pupils of the other denomination in
+it. In the villages where there is a church, as at Clondalkin, 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 authority 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 supposed not to be
+coloured by religion, but it is inevitable that it should be; and this
+is especially true of Ireland, 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 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 furthermore 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 occurred 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 instruction 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 schoolhouses, and you will wonder what
+they are doing there.
+
+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
+requires 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 absurd. I do not believe
+that religious and secular instruction can be combined in this way,
+especially with a mixed population, without impairing the efficiency of
+both. The first real struggle the Home Rule Parliament 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 principle 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 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 Ireland--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 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
+something 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. Ireland 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
+English 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 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 schoolhouses, 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 Instruction.
+
+          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 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 Circumlocution
+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 frequently 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, however, quite powerless to do anything except raise a row.
+Another, who believed that the highest function of education was to
+develop the aesthetic consciousness, 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
+mentioned 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 Englishman will be glad to get rid of us, so his government 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 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 expressions 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
+graveyard. All the churches are little ones--mere midgets, some of
+them--and they are in all states of preservation, from a few fragments
+of wall to the almost perfect "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 monastery, 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 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 everywhere.
+
+We blundered into the fish-market, as we were exploring the streets, and
+watched for some time the 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
+microscopic; 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, recalling 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, under Owen Roe O'Neill, had, naturally
+enough, supported 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 before 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 garrison 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 afterwards
+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 preserved 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 addressed ourselves to
+getting out to the battlefield and abbeys. The railroads sell
+combination tickets for the 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 giving the price of the trip we wanted to take as ten
+shillings 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE ROUND TOWER, CLONDALKIN]
+
+[Illustration: ST. LAWRENCE'S GATE, DROGHEDA]
+
+"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 jarvies just charge what they please. I'm free to
+admit they have no conscience. There is one, though, who is fairly
+honest," 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 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 forgetting the
+bell-boy), drove to the station, and got aboard a train, which presently
+rolled away southwards. It was very full--the third-class crowded with
+soldiers in khaki bound for the camp on the Curragh 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
+comfortable 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 interesting. Her home was
+somewhere down in the Vale of Tipperary, and I judged from her
+appearance that she was the wife of a well-to-do farmer. She was most
+emphatically not a Nationalist.
+
+"It isn't them who own land, or who are buyin' a little farm under the
+purchase act that want Home Rule," she said. "No, no; them ones would be
+glad to let well enough alone. 'Tis the labourers, the farm-hands, the
+ditch-diggers, and such-like people, who have nothin' to lose, that
+shout the loudest for it. They would like a bit of land themselves, and
+they fancy that under Home Rule they'll be gettin' it; but where is it
+to come from, I'd like to know, unless off of them that has it now; and
+who would be trustin' the likes of them to pay for 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.
+
+"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 Ireland--the small farmer, handicapped by
+poverty and primitive methods, ground down in the markets of the world,
+and in turn grinding down the labourers beneath 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 composed 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 Parliament will somehow compel them to pay living
+wages to their labourers. I can only say that I hope it will!
+
+Outside, meanwhile, rural Ireland was unfolding itself under our eyes,
+varied, beautiful--and sad. The first part of it we had already
+traversed on our excursion 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 minding 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.
+
+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
+horizon, 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 Tipperary, and one realises it was a true vision of the place of his
+birth that Denis McCarthy had when he wrote his lilting verses in praise
+of it:
+
+    Ah, sweet is Tipperary in the springtime of the year,
+      When the hawthorn's whiter than the snow,
+    When the feathered folk assemble and the air is all a-tremble
+      With their singing and their winging to and fro;
+    When queenly Slievenamon puts her verdant vesture on
+      And smiles to hear the news the breezes bring;
+    When the sun begins to glance on the rivulets that dance--
+      Ah, sweet is Tipperary in the spring!
+
+Slievenamon is not in sight from the train--we shall see it to-morrow
+from the Rock of Cashel; but just ahead is a rugged hill with a
+singular, half-moon depression 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 syllables, 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-looking 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 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, having seen us safely to
+the platform, called loudly for "Jimmy," and an old man presently
+shambled forward, to whose care, with many wishes for a pleasant
+journey, we were committed.
+
+The old man proved to be the driver of a very ramshackle 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 uncomfortable, 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 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 intervals by the tramping and
+neighing of the horses arriving for the fair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+HOLY CROSS AND CASHEL OF THE KINGS
+
+
+IF one doesn't like bacon and eggs, one must go without breakfast in
+Ireland, unless one likes fish, or is content with bread and butter.
+Every evening Betty would have a colloquy with the maid, which ran
+something like this:
+
+"What will ye be wantin' for breakfast, miss?"
+
+"What can we have?"
+
+"Oh, anything ye like, miss."
+
+"Well, what, for instance?"
+
+"There's bacon and eggs, miss, and there's fish."
+
+We usually took bacon and eggs, for fish seemed out of place on the
+breakfast-table. Besides, we were sure to encounter it later at dinner.
+
+"And will ye have coffee or tay, miss?" the maid would continue.
+
+We took coffee once, and after that we took tea. The tea is good, though
+strong, and it seems somehow to suit the climate; but one sip of Irish
+coffee will be enough for most people.
+
+So next morning we sat down to our breakfast of tea and bacon and eggs
+with a good appetite. The cloth was not as clean as it might have been,
+but the eggs were fresh and the bacon sweet, and the bread and butter
+were delicious--as they are all over Ireland--and the tea tasted better
+than I had ever imagined tea could taste, and outside the sun was
+shining brightly, 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 represented 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 offering 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 display.
+
+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 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
+presently we saw ahead a great pile of crumbling buildings--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 hundred
+years ago, how crowded with castles and monasteries; 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 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!
+
+[Illustration: HOLY CROSS ABBEY, FROM THE CLOISTERS]
+
+[Illustration: THE MIGHTY RUINS ON THE ROCK OF CASHEL]
+
+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 common to almost all monastic establishments: a cruciform
+church, with the altar at the east end, as nearest Jerusalem, 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 buildings--the refectory, the
+chapter-house and the dormitories; and still beyond these were the
+granaries and storehouses and guest-houses and various out-buildings.
+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 otherwise
+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 lavished 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 surrounded it; but the square of domestic
+buildings about it is better preserved than one will find almost
+anywhere 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 lichened and crumbling walls, restoring
+them in imagination 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 instance, 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 yonder 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 English 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 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 centuries 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
+shamrock to illustrate the principle of the Three-in-One; Brian Boru
+strengthened its fortifications; and in 1134 was consecrated here that
+wonderful chapel of Cormac McCarthy, King of Munster, which still
+endures as a most convincing demonstration of the beauty of old Irish
+architecture. Then a round tower was put up, and then a castle, and then
+a great cathedral, for King Murtough had granted the Rock to "the
+religious of Ireland," and the Archbishop of Cashel came, before long,
+to be nearly as powerful as the great Archbishop of Armagh; and then a
+monastery was built, and 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.
+
+[Illustration: (C) Underwood & Underwood, N.Y.
+
+CASHEL OF THE KINGS]
+
+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 Protestantism, married not
+once, but twice. From that time on, the place was used as a Protestant
+cathedral, until, 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
+Parliament an act decreeing that, whereas, "in several dioceses,
+cathedral churches are so incommodiously situated that they cannot be
+resorted to for divine service," 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 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 "Crummell" didn't make. George II was
+King of England in 1749, and Cromwell had been dead nearly a hundred
+years.
+
+I shall never forget my first glimpse of this stupendous pile of
+buildings, looming high in air, all turrets and towers, like those fairy
+palaces which Maxfield Parrish loves to paint. A short branch runs from
+Goold's Cross to Cashel, and it was from the windows of the rickety
+little train we peered, first on this side and then on that--and then,
+quite suddenly, away to the left, we saw the Rock, golden-grey, high
+against the sky, so fairy-like and ethereal that it seemed impossible it
+could be anything more than a wonderful vision or mirage. And then the
+train stopped, and we jumped out, and hurried from the station, and
+presently we were following the path around the Rock. But that was too
+slow, and with a simultaneous impulse we left the path and climbed the
+wall, and hastened upward 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, secured with a chain and formidable
+padlock.
+
+But we had scarcely time to feel the shock of disappointment, 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 moment
+later we had the pleasure of meeting John Minogue, the caretaker--the
+most accomplished caretaker, I venture to say, in all the length and
+breadth of Ireland. 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 Mountain
+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 invincible 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 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 Aengus 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. Aengus 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. Perhaps 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. It nestles in between the choir and south transept
+of the later cathedral, and its entrance is the most magnificent 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 ornamentation, 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, arcaded 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 serpent 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 sculptures 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 there gazing in delight at these inimitable
+figures, a party of four or five entered the church, and stood staring
+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 preserved;
+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 understand 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 incantation, 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
+Ecclesiastical Architecture," and with gleaming face our host turned to
+the preface and showed us where Champneys 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 multitudinous 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 extensive, and Minogue told us that it
+was Hore Abbey, a Cistercian monastery built about 1272, but had added
+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 declined 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 inside 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
+overburdened 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 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, suspended 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 picturesque Galtees, the highest mountains
+in the south of Ireland, fissured and gullied and folded into deep
+ravines 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 outside 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 attracted a
+great crowd from all over the south-eastern 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-meeting 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 reverses, 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 compartment 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 handsome bridge, and the rest of the town
+is composed for 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 people, as at Dublin; but here there was a
+large admixture of English soldiers and sailors, come up from Queenstown
+to celebrate. Many of them had girls on their arms, and those who had
+not were evidently hoping to have, and the impression one got was that
+Cork suffers a good deal from the evils of a garrison town. There is a
+tradition that the girls of Cork are unusually lovely; but I fear it is
+only a tradition. Or perhaps the lovely ones stay at home on Saturday
+night.
+
+Sunday dawned clear and bright, and as soon as we had breakfasted, we
+set out for the most famous spot in the vicinity of Cork, and perhaps in
+all Ireland, Blarney Castle. Undoubtedly the one Irish tradition which
+is known everywhere is that of the blarney stone; "blarney" itself has
+passed into the language as a noun, an adjective, and a verb; and the
+old tower of which the stone is a part has been pictured so often that
+its appearance is probably better known than that of any other ruin in
+Europe. Blarney is about five miles from Cork, and the easiest way of
+getting there is by the light railway, which runs close beside a pretty
+stream, in which, this bright morning, many fishermen were trying their
+luck. And at last, high above the trees, 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.
+
+[Illustration: BLARNEY CASTLE]
+
+"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 dancing
+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 McCarthy 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 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, Cormac McCarthy was returning home through the
+blackness 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 resist it.
+
+Such is the legend, and it may have had its origin in the soft,
+delutherin speeches with which Dermot McCarthy put off the English, when
+they called upon him to surrender his castle. Certain it is that it was
+fixed 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 staircase 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 almost dislodged it, and
+it is worn and polished by the 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 experienced 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 certain--I'm not going
+away from here until I've kissed that stone. I'd be ashamed to go home
+without kissing it."
+
+"So would I," I agreed; "but I'd prefer that to hanging 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 things; but all
+either of us thought about was kissing the stone, and we touched on it
+incidentally now and then, and then shied away from it, and pretended to
+think of something else. Presently we heard voices on the stair, and a
+man and two women emerged on the parapet. We waited, but they didn't
+approach the stone, they just looked around at the landscape; and
+finally Betty inquired casually if they were going to kiss the Blarney
+stone.
+
+"Kiss the Blarney stone?" echoed the man, who was an Englishman. "I
+should think not! It's altogether too risky!"
+
+"But it seems a shame to go away without kissing it," Betty protested.
+
+"Yes, it does," the other agreed; "but I was here once before, and I
+fought that all out then. It's really just a silly old legend, you
+know--nobody believes it!"
+
+Now to my mind silly old legends are far more worthy of belief than most
+things, but it would be folly to say so to an Englishman. So the
+conversation dropped, and presently he and his companions went away, and
+Betty and I sat down again and renewed our conversation.
+
+And then again we heard voices, and this time it was two American women,
+well along in years. They asked us if we knew which was the Blarney
+stone, and we hastened to point it out to them, and explained the
+process of kissing it. There were postcards illustrating 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.
+
+"We were just sitting here trying to screw up courage to do it," Betty
+added.
+
+The newcomers looked at the stone, and then at the abyss.
+
+"Well, _I'll_ never do it!" they exclaimed simultaneously, and they
+contented themselves with throwing a kiss at it; and then _they_ went
+away, and Betty and I, both rather pale around the gills, continued to
+talk of ships and shoes and sealing-wax. But I saw in her eyes that
+somehow or other she was going to kiss the stone.
+
+And then a tall, thin man came up the stair, and _he_ asked us where the
+stone was, and we showed him, and he looked at it, and then he glanced
+down into the intervening gulf, and drew back with a shudder.
+
+"Not for me," he said. "Not--for--me!"
+
+"We've come all the way from America," said Betty, "and we simply
+_can't_ go away until we've kissed it."
+
+"Well, _I've_ come all the way from New Zealand, madam," said the man,
+"but I wouldn't think for a minute of risking my life like that."
+
+"It used to be a good deal more dangerous than it is now," I pointed
+out, as much for my own benefit as for his. "They used to take people by
+the ankles and hold them upside down outside the battlement. I suppose
+they dropped somebody over, for those spikes were put there along the
+top to stop it. If the people who hold your legs are steady, there
+really isn't any danger now."
+
+The New Zealander took another peep over into space.
+
+"No sirree!" he said. "No sir--ree!"
+
+But he didn't go away. Instead, he sat down and began to talk; and I
+fancied I could see in his eyes some such uneasy purpose as I saw in
+Betty's.
+
+And then a boy of twelve or fourteen came up. He was evidently native to
+the neighbourhood, and I asked him if he had ever kissed the stone.
+
+"I have, sir, many a time," he said.
+
+"Would you mind doing it again, so that we can see just how it is done?"
+
+He readily consented, and lay down on his back with his head and
+shoulders over the gulf, and the New Zealander took one leg and I took
+the other. Then the boy reached his hands above his head and grasped the
+iron bars which ran down inside the battlement to hold the stone in
+place.
+
+"Now, push me down," he said.
+
+My heart was in my mouth as we pushed him down, for it seemed an awful
+distance, though I knew we couldn't drop him because he wasn't very
+heavy; and then we heard a resounding smack.
+
+"All right," he called. "Pull me up."
+
+We pulled him up, and in an instant he was on his feet.
+
+"That's all there is to it," he said, and sauntered off.
+
+"Hm-m-m!" grunted the New Zealander, and sat down again.
+
+I gazed at the landscape for a minute or two, my hands deep in my
+pockets.
+
+When I turned around, Betty had her hat and coat off, and was spreading
+her raincoat on the parapet opposite the stone.
+
+"What are you going to do?" I demanded sternly.
+
+She sat down on the raincoat with her back to the abyss.
+
+"Come on, you two, and hold me," she commanded.
+
+I suppose I might have refused, but I didn't. The truth is, I wanted her
+to kiss the stone as badly as she wanted to; so I knelt on one side of
+her and the New Zealander knelt on the other, and we each grasped an
+ankle. She groped for the iron bars, found them after an instant, and
+drew herself toward them.
+
+"Now, push me down," she said.
+
+We did; and as soon as we heard the smack, we hauled her up again, her
+face aglow with triumph. It took her some minutes to get her hair fixed,
+for most of the hair-pins had fallen out. When she looked up, she saw
+that I had taken off my coat.
+
+"What are you going to do?" she demanded, in much the same tone that I
+had used.
+
+"I'm going to kiss that stone," I said. "Do you suppose I'd go away now,
+without kissing it? Why, I'd never hear the last of it! Get hold of my
+legs," and I sat down, keeping my eyes carefully averted from the
+hundred-and-twenty-foot drop.
+
+"Oh, but look here," she protested, "I don't know whether I'm strong
+enough to hold you."
+
+"Yes, you are," I said, making sure that there was nothing in my
+trousers' pockets to fall out. "Now, then!"
+
+Just then four or five Irish girls came out upon the tower, and Betty,
+stricken with the fear of losing me, asked them if they wouldn't help,
+and they said they would; so, with one man and four women holding on to
+my legs, I let myself over backwards. One doesn't realise how much two
+feet is, till one tries to take it backwards; it seemed to me that I was
+hanging in midair by my heels, so I kissed a stone hastily and started
+to come up.
+
+"That wasn't it," protested one of the girls who had been watching me;
+"you've got to go farther down."
+
+So they pushed me farther down, and I saw the smooth, worn stone right
+before my eyes.
+
+"Is this it?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," she said; so I kissed it, and in a moment was right side up
+again; and I don't know when I have felt prouder.
+
+And then the New Zealander, his face grim and set, began to take things
+out of his trousers' pockets.
+
+"If you people will hold me," he said, "I'll do it too."
+
+So we held him, and _he_ did it.
+
+Then he and I offered to hold the Irish girls, but they refused,
+giggling, and as there was nothing more to do on top of that tower, we
+went down again, treading as if on air, more elated than I can say.
+
+That sense of elation endures to this day, and I would earnestly advise
+every one who visits Blarney Castle to kiss the stone. I am not aware
+that I am any more eloquent than I ever was, and Betty never had any
+real need to kiss it, but to go to Blarney without doing so is--well, is
+like going to Paris without seeing the Louvre, or to the Louvre without
+seeing the Winged Victory and the Venus of Milo. Really, there isn't any
+danger, if you have two people of average strength holding you; and
+there isn't even any very great sense of danger, since your back is to
+the abyss and you can't see it. My advice is to do it at once, as soon
+as you get to the top of the tower, without stopping to think about it
+too long. After that, with a serene mind, you can look at the view,
+which is very, very lovely, and explore the ruin, which is one of the
+most interesting and noteworthy in Ireland.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We sat down on a bench just outside the castle entrance to rest after
+our exertions. There was a young man and woman on the bench, and in
+about a minute we were talking together. It turned out that they were
+members of Alexander Marsh's company, then touring Ireland in classical
+repertoire, and would open in Cork in "The Three Musketeers" the
+following evening. I had never heard of Alexander Marsh, but they both
+pronounced his name with such awe and reverence that I fancied he must
+be a second Irving, and I said at once that we should have to see the
+play. We went on to talk about that high-hearted story, which I love;
+and I noticed a growing embarrassment in our companions.
+
+"See here," said the man at last, "you know the book so well and think
+so much of it, that I'm afraid the play will disappoint you. For one
+thing, we can't put on Richelieu. The play makes rather a fool of him,
+and the Catholics over here would get angry in a minute if we made a
+fool of a Cardinal, even on the stage. So we have to call him Roquefort,
+and leave out the Cardinal altogether, which, of course, spoils the
+whole point of the plot. It's a pity, too, because his robes are
+gorgeous. Of course it doesn't make so much difference to people who
+haven't read the book--and mighty few over here have; but I'm afraid you
+wouldn't like it."
+
+I was afraid so, too; so we promised we wouldn't come.
+
+And then they went on to tell us about themselves. They were married, it
+seemed, and were full of enthusiasms and ideals, and they spoke with
+that beautiful accent so common on the English stage; and he had been to
+New York once, and for some reason had fared pretty badly there; but he
+hoped to get to America again. He didn't say why, but I inferred it was
+because in America he could earn a decent salary, which was probably
+impossible in the Irish provinces.
+
+We left them after a while, and wandered through what is left of the
+groves of Blarney, and visited the caves in the cliffs under the castle,
+at one time used for dungeons, into which the McCarthys thrust such of
+their enemies as they could capture. And then we explored the charming
+little river which runs along under the cliff, and walked on to Blarney
+Lake, a pretty bit of water, with more than its share of traditions:
+for, at a certain season of the year, a herd of white cows rises from
+its bosom and feeds along its banks, and it is the home of a red trout
+which will not rise to the fly, and it was into this lake that the last
+of the McCarthys cast his great chest of plate, when his castle was
+declared forfeited to the English, and his spirit keeps guard every
+night along the shore, and the secret of its whereabouts will never be
+revealed until a McCarthy is again Lord of Blarney.
+
+We walked back to the entrance, at last, and had a most delicious tea on
+the veranda of a clean tea-shop there, with gay little stone-chatters
+hopping about our feet, picking up the crumbs; and then we loitered
+about the quaint little village, and visited the church, set in the
+midst of a pretty park, and wandered along a road under lofty trees, and
+were wholly, completely, riotously happy.
+
+We had kissed the Blarney Stone!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CUSHLA MA CHREE
+
+
+IT was very evident, as we went back to Cork, that the people who live
+there do not regard it as an earthly paradise, for it seemed as though
+the whole population of the place was out in the fields. We had seen the
+same thing at Dublin the Sunday before--every open space near the city
+crowded with men and women and children; from which I infer that the
+Irish have sense enough--or perhaps it is an instinct--to get out of
+their slums and into the fresh, clean air whenever they have a chance.
+And the way they lie about in the moist grass on the damp ground is
+another proof of the amenity of the Irish climate.
+
+When we got back to the town, we decided we could spend an hour very
+pleasantly driving about and seeing the place; and, since the day was
+fine, we voted for an outside car. Be it known, there are two varieties
+of car in Cork: one the common or garden variety, the outside car, and
+the other a sort of anti-type called an inside car. The difference is
+that, in an outside car you sit on the inside, that is in the middle
+with your feet hanging over the wheel, while in an inside car you sit on
+the outside, that is over the wheel with your feet hanging down in the
+middle. Also the inside car has a top over it and side-curtains which
+can be let down in wet weather. I hope this is clear, for I do not know
+how to make it clearer without a diagram. Both inside and outside cars
+are rather more ramshackle in Cork than anywhere else in Ireland.
+
+The legal rate for a car in Cork is one shilling sixpence per hour, and
+I decided in advance that, come what might, come what may, I would not
+pay more than twice the legal rate for the use of one. So when we got
+off the train at the Cork terminus, I passed under review the cars
+standing in the street in front of it, while each individual jarvey,
+seeing I was interested, stood up in his seat and bellowed at the top of
+his voice. Finally I picked out the least disreputable one and looked
+the jarvey in the eye.
+
+"We want to drive around for an hour or two," I said. "How much will you
+charge an hour?"
+
+"Jump right up, sir," he cried, and wheeled his car in front of me with
+a flourish.
+
+"You'll have to answer my question first."
+
+"'Twill be only five shillings an hour, sir."
+
+I passed on to the next driver, who had been listening to this colloquy
+with absorbed interest. His price was four shillings. So I passed on to
+the third. His price was three shillings. I suppose if I had passed once
+again, the price would have been two shillings; but three shillings was
+within my limit, so we mounted into our places and were off.
+
+I fear, however, that that phrase, "we were off," gives a wrong idea of
+our exit. We did not whirl up the street, with our horse curvetting
+proudly and the jarvey clinging to the reins. No, nothing like that. The
+horse trotted--I convinced myself of this, from time to time, by looking
+at him--but he was one of those up-and-down trotters, that come down in
+almost exactly the same place from which they go up. The jarvey
+encouraged him from time to time by touching him gently with the whip,
+but the horse never varied his gait, except that, whenever he came to a
+grade, he walked. Sometimes we would catch up with a pedestrian
+sauntering in the same direction, and then it was quite exciting to see
+how we worked our way past him, inch by inch. This mode of progression
+had one advantage: it was not necessary to stop anywhere to examine
+architectural details or absorb local atmosphere. We had plenty of time
+to do that as we passed. In fact, in some of the slum streets, we
+absorbed rather more of the atmosphere than we cared for.
+
+Cork is an ancient place, built for the most part on an island in the
+River Lee. St. Fin Barre started it in the seventh century by founding a
+monastery on the island; the Danes sailed up the river, some centuries
+later, and captured it; and then the Anglo-Normans took it from the
+Danes and managed to keep it by ceaseless vigilance. The Irish peril was
+so imminent, that the English had to bar the gates not only at night,
+but whenever they went to church or to their meals, and no stranger was
+suffered inside the walls until he had checked his sword and dagger and
+other lethal weapons with the gate-keeper.
+
+But the Irish have always had a way with them; and what they couldn't
+accomplish by force of arms, they did by blarney;--or maybe it was the
+girls who did it! At any rate, at the end of a few generations Cork was
+about the Irishest town in Ireland, and levied its own taxes and made
+its own laws and even set up its own mint, and when the English
+Parliament attempted to interfere, invited it to mind its own business.
+The climax came when that picturesque impostor, Perkin Warbeck, landed
+in the town, was hailed as a son of the Duke of Clarence and the
+rightful King of England by the mayor, and provided with new clothes and
+a purse of gold by the citizens, together with a force for the invasion
+of England. The result of which was that the mayor lost his head and the
+city its charter.
+
+Cork is a tragic word in Irish ears not because of this ancient history,
+but because of the dreadful scenes enacted here in the wake of the great
+famine of 1847. It was here that thousands and thousands of famished,
+hopeless, half-crazed men and women said good-bye to Ireland forever and
+embarked for the New World. Hundreds more, unable to win farther, lay
+down in the streets and died, and every road leading into the town was
+hedged with unburied bodies. That ghastly torrent of emigration has kept
+up ever since, though it reached its flood some twenty years ago, and is
+by no means so ghastly as it was. Yet every train that comes into the
+town bears its quota of rough-clad people, mere boys and girls most of
+them, with wet eyes and set faces, and behind it, all through the west
+and south, it leaves a wake of sobs and wails and bitter weeping.
+
+Cork possesses nothing of antiquarian interest. The old churches have
+all been swept away. The oldest one still standing dates only from 1722,
+and is worth a visit not because of itself, but because of some verses
+written about its bells by a poet who lies buried in its churchyard. St.
+Anne Shandon, with its tall, parti-coloured tower surmounted by its
+fish-weathervane, stands on a hill to the north of the Lee. The tower
+contains a peal of eight bells, and it was their music which furnished
+inspiration for Father Prout's pleasant lines:
+
+    With deep affection and recollection
+      I often think of the Shandon bells,
+    Whose sounds so wild would, in the days of childhood,
+      Fling round my cradle their magic spells.
+    On this I ponder where'er I wander,
+      And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee,--
+    With thy bells of Shandon, that sound so grand on
+      The pleasant waters of the River Lee.
+
+Of course we wanted to see St. Anne Shandon and to hear the bells, so,
+with some difficulty, we persuaded our driver to put his horse at the
+ascent. The streets rising up that hill are all slums, with little lanes
+more slummy still ambling away in various directions; and all of them
+were full of people, that afternoon, who hailed our advent as an
+unexpected addition to the pleasures and excitements of the day, and
+followed along, inspecting us curiously, and commenting frankly upon the
+details of our attire. The impression we made was, I think, on the
+whole, favourable, but there is a certain novelty in hearing yourself
+discussed as impersonally as if you were a statue, and after the first
+embarrassment, we rather enjoyed it. At last we reached the church, and
+stopped there in the shadow of the tower until the chimes rang. They are
+very sweet and melodious, and fully deserve Father Prout's rhapsody.
+
+The wife of the inspector we met at Glendalough had told Betty of a
+convent at Cork where girls were taught lace-making, and had given her
+the names of two nuns, either of whom, she was sure, would be glad to
+show us the school. It is in the convents that most of the lace-making
+in Ireland is taught nowadays, and of course we wanted to see one of the
+schools, so Monday morning we sallied forth in search of this one. We
+found it without difficulty--a great barrack of a building opening upon
+a court. Both nuns were there, and I do not remember ever having
+received anywhere a warmer welcome. Certainly we might see the
+lace-makers, and Sister Catherine took us in charge at once, explaining
+on the way that there were not as many girls at work as usual that
+morning, because one of their number had been married the day before,
+and the whole crowd had stayed up very late celebrating the great event.
+And then she led us into a room where about twenty girls were bending
+over their work.
+
+They all arose as we entered, and then I sat down and watched them,
+while Sister Catherine took Betty about from one girl to the next, and
+explained the kind of lace each was making. Some of it was
+Carrickmacross, of which, it seems, there are two varieties, applique
+and guipure; and some of it was needle-point, that aristocrat of laces
+of which one sees so much in Belgium; and some of it was Limerick, and
+there were other kinds whose names I have forgotten, but all of it was
+beautifully done. The designing is the work of Sister Catherine, and,
+while I am very far from being a connoisseur, some of the pieces she
+afterwards showed us were very lovely indeed. Then we were asked if we
+wouldn't like to hear the girls sing, and of course we said we would, so
+one of them, at a nod from the Sister, got to her feet and very gravely
+and earnestly sang John Philpot Curran's tender verses, "Cushla ma
+Chree," which is Irish for "Darling of My Heart":
+
+    Dear Erin, how sweetly thy green bosom rises!
+      An emerald set in the ring of the sea!
+    Each blade of thy meadows my faithful heart prizes,
+      Thou queen of the west! the world's cushla ma chree!
+
+    Thy gates open wide to the poor and the stranger--
+      There smiles hospitality hearty and free;
+    Thy friendship is seen in the moment of danger,
+      And the wanderer is welcomed with cushla ma chree.
+
+    Thy sons they are brave; but, the battle once over,
+      In brotherly peace with their foes they agree;
+    And the roseate cheeks of thy daughters discover
+      The soul-speaking blush that says cushla ma chree.
+
+    Then flourish forever, my dear native Erin,
+      While sadly I wander an exile from thee;
+    And, firm as thy mountains, no injury fearing,
+      May heaven defend its own cushla ma chree!
+
+It is a very characteristic Irish poem of the sentimental sort, and it
+has been set to a soft and plaintive air also characteristically Irish,
+and it took on a beauty which the lines by themselves do not possess as
+we heard it sung that morning, with the girls, bending to their work,
+joining in the chorus. Then we were shown over the convent, and finally
+taken to the parlour, where Sister Bonaventura joined us, and where we
+had a very pleasant talk.
+
+The convent's chief treasure is the great parchment volume in which its
+history is noted from day to day. How far back it goes I have forgotten,
+but I think to the very founding of the institution, and it is
+illuminated throughout very beautifully, while the lettering is superb.
+The great events in the life of every nun are recorded here, and those
+events are three: when she became a novice, when she took the final
+vows, and when she died. Those are the only events that concern the
+community, except that sometimes when death followed a painful and
+lingering illness, it was noted how cheerfully the pain was borne.
+Occasionally some delicate woman found the hard life more than she could
+endure, and then she was permitted to put aside her robes and go back
+into the world.
+
+I spent half an hour looking through the book, and Sister Bonaventura
+showed me the record of her own entry into the convent. It was in the
+year in which I was born, and I shivered a little at the thought that,
+during all the long time I had been growing to boyhood and manhood and
+middle age, she had been immured here in this convent at Cork; during
+all the years that I had been reading and writing and talking with men
+and women and knocking about the world, she had been doing over and over
+again her little round of daily duties; but when I looked at her bright
+brave face and quiet eyes, and listened to her calm sweet voice, I
+wondered if, after all, she hadn't got farther than I!
+
+It would be a mistake, however, to think of these nuns--or of any I ever
+met--as pious, strait-laced, lachrymose creatures. They were quite the
+reverse of that; they were fairly bubbling over with good humour and
+with big-hearted blarney. Some one had given them a victrola, and it was
+evidently the supreme delight of their lives.
+
+"We can't go to the opera," they said; "but the opera comes to us. We
+have a concert nearly every evening, and it's sorry we are when the bell
+rings and we have to go to bed."
+
+They showed us their austere little chapel, after that, and introduced
+us to the Mother Superior, a very delicate, placid, transparent woman of
+more than eighty, who reminded me of the sister of Bishop Myriel; and I
+am sure they were sorry when we had to say good-bye.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We went down to Monkstown by rail, that afternoon, to see Queenstown
+harbour. The line runs close to the river, passing Passage, whose charms
+have been celebrated by Father Prout, and finally reaching Monkstown, on
+the heights above which stands the famous, four-square castle which cost
+its owner only fourpence. The story goes that, in 1636, John Archdeckan
+marched away to the war in Flanders, and his wife determined to surprise
+him, on his return, by presenting him with a stately castle. So she
+gathered a great number of builders together and gave them the job on
+the condition that they would buy all their food and drink and clothing
+from her. When the castle was done, she balanced her accounts and found
+that she had expended fourpence more than she had received.
+
+At Monkstown, we took a boat and ferried across the harbour, past many
+grey men-of-war which lay at anchor there. Very beautiful it is, with
+the high, green-clad hills pressing about it on all sides, and shrouding
+the entrance so completely that one might fancy oneself in a landlocked
+lake. Queenstown is built on the side of one of these hills, and is
+dominated by the great, white cathedral, which has been building for
+fifty years, and is not yet finished.
+
+It is a curious coincidence that the two ports of Ireland by which most
+visitors enter and leave it should be named after two people whom the
+Irish have little reason to love. In 1821, when George IV embarked at
+the port of Dunleary, just below Dublin, he "graciously gave permission"
+that its name might be changed to Kingstown in honour of the event. In
+1849, Queen Victoria paid one of her very few visits to Ireland, and
+sailed into the Cove of Cork. As she herself wrote, "To give the people
+the satisfaction of calling the place Queenstown, in honour of its being
+the first spot on which I set foot on Irish ground, I stepped on shore
+amidst the roar of cannon and the enthusiastic shouts of the people."
+Forty years later, when the Irish had come to realise that the Queen had
+no interest in them, they had the dignity and good sense to put aside
+the servility to which they have sometimes been too prone, and to refuse
+to take part in the celebration of her Jubilee. But Queenstown is still
+Queenstown.
+
+The town consists of a single long street of public houses and emigrant
+hotels and steamship offices facing the water, and some steep lanes
+running back up over the hill, and the day we were there, it was crowded
+with emigrants, Swedes and Norwegians mostly, who had been brought
+ashore from the stranded _Haverford_, and who spent their time wandering
+aimlessly up and down, trying to find out what was going to happen to
+them. There were many sailors and marines knocking about the grog-shops,
+as well as the crowd of navvies and longshoremen always to be found
+lounging about a water-front. This water-front is one great
+landing-stage, and it is here that perhaps a million Irish men and women
+have stepped forever off of Irish soil.
+
+We climbed up the hill presently to the cathedral, which owes not a
+little of its impressiveness to its superb site. Its exterior is
+handsome and imposing--good Gothic, though perhaps a trifle too florid
+for the purest taste; but the effect of the interior is ruined by the
+absurd columns of the nave, made of dark marble, and so slender that the
+heavy structure of white stone above them seems to be hanging in the
+air.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We had hoped to go by rail to Youghal and take steamer up the Blackwater
+to Cappoquin, and from there drive over to the Trappist monastery at Mt.
+Melleray; but we found that the steamer did not start until the
+fifteenth of June, so most regretfully that excursion had to be
+abandoned. Those who have made it tell me it is a very beautiful one.
+Cloyne is also perhaps worth visiting; but we were tired of Cork and
+hungering for Killarney, and so decided to turn our faces westward next
+day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE
+
+
+THERE are two ways of getting from Cork to Killarney, one by the
+so-called "Prince of Wales Route," because the late King Edward went
+that way in 1858, and the other by way of Macroom. Both routes converge
+at Glengarriff and are identical beyond that, and as the best scenery
+along the route is between Glengarriff and Killarney, I don't think it
+really matters much which route is chosen. The "Prince of Wales Route"
+is by rail to Bantry, and then either by boat or coach to Glengarriff,
+which is only a few miles away. The other route is to Macroom by rail,
+and from there there is a very fine ride by coach of nearly forty miles
+to Glengarriff. We chose the Macroom route because of the longer coach
+ride and because it touches Gougane Barra, the famous retreat of St. Fin
+Barre. I think, on the whole, it is the more picturesque of the two
+routes; but either is vastly preferable to the all-rail route. Indeed,
+the visitor to Killarney who misses the run from Glengarriff, misses
+some of the most beautiful and impressive scenery in all Ireland.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was shortly after nine o'clock that our train pulled out of the
+station at Cork, and at first the line ran between small, well-tilled
+fields, each with its cosy cottage. The whole country-side had an air of
+content and passable well-being; every wall was gay with the yellow
+gorse, and in the fields the green of potato and turnip was just
+beginning to show above the dark earth of the ridges in which they were
+planted. These ridged fields, which we were to see so often afterwards
+in the west of Ireland, tell of a ground so soaked with moisture that it
+must be carefully and thoroughly drained before anything will grow in
+it. The ridges, which run with the slope of the land, are usually about
+eighteen inches wide, and are separated by ditches a foot wide and a
+foot deep to carry off the excess moisture. There is always a trickle of
+water at the bottom of these ditches, and the task of keeping them open
+and free from weeds is a never-ending one.
+
+Presently on a high rock away to the left, appeared the tower which is
+all that is left of the old stronghold of the Barretts, and farther on
+are the green-clad ruins of Kilcrea Abbey, and near by is another great
+keep marking an old castle of the McCarthys. And then the train skirts
+the wild bog of Kilcrea, and then there are more ruins, and still more;
+and at last the train stops at its terminus, Macroom.
+
+The motor-coach was awaiting us, and we were relieved to find that, so
+far from being crowded, there was only one other couple, Americans like
+ourselves, to make the trip. The season had opened only the day before,
+and, after we got started, the driver confided to us that this was the
+first time he had ever been over the road. Even if he hadn't told us, we
+should soon have had every reason to suspect it.
+
+The road follows the valley of the Lee, which is not here the single
+clear and shining stream which we saw above Cork, but is broken into a
+score of channels between islands covered with low-growing brush--a sort
+of morass, of a strange and weird appearance. Here and there an ivied
+ruin towers above the trees, for this was the country of the O'Learys
+and these are the strongholds they built to defend it against the
+aggressions of their neighbours; and then we rattled down the street of
+a little village, and the driver brought the coach to a stop before the
+door of an inn, told us that this was Inchigeelagh and that there would
+be ten minutes for refreshments, and then disappeared in the direction
+of the bar.
+
+I suppose he got his refreshments for nothing, as a reward for stopping
+there. At least I can think of no other reason for stopping, since
+Inchigeelagh is only half an hour from Macroom, unless it was to give
+the nerves of the passengers a chance to quiet down a little. For we had
+already begun to realise that our driver was a speed-maniac. He had
+struck a hair-raising gait from the start, had sent the lumbering bus
+down grades and around turns at a rate that was decidedly disconcerting,
+and while there had been no especial danger except to the people we
+met--for the road was bordered by high earthen walls--the rattle and jar
+of the solid tires had been enough to make the teeth chatter.
+
+So we were glad when the racket stopped, and we could get down and
+stroll about a little; and we soon found that Inchigeelagh is a very
+quaint village. We walked down to the bridge over the Lee, and looked at
+Lough Allua stretching away to the west; and then we stopped at a
+tumbledown cottage to talk to an old woman who was leaning over her
+half-door; and she invited us in and asked us to sit down. It was my
+first glimpse of the interior of an Irish cottage of the poorer class,
+and it opened my eyes to the cruel lot of the people--and there are
+many, many thousands of them--who are compelled to live in such
+surroundings.
+
+There was just one room, perhaps eight feet by fifteen, lighted by two
+little windows about eighteen inches square, one on either side the
+door. The doorway was just high enough to enter without stooping, and
+ran from the ground right up to the eaves. The floor was of clay, and
+the walls inside had been daubed with mud to fill up the cracks and then
+whitewashed, but the damp had flaked the whitewash off in great
+leprous-looking blotches. The ceiling was formed by some rough boards
+laid on top of the joists overhead, so low that one feared to stand
+upright, and I suppose the dark space under the thatch was used as a
+sleeping-room, for there was a ladder leading to it, and I saw nothing
+in the room below which looked like a bed. There may have been a bed
+there, however, which, being new to rural Ireland, I did not recognise
+as such.
+
+At one end of the room was an open fireplace in which a few blocks of
+turf smoked and flared, with that pungent odour which we had already
+come to like, but which, at such close quarters, was a little
+over-powering. A black and battered pot hung on a crane above the fire,
+and some sort of mess was bubbling in it--potatoes I suppose. There was
+a rude table, and two or three chairs, and all sorts of rags and debris
+hung against the walls and piled in the corners, and a few dishes in a
+rough home-made dresser, and an old brush-broom, and some boxes and a
+lot of other indescribable trash. Three or four bedraggled chickens
+were wandering in and out, and I glanced around for the pig. But there
+was no pig--this family was far too poor to own one.
+
+It seemed impossible that a human being could live for any length of
+time in a place so bare of comfort, and I looked at the old woman, who
+had sat down across from us, and wondered how she managed to survive. I
+suspect she was not half so old as her wrinkled face and sunken eyes and
+shrivelled hands indicated. She lived there with her husband, she said,
+and had for many years. He was a labourer, and, in good times, could
+earn ten shillings a week; but most of the time it was impossible to
+find any work at all. She had no relatives in America to turn to, and
+neither she nor her husband was old enough to get a pension, so that it
+was a hard struggle to keep out of the workhouse. But they _had_ kept
+out thus far, glory be to God, though the struggle was growing harder
+every year, for they were getting older and their rheumatism was getting
+worse, and neither of them could work as they once could.
+
+All this was said quite simply, in a manner not complaining, but
+resigned, as if accepting the inevitable. Her philosophy of life seemed
+to be that, since Fate had chosen to set herself and her husband in the
+midst of circumstances so hard, there was nothing to do but struggle on
+as long as possible, with the certainty of coming to the workhouse in
+the end. No doubt they would be far more comfortable in the workhouse
+than they had ever been outside of it, and yet they had that horror of
+it which is common to all Irish men and women. The horror, I think, is
+not so much at the abstract idea of receiving charity as at the public
+stigma which the workhouse gives. The Irish have been eager enough to
+draw their old age pensions, and many of them, who shrink from the
+workhouse as from a foul disgrace, do not hesitate to beg a few pennies
+from the passing stranger.
+
+[Illustration: A COTTAGE AT INCHIGEELAGH]
+
+[Illustration: THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE]
+
+The old woman at Inchigeelagh, however, did not beg, nor intimate in any
+way that she desired or expected money, but she did not refuse the coin
+I slipped into her hand, after I had taken the picture of her and of her
+cottage, which you will find opposite this page. Perhaps she would have
+liked to do so, but the little coin represented a measure of potatoes or
+of turnips, and so a little less hunger, a little more strength. How
+many of us, I wonder, would be too proud to beg if we could find no work
+to do, and our backs were bare and our stomachs empty?
+
+The tooting of the horn warned us that our bus was ready to go on again,
+and we were soon skirting the shore of Lough Allua, with picturesque
+mountains closing in ahead. And then our driver crossed the bridge over
+the Lee, and made a wrong turning, and didn't know it until somebody
+shouted at him and set him right; and this small misadventure seemed
+completely to wreck his self-control, so that, when he got back to the
+main road, he rushed along in a manner more terrifying than ever. The
+fearful racket heralded our approach, else there must have been more
+than one bad accident; and I can yet see wild-eyed men leaping from
+their seats and springing frantically to their horses' heads, while the
+white-faced women seated in the carts peered out at us under their
+shawls as we brushed past, and no doubt sent a malediction after us.
+Geese, chickens and pigs scurried wildly in every direction, and that we
+did not leave the road strewn with their dead bodies was little less
+than a miracle. The road ran between high hedges, so that we could see
+only a little way ahead, and we got to watching the curves with a sort
+of fascination, for it seemed certain that we _must_ run into something
+at the next one.
+
+We had been mounting gradually all this time, often up gradients so
+steep that they kept the driver busy with his gears, and the view had
+gradually widened and grown in impressiveness. Then we turned off a
+narrow road at the right, and I thought for a moment our driver had gone
+wrong again.
+
+"We're going to Gougane Barra," he explained, seeing my look, for I sat
+on the seat beside him, and in a few minutes we were skirting a narrow
+lough, hemmed in, on the north, by a range of precipitous mountains,
+with gullied sides patched with grey granite and dark heather, as bare
+and desolate as a mountain could be.
+
+There is an inn by the lake shore, and the bus stopped in front of it.
+The driver showed us with a gesture the little island containing the
+shrine of St. Fin Barre, and then hastened away into the inn. We four
+started for the island, and presently we heard heavy steps behind us,
+and an animated scarecrow armed with a big stick came running up and
+shouted something in an incomprehensible tongue, and waved the stick
+above his head, and proceeded to lead the way. He was evidently the
+guide, so we followed him along the border of the lake, and across the
+narrow strip of land which now connects the island with the shore, and
+all the time our guide was talking in the most earnest way, but not a
+word could any of us understand. It sounded remotely like English, and
+he evidently understood English, for when we asked him to repeat some
+particularly emphatic bit, he would do so with added emphasis, but quite
+in vain. I shall never forget how earnestly he would look in our faces,
+raising his voice as though we were deaf, and pointing with his stick,
+and gesturing with his other hand, in the effort to make us understand.
+
+We persuaded him to go and sit down, after awhile, and then we had a
+chance really to look about us. There is something indescribably savage
+and threatening about that dark sheet of water, shadowed by gloomy
+cliffs, bare of vegetation, and torn into deep gullies by the cataracts
+which leap down them. Through the hills to the east, the water from the
+lake has carved itself a narrow outlet, and the stream which rushes away
+through this gorge is the beginning of the River Lee. No place so grand
+and desolate would be without its legend, and this is Gougane Barra's:
+
+When the blessed Saint Patrick gathered together all the snakes in
+Ireland and drove them over the mountains and into the western sea,
+there was one hideous monster which he overlooked, so well had it
+concealed itself in this mountain-circled tarn. It was a winged dragon,
+and it kept very quiet until the Saint was dead, for fear of what might
+happen; but, once Patrick was gathered to his fathers, the dragon
+fancied it might do as it pleased. So it issued forth, all the more
+savage for its years of retirement, and started to lay waste the
+country. The frightened people appealed to their saints to help them,
+and among those who put up prayers was a holy man named Fineen Barre,
+who had a hermitage on an island in the lake, and so knew the dragon
+well. And the saints in heaven looked down and saw the distress of the
+poor people and pitied them, and they told Fineen Barre that they would
+give him power to slay the dragon on one condition, and that condition
+was that he should build a church on the spot where the waters of the
+lake met the tide of the sea.
+
+Fineen accepted the condition gladly, and went out and met the monster
+and slew it and threw its body into the lake, and its black blood
+darkens the water to this day. And when that was done, he set off down
+the river, and at the spot where its waters met the tide, he built his
+church, and the city of Cork grew up about it. And then in place of the
+church, he built a great cathedral, and when he died his body was placed
+in a silver coffin and buried before its high altar. Then the city was
+plundered by the Danes, who dug up the coffin and carried it away, and
+what became of the Saint's bones no one knows.
+
+But the little island where he first lived has been a holy place from
+that day to this, and on the anniversary of his death, which comes in
+September, crowds of pilgrims journey here to say their prayers before
+the thirteen stations set apart by tradition, and to bless themselves
+with water from the Saint's well.
+
+The well is just at the entrance to the island, and its water is
+supposed to possess miraculous power. Our voluble but ununderstandable
+guide invited us by urgent gestures to test its efficacy, but the water
+looked scummy and dirty, and we declined. A few steps farther on is a
+small, stone-roofed chapel, built in the likeness of Cormac's chapel on
+the Rock of Cashel, and in it services are held during the days of
+pilgrimage to the shrine. There are also some remains of an old chapel,
+supposed to have been Saint Fin Barre's own; but by far the most
+interesting thing on the island is the stone enclosure within which the
+pilgrims say their prayers.
+
+The enclosure, which is surrounded by a heavy wall of stones laid
+loosely on each other, after the ancient Irish fashion, is about thirty
+feet square, and its level is some feet below that of the ground
+outside, so that one goes down into it by a short flight of steps. In
+the centre of the enclosure a plain wooden cross stands on a platform of
+five steps. On the flagstone at its foot is an inscription telling in
+detail how the "rounds" are to be performed on the vigil and forenoon of
+St. Fin Barre's feast-day. In the enclosing wall, which is fourteen feet
+thick in places, under heavy arches, are eight cells, which may be used
+as places of retreat by those undergoing penance. The Stations of the
+Cross are set in the upper portion of the wall, but are ugly modern
+plaster-casts. I took a picture of the place, which will be found
+opposite page 144, and which gives a fairly good idea of it.
+
+In the middle of a scrubby grove, a little way from the enclosure, is a
+wishing-stone, which had evidently been much used, I hope to good
+purpose, for the stone itself was covered with trinkets and the bushes
+round about were hung thickly with rags and hairpins and rosaries and
+other tokens. I picked up somewhere, perhaps from the jargon of the
+guide, that this wishing-stone is the altar of Fin Barre's old chapel,
+but I haven't been able to verify this, and it may not be so; but the
+game is to put up a prayer to the Saint, and make your wish, and leave
+some token to show you are in earnest, and the wish will surely come
+true. Of course we made a wish and added some half-pennies to the
+collection on the altar. In turning over the trinkets already deposited
+there, we were amused to find two bright Lincoln cents.
+
+On the shore just opposite the island is a little cemetery held in great
+repute because of the holy men who are buried there. For the island has
+been the home of a succession of hermits from the time St. Fin Barre
+left it to build his church at Cork, and there are many legends of their
+saintly lives and wonderful deeds. When they died, they were buried in
+the cemetery, where there is also a cross to the memory of Jeremiah
+Callanan, a poet native to the neighbourhood, who celebrated the shrine
+in some pretty verses beginning:
+
+  There is a green island in lone Gougane Barra,
+  Where Allua of songs rushes forth as an arrow;
+  In deep-valleyed Desmond--a thousand wild fountains
+  Come down to that lake, from their home in the mountains.
+
+But the wild honking of the horn told us it was time to go; our guide
+realised this, too, and was back at our heels more voluble and
+inarticulate than ever; not too inarticulate, however, to sell a knobby
+shillelagh to our companions and to accept with thanks the pennies I
+dropped into his hand. He tried to stay, hat in hand, until we
+departed, but the strain was too much for him, and after a moment he
+made off for the bar of the inn.
+
+Our chauffeur was evidently vexed that we had lingered so long at the
+shrine of the Saint, for he hurtled us down the rough by-road at a great
+rate, whirled into the smoother highway on two wheels, and then opened
+his throttle wide and pushed up his spark and let her rip. The road
+mounted steadily, with the view to the south opening more and more, and
+a rugged range of hills ahead coming closer and closer, until they lay
+flung right across the road, and then we swept around a sharp turn and
+entered the Pass of Keimaneigh.
+
+The guide-books assert that no pass in Europe exceeds it in grandeur,
+but this is a gross exaggeration--it is not nearly so fine, for
+instance, as the Pass of Llanberis; and yet it is wild and savage and
+very beautiful--a deep gorge cut right through the mountains by a
+glacier, which has left the marks of its passage on the rocks on either
+side. There is just room between the craggy precipices for a narrow road
+and the rugged channel of the rushing stream which drains the mountains.
+The pass is most picturesque near its eastern end, for there the cliffs
+are steepest, and the overhanging crags assume their most fantastic
+shapes. In every nook and cranny of the rocks ferns and heather and
+wild-flowers have found a foothold, the feathery plumes of London-pride
+being especially noticeable. Here in Ireland it is called St. Patrick's
+Cabbage, and no doubt there is a legend connecting the Saint with it,
+but I have never happened to run across it.
+
+As we plunged deeper into the pass, the walls on either side closed in
+more and more, great boulders dislodged from the heights above crowded
+the road so closely that more than once it was forced to turn aside to
+avoid them; the greenery of fern and colour of flower gave place to the
+sober hue of the heather and the dark green of the bog-myrtle; and then
+we were suddenly conscious that the stream by the roadside, which had
+been flowing back toward Cork, was flowing forward toward Bantry Bay,
+and we knew that we had reached the summit of the watershed dividing
+east from west. And then the hills fell back, and there, far below us,
+stretched a great rugged valley, with a tiny river wandering through,
+and white threads of roads curving here and there, and Lilliputian
+houses scattered among the fields.
+
+The car paused for an instant on the edge of this abyss and then plunged
+into it. At least, that was the sensation it gave its passengers. I do
+not know that I have ever travelled a steeper road, or one which wound
+more threateningly near the unguarded edges of precipices--certainly not
+in a heavy motor-bus hurtling along at thirty miles an hour. Perhaps the
+brakes were not holding, or perhaps the driver had had a drink too much;
+at any rate, we bounced from rock to rock and spun around sharp turns,
+only a foot or two from the edge of the road, which there was absolutely
+nothing to guard and which dropped sheer for hundreds of feet. But at
+last the more hair-raising of these turns were left behind, the road
+straightened out along the side of the hill, and then, far ahead, we saw
+opening out below us the blue waters and craggy shores of Bantry Bay.
+
+Down and down we dropped, with new vistas opening every minute, until we
+were running close beside the border of the bay, and for ten miles we
+followed its convolutions. Then we swung away between high hedges, and
+Betty nearly fell out of the bus--for the hedges were of fuchsias, ten
+feet high and heavy with scarlet flowers!
+
+That was the crowning delight of that wonderful drive. We ran between
+high rows of fuchsias for perhaps half a mile; then we turned through a
+gate into beautiful grounds; and a moment later we were climbing out in
+front of the hotel at Glengarriff--half an hour ahead of schedule time!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND
+
+
+YOU may well believe that, with such variegated loveliness all about us,
+we did not linger in the hotel a moment longer than was necessary, but
+made a hasty tea and sallied forth to explore the neighbourhood. First
+of all, Betty must pick some fuchsias, so we went back to the road, and
+climbed over a wall into a field surrounded by high hedges of the
+gorgeous flower. It was a new experience for Betty to reach up overhead
+and break off great branches which were simply masses of scarlet bells,
+until she had her arms full, and I suspect she went a little wobbly over
+it; but she was to have the same experience many times thereafter, for
+the fuchsia grows in great profusion throughout southern and western
+Ireland.
+
+I saw but one variety, however, the flower of which has a dark blue
+trumpet and scarlet bell, but this is perhaps the most showy of all, and
+nothing could be more gorgeous than a hedge in full bloom. In the woods,
+or in gardens where they are left untrimmed, the bushes will grow into
+veritable trees, twenty-five or thirty feet high.
+
+We went back to the hotel, when Betty had gathered all she could carry,
+and she sent the flowers up to our room by a maid who laughed
+sympathetically--I fancy she had seen such attacks of madness more than
+once before--and then we started along a winding path which led through
+the woods down to the shore of the bay. And we soon found that fuchsias
+were not the only things which grow to giant proportions here, for the
+path was hedged with ferns four or five feet high--great, lordly
+fellows, standing stiffly upright as though on parade. Ferns were
+everywhere, even on the trees overhead, for the trees are padded with
+moss, and in this the ferns have found a foothold. And there were holly
+trees still scarlet with last year's berries, and hawthorn fragrant with
+bloom; and over everything the English ivy ran riot--rather in the same
+fashion, I thought as I looked at it, in which England herself has run
+riot over Ireland.
+
+We got down to the shore of the bay, at last, and I quite agree with
+Thackeray that it is a world's wonder, with its rock-strewn shore and
+emerald islands and pellucid water, framed in, all about, by rugged
+mountains. We wandered along its edge, gay with sea-pinks, for an hour
+or more, and then spent another hour loitering in the woods, and finally
+walked on, between the flaming hedges and fern-draped trees, to the
+little village, which we could smell, long before we came to it, by the
+tang of peat-smoke in the air. It is a mere huddle of low, thatched
+houses, and I judge that, even amid these gorgeous surroundings, life
+can be as hard and sordid as anywhere in Ireland.
+
+A little distance from the village was a pretty, two-storied villa,
+covered with roses and climbing vines, and with a large garden beside
+it, blazing with a great variety of gorgeous bloom. We stopped to look
+at it over the gate, and the gardener espied us and came hurrying
+forward to ask us in to see the flowers. And one of the plants he
+showed us most proudly was a single, sickly-looking stalk of Indian
+corn, about a foot high, growing in a pot. When we told him that, in the
+state we came from, Indian corn filled thousands and thousands of acres
+every summer, and grew from eight to ten feet high, he looked as though
+he scarcely believed us. But that little stalk of corn brought home to
+me, as perhaps nothing else could have done, the fact that my own
+particular corner of the earth is divinely favoured, too, in ways
+unknown even to Glengarriff.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had a most improving conversation, that night, in the smoking-room of
+the hotel, with a Catholic priest and a salesman for the British
+Petroleum Company. The priest, who must have been at least sixty-five,
+had the typical long, thin Irish face, and was intensely Nationalist.
+The salesman was younger and rather rubicund, and I judge that he was an
+Englishman and a Unionist. It was the priest who did most of the talking
+about Home Rule, after I got him started, and he protested earnestly
+that Ulster's fears of unfair treatment were utterly unfounded. The
+Catholics, he said, didn't want supremacy; all they wanted was equality,
+but they _did_ want that, and felt they were entitled to it. England, he
+admitted, had made great strides within the past ten years toward
+atoning for her old injustice to Ireland, and was evidently trying hard
+to do what was right.
+
+"Yes," broke in the salesman; "she's going altogether too far. What with
+old age pensions and the purchase act and poor relief and railway
+building and putting up labourers' houses and what not, she's spending
+twice as much on this country as she gets out of it. It won't do; it has
+got to stop."
+
+"I don't believe England spends more on Ireland than she gets out of
+us," said the priest quickly.
+
+"Here it is in black and white," and the other triumphantly slapped the
+paper he had been reading. "Imperial expenditures for Ireland, 1912-13,
+L12,381,500; received from Ireland, L10,850,000; deficit,
+L1,531,500--that would be about seven and a half million dollars," he
+added, for my benefit. "Over a million and a half pounds sterling that
+England has made Ireland a present of in the past year! What do you
+think of that?" and he turned back to the priest.
+
+"The figures may be true," said the latter, slowly, "and then again they
+may not. I have been told that England burdens Ireland with many
+expenditures which don't belong to us. But in any event, I agree with
+you that charity does us no good--it does us harm. We don't want
+charity."
+
+"Hm-m-m!" grunted the salesman sceptically.
+
+"I'll admit," went on the other, "that there are and always have been
+many Irishmen only too eager to take alms--more shame to them. There
+have always been many ready to sell themselves for a good position under
+government, and to sell their country too, if need be. We have our share
+of patriots, but we have more than our share of traitors, I sometimes
+think. But it isn't by them the country should be judged. What true
+Irishmen want is the right to stand alone like men and fight their own
+battles, and in fighting them, the north and south will forget their
+foolish quarrel and become friends again as they should be. They aren't
+half as far apart, even now, as some would have you believe. Most of
+this talk about Ulster is the black work of men who make their living
+out of it, who care nothing for Ireland, and take advantage of every
+little by-election to stir the fire and keep the pot bubbling."
+
+I remarked that this ceaseless agitation over elections was unknown in
+America, where all the elections were held on one day, after which there
+were no more elections for a year.
+
+The priest stared at me in astonishment.
+
+"Did I understand you to say," he asked, "that the elections all over
+your country are held on the same day?"
+
+"Yes," I said; "on a day early in November, fixed by law."
+
+"I don't see how you manage it."
+
+"It isn't hard to manage--it's really very simple."
+
+"But where do you get enough police?"
+
+"Enough police?"
+
+"Yes. Here in Ireland, when we have an election, we have to send in the
+police from all the country round to keep the peace. If we tried to have
+all our elections on one day, there would be riots everywhere."
+
+"What about?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know--the people wouldn't know themselves, most likely; but
+there's many of them would welcome the chance for a shindy, if the
+police wasn't there. Isn't it the same in America?"
+
+I told him I had been an election officer many times, but had never seen
+any serious disorder at the polls.
+
+"Aren't there many riots next day?" he asked.
+
+"Why," I said, "the day after election is the quietest day in the year.
+Everybody goes to work as though nothing had happened."
+
+"I don't think there is much danger of riots," put in the salesman, "but
+we couldn't have your system over here because with us a man has a right
+to vote wherever he owns property and pays taxes, and if all the
+elections were held on one day, he couldn't get around."
+
+"Ah, yes," nodded the priest; "I did not think of that. How do you
+manage it in America?"
+
+"With us," I explained, "every man has one vote and no more."
+
+Again his eyes goggled.
+
+"Would you be telling me," he gasped, "that your millionaires, your men
+of vast properties, have no more votes than the poor man?"
+
+And when I told him that was so, I think he was by way of pitying our
+millionaires, as men deprived of their just rights--as, perhaps, in some
+respects, they are.
+
+And then the salesman told me that he had been to America, as far west
+as Kansas, where he had visited some friends. He had gone over, he said,
+with that sort of good-natured contempt for everything American so
+common in England, but he had come away convinced that there was no
+country on earth to match it.
+
+"The only thing I saw to criticise in America were the roads," he added.
+"Why don't you take a leaf from Lloyd George's book? He has put a tax of
+three-pence a gallon on gasoline used by pleasure cars, and this tax
+goes into a fund for the upkeep of the highways, proportioned according
+to the number of cars in each county. Gasoline used in commercial cars
+pays a tax of three-ha'-pence a gallon. A great sum is collected in this
+way, and the upkeep of the highways is thrown upon the people who do
+them the most damage. If you'd do the same in America, your roads would
+soon be as good as ours; and nobody could complain that the tax was
+unjust."
+
+I agreed that it was a clever idea, and I hereby call it to the
+attention of our lawmakers.
+
+"Well," said the priest, who had been listening attentively to all this,
+"I am glad to know the truth about this tax. I had heard of it, and had
+thought it another English exaction laid upon Ireland. Now I see that I
+was wrong; for, as you say, it is a just tax."
+
+And then he told us some stories of the old days, of famine and
+persecution and eviction, of the hard fight for life on the rocky
+hillsides, while the fertile valleys were given over to grazing or
+ringed with high walls and turned into game preserves. There were
+lighter stories, too, of the humorous side of Irish character, and one
+of them, though I suspect it is an old one, I will set down here.
+
+The southwest coast of Ireland, of which Bantry Bay forms a part, is one
+of the most dangerous in the world, because of the rugged capes which
+stretch far out into the ocean and the small islands and hidden reefs
+which lie beyond. It is just the sort of coast where fish abound, and so
+little villages are scattered all along it, whose men-folks fish
+whenever the weather lets them, and at other times labour in the tiny
+potato patches up on the rocky hillsides. Naturally they are familiar
+with all the twists and turnings of the coast, and are always on the
+lookout to add to their scanty incomes by a job of piloting.
+
+One day the crew of a fishing-boat perceived a big freighter nosing
+about in a light fog, rather closer inshore than she should have been,
+and at once lay alongside and put a man aboard.
+
+"Will you be wantin' a pilot, sir?" he asked the captain, who was
+anxiously pacing the bridge.
+
+The captain stared a moment at the dirty and tattered visitor.
+
+"Who the devil are you?" he demanded, at last.
+
+"Me name's McCarthy, sir. I'm a pilot, sir."
+
+"A pilot!" and the captain looked at McCarthy again. "I don't believe
+it."
+
+"'Tis the truth I'm tellin' you, sir," protested McCarthy.
+
+"Well," said the captain, "if it's the truth, you can easily prove it.
+Let me hear you box the compass."
+
+McCarthy was nonplussed. More than once, sitting over a pot of ale in
+some public house, he had heard old sailors proudly rattle off the
+points of the compass, but, though he remembered how the rigmarole
+sounded, he had no idea how to do it, nor even any very clear idea of
+what it meant.
+
+"Faith, I can't do it, sir," he admitted.
+
+"Can't do it?" roared the captain. "Can't box the compass! And yet you
+call yourself a pilot."
+
+McCarthy did some rapid thinking, for he saw a good job, which he could
+ill afford to lose, slipping through his fingers.
+
+"It's like this, sir," he said, finally, "in our small place, it's the
+Irish we would be using, niver a word of English, and all the English
+any of us knows is just the little we might pick up from bein' after the
+ships. I can't box the compass in English, but I can box it in the
+Irish, sir, if that will do."
+
+The captain looked into the speaker's guileless eyes and also did some
+rapid thinking. He knew no Gaelic, but he needed a pilot badly, and he
+reflected that, in any language, it ought to be possible to tell whether
+the compass was being boxed correctly, because the words would have to
+follow each other with a certain similarity of sound, as north,
+north-and-by-east, north-north-east, north-east-by-north, and so on.
+
+"All right," he growled, "go ahead and let's hear you."
+
+"My father," McCarthy began solemnly in his homely Gaelic; "my
+grandfather, my grandfather's grandmother, my grandmother's grandfather,
+my great grandfather, my great grandfather's grandmother, my great
+grandmother's great. . . ."
+
+"Hold on," shouted the captain, quite convinced. "I see you know how.
+Take charge of the ship!"
+
+And McCarthy thereupon proved he knew how by getting the vessel safely
+past Cape Clear!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was pouring rain, next morning, a steady, driving rain, which looked
+as though it might last forever, and we were confronted by the problem
+which so often confronts the traveller in Ireland, whether to go or
+stay. To go meant the possibility of having the most beautiful drive in
+Ireland obscured in mist; to stay meant a dreary day at the hotel, with
+no assurance that the next day would be any better, or the next, or the
+next. At last we decided to go.
+
+Never after that was the problem so difficult, for we soon realised the
+folly of permitting Irish rain to interfere with any plan. In the first
+place, the rain is not an unmixed evil, for it is soft and fresh and
+vivifying, and it adds mystery and picturesqueness to the most
+commonplace landscape; and in the second place, it is very fickle,
+begins unaccountably, stops unexpectedly, and rarely lasts the day
+through. In fact, the crest of any ridge may take one into it, or out of
+it, as we were to find that day.
+
+So when, about ten o'clock, the bus came puffing up to the door, we
+climbed aboard. The road, for a little way, wound up the valley of the
+Glengarriff River, and then, striking off into the mountains, climbed
+upward at a gradient that tested the power of the engine. Almost at once
+we were in the mountain mist, soft and grey, eddying all about us,
+whirling aside for an instant now and then to give us tantalising
+glimpses down into the valleys, and then closing in again. Up and up we
+went, a thousand feet and more, and at last we came to the crest of the
+mountain range which divides County Cork from County Kerry. The road
+plunges under the crest through a long tunnel, and then winds steeply
+down into the valley of the Sheen.
+
+Again there was a series of sharp and unprotected turns, just as on the
+day before, and this time with the added complication of a slippery,
+sloppy road; but I have never ridden with a more careful or more
+accomplished driver than we had that day, and he nursed the heavy bus
+along so quietly and with such easy mastery that no one thought of
+danger. Gradually the mist lightened and cleared away, until we could
+see the wide valley far below, with the tiny winding river at the
+bottom, and the walled fields and midget houses. There was a succession
+of such valleys all the way to Kenmare, and we finally rolled up before
+the big hotel there just in time for lunch.
+
+We walked down into the village, afterwards, and found it more bustling
+and prosperous than any of the other small villages we had seen. This is
+due partly perhaps to the tourist traffic, for Kenmare is a famous
+bathing and fishing resort; but homespun tweeds are manufactured there
+in considerable quantities, and at the convent scores of girls are
+employed at lace-making, Celtic embroidery, wood-carving and
+leather-work. The school is said to be one of the best managed in
+Ireland, and I was sorry that we did not have time to visit it. We saw,
+however, some of the Kerry girls in the street, and they were fully
+handsome enough to give colour to the doggerel:
+
+    'Tis sure that the lads will be goin' to Cork
+    When their money is gone and they're wantin' to work;
+    But 'tis just as sure that they'll turn back to Kerry
+    For a purty colleen when they're wantin' to marry.
+
+Kerry is a poor country and always will be, for it consists mostly of
+stony hills, and though it is renowned for its scenery, no one except
+the hotel keepers can live on that. Such little hill farms as have been
+wrested from the rocks produce but scantily; so when there is a "long
+family," as the Irish put it--and "long families" are the rule--one son
+will stay at home to look after the old people, and the others will fare
+forth into the world to search for a living. I hope it is true that they
+come back when they're searching for wives. Otherwise the lot of the
+Kerry girls, hard enough under any circumstances, would be harder still.
+Nowhere in Ireland are there brighter eyes or redder cheeks.
+
+[Illustration: THE BAY AT GLENGARRIFF]
+
+[Illustration: THE UPPER LAKE, KILLARNEY, FROM THE KENMARE ROAD]
+
+The rain was quite over by the time we were ready to start again, and
+the mist had disappeared under the rays of the sun, so that we had the
+benefit of the full beauty of the Kenmare River, which is really a wide
+bay, as we ran close along its western bank. Then the road doubled back
+from it, and presently the driver stopped at a spot where a narrow
+footpath struck down into the woods, and advised us to take it, saying
+that he would wait for us at its other end. In a moment we found
+ourselves clambering down the side of a wildly-beautiful ravine, with
+the roar of rushing water rising from below, and trees festooned with
+ferns and ivy meeting above our heads. And then, high above us, we saw
+the arch of a stone bridge; and quite suddenly we came out upon the
+stream, the Blackwater, foaming over the rocks. It was at its very best,
+from the heavy rain of the morning, and we stood there watching it,
+fascinated by its beauty, as long as we dared.
+
+We went on again close beside the shore of the bay, and in half an hour
+came to Parknasilla, where there is another big hotel, set in the midst
+of beautiful grounds, and with superb views opening on every side. The
+climate here is sub-tropical, and the vegetation mounts to a climax
+of riotous profusion, with palms and calla lilies growing in the open.
+The bay, too, is very fine, with bluff, rock-strewn shores, and
+innumerable green islets speckling its sparkling waters, and rugged
+mountains closing in the distance.
+
+Then again we were off, mounting steadily, steadily, winding under
+beetling crags and above grey precipices; up and up, with the world
+sinking away into the valley at our left, and the heathery, rock-strewn
+heights soaring upward at our right; and finally, at our feet, opened
+the wonderful panorama of the Brown Valley--brown bog, brown rock, brown
+heather, mounting to the distant slopes of Macgillicuddy's Reeks. We
+dropped down toward it, mile after mile; then up and up again, to the
+crest of the ridge beyond--and there, far below us, lay the lakes of
+Killarney, rimmed with green hills and dotted with green islands--the
+most sweetly beautiful in all the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The loveliest general view of the lakes of Killarney to be had from
+anywhere is as one drops down toward them along the Kenmare road. Their
+individual beauties may, of course, be seen to better advantage closer
+at hand; but from this height, the whole wonderful panorama stretches
+before one. Right across the valley opens the Gap of Dunloe, with the
+rugged Reeks on one side and the green clad Purple Mountain on the
+other; below is the narrow, island-dotted, hill-encircled upper lake;
+farther away is Muckross Lake, and far in the distance stretch the blue
+waters of Lough Leane, the largest of them all. My advice is to take a
+long look at it, for you will never see anything more lovely.
+
+The road soon dropped among the trees, and our driver pointed out with
+evident pride the Queen's cottage on the shore of the upper lake, built
+a good many years ago in order that Victoria, on her tour of the lakes,
+might have a fitting place in which to lunch, and which has never been
+occupied since. Then the road ran close beside the border of the middle
+lake, plunged again into the woods for a mile or two; and at last the
+bus stopped before the inn where we intended to stay, and we climbed
+down regretfully.
+
+The inn was a long, two-storied building, standing a little back from
+the road, and the porter who came running out to take our bags might
+have stepped straight out of Pickwick, he was so fat, so jolly, and so
+rubicund. I had some films I wanted developed at once, because I was
+afraid the damp weather would affect them, and I asked him where I could
+get it done.
+
+"There's a man just this side of the village can do it, sir," he said.
+"You will see his sign as you go along the road."
+
+"How far is it?" I asked.
+
+"The village is two mile, sir."
+
+"Then it's less than two miles?"
+
+"It is, sir."
+
+I turned to Betty.
+
+"We've got plenty of time before dinner," I said. "Suppose we walk in
+and see the town."
+
+And Betty, wotting little of what was before her, consented.
+
+I put my films in my pocket, and we set off eagerly along the pleasant
+road, past a little village, past a church with a graveyard back of it
+and a Celtic cross high on the hillside above it, past a hotel or two,
+around one turn after another, with green-clad hills mounting steeply to
+our right and the blue lake lying low on our left. We met an occasional
+cyclist, or a donkey-cart being driven home from market, or a labourer
+trudging stolidly home from work, or two or three girls strolling along
+with arms interlaced, exchanging confidences. And the air was very sweet
+and the evening very cool and pleasant, and the sky full of glorious
+colour--
+
+"We must certainly have come two miles," said Betty. "What do you
+suppose is the matter?"
+
+"I don't know," I said, looking at my watch and noting that we had been
+half an hour on the road. "Perhaps we'll see the town around the next
+turn."
+
+But we didn't. All we saw was about half a mile of empty road. We
+covered this and came to another turn, and there before us lay another
+long stretch of road. Determined not to give up, we pushed on, and came
+to a bridge over a rippling little stream, which we learned afterward
+was the Flesk, and we stopped and looked at it awhile and rested.
+
+"We must be nearly there," I said encouragingly.
+
+"What's bothering me," explained Betty, "isn't the distance we have to
+go to get there; it's the distance we have to go to get back."
+
+There was another bend in the road just beyond the bridge, and we turned
+this, confident that the village would be there. But it wasn't. We saw
+nothing but the smooth highway, stretching away and away into the dim
+distance. I looked at my watch again.
+
+"We've been walking nearly an hour," I said. "It looks as though we
+might miss dinner, after all."
+
+And just then there came the trot of a horse and the jingle of harness
+along the road behind us, and a side-car drew up with a flourish.
+
+"Would your honour be wantin' a car?" asked the jarvey, leaning toward
+us ingratiatingly.
+
+"We were told there was a photographer's just this side of the village.
+Do you know where it is?"
+
+"I do, your honour."
+
+"How far is it?"
+
+"'Tis just over there beyont. If you will step up on the car, I'll have
+ye there in a minute. I'm goin' right past it."
+
+Of course we got up. And, as the jarvey had said, the photographer's
+shop was just around the next bend. But before I got down, I made a
+bargain with him to drive us back to our hotel, and, after I had left my
+films, we set merrily off through the gathering dusk.
+
+"There's one thing I don't understand," I said, at last. "The porter at
+the hotel said it was only two miles to the village. Yet we walked for
+an hour without getting there."
+
+"He meant Irish miles, your honour," explained the jarvey, laughing.
+"There is an old saying that 'an Irish mile is a mile and a bit, and the
+bit is as long as the mile.' You see, here in ould Ireland we always
+stretch everything."
+
+I have found since that the Irish mile is about a mile and a quarter;
+but this is no real measure of its elasticity. More than once thereafter
+we saw one mile stretch out to three; and we soon came to realise that
+the Irish mind is extremely vague and inexact when it comes to distances
+and directions.
+
+We got back to the hotel to have our first view of what proved to be a
+nightly ceremony. On a stand in the entrance hall was a huge platter,
+and on the platter lay a huge salmon, and a card leaning against it
+announced that it weighed fourteen pounds and had been caught that day
+by Captain Gregory, and there were flowers all about it, so it's a proud
+fish it should have been. There were five or six other salmon on a lower
+table, each with a card giving its weight--anywhere from five pounds to
+eleven--and the whole collection represented the day's catch of the
+guests of the hotel.
+
+For the hotel, being handy to the lakes, and clean and comfortable and
+homelike, is a favourite resort of the fishermen who come to Killarney
+during the salmon season. Every evening while we were there, as the
+fishermen came in, tired and wet, with their boatmen tramping behind
+them carrying the fish--if there were any--they were met at the door by
+the rotund porter, his face beaming like a full moon--a red harvest
+moon!--and the fish would be solemnly weighed, and the biggest would be
+decorated with flowers and awarded the place of honour, and the others
+would be grouped around it, and after dinner, the fishermen would stand
+and look at them, their hands deep in their pockets; and later on there
+would be a great bustle as the fish were wrapped in straw and tied up,
+ready to be sent by parcel-post to admiring friends back home!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a cosmopolitan crowd which gathered that evening after dinner
+about the big fireplace in the smoking-room, where a most welcome and
+comforting wood fire blazed and crackled. The weather had turned very
+cold, and Betty and I were dressed as warmly as we had been at any time
+during the winter, though it was the fifth of June, and the papers were
+running long columns about the fearful heat wave which had America in
+its grip. There was a sturdy, red-faced old Scotchman in carpet
+slippers, and a sallow, heavy-lidded ancient whom the others addressed
+as "colonel," and just such a close-clipped, stiff-backed sporting
+squire as is Canon Hannay's Major Kent, of near Ballymoy; and there were
+two or three other Englishmen with no outstanding characteristic except
+their insularity; and the talk was of flies and rods and casts, and
+everybody was indignant at the suffragette who had rushed out on the
+track and tried to stop the Derby; and there was a steady emptying of
+tall glasses and a steadily-deepening cloud of tobacco smoke, and
+everybody was very comfortable and cosy. And presently the old Scotchman
+took pity on me as a mere American who knew nothing about the high
+mysteries of sport.
+
+"It must be a great pleasure for you to sit before an open fire like
+this," he said.
+
+"It is," I agreed. "There's nothing more pleasant than a wood fire."
+
+"Ye may well say so. But of course in America you have nothing like it."
+
+"Nothing like it?" I repeated, looking at him.
+
+"Why no," he said. "You never see an open fire in America. All you have
+is steam pipes running all around the room."
+
+I looked at him again to see if he was in earnest; and then I tried
+gently to disabuse his mind of that idea. But it was no use. Indeed, he
+got rather huffy when I said I had never seen a room with steam pipes
+running all around it.
+
+The savage insularity of the average Englishman is matter for
+never-ending amusement, once one has grown accustomed to his contempt.
+He believes that all American men are money-grubbers, and all American
+women social climbers, who chew gum and talk loudly, while their
+daughters are forward minxes who call their fathers "popper," and that
+men, women, and children are alike wholly lacking in culture and
+good-taste. The peculiar thing about it is that he never for an instant
+doubts his own good taste in telling one all this frankly to one's face.
+
+This is no fancy sketch. My own opinion is that the average Englishman
+has no genuine feeling of friendship for America, and his ignorance of
+things American is abysmal. One day, on the boat coming home, a
+well-educated Englishman whom I had got to know, asked me the name of a
+man with whom I had been talking.
+
+"That is Senator So-and-so," I answered.
+
+"What is a senator?" he inquired.
+
+I remember that one day Betty and I and two other Americans happened to
+be driving through the Tyrol in a coach with two Englishmen, and they
+began to discuss American railway accidents--a favourite topic with
+Englishmen when Americans are present; and one of them remarked that it
+was no wonder there were so many accidents in America, since when
+Americans built a railroad all they did was to lay the ties along on top
+of the ground and spike the rails to them. I asked him if he had ever
+been to America, and he said no, and I advised him to run over and pay
+us a visit some time. This huffed him.
+
+"Ah!" he said. "But what you Americans would give for a king!"
+
+"Give for a king?"
+
+"Yes; you would give anything for a king. Then you could have a court
+and an aristocracy, and some real society. You're sick of your limping,
+halting, make-believe government, and you know it!"
+
+We all four stared at him in astonishment, wondering if he had gone
+suddenly mad. Then Betty got her breath.
+
+"No," she said; "you're really wrong about that. You see we settled the
+king question back in 1776."
+
+The rest was silence.
+
+But really Englishmen aren't to blame for their distorted ideas of
+America, for they get those ideas from the English newspapers, and the
+only kind of American news most English newspapers publish is freak
+news. During that week, for instance, almost the only American news in
+any of the papers was about the terrific heat-wave, about Harry Thaw's
+escape from Matteawan, and about some millionaire who had taken
+bichloride of mercury by mistake, and lived for ten days or so
+afterwards, occupying the time very cheerfully in closing up his
+affairs. After his death, one of the great London dailies published a
+column editorial about the affair, reasoning in the most solemn manner
+that his survival for so long a time could have been due only to the
+remarkable tonic properties of the American climate.
+
+With the Irish it is entirely different. In the first place, America is
+to them the haven to which a million Irishmen have fled from English
+persecution; and in the next place, their knowledge of the country comes
+not from newspapers but from letters written by relatives and friends.
+The letters are somewhat rosier, I fear, than the facts warrant, but
+they establish a kindly feeling which makes every Irishman ready to
+welcome the passing American as a friend and brother. The only trouble
+is that he is also apt to regard him as necessarily a millionaire.
+
+It is undoubtedly true that a large portion of the lower-class Irish
+consider it no disgrace to beg from an American. Not that they are
+habitual beggars, but when an American comes their way, they seem to
+consider it a waste of opportunity if they do not apply for a small
+donation. In tourist centres, such as Dublin and Killarney, they are
+very persistent, especially the children, and will follow along for
+minutes on end telling the tale of their poverty and distress in queer
+bated voices, as though they lacked the strength to speak aloud. But
+Betty accidentally discovered a cure for this nuisance, quite as
+effective as John Minogue's, and I take pleasure in passing it on.
+
+Like most other people who have lived together for a long time, we have
+developed a lot of symbols and pass-words, without meaning to any one
+but ourselves; and it has become a rather foolish habit of mine when we
+are together and I see something I especially admire, to express my
+admiration by uttering the single word "Hickenlooper." And Betty, if she
+agrees, says "Oppenheimer," and we understand each other and pass on.
+One day in Cork, a group of children were unusually annoying, and
+followed along and followed along, until Betty, losing patience, turned
+upon them sharply, pointed her finger at them, and said "Oppenheimer!" I
+shall never forget the startled look in their eyes, as they stopped dead
+in their tracks, stared at her for an instant, and then fled
+helter-skelter. We decided afterwards that they thought she was putting
+a curse on them. She tried it more than once thereafter, and it never
+failed to work; so, if you are annoyed beyond endurance by juvenile
+beggars in Ireland, turn upon them sharply, point your finger at them,
+and say "Oppenheimer!"
+
+And since I am giving advice, I will give one bit more before I close
+this chapter.
+
+Among the purchases which Betty had made in New York, just before we
+sailed, was a small electric torch. I had derided it as unnecessary, but
+she had insisted on bringing it along, and had put it in our
+travelling-bag when we were sorting over our luggage in Dublin. The
+first night at Thurles, in a dreary little room, with only the
+flickering candle for a light, I acknowledged her wisdom, for the bright
+glow of the torch was very welcome. Again at Glengarriff candles were
+the only illumination, and that night at Killarney, when I got to our
+room, I found her in animated conversation with the chambermaid by the
+light of a single tallow dip. They were talking about America, I think,
+and the maid's eyes were shining with excitement and her cheeks were
+flushed and the beautiful soft brogue was rolling off her tongue, when a
+sudden gust from the open window blew the candle out. Betty picked up
+the torch from the dresser and pressed the button.
+
+"Glory be to God! What's that?" cried the girl, as the glare flashed
+into her astonished eyes.
+
+"It's only a torch," said Betty. "It won't hurt you." And then, when I
+had lighted the candle again, she showed the girl how it worked.
+
+"Glory be to God!" she cried again. "The wonder of it! You would niver
+be gettin' that in Ireland!"
+
+"No; I got it in New York."
+
+"Ah, 'tis a wonderful place," said the girl, reverentially. "No place
+but America would be havin' such things as that!"
+
+Now this is no doubt a libel upon Ireland, for I suppose one can get
+electric torches there. At any rate, my advice is to get one
+somewhere--a good one--and take it along in your handbag. This advice is
+good for the continent as well as for Ireland, but it is especially good
+for the latter, and the reason is this:
+
+In the old days, when English prodigals wasted their substance on
+castellated palaces, the Irish squire, being a wiser man, spent his
+money on good wine and good horses--or, when he had no money, ran
+light-heartedly into debt for them. As to his family mansion, he
+contented himself with adding a wing from time to time, as it might be
+needed, either because of the increasing number of his children, or the
+widening circle of his friends. The result was a singular house, often
+only one story high, never more than two, flung wide over a great deal
+of ground, and of a most irregular plan. Such a house had many
+advantages, for, as another writer has pointed out, "at one end of it
+the ladies could sleep undisturbed, no matter how joyous the men were at
+the other; there were no stairs to fall down; and the long narrow
+corridors were pleasant to those who found it hard to direct their
+devious steps."
+
+But the time came when these hospitable Irishmen found themselves
+overwhelmed by debt, their houses were taken from them, and many of
+them, since they were too large for any private family, were converted
+into inns. The traveller in rural Ireland will encounter more than one
+of them, and will find those long, shadowy, zig-zag corridors eerie
+places after night, unless he has a torch to light his steps. The doors
+are not always fitted with locks, and if the window is kept open, an
+intruder has only to step over the sill. We never had any intruder; but
+had we had, I am sure one flash from the torch would have sent him
+flying.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE "GRAND TOUR"
+
+
+THERE are many excursions which can be made over and around the
+Killarney lakes, but the most important one--the "grand tour," so to
+speak--starts at the town, proceeds by car to Kate Kearney's cottage,
+then by pony through the Gap of Dunloe, then by boat the full length of
+the lakes to Ross Castle, and back to town again by car. This round
+takes a day to accomplish, and gives one a very fair idea of Killarney.
+It is about all most of the people who come to Killarney ever see of it.
+In fact, some of them don't see that much--as will presently appear.
+
+Now Killarney is to Ireland what the Trossachs are to Scotland and
+Niagara Falls to America--in other words, its most famous show-place;
+and so it has passed more or less under the control of that ubiquitous
+exploiter of show-places, Thomas Cook. Cook arranges all the excursions,
+Cook controls most of the vehicles, Cook's boats are the biggest and
+safest, and so, if you wish to see Killarney "in the least fatiguing
+manner," you must resign yourself to Cook. Let me say here that I admire
+Cook; there is no place where a traveller is served more courteously,
+more fairly, or more intelligently than in a Cook office. No one need be
+ashamed to make intelligent use of Cook. The reason of his disrepute is
+that he has come to be used so largely by self-complacent people whose
+idea of seeing Europe is to gallop from place to place in charge of a
+conductor. But that isn't Cook's fault.
+
+Killarney is the one place in Ireland which every tourist wants to see,
+not because it is characteristically Irish, but because it has been very
+carefully exploited. In my own opinion, a trip to Holy Cross and Cashel,
+or to Mellifont and Monasterboice and the tombs of the kings, or to the
+congested districts of Connaught, is far better worth while. But the
+great bulk of tourist traffic follows the beaten path, and in Ireland
+the beaten path leads straight to Killarney.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As we sat at breakfast next morning, we witnessed the ceremonial rites
+involved in getting the fishermen started off for the day's sport. The
+rotund porter acted as major-domo, and puffed and panted and hurried
+hither and yon, his brow creased with the anxieties of his high office.
+
+It is a point of honour with all true fishermen to wear only the most
+faded, rain-stained, disreputable of garments, and it was a
+weird-looking company which gathered in front of the hotel that morning,
+with their hats, decorated with many-coloured flies, flapping around
+their brick-red faces. There was one woman in the lot who was going out
+with her father--a short, square spinster, evidently hard as nails, with
+a face as red as the reddest, and boots as heavy as the heaviest. The
+wonder was that she didn't smoke a pipe like the others. They overhauled
+their tackle with great care--shook out the lines, tested rods and
+reels, examined the flies, and finally trudged away, the boatman
+following, laden with rain-proofs and lunch-basket and gaff and
+landing-net, and with a broad grin on his face at the prospect of
+sharing his employer's tobacco and lunch, and of earning a few shillings
+in so pleasant a manner.
+
+When we had finished breakfast, we went out to have a look at the
+weather, and found the sun shining brightly, with every prospect of a
+pleasant day. The porter assured us that there was no chance of rain;
+but we had already had some experience of the fickleness of the Irish
+climate, so we went back and prepared for the worst, and clambered
+presently to the seat of the car Cook sent for us.
+
+On the way in to the village, we stopped at another hotel to pick up
+three American women who had been touring the continent and England, and
+who, by a long jump, had managed to squeeze in one day for Killarney
+before hastening on to Queenstown to catch their boat. They had arrived
+late the night before, and would leave for Cork as soon as the tour of
+the lakes had been completed, and they were jubilant because the day was
+so fine. They had feared it might rain, and that their long journey
+would be for nothing. The only protection against rain they had with
+them was two small umbrellas, and I could see that they were somewhat
+amused at our rain-coats and leggings.
+
+There was a long open coach, with seats for about twenty people, waiting
+in front of Cook's office in the village, and presently, as cars drove
+in from the various hotels, this was filled to overflowing, and at last
+we rumbled away. We were fortunate in having been assigned to the front
+seat with the driver, a handsome, good-humoured fellow, not averse to
+talking; and behind us we could hear the merry chatter of the happy and
+contented crowd. We passed the workhouse, which, as usual, is the
+biggest building in the place, and then the lunatic asylum, which is
+almost as big, and then we saw the ruins of Aghadoe high on the
+hillside--and then I felt a drop of rain on my cheek. There was another
+drop, and then another, and then a gentle patter, and then a rushing and
+remorseless downpour.
+
+We held the rubber lap-robe up under our chins and the water ran down it
+in streams. The happy chatter had turned to exclamations of
+consternation and dismay, and we did not need to look around to realise
+the havoc which the rain was working. The driver chirruped to his horses
+and endeavoured to divert his passengers with a few stanzas of a classic
+Irish drinking song, rendered in a resounding baritone:
+
+    Let the farmer praise his grounds,
+    Let the huntsman praise his hounds,
+      The shepherd his dew-scented lawn;
+    But I, more blest than they,
+    Spend each happy night and day
+      With my charming little cruiskeen lawn, lawn, lawn,
+      With my charming little cruiskeen lawn.
+
+"What does cruiskeen lawn mean?" asked a man's voice behind us.
+
+"Oh, it is just a term of endearment," said a woman's voice in answer.
+"Don't you remember the song about Willy Reilly and his dear cruiskeen
+lawn?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said the man.
+
+I caught a twinkle in our driver's eye, but he said nothing. After all,
+Willy Reilly, being a true Irishman, no doubt loved his cruiskeen lawn,
+or little full jug, almost as well as his colleen bawn, or fair-haired
+lassie.
+
+So we rolled merrily on, and presently turned into a hilly lane, where a
+crowd of ragamuffins mounted on bony steeds awaited us. These were the
+pony-boys, and a wild-looking lot they were as they fell in about us and
+proceeded to act as a sort of cavalry escort. We took a bridge and a
+steep grade beyond at a gallop, and drew up in front of a white-washed,
+slate-roofed little house, which our driver announced was Kate Kearney's
+cottage, and his bedraggled passengers made a break for its welcome
+shelter. It was Lady Morgan who celebrated Kate's charms in the
+ingenuous verses beginning,
+
+          Oh, did you not hear of Kate Kearney?
+          She lives on the banks of Killarney,
+          From the glance of her eye shun danger and fly,
+          For fatal's the glance of Kate Kearney,
+
+and she is supposed to have lived somewhere in this neighbourhood,
+though it is a long way from the "banks of Killarney." At any rate, this
+spick-and-span cottage, very unlike Kate's, has been given her name, and
+I dare say that any of the girls who tend bar inside would answer to it,
+just to keep up the local colour.
+
+The room into which the door opens has a bar at one end and an open fire
+at the other, and while the women of the party crowded about the fire,
+the men paused before the bar for a taste of potheen. There are many
+other opportunities to taste it before one gets through the gap, but if
+it is to be done at all, it would better be done here, for here one
+gets a clean glass to drink it out of. The whiskey is supposed to be
+surreptitious, but of course it has paid the tax like any other; an inch
+of it is poured into the bottom of the glass, and then the glass is
+filled with milk, and one drinks it and smacks one's lips and looks
+knowing. I drank a glass of it in the interests of this narrative, and I
+am free to say I have drunk many things I liked better.
+
+At the end of half an hour, everybody had managed to get fairly dry, and
+a prolonged discussion arose whether to go on through the gap or turn
+back to the town. The rain was still falling steadily, and there was no
+sign of break in the heavy clouds, though our conductor contended that
+they were clearing away to the westward. The motley crew of pony-boys,
+with their shaggy "coppaleens," were all most insistent that the shower
+would soon be over, and that it would be a great mistake to go back.
+Betty and I had already made up our minds: we were going to see the
+thing through whatever happened; but the rest of the crowd vacillated
+back and forth in cruel indecision, especially the three women who must
+see Killarney to-day or never. We advised them to risk it; but in the
+end, only one other member of the party, a little German Jew, decided to
+do so, and all the rest clambered back into the bus and were driven off
+toward the town. The Cook's conductor stayed with us to act as pilot.
+
+I wish you could have heard the chorus of commendation from those Irish
+throats as Betty mounted her pony. Sure she was the brave lady, she was
+the wise lady, the torrents and cataracts would be that fine; let the
+featherbed trash drive off back to the town, sure they were not worth a
+thought; the shower would soon pass by, and it would be a fine day, and
+anyway the Irish rain was a soft sweet rain that never did any harm, and
+the gap was the grandest sight in the whole world--so their tongues ran
+on.
+
+I gave my camera into the keeping of the pony-boy who was going along
+with us, and scrambled into the saddle. I have had mighty little
+equestrian experience since my hobby-horse days, and I cannot pretend
+that I enjoyed that ride, for the road was rough and up-and-down and the
+pony anything but a smooth stepper. If I had it to do again, I think I
+should walk. The distance is only about five miles, and a person not
+thoroughly at home in the saddle has far more leisure to survey the
+beauties of the gap when he is using his own legs than when he is
+bumping along on a "coppaleen."
+
+The accompaniments of the ride are more diverting than the ride itself.
+We had gone scarcely a dozen yards, when we found a photographer with
+his camera set up in the middle of the road, who took our pictures on
+the off chance that we'd buy one. Then from the shelter of a rock arose
+a battered human, with a still more battered cornet, which looked as
+though it had been used as a shillelagh in moments of absent-mindedness,
+and he offered to awake the echo for a penny. I produced the penny, but
+the blast he blew upon the horn was so faint and wavering that Echo
+slept on undisturbed. Then we came to an individual playing with great
+violence upon a wheezy accordion. The pony-boys said that he had been a
+great actor, but that rheumatism had overtaken him, so that he could
+strut the boards no longer, and he had finally been reduced to playing
+an accordion in the Gap of Dunloe, and they besought charity for him, as
+the most deserving case in the gap. And then we came to two men with a
+small cannon, which they offered to discharge for sixpence. And then
+began a long procession of barefooted old women, pretending to offer
+homeknit woollen socks and home-distilled potheen for sale, but really
+begging--begging most insistently, running along beside the ponies with
+their poor red feet slopping in the mud or slipping over the stones;
+voluble with their blessings if they got a small coin, and plainly
+thinking themselves insulted if they didn't.
+
+Meanwhile, we had mounted into the gap along a rough and winding
+bridle-path, and a desolately-impressive place we found it. A little
+river, the Loe, runs at the bottom, and close on either side high,
+frowning, rock-strewn precipices tower steeply upwards. There is no sign
+of vegetation--except a patch of heather maintaining a perilous foothold
+here and there on the bare and desolate hills,--the Tomies on one side
+and McGillicuddy's Reeks on the other. And then, at what seemed the most
+desolate spot, we came to a substantial, two-storied house, a station of
+the Royal Irish Constabulary. What the police could find to do in such a
+desert was difficult to imagine; but we stopped a few minutes to talk
+with them, and they evidently welcomed the diversion.
+
+Legend has it that the Gap of Dunloe was cleft by Finn MacCool with a
+single blow of his great sword, and that it was here, in the Black Lough
+into which the River Loe presently widens, that St. Patrick imprisoned
+the last snake in Ireland, by persuading it to enter a box on the
+promise that he would release it to-morrow. When the morrow came, the
+too-trusting serpent reminded the Saint of his promise, and asked him to
+open the lid, but Patrick replied that it was not yet to-morrow, but
+only to-day, and so the snake is still there in the box on the bottom of
+the lake, waiting for to-morrow to come. It makes such a fearful
+bubbling sometimes that it scares all the fish away, so that, while
+there are fish in plenty in the other lakes, there is none in this.
+There is a bridge at one end of the lake, and if one makes a wish as one
+crosses it, the wish will come true.
+
+The road mounts steadily, curving from side to side of the valley, and
+one should stop from time to time and look back, or the full beauty of
+the place will be lost. We found the wind rushing along the heights, as
+we worked our way upward, and the rain fairly poured at times, so that
+the cataracts performed splendidly. At least I can vouch for two of
+them--one down Betty's nose and the other down mine! But presently, the
+clouds blew away, and the rain stopped just before we came out on the
+heights above the Black Valley.
+
+This is undoubtedly the most beautiful point of the ride. To the right a
+savage glen runs back into the very heart of the Reeks, ending in a
+pocket shut in by sheer and rugged precipices. Far below lies the
+valley, with a silver ribbon of a river winding through it, and to the
+left shine the blue waters of the upper lake.
+
+I dismounted at this point, turned my pony over to the boy, and went
+down the winding road on foot, for I didn't want anything to distract
+my eyes from this wonderful view. And presently we were down among the
+trees, before a little lodge called for some unknown reason "Lord
+Brandon's Cottage," in which sat a man to whom we had to pay a shilling
+each before we could pass to the landing-place at the head of the lake,
+where the boats and lunch were waiting. Killarney is about the only spot
+in Ireland which is exploited in this manner, but here you will find
+fees exacted at every turn--a petty annoyance which, added to the
+persistent begging and insistent demands for tips, does much to
+interfere with the pleasure of the Killarney trip.
+
+At the landing we found two boats which had rowed up from Ross Castle
+during the morning--a small one with two oarsmen and a larger one with
+four. The conductor marshalled us into the big one, took his seat at the
+stern, got out our lunches, which had been sent up from the hotel,
+tucked us in with heavy waterproofs, drew the tiller-lines across his
+lap and gave the signal to start.
+
+The upper lake is much the most beautiful of the three, with its many
+islands, and the high hills hemming it in. Near its lower end is Arbutus
+Island, and it is worth pausing a moment beside it to look at the
+arbutus, that handsomest of shrubs, with ruddy stem and glossy leaf,
+which is indigenous all about Killarney, but reaches its height of glory
+on this little island. It is impossible to tell where the outlet of the
+lake is, until you are right upon it, but it suddenly opens out between
+two high rocks, and the boat enters the Long Range--the winding river
+some three miles in length which connects the upper and middle lakes.
+
+The rock on the left is called Colman's Leap, and the legend is that,
+once upon a time, this Colman, who was lord of the upper lake, was
+chased down the mountain by some supporters of The O'Donaghue, and took
+a flying leap across the river, in proof of which you may still see the
+print of his feet in the rock where he landed on the other side. Our
+guide offered to show us the foot-prints, if we required any proof of
+the story, but we assured him of our unquestioning belief.
+
+The Reach itself is quite as beautiful as any of the lakes, for its
+banks are covered with the most varied and luxuriant vegetation; and
+once, as we drifted quietly along, we saw a red deer browsing among the
+bracken. And then we drifted past the foot of a great precipice, and the
+channel narrowed, the current quickened, and the boatmen prepared to run
+the rapids into the middle lake.
+
+One of the boatmen was a wild-eyed old fellow, very nervous and fidgety,
+who had considerable difficulty in wielding an oar against the husky
+fellow opposite him, and more than once the steersman had admonished him
+to put more ginger into it. Now, as we drew near the rapids, his
+agitation increased, his eyes grew wilder than ever, and as the current
+caught us and we shot under the ancient arch of masonry called the Old
+Weir Bridge, he managed to strike his oar on a rock with a force that
+nearly broke it. The nose of the boat swerved alarmingly for an instant,
+but the steersman brought her round with a quick jerk, and in a minute
+more we were in the quiet waters of the middle lake. The atmosphere was
+far from quiet, however, as the steersman relieved his mind. Let it be
+added that the rapids are not very terrible, as will be seen from the
+picture opposite this page, and even if the boat struck a rock and was
+ripped in two, one could get ashore without much difficulty.
+
+[Illustration: OLD WEIR BRIDGE, KILLARNEY]
+
+[Illustration: THE MEETING OF THE WATERS]
+
+[Illustration: ROSS CASTLE, KILLARNEY]
+
+Just beyond, at the "meeting of the waters," there is a whirlpool called
+O'Sullivan's Punchbowl, and every rock and cave along the shore has its
+tradition, many of them manufactured, I suspect, for the consumption of
+the summer visitor. Most of the traditions are of The O'Donaghue,
+Chieftain of the Glens. A long cave is O'Donaghue's Wine-cellar; a
+depression at its mouth is O'Donaghue's Chair; and a tall knoll beside
+it is O'Donaghue's Butler, otherwise Jockybwee.
+
+The boat leaves the middle lake under another massive, high-hipped arch
+of masonry--Drohid-na-Brickeen, "The Bridge of the Little Trout," or
+Brickeen Bridge, as it is called now--and emerges into Glena Bay,
+another place of beauty; but, as we were gazing at its loveliness, the
+boat suddenly pitched sideways, then tried to stand on end, and we
+started round to find ourselves in the midst of an ugly expanse of
+white-capped water. We had never thought of rough water on Killarney;
+yet here it was, and mighty rough at that. The lower lake is five miles
+long and half as wide, and when the wind gets a good sweep at it, it can
+kick up a sea that is not to be despised.
+
+"'Tis just O'Donaghue's white horses out for a frolic," said the
+steersman encouragingly, and took a new grip of his lines. The oarsmen
+bent to their work, and we headed out into the lake, for it was
+necessary to cross to Ross Island.
+
+We said nothing, but held tight, and grinned palely at each other when
+the boat made a peculiarly ferocious pitch; the spray flew in sheets,
+the wind dashed the spindrift viciously in our faces, and we would have
+been very wet indeed but for the waterproofs. But after the first few
+minutes, we began to enjoy it, for it was evident that the boat was a
+staunch one, and even if it went over, it wouldn't sink. I don't suppose
+there was really any danger of its going over, though it hung at an
+alarming angle on the side of a huge wave, once or twice; and at the end
+of half an hour, we swept under the lee of Ross Island, and our sweating
+boatmen paused to take breath. The excitable one was trembling so he
+could scarcely get his pipe between his teeth.
+
+That night at the hotel, Betty was talking to two Englishwomen who had
+hired a boatman to row them out to Inisfallen Island. The lake hadn't
+been especially rough when they went out, and it wasn't until they got
+out of the lee of the island on the return trip that they realised its
+fury. Their boatman, at the end of a few moments, found himself unable
+either to get ahead or to go back; the most he could do was to keep the
+boat's head to the waves, and for nearly an hour they tossed there,
+shipping great seas, bailing desperately, too frightened to be sea-sick,
+and finally giving themselves up for lost, when the wind shifted and
+their boatman managed to struggle past the point of Ross Island. They
+expressed surprise that their hair wasn't white, and said that they
+would consider all the remainder of their lives sheer gain, because they
+felt that, except for a miracle, they would have ended on June 5, 1913.
+No doubt they exaggerated their danger, but just the same I would advise
+any one who is nervous on the water to be sure that the lower lake is
+fairly smooth before attempting to cross it. We certainly drew a breath
+of relief when we stepped ashore in the shadow of the ivy-clad ruins of
+Ross Castle.
+
+The castle itself is not of especial interest, for all that is left of
+it is the ruin of the old keep, with some crumbling outworks, not nearly
+so imposing as Blarney. About the only reason to visit it is to get the
+view from the top, which is very fine. But it has some stirring
+associations, for it was the stronghold of the great O'Donaghue, whose
+legend dominates the whole district. The story goes that, every May
+morning just before sunrise, the old warrior, armed cap-a-pie, emerges
+from the lake, mounts his white horse, and rides like the wind across
+the waters, attended by fairies who strew his path with flowers.
+
+It was here the Royalist forces made their last stand against Cromwell,
+and they thought they were safe, because the castle was a strong one,
+and was built on an island, which made it unusually difficult to attack;
+and furthermore there was an old legend which said it would never be
+taken until a fleet swam upon the lake. Ludlow brought an army of four
+thousand men over the mountains, and started a siege, but made little
+progress; and then, one morning, as the garrison looked out over the
+battlements, they saw a fleet of boats bearing down upon them across the
+lake, and they rubbed their eyes and looked again, only to see the boats
+nearer, and now they could discern the pieces of ordnance mounted in
+the bows and the soldiers who crowded them, and they were so awed by the
+fulfilment of the prophecy that they surrendered without more ado. That
+was the end of Ross Castle, but nobody knows certainly to this day how
+Ludlow got the boats over the hills from Castlemaine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A pretty drive along the margin of the middle lake brought us back to
+the hotel, where we found all the fishermen assembled, for the water had
+been too rough for fishing. We hurried out of our wet things, and dinner
+certainly tasted good; and when we joined the others about the fire,
+that evening, we found that we had qualified for admission to their
+charmed circle by going through the gap and crossing the lake on such a
+day. We were no longer tenderfeet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ROUND ABOUT KILLARNEY
+
+
+WE had been assured more than once, during our trip through the Gap of
+Dunloe, that the Irish rain is a soft, sweet rain, which does nobody any
+harm, and we found that this was true, for we felt splendidly next
+morning. The only evidence of our strenuous experience was a certain
+redness of visage, which grew deeper and deeper, as the days went on,
+until it approached that rich brick-red, which we had already noted as a
+characteristic of Irish fishermen.
+
+The day was bright and warm, and after breakfast we walked in to the
+town to take a look at our films. We found the road even more beautiful
+in the morning than it had been in the evening, and, since we knew how
+long it was, it did not seem long at all. But we were rather
+disappointed in the films. I had not appreciated how much the moisture
+in the atmosphere diminished the intensity of the sun, and so most of
+the films were under-exposed. Amateur photographers in Ireland will do
+well to remember that they must use an aperture twice as large or an
+exposure twice as long as is necessary anywhere else.
+
+We walked on in to the town, and were sauntering along looking in the
+windows, when some one touched me on the elbow.
+
+"Hello, comrade," said a voice, and I swung around to find myself
+looking into the face of a tall, thin American whom we had met at
+Dublin looking at the Book of Kells in Trinity College Library. We had
+fallen into talk upon that occasion, and he had confided to us that he
+was from Massachusetts, that he was a bachelor, that he had started out
+by himself to see Europe, and that he was very lonely. He looked
+lonelier than ever, standing on this Killarney street corner, and he
+said that he was getting disgusted with Ireland, that it seemed to be
+raining all the time, that Killarney wasn't half as beautiful as he had
+been led to believe, and that he had about made up his mind not to go up
+the west coast, as he had intended, but to go straight to the continent.
+We remarked that we intended going up the west coast, and I saw his eye
+light with anticipation, but there are some sacrifices too great for
+human nature, and I didn't suggest his coming along.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Perhaps the most interesting show-place in the vicinity of Killarney is
+Muckross Abbey, and we spent that afternoon exploring it and its
+grounds. Muckross is far surpassed in interest by many other Irish
+ruins, but it is very beautiful, embowered as it is in magnificent trees
+and all but covered with glistening ivy. It is not very old, as Irish
+ruins go, for it dates only from the latter half of the fifteenth
+century, when it was founded for the Franciscans. The gem of the place
+is undoubtedly the cloister, with its arcade of graceful arches ranged
+around a court and lighting a finely-vaulted ambulatory. In the middle
+of the court is a giant yew, many centuries old, which spreads its
+branches from wall to wall. It is encircled with barbed wire, and I
+don't know whether this is to protect it from vandals, or to protect
+vandals from it--for the legend is that whoever plucks a spray of this
+tree dies within a twelvemonth.
+
+[Illustration: MUCKROSS ABBEY, KILLARNEY]
+
+[Illustration: THE CLOISTER AT MUCKROSS ABBEY]
+
+The adjoining graveyard is crowded with interesting old tombs, and as we
+were wandering about looking at them, a funeral arrived. The priest
+walked in front, reading the burial service, while his assistant walked
+beside him, holding an umbrella over him, for it had begun to rain. Both
+of them wore black and white scarfs draped over one shoulder and strips
+of black and white cloth tied about their hats. Behind them came the
+coffin, carried on the shoulders of four men, the pair in front and the
+pair behind gripping each other about the waist so as not to be thrown
+apart by the inequalities of the path. Then came the mourners, about a
+dozen men, each with a black streamer about his hat. A number of women
+came last, their shawls over their heads.
+
+The coffin was placed on the ground, and every one knelt in the dripping
+grass, bareheaded under the drenching rain, until the service was
+concluded. One of the mourners, at the proper moment, produced from
+beneath his coat a little black bottle which proved to contain the holy
+water, and with this the priest sprinkled the rude black casket, with
+little crosses for the screw-heads. Then the priest and his assistant
+went away, and the men hastened to get to their feet and clap on their
+hats, and then there was a general production of black clay cutties, and
+in a moment a dozen deep puffs of smoke were floating away before the
+breeze.
+
+The women of the party retired behind a corner of the abbey to eat a
+bite of lunch, and the men stood around talking and smoking; and finally
+the caretaker produced four long-handled spades, and there was an
+animated discussion as to just where the grave should be dug. As is
+usually the case with Irish graveyards, this one was so crowded that it
+was no easy matter to find room for a fresh grave, but at last the spot
+was fixed upon, and four of the men fell to with the spades. When they
+grew tired, four others took up the work, and in half an hour the
+shallow grave was dug, the coffin placed in it, and the earth heaped
+back upon it. There was no keening.
+
+One of the women who was with the party told us that the funeral
+procession had come all the way from the end of the upper lake, more
+than fourteen miles away, and that the deceased was a woman of
+ninety-six. Fancy the tragedies she must have seen! For she was a woman
+of twenty-six, married, no doubt, with children, in the famine of '47.
+How many of them died, I wondered, and how had she herself managed to
+survive the awful years which followed? Her home beyond the upper
+lake--I could close my eyes and see it--the dark little cabin with its
+thatched roof and dirt floor and single room; I could picture the rocky
+field from which she and her husband had somehow managed to wring a
+livelihood; I could see her running with her poor bare feet through mud
+and over stones beside some laughing tourist in the hope of getting a
+penny or two--
+
+But it is too tragic to think about!
+
+The shower passed, after a time, and we went on along a beautiful walk
+leading toward the lake--the Friars' Walk, it is called, and it is
+bordered by century-old beeches, yews, pines and limes, the most
+magnificent trees that I have ever seen, so glorious and inspiring that
+we were lured on and on. We came to the shore of the lake, at last,
+where the waves have carved the rocks into beautiful and fantastic
+shapes, and we followed the shore a long way, stopping at every jutting
+headland for a long look out over the grey, wind-swept water. Then the
+path turned inland and came out upon the middle lake, and here we found
+the fishermen from our hotel just getting to land, in a very drenched
+and disconsolate condition, for the water had been too rough for good
+sport.
+
+That evening before the fire, the old Englishman, of whom I have already
+spoken, relieved his mind to me upon the subject of Ireland and the
+Irish. He said it was no use to try to help the Irish: in the first
+place, they didn't deserve any help; in the second place they took your
+help with one hand and bludgeoned you with the other; and in the third
+place any attempt to help them only made matters worse. Take the old age
+pensions, for example. They were a farce. Hundreds and hundreds of
+farmers had given their property to their children, so that they could
+go into court and swear they possessed nothing and claim a pension.
+Thousands more who were nowhere near seventy were drawing pensions
+because there was no way to prove just how old they were. And most of
+the pension money went for drink. Every pensioner had credit at the
+public houses, and his pension was usually drunk away long before it was
+received. The only effect of the act had been to make the Irish worse
+drunkards than ever--and they were already the worst in the world. That
+was the cause of their poverty; that was the reason they lived in filth
+and wretchedness. They were without ambition, without pride, without any
+sense of manhood or decency--all they wanted was whiskey, and they would
+do anything to get it. All this, I dare say, is the honest belief of a
+great many Englishmen; and there is in it just that small grain of truth
+which makes it sting.
+
+But I grew tired of listening, after a time, and went out to the bar,
+where a very loquacious Ulsterman with the broadest of Scotch accents
+was explaining his woes to the grinning barmaid. He had just been
+dismissed, it seemed, from some position in the neighbourhood because he
+had "been out with a few friends" the night before. He was convinced
+that his late employer was no gentleman, because a gentleman would have
+understood the circumstances and overlooked them; he pronounced Kerry
+the most God-forsaken of counties, and announced his intention of
+getting back to Ulster as soon as he could. No doubt his experience in
+the south of Ireland made him a more rabid Orangeman than ever, and I
+suppose he lost no time in signing the covenant and enlisting in
+Ulster's "army."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We had planned to spend our last day at Killarney walking and driving
+about the neighbourhood, and we were delighted, when we came down to
+breakfast that Saturday morning, to find the weather all that could be
+desired, with the sun shining from a brilliant sky, and not a cloud upon
+it, except high, white, fair-weather ones flying before the wind. So as
+soon as we had eaten, we started away on a car for a drive through the
+deer-park of the Earl of Kenmare, a walk along the "fairy glen" which
+traverses it, and then another drive up along the heights to the ruins
+of Aghadoe.
+
+We met many little carts driving in to Killarney, for it was market
+day--the identical type which had already grown so familiar: a flat cart
+with a man driving, his legs hanging down, and his women-folks crouched
+behind him under their shawls, with their knees drawn up to their chins,
+and the shaggy donkey which furnished the motive power, trotting briskly
+and alertly along. I don't know what the poor Irish would do without
+this serviceable little beast, long lived and useful in so many ways,
+able to exist on stones and nettles, and costing only a pound or two.
+Betty was so impressed with their usefulness that she wanted to buy one
+and send it home, but that speculation fell through.
+
+As we climbed higher and higher up the heights, the wind grew cold and
+cutting, but the view below us over the lakes to the south opened more
+and more--a glorious panorama of wood and hill and white-capped water,
+with ever-varying light and shade under the drifting clouds. But what a
+contrast between this smiling landscape and the one which met our eyes
+when we turned them to the north, where one bleak and desolate hill
+towered behind another, away and away as far as the eye could see, a
+wilderness of grey boulders and black, fissured crags.
+
+The car stopped at last before some stone steps leading over a wall, but
+as we started to mount them, a woman came running out of a near-by
+cottage and insisted on unlocking the gate for us, in the hope, of
+course, of getting a tip. She was the caretaker in charge of the ruins
+of Aghadoe, and she tried to tell us something about them, but the
+visitor who has to rely on her for information must content himself with
+very little.
+
+The story, as I piece it together, is something like this: About the
+middle of the seventh century, there dwelt at Killarney a very holy man
+named St. Finian the Leper, and on Inisfallen, the largest of the
+Killarney islands, he founded an abbey, whose ruins may yet be seen
+there; and here at Aghadoe, the Field of the Two Yews, he built a
+church, which became the seat of a bishop. As was often the case, the
+original church proved, in time, to be too small, and an addition was
+tacked on to it. A round tower was also built as a protection against
+the Danes, and a little farther down the slope, a rude castle was put up
+as a residence for the bishop.
+
+There is very little left of the castle and the round tower, but the
+walls of the church are still standing. The early church built by St.
+Finian forms the western part, or nave, and is entered by a beautiful
+round-headed doorway, of the familiar Celtic type. The rain of centuries
+has washed away much of the carving, but enough remains to show how
+elaborate it was. The windows here are also round-headed, but the later
+portion, or choir, is lighted by narrow lancet windows, which prove that
+it was built some time in the thirteenth century, after the Normans
+came. These are the only things of interest left in the ruins, and the
+visit to them is worth making not so much on their account, as for the
+magnificent view over the lakes.
+
+We drove back to Killarney along the border of the lower lake, through
+the Kenmare demesne, and past the many-gabled mansion of the Earl, which
+has since been destroyed by fire; and we spent a very pleasant hour
+wandering about the village. The main street at Killarney is
+unattractive enough, crowded as it is with shops whose principal stock
+in trade is post-cards and photographs and books of views and
+monstrosities in bog oak and Connemara marble--souvenirs, in a word, for
+Cook tourists to take home. But turn up any of the narrow lanes which
+branch off on either side, and there is authentic Ireland--the Ireland
+of plastered cottages and thatched roofs and half-naked children and
+gossiping women leaning over their half-doors.
+
+As it was market day, the lanes were more than usually crowded, and I
+explored them one after another, to an accompaniment of much
+good-humoured chaffing from the girls and women, especially when I
+unlimbered my camera. Then we walked out and took a look at the
+cathedral, a towering structure, still uncompleted as to its interior
+and bare and cold, but an impressive proof of the influence of the
+church which could raise the money to build so great an edifice in this
+poverty-stricken land; and then we stopped at some of the shops and
+looked at the Irish homespun, and spent a little time at an
+auction-sale, where the bidding was very slow and cautious, and finally
+we caught the omnibus back to our hotel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was still one place we wished to see. That was the Torc cascade,
+and, after tea, we set out to walk to it. The road lay for about a mile
+along the road skirting Muckross Lake, and then we came to a gate where
+a boy was waiting to exact a fee of nine-pence. Then we mounted a steep
+path, under magnificent pines, close beside the brawling Owengarriff
+River, up and up, with a lovely view of the lakes opening below us; and
+finally we came to the cascade--a white welter of water slithering down
+over the black rocks, very beautiful and impressive.
+
+We sat there for a long time, looking at it and at the stately wood
+which clothed the opposite hillside, and at the blue water lying far
+below us, and at the green hills away beyond, and we both agreed that,
+next to the view from the Kenmare road, this was the most glorious view
+to be had about Killarney. Subsequent reflection has not altered this,
+and, after the trip through the Gap of Dunloe and across the lakes, I
+should certainly place this one to the Torc cascade. Beside it, the view
+from Aghadoe is nowhere.
+
+We went on reluctantly, at last, mounting still higher until we came to
+a path bearing away to the left through the woods, and we followed this
+until we came to a mountain road which we had been told was there. It is
+called the Queen's Drive, and I suppose Victoria passed this way during
+her visit to the lakes; and it led us past the reservoir which supplies
+Killarney with water, and on down through magnificent woods whose beauty
+is marred only by a lot of so-called "monkey trees"--a monstrosity which
+had annoyed us all through Ireland, but to which I have not yet
+referred.
+
+The monkey tree is a sort of evergreen, with long, thin branches clad
+with close-growing foliage, and looking not unlike monkeys' arms. In
+fact, the tree itself resembles in a grotesque way a lot of monkeys
+swinging in midair, and hence its name. It is a hideous thing, and yet a
+specimen grows in every dooryard. There was one in front of our hotel,
+there were others along the road; here they had been planted in great
+numbers and reached an unprecedented size--but we were glad to observe
+that a few were dying. The monkey tree seems to be to Irish homes what
+the rubber-plant used to be to American ones, and it appalled us to see
+how many little ones were being started in tiny front yards, which they
+would one day overshadow and render abominable. I can only hope that, in
+some happy hour, a wave of reform will sweep over Ireland and carry
+these monstrosities before it.
+
+We came out, at last, upon a little huddle of houses on the hillside
+above our hotel, and stopped to talk to some children and their mother,
+then went on downward, in the gathering dusk, very happy because of a
+beautiful and satisfying day. And just as we turned into the highroad,
+Betty saw something gleaming on the ground at her feet, and stooped and
+picked up a shilling. From what ragged pocket had it fallen, we
+wondered? How great a tragedy would its loss represent? We looked up and
+down the road, but there was no one in sight. So we decided to keep it
+for luck, and we have it yet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+O'CONNELL, JOURNEYMAN TAILOR
+
+
+THERE was quite a crowd on the platform, that Sunday morning, of
+travellers turning their backs on Killarney, and we found ourselves
+eventually in a compartment with two Americans, man and wife, who were
+plainly in no pleasant humour. The man was especially disgruntled about
+something, and I judged from his exclamations that he had got decidedly
+the worst of it when it came to settling the bill. It is in some such
+mood as this, I fear, that many people leave Killarney.
+
+But the view from the window soon made us forget our fellow-passengers.
+The road runs for a time close beside the Flesk, one of the prettiest of
+Irish rivers, while away to the south rose the beautiful Killarney
+hills, peak upon peak, with mighty Mangerton dominating all of them. And
+then came the Paps, two conical elevations separated by a deep ravine;
+and then the bleak brown slopes of the Muskerry hills, with a ruined
+castle of the McCarthys guarding the only pass into the valley. To the
+north a boggy plain stretched away and away, ridged with black pits,
+like long earthworks, from which the turf had been cut.
+
+The hills to the south grew gradually less rugged, and presently we
+dropped into the beautiful valley of the Blackwater, with many ruined
+castles perched on the crags which overshadow it--castles built by the
+McCarthys, the O'Callaghans, and I know not what other septs, memorials
+of the old days of raid and counter-raid, of warring clans and
+treacherous chieftains.
+
+And then we came to Mallow, and had to change into another carriage,
+where we found five Americans, who were also coming from Killarney, and
+who also believed that they had been held up. Their grievance was
+against the hotel at which they had stopped, and they said wildly that
+it was no better than a den of thieves. This, of course, was an
+exaggeration, and, in any event, I did not pity them much, for it was
+soon evident that their visit to Ireland had been a waste of time. They
+knew nothing of her history and traditions; her ruins held no meaning
+for them; her empty valleys told them nothing of her past; they had
+never heard of Cormac, or Finn the Fair, or Ossian, or Conn the Hundred
+Fighter, or even of Brian Boru; they had never heard of that old
+civilisation which the Danes swept away, and saw nothing very wonderful
+in the Cross of Cong or the Book of Kells. So to them Ireland had proved
+a disappointment, just as she will to every one who visits her in
+ignorance and indifference.
+
+We reached Limerick Junction, at last, and changed thankfully to the
+branch which runs to Limerick, twenty miles away. And almost at once we
+came upon traces of Patrick Sarsfield, of glorious memory, for a few
+miles beyond the Junction, to the left of the line, are the ruins of a
+castle, which was held by the English, but which he surprised one night,
+on one of those famous raids of his, and captured and blew up. And then
+the line mounted the hills which divide the Vale of Tipperary from the
+valley of the Shannon, crossed them, and came out upon a land as
+beautiful and fertile as any we had seen in Ireland. Such lushness, such
+greenness, such calm, quiet loveliness can surely be matched in few
+other spots upon this earth.
+
+It was still early afternoon when the train rolled in to the station at
+Limerick, and on the platform we met the actor and his wife whom we had
+talked with at Blarney a week before. They had come to Limerick, where
+their principal was a great favourite, for a three weeks' engagement. I
+saw the actor afterwards on the street, and he told me that the theatre
+was in terrible shape, for some misguided enthusiasts had attempted to
+hold a Unionist meeting there, a few days previously, and the patriotic
+Limerickians had nearly torn the place to pieces.
+
+Limerick is by far the most important town of central or western
+Ireland; in fact it is surpassed in population only by Belfast, Dublin
+and Cork, and it has many amusing points of resemblance to the two
+latter. It is divided into two parts by a branch of the Shannon; it has
+one long, curving principal street leading to a bridge; the street is
+known officially as George Street, after an English king, but to all
+Irishmen it is O'Connell Street, in honour of the Liberator whose statue
+is its chief adornment; this street is a street of bright and attractive
+shops, not in itself interesting, but cross the bridge to the older part
+of the town, or turn up any of the little lanes which lead off from it,
+and you will find nothing more picturesque anywhere--nor more
+distressful.
+
+We walked along George Street, that afternoon, and crossed the bridge
+to the island on which Limerick had its birth. The bridge is called
+Matthew Bridge, not after the Disciple, but after Ireland's great
+apostle of temperance. Beyond the bridge is a maze of narrow, crooked
+streets, and we made our way through them to the old cathedral, whose
+tower served as guide. We got there just as vespers were over, and we
+found the verger very willing to show us about.
+
+I do not imagine there are many Protestants at Limerick; at least, a
+very small portion of this impressive old church serves the needs of the
+congregation, and the rest of it is bare and empty--and imposing. Rarely
+indeed have I seen a more sombre interior, for the walls are very
+massive, and the windows small, and there is a surprising number of dark
+little chapels--the principal one, of course, being dedicated as a
+burial place for the Earls of Limerick. The carved miserere seats are
+worth examining, as are also many of the old tombs which clutter the
+interior. There is an elaborate one to the Earl of Thomond in the
+chancel, and a carved slab covering the grave of Donall O'Brien, King of
+Munster, who founded the cathedral in 1179; but among the quaintest is a
+slab built into the wall of the nave with this epitaph cut upon it:
+
+               MEMENTO MORY
+          HERE LIETH LITTELL SAMUEL
+          BARINGTON THAT GREAT UNDER
+          TAKER OF FAMOUS CITTIES
+          CLOCK AND CHIME MAKER
+          HE MADE HIS ONE TIME GOE
+          EARLY AND LATTER BUT NOW
+          HE IS RETURNED TO GOD
+          HIS CREATOR
+          THE 29 OF NOVEMBER THEN
+          HE SCEST AND FOR HIS
+          MEMORY THIS HERE IS PLEAST
+          BY HIS SON BEN
+                    1693
+
+We spent a very pleasant half hour in the church, and then we wandered
+on through the crooked streets to the magnificent Norman castle, set up
+here to defend the passage of the Shannon. Most venerable and impressive
+it is, with its great drum towers, and curtains ten feet thick. Just in
+front of it the Shannon is spanned by a fine modern bridge, replacing
+the ancient one which was the scene of so many conflicts, and at the
+farther end of it, mounted on a pedestal, is the famous stone on which
+Sarsfield signed his treaty with the English in 1691--the treaty which
+guaranteed equal rights to Catholics, but which, as every Catholic
+Irishman somewhat too vividly remembers, resulted only in a more bitter
+persecution. Irish memory, curiously enough, seems always to grow
+clearer with the passing years, and the mists of two centuries
+accentuate, rather than obscure, the fame of Limerick as "The City of
+the Violated Treaty." The story runneth thus:
+
+The River Shannon, with its wide estuary, its many lakes, and its mighty
+current flowing between impassable bogs or beetling cliffs, has always
+been a formidable barrier between east and west Ireland. In the old
+days, the only doors in this barrier was the ford at Athlone, just below
+Lough Ree, and another all but impassable one at Killaloe, just below
+Lough Derg; but in the ninth century, the Danes sailed up from the sea,
+landed on an island at the head of the tideway, fortified it, and so
+started the city of Limerick. The current of the river was divided here,
+and the invaders managed in time to get a bridge across, and so opened
+another door in the Shannon barrier. Brian Boru drove them out, at last,
+and then the Normans came and, after their fashion everywhere, rendered
+their hold secure by erecting a great round-towered castle to guard the
+bridge. Edward Bruce captured it in 1316, and three centuries later,
+Hugh O'Neill held it for six months against Cromwell's great general,
+Ireton. The Ironsides captured it, finally, and Ireton died of the
+plague not long afterwards in a house just back of the cathedral.
+
+But it was in the war against William of Orange that Limerick played its
+most distinguished part. I have already told how the Irish chose the
+cause of the Stuarts against the Parliament; how they proclaimed Charles
+II king as soon as his father's head was off, and of the vengeance
+Cromwell took. So it was inevitable that they should espouse the cause
+of James II against the Protestant William, whom the English had called
+over from the Netherlands to be their king. James came to Ireland to
+lead the rebellion, proved himself an idiot and a coward, and ended by
+running away and leaving the Irish to their fate.
+
+William's troops swept the country, took town after town and castle
+after castle, until Limerick remained nearly the last stronghold in
+Irish hands. So William marched against it, at the head of 26,000 men,
+but the position was a very strong one, and that ablest of Irish
+generals, Patrick Sarsfield, was in command of the town, and William was
+beaten back. The next year another great army under General Ginkle
+marched against the place, first capturing Athlone, and so getting
+across the river. A terrific attack was concentrated on the fortress
+guarding the bridge, a breach was made, the fort stormed, and the
+garrison put to the sword, only about a hundred out of eight hundred
+escaping across the other branch of the river into Limerick.
+
+Sarsfield still held the town, but his men were disheartened by the loss
+of the castle. Ginkle, on the other hand, realised that to take the town
+would be no easy task. A truce was proposed, negotiations began, both
+sides were eager to end the war, and the result was that the famous
+Treaty of Limerick was signed by Ginkle and Sarsfield on the third day
+of October, 1691, on a stone near the County Clare end of the bridge
+over the Shannon.
+
+There were twelve articles in the treaty, and some of them were
+kept--the one, for instance, permitting all persons to leave the country
+who wished to do so, and to take their families and portable goods
+along; but one was not kept, the most important one, perhaps, which
+provided that Irish Catholics should enjoy all the religious rights they
+possessed under Charles II, and that all Irish still in arms, who should
+immediately submit and take the oath of allegiance, should be secured in
+the free and undisputed possession of their estates. In a word, the
+price of peace was to have been a general indemnity and freedom of
+religious worship. It was not an excessive price, but it was never paid.
+
+The Protestant colonists in Ireland protested in great wrath that they
+had been betrayed, and the Irish Parliament, which the colonists
+controlled, after a bitter fight, repudiated the treaty, or, at least,
+confirmed only so much of it as "consisted with the safety and welfare
+of his Majesty's subjects in Ireland," and passed a number of new laws
+aimed at Catholics, disqualifying them from teaching school, from
+sending their children abroad to be educated, from observing any holy
+day except those set apart by the Church of Ireland, and many others of
+the same sort, some of almost insane malignity. All this was, of course,
+quite unjustifiable, but "King Billy" seems to have been in no way
+responsible for it. In any event, it happened more than two centuries
+ago, all these laws have long since been repealed, and it seems absurd
+to keep their memory so fresh and burning.
+
+One word more, and I am done with history. After the surrender of
+Limerick, Sarsfield and his men were given the choice of enlisting in
+William's army or leaving the country. They chose the latter, and went
+to France, where the last Catholic king of England had sought refuge.
+He, of course, was unable to maintain them, so they enlisted under the
+French king, Louis XIV, and formed the Irish Brigade, which was
+afterwards to become so famous, and in which, during the next fifty
+years, nearly half a million Irishmen enlisted, as the best means of
+avenging themselves on England. The part they played at Landen, at
+Barcelona, at Cremona, at Blenheim, at Ramilles, and finally at
+Fontenoy--all this is matter of history.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We crossed the bridge again, after a look at the treaty stone--which,
+enshrined on its lofty pedestal, is really a monument to English
+perfidy--passed the castle, and plunged into the crooked streets of
+"English Town," as this oldest part of Limerick is called, with its
+tall, foreign-looking, tumbledown houses--as picturesque a quarter as I
+have seen anywhere. For Limerick grew into an important city in the
+century following its capture by the English, and many wealthy people
+put up handsome town-houses, four or five stories high, with wide halls
+and sweeping stairs and beautiful doorways and tall windows framed in
+sculptured stone. It is these old houses which shadow the narrow lanes
+of "English Town," and they are all tenements now, for the well-to-do
+people--such of them as are left--have moved over to the newer, more
+fashionable, more sanitary quarter. No attempt is made to keep them in
+repair, and many of them have fallen down, leaving ragged gaps in the
+street. Others seem in imminent danger of falling, and the distressed
+look of the place is further heightened by the great fragments of the
+old walls which remain here and there.
+
+This part of Limerick is on the island where the town started; the part
+just beyond the bridge which leads to the mainland is called Irish Town,
+and it, too, was once included in the city walls, a long stretch of
+which is still standing back of the ancient citadel. Here too,
+especially along the quay, are handsome houses, long since fallen from
+their high estate, and now the homes of the poorest of the poor, a
+family in every room. It is something of a shock to see these ragged and
+distressed people climbing the beautiful stairways, or sitting in the
+handsome doorways or leaning out of the carved windows, very much at
+home in the place which was once the abode of wealth and fashion, while
+the noisy play of dirty and neglected children echoes through the rooms
+which once rang with gentle laughter and impassioned toast.
+
+Newtown-Pery, the newer part of the town, built on land reclaimed from
+the river by the Pery family, the Earls of Limerick, who still own it,
+contrasts strongly with the older part, for its streets are wide and
+straight and run regularly at right angles, and it is a bustling place,
+but quite without interest to the stranger. The houses are almost
+uniformly four stories high, and are built of a peculiar dark-brown
+brick, which makes them look much older than they really are. And down
+along the water-front are nearly a mile of quays, with floating docks
+and heavy cranes, and towering warehouses looking down upon them.
+
+Time was when Limerick fondly hoped to become the greatest port in
+Ireland. She had every advantage--a noble situation on the broad estuary
+of the Shannon, up which ships from America could sail direct to her
+wharves--but in spite of great expenditures to improve her harbour
+facilities, not only did no new trade come, but such as she already had
+withered and withered, until to-day her tall warehouses are empty, her
+quays almost deserted, and in the broad expanse of the Shannon there are
+few boats except excursion steamers and pleasure yachts.
+
+The cause of this decay? Irishmen assert that there is only one
+cause--unjust and discriminating laws passed by England to protect her
+own trade by destroying Irish industry. No doubt this is true; but these
+laws have been repealed for many years, and there is little evidence of
+the healthy revival of these industries anywhere in Ireland. Such
+revival as there is has been carefully fostered by various government
+agencies; there has been no great spontaneous revival, and perhaps there
+never will be. But it is a melancholy sight--the empty, decaying mills,
+the idle factories, the deserted warehouses, the ruined dwellings, which
+the traveller sees all up and down the land.
+
+I went out for another stroll about the town, after tea, for I wanted to
+see the new Catholic cathedral, whose tall spire dominates the landscape
+for many miles around. And as I went, I could not but notice the impress
+the English have left on the names of the streets. The principal street,
+as I have said already, is George Street; then there is Cecil Street,
+and William Street, and Nelson Street, and Catherine Street, and George
+and Charlotte Quays opposite each other. There is one, however, named
+after a local celebrity whom all Irishmen should delight to
+honour--Gerald Griffin, an authentic poet, whose "Eileen Aroon" is one
+of the tenderest and most musical of lyrics.
+
+Gerald Griffin Street is one of the most important in Limerick, and it
+is by it that one gains the cathedral, an impressive building,
+especially as to its interior, dimly lighted through high, narrow lancet
+windows. And here again one admires not so much the church itself, as
+the indomitable spirit which could undertake the task of building such
+an edifice in want-stricken Ireland.
+
+The Sarsfield monument is in the cathedral square, a rampageous figure,
+charging with drawn sword off the top of a shaft of stone--perhaps the
+most ridiculous tribute to a great soldier and patriot to be seen
+anywhere on this earth. I, at least, have never seen any to match it,
+unless it be that imperturbable dandy, supposed to represent Andrew
+Jackson, who calmly doffs his chapeau from the back of a rearing horse
+in front of our own White House!
+
+I walked on, after that, down toward the quays, along little lanes of
+thatched houses, and then back into the region of the old mansions, with
+their chattering women and sprawling children; and then, suddenly, I
+became aware of the girls.
+
+Limerick, like Cork, is supposed to be famous for the beauty of its
+women, and the younger generation was out in force, that Sunday evening,
+rigged up in its best clothes, evidently ready for any harmless
+adventure. There _were_ some nice-looking girls among them, no doubt of
+that, with bright eyes and red lips and glowing cheeks, and the advent
+of a stranger in their midst filled them with the liveliest interest,
+which they were at no pains to dissemble. I know nothing about the
+psychology of Irish girls, for I was not in a position to investigate or
+experiment; but while they are shy, at first, I should judge that most
+of them are not altogether averse to mild flirtation. The glance of
+their eye is not, perhaps, as fatal as Kate Kearney's, but it is very
+taking.
+
+I wish I could say as much for the boys; but if there were any witty,
+invincible Rory O'Mores left in Ireland, I didn't see them. The Irish
+young man seems very different indeed from the light-hearted, audacious,
+philandering scapegrace so dear to Lover and Lever and scores of lesser
+poets, and once so familiar upon the stage. They are not forever
+breaking into song, they do not brim with sentiment, they are not, so
+far as I could judge, full of heroic emotions and high ambitions. In
+fact, they are quite the opposite of all that--matter-of-fact, humdrum,
+rather stupid.
+
+Of course there are exceptions, and I was fortunate enough to meet one
+that very evening. I stopped in at a tobacconist's to get a paper, and
+fell into talk with the proprietor; and presently there entered a man
+who bought a pennyworth of tobacco, filled his pipe, and then remained
+for a word, seeing that I was a stranger. We were talking about Ireland,
+and in a very few minutes the newcomer had the centre of the stage.
+
+O'Connell, journeyman tailor, so he introduced himself, and I wish I
+could paint a picture of him that would make him live for you as he
+lives for me. He was a faded little man, of indeterminate age, with a
+straw-coloured moustache and sallow skin, but his eyes were very bright,
+and before long his face was glowing with an infectious enthusiasm. His
+clothes were worn and shabby, but one forgot them as he stood there and
+talked--indeed they even lent a sort of dignity to his lean, nervous
+little figure.
+
+First he told of how Cleeve, the big butter man, was trying to get the
+city to close the swing bridge over the Shannon, so that his heavy
+trams, which went about the country collecting milk, could cross it. To
+close the bridge would shut off permanently about four hundred yards of
+quay; but, so Cleeve argued, the quays were little used, and the town
+would never need that stretch above the bridge. But O'Connell did not
+believe it.
+
+"'Tis true," he said, "that England with her cruel laws, has killed our
+trade and brought us all to want; 'tis true that we have no use for the
+quay at present. But all that will be changed when we get Home Rule.
+Then, sir, you will see our quays crowded with boats from end to end;
+you will see our mills and factories humming with life, you will see our
+warehouses piled with commodities from every quarter of the world. To
+shut off part of them, just because this bloated butter-maker wants it,
+would be a crime against the people of this town."
+
+"How is all this to be brought about?" I asked.
+
+"'Tis you Americans will be doing it, sir. The Irish in America, our
+brothers, God bless them, will rally to the ould land. Her children will
+come home to the Shan Van Vocht, once she is free of England. 'Tis them
+ones will set us on our feet again. They will be putting their money
+into our industries, till in the whole island there will be not an idle
+wheel or a smokeless chimney."
+
+I told him I was afraid his dreams were too rosy; that the American
+Irish, like all other Americans, would be governed by dividends, not by
+sentiment, in the investment of their money. But nothing could shake his
+belief in the good time coming. I asked him what he thought of Ulster,
+and he laughed.
+
+"The Protestants have nothing to fear from Home Rule," he said. "'Tis
+them will control this government. We Catholics are going to pick the
+best and strongest men in this island to man the ship, and there will be
+more Protestants than Catholics amongst them. We will need strong arms
+at the helm, and what do we care what their religion may be, if only
+they're good men and true? You're a Protestant, I take it, sir?"
+
+"Yes," I said; "I am."
+
+"And does that make me think any the less of you? Not a bit of it. 'Tis
+the same God we look at, only with different eyes."
+
+"Not even that," I corrected; "with the same eyes--just from a different
+angle."
+
+"You've said it, sir. I can't improve on that. Well then, what is it the
+Ulster men are afraid of? They say it's the priests. But how silly that
+is! Let them look back into history, and see what has happened when the
+priests interfered with things that did not concern them. In spiritual
+matters I bow to my priest; in everything else, I am independent of him.
+It is so with all Irishmen, and has always been. Do you remember what
+the great O'Connell said: 'I would as soon,' said he, 'take my politics
+from Stamboul as from Rome.' Do you remember what happened when Rome
+tried to prevent the Catholics of Ireland from contributing to the
+testimonial for the greatest patriot Ireland has ever had, Charles
+Stewart Parnell? But of course you don't. I'll just tell you. Why, sir,
+the whole country was on fire from end to end. 'Make Peter's Pence into
+Parnell's Pounds' was the battle-cry, and the money poured in like rain.
+Mr. Parnell's friends had hoped to raise fifteen thousand pounds for
+him. When they got the money counted at last, they had near forty
+thousand pounds. What do you think of that now?"
+
+"I think it was fine," I said. "But why is it, then, Ulster is so
+frightened?"
+
+"Ah, Ulster isn't frightened--it's just a lot of talk from people who
+live by talkin'. There's many Catholics who are against Home Rule, and
+there's many Protestants who are for it. They'll all be for it, after
+they've tried it a while. And we won't let the Protestants stay out--we
+can't afford to--we need them too much. Why, sir, our leaders have
+always been Protestants, and I'm thinking always will be."
+
+"There was O'Connell," I reminded him.
+
+"I have not forgotten him--I quoted him but a moment since; and 'tis
+true he was a great man and a true patriot. But he fell into grievous
+error when he chose Catholic emancipation, when he might have got Home
+Rule. What did Catholic emancipation mean to me and thousands like me?
+It meant just nothing at all. It meant that some Catholics of
+O'Connell's own class could hold jobs under government--that was all.
+The greatest man this island ever produced, sir, was a Protestant. I
+have mentioned him already; his name was Charles Stewart Parnell!"
+
+I wish you could have seen his shining eyes and heard his quivering
+voice as he went on to tell me about Parnell; and how, after the scandal
+which ruined his life--a scandal prearranged, so many think, by his
+political enemies--he had come to Limerick to address a meeting, with
+death in his face and a broken heart in his eyes; and there had been
+some in the crowd that hissed him and pelted him with mud; and the
+little tailor, his chest swelling at the old glorious memory, told how
+he had been one of those who rallied around the stricken leader and beat
+the crowd back and got him safe away. There were tears in his eyes
+before he had ended.
+
+"Ah, woman," he went on, "'twas not only Parnell you ruined then, it was
+ould Ireland, too! And not for the first time! Why, sir, 'twas because
+of a woman the British first came to this island. Troy had her Helen, as
+Homer tells, and so had Erin. 'Twas the same story over again.
+Dervorgilla the lady's name was, and she was the wife of Tiernan
+O'Rourke, Prince of Breffni, who had his fine castle on the beautiful
+green banks of Lough Gill. It was there that Dermot MacMurrough, King of
+Leinster, saw her, and after that no other woman would do for him. So he
+courted her in odd corners and whispered soft honeyed words into her
+ear; and she listened, as women will, and her head was turned by his
+flattery. One day her husband, who was a pious man, kissed her good-bye
+and started on a pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory in Lough Derg;
+and he was there nine days; and when he came back, what did he find? Ah,
+sir, Tom Moore has told it far better than I can:
+
+  "'The valley lay smiling before me,
+     Where lately I left her behind;
+   Yet I trembled, and something hung o'er me,
+     That saddened the joy of my mind.
+   I looked for the lamp which, she told me,
+     Should shine when her Pilgrim returned;
+   But, though darkness began to enfold me,
+     No lamp from the battlements burned!
+
+  "'I flew to her chamber--'twas lonely,
+     As if the loved tenant lay dead;--
+   Ah, would it were death, and death only;
+     But no, the young false one had fled.
+   And there hung the lute that could soften
+     My very worst pains into bliss;
+   While the hand, which had waked it so often,
+     Now throbbed to a proud rival's kiss.'"
+
+I wish I could convey the tremor of the voice with which O'Connell,
+journeyman tailor, recited these silly lines. I can see him yet,
+standing there, one hand against his heart, his eyes straining up to the
+battlements from which no welcoming light gleamed. I can see the
+proprietor of the little shop, as he lounged against his counter,
+smiling good-naturedly. I can see the two or three other men who had
+drifted in, listening with all their ears.
+
+And then O'Connell went on to tell how O'Rourke, finding his wife had
+fled with MacMurrough, appealed to his overlord, King Turlough O'Conor,
+and how the two of them so harassed MacMurrough that he was compelled to
+restore Dervorgilla to her husband and to flee to England, where he went
+to Strongbow and persuaded him to bring his Normans to Ireland to help
+him in his feud; and how Strongbow, once he got a firm grip on the land,
+refused to loosen it, and the curse of English rule had been on Ireland
+ever since.
+
+I looked this story up, afterwards, and found that legend tells it much
+as O'Connell did, and it is probably true. But, just the same, it is
+hardly fair to lay the whole blame for Ireland's woes on Dervorgilla,
+for the Normans had been looking longingly across the Irish Sea years
+before MacMurrough fled to them, and would no doubt have crossed it,
+sooner or later, without an invitation. The tragic point of the story is
+that, as usual, the invader found the Irish divided and so unable to
+resist. We shall see the castle from which Dervorgilla fled, before our
+journey is done, and also the place where she lies buried, at Mellifont,
+in the valley of the Boyne.
+
+The quotation from Tom Moore had turned my little tailor's thoughts
+toward poetry, and he asked if I knew this poem and that, and when I
+didn't, as was frequently the case, he would quote a few lines, or sing
+them, if they had been set to music.
+
+"Of course you know 'To the Dead of Ninety-eight'?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," I said; "but that is not Johnson's noblest poem. Do you know his
+'Ode to Ireland'?"
+
+"I do not," he answered. "Let us have it, sir."
+
+How sorry I was that I couldn't let them have it, or didn't have a copy
+that I could read to them, for it is a stirring poem; I had to confess
+that I didn't know it, but I can't resist quoting one splendid stanza
+now--
+
+    "No swordsmen are the Christians!" Oisin cried:
+    "O Patrick! thine is but a little race."
+    Nay, ancient Oisin! they have greatly died
+    In battle glory and with warrior grace.
+    Signed with the Cross, they conquered and they fell;
+      Sons of the Cross, they stand:
+    The Prince of Peace loves righteous warfare well,
+    And loves thine armies, O our Holy Land!
+    The Lord of Hosts is with thee, and thine eyes
+      Shall see upon thee rise
+    His glory, and the blessing of His Hand.
+
+"Have you heard Timothy Sullivan's 'Song from the Backwoods'?" he asked
+me finally, and when I said I never had, he sang it for the assembled
+company, and a splendid song I found it. Here it is:
+
+          Deep in Canadian woods we've met,
+            From one bright island flown;
+          Great is the land we tread, but yet
+            Our hearts are with our own.
+          And ere we leave this shanty small,
+            While fades the Autumn day,
+              We'll toast Old Ireland!
+              Dear Old Ireland!
+              Ireland, boys, hurray!
+
+          We've heard her faults a hundred times,
+            The new ones and the old,
+          In songs and sermons, rants and rhymes,
+            Enlarged some fifty-fold.
+          But take them all, the great and small,
+            And this we've got to say:--
+              Here's dear Old Ireland!
+              Good Old Ireland!
+              Ireland, boys, hurray!
+
+As he went on with the song, the others in the shop warmed up to it and
+joined in the chorus so lustily that a crowd gathered outside; and the
+shopkeeper got a little nervous, fearing, perhaps, a visit from some
+passing constable, and he whispered in O'Connell's ear, when the song
+was done, and there were no more songs that evening.
+
+But still we sat and talked and smoked and O'Connell told me something
+of himself: of the fifteen shillings a week he could earn when he had
+steady work; of the three-pence a week he paid out under the insurance
+act, and how, if he was sick, he would draw a benefit of ten shillings
+a week for six months. He said bitterly that, if he lived in England, he
+would get free medical attendance, too, but that had been refused to
+Ireland through the machinations of the doctors and their friends. He
+told of the blessing the old age pension had been to many people he
+knew, and he admitted that England had been trying, of late years, to
+atone for her old injustices toward Ireland, and was now, perhaps,
+spending more money on the country than she got out of it.
+
+"But there is a saying, sir, as you know," he concluded, rising and
+knocking out his pipe, "that hell is paved with good intentions; and
+however good England's intentions may be, she can never govern us well,
+because she can never understand us. Besides, it's not charity we want,
+it's freedom. Better a crust of bread and freedom, than luxury and
+chains! We'll have some hard fights, but we'll win out. Come back in ten
+years, sir, and you'll see a new Ireland. Take my word for it. It's glad
+I am that I came in here this night," he added. "I was feeling downcast
+and disheartened; but that is all over now. This talk has been a great
+pleasure to me. Good-bye, sir; God save you!" and he disappeared into
+the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE RUINS AT ADARE
+
+
+WE threw back the shutters, next morning, to a cold and dreary day of
+misting rain; and after a look at it, Betty elected to spend it before a
+cosy fire in our great, high-ceilinged room. I have wondered since if
+our hotel at Limerick was not one of those handsome eighteenth-century
+mansions, brought by the hard necessities of time to the use of passing
+travellers. It is difficult to explain the gorgeousness of some of its
+rooms on any other theory. Ours was a very large one, with elaborate
+ceiling-mouldings and panelled walls and a mantel of carved marble,
+which Betty inspected longingly. She could see it, I fancy, in her own
+drawing-room, and perhaps its beauties had something to do with her
+decision to spend the day in front of it.
+
+There were two or three pictures I wanted to take--one of the old castle
+and another of the crooked little lane I had wandered through the night
+before; so I set forth to get them, along busy George Street, with its
+bright shops, and then across the river to English Town, and so to the
+castle front. I found it very hard to get anything like a satisfactory
+picture of it, because the parapet of the new bridge is in the way, and
+because the angle of my lens was not wide enough to take in both the
+towers. I did the best I could, took a last look at the treaty stone,
+but forbore to add to its fame by photographing it; and then traversed
+again the quaint old streets, with their ramshackle houses, and so came
+to the little lane.
+
+The town, as I came through it, had been full of market-carts drawn by
+ragged donkeys and driven by shawled women, and I loitered about for a
+time, hoping that one of them would come this way and so add a touch of
+human interest to my picture. A painter was busy giving one of the
+thatched houses a coat of white-wash; only it wasn't white-wash,
+properly speaking, because a colouring-matter had been added to it which
+made it a vivid pink. This pink wash is very popular in Ireland, and,
+varied sometimes by a yellow wash, adds a high note to nearly every
+landscape. I talked with the man awhile, and then, the rain coming down
+more heavily, I slipped into a cobbler's shop for shelter.
+
+It would be difficult to imagine anything more comfortless and primitive
+than that interior. The shop occupied one of the two rooms of the family
+home--bare little rooms with dirt floors and tiny windows and no
+furniture except the most necessary. Somebody has said that there are
+two pieces of furniture always worthy of veneration--the table and the
+bed; but I doubt if even that philosopher could have found anything to
+venerate in the specimens which this house contained. The table was a
+rude affair of rough boards, with one corner supported by a box in lieu
+of a leg, and the bed was a mere pile of rags on a sort of low shelf in
+one corner. What sort of fare was set forth upon that table, and what
+sort of rest the bed afforded, was not difficult to imagine.
+
+The cobbler was tapping away at a pair of shoes, trying to mend them,
+and sadly they needed it. Indeed, they were such shoes as no
+self-respecting tramp would wear in America, and I could not but suspect
+that the cobbler had fished them from a garbage heap somewhere, and was
+trying, as a sort of speculation, to make them worth a few pennies. Two
+or three blocks of turf smoked and flared in a narrow fire-place, and,
+as always, a black pot hung over them, with some sort of mess bubbling
+inside it. The cobbler's wife sat on a stool before the fire
+contemplating the boiling pot gloomily, and a dirty child, of
+undeterminable sex, played with the scraps of leather on the floor.
+
+I apologised for my intrusion; but the atmosphere of the place was not
+genial. I fancied they resented my presence,--as I should have done, had
+our positions been reversed--and so, as soon as the downpour slackened a
+bit, I pressed a penny into the baby's fist and took myself off. The
+cobbler, suddenly softened, followed me outside to see me take the
+picture, and perhaps to be in it; but that picture was a failure, all
+spotted by the rain.
+
+I intended going to Adare, a little town not far away, said to possess a
+most remarkable collection of ruins, but it was yet an hour till train
+time, and I spent it exploring the town back of the railway station. I
+found it a most picturesque collection of crooked streets and quaint
+houses, and my advent was frankly treated as a great event by the
+gossips leaning over their half-doors. How eager they were to talk; I
+should have liked to stop and talk to all of them; but when I got ready
+to take a picture of the very crookedest street, their interest in my
+proceedings was so urgent and humorously-expressed that I lost my head
+and forgot to pull the slide--a fact I didn't realise until I had bade
+them good-bye and was walking away; and then I was ashamed to go back
+and take another.
+
+The train for Adare was waiting beside the platform when I got to the
+station, and I carefully selected a vacant compartment and clambered
+aboard. And then a guard came along and laughingly told me I would have
+to get out, because that car was reserved for a "Mothers' Union," which
+was going to Adare to hold a meeting. So I got out and waited on the
+platform till the Union arrived--some twenty or thirty comfortable-looking
+matrons, in high spirits, which the miserable weather did not dampen in
+the least. Irish meetings are held, I suppose, just the same rain or
+shine. It was Simeon Ford who remarked that if the Scotch knew enough to
+go in when it rained, they would never get any outdoor exercise. This is
+equally true of the Irish--only in Ireland, one doesn't need to go in,
+for sure 'tis a soft rain that does nobody any harm!
+
+Adare is about ten miles from Limerick and the road thither runs along
+the valley of the Shannon, with its lush meadows and lovely woods,
+veiled that day in a pearly mist of rain. As usual, the station is
+nearly a mile from the town, and as I started to walk it, I saw a tall
+old man coming along behind me, and I waited for him.
+
+"'Tis a bad day," I said.
+
+"It is so," he agreed; "and it's a long walk I have before me, for my
+house would be two miles beyont the village."
+
+"They tell me there are some fine ruins in the village."
+
+"There are so;" and then he looked at me more attentively. "You're not a
+native of these parts?" he asked, at last.
+
+"No," I said; "I'm from America."
+
+"From America!" he echoed, incredulously.
+
+"Yes; from the state called Ohio."
+
+"Think of that, now!" he cried. "And I can understand every word you
+say! Why, glory be to God, you speak fairer than the old woman up here
+along who has never crossed the road!"
+
+I should have liked to hear more about this remarkable old woman, but he
+gave me no chance with his many questions about America. He had a son in
+New Jersey, he said, and the boy was doing well, and sent a bit of money
+home at Christmas and such like. It was a wonderful place, America. Ah,
+if he were not so old--
+
+So, talking in this manner, we came to the town, and he pointed out the
+inn to me, opposite a picturesque string of thatched cottages nestling
+among the trees, and bade me Godspeed and went on his way; and I suppose
+that night before the fire he told of his meeting with the wanderer from
+far-off America, and how well he could understand his language!
+
+I went on to the inn, which was a surprisingly pretty one, new and clean
+and well-kept; and I took off my wet coat and sat down in the cosy bar
+before a lunch which tasted as good as any I have ever eaten; and then I
+lit my pipe and drew up before the fire and asked the pretty maid who
+served me how to get to the ruins. They were all, it seemed, inside the
+demesne of the Earl of Dunraven, the entrance to which was just across
+the road, and it was necessary that I should have an entrance ticket,
+which the maid hastened to get for me from the proprietor of the inn.
+When she gave it to me, I asked the price, and was told there was no
+charge, as the Earl of Dunraven was always glad for people to come to
+see the ruins.
+
+All honour to him for that!
+
+So it was with a very pleasant feeling about the heart that I presently
+crossed the road and surrendered a portion of my ticket to a black-eyed
+girl at the gate-house, and she told me how to go to get to the ruins,
+and hoped I wouldn't be soaked through. But I didn't mind the rain; it
+only added to the beauty of the park. Besides, I was thinking of "Silken
+Thomas."
+
+Have you ever heard of "Silken Thomas," tenth Earl of Kildare? Probably
+not; yet he was a great man in his day--not so great as his grandfather,
+that greatest of the Geraldines, whose trial for treason before Henry
+VII is a thing Irishmen love to remember.
+
+"This man burned the cathedral at Cashel," said the prosecutor, "and we
+will prove it."
+
+"Spare your evidence," said the Earl. "I admit that I set fire to the
+church, but 'twas only because I thought the archbishop was inside."
+
+"All Ireland cannot rule this man!" cried one of his opponents.
+
+"Then, by God, this man shall rule all Ireland!" said the King, and
+Kildare was made lord lieutenant, and went back to Dublin in triumph.
+
+It was in the thirteenth century that Adare came into possession of
+this mighty family, and the second Earl built a great castle here, on
+the site of an older one which had belonged to the dispossessed
+O'Donovans. The first Earl had already built near by a monastery for the
+Augustinians; and another Earl and his pious wife built a yet handsomer
+one for the Franciscans; so that here was citadel and sanctuary for
+them, when they grew weary of fighting, or when the tide of battle went
+against them. It was a Kildare who led the northern half of Ireland
+against the southern, at the great battle of Knocktow, where Irishmen
+slew each other by thousands, while the English looked on and chuckled
+in their sleeves; and after that, the Kildares waxed so powerful that
+Wolsey, the great minister of the eighth Henry, took alarm at their
+over-vaulting ambition, and caused the head of the house, the ninth
+Earl, to be summoned to London. He went unwillingly, though he had been
+given every assurance of safety; and his misgivings proved well-founded,
+for he was at once imprisoned in the Tower.
+
+He left behind him in Ireland his son, "Silken" Thomas, so-called from
+the richness of his attire and retinue, a youth of twenty-one; and when
+the news came that the old Earl had been put to death, Silken Thomas,
+deeming it credible enough, renounced his allegiance to England, marched
+into Dublin, and threw down his sword of state before the Chancellor and
+Archbishop in St. Mary's Abbey, and then rode boldly forth again, none
+daring to stop him. But it came to naught, for a great English force
+wore him out in a long campaign, seduced his allies from him, and
+finally persuaded him to yield on condition that his life should be
+spared. He sailed for England, assured of a pardon, was arrested as soon
+as he landed, and was beheaded, and drawn and quartered on Tower Hill,
+together with five of his kinsmen.
+
+So ended the haughty Geraldines. The estate was confiscated, and the
+castle, after being besieged by Desmonds and O'Connells, by Irish and by
+English, was finally taken by Cromwell's men and destroyed, and they
+also, perhaps, put the finishing touches to the monasteries.
+
+That was the wild old story I was thinking of as I made my way along the
+winding road, over a beautiful little stream in which I could see the
+trout lurking, and then across a golf ground to the ivy-draped ruins of
+the old abbey of the Franciscans, built by the Geraldines in the heyday
+of their power. It is a beautiful cluster of buildings, with a graceful
+square tower rising high above them; and they are in excellent
+preservation, lacking only the roofs and a portion of gable here and
+there. Even the window tracery is, for the most part, intact.
+
+The interior of the church is of unusual richness and beauty, abounding
+in delicate detail--recessed altar-tombs, richly-carved sedilia, arched
+vaults, graceful mouldings, and the window traceries are very pure and
+lovely. Here, as at Muckross, the cloisters are especially beautiful,
+and are perfectly preserved. They are lighted on two sides by pointed
+arches arranged in groups of three, while on the side next the church
+the arches are grouped in pairs, and the fourth side is closed in by a
+lovely arcade, with double octagonal columns. Here, also as at Muckross,
+the friars planted a yew tree in the centre of the court, and it is now
+a venerable giant. Whether it is as deadly as the Muckross yew I do not
+know.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHOIR OF THE ABBEY AT ADARE]
+
+[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF THE GERALDINES, ADARE]
+
+Beyond the cloisters are the refectory and domestic offices and
+dormitories, all well-preserved, and repaying the most careful scrutiny.
+I don't know when I have been more ecstatically happy than when, after
+examining all this beauty, I sat myself down under an arch in the very
+midst of it, and smoked a pipe and gazed and gazed.
+
+I tore myself away at last, and made my way across the meadow to the
+ruins of the castle, which I could see looming above the trees by the
+river. Right on the bank of the river it stands, and at one time there
+was a moat all around it which the river fed. One can see traces of the
+moat, even yet, with a fosse beyond, and there is enough left of the
+castle to show how great and strong this citadel of the Geraldines was.
+There is a high outer wall, all battlemented, pierced by a single gate;
+and then an inner ward, also with a single gate, flanked by heavy
+defending towers. Within this looms the ultimate place of refuge, the
+mighty donjon, forty feet square, with walls of tremendous strength, and
+flanking towers, and every device for defence, so that one wonders how
+it was ever taken.
+
+One can still go up by the narrow stone stair, and from the top look
+down upon these walls within walls, and fancy oneself back in the Middle
+Ages, with their pageantries and heroisms and picturesque mummeries; and
+one can see, too, how hard and comfortless life was then, save for the
+few who held wealth and power in their mailed fists. "The good old
+times!" Not much! The sad, cruel, gruesome, selfish, treacherous old
+times, whose like, thank heaven, will never be seen again upon this
+earth!
+
+The rain was pouring down in sheets as I left the castle, but I could
+not forbear going back again to the friary for a last look at it; and
+then I tramped happily back along the road to the gate; and the
+black-eyed girl was there to welcome me, and to say how sorry she was
+that the day was so bad. But I did not think it bad; I thought it
+beautiful, and said so; only I was afraid my photographs wouldn't be
+worth reproducing.
+
+And then the girl asked me if I wouldn't come in and sit by the fire a
+bit, and we had a little gossip, of course about America. She had a
+married sister in New York, she said, and she hoped some day to join
+her. And then she told me that the cottage next door was where the
+famous Adare cigarettes were made--an industry started by the Earl, who
+grew the tobacco on his place.
+
+I stopped in to see the factory, and found four girls rolling the
+cigarettes and a man blending the tobaccos. He told me that the Earl had
+planted twenty-five acres with tobacco, and that it did very well; but
+it was not used alone, as it was too dark, but blended with the lighter
+Maryland, brought from America. I bought a packet of the cigarettes in
+the interests of this narrative, but they did not seem to me in any way
+extraordinary.
+
+I went on again and stopped in at the parish church, which was at one
+time a Trinitarian Friary, or White Abbey, founded seven hundred years
+ago. It was falling into ruins, when the Earl, who seems omnipotent in
+these parts, restored it and fitted it up as a church and turned it over
+to the Catholics. There is a big school attached to it now, and as I
+entered the grounds, a white-coifed nun who was sitting at a window
+looking over some papers, fled hastily. The church itself is chiefly
+remarkable for a very beautiful five-lighted window over the altar. Just
+outside is a handsome Celtic cross, surmounting the fountain where the
+villagers get their water.
+
+There was a store farther down the street, and I stopped in to get some
+postcards. It was the most crowded store I ever saw, the ceiling hung
+with tinware, the shelves heaped with merchandise of every kind, and the
+floor so crowded with boxes and barrels that there was scarcely room to
+squeeze between them. I remarked to the proprietor that he seemed to
+carry a large stock, and he explained that he tried to have everything
+anybody would want, for it was foolish to let any money get away. While
+we were talking, a girl came in to sell some eggs. She had them in a
+basket, and the man took them out, but instead of counting them, he
+weighed them.
+
+I went on back to the station, after that, through the driving rain, and
+I was very wet by the time I got there--wet on the outside, that is, but
+warm and dry and happy underneath. And at the station, I found three
+men, who were engaged in a heated argument as to whether a man weighed
+any more after he had eaten dinner than he did before. One of the men
+contended very earnestly that one could eat the heartiest of meals
+without gaining an ounce of weight if one only took the precaution of
+drinking a mug or two of beer or porter with the meal, since the drink
+lightened the brain and so neutralised the weight of the food in the
+stomach. He asserted that he had seen this proved more than once, and
+that he was willing to bet on it. He was also willing to bet that he
+could put twelve pennies into a brimming glass of stout without causing
+it to spill. As the village was a mile away, there was no place to get a
+glass of stout and try this interesting experiment.
+
+And then one of the men, looking at my wet coat and dripping cap, asked
+me if I had been fishing.
+
+"No," I said. "I was tramping around through the demesne looking at the
+ruins and trying to get some pictures of them," and I tapped my camera.
+
+He looked at the camera and then he looked at me.
+
+"Where would you be from?" he asked.
+
+"From America."
+
+"From America?" he echoed in surprise. "Ah, well," he added, after a
+moment's thought, "that do seem a long way to come just to get a few
+photos!"
+
+I couldn't help laughing as I agreed that it did; but I had never before
+thought of it in just that way.
+
+And then he told me that he had five brothers in America, but he himself
+had been in the army, and was minded to enlist again. In the army, one
+got enough to eat and warm clothes to wear and a tight roof to sleep
+under, which was more than most men were able to do in Ireland!
+
+The Mothers' Union presently arrived, very wet but very happy. I was
+curious to know what they had discussed at their meeting, and what
+conclusions they had reached, but the train pulled in a moment later,
+and I had no time to make any inquiries. If Betty had been along, I
+think I should have persuaded her to attend that meeting; but I found
+her very warm and comfortable before her fire back at Limerick, and I
+confess that I was glad to get out of my wet things and sit down in
+front of it.
+
+At 9:25 o'clock that night, when we supposed that most of Limerick was
+in bed, we heard the sound of music and the tramp of many feet in the
+street below, and looked out to see a band going past, followed by a
+great crowd of men tramping silently along in the wet. Ordinarily, I
+would have rushed out to see what was up; but I was tired, and the fire
+felt very good, and so I sat down again in front of it. I have been
+sorry since, for I suspect it was a Home Rule meeting, and Limerick has
+a great reputation for shindies. Perhaps O'Connell, journeyman tailor,
+made a speech. If he did, I am sorrier still, for I am sure it was a
+good one!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was one thing more at Limerick we wished to see--the great butter
+factory of the Messrs. Cleeve, on the other side of the Shannon. We had
+already seen, rumbling through the streets of Limerick, the heavy steam
+trams carrying enormous iron tanks, which collect the milk from the
+country for miles around--from ten thousand cows some one told us--and
+we had seen so few industries in Ireland that it seemed worth while to
+inspect this one. So, next morning, we walked down to the water-front,
+past the towering, empty warehouses, to the swing bridge which Cleeve
+wants to close so that his trams can get across the Shannon without
+going away around by the castle.
+
+The bridge, a very fine one, was named originally after Wellesley, but
+has been re-christened after Patrick Sarsfield, in whose honour the
+street which leads up from it is also named. The swivel which allows
+boats to pass and which isn't strong enough to carry the weight of
+Cleeve's trams, is on the Limerick side, and just beyond it is a statue
+which one naturally thinks is Sarsfield's, until one reads the
+inscription at its base and finds it is a presentment of a certain Lord
+Fitzgibbon, who was killed in the charge of the Light Brigade. Beyond
+that, the bridge stretches away across the wide and rapid stream, by far
+the biggest river in Ireland.
+
+The butter factory is not far off, and we entered the office and told
+the clerk who came forward that we should like to see the place. He
+asked for my card, had me write my American address on it, and then
+disappeared with it into an inner room. There was a delay of some
+minutes, and finally one of the Messrs. Cleeve came out, my card in his
+hand.
+
+After greeting us quite cordially, he looked at the camera which I had
+under my arm, and asked if I expected to take any pictures of the place.
+
+"Why, no," I said; "I hadn't thought of doing so. I certainly won't if
+you don't want me to."
+
+"Are you interested in the butter business?"
+
+"Only as a private consumer."
+
+"Or in the condensed milk business??"
+
+"No," I said promptly, "neither of us is interested in that, even as
+consumers." And then, seeing that he still hesitated, I explained that
+we were just travelling Americans who had heard about the factory and
+thought we should like to see it; but that if it was against the rules,
+he had only to say so, and it would be all right.
+
+"It isn't against the rules," he explained. "In fact, we welcome
+visitors; only we have to be careful. We have some secret processes,
+especially with our condensed milk, which we wouldn't care to have our
+competitors know about. But I'm sure you're all right," he added, and
+called a clerk and told him to show us everything.
+
+Most interesting we found it, for twenty-three million gallons of milk
+are used there every year, and are converted not only into butter and
+condensed milk, but into buttons and cigarette holders and all sorts of
+things for which celluloid is commonly used. It was in this use of one
+of the by-products of the business, casein, so our guide explained, that
+much of the profit was made, since both the butter and the condensed
+milk had to be sold on a very close margin.
+
+The factory is a very complete one, making everything it uses--its own
+cans and boxes, its own labels, its own cartons, its containers of every
+kind and shape, as well as their contents. And the machinery with which
+this is done is very intricate and ingenious.
+
+Our guide said that one of the principal hazards of the business was the
+likelihood that some new machine would be invented at any time to
+displace the old ones, and would have to be purchased in order to keep
+abreast of competition.
+
+We saw the long troughs into which the milk is poured and strained and
+heated to Pasteurize it, and then run through the separators. In the
+next room were the great churns, from which the yellow butter was being
+taken; and beyond were the mechanical kneaders, which worked out the
+superfluous water and worked in the salt; and then the butter was put
+through a machine which divided it into blocks weighing a pound or two
+pounds, and then each of these blocks was carefully weighed, to be sure
+that it was full weight, and if it wasn't a little dab of butter was
+added before it was wrapped up and placed in the carton. And during all
+these processes it was never touched by any human finger.
+
+On the floor above were the great copper retorts in which the milk was
+being condensed by boiling. We looked in through a little isinglassed
+opening, and could see it seething like a volcano. And still higher up
+were the machines which turned the hardened casein, which would
+otherwise be wasted, into buttons and novelties of various kinds. The
+place seemed very prosperous and well-managed, and, so our guide assured
+us, was doing well. We were glad to find one such place in southern
+Ireland.
+
+Of course there are many others; and perhaps the impression I have given
+of Limerick does the town injustice, for it is a busy place. It is
+famous for its bacon, to the making of which ten thousand pigs are
+sacrificed weekly. It used also to be famous for its lace, worked by
+hand on fine net; but Limerick lace is made almost everywhere nowadays
+except at Limerick, although there is a successful school there, I
+believe, in one of the convents.
+
+The name of the town has also passed into the language as that of a
+distinctive five-line stanza, which Edward Lear made famous, and of
+which such distinguished poets as Rudyard Kipling, Cosmo Monkhouse,
+George du Maurier, Gelett Burgess and Carolyn Wells have written famous
+examples. The limerick is said to have been originally an extempore
+composition, a lot of people getting together and composing limericks,
+in turn, as a sort of game designed to while away an evening. Whether
+this was first done at Limerick I don't know, but the name came from the
+chorus which was sung after every stanza in order to give the next
+person time to get his limerick into shape:
+
+          Oh, won't you come up, come up, come up,
+            Oh, won't you come up to Limerick?
+          Oh, won't you come up, come all the way up,
+            Come all the way up to Limerick?
+
+At least, that is the way I heard the chorus sung once, many years ago,
+without understanding in the least what it meant. The invitation, of
+course, is for the passing ship to enter the wide estuary of the Shannon
+and sail up to Limerick's waiting quays. If the first limerick was
+composed at Limerick, it must have been a long time ago, and I doubt if
+any are produced there nowadays.
+
+We took a last stroll about the town, after we had seen the
+butter-making, and looked at the great artillery barracks, and the big
+market, and the mammoth jail and the still more mammoth lunatic asylum,
+where the inmates are decked out in bright red bonnets, which I should
+think would make them madder still. And then we walked through an open
+space called the People's Park, whose principal ornament is a tall
+column surmounted by the statue of a man named Spring Rice. Betty
+remarked that she had heard of spring wheat, but never of Spring Rice,
+and asked who he was; but I didn't know; and then we came to the
+Carnegie Library, and went inside to see what it was like.
+
+I have seldom seen a drearier place. In the reading-room a few shabby
+men were looking over some newspapers, but the rest of the building was
+deserted, except for one old man, who may have been the librarian. There
+were few books, and the names of those the library had were arranged in
+a remarkable mechanism which resembled a lot of miniature post-office
+boxes; and when the book was in, the name was turned out toward you, and
+when it was out, the card was turned blank-side out. It was the most
+complicated thing I ever saw in a public library. I suppose after a
+while, when the library gets more books, this bulletin will be used only
+for the newer ones; but I don't imagine there is a great demand for
+books in Limerick. At least mighty few seemed to be in circulation.
+Where life's realities are so bitter, where want is always at one's
+heels, there is little time for intellectual recreation.
+
+How bitter those realities are we realised, as we had never done before,
+on our way back to the station; for, on the doorstep of a low, little
+house, sat a ragged girl of six or eight, cuddling her doll against her
+breast and crooning to it softly. And the doll was just a block of turf,
+with a scrap of dirty rag for a dress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+"WHERE THE RIVER SHANNON FLOWS"
+
+
+I HAVE already spoken of the wonders of the River Shannon, which rises
+in a bubbling cauldron away above Lough Allen, and flows down through
+ten counties to the sea; widening into lakes twenty miles long, or
+draining vast stretches of impassable bog; navigable for more than two
+hundred miles; and, finally, the great barrier between eastern Ireland,
+which the Danes and English over-ran and conquered, and western Ireland,
+which has never ceased to be Irish, and where the old Gaelic is still
+the language of the people.
+
+The most beautiful portion of the river lies between Lough Derg, at
+whose lower end stands the ancient town of Killaloe, and Limerick, which
+marks the limit of the tideway. In this twenty-mile stretch, the river,
+for the first and last time in its course, is crowded in between high
+hills, and runs swift and deep and strong. It was this stretch we
+started out from Limerick, that day, to explore, and our first
+stopping-place was Castleconnell, about halfway to Killaloe. We found it
+a perfect gem of a town, situated most romantically on the left bank of
+the river, and with one of the nicest, cleanest, most satisfactory
+little inns I have ever seen. It reminded us of our inn at Killarney,
+for it was a rambling, two-storied structure, and the resort of
+fishermen. Castleconnell, as the guide-book puts it, is the Utopia of
+Irish anglers. I can well believe it, for the salmon we saw caught at
+Killarney were mere babies beside the ones which are captured here.
+
+We made straight for the river as soon as we had divested ourselves of
+our luggage, down along the winding village street, past the ruins of
+the castle which was once the seat of the O'Briens, kings of Thomond,
+and which Ginkle blew up during the siege of Limerick, thinking it too
+dangerous a neighbour; and then we turned upstream, close beside the
+water's edge, for two or three miles. The exquisite beauty of every
+vista lured us on and on--the wide, rushing river, with its wooded
+banks, broken here and there by green lawns and white villas, lovely,
+restful-looking homes, whose owners must find life a succession of
+pleasant days. For this portion of the valley of the Shannon seems to me
+one of the real garden spots of the world.
+
+The river was in flood, and so not at its best for fishing, but
+nevertheless we passed many anglers patiently whipping the water in the
+hope that, by some accident, a passing fish might see the fly and take
+it. And at last we came to the end of the river road--a place called
+"World's End," where we had expected to get tea. But the refreshment
+booth was closed and there was no sign of any one in the neighbourhood.
+
+We were very hungry therefore, when we got back to our inn, and our high
+tea tasted very good indeed, served in the pleasantest of dining rooms,
+on a table with snowy linen and polished dishes and shining silver, and
+by a waiter who knew his business so well that I judged him to be
+French. What a pleasure that meal was, after the slovenly service of the
+house at Limerick, most of whose customers were commercial travellers!
+Irish commercial travellers, I judge, are the least fastidious of men!
+
+Just across the street from the inn at Castleconnell is the place where
+the famous Enright rods are made, and after tea we went over to take a
+look at them. I know nothing about rods, but any one could appreciate
+the beauties of the masterpieces which the man in charge showed us. And
+then he asked us if we wouldn't like to try one of them, and insisted on
+lending us his own--hurrying home after it, and stringing on the line
+and tying on the flies, and pressing it into my hand in a very fever of
+good-nature. I confess I shrank from taking it. I had a vision of some
+mighty fish gobbling down the fly and dashing off with a jerk that would
+crumple up the rod in my hands, and I tried to decline it. But he
+wouldn't hear of it--besides, there was Betty, her eyes shining at the
+prospect of fishing in the Shannon.
+
+So I took the rod at last, and we went down to the river again, and
+worked our way slowly down stream, along a path ablaze with primroses,
+and cast from place to place for an hour or more. There were many others
+doing the same thing, and they all seemed to think that the fish would
+be sure to rise as the twilight deepened. But they didn't, and I saw no
+fish caught that day. This didn't in the least interfere with any one's
+pleasure, for your true angler delights quite as much in the mere act of
+fishing as in actually catching fish. But it was with a sigh of relief I
+finally returned the rod intact to its owner. He said that I was welcome
+to it any time I wanted it, but I did not ask for it again.
+
+There were five or six fishermen staying at the hotel, and they came in
+one by one, empty-handed. They had had no luck that day--the water was
+too high; but it was already falling, and they were looking forward to
+great sport on the morrow.
+
+That morrow was a memorable one for us, also. It was a perfect day, and
+we set out, as soon as we had breakfasted, for the falls of Doonas and
+St. Senan's well, one of the most famous of the holy wells of Ireland.
+To get to it, it was necessary to cross the river, and the only way to
+get across is by a ferry, which consists of a flat-bottomed skiff,
+propelled by a man armed only with a small paddle. As I looked from the
+paddle to the mighty sweep of the river, rushing headlong past, I had
+some misgivings, but we clambered aboard, and the boatman pushed off.
+
+He headed almost directly upstream, and then, when the current caught
+us, managed by vigorous and skilful paddling to hold his boat diagonally
+against it, so that it swept us swiftly over toward the other bank, and
+we touched it exactly opposite our point of departure. It was an
+exhibition of skill which I shall not soon forget.
+
+We stepped ashore upon a beautiful meadow rolling up to a stately,
+wide-flung mansion, and turned our faces down the river. Already the
+fishermen were abroad, some of them casting from the bank, but the most
+out in midstream, in flat-bottomed boats like the one we had crossed in,
+which two men with paddles held steady in some miraculous way against
+the stream. One was at the bow and the other at the stern, and they did
+not seem to be paddling very hard, but the boat swung slowly and
+steadily back and forth above any spot which looked promising, no
+matter how swift the current.
+
+It grew swifter with every moment, for we were approaching the rapids,
+and at last we came out on a bluff overhanging them. Above the rapids,
+the river flows in a broad stream forty feet deep, but here it is broken
+into great flurries and whirlpools by the rocky bed, which rises in dark
+irregular masses above its surface, and the roar and the dash and the
+white foam and flying spray are very picturesque. For nearly a mile the
+tumult continues, and then the stream quiets down again and sweeps on
+toward Limerick and the sea.
+
+We followed close beside it to a little inn called the "Angler's Rest,"
+set back at the edge of a pretty garden, entered through a gate with
+three steps, on which were graven the words of the old Irish greeting,
+"Cead Mile Failte," a hundred thousand welcomes. We sat down for a time
+at the margin of the river and watched the changing water, and then set
+off to find St. Senan's well.
+
+There are really two wells. The first is in a graveyard, a few rods
+away, where a fragment of an old church is still standing. It is a
+tangled and neglected place, with the headstones tumbled every way, and
+bushes and weeds running riot, but the path that leads to the well shows
+evidence of frequent use. The well itself is merely a small hollow in an
+outcropping of rock--a shallow basin, about a foot in diameter, but
+always miraculously full of water. I don't know how the water gets into
+it, or whether it is true that the basin is always full, but it
+certainly was that day; and the legend is that whoever bathes his
+forehead in that water will never again be troubled with headache,
+provided that he does it reverently, with full belief, and with the
+proper prayers. The well is shadowed by a tall hawthorn bush, and this
+bush is hung thick with cheap rosaries and rags and hairpins and bits of
+string and other tokens placed there by the true believers who had
+tested the wonderful properties of the water. We tested them, too, of
+course, and added our tokens to the rest.
+
+The principal well is a little farther up the road, set back in a circle
+of trees and approached by a short avenue of lindens. It is a far more
+important well than the other--is one of the most famous in Ireland,
+indeed--and is covered with a little shrine, which you will find
+pictured opposite the next page. The shrine is hung with rosaries and
+crowded with figurines and pictures of the Virgin and of various saints,
+among which, I suppose, the learned in such matters might have picked
+out Saint Senan, who blessed this well and gave it its miraculous power.
+The trees which encircle the glade in which the well stands are also
+hung with offerings--sacred pictures, rosaries, small vessels of gilt,
+and the crutches of those who came lame and halting and went away cured.
+On either side of the entrance is a bench where one may sit while saying
+one's prayers, and in front of the shrine is a shallow basin, some two
+feet wide and a yard long, into which the water from the well trickles,
+and where one may sit and wash all infirmities away. The water is held
+to be especially efficacious in curing rheumatism and hip disease and
+diseases of the joints; and I only hope the cripples who left their
+crutches behind them never had need of them again.
+
+[Illustration: THE SHANNON, NEAR WORLD'S END]
+
+[Illustration: ST. SENAN'S WELL]
+
+This whole valley of the Shannon, from Killaloe to the sea, is dominated
+by the patron of this well, St. Senan, a holy man who died in 544, and
+whose life resembled that of St. Kevin, whom we have already encountered
+at Glendalough. Like Kevin, Senan was persecuted by the ladies, who, in
+all ages, have taken a peculiar delight in pursuing holy men, and he was
+finally driven to take refuge on a little island at the mouth of the
+Shannon, Scattery Island, where he hoped to be left in peace. But he was
+destined to disappointment, for a lady named Cannera, since sainted,
+followed him and asked permission to remain. This scene, of course,
+appealed to Tom Moore, and he enshrined it in a poem, of which this is
+the final stanza:
+
+          The Lady's prayer Senanus spurned;
+          The winds blew fresh, the bark returned;
+          But legends hint that had the maid
+            Till morning's light delayed,
+          And given the Saint one rosy smile,
+          She ne'er had left his lonely isle.
+
+I do not know upon what evidence Moore bases this slander of a holy man;
+but, at any rate, he stayed on his island, and built a monastery and
+collection of little churches there for the use of the disciples who
+soon gathered about him, and their ruins, which much resemble those at
+Glendalough, even to a tall round tower, may be seen to this day. Some
+antiquarians hold that St. Senan is merely a personification of the
+Shannon; but I don't see how a personification could build a
+collection of churches. It is more satisfactory, anyway, to think of him
+as a person who once existed, and lived a picturesque life, and built
+churches and blessed holy wells, and died at a ripe age in the odour of
+sanctity.
+
+We sat for a long time before his shrine, looking at the tokens and the
+crutches, and wishing we had been there the day they were abandoned. To
+be made whole by faith is a wonderful thing, whatever form the faith may
+take, and I should like to have seen the faces of the cripples as they
+felt the miracle working within them, here in this obscure place.
+Unlettered they no doubt were, unable to read or write perhaps,
+believing this flat and stable earth the centre about which the universe
+revolves; but they touched heights that day which such sophisticated and
+cynically sceptical persons as you and I can never reach.
+
+We left the shrine, at last, and made our way back to the river, and up
+along it, past the rapids, to the ferry. The ferryman was watching for
+us, and had us back on the Castleconnell side in short order. He
+evidently considered the sixpence I gave him a munificent reward for the
+double trip.
+
+When we got back up into the village, we found it in the throes of a
+great excitement over the arrival of three itinerant musicians, two of
+whom played cornets, while the third banged with little sticks upon a
+stringed instrument suspended in front of him. The cornetists paused
+from time to time, to make short excursions, cap in hand, in search of
+pennies, but the third man never stopped, but kept playing away all up
+the street and out of sight. We came across them again when we walked
+over to the station to take the train for Killaloe; but I judge their
+harvest was a slender one, for the people who hung out of gates and over
+doors to listen to the music, disappeared promptly whenever the
+collectors started on their rounds.
+
+We had a little while to wait at the station, and I got into talk with
+the signalman, who told me he had a brother, a Jesuit priest, in
+Maryland, and who wanted to hear about America, whither he hoped to be
+able to come some day. That it would be at best a far-off day I judged
+from the wistful way in which he said it.
+
+And then he saw that I was interested in the signal-system by which the
+trains on his little branch were managed, and he explained it to me. For
+each section of the road there is a hollow iron tube, some two feet
+long, with brass rings around it, called a staff. The engine-driver
+brings one of these staffs in with him, and this must be deposited in an
+automatic device in the signal-house and another received from the
+signalman before the train can proceed. When the staff is deposited in
+the machine, it automatically signals the next station and releases the
+staff in the machine there, ready to be given to the engineer of the
+approaching train. No staff, once placed in the machine, can be got out
+again until it is released in this way, and as no train can leave a
+station until its engineer has received a staff, it is practically
+impossible for two trains to be on the same section of road at the same
+time. The system is rather slow, but it is sure; and being automatic, it
+leaves nothing to chance, or to the vagaries of either engineer or
+signalman.
+
+The bell rang, signalling the approach of our train, the signalman
+carefully closed the gates across the highway which ran past the
+station, and a crowd of men and boys collected, to whom the arrival of
+the train was the most important and interesting event of the day; and
+then it puffed slowly in, and we climbed aboard. Killaloe is only ten
+miles or so from Castleconnell, but we had to change at a station called
+Bird Hill; and then the line ran close beside the Shannon, with lofty
+hills crowding down upon it, and at last we saw the beautiful bridge
+which spans the river, and beyond it the spires and roofs of the little
+town.
+
+Not unless one knows one's Irish history will one realise what a
+wonderful place Killaloe is; for Killaloe is none other than Kincora, a
+word to stir Irish hearts, the stronghold of the greatest of Irish
+kings, Brian Boru. When that great chieftain fell at Clontarf, MacLiag,
+his minstrel, wrote a lament for him in the old Gaelic, and James
+Clarence Mangan has rendered it into an English version, of which this
+is the first stanza:
+
+          O, where, Kincora, is Brian the Great?
+            And where is the beauty that once was thine?
+          O, where are the princes and nobles that sate
+            At the feast in thy halls, and drank the red wine?
+                          Where, O, Kincora?
+
+It was by no mere chance that Kincora, the seat of the Kings of Thomond,
+was situated just here, for it was this point which controlled the
+valley of the lower Shannon. Limerick marks the head of the tideway
+navigable from the sea, then come fifteen miles of rushing torrent, of
+fall and rapid, which no boat can pass; and then comes the long stretch
+of placid lake and river over which boats may go as far as the ford of
+Athlone, and farther. Between Athlone and the sea, there was just one
+ford--a treacherous and hidden one, it is true, possible only to those
+who knew every step of it, but still a ford--and it was here, a little
+above the present town of Killaloe, where Lough Derg begins to narrow
+between the hills.
+
+Brian was born here in 941. Twenty years before, the Danes had sailed in
+force up the Shannon and fortified the island at the head of the tideway
+which is now the oldest part of Limerick. They set themselves to ravage
+the wide and fertile valley, to sack the shrines of the churches, to
+exact tribute from every chieftain--nay, from every family. MacLiag,
+Brian's bard, author of that old epic, "The Wars of the Gael with the
+Gall," another Homer almost, who told the story of Danish oppression
+down to their final defeat at Clontarf, thus described the burden under
+which, in those days, the people of Ireland groaned:
+
+          "Such was the oppressiveness of the tribute and
+          the rent of the foreigners over all Erin, that
+          there was a king from them over every territory, a
+          chief over every chieftaincy, an abbot over every
+          church, a steward over every village, and a
+          soldier in every house, so that no man of Erin had
+          power to give even the milk of his cow, nor as
+          much as the clutch of eggs of one hen, in succour
+          or in kindness to an aged man, or to a friend, but
+          was forced to keep them for the foreign steward or
+          bailiff or soldier. And though there were but one
+          milk-giving cow in the house, she durst not be
+          milked for an infant of one night, nor for a sick
+          person, but must be kept for the foreigner; and
+          however long he might be absent from the house,
+          his share or his supply durst not be lessened."
+
+Brian had an elder brother, Mahon, who was king of South Munster, and
+dwelt at Cashel, and the two did what they could against the invaders,
+killing them off "in twos and in threes, in fives and in scores"; but
+always fresh hordes poured in, and at last Mahon grew disheartened at
+the seemingly endless struggle against these stark, mail-clad warriors;
+while as for Brian, his force was reduced to a mere tattered handful,
+hiding in the hills. Then it was that he and Mahon met to discuss the
+future.
+
+"But where hast thou left thy followers?" Mahon asked, looking at the
+men, only a score in number, standing behind their chief.
+
+"I have left them," answered Brian, "on the field of battle."
+
+"Ah," said Mahon, sadly. "Is it so? You see how little we can do against
+these foreigners."
+
+"Little as it is," said Brian, "it is better than peace."
+
+"But it is folly to keep on fighting," said Mahon. "We can not conquer
+these shining warriors, clad in their polished corselets. The part of
+wisdom is to make terms with them, and leave no more of our men dead
+upon the field."
+
+"It is natural for men to die," answered Brian calmly; "but it is
+neither the nature nor the inheritance of the Dalcassians to submit to
+injury and outrage. And yet I have no wish to lead any unwilling man to
+battle. Let the question of war or peace be left to the whole clan."
+
+So it was done, and "the voice of hundreds as of one man answered for
+war."
+
+Mahon abode loyally by this decision, and there was a great muster, and
+a fierce battle near the spot where Limerick Junction now stands, and
+the Danes were routed, "and fled to the ditches, and to the valleys, and
+to the solitudes of that great sweet-flowery plain," and the Irish
+pursued them all through the night, and with the morning, came to
+Limerick, and stormed and took the island fortress; plundered it, and
+reduced it "to a cloud of smoke and red fire afterwards."
+
+Then Mahon was murdered by some such treachery as stains so many pages
+of Irish history, and Brian became king of all Munster. His first work
+was to punish his brother's murderers, which he did with grim celerity,
+so that, as the chronicler puts it, they soon found that he "was not a
+stone in place of an egg, nor a wisp in place of a club, but a hero in
+place of a hero, and valour in place of valour." After that, with new
+energy, he turned against the Danes, and harried them and was himself
+harried, defeated them and was himself defeated, but fought on undaunted
+year after year, until the final great victory at Clontarf, where he
+himself was slain. And during all the years that he was king of Munster,
+he ruled it, not from Cashel, but from Kincora, his well-beloved castle
+here at the ford of the Shannon.
+
+The ford is no longer there, for an elaborate system of sluice-gates and
+weirs has been constructed to hold the water back and regulate the
+supply to the lower reaches of the river, and one crosses to the town
+upon a beautiful stone bridge of thirteen arches, between which the
+water swirls and eddies, forming deep pools, where great salmon love to
+lurk. At its other end is the town, with its houses mounting the steep
+slope from the river, and dominated by the square tower of its old
+cathedral.
+
+It was to the cathedral we went first, and a venerable pile we found it,
+dating from the twelfth century, and attributed to that same Donall
+O'Brien, King of Munster, who built the one at Limerick. But, alas, it
+is venerable only from without; as one steps through the doorway, all
+illusion of age vanishes, for the interior has been "improved" to suit
+the needs of a small Church of Ireland congregation.
+
+The Protestants in this parish are so few that the choir of the
+cathedral is more than ample for them; so it has been closed off from
+the rest of the church by a glass screen with hideous wooden
+"tracery"--there is a rose window (think of it!) sawed out of boards;
+and beyond this screen an ugly pavement of black and yellow tiles has
+been laid over the beautiful grey flags of the old pavement, and pews
+have been installed. One of the transepts is used as a robing-room; in
+the other an elaborate combination of steam-engine, dynamo and
+storage-batteries has been placed to furnish heat and light--and this,
+mind you, in the church which was once the royal burying-place of the
+Kings of Munster!
+
+It seems foolish to maintain a great church like this for the use of so
+small a congregation as worships here, and yet the same thing is done
+all over Ireland, though it would seem to be only common sense to give
+the big churches to the big congregations, and to provide small churches
+for the small ones. But I suppose no one in Ireland would dare make such
+a suggestion.
+
+I am surprised that the energetic vicar of this parish has not decided
+that the church is too dark and hired some workmen to knock out the
+lancet windows. These windows are one of its chief beauties, they are so
+tall, so narrow, so deeply splayed--the very earliest form, before the
+builders gathered courage to cut any but the smallest openings in their
+walls. And in the wall of the nave, blocked up and with use unexplained,
+is a magnificent Irish-Romanesque doorway. Tradition has it that it was
+the entrance to the tomb of King Murtough O'Brien, and its date is
+placed at the beginning of the twelfth century. The man who built it was
+an artist, for nothing could be more graceful than its four
+semi-circular arches, rising one beyond the other and covered with
+ornamentation--spiral and leaf work, grotesque animals with tails twined
+into the hair of human heads, flowers and lozenges, and the familiar
+dog-tooth pattern, of which the Irish were so fond.
+
+Interesting as the church is, or would be but for the "improvements," it
+is far outranked by a tiny stone structure just outside--the parish
+church of Brian Boru himself. It is less than thirty feet long, and the
+walls are nearly four feet thick, and the two narrow windows which light
+it, one on either side, are loopholes rather than windows; and the
+doorway by which it is entered, narrower at the top than at the bottom,
+is a veritable gem; and the high-pitched roof of fitted blocks of stone
+is twice as high as the walls;--and on the stone slabs of its pavement
+Brian Boru was wont to kneel in prayer, five centuries before Columbus
+sailed out of Palos!
+
+Of course I wanted a picture of this shrine; but there were
+difficulties, for it stands in a little depression which conceals part
+of it, and the high wall around the churchyard prevented my getting far
+enough away to get all of the high-pitched roof on the film. The
+caretaker, who was most interested in my manoeuvres, brought a ladder
+at last, and I mounted to the top of the wall, and took the picture
+opposite the next page; but, even then, I didn't get it all.
+
+The graveyard about these churches is a large one, but it is crowded
+with tombs; and the north half of it is mown and orderly, and the south
+half is almost impenetrable because of the rank and matted grass and
+weeds and nettles. This is the result of an old quarrel, more foolish
+than most. For, like Ireland itself, this graveyard is divided between
+Protestants and Catholics, the Protestants to the north and the
+Catholics to the south of the church; and the Protestants consider their
+duty done when they have cared for the graves in their own half; while
+the Catholics hold that, since the Protestants claim the cathedral, they
+are bound to look after its precincts; and the result is that the
+visitor to those precincts is half the time floundering knee-deep in
+weeds.
+
+The most interesting tomb in the place is in the midst of this tangle,
+therefore a Catholic's. It bears the date 1719, and is most elaborately
+decorated with carved figures--one kneeling above the legend, "This is
+the way to Blis"; another, a man with crossed arms, inquiring, "What am
+I? What is man?"--two questions which have posed the greatest of
+philosophers. One panel bears this sestet:
+
+          How sweetly rest Christ's saints in love
+          That in his presence bee.
+          My dearest friends with Christ above
+          Thim wil I go and see
+          And all my friends in Christ below
+          Will post soon after me.
+
+[Illustration: THE BRIDGE AT KILLALOE]
+
+[Illustration: THE ORATORY AT KILLALOE]
+
+We left the place, at last, and walked on along the street, peeping in
+between the bars of an iron gate at the beautiful grounds of the
+Bishop's palace; and then up a steep and narrow lane to the little
+plateau which is now the town's market-place, but where, in the old
+days, Brian's palace of Kincora stood. Not a stone is left of that
+palace now, for the wild men of Connaught swept down from the mountains,
+in the twelfth century, while the English were trying to hold the castle
+and so control the destinies of Clare, and drove the intruders out, and
+tore the castle stone from stone, and threw timber and stone alike into
+the Shannon. Just beyond the square stands the Catholic church--a
+barn-like modern structure, hastily thrown together to shelter the
+swarming congregation, for which the cathedral would be none too large.
+
+We went on down the hill, past the canal, with the roaring river beyond,
+and the purple vistas of Lough Derg opening between the hills in the
+distance, along an avenue of noble trees, and there before us lay a
+great double rath, sloping steeply to the river, built here to guard the
+ford. The ford lies there before it--a ford no longer, since the sluices
+back up the water; but in the old days this was the key to County Clare,
+this was the path taken by the men of Connaught in raid and foray; and
+here it was that Sarsfield, with four hundred men, followed Hogan the
+rapparee, on that night expedition which resulted in the destruction of
+the English ammunition-train. Aubrey de Vere has told the story in a
+spirited little poem, beginning,
+
+          Sarsfield went out the Dutch to rout,
+            And to take and break their cannon;
+          To Mass went he at half past three,
+            And at four he crossed the Shannon.
+
+We had hoped to go to Athlone by way of Lough Derg, but we had already
+learned that that was not to be, for we had been told, back at the
+bridge, that the passenger service across the lake would not start until
+the sixteenth of June. And we were sorry, for, from the summit of this
+old rath, the lake, stretching away into the misty distance, looked very
+beautiful and inviting.
+
+We made our way back to the village and stopped in at a nice little
+hotel just below the bridge, and had tea, served most appetizingly by a
+clean, bright-eyed maid; and then, while Betty sat down to rest, I
+sallied forth to see, if possible, the greatest curiosity of all about
+Killaloe--the original church or oratory of St. Molua, on an island near
+the left bank of the Shannon, about half a mile downstream.
+
+Now to get back to St. Molua, one has to go a long way indeed, for he
+died three hundred years before Brian Boru was born. He was the first
+bishop of Killaloe, which is named after him, "cill" meaning church, and
+Killaloe being merely a contraction of Cill Molua, the church of Molua.
+The little oratory on the island, to which he retired for contemplation,
+after the manner of Irish saints, was built not later than the year
+600.
+
+You will understand, therefore, why I was so eager to see it, and I went
+into the bar to consult with the barmaid as to the best manner of
+getting to it. I had been told that it was possible to reach it from the
+left bank of the river without the aid of a boat, but the maid assured
+me this could be done only when the river was low, and was out of the
+question in the present stage of the water. So she went to the door and
+called to a passing boatman, and explained my wishes, and he at once
+volunteered to ferry me over to the island. His house, he said, was just
+opposite the island, and his boat was tied up at the landing there; so
+we walked down to it, along the bank of the canal which parallels the
+river.
+
+A little way down the canal was a mill, and a boat was tied up in front
+of it unloading some grain, and when I looked into the boat, I saw that
+the grain was shelled Indian corn! It was not from America, however, but
+from Russia, and my companion told me that quite a demand for cornmeal
+was growing up in the neighbourhood, and that it was used mixed with
+flour. And then he listened, his eyes round with wonder, while I told
+him how corn grows. He had never seen it on the ear, and did not know
+the meaning of the word "cob," except as applied to a horse.
+
+"And of course you have seen bananas growing!" he said, when I had
+finished, and I think he scarcely believed me when I tried to explain
+that a country warm enough for corn might still be too cold for bananas.
+
+We finally reached his house--a little hovel built on a bluff
+overhanging the river--and went down some rude stone steps to the
+water's edge; and he unchained his boat, and whistled to his dog, and
+pushed off. It was quite an exciting paddle, for the current was very
+swift; but we got across to the island at last, after some hair-raising
+scrapings against rocks and over submerged reefs. We found the island a
+tangle of weeds and briars, but we broke our way through, and after some
+searching, found the tiny church, almost hidden by the bushes about it.
+They were so thick that I found it quite impossible to get a picture of
+the whole church, but by breaking down some of them, I finally managed
+to get a picture of the narrow inclined doorway, with my guide's dog
+posing on the threshold.
+
+The oratory is built solidly of stone, with walls three feet thick, and
+a steep stone roof. Its inside measurements are ten feet by six! There
+is a single window, with a round head cut out of a block of stone, and
+in the wall on either side just below it is a shallow recess. The
+ceiling has fallen in, but one can still see the holes in the walls
+where the supporting beams rested. Above it, under the steep roof, was a
+croft, where perhaps the saint slept.
+
+Consider, for a moment, what was going on in the world when this little
+church was built. It takes us back to the age of legend--the age of King
+Arthur and his knights--to that dim period when the Saxons were
+conquering England, and the Frankish kingdom was falling to pieces, and
+Mohammed was preaching his gospel in Arabia. A century and a half would
+elapse before Charlemagne was born, and two centuries before the first
+Norse boat, driving westward before the tempest, touched the New England
+coast!
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO ST. MOLUA'S ORATORY]
+
+[Illustration: A FISHERMAN'S HOME]
+
+There is, of course, a holy well on the island--the one at which St.
+Molua drank; and we found it after a long search, but the river was so
+high that it was under two or three feet of water. There were some rags
+and other tokens hanging on the neighbouring bushes, but not many, and I
+judge that few people ever come to this historic spot.
+
+At last I was ready to go, and we climbed into the boat and started for
+the mainland; and once I thought we were surely going to capsize, for
+the boat got out of control and banged into a rock; but we finally
+stemmed the current, and the boatman dropped his paddle and snatched up
+a pole, and pushed along so close to the shore that the overhanging
+branches slapped us in the face, and the dog, thinking we were going to
+land, made a wild leap for the bank, fell short, and nearly drowned.
+
+When we were safe again at the landing-place, and the boat tied up, I
+asked my companion how much I owed him for his trouble.
+
+"Not a penny, sir," he said, warmly. "It's glad I am to oblige a
+pleasant gentleman like yourself."
+
+"Oh, but look here," I protested, "that won't do," and I fished through
+my pockets and was appalled to find that I had only nine-pence in
+change. "Wait till we get back to the hotel," I said, "and I'll get some
+money."
+
+"What is that you have in your hand, sir?"
+
+"Oh, that's only nine-pence."
+
+"That would be far too much, sir," he said; and when I hesitatingly
+gave it to him, he as hesitatingly took it, and I really believe he was
+in earnest in thinking it too much.
+
+On our way back to the town, he expounded to me his theory of life,
+which was to give faithful service to one's employer, and help one's
+fellow-men when possible, and never bother unduly about the future,
+which was never as black as it looked. And I agreed with him that
+trouble always came butt-end first, and that, after it had passed, it
+frequently dwindled to a pinpoint--the which has been said in verse
+somewhere, by Sam Walter Foss I think, but I can't put my hand on it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We got back to Castleconnell just as the fishermen were coming in, and
+it was far from empty-handed they were this time. The array of salmon
+stretched out on the floor of the bar, when they had all arrived, was a
+very noble one. And everybody stood around and looked at them proudly,
+and told of the enormous flies that had been used, and how one monster
+had whipped the boat around and towed it right down through the rapids,
+and lucky it was that the water was high or it would infallibly have
+been ripped to pieces, but the boatmen kept their heads and managed to
+get it through, and when the salmon came out in the quiet river below
+and found itself still fast, it gave up and let itself be gaffed without
+any further fuss.
+
+And again after dinner, we saw the familiar sight of the catch being
+wrapped in straw to be sent by parcel post back to England, as proof of
+the anglers' prowess; and I can guess how those battles on Shannon
+water were fought over again when the angler got back to the bosom of
+his family. As for me, I have only to close my eyes to see again that
+noble stream sweeping along between its green, flower-sprinkled banks,
+foaming over the weirs, brawling past the rapids, hurrying between the
+quays of Limerick, and widening into the great estuary where it meets
+the sea.
+
+          Into the West, where, o'er the wide Atlantic,
+            The lights of sunset gleam,
+          From its high sources in the heart of Erin
+            Flows the great stream.
+
+          Yet back in stormy cloud or viewless vapour
+            The wandering waters come,
+          And faithfully across the trackless heaven
+            Find their old home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+LISSOY AND CLONMACNOISE
+
+
+SINCE we could not get to Athlone by water, we must needs get there by
+rail; so, most regretfully, next morning, we bade good-bye to
+Castleconnell and took train for Limerick. Half an hour later, we pulled
+out of the Limerick terminus, circled about the town, crossed the
+Shannon by a long, low bridge, and were in County Clare.
+
+Ruins are more numerous here than almost anywhere else in Ireland, for
+this western slope of the Shannon valley, so fertile and coveted, was
+famous fighting-ground. There are one or two in sight all the time,
+across the beautiful rolling meadows. Near Cratloe there are three,
+their great square keeps looming above the trees, and looking out across
+the wide Shannon estuary. A little farther on is the famous seat of the
+Earls of Thomond, Bunratty Castle, a fine old fortress, with all the
+approved mediaeval trimmings of moat, guard-room, banqueting-hall,
+dungeons and torture-chamber, and I am sorry we did not get to visit it.
+Indeed, there are many places in the neighbourhood worth a visit--but if
+one is going to visit every Irish ruin, he will need ten years for the
+task. Only it does cause a pang of the heart to pass any of them by.
+
+We must have passed at least fifty by, that day; but I found that the
+train stopped for a while at Ennis, the chief town of Clare, and I
+hurried out to see what I could of it. It is certainly a picturesque
+place, with narrow winding streets, and queer little courts, and houses
+painted pink or washed with yellow ochre. I glanced in at the new
+Catholic cathedral, whose most impressive feature is a rather good
+picture of the ascension over the high altar; and then spent a few
+minutes among the ruins of the Franciscan friary, a queer jumble of
+buildings which I did not have time to untangle.
+
+As usual, the two biggest buildings in the town are the jail and the
+lunatic asylum, and I passed them both on my way back to the station.
+Some of the lunatics were languidly hoeing a big potato patch that day,
+with five or six guards looking on. I have never looked up the
+statistics of lunacy in Ireland, but if all the asylums are full, the
+rate must be very high.
+
+About half a mile beyond Ennis, the train passes a most imposing ruin,
+very close to the railway. It is the ruin of Clare Abbey, and is
+dominated by a great square tower, which must be visible for many miles
+around. There is still another ruin, that of Killone Abbey, only a few
+miles away, and for a connoisseur in ruins, Ennis would be an excellent
+place to spend a few days.
+
+From Ennis, we turned almost due northward toward Athenry, and the
+landscape became the rockiest I have ever seen. Every little field was
+surrounded by a high stone wall, and as these walls did not begin to
+exhaust the supply, there were great heaps of rocks in every available
+corner--every one of them dug from the shallow soil with almost
+incredible labour. The fact that any one would try to reclaim such land
+speaks volumes for the hard necessities of the people who settled here.
+I don't suppose they enjoyed the labour, but they had no choice--at
+least, their only choice was to wrest a living from these rocky fields
+or starve. No doubt many of them did starve, but the rest kept labouring
+on, with insect-like industry, reclaiming this corner and that, adding
+to the soil of their fields inch by inch.
+
+There is an old saying that in this district, and in others like it in
+Connaught, the first three crops are stones, and I can well believe it.
+The green appearance of these hillsides is a delusion and a snare, for
+it is nothing but a skin of turf over the rocks, and these rocks must be
+dug away to the depth of two feet, sometimes, before the soil is
+reached. In any other part of the world, a man who would attempt to
+convert such a hillside into an arable field would be thought insane;
+here, in the west of Ireland, it is the usual thing. Most tragic of all,
+after it was fit for tillage, it did not belong to the man whose labour
+had made it so, but to his English landlord, who promptly proceeded to
+raise the rent!
+
+We ran out of this rocky land, at last, and crossed a vast bog, scarred
+with long, black, water-filled ditches, from which the turf had been
+taken. There were a few people here and there cutting it, but a woman
+who had got into the compartment with us said that the continued wet
+weather had made the work very difficult and dangerous. All the people
+hereabouts, she added, lived by the turf cutting, at which they could
+earn, perhaps, ten-pence a day; but in bad seasons they were soon close
+to starvation. I remarked that, with such wages, they must be close to
+it all the time, and she smiled sadly and said that that was true.
+Only, of course, in the bogs the children can work, as well as the men
+and women, and that helps. Indeed, we saw them many times--little boys
+and girls who should have been at school or running free, gaining health
+and strength for the hard years to come, tugging at the heavy,
+water-soaked blocks of peat, and laying them out in the sun to dry. It
+takes a month of sun to dry the peat; in wet weather it won't dry at
+all, and so isn't salable. Truly, the lives of the poor Irish hang on
+slender threads!
+
+There are ruins of castles and monasteries and raths and cashels all
+through this region, and a lot of them cluster about the dirty little
+town of Athenry, which can boast a castle, two monasteries, city walls
+and an old gate. Such richness was not to be passed by, and we left the
+train, checked our luggage at the parcel office, fought off a jarvey who
+was determined to drive us to the ruins which we could see quite plainly
+just across the track, crossed the road by the overhead bridge, and came
+out in the streets of the village.
+
+Athenry is typically Irish, with streets running every way, houses built
+any way, and their inhabitants leaning over the half-doors, or braced
+against the walls at the street corners, or going slowly about such
+business as they have. Life has stood still here for at least a century;
+and yet Athenry was once a royal town--"The Ford of the Kings" its name
+signifies--and a royal court was held here in the great castle, and a
+beautiful monastery was built near by at the express wish of St.
+Dominick himself, and it became a famous place of learning, to which
+scholars flocked from all over Europe. Alas and alack!
+
+    Vanished, those high conceits! Desolate and forlorn,
+    We hunger against hope for that lost heritage.
+
+For the red tide of war swept over Athenry more than once, and left it
+but smoking ruins. Eleven thousand Connaughtmen lay piled about the
+walls one summer day in 1316, all that was left of the army that tried
+to make Edward Bruce king of Ireland; two centuries later, when the
+Earls of Clanricarde swept Connaught with fire and sword, Athenry fell
+before them, and was left in ashes; and when it struggled to its feet
+again, it was only to fall before the destroying hand of Red Hugh
+O'Donnell, who left scarcely one stone upon another, and from that blow
+it never rallied.
+
+One of the old gates still survives, well preserved in spite of war and
+weather, and near it is a quaint old market cross, with the Virgin and
+Child on one side and Christ on the other. All that is left of the
+thirteenth century castle is the gabled keep, looming high on a rock
+just back of the town, and some fragments of the battlemented curtains.
+All the floors have fallen in, and its four massive walls are open to
+the heavens. Red Hugh, when he destroyed it, did his work well!
+
+The ruins of the abbey nestle in the shadow of the rock on which the
+castle stands, and we made our way down to them, along disordered
+streets swarming with geese, ducks, dogs, chickens and children, only to
+find the way closed by an iron gate, securely padlocked. But a passer-by
+told us that the village blacksmith had the key, and indicated vaguely
+the way to his shop, which we found after some circuitous wanderings.
+The smith was a gnarled little man, quite the reverse of Longfellow's,
+and as soon as we had made our errand known, he snatched down the keys
+and hastened to lead the way to the ruins, leaving his work without
+pausing to remove his apron, and without a backward glance at his
+helper, who stood open-mouthed by the forge.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHOIR OF THE ABBEY AT ATHENRY]
+
+[Illustration: A COTTAGE AT ATHENRY]
+
+There were three gates to unlock before we reached the ruins, and then
+the blacksmith hurried back to his work, leaving his daughter to keep an
+eye on us. The church is all that is left of the monastery, for the
+domestic buildings, and even the cloisters have been swept entirely away
+by the rude hand of time, and the far ruder ones of the villagers who
+needed stone for their houses. The church itself has suffered more than
+most, for not only is the roof gone, but the tower and one transept and
+most of the window-tracery, and the whole interior has been swept by a
+savage storm, the tombs hacked and hewed, and the carved decorations
+knocked to fragments. Doubtless if we had questioned the girl who stood
+staring at us, she would have said that "Crummell did it," and in this
+case, history would bear her out, for the Puritan soldiery _did_ do a
+lot of damage here. They and the sans-culottes suffered from the same
+mania--a sort of vertigo of destructiveness before memorials of kings or
+Catholics!
+
+But they couldn't destroy everything, and what is left in this old
+church is well worth seeing, for there are some graceful pointed
+windows, and six narrow lancets in a lovely row along the north wall of
+the choir, and a fine arcade in the north transept, and many details
+of decoration beautiful in spite of mutilation. The place is crowded
+with tombs, for this was the burial place of the Dalys and the Lynchs
+and the De Burgos, and is still in use as such. The tomb of the "noble
+family of De Burgh" is in one corner, and there are many mural tablets,
+with inscriptions in French and Latin and Gaelic, as well as English. In
+fact one of them announces in French and Latin and English, presumably
+so that every one except the Irish might read, that "here is the antient
+Sepulchre of the Sept of the Walls of Droghty late demolished by the
+Cromellians."
+
+We went back through the town, at last, and while I was manoeuvring
+for the picture opposite page 270, Betty got into talk with a girl who
+was leaning over a half-door, and found, marvellous to relate, that she
+had once lived in Brookline, Mass. We asked her why she had come back to
+Ireland, and after a moment's thought she said it was because "America
+wasn't fair." We thought of aristocratic Brookline, the abode of
+millionaires, and then we looked about us--at the ragged donkey standing
+across the way, at the pig wandering down the middle of the dirty
+street, at the low little houses and the shabby people--and perhaps we
+smiled, but be sure it was in sympathy, not in derision.
+
+We crossed over to the railway hotel, finally, and had lunch, and when
+we came out, the woman who managed the place waylaid us at the front
+door for a chat. She told us of a woman from the village who was on the
+_Titanic_, but was saved, and discussed various scandals in high life,
+which she had gleaned from the half-penny press; and then we spoke of
+the girl we had met in the village, and she deplored the high-and-mighty
+airs which some of the girls who come home from America give themselves.
+
+"But I once heard one of them put well in her place," she added, "when
+she came back with her hat full of flowers and her petticoat full of
+flounces, and walked about the town as though we were all dirt beneath
+her feet. Well, one day an old man stopped her for a word, a friend of
+the family who wished her well, but she put up her nose at him--and
+perhaps he was not very clean--and was for going past. But he put out
+his hand and caught her by the arm. 'You're after bein' a fine lady
+now,' says he, 'but I mind the time, and that but a few years since,
+when I've seen ye sittin' on your bare-backed ass, with your naked legs
+hangin' down--yes, and I can be tellin' ye more than that, if so be ye
+wish to hear it!' She didn't stay long in the village after that," added
+the speaker, with a chuckle of relish.
+
+Our train came along, presently, and we were soon running over as
+dreary, bleak and miserable a land as any we had seen in Ireland. Vast
+boggy plains, bare rocky hillsides, with scarcely a house to be seen
+anywhere--only a ruin, now and then, marking the site of some ancient
+stronghold; and so, in the first dusk of the evening, we came to
+Athlone.
+
+One would have thought that, with so important a town, the station would
+have been placed somewhere near it; but habit was too strong for the
+builders of the line, and so they put the station about a mile away, at
+the end of a dreary stretch of road, beyond a great barrack, along the
+river, past the castle, and over the bridge.
+
+Athlone has been famous for its widows ever since the days of Molly
+Malone, ohone! who
+
+            Melted the hearts
+          Of the swains in them parts;
+
+and we found that the best hotel in the place, which was not as good as
+it might have been, was managed by a widow, who might well have posed
+for the lovely Molly. She had not been a widow long, and I judged would
+not be if the swains of the town had any voice in the matter, for the
+bar was very popular when she was behind it.
+
+We went out, after dinner, to see the town, and found it one of the most
+ugly and depressing we had yet encountered--a sort of cross between a
+town and a village, but with the attractions of neither. The water-front
+is its most interesting part, for a fragment of the old castle which was
+built to guard the second of the all-important fords of the Shannon
+still stands there. Kincora, you will remember, guarded the other. But
+Kincora was three days' march to the southward; and for two days' march
+to the northward there was no other place where the Shannon could be
+crossed; and so here at the ford just below Lough Ree, in the old days,
+a franklin named Luan set up a rude little inn, and the place came to be
+known as Ath Luan, Luan's Ford--Athlone. Here in the year 1001, hostages
+were sent from all Ireland to meet Brian Boru and proclaim him High
+King; and here, a century later, the O'Conors built a rath and a tower
+to guard the ford and levy tribute upon all who used it. In another
+hundred years, the Normans had seized it, and put up the strong,
+round-towered castle, parts of which still remain; and for seven
+centuries after that, the English power "sat astride the passage of
+Connaught," save for the brief time, after the battle of the Boyne, it
+was held by the Irish. But Ginkle captured it, as he was soon to capture
+Limerick, and a few years later, most of what was left of the town was
+destroyed when the magazine of the castle blew up during a thunderstorm.
+
+But though there is little in Athlone to delay the visitor, there are
+two places in the neighbourhood worth seeing. Nine miles to the north is
+Lissoy, made immortal by Goldsmith as
+
+          Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain;
+
+and ten miles to the south, on the bank of the Shannon, are the ruins of
+Clonmacnoise, whither, twelve centuries ago, men in search of knowledge
+turned their faces from all the corners of Europe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was for Lissoy we started next morning, on a car for which I had
+bargained the night before. Our jarvey was a loquacious old fellow, who
+talked unceasingly, but in so broken a brogue that it was only with the
+greatest difficulty we could follow him. He had known some people who
+had gone down on the _Titanic_, and he told us all about them; but most
+of his talk was a lament for the hard times, the sorrowful state of the
+country, the paucity of tourists, and the vagaries of the landlady, of
+whom he spoke in the most mournful and pessimistic way. She was not, I
+gathered, a native of Athlone, but a Dublin woman whose ideas were
+new-fangled and highfalutin, and who, I inferred, did not look kindly
+upon the careless habits of her "help."
+
+The road lay through a pleasant, rolling country, with glimpses of Lough
+Ree to the left, and on a hill to the right a tall shaft which our
+jarvey told us marked the exact centre of Ireland. When one looks at the
+map, one sees that it is at least somewhere near the centre. But it has
+been explained to other passers-by in many ways: as the remains of a
+round tower, as a tower which a rich man built in order to mount to the
+top of it every day to count his sheep, as a pole for his tent put up by
+Finn MacCool, as a wind-mill in the old days, and as a dozen other
+things--anything, in fact, that happened to occur to the man who was
+asked the question. One answer, you may be sure, he never made, and that
+was that he didn't know!
+
+There _are_ some remains of old windmills in the neighbourhood--we saw
+one or two on near-by hillsides, close enough to recognise them; and if
+I had known at the time what a divergence of opinion there was about
+that lonely tower in the distance, I would have driven over to it and
+investigated it on my own hook. But our jarvey's answer was so positive
+that it left no room for doubt, so we drove on through a village of tiny
+thatched houses, with the smoke of the turf giving a pleasant tang to
+the air; then up a long hill, to the left at a cross-roads, and at last
+our jarvey drew up before a five-barred gate. We looked at him
+questioningly, for there was no village in sight.
+
+"'Tis here it was, sir," he said, "sweet Auburn, the loveliest village
+of the plain. 'Twas up that path yonder the village preacher's modest
+mansion rose, though there is little enough left of it now; and over
+yonder, behind that wall with the yellow furze atop it, unprofitably
+gay, was where the village master taught his little school, and there is
+nothing at all left of that; and a little furder on is the 'Three Jolly
+Pigeons,' where news much older than the ale went round."
+
+[Illustration: THE GOLDSMITH RECTORY AT LISSOY]
+
+[Illustration: THE "THREE JOLLY PIGEONS"]
+
+I looked at him wonderingly.
+
+"Where did you pick up all that patter?" I asked.
+
+He snickered.
+
+"Ah, you would not be the first gintleman I have driven out here, sir,"
+he explained; "and many of them would be speakin' parts of the poem."
+
+"I suppose ale is still to be obtained at the 'Three Jolly Pigeons'?"
+
+"It is, sir, if so be your honour would be wantin' some. And they have
+one of the big stones of the old mill for a doorstep," he added, as an
+extra inducement not to pass it by.
+
+We got down from our seats, went through the gate, and up the path which
+Goldsmith and his father trod so many times; for, whether or not Lissoy
+was really Auburn, there can be no doubt that the elder Goldsmith was
+really vicar here, and that he lived in the house, the rectory of
+Kilkenny West, of which only a fragment of the front wall remains, and
+that Oliver was a boy here. The ash trees which shadowed the path have
+disappeared, but there are still plenty of gabbling geese around, and a
+file of them went past as I took a picture of the remnant of the
+rectory. A shed with a hideous roof of corrugated iron has been built
+behind it, and near by is a two-storied house where the present tenant
+lives. We found an old woman, for all the world like Goldsmith's
+"widowed, solitary thing," carding wool in an outhouse, and she showed
+us the old well, deep in the ground, walled around and approached by a
+steep flight of steps.
+
+There was nothing more to see, so we went back to the gate, escorted by
+three friendly pigs, and clambered up to our seats again, and looked out
+over the valley. There is nothing in that valley but gently-rolling
+pastures, and nothing lives there now but sheep and cattle. And it sends
+a chill up the spine to realise that once a village stood there, and
+that it has melted away into the earth. Not a stone is left of its
+houses, not a sod of its walls, not a flower of its gardens.
+
+But that village was Lissoy, not Auburn. No such village as Auburn ever
+existed in Ireland, where the young folks sported on the village green,
+and the swain responsive to the milkmaid sung, and the village master
+taught his school during the day, and argued with the preacher in the
+evening, and a jolly crowd gathered every night at the inn to drink the
+nut-brown ale. There is not a single Irish detail in that picture; it is
+all English, just as Goldsmith intended it should be, for it was of
+"England's griefs" he was writing, not of Ireland's. In that day, few
+people here in Westmeath spoke anything but Irish; the village children
+knew nothing of schools, except hedge-row ones, taught by some fugitive
+priest; the "honest rustics" had no "decent churches," but only hidden
+caves in dark valleys, where Mass was said secretly and at the risk of
+life; and, rest assured, when any inhabitant of this valley had money to
+spend for drink, he wasted it on no such futile beverage as nut-brown
+ale!
+
+I am sure that little of it is sold to-day at the "Three Jolly Pigeons,"
+where we presently arrived, a low wayside tavern with thatched roof and
+plastered wall, kept by John Nally, who welcomed us most kindly, and
+grew enthusiastic when I proposed to take a picture. There was a rickety
+donkey-cart standing by the door, and its owner came out to be in the
+picture, too--raggeder even than his donkey, disreputable, dirty,
+gin-soaked, and with only a jagged tooth or two in his expansive mouth,
+but carefree and full of mirth.
+
+Betty, who had been admiring the supreme raggedness of the donkey, asked
+its name.
+
+"Top o' the Mornin', miss," answered the man, with a shout of laughter,
+and I am sure the name was the inspiration of the moment.
+
+And then, while our jarvey drank his whiskey, I had a talk with Mr.
+Nally, who, of course, for reasons of trade perhaps, is firmly of the
+belief that Auburn is Lissoy and no other. And he told me of another
+poet who was born down on the banks of the Inny, a mile or two away, and
+who, in the old days, spent many an evening at the Pigeons--Johnny Casey
+he called him, and it turned out to be that same John Keegan Casey, who
+wrote "The Rising of the Moon," and "Maire my Girl," and "Gracie og
+Machree," and "Donal Kenny,"--Irish subjects all, and most of them local
+ones, as well. Donal Kenny, for instance, was a bold blade, a clever
+hand with the snare and the net, who turned the heads of all the girls
+in the neighbourhood, and broke those of most of the boys, until it was
+glad they were when he went off with himself to America. I have looked
+up the poem since, and I fear that Casey enveloped the parting scene
+with exaggerated sentiment; yet the verses have a swing to them:
+
+          Come, piper, play the "Shaskan Reel,"
+            Or else the "Lasses on the Heather,"
+          And, Mary, lay aside your wheel
+            Until we dance once more together.
+          At fair and pattern oft before
+            Of reels and jigs we've tripped full many;
+          But ne'er again this loved old floor
+            Will feel the foot of Donal Kenny.
+
+We tore ourselves away, at last, taking a road which ran along the
+border of the lake--a beautiful sheet of bluest water, dotted with
+greenest islands, with the rolling plains of Roscommon rising beyond.
+And then, from the top of a long hill, we saw below us the spires of
+Athlone, and soon we were rattling down into the town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That morning, while looking through our guide-book, we had encountered a
+sentence which piqued our curiosity. It was this:
+
+          "Some of the walls of St. Peter's Abbey remain, in
+          which can be seen one of those curious figures
+          called 'Sheela-na-gig."
+
+I remembered dimly that, back at Cashel, John Minogue had called our
+attention to a grotesque figure with twisted legs and distorted visage
+carved on a stone, and had called it something that sounded like
+Sheela-na-gig; but I wasn't sure, and so we started out blithely to find
+this one.
+
+Right at the start, we met with unexpected difficulties, for nobody at
+the hotel, not even the ancient jarvey, had ever heard of the
+Sheela-na-gig. The barmaid, however, said that St. Peter's Abbey was on
+the other side of the river, past the castle, so we went over there, and
+found that part of the town much more dilapidated and picturesque than
+the more modern portion on the Westmeath side. We wandered around for
+quite a while, asking the way of this person and that, and finally we
+wound up at St. Peter's church, a new structure and one singularly
+uninteresting. It was evident that there was no Sheela-na-gig there; and
+at this point Betty surrendered, and went back to the hotel to write
+some letters.
+
+But I had started out on the quest of the Sheela-na-gig, and I was
+determined to find it. I thought possibly it might be somewhere among
+the ruins of the Franciscan Abbey, which stand close to the other side
+of the river, so I crossed the river again, and after walking about a
+mile along a high wall through a dirty lane, reached a gate, only to
+find it locked. There was a man inside, raking a gravelled walk, but he
+said nobody was admitted to the ruins, and anyway he was quite positive
+that there was no such thing as a Sheela-na-gig among them. He added
+that a portion of the ruins had been torn down to make room for an
+extension of the Athlone Woolen Mills, and perhaps they had the
+Sheela-na-gig there.
+
+I had no faith in this suggestion, but for want of something better to
+do, I turned in at the office of the mills, and was warmly welcomed by
+the manager, who invited me to inspect the place. It is an exceedingly
+rambling and haphazard structure, but it gives employment to hundreds of
+people, mostly girls and women, whose pale faces and drooping figures
+bore testimony to the wearing nature of the work. The mill gets the wool
+in the raw state, straight from the grower, and the processes by which
+it is cleaned and carded and spun into thread, and dyed, and woven into
+cloth, and inspected, and weighed, and finally rolled up ready for the
+market, are many and intricate. The manager told me that the mill turned
+out thirty thousand yards of tweed a week, and he hoped to turn out even
+more, as soon as a reduction of the tariff permitted him to get into the
+American market. Even with a duty of forty-five per cent., he could
+compete with American tweeds, and with a lower duty he could undersell
+them.
+
+It needed only a glance at the shabby, toil-worn men and women working
+in his factory to understand why this was true. I didn't ask him what
+wages his women earned, but I _did_ ask as to their hours of labour.
+They go to work at 6:30 in the morning and work till six in the evening,
+with a three-quarter hour interval for breakfast and the same for lunch.
+I saw groups of them, afterwards, strolling about the streets in the
+twilight, and sad and poor and spiritless they looked. Yet they are
+eager for the work, for at least it keeps them alive, and one can
+scarcely blame the manager for sticking to the market price, and so
+doing his best to meet a remorseless competition. I confess that such
+economic problems as this are too stiff for me.
+
+As I was about to leave, I casually mentioned my search for the
+Sheela-na-gig--and he knew where it was! It was over on the other bank,
+it seemed, not far from the river-front, and he directed me with great
+detail how to get to it; but, alas, in such a town of crooked streets,
+definite direction was impossible. However, with hope springing eternal,
+I crossed the bridge a third time, turned up-stream close beside the
+river, wandered into a board-yard, extricated myself, got into a blind
+alley that ended in a high wall and had to retrace my steps; asked man
+after man, who only stared vacantly and shook their heads; and finally
+found a boy who knew, and who eagerly left his work to conduct me to the
+spot.
+
+Imagine with what a feeling of triumph I stood at last before the
+Sheela-na-gig!
+
+It is carved over the wide arch of the entrance to what was once an
+abbey, but what I think is now a laundry--an impish, leering figure,
+clasping its knees up under its chin, and peering down to see who
+passes. Underneath the imp are the words "St. Peter's Port," and
+underneath the words is a grotesque head. On either side of the arch is
+a sculptured plaque, that to the left bearing the words "May Satan never
+enter," and that to the right, "Wilo Wisp & Jack the Printer,"--the two,
+of course, forming a couplet.
+
+While I was staring at these remarkable inscriptions and trying to
+puzzle out some meaning for them, an old woman, who had been watching me
+with interest from the door of her house, came out and tried to tell me
+the history of the gate. But she spoke so incoherently that I could make
+nothing of it beyond the fact that the inscriptions originated in two
+men's rivalry for possession of the property; so somebody else will
+have to untangle that legend.
+
+A little way up the street there was a shop which, among other things,
+had post-cards displayed for sale, and I stopped in, thinking I might
+get a picture of the gate and perhaps learn something more of its story.
+But when I asked for such a card, the proprietor stared at me in
+amazement.
+
+"There is no such gate hereabouts," he said.
+
+"But there is," I protested; "right there at the end of the street. Do
+you mean to say you have never seen the Sheela-na-gig, nor read that
+line about Wilo Wisp and Jack the Printer?"
+
+He rubbed his head dazedly.
+
+"I have not," he admitted. "Look at that, now," he went on; "here have I
+been going past that gate for years, and you come all the way from
+America and see more in one minute than I have seen in me whole life!"
+
+Then he asked me if I had been up on top the castle, which was just
+opposite his shop, and I replied that I had not.
+
+"Nor have I," he said; "but I am told there is a grand view from up
+there."
+
+"Why not go up with me now?" I suggested.
+
+"I might," he agreed; and then he looked at the tall keep of the castle
+and shook his head. "'Tis not to-day I can be doing it; you see, I must
+stay with the shop."
+
+So I left him there, and essayed the heights of the castle by myself.
+Only for a little way, however, was I by myself, for some families
+connected with the garrison live there, and they are all prolific; so I
+soon found myself surrounded by a horde of ragged children, who begged
+for ha'pennies in the queer bated voice which seems to go with begging
+in Ireland. I distributed a few, but that was a mistake; for when they
+found I not only had some ha'pennies but was actually willing to part
+with them, they grew almost ferocious; I said "Oppenheimer!" in vain,
+and I was only saved at last by a husky woman who issued forth from one
+of the towers and swept down upon them, vi et armis, and drove them
+headlong out of sight. She was red-headed and curious, and she stopped
+for a bit of talk. (I pass over the part about America.)
+
+"How do you like living in the old castle?" I asked her, finally.
+
+"Sure, 'tis a grand place, sir."
+
+"Do you ever see any ghosts?"
+
+"Ghosts? Niver a one, sir."
+
+"Nor hear any banshees?"
+
+"Banshees is it? Sure, they niver come to this place, sir, 'tis that
+healthy, bein' so high."
+
+And it must, indeed, be healthier than the narrow, gloomy, squalid
+streets below. I could look down into them from the top of the tower, to
+which I presently mounted, and see their swarming life--men and women
+idling about, a girl drawing water from the public pump, a boy skinning
+some eels at the corner, small children playing in the gutters. On the
+other side lay the river, empty save for a few small launches, and
+beyond it the roofs of the newer part of the town, and beyond the town
+the beautiful Westmeath hills.
+
+Just at my feet was the bridge across the Shannon, connecting east and
+west Ireland. It is a modern one, but it stands on the site of the old
+one, built while Elizabeth was queen, and the scene of a desperate
+conflict when Ginkle stormed the town. Of the castle itself, only the
+keep is old. The drum-towers, which frown down upon the river, are of
+later date, though one would never suspect it to look at them; but when
+one gets to the top of them, one finds embrasures for artillery, and the
+approach is up a graded way along which the guns can be taken. The old
+drawbridge and portcullis which guarded the entrance to the keep are
+still in place, but there is little else of interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The ruins of the ancient abbey of Clonmacnoise lie close beside the
+Shannon, some ten miles below Athlone, and the road thither winds
+through a rolling country down to the broad river, which here flows
+lazily between flat banks. One would expect so noble a stretch of water
+to be crowded with commerce, but it was quite empty that morning, save
+for an occasional rude, flat-bottomed punt, loaded high with turf, which
+a man and a boy would be poling slowly upstream toward Athlone.
+
+It was a desolate scene; and Clonmacnoise looked desolate, too, with its
+gaunt grey towers, and huddle of little buildings, and cluttered
+graveyard. It seemed incredible that this obscure corner of the world
+was once a centre of learning toward which scholars turned their faces
+from the far ends of Europe, to which Charlemagne sent gifts, and within
+whose walls princes and nobles were reared in wisdom and piety. Yet such
+it was--the nearest to being a national university among all the abbeys,
+for it was not identified with any class or province, but chose its
+abbots from all Ireland, and welcomed its students from all the world.
+
+The abbey was founded by St. Kieran in 548. St. Kieran belonged to what
+is known as the Second Order of Irish Saints, founders of monasteries
+and of great co-operative communities, as distinguished from the First
+Order--St. Patrick and his immediate successors--who were bishops and
+missionaries and founders of churches, and the Third Order, who were
+hermits, dwelling in desert places, often in small stone cells, just as
+St. Molua did in his little cell near Killaloe. St. Kieran had already
+started an abbey on an island in Lough Ree, but grew dissatisfied with
+it, for some reason, and he and eight companions got on board a boat and
+floated down the river, rejecting this place and that as not suited to
+their purpose, and finally reaching this sloping meadow, where their
+leader bade them stop.
+
+"Let us remain here," he said, "for many souls will ascend to heaven
+from this spot."
+
+So the abbey was started, and, though Kieran himself died in the
+following year, it grew rapidly in importance. Let me try to picture the
+place as it was then. The students lived in small huts crowded about the
+precincts; the classes were held in the open air; only for purposes of
+worship were permanent buildings built. Here, as at Glendalough, there
+was not one large church, but seven small ones; and the students seem to
+have attended divine service in the groups in which they studied. It was
+a self-supporting community, tilling its own lands, spinning its own
+wool, weaving its own cloth, and building its own churches; and its
+life, while not austere, was of the simplest.
+
+The students, at times, numbered as many as three thousand. The teaching
+was free, but from every student a certain amount of service was
+required in the interest of the community. The principal study, of
+course, was that of religion, but from the very first the heathen
+classics and the Irish language, arithmetic, rhetoric, astronomy and
+natural science were taught side by side with theology.
+
+The life at Clonmacnoise was typical of that at all the other monastic
+schools with which Ireland was then so thickly dotted; and it is the
+more interesting because the whole continent of Europe, at that time,
+was groping through the very darkest period of the Middle Ages. Culture
+there was at its lowest ebb--knowledge of Greek, for instance, had so
+nearly vanished that any one who knew Greek was assumed at once to have
+come from Ireland, where it was taught in all the schools. Those schools
+sent forth swarms of missionaries, "the most fearless spiritual knights
+the world has known," to spread the light over Europe; they established
+centres at Cambrai, at Rheims, at Soissons, at Laon, at Liege; they
+founded the great monastery at Ratisbon; they built others at Wurzburg,
+at Nuremberg, at Constanz, at Vienna--and then came the Vikings, and put
+an end to Irish learning. For the Vikings were Pagans, and the shrines
+of the churches, the treasuries of the monasteries and schools, were the
+first objects of onslaught.
+
+For two centuries, the Danes made of Ireland "spoil-land and sword-land
+and conquered land, ravaged her chieftaincies and her privileged
+churches and her sanctuaries, and rent her shrines and her reliquaries
+and her books, and demolished her beautiful ornamented temples--in a
+word, though there were an hundred sharp and ready tongues in each head,
+and an hundred loud, unceasing voices from each tongue, they could never
+enumerate all the Gael suffered, both men and women, laity and clergy,
+noble and ignoble, from these wrathful, valiant, purely-pagan people."
+The Danes aimed to destroy all learning, which they hated and
+distrusted, and they very nearly succeeded.
+
+[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO CLONMACNOISE]
+
+[Illustration: ST. KIERAN'S CATHAIR, CLONMACNOISE]
+
+I have already told how, under Brian Boru, the Irish drew together, and
+finally managed to defeat the Danes at Clontarf; and for a century and a
+half after that, ancient Erin seemed rising from her ashes. The books
+destroyed by the Danes were re-written, churches and monasteries
+rebuilt, schools re-opened--and then came Strongbow at the head of his
+Normans, and that dream was ended. There was civilisation in Ireland
+after that, but it was a civilisation dominated by England; there was
+education, but not for the native Irish; there were great monasteries,
+but they were built by French or Norman monks--by Franciscans or
+Cistercians or Augustinians; and finally even these were swept away with
+the coming of the Established Church.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall not attempt to describe the ruins of the seven churches of
+Clonmacnoise, except to say that, though they are all small, they are
+crowded with interesting detail; and there are two round towers,
+somewhat squat and rude, as a witness to the danger of Danish raiders;
+but the glory of the place is the magnificent sculptured cross, erected
+a thousand years ago over the grave of Flann, High King of Erin, and
+still standing as a witness to Irish craftsmanship. It is ten feet
+high, cut from a single block of stone, and elaborately carved from top
+to bottom, and its date is fixed by an Irish inscription which can still
+be deciphered: "A prayer for Colman who made this cross on the King
+Flann." It was Flann who built the largest of the stone churches, near
+which the cross stands, about 909, and at that time Colman was Abbot of
+Clonmacnoise. Flann died five years later, and Colman honoured his
+memory with this magnificent tribute.
+
+Its maker's name is lost, but there can be no doubt he was a great
+artist. On one side he has represented scenes from the founding of
+Clonmacnoise, and on the other scenes from the Passion of the Saviour.
+The crucifixion, as usual, is depicted at the intersection, while hell
+and heaven are shown on the arms themselves, crowded with the damned or
+the blessed, as the case may be. There is another cross in the graveyard
+scarcely less interesting, though no one knows on whose grave it stands,
+and there is the shaft of a third. And all about them are crowded the
+lichened tombstones marking the graves of the fortunate ones who won
+sepulture in St. Kieran's cathair, and who, on the last day, will be
+borne straight to heaven with him.
+
+For this enclosure was once the very holiest in Ireland. It was here
+that Kieran was laid, and then his prophecy was remembered that many
+souls would ascend to heaven from this spot; and the belief gradually
+grew that no one interred "in the graveyard of noble Kieran" would ever
+be adjudged to damnation. In consequence, so many people wanted to be
+buried there that there wasn't room for all of them, and in the end,
+even powerful kings and princes were forced to contend with great gifts
+for a place of sepulture. Here Flann was laid; and hither was borne the
+body of Rory O'Conor, the last who claimed the kingship of all Ireland,
+after his death at Cong. The great abbey at Cong served well enough as
+the retreat for his declining years, but it was only at Clonmacnoise, in
+the sacred cathair of Kieran, that he would be buried. And, as I closed
+the chapter on the Shannon with some verses of one of Ireland's truest
+poets, I cannot do better than close this one with his lovely rendering
+of the lament which Enock O'Gillan wrote many centuries ago for
+
+
+THE DEAD AT CLONMACNOISE
+
+    In a quiet-watered land, a land of roses,
+      Stands St. Kieran's city fair,
+    And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations
+      Slumber there.
+
+    There beneath the dewy hillside sleep the noblest
+      Of the clan of Conn,
+    Each below his stone with name in branching Ogham
+      And the sacred knot thereon.
+
+    There they laid to rest the seven kings of Tara,
+      There the sons of Cairbre sleep--
+    Battle-banners of the Gael that in Kieran's plain of crosses
+      Now their final hosting keep.
+
+    And in Clonmacnoise they laid the men of Teffia,
+      And right many a lord of Bregh;
+    Deep the sod above Clan Creide and Clan Conaill,
+      Kind in hall and fierce in fray.
+
+    Many and many a son of Conn the Hundred-fighter
+      In the red earth lies at rest;
+    Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers,
+      Many a swan-white breast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+GALWAY OF THE TRIBES
+
+
+IT was in the dusk of early evening that our train started westward from
+Athlone, and we soon found ourselves traversing again the dreary bogs
+which we had crossed on our way from Athenry. I have seldom seen a more
+beautiful sunset than the one that evening, and we watched the changing
+sky and the flaming west for long hours; and then, just as darkness
+came, the great reaches of Galway Bay opened before us, and we were at
+our journey's end--Galway of the Tribes, the beautiful old town which is
+the gateway to Connemara.
+
+There is a good hotel connected with the railway, and we had dinner
+there, and then went forth to see the town. We were struck at once by
+its picturesqueness, its foreign air. The narrow curving streets do not
+somehow look like Irish streets, nor do the houses look like Irish
+houses; rather might one fancy oneself in some old town of France or
+Belgium. We were fascinated by it, and wandered about for a long time,
+along dim lanes, into dark courts, looking at the shawled women and
+listening to the soft talk of the strolling girls.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nobody knows certainly how Galway got its name. Some say it was because
+a woman named Galva was drowned in the river; others maintain that the
+name was derived from the Gallaeci of Spain, who used to trade here; and
+still others think that it came from the Gaels, who eventually occupied
+it in the course of their conquest of Ireland. Whatever the origin of
+the name, the town was but a poor place, a mere trading village of
+little importance, until the English came. Richard de Burgo was granted
+the county of Connaught by the English king in 1226, and six years later
+he entered Galway, rebuilt and enlarged the castle which had been put up
+by the Connaught men, threw a wall around the town, and so established
+another of those centres of Norman power, which were soon to overshadow
+the whole of Ireland. It was a very English colony, at first, with a
+deep-seated contempt for the wild Irish. Over the west gate, which
+looked toward Connemara, was the inscription,
+
+          FROM THE FURY OF THE O'FLAHERTIES
+          GOOD LORD DELIVER US.
+
+and one of the by-laws of the town was that no citizen should receive
+into his house at Christmas or on any other feast day any of the Burkes,
+MacWilliamses, or Kelleys, and that "neither O' nor Mac shalle strutte
+ne swaggere thro the streetes of Gallway."
+
+The years wore away this animosity, as they have a fashion of doing in
+Ireland, and by Cromwell's time, the citizens of the town had become so
+Irish that they were contemptuously called "the tribes of Galway" by the
+Puritan soldiers. But, as was the case of the Beggars in Holland, a name
+given in contempt was adopted as a badge of honour, and the "Tribes of
+Galway" became a mark of distinction for men who had suffered and fought
+and had never been conquered. There were thirteen of these tribes; and
+the Blakes and Lynches and Joyces and Martins who still form the greater
+part of the old town's population are their descendants--but how fallen
+from their high estate!
+
+For many years, Galway had a practical monopoly of the trade with Spain,
+there was always a large Spanish colony here, and it is to this
+long-continued intercourse that many persons attribute the foreign air
+of the town. I have even seen it asserted that the people are of a
+decided Spanish type; but we were unable to discern it, and I am
+inclined to think the Spanish influence has been much exaggerated. Its
+period of prosperity ended with the coming of the Parliamentary army,
+which took the place and plundered it; and the final blow was struck
+forty years later, when the army of William of Orange, fresh from its
+victories to the east, laid siege to it and captured it in two days. The
+old families found themselves ruined, trade utterly ceased, the great
+warehouses fell to decay, and the mansions of the aristocracy, no longer
+able to maintain them, were given over to use as tenements. There is
+to-day about Galway an air of ruin and decay such as I have seen
+equalled in few other Irish towns; but there are also some signs of
+reawakening, and it may be that, after three centuries, the tide has
+turned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We found the streets crowded, next morning, with the most picturesque
+people we had seen anywhere in Ireland, for it was Saturday and so
+market day, and the country-folk had gathered in from many miles around.
+The men were for the most part buttoned up in cutaways of stiff frieze,
+nearly as hard and unyielding as iron; and the women, almost without
+exception, wore bright red skirts, made of fuzzy homespun flannel, which
+they had themselves woven from wool dyed with the rich crimson of
+madder. The shaggier the flannel, the more it is esteemed, and some of
+the skirts we saw had a nap half an inch deep. They are made very full
+and short, somewhat after the fashion of the Dutch; but the resemblance
+ended there, for most of these women were barefooted, and strode about
+with a disregard of cobbles and sharp paving-stones which proved the
+toughness of their soles.
+
+Galway, as well as most other Irish towns, boasts a number of millinery
+stores, with windows full of befeathered and beribboned hats; but one
+wonders where their customers come from, for hats are a luxury unknown
+to most Irish women, who habitually go either bareheaded, or with the
+head muffled in a shawl. All the women here in Galway were shawled, and
+beautiful shawls they were, of a delicate fawn-colour, and very soft and
+thick.
+
+We went at once to the market, and found the country women ranged along
+the curb, with great baskets in front of them containing eggs and butter
+and other products of the farm. How far they had walked, that morning,
+carrying these heavy burdens, I did not like to guess, but we met one
+later who had eight miles to go before she would be home again. A few
+had carts drawn by little grey donkeys; and the old woman in one of
+these was so typical that I wanted to get her picture. She was sitting
+there watching the crowd with her elbows on her knees, and a chicken in
+her hands, but when she saw me unlimbering my camera, she shook her
+head menacingly.
+
+[Illustration: THE MARKET AT GALWAY]
+
+[Illustration: "OULD SAFTIE"]
+
+There was a constable in the crowd, and he offered to clear the
+bystanders away, so that I could get a good picture of her. I remarked
+that she seemed to object, and he said that he didn't see why that made
+any difference, and that it wouldn't do her any harm. But I preferred
+diplomacy to force, and finally I asked a quaint-looking old man
+standing by if I might take his picture.
+
+"Ye may, and welcome," was the prompt response.
+
+So I stood him up in front of the cart and got my focus.
+
+"Will ye be seein' the ould saftie!" cried the woman. "Look at the ould
+saftie standin' there to get his picter took." And she went on to say
+other, and presumably much less complimentary things, in Irish; but my
+subject only grinned pleasantly and paid no heed. If you will look at
+the picture opposite this page, you can almost see the scornful
+invectives issuing from her lips. My subject was very proud indeed when
+I promised him a print; and I hope it reached him safely.
+
+Eggs are sold by the score in Galway, and the price that day was one
+shilling twopence, or about twenty-eight cents--which is not as cheap as
+one would expect them to be in a country where wages are so low. But
+perhaps it is only labour that is cheap in Ireland!
+
+One row of women were offering for sale a kind of seaweed, whose Celtic
+name, as they pronounced it, I could not catch, but which in English
+they called dillisk; a red weed which they assured us they had gathered
+from the rocks along the beach that very morning, and which many
+people were buying and stuffing into their mouths and chewing with the
+greatest relish. It did not look especially inviting, but the women
+insisted, with much laughter, that we sample it, and we finally did,
+somewhat gingerly. The only taste I detected in it was that of the
+salt-water in which it had been soaked; but it is supposed to be very
+healthy, and to be especially efficacious in straightening out a man who
+has had a drop too much. No matter how tangled his legs may be, so the
+women assured us, a few mouthfuls of dillisk will set him right again;
+and no man with a pocketful of dillisk was ever known to go astray or
+spend the night in a ditch. I regret that we were not able to experiment
+with this interesting plant; but if it really possesses this remarkable
+property, it deserves a wider popularity than it now enjoys.
+
+While I was talking to the women and the constable--who was a Dublin man
+and very lonesome among these Irish-speaking people, who regarded him
+with scorn and derision--Betty had been exploring the junk-shops of the
+neighbourhood, and presently came back with the news that she had
+discovered a Dutch masterpiece. Now we are both very fond of Dutch art,
+so I hastened to look at the picture; and, indeed, it may have been an
+Ostade, for it was a small panel showing two boors drinking, and it
+seemed to me excellently painted; but when the keeper of the shop saw
+that we were interested, he named a price out of all reason, and I was
+not certain enough of my own judgment to back it to that extent. I
+intended to go back later on and do a little bargaining; but I didn't;
+and the first connoisseur who goes to Galway should take a look at the
+picture--it is in a little shop just a few doors from the cathedral--and
+he may pick up a bargain.
+
+We went on down the street, and crossed the Corrib River to the
+Claddagh--a picturesque huddle of thatched and whitewashed cottages, the
+homes of fishermen and their families, Irish of the Irish, who, from
+time immemorial have formed a unique community, almost a race apart.
+Galway, within its walls on the other side of the river, was very, very
+English; here on this strip of land next to the bay, the despised Irish
+built their cabins, and formed a colony which made its own laws, which
+was always ruled by one of its own members, where no strangers were
+permitted to dwell, and whose people always intermarried with each
+other. That old semi-feudal condition is, of course, no longer strictly
+maintained; but the Claddagh people still keep to themselves, the men
+follow the sea for a living just as they have always done, and the women
+peddle the catch about the streets of Galway, as has been their custom
+ever since the English settled there. They wear a quaint and distinctive
+costume, one feature of which is the red petticoat I have already
+described, and common to all Connemara women. But in addition to this is
+a blue mantle, and a white kerchief bound tightly round the head, and
+then over this, if the woman is unusually well-to-do, a fawn-coloured
+shawl. The feet are usually bare, and so are the sturdy legs, some
+inches of which, very red and rough from exposure to every weather, are
+visible below the short skirts.
+
+The houses of the Claddagh have been built wherever fancy dictated, and
+in consequence form a most confusing jumble, for one man's back door
+usually opens into another man's front yard. How a man gets home from
+the tavern on a dark night I don't know, but I suspect that the
+consumption of dillisk is large. We stopped to talk to a woman leaning
+over a half-door; and her children, who had been playing in the dirt,
+gathered around, and there is a picture of her quaint little house
+opposite the next page. Then while I foraged for more pictures, Betty
+sat down on a stone, and a perfect horde of children soon assembled to
+stare at her. They were very shy at first and perfectly well-behaved;
+but gradually they grew bolder, and finally, under careful
+encouragement, their tongues loosened, until they were chattering away
+like magpies.
+
+The people of the Claddagh are said to be a very moral and religious
+race, who never go to sea or even away from home on any Sunday or
+religious holiday; and these dirty, unkempt, neglected, but chubby and
+red-cheeked children were capital illustrations of Kipling's lines:
+
+  By a moon they all can play with--grubby and grimed and unshod--
+  Very happy together, and very near to God.
+
+They were certainly happy enough; and, whether they were near to God or
+not, they had all evidently been taught their catechism with great care,
+for when Betty took from one of them a little picture of the Madonna and
+asked who it was, they answered in chorus, without an instant's
+hesitation, "The blessed Virgin, miss."
+
+The Claddagh people are dark as a rule, though here and there one sees a
+genuine Titian blond, and Spanish blood has been ascribed to them; but
+they probably date much farther back than the Spaniards--back, indeed,
+to that ancient, original Irish race, "men of the leathern wallet,"
+antedating the Milesians or Gaels who now form the bulk of the Irish
+people. The older race took refuge in the bleak Connemara hills before
+the stronger invaders, to come creeping down again and found their
+colony here at the mouth of the Corrib when the invaders had swept on
+eastward to the kindlier and more fertile country there. Their whole
+life is bound up in this topsy-turvy little settlement, where they live
+just as they have lived for centuries, undisturbed by the march of
+civilisation.
+
+[Illustration: THE CLADDAGH, GALWAY]
+
+[Illustration: A CLADDAGH HOME]
+
+We tore ourselves away, at last, from this primeval place, and recrossed
+the river to the turf market, with its familiar little carts piled high
+with the dark fuel.
+
+"The bogs are very wet this year, are they not?" I asked an old man.
+
+"They are, sir, God save ye," he replied, his wrinkled face lighting up
+at the chance to talk to a stranger. "There never was such a year for
+rain. I'm sixty year, God bless ye, and I've never seen such another."
+And then he went on to relate the story of his life, with a "God save
+ye" to every clause. A hearty old fellow he was, in spite of his sixty
+years; and he had driven his cart of turf down ten miles out of the
+mountains, that morning, and would drive ten miles back that night; and
+if he was lucky he would get half a crown--sixty cents--for the load of
+turf which had taken a hard day's labour to cut, and numerous turnings
+during a month to dry.
+
+We went on past some fragments of the old walls, with a most romantic
+arched gateway, and through the fish market, over which the red-skirted
+women from the Claddagh presided--great strapping creatures, with broad
+hips and straight backs and shining, good-humoured faces. Most of them
+were selling an ugly, big-mouthed, unappetising-looking fish, whose name
+I couldn't catch; but they told us it was a fish for poor people, not
+for the likes of us, God bless ye--full of bones and scarcely worth the
+trouble of eating, but plentiful and therefore cheap.
+
+The principal street of Galway is called Shop Street--a name so
+singularly lacking in imagination that it would prove the English origin
+of the town at once, were any proof needed--and about midway of this
+stands a beautiful four-storied building, known as Lynch's Castle, once
+a fine mansion but now a chandler's shop. The walls are ornamented with
+carved medallions, and there is a row of sculptured supports for a
+vanished balcony sticking out like gargoyles all around the top; and
+over the door there is the stone figure of a monkey holding a child,
+commemorating the saving of one of the Lynch children from a fire, by a
+favourite monkey, some centuries ago.
+
+The Lynches were great people in old Galway, and another memorial of
+them exists just around the corner--a fragment of wall, with a doorway
+below and a mullioned window above, and it was from this window, so
+legend says, that James Lynch Fitzstephen, sometime mayor of Galway,
+hanged his son with his own hands. The principal inscription reads:
+
+          This memorial of the stern and unbending justice
+          of the chief magistrate of this city, James Lynch
+          Fitzstephen, elected mayor A. D. 1493, who
+          condemned and executed his own guilty son, Walter,
+          on this spot, has been restored to its ancient
+          site A. D. 1854, with the approval of the Town
+          Commissioners, by their Chairman, Very Rev. Peter
+          Daly, P. P., and Vicar of St. Nicholas.
+
+Below the window is a skull and crossbones, with a much more interesting
+inscription:
+
+          1524
+          REMEMBER DEATHE VANITI OF VANITI
+          AND AL IS BUT VANITI
+
+[Illustration: A GALWAY VISTA]
+
+[Illustration: THE MEMORIAL OF A SPARTAN FATHER]
+
+The story of the very upright Fitzstephen runs in this wise: He was a
+merchant, prominent in the Spanish trade, and fortunate in everything
+except in his only son, Walter, who was as bad a nut as was to be found
+anywhere. But he had shown some fondness for a Galway lady of good
+family, and it was hoped she might reform him; when, unhappily, she
+looked, or was thought to look, too favourably upon a handsome young
+hidalgo, who had come from Spain as the guest of the elder Fitzstephen.
+So young Walter waited for him one night at a dark corner, thrust a
+knife into his heart, and then gave himself up to his father, as the
+town's chief magistrate.
+
+Walter, as is often the way with rake-hellies, was a great favourite in
+the town, and everybody interceded for his pardon, but his father
+condemned him to death. Whereupon a number of young bloods organised a
+rescue party, but just as they were breaking into the house, the
+inexorable parent put a noose about his son's neck, and hanged him from
+the window mullion above the crowd's head--the same mullion, I suppose,
+which you can see in the picture opposite the preceding page.
+
+Just behind the reminder of this fifteenth-century Brutus, stands the
+fourteenth-century church of St. Nicholas, a venerable and beautiful
+structure, with good windows and splendid doorways, and containing some
+interesting tombs--one of them in honour of Mayor Lynch, the hero of the
+tragedy I have just related. On the south wall is a large tablet to
+"Jane Eyre, relict of Edward Eyre," (I wonder if Charlotte Bronte ever
+heard of her), who died in 1760, aged 88. At the bottom of the slab the
+fact is commemorated that "The sum of 300L was given by the Widow Jane
+Eyre to the Corporation of Galway for the yearly sum of 24L to be
+distributed in bread to 36 poor objects, on every Sunday forever." The
+sexton told us that the yearly income from this bequest was now
+thirty-six pounds, but that the weekly distribution of bread had
+occasioned so much disturbance that it had been discontinued, and the
+income of the bequest was now divided equally among twelve deserving
+families.
+
+As we stood there, the peal of bells in the tower began to ring for
+service, but their musical invitation went quite unheeded by the crowd
+in the market-place outside, all of whom, of course, were Catholics. One
+woman, clad in black, slipped into a pew just before the curate began to
+read the lesson. We waited a while to see if any one else would come,
+but no one did, and at last we quietly took ourselves off.
+
+There was one other sight in Galway we wanted to see--the most famous of
+its kind in Ireland--and that was the salmon making their way up the
+Corrib River from the sea to spawn in the lake above; and the place to
+see them is from the bridge which leads from the courthouse on the east
+bank of the river to the great walled jail on the west bank. Just above
+the bridge is the weir which backs up the water from Lough Corrib to
+afford power for some dozen mills--though all the mills, so far as I
+could see, are decayed and ruined and empty. But below this weir the
+salmon gather in such numbers that sometimes they lie side by side
+solidly clear across the bed of the stream.
+
+A number of fishermen were flogging the water, and we sat down under the
+trees on the eastern bank to watch them for a while before going out on
+the bridge. Two or three of them were stationed on a narrow plank
+platform built out over the water just in front of us, and the others
+were on the farther bank, in the shadow of the grey wall of the jail.
+This is supposed to be the very best place in all Ireland to catch
+salmon, and, in the season, more anglers than the short stretch of shore
+can accommodate are eager to pay the fifteen shillings, which is the fee
+for a day's fishing there. They fish quite close together, which is
+somewhat awkward, but has its advantages occasionally; as, for instance,
+on that day, not very long ago, when one enthusiast, having hooked a
+noble fish, dropped dead in the act of playing it. The long account of
+this sad event which the Galway paper published, concluded with the
+following paragraph:
+
+          Our readers will be glad to learn that the rod
+          which Mr. Doyle dropped was immediately taken up
+          by our esteemed townsman, Mr. Martin, who found
+          the fish still on, and after ten minutes' play,
+          succeeded in landing it--a fine clean-run salmon
+          of fifteen pounds.
+
+One cannot but admire the quick wit of Mr. Martin, who, seeing at a
+glance that his fellow-townsman was past all human aid, realised that
+the only thing to do was to save the fish, and saved it!
+
+But no fish were caught while we were there. We had rather expected to
+see one hooked every minute, but we watched for half an hour, and there
+was not even a rise; so at last we walked out on the bridge to see if
+there were really any fish in the stream.
+
+The bridge has a high parapet, worn glassy-smooth by the coat-sleeves of
+countless lookers-on, and there are convenient places to rest the feet,
+so we leaned over and looked down. The water was quite clear, and we
+could see the stones on the bottom plainly--but no fish.
+
+"Look, there's one," said a voice at my elbow, and following the
+pointing finger, I saw a great salmon, his greenish back almost exactly
+the colour of the water, poised in the stream, swaying slowly from side
+to side, exerting himself just enough to hold his place against the
+current. Then the finger pointed to another and another, and we saw that
+the river was alive with fish--and then I looked around to see whose
+finger it was, and found myself gazing into the smiling eyes of a young
+priest--not exactly young, either, for his hair was sprinkled with grey;
+but his face was fresh and youthful.
+
+"Of course you're from America," he said. "One can see that." And when I
+nodded assent, he added, "Well, you Americans brag like hell, but you
+have good reason to."
+
+I glanced at him again, thinking perhaps I had mistaken his vocation;
+but there was no mistaking his rabat.
+
+"I have been to America," he went on. "I went there as a beggar for a
+church here; and after my mission was done, I rested and enjoyed myself;
+and I want to say that there is no country like America."
+
+The words were said with an earnestness that warmed my heart; and of
+course I agreed with him; and then, when he learned we were from Ohio,
+he told us how he had crossed our State on his way to San Francisco, and
+that seemed to establish a kind of relationship; and when we were
+satisfied with looking at the fish, he insisted on taking us through the
+marble works, just across the river, where some great columns of
+Connemara marble were being polished. It comes from a quarry high on
+Lissoughter, which we were soon to visit--though we didn't know it
+then!--and it is very beautiful indeed, usually a deep green, but
+sometimes a warm brown, and always gorgeously veined.
+
+And then he asked us if we wouldn't like to see Queen's College, the
+Galway branch of the National University of Ireland; and of course we
+said we would, and so we started for it, he pushing his wheel before
+him; and on the way, we met a handsome old man, who stopped when he saw
+us, and smilingly asked for an introduction. It proved to be Bishop
+O'Dee, and even in the short chat we had with him, it was easy to see
+that he deserved his reputation for culture and scholarship. He has two
+pet aversions, so our guide told us, as we went on together, bribery and
+drunkenness. I don't imagine there is much bribery in Connaught, but I
+fear the Bishop has a formidable antagonist in John Barleycorn.
+
+We came to the college presently--a fine Gothic building, with a good
+quadrangle, and we went through its somewhat heterogeneous museum and
+looked in at some of the halls. There are now about a hundred and forty
+pupils, so our guide said, and the new seminary, which drew students
+from all the west of Ireland, and which was just getting nicely started,
+was certain to increase this number greatly.
+
+The National University of Ireland was established in 1908, as I
+understand it, for the purpose of affording Catholic youth an
+opportunity for higher education. The act provides that "no test
+whatever of religious belief shall be imposed on any person as a
+condition of his becoming or continuing to be a professor, lecturer,
+fellow, scholar or student" of the college; nevertheless it is well
+understood that its spirit and atmosphere are Catholic, and such
+Protestant youth as desire higher education usually enter Trinity
+College, Dublin, or Queen's College, Belfast. There are three colleges
+in the National University of Ireland--University College, Dublin, which
+is the parent institution, Queen's College, Cork, and Queen's College,
+Galway. All of them are maintained by state grants.
+
+I am not quite clear as to the maintenance of the new seminary, to which
+our guide next conducted us; but it is a mammoth building, with queer
+squat towers, giving it an aspect quite oriental. Our guide said that
+the architecture was Irish-Romanesque, but it reminded me of nothing so
+much as of the pictures I had seen of the temples of ancient Syria and
+Egypt. The seminary is really an intermediate school, and is planned on
+a very extensive scale. Its promoters are hoping great things for it,
+which I trust will come to pass. We mounted to the top of the main
+tower, and looked out over the bay and the hills, and talked of America
+and of Ireland, and of many other things, and then our guide asked us if
+we wouldn't come and have tea with him.
+
+"Ah, I hope you will come," he urged, seeing that we hesitated. "When I
+was in America, the welcome I got was so warm and open-hearted, that I
+feel I am forever indebted to all Americans, and it is a great pleasure
+to me when I am able to repay a little of that kindness. It's few
+opportunities I have, and I hope you won't refuse me this one."
+
+So we accepted the invitation, telling him how kind we thought it, and
+started back through the streets, with the women and children
+courtesying to our guide as we passed, and he never failing to give them
+a pleasant word.
+
+"'Tis not to my own quarters I'll be taking you," he explained, "but to
+those of a brother priest, who will be proud to have them put to this
+use," and he stopped in front of a row of little houses, called St.
+Joseph's Terrace, and opened the door of one of them, and ushered us in,
+and called the old servant, and bade her get us tea.
+
+It was served in a bare little dining-room--with bread and butter and
+jam and cake--and very good it tasted, though the tea was far too strong
+for us, and we had to ask for some hot water with which to weaken it.
+Our host laughed at us; he drank his straight, without milk or sugar,
+and he told us about the first time he ordered tea in New York. When he
+started to pour it, he thought the cook had forgot to put any tea in the
+pot, so he called the waiter and sent it back; and the waiter, who was
+Irish and understood, laughed and took the pot back and put some more
+tea in.
+
+"It was still far too weak," went on our host; "but I was ashamed to say
+anything more, so I drank it, though I might as well have been drinking
+hot water. Indeed, I got no good tea in America. And I nearly burnt my
+mouth off me once, trying to eat ice-cream. I took a great spoonful,
+without knowing what it would be like, and I thought it would be the
+death of me. And I shall never forget the first time they served Indian
+corn. It was in great long ears, such as I had never seen before; and I
+had no idea how to eat it, so I said it didn't agree with me; and then I
+was astonished to see the other people at the table--educated, cultured
+people they were, too--pick it up in their fingers and gnaw it off just
+as an animal would! Ah, that was a strange sight!"
+
+I do not know when I have spent a pleasanter half-hour; but he had to
+bid us good-bye, at last, for he was due at some service; and he wrung
+our hands and wished us Godspeed, and sprang on his bicycle and pedalled
+off down the road, turning at the corner to wave his hat to us. And I am
+sure his heart was light at thought of the good deed he had done that
+day!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Galway possesses a tram-line, which starts at the head of Shop Street
+and runs out to a suburb called Salthill; and as this happens to pass
+St. Joseph's Terrace, we walked slowly on until a tram should come
+along. And in a moment a woman stopped us--a woman so ragged and forlorn
+and with such a tale of woe that, in spite of my dislike for beggars and
+suspicion of them, I gave her sixpence; and she fairly broke down and
+wept at sight of that bit of silver, and we walked on followed by her
+blessings and thinking sadly of the want and misery of Ireland's people.
+
+We had another instance of it, before long, for after we had got on the
+tram, an old man stopped it and tried to clamber aboard, but the
+conductor put him off, after a short sharp altercation, and he followed
+us along the sidewalk, shaking his stick and, I suppose, hurling curses
+after us. The conductor explained that the old fellow had no money to
+pay for a ticket, but had proposed to pay for it after he had collected
+some money which was due him in Galway. This he no doubt considered an
+entirely reasonable proposition, and he was justly incensed when the
+conductor refused to extend the small necessary credit.
+
+"Them ones gave us trouble enough at first," the conductor added. "They
+thought because the trams were owned by the town that they should all
+ride free, and that only strangers should be made to pay. Even yet, they
+think it downright savage of us to put them off just because they
+haven't the price of a ticket. It costs us no more, they say, to take
+them than to leave them, and so, out of kindness and charity, we ought
+to take them. Och, but they're a thick-headed people!" he concluded, and
+retired to the rear platform to ruminate upon the trials of his
+position.
+
+We got down at the head of Shop Street, and Betty went on to the hotel
+to rest, while I spent a pleasant half-hour wandering about the streets
+and through the calf-market. There were numbers of little red calves,
+cooped up in tiny pens, and groups of countrymen standing about looking
+at them, their hands under their coat-tails and their faces quite
+destitute of expression. At long intervals there would be a little
+bargaining; which, if the would-be purchaser was in earnest, grew
+sharper and sharper, sometimes ending in mutual recriminations, and
+sometimes in an agreement, in which case buyer and seller struck hands
+on it. Then the calf in question would be caught and his legs tied
+together, and a piece of gunny-sack wrapped about him, and he would be
+carried away by his new owner. Or perhaps he might be sent somewhere by
+parcel-post. Calves tied up in gunny-sacks with their heads sticking out
+form a considerable portion of the Irish mail--how often have I seen the
+postmen lifting them on and off the cars or lugging them away to the
+parcel-room!
+
+Betty rejoined me, after a time, and we got on the tram to ride out to
+Salthill. Curiously enough, when we had climbed to the top of it, we
+found sitting there the old man whom we had seen put off earlier in the
+afternoon. I don't know whether he recognised us; but he at once
+proceeded to relate to us the story of that misadventure, with great
+warmth and in minutest detail--just as he would relate it, no doubt, to
+every listener for a month to come.
+
+"Why, God bless ye, sir, I told the felly he should have his penny," he
+explained, with the utmost earnestness. "There was a man in the town
+would be owin' me eight shillin's, and he had promised to pay me this
+very evenin'--but it was no use; he put me off into the road, bad cess
+to him, and it was in my mind to lay my stick across his head. But he
+can't put me off now," he added triumphantly, and held up his ticket for
+us to see.
+
+And then he told us how he had five miles to walk beyond the end of the
+tram-line before he would be home; but he seemed to think nothing of
+having had to walk ten or twelve miles to collect his wages. Indeed,
+most Irish regard such a walk as not worth thinking of; which is as
+well, since many children have to walk four or five miles to school, and
+men and women alike will trudge twice that distance in going from one
+tiny field to another to do a bit of cultivating. Our new-found friend
+seemed quite taken with us, for when the tram came to a stop, he asked
+us if we wouldn't have a drink with him; and when we declined, bade us a
+warm good-bye, with many kind wishes, and then shambled over to the
+public-house for a last drink by himself. Twenty minutes later, we saw
+him go past along the road, his face to the west, on the long walk to
+his tiny home among the hills.
+
+Salthill is a popular summer resort, and has a picturesque beach. The
+view out over Galway Bay is very beautiful, and the wide stretch of
+water seems to offer a perfect harbour; but there were no ships riding
+at anchor there. Time was when the people of the town fancied their bay
+was to become a world-famous port because of its nearness to America,
+and a steamship company was formed, and the government was persuaded to
+build a great breakwater and half a mile of quays and a floating dock
+five acres in extent. But the company's life was a short one, for one
+of its boats sank and another burned, and the other companies all
+preferred to go on to Liverpool or London or Southampton, and the docks
+and quays and harbour of Galway were left deserted, save for the little
+hookers of the Claddagh fishermen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+IAR CONNAUGHT
+
+
+WE were ready to say good-bye to Galway and to fare westward into far
+Connaught, most primitive of Irish provinces; but on Sunday there is
+only a single train each way, and the westbound one leaves Galway at six
+in the morning. We managed to catch it, somewhat to our surprise,
+crossed the Corrib River on a long bridge and viaduct, and were at once
+in Iar Connaught--West Connaught, the domain of the wild O'Flaherties,
+from whom the dwellers in Galway every Sunday besought the Lord to
+deliver them.
+
+The train skirts the shore of Lough Corrib, and one has beautiful
+glimpses of the lake and the hills beyond; and then it plunges into a
+wild and desolate country, strewn with great glacial boulders, some of
+them poised so precariously on hill-side and cliff-edge that it seems
+the rattle of every passing train would bring them crashing down.
+
+And then we came out upon wide moors, crossed by innumerable little
+streams, and then ahead of us the great Connemara mountains began to
+loom against the sky--gigantic masses of grey granite, bare of
+vegetation, even of the skin of turf which can find foothold almost
+anywhere, but which is powerless against these masses of solid rock. The
+Maamturk Mountains are the first to be seen, rugged giants two thousand
+feet high, and the road mounts toward them over a pass, and then dips
+rapidly to the station at Recess, which was our stopping-point.
+
+It was still so early that there was nobody about, and when we got to
+the hotel we found it locked; but the porter hastened to open the door
+in answer to our ring, and we found ourselves in one of the nicest
+hotels we had encountered anywhere in Ireland. We had already made up
+our minds to spend that Sunday climbing Lissoughter, a mountain just
+back of the hotel, famous for the view from its top; and so, as soon as
+we had disposed of our luggage and eaten a most appetising breakfast, we
+inquired how to get to it. And Sheila was summoned to tell us--Sheila
+with a complexion like peach-bloom, and the brightest of blue eyes, and
+the fluffiest of brown hair, fit to pose as the prototype of Sweet
+Peggy, or Kathleen Bawn, or Kitty Neil, or any other of the lovely girls
+the Irish poets delighted to sing. Not the least of the attractions of
+this hotel at Recess are the girls who work there--as bright and
+blooming a lot of Irish lasses as one could wish to see--and Sheila, I
+think, was the flower of them all. She told us how to go, and we set off
+happily through the soft, bright air of the morning.
+
+Our road, at first, lay along the margin of a placid lake, then turned
+off sharply to the right, and the climb began. It was an easy climb,
+with beautiful views over bogs and lakes and mountains opening at every
+step. There was a wet bog on either side the road, and at a place where
+the peat was being cut, we walked out to take a closer look at it. And
+as we stood there gazing down into the black excavation, we felt the
+ground trembling beneath our feet; and when we looked up, there was a
+man striding upward toward us, two hundred feet away, but at every
+stride shaking the bog so that we could feel the tremor distinctly. The
+bog shook more and more as he approached and passed us; and then the
+tremor grew fainter and fainter as he went on his way. Unless I had felt
+it, I would never have believed that the footsteps of a single man could
+have created so wide a disturbance, and I understood how serious were
+the difficulties the railways had to face in getting across the bogs of
+central Ireland.
+
+Half a mile farther on, we came to a cluster of little cabins clinging
+to the hillside, and we paused to ask the way of a man who was pottering
+about them; and, after a moment, we found that we were talking to Mr.
+Rafferty, who with his brother, both bachelors, own the only quarry in
+the world which produces Connemara marble; and when he offered to show
+it to us, you may well believe we assented.
+
+From the very first moment, I had perceived an air about Mr. Rafferty
+which puzzled me. He was undoubtedly Irish, and yet his manner of
+speaking was not precisely the Irish manner I had grown accustomed to;
+his intonation was not precisely the Irish intonation, his choice of
+words and acquaintance with slang was surprisingly wide for a man born
+and reared in Connemara, and there was a certain alertness about him
+which was not Irish at all. And then, when he started to tell us his
+story, I understood, for he had been born in New York and spent the
+first fifteen or twenty years of his life there. Not until then did I
+realise in how many subtle, scarcely recognisable ways does the American
+Irishman differ from the Irish Irishman.
+
+His father was a Connemara man who had gone to America in the decade
+following the great famine and settled in New York, where the son who
+was talking to us was born. The father had come back to Connemara,
+again, for some reason, and had settled at Recess, and, by mere
+accident, one day discovered the vein of marble high on the side of
+Lissoughter. There was no railroad in the valley then, and nobody
+supposed the vein would ever be of any value, so he managed to get
+control of it, and his sons came back from America to help him work it.
+Its development was very slow and difficult, for the only way of getting
+the marble to market was to haul it along the mountain roads to Galway,
+forty miles distant.
+
+But since the coming of the railroad, all that is changed. Some
+primitive machinery has been installed, larger blocks can be handled,
+and already more than one office building in New York has its vestibule
+embellished with the beautiful green stone. Even the fragments are
+carefully saved and worked up into small ornaments and novelties to sell
+to tourists--round towers and Celtic crosses and such things.
+
+We were at the entrance to the quarry by this time, and he took us
+through and explained its workings to us. It is a surface vein, as you
+will see from the photograph opposite page 322, which I took next day,
+and no one knows its depth or its extent. Enough has been uncovered to
+last for many years, at the present rate of quarrying. Of course if it
+was in America, a great company would be formed to exploit it, and
+modern machinery installed, and it would be yanked out by the thousands
+of tons a day; but since it is in Ireland, I doubt if the rate of
+production will ever be largely increased.
+
+We bade Mr. Rafferty good-bye at last, and took up the climb again
+toward the summit of the mountain which loomed before us; up and up,
+with the view opening more and more. Away at the bottom of the valley
+ran the white ribbon of a road, with a cluster of thatched roofs huddled
+near it, here and there; and beyond the valley towered the granite sides
+of the Twelve Pins of Bunnabeola, the loftiest and most picturesque
+mountains in these western highlands.
+
+We came to a cabin, presently, away up there by itself on the mountain
+side, and we stopped long enough to leave the specimens of marble which
+Mr. Rafferty had given us, for they threatened to become embarrassingly
+heavy before the climb was ended. The family who lived there came out to
+show us the best way up the hill, and stood watching us as we climbed
+on. The path for a time lay along the bottom of a brook; then we came
+out upon the bare hillside, with an outcrop of granite here and there
+and dripping bog between, and no living thing in sight except agile,
+black-faced sheep, who peered down at us curiously from every crag. The
+way grew steeper and steeper and the stretches of bog more wet and
+treacherous; but always the view was more magnificent, especially to the
+west, where the Twelve Pins were, and to the south, where the plain
+stretched away, gleaming with innumerable little lakes. I never saw so
+many lakes at one time as I saw that day--there must have been two or
+three hundred of them between us and the far horizon, each of them
+gleaming in the sun like a polished mirror.
+
+After an hour of this steep and slippery work, Betty declared that she
+had had enough; but the last grey escarpment of the mountain loomed just
+over our heads, and I hated to give up with the goal so near. She said
+she would wait for me while I went up alone, so, leaving her cosily
+seated in a niche in the cliff, I scrambled on, along the granite wall,
+on hands and knees sometimes; and at last I came out upon the very
+summit, with one of the most beautiful views in all Ireland at my feet.
+
+Lissoughter stands exactly at the end of a great transverse valley, with
+the Maamturk Mountains on one side and the Twelve Pins on the other, and
+at the bottom of this valley gleam the waters of Inagh and Derryclare;
+and the granite hills stretch away as far as the eye can see, one behind
+the other, rugged and bleak, without a sign of vegetation--far more
+impressive than the green-clad hills about Killarney. The day was
+gloriously clear, and I sat there for a long time, gazing first this way
+and then that, and I can shut my eyes now and see again that glorious
+landscape. The top of Lissoughter is a ring of granite, with a bog in
+the depression in the centre; and on the highest point of this ring some
+one had heaped up a little cairn of stones. Feeling something like Peary
+at the north pole, I tore a leaf from my note-book, wrote my name and
+address upon it, with greetings to the next comer, and placed it under
+the topmost stone of this cairn. I did not suppose that it would ever be
+discovered, but when I got home, I found a postal awaiting me from an
+Irish girl, who had climbed Lissoughter with a party a week later, and
+found my note where I had left it.
+
+When we got down again to the cottage where we had left our marble, we
+found the man of the house out in front, and stopped for a chat with
+him. Yes, it was a fine day; very wet it had been, but a few more such
+days as this would do the potatoes a world of good, and one could get
+into the bogs again to cut the winter fuel. As we talked, children
+gathered from various directions, until there were ten standing about
+staring at us, and Betty asked him if they were the neighbours'
+children.
+
+"They are not, miss," he answered, grinning. "They're all mine."
+
+"All yours!" echoed Betty, and counted them again.
+
+The man turned to the eldest girl.
+
+"Mary Agnes, go bring the baby," he said; and Mary Agnes disappeared
+indoors, and came out presently with number eleven.
+
+How they manage to live I don't know; but they do live, and, so far at
+least as the children are concerned, even grow fat. Their bright eyes
+and red cheeks spoke of anything but undernourishment, and it must take
+a large pot to hold enough to satisfy that family! How the pot is filled
+is the mystery.
+
+Their home was typical of Connaught--and of the poorer part of all
+Ireland, indeed: a low cabin, built of stones and whitewashed, with two
+rooms, a dirt floor, a few pieces of rude furniture, a pile of straw and
+rags for a bed, and hardly enough clothes to go around. In fact, below
+the age of ten or twelve, it was impossible to tell the boys from the
+girls, for they were all dressed alike in a single garment, a sort of
+shift made of homespun flannel, and usually, I judge, cut out of the
+mother's old red petticoats; and boys and girls alike have their hair
+cropped close. All through Connemara we saw this fashion--a single
+rudely-made garment of wool, worn by the children of both sexes all the
+year round, without undergarment of any kind, without shoes or
+stockings. The flannel the garments are made of is practically
+indestructible, and I fancy they are taken off only when outgrown and
+passed on to the next youngest member of the family. When a boy outgrows
+it and is privileged to put on trousers, it is a proud day for him, for
+he ceases to be a mere petticoated "malrach" and becomes a "gossure."
+
+Mary Agnes, the oldest member of this particular family, was a girl of
+sixteen, who was soon to leave for America to try her fortune; I don't
+know by what miracles of self-denial the money for her passage had been
+scraped together! She was an ugly girl, with bad teeth and stupid
+expression, and I am afraid she will find life no bed of roses, even
+here in America. The rest of the children went to school; and the
+nearest schoolhouse was five Irish miles away!
+
+We went on at last, down past the other cabins, which are occupied by
+the men employed in the quarry. They were all faithful replicas of the
+one I have described, and they were all swarming with children. I never
+ceased to be astonished at these children, for though they were dirty
+and half-naked, they all seemed plump and healthy. Potatoes, I suppose,
+is the main article of their diet, for every cabin had its deep-trenched
+patch, won by back-breaking toil from the rocks of the hillside. That
+leisurely walk down into the green valley is unforgettable, the day was
+so bright, the air so fresh and sweet, the view so lovely.
+
+[Illustration: THE CONNEMARA MARBLE QUARRY]
+
+[Illustration: A CONNEMARA HOME]
+
+We spent the remainder of the afternoon playing clock golf, and
+exploring the beautiful garden attached to the hotel; and that night we
+sat in front of a great open fire-place where a wood fire crackled, and
+luxuriated in the pleasant fatigue of a well-spent day. If I had known
+as much then as I do now, we would have spent other evenings there, for
+Recess is as good a point as any from which to explore Connaught, and
+the hotel there is immeasurably superior to any other in that section of
+Ireland--clean and bright and comfortable and well-managed, with food
+that was a pleasant variant from the unimaginative dishes we had grown
+so weary of. It has been built by the railroad company to encourage
+tourist traffic, and I don't see how it can pay; but, for the sake of
+travellers in that part of Ireland, I hope it will never be closed.
+
+I said something of this, that evening, to the manager and to Sheila;
+and added to the latter that if she would tell me the secret of her
+complexion, I would make a fortune for both of us.
+
+"'Tis just the air," she laughed. "Send your lady friends out here to
+us, and we'll soon have them blooming like roses."
+
+So there is another reason for a stay at Recess.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I clambered back up to the quarry, next morning, for I wanted some
+pictures of it, and of the quaint cabins along the way. I found Mr.
+Rafferty there, and a gang of men busy loading some blocks of marble
+upon a cart, preparatory to taking them down the mountain. Just back of
+the quarry, two red-skirted women were digging in a potato patch, and
+they looked so picturesque and Millet-like that I asked them if I might
+take their picture. They held a quick consultation, and then said I
+might provided I paid them two shillings first!
+
+But I _did_ want a picture of one of those poor little mountain cabins,
+and on my way back, I saw a woman standing at the door of one of them,
+and she passed the time of day so amiably that I stopped to talk. The
+year had been very hard, she said--as what year is not, in such a
+place!--and her husband was even then at Oughterard, trying to find
+work. Meanwhile, she was left with the children, to do the best she
+could, and what they found to live on I don't know; but she was glad for
+me to take a picture of her little place, with herself and the children
+and the dog standing in front of it, and I am sure the coin I slipped
+into the baby's fist was very welcome. That picture is opposite page
+322, and it gives a better idea than any mere description could of these
+damp, dark, comfortless mountain homes, with their low walls, and tiny
+windows, and leaky, grass-grown thatch, tied on with ropes. Both the
+boys in the picture wear the red flannel garment common to all Connemara
+children. The girl has just outgrown it.
+
+Farther on, I came upon a woman and her daughter, a girl of about
+sixteen, working in a potato patch; and the girl was really pretty,
+although at the moment she was engaged in spreading manure with her
+hands about the roots of the plants. Her skirt was kilted high,
+revealing her graceful and rounded legs, and when she smiled her teeth
+were very white. That was the finishing touch, for teeth are bad in
+Ireland, and most pretty girls need only smile to disillusion one. So,
+after some talk about the weather, and about America, I asked the mother
+if I might not take the girl's picture; and the girl was willing enough,
+for she hastily let down her skirt, blushing with pleasure; but her
+mother shook her head.
+
+"You are not the first one to be askin' that," she said; "but I have
+said no to all of them, for I would not have her growing vain."
+
+"She has a right to be vain," I pointed out, "for she is very pretty;
+and it wouldn't hurt her to have her picture taken."
+
+"Handsome is as handsome does," said her mother; "and she is not as good
+as she looks."
+
+No doubt with a little more blarney I could have won her consent; but in
+my heart of hearts I knew she was right, and I didn't try to persuade
+her. It was not the first time I realised I was not cut out for a
+photographer! She said the girl would be going to America before long,
+and I advised her to take care of her teeth, and bade them good-bye and
+went on my way. I have regretted since that I didn't try the blarney,
+for that picture would certainly have embellished the pages of this
+book!
+
+I had thought that the fine weather would bring out the turf cutters in
+force, and I had hoped to get a picture of them at work; but the
+cuttings were all empty, for some reason, and at last, after a final
+long look at the beautiful valley, I made my way back to the hotel, and
+an hour later we were faring westward toward Clifden.
+
+The road ran for many miles with the granite masses of the Twelve Pins
+towering on the right, springing sheer two thousand feet from the bogs
+around them--great cones rising one behind the other, their summits
+gleaming so white in the sun that they seemed crowned with snow. We ran
+away from them, at last, across a dreary moor, down to the sea, and so
+to Clifden.
+
+Clifden is a little modern town with a single wide street overlooking
+the bay; but we had time for only a glance at it, for the motor-bus was
+waiting which was to take us to Leenane,--which is pronounced to rhyme
+with "fan," as though it had no final "e"--and we were soon climbing out
+of the town, with a beautiful view of the bay to the left, and on a
+cliff close to the shore the great masts of the Marconi station, which
+is in touch with the coast of Newfoundland. No contrast could have been
+more complete--this latest and greatest of the achievements of science,
+set down in a country where nothing has altered for five centuries; a
+country to which the description penned by Rory O'Flaherty, more than a
+century before our Revolution, applies as closely and completely as it
+did when it was written. Another contrast, just as great, is that
+between the handsome young Italian who set those masts here and the men
+who live in the little cottages along the sea under them. And yet
+Marconi himself is half Irish--for his mother was Irish, and he has
+married an Irish girl; and I fancy he is glad that one of the greatest
+of his stations should be here on the Irish coast.
+
+We mounted steadily along a winding road, and at every turn the scenery
+grew more superb--great sweeps of rugged landscape, of bog and rocky
+field and granite mountain, rousing the soul like a blare of martial
+music. Beyond Letterfrank, the road dips into the lovely Pass of
+Kylemore; and again, as back at Glengarriff, it was bordered with
+fuchsia hedges, gay with scarlet flowers. And presently we were running
+close beside Kylemore Lake, with the white towers of the castle gleaming
+above the trees on the other side--a magnificent structure, now owned by
+the Duke of Manchester--financed by his Cincinnati father-in-law!
+
+And then we came out upon a wide moor, and the road climbed up and
+up--and all at once, we came to the top of the pass, and there, far
+below us lay Killary Bay, a narrow arm of the Atlantic running back into
+the very heart of the Connemara mountains, which press upon it so
+closely that there is barely room for the road between rock and water.
+We dropped down toward it, passed a tiny mountain village, came out upon
+the shore, and sped along at the very edge of the water, until, far
+ahead, we saw the cluster of houses which is Leenane; and in another
+moment we had stopped before the rambling building which is McKeown's
+Hotel.
+
+McKeown himself is a bearded giant of a man, with bronzed face and the
+sunniest of smiles, and his hotel is a sort of paradise for fishermen.
+To others it is not so attractive; but in surroundings it could hardly
+be surpassed. Right at its door stretches Killary Bay; back of it tower
+the steep hills, and across the inlet grey and purple giants spring two
+thousand feet into the air, right up from the water's edge.
+
+A few looms have been set up by Mr. McKeown in a building adjoining the
+hotel, and tweeds are woven there from yarn spun in the neighbourhood,
+forming a small industry which gives employment to a number of persons;
+and a few yards farther down the road is a station of the constabulary,
+and it looked so bright and inviting that I stopped in for a chat with
+the men.
+
+I have already spoken of the Royal Irish Constabulary--the force which
+polices the country; slim, soldierly men, governed from Dublin Castle,
+and really constituting an army, eleven thousand strong, armed with
+carbines, sword bayonets and revolvers, and ready to be concentrated
+instantly wherever there is trouble. They are nearly all Irishmen, so it
+is not a foreign army, but they are seldom assigned to the districts
+where they were born and reared; and the men who command them from
+Dublin Castle are English army officers, who are in no way responsible
+to the public. All, in fact, that Ireland has to do with the Royal Irish
+Constabulary is to foot the bills.
+
+Because of this fact, because in the old days they were called out to
+assist at every eviction and at every political or religious arrest,
+because their services are still required at every trial and
+mass-meeting and fair and market, and finally because their demeanour is
+sometimes rather top-lofty, the Irish generally regard them with a
+suspicion and dislike which seem to me undeserved. So far as I came into
+contact with them, I found them courteous and kindly men, and apparently
+as good Irishmen as any one could desire. But there is one cause for
+complaint which has a real basis, and that is that, in a country which
+is as free of crime as Ireland now is, a police force should be
+maintained which averages one to every 394 of the population, and which
+costs annually about $7,500,000. In the old days of evictions and
+coercion acts and political and religious strife, some such force may
+have been necessary; but that need has passed. Crime is to-day much less
+frequent and serious in Ireland than in England, yet in Ireland the per
+capita cost of the police is $1.64, while in England it is only
+fifty-six cents.
+
+But the members of the constabulary are not to blame for this, and one
+grows accustomed to seeing them everywhere--at the Dublin crossings, at
+the street corners of every little village, walking briskly in pairs
+along the loneliest of mountain roads, stationed in the wilds of the
+hills or amid the desolation of the bogs, often with no house in sight
+except the barrack in which they live.
+
+I certainly got a warm welcome, that day, from the sergeant in charge of
+the Leenane barrack, and from the one constable who happened to be on
+duty there. They showed me all through the place, clean and bare and
+Spartan-like, with their kits along the wall, ready to be caught up at a
+moment's notice, for a call to duty may come at any time, and there must
+be no delay. It was a real barrack, too, with heavy bars across the
+windows, and a door that would resist any mob.
+
+And then they showed me their equipment. To the belt which they all wear
+a leather case is suspended for the baton, and a square leather pouch
+which contains a pair of handcuffs. At the back is the ammunition pouch,
+and on the side opposite the baton hangs the sword-bayonet, which can
+also be used as a knife or dagger. The small carbine they carry weighs
+only six and a half pounds, but is wonderfully compact and efficient,
+with a six-shot magazine, and a graduated sight up to two thousand
+yards. No man in this station had ever had occasion to use his rifle,
+and they all said earnestly that they hoped they never would.
+
+They have a beat of twelve miles along the mountain roads, and they
+cover it twice every day and once every night. I asked them the reason
+for so much vigilance, for I could not imagine any serious crime back in
+these hills among this simple and kindly people; and they said that
+there was really very little crime; but a sheep would be missing now and
+then, or a bit of poaching would be done, or perhaps a quarrel would
+arise between some farmer and his labourers and a horse would be
+lamed--it was such things as those they had to be on the lookout for.
+The position of constable is a good one--for Ireland; and I imagine that
+most of those who enter the service stay in it till retired, for it
+carries an increase of pay every five years, with a pension after
+twenty-five years' service, or in case of disability.
+
+We sat and talked for a long time about America and Ireland, and
+intelligent fellows I found them, though perhaps with a little of the
+soldier's contempt for the shiftless civilian. And then I walked on to
+the village which nestles at the head of the bay, a single street of
+slated houses. Everybody wanted to talk, and I remember one old granny,
+with face incredibly wrinkled, who sat in front of her door knitting a
+stocking without once glancing at it, and who told me she was
+eighty-five and had nine children in America. And I met the girl who,
+with her brother, teaches the village school, and she asked me if I
+wouldn't come in, before I left, and see the school, and I promised her
+I would.
+
+Then I noticed that one of the little shops had the name "Gaynor" over
+the door, and I stopped in to ask the proprietor if he knew that was
+also the name of the mayor of New York. He did--indeed, he knew as much
+about Mayor Gaynor as I did. There were two other men sitting there, and
+they asked me to sit down. One of them was a mail carrier, and he told
+me something of his trips back up into the hills, and how almost all the
+letters he delivered were from America, each with a bit of money in it.
+
+"When there is bad times in America," he went on, "and when men are out
+of work there, it pinches us here just as hard as it pinches them
+there--harder, maybe, for if the money don't come, there is nothing for
+it but the work-house. A man can't make a living on these poor hill
+farms, no matter how hard he tries, and there is no work to be had about
+here, save a little car driving and such like in the summer for visitors
+like yourself."
+
+"Why do they stay here?" I asked. "Why don't they go away?"
+
+"Where would they go? There's no place for them to go in
+Ireland--America is the only place, and every one that can raise the
+money does go there, you may be sure. Them that's left behind are too
+poor or too old to cross the sea; and then, however bad it is, there is
+some that will not leave the little home they was born in, so long as
+they can stay there and keep the soul in their body. There be some so
+wrongheaded that they won't even move down into the valley farms which
+they might be getting from the Congested Districts Board."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have been fighting shy of the Congested Districts Board ever since I
+left Cork; but here, in the very heart of the worst of the congested
+districts, I may as well explain what the words mean.
+
+No one, travelling from Galway to Clifden and then on to Leenane, as we
+had done, would have thought of the district as "congested," for, while
+the little huddles of thatched roofs which mark a village are fairly
+frequent, they are scarcely noticeable in the great stretches of hill
+and bog and rocky meadow among which they nestle. And, indeed,
+"congested," in this sense, does not mean crowded with people; it means
+exceptionally poor; and there is no district of Ireland poorer than
+Connaught, that land of bog and granite, where every inch of ground must
+be either elaborately drained or wrested from the rock, and where, even
+after years of labour, the fields are still either so wet that a little
+extra rain ruins them, or so full of stones that the reaping must be
+done with the hook. In Connaught, even the poorest man has a right to be
+proud of his home, because, however small and mean it may be, it
+represents infinite toil.
+
+But how does it come that any one lives in these hills, where life is
+such a constant and heartrending struggle? The answer is that Connaught
+is the Irish pale. After Cromwell had subdued Ireland, the Puritan
+Parliament announced that it was "Not their intention to extirpate the
+whole nation," as many people had been led, not unreasonably, to
+believe; and a year later, they proved their humanitarian intentions by
+enacting that such Irish as survived should be permitted to live
+thereafter between the Atlantic and the Shannon, certain portions of
+which were set aside, as the Parliament said in unintentional rhyme,
+
+          "For the habitation
+           of the Irish nation."
+
+It was stipulated, however, that they should not settle within four
+miles of the sea, within four miles of a town, nor within two miles of
+the Shannon; they were given until the first of May, 1654, to get into
+their new homes, after which date, any found outside of Connaught were
+to be treated as outlaws and killed out of hand. The misery and
+sufferings of the little bands of terror-stricken people, wandering in
+the depth of winter westward along unknown roads to an unknown,
+inhospitable country, will not bear thinking of--or, thinking of it, one
+can understand something of Irish hate for Cromwell's memory. As a
+matter of fact, the edict sounds worse than it was, as such edicts
+usually do, for it was impossible for it to be literally carried out.
+All the Irish were not banished to Connaught, for many of them preferred
+to face death where they had always lived rather than among the
+Connemara hills; and they were not murdered out of hand, but given work,
+for the new landlords were glad to employ them at menial labour, since
+no other labourers were to be had. But from that time on, it was usually
+the Protestant Englishman who lived in the mansion house, and the Irish
+Catholic whose home was roofed with thatch and floored with dirt.
+
+Let us be careful not to grow sentimental over the wrongs of Ireland,
+nor to magnify them. They are not unique, for they have been paralleled
+many times in history. We should be careful, too, not to judge a
+seventeenth-century Parliament by twentieth-century ideals. There is
+this to be said for it: that its only hope of existence lay in stamping
+out rebellion, and the only way, apparently, to stamp out rebellion in
+Ireland was to kill the rebels. That the Parliament chose to banish them
+rather than kill them is so much to its credit, and I doubt not that,
+after the vote had been taken, many of those old Puritans went home with
+the feeling that they had done a merciful and Christian deed. Nor should
+we forget that the wars of religion were as bitter on one side as on the
+other: St. Bartholomew was far more bloody than Drogheda, and the
+removal of the Irish to Connaught was matched by the banishment of the
+Huguenots from France, thirty years later. It did not seem possible, in
+that day, that Protestant and Catholic could ever live side by side in
+peace and friendship, and that narrow bigotry alone would strive to keep
+alive the memory of those mistaken, centuries-old feuds and
+persecutions.
+
+The best portions of Connaught were already fully settled, as the
+fugitive Irish found when they got there; furthermore, although the
+broad Shannon formed a natural moat which would hold safely the Irish
+who had crossed it, it was further strengthened by giving to Cromwell's
+soldiers all the broad belt of fertile land along the river, as well as
+the rich valleys running back into the hills. All that was left for the
+newcomers were the bleak moors and rocky mountain-sides, where no one
+else would live; and since these, for the most part, were quite unfit to
+be cultivated, there was every reason to believe that the people
+condemned to live among them would soon cease from troubling.
+
+But they didn't--at least, all of them didn't. They built rude shelters
+of rock for their families, and the cabins one sees to-day throughout
+Connemara are the direct descendants of those early ones, with scarcely
+an altered feature. They set to work to reclaim the hillsides, and
+though, every year, the spade turned up a new crop of stones, the fields
+slowly grew capable of producing a little food. Before that time, of
+course, many of the people had starved, but those that were left were
+all the better off, and it looked, for a while, as though they might
+some day be able to open the door without seeing the wolf there.
+
+But the end was not yet. It should be remembered that these mountain
+farms did not belong to the people who had created them, and who
+laboured constantly to improve them, but were part of the "plantation"
+of some court favourite or adventurer, so that rent must be paid for
+them; and as the farm improved the rent was raised, although the
+improvement resulted from the labour of the man who paid the rent, so
+that, in the end, it was not the tenant who was richer, but the
+landlord. If the rent was raised to a point where the tenant couldn't
+pay it, or if the landlord wanted the land, the tenant was evicted with
+absolutely no compensation for the improvements he had made. Then it was
+a question either of going to America, or, if there wasn't money enough
+for that, as was usually the case, of taking up some other stretch of
+rocky hillside, and beginning the weary struggle all over again. The
+craze for grazing, which started some forty or fifty years ago, resulted
+in the eviction of many thousands from farms their own industry had
+made, and to-day, as one drives through Connaught, one sees great
+stretches of land given over to sheep which were once part of such
+farms, and one can tell it is so by the faint ridges which mark the old
+tillage.
+
+So evolution proceeded, but for the Irish peasantry it was devolution,
+for every step was a step downward; and millions of them left the land
+in despair, and millions of those that remained were unable to make
+enough to live on; and the workhouses kept getting bigger and bigger,
+and the people poorer and poorer; until finally, a few English
+statesmen, with a somewhat broader outlook than the average, saw that
+something had to be done, and set about doing it. There is no need for
+me to enumerate the steps that were taken--some of them wise, many of
+them foolish; but the greatest of all was the enactment of legislation
+permitting and assisting tenants to become the owners of the land on
+which they lived.
+
+This was in 1891, when the Congested Districts Board was established,
+with wide powers, which have since been made wider still; but the kernel
+of it all is this: in the west of Ireland, where the need is greatest,
+the board has power to condemn and purchase at a fair valuation the
+fertile land of the great land-owners, except the demesne, which is the
+park about the mansion house, and can then re-sell this land to small
+farmers, giving them about sixty years to pay for it, the payments being
+figured on the basis of the cost price, plus interest at the rate of
+four per cent. Such condemnation and re-selling is necessarily slow, but
+it is going steadily forward, and must in the end, change the whole face
+of western Ireland. Indeed, there are some who think it has already done
+so.
+
+The Congested Districts Board has done much more than buy and re-sell
+land; it has aided and developed agriculture, improved the breeding of
+stock, encouraged the establishment of industries, developed the
+fisheries along the western coast, established technical schools--in
+short, it has assumed a sort of paternal oversight of the districts
+committed to its care.
+
+All of the "congested districts" aren't in the west of Ireland--there
+are districts in the east and south where the holdings are
+"uneconomic"--that is, where the income possible to be derived from them
+is not enough to support a family--sometimes not enough even to pay the
+rent. But conditions are worst in Connaught, and remain worst, in spite
+of the work of the board. It is here that life has sunk to its lowest
+terms, where the usual home is a hovel unfit for habitation, sheltering
+not only the family, but the chickens and the pigs and the donkey; it is
+here that manure is piled habitually just outside the door, and where
+fearful epidemics sweep the countryside. At the time we were at Leenane,
+there was an outbreak of typhus a few miles back in the mountains. It
+had been announced with hysterical scare-heads by the Dublin papers, but
+the people of the neighbourhood thought little of it--they had seen
+typhus so often!
+
+Which brings me back to Gaynor's general store, and the mail-carrier who
+was telling me about the letters from America.
+
+"Yes," Gaynor put in, "and about the only letters that go out from here
+are for America--and well I know what is inside them! There was a time
+when I sold stamps to the poor people, or gave credit to them when they
+couldn't pay, and the only stamps I ever thought of buying was the
+tuppence-ha'penny ones, which we used to have to put on American
+letters. And many is the letter I have written for poor starving people
+praying for a little help from the son or daughter who had gone to the
+States, and who was maybe forgetting how hard life is back here in
+Connaught."
+
+"Not many of them do be forgetting," said the mail-carrier, puffing his
+pipe slowly; "I will say that for them. There be many away from here
+now," he went on, "just for the summer--gone to England or Scotland to
+help with the harvest. It is a hard life, but they make eighteen
+shillings a week there, and the money they bring back with them will
+help many a family through the winter. There be thousands and thousands
+here in Connaught who could not live but for the money they make every
+year in this way."
+
+He stopped to watch Gaynor weigh out a shilling's worth of
+flour--American flour!--for a girl who had come in with a dingy basket,
+into which the flour was dumped; and then he went on to tell me
+something about his trips up over the hills--for no house in Ireland is
+too poor or too remote for the mail-carrier to reach. Talk about rural
+delivery! With us, a man must have his mail-box down by the highroad,
+where the carrier can reach it easily; in Ireland, the carrier climbs
+to every man's very door, and puts the letter into his hand--and I can
+imagine the joy that it brings. Irish mail-carriers play Santa Claus all
+the year round!
+
+I tore myself away, at last, from this absorbing conversation, and
+started back to the hotel. The sun had not yet set; but suddenly the
+thought came to me that it must be very late, and I snatched out my
+watch and looked at it. It was half-past eight--an hour after the
+hotel's dinner time! However, in a fishing hotel, they are accustomed to
+the vagaries of their guests; and I found that dinner had been kept hot
+for me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later, as we sat on the balcony in front of our room, gazing out
+across the moonlit water, we heard the tread of quick feet along the
+road, and, looking down, saw pass two constables, starting out upon
+their night patrol. And whenever I think of Leenane, I see those two
+slim, erect figures marching vigorously away into the darkness along the
+lonely road.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+JOYCE'S COUNTRY
+
+
+TWENTY-FIVE miles away to the eastward from Leenane, across a wild
+stretch of hill and bog known as Joyce's Country, are the ruins of the
+old abbey of Cong, and thither we set out, next morning, behind a little
+black mare who would need all her staying powers for the trip that day,
+and on a car driven, as was fitting, by a man named Joyce--as perhaps
+half the men are who live in this neighbourhood. "Jyce" is the local
+pronunciation; and the Joyces are one of the handsomest and fiercest
+breeds of mountaineers to be met with anywhere--fit companions for those
+of Kentucky and Tennessee.
+
+The original Joyces were Welshmen, so it is said, who came to Ireland
+about 1300, and, with the permission of the all-powerful O'Flaherties,
+settled in this country between Lough Mask and the sea. Why they should
+have chosen so inhospitable a region I don't know--perhaps because no
+one else wanted it. Certainly the O'Flaherties didn't; for they
+preferred to live along the sea, where fish was plentiful. But the
+Joyces were an agricultural people; they turned as much of the hillside
+as they could into arable land, cultivated with the spade to this day
+and reaped with the hook. On the rest of it, they grazed their flocks,
+and they still graze them there.
+
+It was a beautiful, warm day, with fleecy clouds in the sky and a blue
+haze about the hills, and everybody was out enjoying the sunshine as we
+drove through the village and turned up along the shoulder of the
+Devil's Mother Mountain. The fine weather had brought the men and women
+out to work in the potato fields--such of the men, that is, as hadn't
+yet left for England or Scotland to spend the summer in the fields
+there. Usually there were five or six women to one man, each of them
+armed with a spade or a fork, and it was pitiful to see the poor little
+patches in which they were working. Almost always they were on a steep
+hillside--there isn't much else but hillside hereabouts which can be
+cultivated, for even where there happens to be a little level land in
+the valley, it is almost always wet bog in which nothing can be grown.
+The patches were very, very small, and each of them was surrounded by a
+high wall built of the stones which had been dug from the ground; and at
+the bottom of every slope was a pile of surplus stones which had been
+rolled there out of the way.
+
+The potatoes were planted in drills about two feet wide, and then
+between the drills a deep trench was dug to carry off the water, for
+even on the hillsides the ground is very wet; and these trenches must be
+kept clear of weeds so that the water will run off freely, and of course
+the drills must be kept clear of weeds too; and the ground is so poor
+that manure must be freely used, and the only way to get it where it is
+needed is to place it there by hand. And almost every time the spade is
+driven into the ground, it brings up more stones which must be carried
+away, until it sometimes becomes quite a problem what to do with them.
+
+As many as possible are built into the fences; and the dominant feature
+of every Connemara landscape is the zig-zag tapestry of stone walls
+which covers it. They run in every direction--up the sides of hills so
+steep that it seems a miracle they don't slide off, around fields so
+small that the ground can't be seen above the fence, along the tops of
+high ridges where they form grotesque patterns against the sky which
+shines through every chink, in places where there seems to be no need
+whatever for a wall and yet to which the stones have been carried with
+prodigious labour.
+
+But do not suppose that, even with all this toil, the fields are cleared
+of stones. Everywhere there are outcroppings of solid rock which the
+tiller of the field has been unable to dislodge, and around which he
+must sow and reap. In consequence, there are practically no fields in
+which it would be possible to drive a plow, and few indeed in which it
+is possible to swing a scythe. The fields themselves are so small that
+one wonders anybody should trouble to cultivate them at all. I have seen
+scores and scores not more than fifty feet square, each surrounded with
+its high wall; I have seen many less than that, with just space enough
+for a two-roomed hovel, where the family must take the stock into the
+house with them, because there is no place for an out-building, and
+where the manure must be heaped against the wall, because to throw it a
+foot away would be to put it on land belonging to some one else. The
+land which the family itself cultivated might lie in twenty different
+places, miles away.
+
+This complication, which is unparalleled elsewhere in the world, arose
+in this way: Half a century ago a man would lease some acres of ground
+and by terrific labour convert it into tillable land. As his sons grew
+up and his daughters married, he would sub-let to each of his sons and
+sons-in-law small portions of his holding, and their other relatives
+would do the same, so that, while each of them might be the tenant of
+four or five acres, they would be scattered in a dozen different places.
+A second generation further complicated things. An acre field would be
+split up between ten different tenants, each with his stone wall around
+his portion; and one of the biggest jobs the Congested Districts Board
+has had to tackle is that of so redistributing the land that each tenant
+shall have a compact portion.
+
+Imagine the small farmers of any neighbourhood called together for the
+purpose of redistribution, each of them suspicious and jealous of all
+the others, each of them believing that his scattered bits of land are
+quite exceptionally valuable, each of them remembering the bitter labour
+by which he reclaimed each rood; and then imagine the patience and tact
+which are needed to convince them that they are not being cheated, and
+to persuade them to agree to the proposed re-allotment. Talk about the
+labours of Hercules! Why they were child's play compared with this!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We drove on, that morning, down a wide valley, past these tiny walled
+fields and thatched houses, now and then passing one of the neat little
+slated cottages which the County Council builds where it can, but which
+are distressingly few and far between; and then we came out into the
+grazing country, with stone walls running right up the thousand-foot
+hillsides to the very top, and the white sheep dotted over the green
+turf; and then we turned off along a side-road, which speedily mounted
+through a narrow pass, across a wide bog, and so to the head of a deep
+gorge where, far below us, stretched the blue waters of Lough Nafooey,
+lying in a deep cup of granite mountains.
+
+I have never seen a steeper road than that which zig-zags down into this
+valley, and I was very glad indeed to get off and walk, not only because
+of the steepness, but also because on foot I could stop whenever I chose
+and look at the beautiful scene below--the long, narrow lake, crowded in
+on the south by steep, bare mountains, and with a white ribbon of road
+running along its northern edge, past a cluster of houses built close
+beside it, and with the furrowed fields behind them mounting steeply
+upwards. The whole village was out at work in the fields, and the red
+petticoats of the women gave the scene just that added touch of colour
+it needed.
+
+The mountains on the southern shore grew less rugged presently, and as
+soon as the ground grew level enough for tillage, it presented such a
+complicated pattern of stone walls as must be unique, even here in this
+bewalled district. For more than a mile we drove along opposite them;
+and then we reached the end of the lake, and struck off along another
+valley toward Lough Mask. We were soon on another desolate moor, dotted
+with the black stumps of bog oak; and then the road sank into a pass, as
+the hills closed in on either side, and skirted a dancing brook, and
+then before us opened the lower part of Lough Mask.
+
+[Illustration: IN "JOYCE'S COUNTRY"]
+
+[Illustration: ON THE SHORE OF LOUGH MASK]
+
+I have said that these Irish mountaineers are fierce, and I must explain
+now what I meant by that, for a kindlier people, one more eager to bid
+you welcome or help you on your way, you will find nowhere. The same is
+true of the Kentucky mountaineers; and yet they do not hesitate to put a
+bullet through any man they regard as an enemy. So with the Joyces and
+the O'Malleys. It was here among these hills that the "Invincibles" and
+the "Moonlighters" ranged in the days of the Land League; their notions
+of right and wrong were, and still are, the old primitive ones. They
+believe in the Mosaic law of an eye for an eye; murder after murder has
+been done here, and no one disapproved; and yet a man with a purse
+filled with gold, or a woman with no protection save her chastity, might
+walk these roads unharmed and unafraid on the darkest night.
+
+Just before one reaches the bridge over the narrow stream through which
+the upper lake flows into the lower, the road passes close to a cluster
+of houses, and it was in one of them that two bailiffs of Lord Ardilaun
+were beaten to death, and their bodies placed in sacks weighted with
+stones; and then they were carried down to the lake, and every one along
+the road was made to lend a hand to carrying them. That was but one
+tragedy of many such--outbreaks of the feud which started six centuries
+ago, and which only within the past decade has shown any sign of being
+outlived and forgotten.
+
+I do not know when I have been more impressed and astonished than when I
+stood on the bridge over the river below Lough Mask, and gazed out upon
+that noble sheet of water, stretching away to the north like an
+inland sea. It was dotted with beautiful islands, but no farther shore
+was visible, not even when we mounted a bold crag overhanging the water
+in order to get a wider view. We went on again, with the lake at our
+left, and then the road turned away between high stone walls--only these
+walls were solidly built of dressed stones laid in mortar, and were
+surmounted with broken glass set in cement. There was a gate here and
+there, through which we could catch glimpses of wild and unkempt woods,
+a-riot with a luxuriant vegetation bearing witness to the richness of
+the soil.
+
+The wall must have been ten feet high, and after we had gone on for half
+an hour with no sign of it coming to an end, we asked the driver what it
+was, and he told us that it was the wall surrounding part of the estate
+of Lord Ardilaun, which stretches clear on to Cong, a distance of six or
+eight miles--the very choicest land of the whole district. Some of it is
+let to tenants, so our driver said, at rents which are almost
+prohibitive; but the most part is walled in, with many notices against
+trespassing posted about it--a preserve for woodcock.
+
+We dropped through the little town of Rosshill, once the seat of the
+Earl of Leitrim (but now owned by Lord Ardilaun), and then into Clonbur
+(also owned by Lord Ardilaun), where the wall stopped for a while to
+make room for the houses, but began again as soon as the village ended;
+and then we passed a curious collection of cairns on a plateau at the
+side of the road, some of them surmounted by weather-blackened wooden
+crosses; and then on a hill to the right we saw another great cairn;
+and then we suddenly realised that we were on the battlefield of
+Moytura, which raged for five days over this peninsula between Lough
+Corrib and Lough Mask, so long ago that nobody knows exactly when it
+was, though it has been roughly dated at two thousand years before
+Christ.
+
+The contestants in that battle were the Firbolgs, the men of the
+leathern wallets, who had come from the south to Ireland five days
+before the flood, and the De Dananns, a tall, fair, blue-eyed race of
+magicians from the north, who had "settled on the Connemara mountains in
+the likeness of a blue mist." The De Dananns were the victors, and the
+cairns we saw that day were the monuments they raised over the burial
+places of their dead warriors.
+
+There was another famous battle on this same peninsula, not so many
+years ago, for over there on the shore of Lough Mask lived Captain
+Boycott, whose name has passed into the language as that of the silent
+and effective weapon which the peasantry forged against him, in Land
+League days.
+
+Half a mile farther, and a sharp turn of the road brought us into the
+village of Cong, a single street of drab houses, whose principal
+attraction is the ruins of the abbey where the Cross of Cong was
+fashioned; but the long drive had made us hungry, and so first of all we
+stopped at a clean little inn and had tea, and it was set forth in a
+service of old silver lustre which Betty marvelled over so warmly that
+she almost forgot to eat. And then we started for the abbey, which, of
+course, like everything else hereabouts, belongs to Lord Ardilaun.
+
+From the road, all that one can see of it is a portion of the wall of
+the church, so overgrown with ivy that even the windows are covered; but
+we managed to rout out a boy, who took us around to the cloister side,
+which is very beautiful indeed, with its lovely broken arcades, its
+rounded arches, its clustered pillars, and round-headed windows--some
+glimpse of which will be found in the photograph opposite page 346.
+There is not much of interest left in the church, but in one corner is a
+small, dark, stone-roofed charnel house, still heaped high with the
+whitened skulls of the monks who were entombed there.
+
+The abbey stands close to the bank of that wonderful white river which,
+coming underground from Lough Mask, bursts from the earth in a deep
+chasm a mile above Cong, and sweeps, deep and rapid, down into Lough
+Corrib. And the monks at Cong were more ingenious than most, for there,
+on a little island in the middle of the river, stand the ruins of their
+fishing-house, constructed over a narrow channel into which the nets
+were dropped, and they were so arranged that when a fish was captured,
+its struggles rang a bell back at the abbey, and some one would hasten
+to secure it. We made our way through an orchard of beautiful old apple
+trees bearded with lichen, waist-deep in grass, to the very edge of the
+stream, that I might get the picture of this labour-saving edifice,
+which you will find opposite the preceding page.
+
+Then the boy asked us if we would care to see Ashford House, the seat of
+Lord Ardilaun; and for the benefit of those of my readers who are
+wondering from what ancient family Lord Ardilaun is descended, I may as
+well state here that he is none other than Guinness, of Guinness's
+Stout, and takes his title of Baron Ardilaun from a little island out in
+Lough Corrib. We said, of course, that we should like to see Ashford
+House, and we walked for half a mile through the beautiful woods of the
+demesne, up to the great mansion of limestone and granite, set at the
+edge of a terrace sloping down to the lake. The entrance to it is under
+a square tower with drawbridge and portcullised gateway, and the house
+itself is a mammoth affair, with turrets and battlements and towers and
+machicolations and other mediaevalities, quite useless and meaningless on
+a modern residence, and there are acres and acres of elaborately-planted
+grounds, with sunken gardens and fountains and long shady avenues
+stretching away into dim distance.
+
+[Illustration: THE CLOISTER AT CONG ABBEY]
+
+[Illustration: THE MONKS' FISHING-HOUSE, CONG ABBEY]
+
+But nobody lives here except a few caretakers, for Lord Ardilaun, an old
+man of seventy-three, prefers the south of France, so that Ashford House
+is deserted from year's end to year's end, except for a few days now and
+then when a shooting-party of more than usual importance comes to kill
+the woodcock. For the ordinary party, another mansion, farther down the
+lake on Doon Hill, suffices; but when the king comes, as he did in 1905,
+of course the great house has to be opened.
+
+One reads in Murray, which is a very British guide-book, how, on that
+occasion, the king and his party killed ninety brace of woodcock in a
+single day; and how, five years later, 587 brace were bagged in five
+days; but it will be quite impossible for you to understand, unless you
+are also British, the peculiar veneration with which such coverts as
+these are regarded by British sportsmen, and the peculiar cast of
+mind which deems it right and proper that thousands of fertile acres
+should be maintained as game preserves in a land where most of the
+people are forced to wring their livelihood from the rocky hillsides.
+
+It is only for such great parties that Lord Ardilaun returns to do the
+honours; and he hastens away again, as soon as the parties are over. He
+knows nothing of his tenants; he leaves the collection of his rents to a
+factor, and the preservation of his coverts to a force of gamekeepers,
+and any one caught inside the wall may expect to be prosecuted to the
+limit of the law.
+
+Now I have no quarrel with Lord Ardilaun. The stout he sells is honest
+stout, and he got possession of this estate by honest purchase, which is
+more than can be said for most great estates in Ireland. But he presents
+an example of that absentee landlordism which has been the chief and
+peculiar curse of this unfortunate country. With landlords who lived on
+their estates and looked after their properties and got acquainted with
+their tenants and took some human interest in their welfare, the tenants
+themselves seldom had any quarrel. It was the landlords who lived in
+England or on the continent, who entrusted the collection of rents to
+agents, and whose only interest in their Irish estates was to get the
+largest possible returns from them--it was these men who kept the
+country in an uproar of eviction and persecution.
+
+Indeed, I believe that if all Irish landlords were resident landlords,
+the Irish labourer would be better off without the land purchase act;
+for there are no more grasping and exacting masters in the world than
+the small farmers to whom the great estates are passing. The old owners
+might be despotic, but they were not mean; and where they lived among
+their people and came to know them, their despotism was usually a
+benevolent despotism, tempered with mercy. The rule of the small farmer
+will be a despotism, too, but there will be no mercy about it. Joyce,
+our driver, voiced all this in a sentence, as we were driving back.
+
+"Land purchase, is it?" he said, puffing his short pipe, and staring out
+across the hills. "Yes, I have heard much of it; but I'm thinking it
+will be a cruel time for the poor."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The neighbourhood of Cong is remarkable for its natural curiosities, for
+the ground to the north toward Lough Mask is honeycombed with caves,
+made by the water working its way through to Lough Corrib. Geologists
+explain it learnedly, and doubtless to their own satisfaction, by saying
+that the peninsula is composed of carboniferous limestone which has been
+perforated and undermined by the solvent action of the free carbonic
+acid in the river water; but I prefer to believe, with the residents of
+the neighbourhood, that it was the work of the Little People.
+
+The lofty tunnel through which the sunken river flows is accessible in
+several places, and one of these, called the Pigeon Hole, is not far
+from the village and is worth visiting. It is in the centre of a field,
+and is a perpendicular hole some sixty feet deep, clothed with ferns and
+moss and very damp indeed, and the steps by which one goes down are very
+slippery, so that some caution is necessary; but there at the bottom is
+a vaulted cavern through which the river sweeps. The girl who has come
+along, carrying a wisp of straw, lights it and walks away into the
+depths of the cavern, but the effect is not especially dazzling and the
+smoke from the straw is most offensive. They order these things better
+in France--at the Grotto of Han, for instance!
+
+Another curiosity of the peninsula is not a natural but an artificial
+one--a canal dug during famine times with government money to connect
+Lough Corrib with Lough Mask. This was expected to be a great blessing
+to the west of Ireland, extending navigation from Galway clear up across
+Lough Mask and Lough Conn to Ballina; but, alas, when it was finished,
+it was found that the canal wouldn't hold water, for the rock through
+which it was cut was so porous that the water ran through it like a
+sieve, and left the canal as dry as a bone. So there it remains to this
+day, and one may walk from end to end of it dryshod and ponder on the
+marvels of English rule in Ireland!
+
+One thing more at Cong is worth inspecting, and that is the old cross
+which stands at the intersection of the street with the road to the
+abbey. It was erected centuries ago to the memory of two abbots, Nicol
+and Gilbert O'Duffy, whose names may yet be read on its base; and it is
+a cross that can work miracles. Here is one of them:
+
+There was a boy here at Cong, once, who was stupid and could learn
+nothing, but spent all his time wandering along the river or climbing
+the hills or lying in the fields staring up at the sky. Everybody said
+he would come to a bad end; but one day he sat down on the base of this
+cross, and fell asleep with his head against it; and that night, when he
+went home, he took up the newspaper which his father was reading and
+read aloud every word that was on it; and they took him to the priest,
+thinking a spell was on him, and there was not a book the priest had, in
+Latin or Irish or any language whatever, but the boy he could read it at
+a glance; and they sent him down to Cork to the college there, but there
+was nothing his masters could teach him that he did not know already;
+and the fame of him became so great that when Queen Victoria was looking
+about her for a man to put at the head of the new college at Galway, she
+hit upon him, and so he was given charge of Queen's College, and his
+name was O'Brien Crowe, and he made that college a great college, and he
+taught things there that no other man in Ireland had ever so much as
+dreamed of!
+
+I am sorry I had not heard this tale when I was at Galway; I should have
+liked to ask Bishop O'Dee how much of it is true.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We returned to Leenane by a different road, which lay for some miles
+close beside the shore of Lough Corrib, white-capped now under a stiff
+wind which had arisen, and studded with lovely green islands. It is
+undoubtedly one of the most beautiful of the Irish lakes, but even here
+the shadow of Land League days still lingers, for close by the shore is
+Ebor Hall, which was the residence of Lord Mountmorris, who was beaten
+to death near by; and as we drove on, our jarvey pointed out the scenes
+of similar if less famous tragedies, whose details I have forgotten. But
+all that was thirty years ago; the problem which the Land League tried
+to solve has been solved in another fashion; the peasantry of Ireland
+have won the fight for fair rent, fixed hold, and free sale, and can
+afford to forget the past.
+
+Just beyond the Doon peninsula, the road opens up the long expanse of
+the narrow arm of the lake which runs back many miles into the
+mountains, and on an island a little distance from the shore, towers the
+keep of a ruined castle--Caislean-na-Circe, or Hen Castle in the prosaic
+vernacular. Islands, as you will have remarked before this, were a
+favourite place in Ireland for castles and monasteries, and the deeper
+the water about them the better, for it was a welcome defence in the
+days when midnight raids were the favourite pastime of every chief, and
+no sport was so popular with the English as that of hunting the Irish
+"wolves."
+
+There are many legends to explain the name of this castle in Lough
+Corrib. One is that the castle was built in a single night by an old
+witch and her hen, and she gave it and the hen to The O'Flaherty,
+telling him that, if the castle was ever besieged, he need not worry
+about provisions, since the hen would lay eggs enough to keep the
+garrison from want. It was not long before a force of O'Malleys ferried
+over from the mainland and camped down about the walls, and O'Flaherty,
+forgetting the witch's words, killed the hen and was soon starved out.
+Another legend is that the castle was held during a long siege by the
+formidable Grainne, wife of Donell O'Flaherty, and that her husband was
+so proud of her that he named the place Hen Castle in her honour. Still
+another is that the Joyces were holding it against the O'Flaherties,
+but were about to surrender, when the famous Grace O'Malley marched a
+party of her clansmen over the mountains from the sea and drove the
+O'Flaherties off, and so it was named after her. These are examples of
+what the Irish imagination can do when it turns itself loose; for the
+fact is that the castle, at least as it stands now, was built by Richard
+de Burgo, that first old doughty Norman ruler of Connaught, to hold the
+pass from the isthmus of Cong into the wilds of Connemara. The keep is
+plainly Anglo-Norman, flanked by great square towers of cut limestone.
+
+A few miles farther on is the village of Maam, set in the midst of
+magnificent scenery at the intersection of two valleys, one running to
+the west and one to the south, closed in by the wildest, bleakest,
+ruggedest of mountains. Our driver drew up here to water and wind the
+horse, and I wandered about the village for a while, and stopped at last
+at the open door of a little cottage where an old woman and some
+children were sitting before a flaring fire of turf, and a hen was
+hovering some chickens in a basket in one corner. Three or four others
+were wandering about the dirt floor, looking for crumbs as a matter of
+habit, though they must have known perfectly well that there were no
+crumbs there.
+
+I was welcomed heartily and invited to sit down before the fire, with
+that instinctive courtesy and open-heartedness which is characteristic
+of the Irish peasantry. Let the traveller take shelter anywhere, pause
+before any door, and he will be greeted warmly. There is an old Irish
+riddle which runs something like this:
+
+          From house to house it goes,
+            A wanderer frail and slight,
+          And whether it rains or snows,
+            It bides outside in the night.
+
+It is the footpath the Irish mean; and if they could bring it in out of
+the rain and the snow, I am sure they would, just as they bring their
+chickens and cats and dogs and pigs and donkeys in, to share the warmth
+of the fire.
+
+So in this little cottage a stool was at once vacated for me and set in
+a good place, and a ring of smiling faces closed around me, and the rain
+of eager questions began as to whence I came and whither I was going. I
+wish I could give you some idea of the tangle of trash that littered the
+single room of that hovel--old clothes, old boards, broken baskets, a
+pile of turf in one corner but scattered all about where the chickens
+had been scratching at it, a low shelf piled with rags and straw for a
+bed, a rude dresser displaying some chipped dishes--but I despair of
+picturing it. And the dirty, ragged children, with their bright eyes and
+red cheeks; and the old woman, wrinkled and toil-worn, but obviously
+thinking life not so bad, after all. . . .
+
+A whistle from Joyce told me that he was ready to start, and we were
+soon climbing out of the valley, emerging at last upon a vast moor, with
+great mountain masses away to the south, their summits veiled in mist.
+We could see groups of people working in the bog here and there, and at
+last we came upon two men and two boys cutting turf close to the road. I
+asked them if I might take their picture, and they laughed and agreed,
+and it is opposite this page, but the sun was setting and the light was
+not good enough to give me a sharp negative. Still one can see the man
+at the bottom of the ditch cutting the peat with a sharp-edged
+instrument like a narrow spade and throwing the water-soaked bricks out
+on the edge, where the boys picked them up and laid them out at a little
+distance to dry.
+
+[Illustration: THE TURF-CUTTERS]
+
+[Illustration: A GIRL OF "JOYCE'S COUNTRY"]
+
+"There's one would make a picture," said Joyce, about ten minutes later,
+and I turned to see him pointing with his whip at a little girl
+unloading turf from the panniers of a donkey by the side of the road.
+
+Needless to say, I was out of my seat in an instant, and Betty, scarcely
+less excited, was asking the girl if I might not take her picture; and
+then Joyce said something to her in the Irish, and then from across the
+bog came her mother's voice telling her, also in Irish, to hold still
+and do as the gentleman wished.
+
+She was a child of eight or ten, with dark hair and eyes, and slighter
+and frailer than the average Irish child; and she wore the
+characteristic garment fashioned from red flannel which all the poor
+children in Connemara wear; and she was bare-headed and barefooted; and
+her task was to drive the ragged little donkey out into the bog and fill
+the panniers with the bricks, and drive it back again to the side of the
+road, and pile the turf there, ready for the cart which would take it
+away. From the place where the turf was being cut to the roadside was at
+least a quarter of a mile, and how often that child had travelled that
+road that day I did not like to think. From the pile of turf that lay
+at the side of the road, it was evident she had not idled!
+
+She was not without her vanity, for she had her skirt kilted up, and let
+it quickly down as soon as she realised what I wanted; and then she let
+me pose her as I wished. You should have seen her astonishment when I
+pressed a small coin into her hand, as some slight recompense for the
+trouble I had given her; you should have seen her shining eyes and
+trembling lips. . . .
+
+Up we went and up, with the mists of evening deepening about us; and at
+last we reached the summit of the pass, and dropped rapidly down toward
+Leenane. Half an hour later, we trotted briskly up to the hotel, the
+little mare apparently as fresh as ever, in spite of the fifty miles, up
+hill and down, she had covered that day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM
+
+
+IT was well we went to Cong when we did, for the next day was cold and
+rainy, with a clammy mist in the air which settled into the valleys and
+soaked everything it touched. I walked over to the village, after
+breakfast, to keep my promise to the school-teacher. The school is a
+dingy frame building with two rooms and two teachers, a man for the
+older pupils and a woman for the younger ones. They are brother and
+sister, and from their poor clothes and half-fed appearance, I judge
+that teachers are even worse paid in Ireland than elsewhere. But they
+both welcomed me warmly, and the man hastened to set out for me the only
+chair in the place, carefully dusting it beforehand.
+
+He called the roll, and it was delightful to hear the soft, childish
+voices answer "Prisent, sorr," "Prisent, sorr." Then he counted heads to
+be sure, I suppose, that some child hadn't answered twice, once for
+himself and once for some absent friend. There were about thirty
+children present, ranging in age from six to fifteen; and they were all
+barefoot, of course, and such clothing as they had was very worn and
+ragged, and most of them had walked four or five miles, that morning,
+down out of the hills. The teacher said sadly that the attendance should
+be twice as large, but there was no way of enforcing the compulsory
+education law, though the priest did what he could.
+
+I wish I could paint you a picture of that school, so that you could see
+it, as I can, when I close my eyes. In the larger room there was a
+little furniture--a chair and cheap desk for the teacher, some rude
+forms for the children, and a small blackboard; but the other room was
+absolutely bare, and the children sat around on the floor in a circle,
+with their legs sticking out in front of them, red with cold, while the
+teacher stood in their midst to hear them recite. Each of them had over
+his shoulder a cheap little satchel, usually tied together with string;
+and in this he carried his two or three books--thin, paper-covered
+affairs, which cost a penny each; and all the children, large and small,
+had to carry their books about with them all the time they were in
+school because there was no place to put them.
+
+The reading lesson had just started when I entered the room where the
+smaller children were, and it was about the advantages of an education.
+It brought tears to the eyes to hear them, in their soft voices and
+sweet dialect, read aloud with intense earnestness what a great help
+education is in the battle of life and in how many ways it is useful.
+When the reading was done, the teacher asked them the meaning of the
+longest words, and had them tell again in their own way what the lesson
+had said, to be certain that they understood it.
+
+Poor kiddies! As I looked at them, I could see in my mind's eye our
+schoolhouses back home, heated and ventilated by the best systems--there
+was ventilation enough here, heaven knows, for the door was wide open,
+but no heat, though the day was very raw and chilly, and the children
+were shivering--equipped with expensive furniture and the latest devices
+of charts and maps; and I could see the well-fed, well-clothed children,
+with their beautiful costly books which make teachers almost
+unnecessary, languidly reading some such lesson as was being read here
+in Connaught, on the advantages of an education! It would not have been
+read so earnestly, be sure of that, nor with such poignant meaning.
+
+And in that moment, I thrilled with a realisation of Ireland's greatest
+and truest need. It is not land purchase, or reform of the franchise, or
+temperance, or home rule, though these needs are great enough; it is
+education. It is education only that can solve her industrial problems
+and her labour problems; and, however she may prosper under the
+favouring laws of a new political regime, it is only by education, by
+the banishment of ignorance and illiteracy, that she can hope to take
+her place among the nations of the world.
+
+It was a sort of vision I had, standing there in that bare little room,
+of a new Ireland, dotted with schools and colleges, as she was a
+thousand years ago, illumined with the white light of knowledge; but
+here, meanwhile, were these eager, bright-eyed, ragged little children,
+stumbling along the path of knowledge as well as they could; but a rocky
+path they find it, and how deserving of help they are! I wish you could
+have seen those soiled, thumbed little readers, which cost, as I have
+said, only a penny each, and which, if they had cost more, would have
+been beyond the reach of the average Connaught family.
+
+I bought a few of them, afterwards, to bring home with me, and when I
+looked through them, I found them very primitive indeed. Here, for
+instance, is Lesson Six in the primer:
+
+          Pat has a cat.
+          It is fat. It is on the mat.
+          The cat ran at the rat.
+          It bit the fat cat.
+          Pat hit the rat.
+          The rat ran. The cat ran at it.
+          The rat bit the fat cat.
+
+Cats and rats used, I remember, to be favourite subjects in the readers
+of my own early school days; and so were dogs. It is still so in
+Ireland, as Lesson Eight will show:
+
+          Is it a dog?
+          It is a fox.
+          Was the fox in a box?
+          The dog was in the box.
+          He was in the mud.
+          Rub the mud off the dog.
+          He ran at the fox in the mud.
+          The dog ran at the fox and bit it.
+
+My principal objection to this is that it is nonsense: how, for example,
+if the dog was in the box, could it have been also in the mud? These
+questions occur to children even more readily than to adults, and to
+teach them nonsense is wrong and unjust. Also these lessons tell no
+story; they have no continuity; they ask questions without answering
+them; they change the subject almost as often as the dictionary. Here,
+for instance, is the first lesson of the second term:
+
+          Tom put the best fish in a dish.
+          The cat sat near it on a rug.
+          Let the hen rest in her nest.
+          Frank rode a mile on an ass.
+          He went so fast he sent up the dust.
+
+The last sentence shows it was an Irishman made this book; but why, in
+this lesson, did he not continue with the story of the fish in the dish,
+which the cat was plainly watching from the rug with malicious intent,
+instead of branching off to a wholly irrelevant remark about a hen, and
+then to an account of Frank's adventure with an ass? Perhaps the first
+step to be made in educational reform in Ireland is the adoption of
+better school-books, and there is no reason why this step should be
+delayed.
+
+I went back, presently, to the other room where the larger boys and
+girls were reciting in small sections, standing shrinkingly before the
+shrivelled little teacher, whose fierceness, I am sure, was assumed for
+the occasion, and he got out for me a sheaf of compositions which the
+boys and girls had written on the subject, "My Home," and of which he
+was evidently very proud. They were written in the round, laborious
+penmanship of the copy-book, and the homes which they described were,
+for the most part, those poor little cabins clinging to the rocky
+hillsides, which I have tried to picture; but here the picture was drawn
+sharply and simply, with few strokes, without any suspicion that it was
+a tragic one. For instance, this is John Kerrigan's picture of
+
+
+My Home.
+
+          My home is in County Galway and is placed in
+          Ganaginula. It is built on a height near the
+          roadside. The length of it is eighteen feet and
+          the breadth is six feet. It is about ten feet
+          high. The covering is timber and thatch. It is
+          built with stones and mortar. There are four
+          windows, two in the kitchen and two in the room.
+          The floor is made of sand and gravel.
+
+That was all that John Kerrigan found to describe about his home, and I
+dare say there wasn't much more; but it is easy to picture it standing
+there on the bleak hillside, with its low walls of rubble and its roof
+of thatch, and its two little rooms, nine feet by six, with dirt floor
+and tiny windows. And at one end of the kitchen there would be an open
+fireplace, with some blocks of turf smoking in it, and above the turf
+there would be hanging a black pot, where the potatoes are boiling which
+is all John will have for supper. . . .
+
+I put the compositions aside, for a lesson in Gaelic had begun. The
+teacher wrote on the little blackboard some sentences composed of the
+strangest-looking words imaginable, and the pronunciation of them was
+stranger still. But the lesson proceeded rapidly, and it was evident
+that most of the children understood Gaelic quite as well as they did
+English. That, of course, is not saying very much; and I fancy that
+about all these children can be expected to learn is to read and write.
+Indeed, it is a wonder that they learn even that, for the odds against
+them are almost overwhelming.
+
+I bade them good-bye at last, and returned pensively to the hotel, and
+there I found the district physician making some repairs to his
+motor-cycle. It probably needs them often, for the roads up into the
+hills are trying for anything on wheels; but he said it was surprising
+where it would go and how much knocking about it would stand. And then,
+naturally enough, we fell into talk about his work.
+
+Every poor person in Ireland is, as I understand it, entitled to free
+medical attendance. The country is divided into districts, in each of
+which a doctor is stationed, paid partially by the government and
+depending for the remainder of his income on his private practice.
+Before a person is entitled to free attendance, he must secure a ticket
+from one of the poor-law guardians, who have the management of the
+charities in each district; and no physician is compelled to give free
+attendance, unless the person asking for it can produce one of these
+tickets.
+
+"Even then," continued the doctor at Leenane, who was explaining all
+this to me, "I don't put myself out, if I think the person presenting
+the ticket can afford to pay. I look him over, of course, and give him
+some medicine, with instructions how to take it--the law compels me to
+do that; but I don't bother myself to see whether the instructions are
+carried out. And if he's really sick, he soon realises that if he wants
+me to be interested, he's got to pay for it, and he manages to find a
+guinea or so. This sounds hard-hearted, perhaps; but it's astonishing
+how many beggars there are in this country, and how the poor-law
+guardians let themselves be imposed on. Why, people come to me with
+cards and try to get free attendance who could buy and sell me ten times
+over! I don't bite my tongue telling them what I think of them, you may
+well believe. The trouble is, the poor-law guardians are natives of the
+district and they all have some axe to grind; so the doctor, who is a
+stranger for whom they care nothing, gets the worst of it. This is about
+the worst district in Ireland, anyway, so big and poor and full of
+hills. A man has to work himself to death to make three hundred pounds a
+year out of it."
+
+Various reflections occurred to me while he was talking. One was that
+three hundred pounds a year is many, many times the income of the
+average dweller in Connaught; and another was that, to leave any
+discretion to the physician in regard to the treatment of charity
+patients is not without its dangers; and still a third was that, in any
+sudden emergency, such as might occur at any time, many valuable minutes
+would be lost if the poor-law guardians had to be hunted up and a card
+obtained before the doctor could be summoned. I suppose, in such cases,
+the doctor is summoned first, and the card secured when there is time to
+do so.
+
+It is probably only in cases of dire need that the district doctor is
+summoned at all. The fact that he is a stranger and a government
+appointee is enough to make a large section of the Irish peasantry
+distrust him. This one told me that he is never called for confinement
+cases, because every old Irish woman considers herself competent to
+handle them, and usually is; and that other cases are treated with "home
+remedies" or visits to holy wells, until they get so bad that the doctor
+is turned to as a last resort.
+
+"The ignorance of the people is past all belief," he went on. "They
+haven't any idea of what causes disease; they never heard of germs; they
+don't know it is unhealthy to have a stinking heap of manure and human
+excrement under the window or in front of the door; they don't believe
+there is any reason why a person dying with consumption shouldn't sleep
+in the same bed with other people, and eat out of the same dishes, and
+spit all about the place. And so we have typhus, and tuberculosis--you
+Americans are partially responsible for that."
+
+"In what way?" I asked.
+
+"The people born and reared in these western highlands, with lungs
+adapted through long generations to this soft, moist climate, can't
+stand the American atmosphere. When they are poor and live crowded
+together in your towns, consumption gets them; and then, when they're
+too far gone to work, they come back home to cough their lives out and
+poison all their friends. They lie in these dark cabins without a
+window, which soon become perfect plague-spots; and the children,
+playing on the filthy, infected floor, get the infection in their lungs;
+or perhaps they cut their knees and rub it into the sore. Ugh! it makes
+one sick to think about it. There ought to be a law preventing any such
+infected person landing in Ireland--you won't let such a one land in
+America."
+
+I had to admit that that would be one way of dealing with the mischief;
+and I suggested that another way would be to try to educate the people
+to some knowledge of the simpler facts of hygiene. But the doctor
+snorted.
+
+"Educate them!" he echoed. "You can't educate them! Why, you haven't any
+conception of the depths of their ignorance. And they're superstitious,
+too; they don't believe in science; they think it's something
+irreligious, something against their faith. If prayers to the Virgin
+won't cure them, or a visit to some holy well or other, why nothing
+will. If I do cure them, I don't get the credit--they simply believe
+they've got on the good side of one of their saints. What is a man to do
+against such ignorance as that? The only reason they don't all die is
+because this country is so full of little streams that the running water
+carries off most of their filth, and the turf smoke which fills their
+houses helps to disinfect them."
+
+I agreed that his was a hard task; and left him still tinkering with his
+motor-cycle, and went over to smoke a pipe with the men at the stables.
+Joyce, our driver of the day before, was there, and he smiled as he
+pointed his pipe-stem toward the doctor, with whom he had seen me
+talking.
+
+"He's a hard one, he is," he said. "Not a word of advice nor a sup of
+medicine do you get out of that one, if he thinks you've got a shillin'
+about you. He thinks we're all liars and thieves, which is natural
+enough, for he's an Englishman--and I'm not sayin' but what it may be
+true of some of us," and he grinned around at his companions.
+
+"Tell the gintleman about the other one," one of them suggested.
+
+"Ah, Mister O'Beirn, that was," said Joyce; "a Galway man, born to the
+Irish. How he got the app'intment, I don't know; but he did stir this
+district up--went about givin' long talks, he did, about how we're made
+and why we get sick, and such like; and he went into the houses and made
+the women wash the childer and set things to rights, and they bore with
+him because they knew he meant them no harm. He wore himself to a bone,
+he did, and we were all fond of him; but I'm not sayin' it wasn't a
+relief when he was moved to another district, and we could make
+ourselves comfortable again."
+
+"No doubt the children are glad, too," I ventured.
+
+"They are, sir; and why should one bother washin' them when they get
+dirty again right away? Sure the women have enough to do without that!"
+
+But it would be a mistake to suppose that the lives of the women and
+girls are all work and no play. Betty chanced to remark to the girl who
+waited on our table at the hotel that she must find the winters very
+lonesome.
+
+"Oh, not at all, miss," she protested. "We have a very good time in the
+winter with a dance every week; and at Christmas Mr. McKeown do be
+givin' us a big party here at the hotel. Then there will be maybe two or
+three weddings, and as many christenings, and some of the girls who have
+been to America will come home for a visit and there will be dances for
+them, so there is always plenty to do."
+
+So Leenane has its social season, just the same as New York and Paris
+and London; and I suppose the same is true of every Irish village. The
+Irish are said to be great dancers, but we were never fortunate enough
+to see them at it.
+
+You may perhaps have noticed that in such Irish conversations as I have
+given in these pages, I have contented myself with trying to indicate
+the idiom, without attempting to imitate the brogue; and this is
+because it is impossible to imitate it with any degree of accuracy.
+Such imitation would be either a burlesque or would be unreadable. For
+example, while we were talking to the waitress at Leenane, Betty asked
+her what a very delicious jam which she served with our tea was made of.
+
+"Black torn, miss," she answered--at least, that is what it sounded
+like.
+
+"Black torn?" repeated Betty. "What is it? A berry or a fruit?"
+
+The girl tried to describe it, but not recognisably.
+
+"Can you spell it?" asked Betty at last.
+
+"I can, miss; b-l-a-c-k, black, c-u-r-r-a-n-t, torn," answered the girl.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We bade good-bye to Leenane, that afternoon, taking the motor-bus for
+Westport, and my friends of the constabulary were out to see me off and
+shake hands, and Gaynor sent a "God speed ye" after us from the door of
+his little shop, and the schoolmaster and his sister waved to us from
+the door of the school. It was almost like leaving old friends; and
+indeed, I often think of them as such, and of that drab little town
+crouching at the head of Killary, and of how serious a thing life is to
+those who dwell there. We looked back for a last glimpse of it, as we
+turned up the road out of the valley--the row of dingy houses, the grey
+mountains rising steeply behind them, the broad sheet of blue water in
+front--how plainly I recall that picture!
+
+There were three other passengers on the bus--an elderly man and woman,
+rather obese and grumpy, and a younger man with clean-shaven eager
+face; and we were puzzled for a time to determine their relationship,
+for the younger man was most assiduous in attending to the wants of his
+companions and pointing out the places of interest along the road. And
+then, finally, it dawned upon us--here was a personally conducted party;
+a man and wife who had brought a guide along to see them safely through
+the wilds of Ireland!
+
+The road from Leenane to Westport is not nearly so picturesque as that
+from Clifden, for we soon ran out of the hills, and for miles and miles
+sped across a wild bog, without a sign of life except a few sheep
+grazing here and there. We met a flock of them upon the road, and the
+way the shepherd's dog, at a sharp whistle from him, herded his charges
+to one side out of the way was beautiful to see.
+
+Then at last, far below us, at the bottom of a valley, we saw the roofs
+of Westport, and we started down the road into it--a steep and dangerous
+road, for we came within an ace of running down a loaded cart that was
+labouring up; and when we came to the foot of the hill, we were startled
+by a remarkable monument looming high in the middle of the principal
+street--a tall, fluted shaft, with two seated women at its base, rising
+from an octagonal pedestal, and surmounted by a heroic figure in knee
+breeches and trailing robe--without question the very ugliest monument I
+ever saw. It was so extraordinarily ugly that we came back next day to
+look at it, and discovered the following inscription:
+
+          To the Memory of
+          GEORGE GLENDINING
+          Born in Westport 1770
+          Died in Westport 1845
+
+If the deceased had any other claim to fame except that he was born in
+Westport, and also ended his days there, it does not appear upon his
+monument.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Westport has only one hotel, and it is probably the worst in Ireland.
+When we had been ushered along its dark and dirty corridors, into a room
+as dingy as can be imagined, and had found that it was the best room to
+be had, and that there was nothing to do but grin and bear it, we sat
+down and looked at each other, and I could see in Betty's disgusted face
+some such thought as Touchstone voiced: "So here I am in Arden. The more
+fool I. When I was at home, I was in a better place."
+
+"'Travellers must be content,'" I said. "Let's get out of here and look
+at the town."
+
+Betty agreed with alacrity; but we soon found that it is a dull and
+uninteresting place, offering no diversion except a stroll through Lord
+Sligo's demesne. The gate was open, so we entered and plodded along a
+sticky road, past the square, unimpressive mansion-house, out to the
+head of Clew Bay. We walked on, past the longest line of deserted quays
+and empty warehouses we had encountered in Ireland. There must be half a
+mile of quays, and the warehouses are towering, four-storied structures,
+with vast interiors given over to rats and spiders; and all along that
+dreary vista, there was just one boat--a small one, unloading lumber.
+
+It was government money, I suppose, which built the quay, and a
+government board which authorised it; and looking at it, one realises
+where Canon Hannay got the local colour for the descriptions of the
+activities of government boards which are scattered through his Irish
+stories. For Canon Hannay, whose pen name is George A. Birmingham, lives
+here at Westport; and the bay which faces it is the scene of most of his
+tales.
+
+It is a beautiful bay, dotted with the greenest of islands; and it was
+among those islands that the irrepressible Meldon sailed in quest of
+Spanish gold; it was there the Major's niece had her surprising
+adventures; and I have wondered since if the grotesque statue back in
+the town may not have suggested that of the mythical General John Regan.
+
+And there, in the distance, towering above the bay, is Croagh Patrick,
+the great hill, falling steeply into the water from a height of 2500
+feet, down which Saint Patrick one fine morning drove all the snakes and
+toads and poisonous creatures in Ireland, to their death in the sea
+below. Indeed, the marks of their passage are still plainly to be seen,
+for the precipice down which they fell is furrowed and scraped in the
+most convincing manner:
+
+          The Wicklow hills are very high,
+            And so's the Hill of Howth, sir;
+          But there's a hill much bigger still,
+            Much higher nor them both, sir;
+          'Twas on the top of this high hill
+            St. Patrick preached his sarmint
+          That drove the frogs into the bogs
+            And banished all the varmint.
+
+The legend is that St. Patrick, who had spent forty days on the mountain
+in fasting and prayer, stood at the edge of the precipice and rang his
+little bell--the same bell we have seen in the museum at Dublin--and all
+the snakes and toads in Ireland, attracted by the sound, plunged over
+the cliff and so down into the sea.
+
+From a distance, Croagh Patrick seems to end in a sharp point; but there
+is really a little plateau up there, some half-acre in extent, and a
+small church has been built there, and on the last Sunday in July,
+pilgrims gather from all over Ireland and proceed to the mountain on
+foot and toil up its rugged sides and attend Mass on the summit and then
+make the rounds of the stations on their knees, just as has been done
+from time immemorial. For Croagh Patrick is a very holy place, since
+Ireland's great apostle prayed and fasted there, and those who pray and
+fast there likewise shall not go unrewarded.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I heard the click of a typewriter, as I went up the walk to the rectory,
+that evening, to spend a few hours with Canon Hannay, and it must be
+only by improving every minute that he gets through the immense amount
+of work he manages to accomplish. He had just arranged for an American
+lecture tour in the following October, and both he and his wife were
+pleasantly excited at the prospect of encountering American
+sleeping-cars and soft-shelled crabs and corn on the cob, and other such
+novelties, some of which they had heard were very dreadful. I reassured
+them as well as I could; and then we talked awhile about George Moore's
+inimitable reminiscences, and Canon Hannay's own books; but the gist of
+the evening was the discussion of Ireland and Irish problems which
+occupied the greater part of it. It was very late indeed when I arose to
+say good-night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE TRIALS OF A CONDUCTOR
+
+
+WE took a last look about the town, next morning, not forgetting the
+Glendining monument, which has the fascination supreme ugliness
+sometimes possesses; and then we walked on down to the station, where a
+loquacious old woman accosted Betty with a tale of woe which culminated
+in an appeal for aid; and it was suddenly borne in on me that not once
+in the whole of Connaught had we encountered a beggar. Not even a child
+had held out its hand or indicated in any way that it desired or
+expected alms. And I do not know that I can pay any greater compliment
+to the people of that distressful province than by setting down this
+fact. We were in Mayo now--and Mayo is different!
+
+The first town out of Westport is Castlebar, which, as Murray puts it,
+"has all the buildings usual in a county town, viz. Asylum, Gaol,
+Court-house and Barracks," and they can be seen looming up above the
+other buildings as the train passes, some half mile away. Beyond
+Castlebar, the line crosses the so-called plains of Mayo, a vast expanse
+of naked limestone rock, very ugly and sinister; and then to the left is
+a village dominated by a round tower; and finally we came to
+Claremorris, where we were to change cars.
+
+Claremorris, no doubt, also has an asylum, a jail, a court-house and a
+barracks; but we didn't go out to see, for nobody seemed to know just
+when our train might be expected, and we were afraid to run any risks.
+So we sat down on the platform, and Betty fell into talk with a clean,
+nice-looking old man, who was carefully gathering up all the dodgers and
+posters and old newspapers that were lying around, and folding them up
+and putting them in his pocket, I suppose to read at leisure after he
+got home. And he told about where he lived, and how many children he
+had, and described the disposition of each of them; and then he
+questioned Betty about her condition in life, and age, and size of
+family, and all the time he was looking intently at her mouth.
+
+"Tell me, miss," he said, at last, "is them your own teeth you've got?"
+
+"Indeed they are," laughed Betty, and clashed them to prove it.
+
+"I would hardly believe it," he went on, and looked closer. "I niver saw
+any like them."
+
+"They're strong as iron," and Betty clashed them again.
+
+"And white as snow. I wish my daughter was here, for she will not
+believe me when I tell her."
+
+Good teeth, as I have remarked before, are the exception in Ireland; and
+most of those that appear good at first glance, turn out, at second
+glance, to be fabrications of the dentist. Perhaps it has always been
+so. Irish poets are fond of dwelling on the glories of Irish hair, and
+it is still glorious; they tell over and over again of the brightness of
+Irish eyes, and they are still bright; they describe how many times the
+beauty of Irish complexions, and there is none to match them anywhere
+else in the world; but I do not remember that any of them refer to
+Irish teeth. It is a pity, for many a pretty face is ruined by the ugly
+teeth a smile discloses.
+
+We got away from Claremorris, finally, after narrowly escaping being
+carried back to Westport, and proceeded northward over a new line which
+has been built across the plains of County Mayo. There were few
+passengers, and we had a compartment to ourselves, except for two
+priests who rode with us for a short distance, and who wanted to know
+all about President Wilson, of whom they had heard many splendid things.
+Just where we crossed into County Sligo I don't know; but we were in it
+at Collooney, a village more prosperous than most, with a number of
+mills; and then we came to Ballysadare, where there are some famous
+salmon fisheries.
+
+As we ran on past Ballysadare, a hill like a truncated cone loomed up on
+the left, and in the centre of the level top was something that looked
+like a huge bump, and as we drew nearer, we saw that it was a great
+cairn of loose stones piled on top of each other. The hill was
+Knocknarea, and the cairn, which is six hundred feet around and
+thirty-five feet high, is said to have been piled over the body of
+Meave, Queen of Connaught, by her tribesmen, in the first century after
+Christ. Meave was killed while bathing in Lough Ree by Conal Carnach,
+who, angry at her share in the death of the mighty Cuchulain, put a
+stone into a sling and cast it at her with such sure aim that he
+inflicted a mortal wound. There is some dispute as to whether she was
+really borne to the top of Knocknarea for burial; but the cairn is
+called "Miscan Meave," or "Meave's Heap," and if it does not actually
+cover her body, it probably commemorates her death. She lived so long
+ago that her name has passed into folk-lore--in England as Queen Mab.
+
+Knocknarea, with its strange shape, dominates the whole landscape, and
+is in sight all the way to Sligo, for the train describes a half-circle
+around it. Sligo itself is a considerable town, with more bustle about
+its streets than is usual in western Ireland, and the proprietor of its
+principal hotel is a canny individual who follows the precept, once so
+popular with American railroads, of charging all the traffic will bear.
+When I asked the price of a double room, he looked me over, and then he
+said ten shillings the night.
+
+"Ten shillings a night!" I echoed, in some surprise, for I had not
+expected to encounter rates so metropolitan on the west coast of
+Ireland; and then I asked to see the room, thinking it might be
+something palatial. But it was quite an ordinary room; clean and airy
+and comfortable enough; but I judged the usual charge for it was about
+five shillings. There are few things I detest more than being
+overcharged. "Come along," I said to Betty. "There's another hotel in
+this town; we'll have a look at it."
+
+The proprietor was waiting nervously in the lobby.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked, as we came down. "Isn't the room all
+right?"
+
+"Oh, it's right enough," I said; "but I'm not going to pay two prices
+for it."
+
+"But this is the best hotel in Sligo," he protested. "There's an
+American millionaire and his wife staying here right now."
+
+"Well, I'm not a millionaire," I said; "and even if I were, I wouldn't
+pay ten shillings for that room," and I started to walk out, for I
+didn't want to argue about it.
+
+But he followed me to the door.
+
+"What would you pay, now?" he asked, ingratiatingly.
+
+I looked at him in surprise, for I hadn't had any idea of fixing his
+rates for him.
+
+"Five shillings," I said.
+
+"You may have it for six," he countered.
+
+I hesitated. I didn't like the man; but it was a nice room, and the
+dining-room looked clean. Probably we should fare worse if we went
+farther.
+
+"All right," I agreed finally; and I am bound to admit that he never
+showed any malice, but treated us as nicely as possible during all our
+stay in Sligo. Perhaps he is a retired jarvey, and this is just his way
+of doing business.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sligo, with its well-built houses and bustling streets, has every
+appearance of being prosperous, and I have been told that it is one of
+the few towns in Ireland which is growing in population. It has had its
+share of battles and sieges, for Red Hugh O'Donnell captured it from the
+English, and then the English captured it from Red Hugh, and camped in
+the monastery and did what they could to destroy it; but enough of it
+remains to make a most interesting ruin, and we set out at once to see
+it.
+
+It is a Norman foundation, dating from 1252, but a good deal of the
+existing structure is later than that. The most interesting feature, to
+my mind, is the row of eight narrow lancet windows lighting the choir of
+the church. I like these early lancets, and I am inclined to question
+whether the wide windows and elaborate tracery of later Gothic are as
+dignified and severely beautiful. There is a grace and simplicity about
+these tall, narrow openings, with their pointed arches, which cannot be
+surpassed.
+
+There are some interesting monuments, too, in the choir, notably a most
+elaborate one to O'Conor Sligo against the south wall. O'Conor and his
+wife, life-size, kneel facing each other in two niches, over and below
+and on either side of which are sculptured cherubs and saints and skulls
+and swords and drums and spades and hooks and hour-glasses, together
+with the arms of the family and an appropriate motto or two. From the
+choir, a low door gives access to the charnel-house, and beyond that is
+the graveyard; while from the nave there is an entrance to the
+cloisters, three sides of which are very well preserved, though the
+level of the ground almost touches the base of the pillars.
+
+It is, I should say, at least four feet higher than it was when the
+cloisters were built, and this accretion is mostly human dust, for the
+graveyard has been in active use for a good many centuries. Burials grew
+so excessive, at last, that before one body could be placed in the
+ground, another had to be dug out of it; and gruesome stories are told
+of the ruthless way in which old skeletons were torn from the graves and
+thrown out upon the ground and allowed to lie there, a scandal to the
+whole county. All that has changed now, and there wasn't a bone in sight
+the day we visited the place. Indeed, the old caretaker waxed very
+indignant about the way he had been wronged.
+
+"'Tis in that book you have in your hand the slander is," he said, and
+nodded toward my red-bound Murray, and I read the sentence aloud:
+
+          "The exposure of human remains, and the general
+          neglect here and in other church ruins, are a
+          scandal to the local authorities."
+
+"Now, I ask ye to look around, sir," continued the caretaker, excitedly,
+"and tell me if ye see anywhere aught to warrant such words as them
+ones. Human remains, indeed! Ye see, sir, it was like this. The day the
+felly was here who wrote that book, I had just picked up a bone which
+had got uncovered on me, and slipped it under a tomb temporary like,
+till I could find time to bury it decent; and then he come by, and saw
+it, and that was what he writ. The bones do be workin' up to the surface
+all the time--and how can that be helped, I should like to know? But I
+put them under again as soon as I see them. As for neglect--look about
+ye and tell me if ye see neglect."
+
+I assured him that everything seemed to be in good shape, for the grass
+had just been cut and everything was very tidy. And then he told me that
+he and his helper had been working on the place for a week past,
+because, in a few days, the Irish Antiquarian Society was to meet at
+Sligo, and its members would be poking their noses about everywhere.
+From which I inferred that, perhaps, at ordinary times, the place may be
+rather ragged, and that an occasional bone _may_ escape the guardian's
+watchful eye.
+
+When we got back to the hotel and entered the dining-room for dinner, we
+were amused to find that the American millionaire and wife, of whom the
+proprietor had boasted, were no other than the personally-conducted
+couple who had come with us on the coach from Leenane to Westport. They
+were eating grumpily, while their guide, who ate with them, was doing
+his best to impart an air of cheerfulness to the meal by chattering away
+about the country. The head-waiter hovered near in a tremor of anxiety,
+and almost jumped out of his skin whenever the guide raised his finger.
+
+I went into the smoking-room, later on, to write some letters; and
+presently the door opened, and the guide slipped in, and closed the door
+carefully, and sat down with a sigh, and got out a pipe and filled and
+lighted it, and rang for a whiskey and soda. And then I caught his eye,
+and I couldn't help smiling at its expression, and in a minute we were
+talking. He was a special Cook guide, he told me, and the two people
+with him were from Chicago.
+
+"I fancied," he went on, "when I took this engagement, that I was going
+to have an easy time of it with just two people, but I have never worked
+so hard in my life. The man is all right; but all the woman wants to do
+is to keep moving on. You know Glengarriff? Well, then you know what a
+jolly place it is, and what a splendid trip it is over the hills from
+Macroom. Would you believe me, that woman would not even turn her head
+to look at that view. I would say to her, 'Now, Mrs. Blank, isn't that
+superb!' and she would just bat her eyelids; and when we got to
+Glengarriff, she raised a most awful row because we had to stay there
+over night, and because there was no light but candles in the bedrooms.
+
+"I don't know why such people travel at all," he went on wearily. "Yes I
+do, too--she travels just to buy post-cards and send them back home. She
+buys a hundred at every stop, and as soon as she gets them addressed and
+posted, she is ready to start on. Ruins? Why she won't look at ruins.
+She wouldn't even get out of the carriage at Muckross Abbey--but she
+thinks that new Catholic cathedral at Killarney a marvel of beauty. It
+is the only thing she has grown enthusiastic about since she has been in
+Ireland. We had planned to stay at Killarney four days, but she wanted
+to go on before she had been there four hours. I tell you, sir, it's
+disheartening."
+
+I asked him how long he had been conducting for Cook, and he said only
+for a short time, for he was an actor by profession, and hoped to return
+to the stage some day. But by a run of bad luck, he had been involved in
+three or four failures, and had been driven to Cook's to make a living.
+He had been to America, and he told me with what company, but I have
+forgotten, and then he was going on to tell me what roles he had played
+and which of them had been his greatest successes, and the worn,
+harassed look left his face--and just then the door opened and the
+Chicagoan stuck his head in, and frowned when he saw us talking and
+laughing together; and my companion grew suddenly sober, and went out to
+see what was wanted, and I didn't see him again. I suppose they were on
+their way at daybreak.
+
+Sligo is the centre of one of the most interesting districts in Ireland
+for the antiquarian. There is that great cairn on the top of Knocknarea,
+and on the plain of Carrowmore near the mountain's foot is such a
+collection of megalithic remains as exists nowhere else in the British
+Isles, while on the summit of a hill overshadowing Lough Gill is a
+remarkable enclosure, resembling Stonehenge, but far more extensive.
+
+It was for Carrowmore we set off on foot, next morning, determined to
+spend the day, which was beautifully bright and warm, in a leisurely
+ramble over the plain, which, four thousand years ago, was the scene of
+a great battle, in which the De Dananns were again the victors, as they
+were at Moytura, below Lough Mask. This battle is known as Northern
+Moytura, and here the De Dananns met and conquered Balor of the Evil Eye
+and his Formorians, and after that they were undisputed masters of Erin
+for a thousand years, until the Milesians, or Gaels, sailing from
+south-western Europe, beached their boats upon the shore of Kenmare Bay.
+It was to mark the graves of the warriors who fell in that dim-distant
+fray that the circles and cromlechs which dot its site were probably
+erected; but the Irish have another theory, which we shall hear
+presently.
+
+I shall not soon forget that walk, at first through the busy streets of
+the town, past solid, well-built houses of brick, with bright shops on
+the lower floor and living-rooms above; then into the poorer and
+quainter quarter, where the houses are all one-storied, built of rubble,
+roofed with straw, and, as we could see through the open doors, stuffed
+with trash, as all these little Irish houses seem to be; and finally
+out along the country road, between fragrant hedges, occasionally
+passing a pretty villa, set in the midst of handsome grounds--and then
+we came to a place where the road branched, and we stopped.
+
+Our guide-book gave no definite directions as to how to get to
+Carrowmore. "On Carrowmore," it says, with magnificent vagueness,
+"within three miles south-west of Sligo, is a large and most interesting
+series of megalithic remains"; nor does it tell how far the remains are
+apart, or how to find them. If it had been Baedeker, now, we would not
+have stood there hesitant at the cross-roads, because he would not only
+have told us which way to turn, but would have provided a diagram, and
+led us step by step from one cromlech to the other. There is no Baedeker
+for Ireland, which is a pity, for I have never yet found a guide to
+equal that painstaking German.
+
+There was no one to ask, so we took the road which led toward
+Knocknarea; but after we had gone some distance, a telegraph-boy came by
+on his wheel, and told us that we should have taken the other road; so
+we walked back to the branch and turned up it. The road mounted
+steadily, and after about a mile of up-hill work, we came to a cluster
+of thatched houses, and I went up to one of them to ask the way of a
+woman who was leaning over her half-door.
+
+I think I have already said somewhere that Irish directions are the
+vaguest in the world--perhaps this is the reason Murray is so vague,
+since it is written by an Irishman!--and the conversation on this
+occasion ran something like this:
+
+"Good morning," I began. "It is a fine day, isn't it?"
+
+"It is so, glory be to God."
+
+"Can you tell me how to get to the cromlechs?"
+
+"The cromlechs? What might that be?"
+
+"The big stone monuments that are back here in the fields somewhere."
+
+"Ah--so it is the big stones you would be after?"
+
+"Yes. Can you tell me how to get to them?"
+
+"I might," said the woman cautiously. She had been looking at me all
+this time with the brightest of eyes, and then she looked at Betty, who
+had remained behind at the gate. "Is yon one your wife?" she asked, with
+a nod in Betty's direction.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You would be from America."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you people hereabouts?"
+
+"Oh, no; we haven't any relatives in Ireland."
+
+"And would you be comin' all this way just to see the big stones?"
+
+"We want to see everything," I explained. "The stones are near here,
+aren't they?"
+
+"They are so. Just a step up yonder lane, and you are right among them."
+
+She was preparing to ask further questions; but this direction seemed
+definite enough, so I thanked her and fled, and Betty and I proceeded to
+take a step up the lane. We took many steps without seeing any stones;
+and finally we turned up a narrow by-lane, and came to a tiny cottage,
+hidden in the trees. We were greeted by a noisy barking, and then a man
+hurried out of the cottage and quieted the dog and told us not to be
+alarmed. We told him we were looking for the stones.
+
+"There be some just a small step from here," he said; "but you would
+never find them by yourselves, so I will go with you. You are from
+America, I'm thinking?"
+
+"Yes," I admitted, wondering, with sinking heart, if it was going to
+begin all over again.
+
+"I have four brothers in America, and all doing well, glory be to God,
+though seldom it is that I hear from them."
+
+"How did you happen to stay in Ireland?" I asked.
+
+"One must stay with the mother," he explained simply. "I was the oldest,
+so that was for me to do."
+
+He was a nice-looking man of middle age, with a kindly, intelligent
+face, and eyes very bright; and while his clothes were old and worn,
+they were clean.
+
+"She is dead now, God rest her soul," he added, with a little convulsion
+of the face I didn't understand till later, "and I am alone here."
+
+"What," I said; "not married?"
+
+"No," he answered, with a smile, "there's just Tricker and me."
+
+"Tricker?"
+
+"Sure that's the dog, and a great help he is to me. Come here, Tricker,
+and show the lady and gentleman what you can do." The shaggy black dog
+came and sat down in front of him, looking up at him with shining eyes.
+"You would hardly believe it, miss, but Tricker gathers all my eggs for
+me, and he can tell a duck egg from a hen egg. If I do be having a bit
+of company, I will tell Tricker to go out and bring in some duck eggs,
+and I have never known him to make a mistake. Or perhaps I will be
+wanting some water from the spring, and I just give Tricker the bucket
+and send him for it. Or perhaps I will be wanting some coal, and then I
+just tell Tricker to fetch it."
+
+There was a little pile of coal lying in one corner of the yard, and I
+had noticed it with some surprise, for we had seen nothing but turf in
+the west of Ireland; but our host told us that the coal came from
+Donegal and that it was better than turf and even cheaper in the long
+run.
+
+"Tricker," he said, "take in some coal!"
+
+Tricker ran to the coal and picked up a lump in his jaws and trotted
+through the open door of the house and laid the lump down on the hearth
+inside; then he came back and took in another lump, and then a third,
+and finally his master stopped him.
+
+"He would be taking it all in if I left him to himself," he said. "He is
+not very well, for he was kicked by the mare the other day, and I
+thought for a time he was going to die on me. But he did not, glory be
+to God, and I think he will soon be well again. And now, if you will
+come this way, I will be showing you the stones."
+
+He led the way across a field, which he said was his, and then over a
+stone wall into another; and in the middle of it was a depressed tomb
+with slabbed sides, in which, I suppose, at some far-off time, the body
+of some chieftain had been laid; and then our guide showed us the path
+which we must follow to get to the cromlechs; and then I put my hand in
+my pocket.
+
+"Ah, no," he protested, drawing back.
+
+"For Tricker," I said; "to get him some dainty, because he's ill."
+
+His face softened.
+
+"Ah, well, sir," he said, "if you put it like that, I'll take it, and
+Tricker and I both thank ye kindly; and you, miss. God speed ye," and he
+stood watching us for quite a while, as we made our way up toward the
+road which ran along the edge of the ridge above us.
+
+As soon as we gained it, we saw the first of the cromlechs; and then, in
+a farther field, we saw another--great stones, standing upright in a
+circle of smaller ones, with a mighty covering slab on top, grey and
+lichened, and most impressive. They are supposed, as I have said, to
+mark the graves of warriors who fell in battle four thousand years ago;
+but the Irish peasantry explain them in a more romantic way, as the beds
+which Diarmuid prepared nightly for his mistress, Grainne, during the
+year they fled together up and down Ireland to escape the wrath of her
+husband, the mighty Finn MacCool.
+
+Grainne, you will remember, was the daughter of King Cormac, and she it
+was who won that race up Slievenamon for the honour of Finn's hand.
+There was a splendid wedding at Tara; but as Grainne sat at the feast,
+she looked at the man she had just married, and saw that the weight of
+years was on him; and then she looked about the board and noticed a
+"freckled, sweet-worded man, who had the curling, dusky black hair, and
+cheeks berry-red," and she asked who he was, and she was told that he
+was Diarmuid, "the white-toothed, of lightsome countenance, the best
+lover of women and of maidens that was in the whole world." And Grainne
+looked on him again, and her heart melted in her bosom; and she mixed a
+drink and sent it about the board, until there came upon all the company
+"a stupor of sleep and deep slumber."
+
+Then she arose from her seat and went straight to Diarmuid, and laid a
+bond upon him that he should take her away; and Diarmuid, who was leal
+to Finn, asked his comrades what he should do, and they all said he must
+bide by the bond she had laid on him, for he was bound to refuse no
+woman, though his death should come of it.
+
+"Is that the counsel of you all to me?" asked Diarmuid.
+
+"It is," said Ossian and Oscar and all the rest; and then Diarmuid rose
+from his place, and his eyes were wet with tears, and he said farewell
+to his comrades, for he knew that from that day he was no longer a
+member of the goodly company of the Fianna, but only a hunted man.
+
+And he and Grainne fled from Tara to Athlone, and crossed the Shannon by
+the ford there, with Finn's trackers close behind them; and for a year
+and a day they travelled through the length and breadth of Ireland; and
+every night Diarmuid built for his love a chamber of mighty stones, and
+carpeted it with sweet grass, and crept softly in beside her and held
+her in his arms till morning, so that no hurt might come to her. And
+there the chambers remain to this day, 366 of them, to prove the story
+true.
+
+I wish I could tell the remainder of the legend, but there is no space
+here; besides you will find it and many others like it very beautifully
+told in one of the most fascinating Irish books I know--Stephen Gwynne's
+"Fair Hills of Ireland"; a book which I have pillaged remorselessly, and
+which I recommend to every one planning to visit the Island of the
+Saints.
+
+There are really more than 366 of the cromlechs, though nobody knows the
+exact number; and they are the most venerable monuments reared by man in
+Ireland. The growth of peat around certain of them proves that they have
+stood where they now stand for at least four thousand years. How the
+huge covering stones, sometimes weighing hundreds of tons, were lifted
+into place, no one knows, just as no one knows how the Egyptians raised
+their great monoliths from the quarry.
+
+There are two most impressive cromlechs at Carrowmore, quite close
+together, and my pictures of them are opposite the next page. The first
+one we came to stands near the road in a pasture, and it was merely a
+question of clambering over a wall to get to it; but to reach the other,
+it was necessary to cross a newly-cultivated field; and as there were
+some men working in it, I asked permission to do so.
+
+"Ah," said one of them, "so it is the big stones you have come to see.
+You're very welcome. I only wish you could take them with you."
+
+"So do I," I said. "We haven't anything like them in America. Everybody
+would want to see them."
+
+"That is just the trouble here. There are always people coming to see
+them, and they tramp about over my field, with no thought of the damage
+they will be doing, and without asking my leave, as you have done. And
+then it is at least half an acre of good land that the stones make good
+for naught, and good land is not that plentiful in Ireland that we can
+afford to waste any of it. And then there's the trouble of ploughing
+around them."
+
+[Illustration: CROMLECHS AT CARROWMORE]
+
+The farmer was right, in a way, for a half acre of good land would have
+been of far more value to him than this beautiful cromlech in the midst
+of its circle of stones; but how happy I would have been to give it half
+an acre, if I could have wafted it home to America! The circle is
+considerably more than a hundred feet in diameter, and the stones which
+compose it are great boulders, four or five feet high, set on end. The
+cromlech itself is very imposing, with massive side supports, six or
+seven feet high, and a mighty covering stone, flat on the under side. It
+is like a giant bestriding the landscape; and Betty remarked that it
+reminded her of the legs of Uncle Pumblechook, with several miles of
+open country showing between them. My picture of it has Knocknarea in
+the background, and if you look closely, you will see the little bump in
+the middle of its summit which is the cairn of Queen Meave.
+
+The hill was only a mile or so away, and I proposed going over to it,
+but Betty vetoed that, for it meant some stiff climbing, and we had
+already walked a good many miles; so we started back slowly along the
+road to Sligo, and a beautiful road it was, with the purple hills in the
+distance, and the green rolling fields on either side, and the
+whitewashed cottages gathered close beside it. And the doors of all of
+them were wide open, and the people who lived in them, hearing our
+footsteps, came out to pass the time of day and make some comment on the
+weather; and one old woman, who had been hoeing her potatoes, was so
+eager to talk that we stopped and sat down on the low wall in front of
+her cottage, and stayed for half an hour.
+
+She began with the usual questions--where we were from, if we were
+married, how old we were, and so on; and then she started to tell us
+about herself, omitting no detail, however intimate.
+
+"I have been to America," she said; "for seven years I lived there, and
+a grand place it is; and you will be wondering why I ever came back to
+County Sligo. 'Twas because of this bit of land, which would be mine,
+and this houseen, which is a poor one, but I was born there, and I will
+die there, glory be to God. I would ask you in, but it is that dirty, I
+am ashamed of it. There is so much to be done in the field that I have
+had no time for the house; besides, I am getting old and my legs are
+very bad. I got a bottle from the doctor, and I do be taking a sip of it
+now and then, but it does me no good. I am thinking there is nothing
+will cure me.
+
+"We were not always down in the world like this," she rattled on. "There
+was a time when we were well off. That was before my man was hurted. He
+was a county councillor, then, and as handsome a man as you would be
+seeing in a day's walk; and many's the time he has gone to Dublin with a
+flower in his button-hole, and me looking after him with pride, for he
+was always a good head to me. But a horse kicked him, and broke his leg
+and his arm, and he has not had the right use of either since; and so
+we started going down; and when one starts doing that, there's no
+stopping.
+
+"That's himself going there," she added, indicating an unkempt figure
+limping painfully along the road with the help of a heavy cane. "He's
+ashamed for you to see him, he's that dirty;" but curiosity proved
+stronger than pride, in the end, and he finally came hobbling up to us,
+a wreck of a man with dirty clothes and unkempt hair and unshaven face
+and battered derby hat--and yet one could see that he had been a
+handsome fellow once.
+
+We mentioned our stopping at the house of the bachelor who owned
+Tricker, and both our companions grew serious.
+
+"Ah, poor boy," said the woman, "he does be havin' a hard time. There
+was no one but his mother--all the others had gone to America; and he
+looked after her as careful as a daughter could; but she was very
+feeble, and he come home from the field one day to find her dead on the
+hearth. She had fallen in the fire and burned, bein' too weak to get up.
+It was a great shock to him, her dyin' in a way so painful and without a
+priest; and we all felt for him, though he was to blame for not marryin'
+some girl who could have looked after the old woman. He is well off, but
+there's no girl could put the comether on him, though many have
+tried,--nice girls, too, as nice as ever put a shawl across their
+heads."
+
+I remarked that we had been surprised at the number of bachelors in
+Ireland; we had supposed that all Irishmen married and had "long
+families," but it was not so at all. Some were too poor to marry, and
+that we could understand; but many that were not poor preferred to stay
+single. There were the Rafferty brothers, owners of the Connemara marble
+quarry; there was the proprietor of the hotel at Castleconnell; and now
+here was this man.
+
+"It is so," the old woman agreed. "There be many bachelors
+hereabouts--men too who could well afford to take a wife. The priest
+gets very warm over it. Not long ago, he said some words about it in the
+church--he said if it was left to him, he would be puttin' all these
+bachelors in a boat with a rotten bottom, and sendin' them out to sea,
+and sink or swim, small loss it would be whatever happened. For he said
+they were poor creatures, who thought of nothing but their own pleasure,
+who wasted their money in Dublin, instead of raising a family with it,
+and who would come to no good end. And I'm thinking that was nothing to
+what he had been saying to them in private. For of course, before he
+said anything in public, he had been after them to let him speak to the
+fathers of some of the nice girls there be about here."
+
+Among the Irish, especially the Irish peasantry, marriage is still
+largely a matter of arrangement between the families of the young
+people; though I doubt if it is ever quite so carelessly done as in one
+of Lever's books, where, after the bargain has been made, the father of
+three daughters asks the suitor which one it is he wants, and the suitor
+has them all brought in so that he may inspect them before he makes up
+his mind. It is always a solemn occasion, however, with the suitor's
+relatives ranged along one side of a table, and the bride's relatives
+along the other--male relatives, be it understood, for it is not lucky
+for a woman to take part in a match-making; and the bargaining is very
+shrewd and quite without sentiment; but the marriages thus arranged
+usually turn out well. For, if they are without romance, they are also
+without illusion. The woman knows beforehand what will be expected of
+her as wife and mother; the man is quite aware that matrimony has its
+rough side; and so there is no rude awakening for either. It is really a
+partnership, in which both are equal, and which both work equally hard
+to make successful.
+
+But I suspect that, in Ireland as elsewhere, marriage is not the
+inevitable thing it once was, especially for the men. It may be, as the
+priest said, that they have grown selfish and think only of their own
+comfort; or it may be that their needs have become more complex and
+their ideals harder to satisfy. Whatever the cause, Ireland certainly
+has her full share of bachelors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We went to a picture-show at Sligo, that night, and I have never seen a
+livelier audience. There was, of course, a cowboy film which was
+received with the keenest pleasure; and there was a lurid melodrama,
+which culminated in the hero flinging the villain over a high cliff, at
+which those present rose to their feet and stamped and cheered; and then
+King George was shown reviewing the Life Guards, and the crowd watched
+in moody silence--a silence that was painful and threatening. As the
+troops marched past, gallant and glittering, a sight to stir the blood,
+there was not the suspicion of a cheer or hand-clap--just a strange,
+breathless silence. We were to witness the same thing thereafter in
+"loyal" Derry--the most convincing evidence imaginable of the feeling
+toward England which every Irishman, Protestant or Catholic, carries
+deep in his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS
+
+
+WE wanted to drive around Lough Gill, a distance of about twenty-five
+miles, and I had mentioned this project to our landlord the day before,
+and asked the price of a car. He said it was a long trip and a trying
+one on a horse, and that the price would be twenty shillings, and I saw
+the same glitter in his eye which had been there when he named the price
+of a room.
+
+That afternoon, I happened to see a sign over a shop announcing that
+posting was done in all its branches. Remembering the glitter in the
+landlord's eye, I stopped in and asked the woman in charge if a car
+could be had for the trip around Lough Gill. She said it might, and the
+price would be twelve shillings, including the driver. I closed with her
+on the spot, and told her to have the car ready at nine o'clock next
+morning; and somewhat to my surprise it was; and we set forth on what
+was to prove one of the most beautiful and adventurous excursions we had
+had in Ireland.
+
+It was a bright, warm day, and our jarvey, a picturesque old fellow, was
+quite certain it would not rain; but we put our rain-coats and all our
+other waterproof paraphernalia in the well of the car, so as to be
+prepared for the worst; and we elected to go out by the northern shore
+and come back by the southern one. For a mile or two our road lay
+through beautiful fragrant woods, and then we came out high above the
+lake.
+
+There is no prettier lake in Ireland than Lough Gill, with its green
+islands, and its blue water reflecting the blue sky and the fleecy
+clouds, and its banks covered with a vegetation almost as varied and
+luxuriant as that about Killarney, and the purple mountains crowding
+down upon it--only it is hardly fair to call them purple, for they are
+of many colours--the grey granite of their towering escarpments gleaming
+in the sun, the wide stretches of heather just showing a flush of
+lavender, the clumps of dark woodland clothing the glens, the broad
+spread of green pastures along their lower slopes, all combining in a
+picture not soon forgotten. For two or three miles we trotted on with
+this fairy scene stretched before us, and then we turned back into the
+hills, for we wanted to see the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis, the Stone of Conn
+the Son of Rush, set up on a neighbouring hilltop as a warning and a
+sign.
+
+At least, Murray calls it the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis, but our driver had
+never heard of it, though he protested that he knew every foot of the
+neighbourhood. Perhaps he did not recognise the words as I pronounced
+them, and as he could not read, it did no good for me to show them to
+him in the book. So I described it to him as well as I was able, never
+having seen it myself and having only the vaguest idea what it looked
+like, as a collection of great standing stones on top of a hill not far
+away; and still he had never heard of it. He was inclined to turn back
+to the lake, but I persisted; and finally he stopped a man who was
+driving a cart in to Sligo, and they talked together awhile in Irish,
+and then our driver turned up another road, not very hopefully.
+
+[Illustration: SLIGO ABBEY FROM THE CLOISTER]
+
+[Illustration: THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS]
+
+It was a very hilly road, and our horse developed an alarming propensity
+to gallop--a propensity which the driver encouraged rather than strove
+to check, so that we felt, a good part of the time, as though we were
+riding to a fire at break-neck speed. The jaunting-car, it should be
+remembered, is a two-wheeled vehicle, and when the animal between the
+shafts takes it into his head to gallop, it describes violent arcs
+through the air. But we hung grimly on, and finally our driver drew up
+at a house near the roadside.
+
+"'Tis here," he said.
+
+We got down and looked around, but saw nothing that resembled the
+Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis; and then a woman came out of the house, and we
+asked her if she knew where it was, and, wonder of wonders! she did.
+Most wonderful of all, she had been to see it herself, so she knew where
+it was not vaguely but precisely, and she told us just how to go. It was
+on the hill back of the house, and she showed us the path which we must
+follow, and told us to look out for the rabbit-warrens, or we might
+sprain an ankle; and we set off through knee-deep heather up over the
+hill. It was quite a climb, and when we got to the top we saw no
+standing stones, and I wondered if we were going to miss them, after
+all; but we pressed on, and then, as we topped the next rise, my heart
+gave a leap--for there before us was the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis--the most
+remarkable stone enclosure I have seen anywhere, with the exception of
+Stonehenge--and Stonehenge is more remarkable only because its stones
+are larger.
+
+In every other way--in extent and in complexity--this enclosure far
+outranks Stonehenge. Great upright rocks, lichened and weatherbeaten
+by the rains and winds of forty centuries, form a rude oblong, about a
+hundred and fifty feet in length by fifty feet across. It stretches east
+and west, and at the western end is a square projection like a
+vestibule, divided into two chambers; while at the eastern end are two
+smaller oblongs some ten or twelve feet square, and their doorways are
+two trilithons--that is to say, two great rocks set on end with another
+rock laid across them, just as at Stonehenge. I despair of trying to
+picture it in words, but I took two photographs, one of which is
+opposite the preceding page, and gives some idea of the appearance of
+this remarkable monument--at least of the trilithons. But it gives no
+idea of its shape or its extent. There was no vantage point from which I
+could get a photograph that would do that.
+
+Its effect, here on this bleak hilltop, with other bleak hills all
+around as far as the eye could see, was tremendously impressive. Nobody
+knows who built it, nor when it was built, nor why. That it was a shrine
+of some sort, a holy place, seems evident; and to me it seemed also
+evident that the holy of holies were those two little chambers back of
+the trilithic doorways; and it seemed to me also significant that they
+should be at the east end, nearest the sunrise, just as the altars in
+Gothic churches are, and that there should be a vestibule or entrance at
+the west end. Surely it was built with some reference to the sun; and I
+tried to picture the horde of panting men, who had, with incredible
+labour, hacked out these giant stones from some quarry now unknown, and
+pulled them up the steep hillside and somehow manoeuvred them into
+place. Some powerful motive must have actuated them, and I can think of
+none powerful enough except the motive of religion--the motive of
+building a great temple to the God they worshipped, in the hope of
+pleasing Him and winning His favour.
+
+[Illustration: A RUIN ON THE SHORE OF LOUGH GILL]
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST FRAGMENT OF AN ANCIENT STRONGHOLD]
+
+What strange rites, I wondered, had these old stones witnessed; what
+pageantries, what sacrifices, what incantations? Of all that ancient
+people there remains on earth not a single trace, except in such silent
+monuments of stone as this, so mighty the passing centuries have been
+powerless to destroy them, more mysterious, more inscrutable than the
+Sphinx.
+
+We tore ourselves away, at last, and went silently down through the
+heather, which was fairly swarming with rabbits; and we mounted our car
+and headed back toward the lake. We came out presently close beside the
+shore, and followed it around its upper end. Just there, out at the end
+of a point of land, stands the fragment of a tower, and our jarvey told
+us it was all that was left of the castle from which Dervorgilla eloped
+with Dermot MacMurrough--a tale already told by the little tailor of
+Limerick.
+
+Of course I wanted a picture of it, and after much manoeuvring, I
+managed to get the one opposite this page, which I include only because
+of the beautiful Japanesy branch across one corner; for this wasn't
+Breffni's castle at all, as we were presently to find. A little farther
+on, and quite near the road, was another ruin, and a most imposing one,
+with drum towers at the four corners, and a dilapidated cottage hugging
+its wall; and I took a peep within the square enclosure, used now as a
+kind of barnyard. There were little turrets looking out over the
+lake, and a spiral stair in one corner, and mullioned windows and tall
+chimneys and yawning fireplaces; and it looked a most important place,
+but I have not been able to discover anything of its history. Then we
+went on again, with beautiful views of the lake at our right, and high
+on our left the flat-topped mountain called O'Rourke's Table, where,
+once upon a time, as told by the old ballad, "O'Rourke's Noble Feast"
+was spread:
+
+          O'Rourke's noble fare will ne'er be forgot
+          By those who were there, or those who were not.
+          His revels to keep, we sup and we dine
+          On seven score sheep, fat bullocks and swine,
+
+and so on. It is, indeed, a table fit for such a celebration--a rock
+plateau with sheer escarpments of grey granite dropping away from it,
+and a close cover of purple heather for a cloth.
+
+The road curved on along the lake; then turned away from it through a
+beautiful ravine; and then a sparkling river was dashing along at our
+right, and beyond it loomed the grey walls of a most extensive ruin; and
+then we dropped steeply down into the town of Dromahair, and stopped at
+a pretty inn to bait the horse.
+
+I wanted to get closer to the ruins, and I asked if there was a bridge
+across the river, and was told that there was, just behind the hotel. So
+I made my way down to it, to find that the "bridge" was a slender plank,
+without handrail or guard, spanning some ugly-looking rapids. I looked
+at the plank, and I looked at the swirling water, and I looked at the
+grey ruins on the farther shore, and I hesitated for a long time; but I
+wasn't equal to it; and I turned away at last and made my way back to
+the village in the hope of finding some more stable bridge there.
+
+The dominating feature of the village is not the workhouse or lunatic
+asylum, but an enormous mill, five stories high, built of black stone as
+hard as flint, to endure for all eternity, but forlorn and deserted; and
+while I was gazing at it and wondering where the money had come from to
+build it, a man came out of the house attached to it and spoke to me. He
+was an Englishman, he said, who was spending his vacation at Dromahair.
+I asked him if there was any other bridge across the river except the
+slender plank, and he said there was not; and that it was characteristic
+of the Irish that there should not be, for a more careless, shiftless,
+happy-go-lucky race did not exist anywhere on earth.
+
+I asked him about the mill, and he said that it was just another example
+of Irish inefficiency and wrong-headedness; that it had been erected at
+great expense and equipped with the most costly machinery to grind
+American grain, which was to be brought up Sligo Bay from the sea, and
+up the river and across the lake; and then, when all was ready, there
+was no grain to grind--or none, at least, which could be brought to the
+mill without prohibitive expense. Furthermore, the power was so poor and
+costly that it would have been impossible to operate the mill profitably
+even if there had been plenty of grain. But the owner of the mill, with
+some sort of dim faith in the power of Home Rule to produce the grain,
+was preparing to install a turbine to run the machinery, and had already
+started to build a big aqueduct to bring the water in from above the
+rapids.
+
+The rapids are just above the mill, and are quite imposing; and there,
+just beyond them, is the abbey. I was near enough to see it fairly well,
+though not, of course, in detail as I should have liked to do; but I
+comforted myself with the thought that it is a comparatively modern one,
+dating from the sixteenth century, when Margaret, the wife of another
+O'Rourke, having, perhaps, like Dervorgilla, done something she
+regretted, built it for the Franciscans.
+
+I had another comfort, too; for I asked the Englishman if he had seen
+the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis; and he said that he had been hunting for it for
+a week, but hadn't been able to find it, as none of the people
+thereabouts seemed to know where it was; and he was astonished when I
+told him that we had found it, and commented with envy upon the energy
+of Americans. He asked me where it was, and I told him as nearly as I
+could; and then he wanted me to come in and have tea, and was for
+sending up to the hotel for Betty; but I had to decline that invitation.
+I think he was lonely and glad to find some one to talk to, for he was
+unusually expansive for an Englishman; and he said he would send his car
+in to Sligo after us, if we would come out next day; but I told him we
+were going on to Bundoran.
+
+And then I left him and went back up the hill to the ivy-covered ruin
+which was really the castle of Tiernan O'Rourke. It stands on the edge
+of the hill overlooking the valley--the same valley which lay smiling
+before him that evening he came back from his pilgrimage to Lough Derg;
+and up there was the battlement from which no light burned. It was
+battered down in the sixteenth century, in some obscure fight, and all
+that is left of the castle now is the shell of its walls.
+
+I am afraid Tom Moore, as well as O'Connell, journeyman tailor, has
+invested the story with a glamour which did not belong to it; for
+Tiernan O'Rourke was a one-eyed bandit who had sacked the abbey of
+Clonard a few years before, and who certainly had need of pilgrimages to
+shrive him from his sins; and Dervorgilla, so far from being a "young
+false one," was forty-two years old; and MacMurrough took care to carry
+off, not only the lady's person, but all her movable property, and most
+of her husband's, as well.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The clouds were gathering in the west as we set out from Dromahair, and
+presently the rain began to slant down, slowly and softly at first, and
+then in a regular torrent. I do not know when I have seen it rain
+harder; but we were soon fixed for it and didn't mind. Dromahair is
+about twelve miles from Sligo, and they are hilly miles, so we knew that
+we had at least three hours of this wet work ahead of us; but the people
+working in the fields or plodding along the road paid no attention to
+the rain, so why should we? In fact, most of them, though without any
+sort of protection, seemed to be quite unconscious that it was raining
+at all.
+
+And then, just when the rain was hardest, I saw to the left a circle of
+stones crowning a little hill, and I knew it was a cashel. A cashel, as
+I have explained already, is a fort made of stones, just as a rath is a
+fort made of earth, both being in the form of a circle; and I knew I
+could get pictures of raths without much difficulty, but I didn't know
+when I would see another cashel; so I made the driver stop, and got my
+camera out of the well, and started off through a field to get a picture
+of this one, not heeding Betty's anxious inquiry if I had suddenly gone
+mad.
+
+That field into which I plunged was thigh-deep with dripping grass, and
+I didn't realise how wet it was until I was well into it, and then there
+was nothing to do but go on. So I scrambled up the hill and took two
+pictures, shielding my lens, as well as I could, against the driving
+rain; and I hadn't any idea that the pictures would be good ones, but
+they were, and one of them is opposite the next page.
+
+There was no vantage point from which I could take a picture which would
+show the circular shape of the cashel; but it had been built in a
+perfect circle about sixty feet in diameter. It was on top of a steep
+hillock, of which it occupied nearly the whole summit. The walls,
+pierced only by a single narrow entrance, were about six feet high, and
+four or five feet thick, and the lower stones were very massive, as the
+picture shows. They had been roughly dressed and laid without
+mortar--the ancient Irish knew nothing of mortar, apparently, for all
+these old stone circles are uncemented; but they had been so nicely
+fitted that they were still in place after many centuries, though the
+clambering ivy was doing its best to pull them down.
+
+Right in the middle of the circle was a great stone slab, flush with
+the ground. The only use I could imagine for it was as a base for a
+shrine or altar; but as I went down to the road again, an old man came
+out of a little house to talk, and he said that some antiquarians from
+Sligo, who believed the slab covered the entrance to a secret passage,
+had taken it up and found beneath it, not a passage, but a beautifully
+fitted pavement; and that the parish priest, investigating on his own
+account, had dug up some wood ashes, and so decided that this was the
+place where the fire was built.
+
+[Illustration: A CASHEL NEAR DROMAHAIR]
+
+[Illustration: ST. PATRICK'S HOLY WELL]
+
+"But no one knows," my informant rambled on. "Maybe some day some wise
+man like yourself will be able to tell us what it was for."
+
+I remarked that the man who did so would have to be far wiser than I;
+but he protested that he knew a wise man when he saw one; and I suspect
+that there is a blarney stone in some of these ruins, which the general
+public doesn't know about.
+
+I was sorry it was raining, for there was another cashel on a hill to
+the right, and a great rath a little farther off, and I should have
+liked to explore both of them; but really the weather was too bad, so I
+went back reluctantly to the car, which our jarvey had driven close
+under a clump of trees for shelter, and we were soon jogging contentedly
+on again.
+
+The valley which slopes down here to Lough Gill seems very fertile, and
+the little farms have a more prosperous look than is usual in Ireland.
+This is partly due to the fact that a number of neat labourers' cottages
+have been built to replace the usual tumbledown hovels, and still more
+are going up.
+
+This erection of labourers' cottages, which is going on to-day all over
+Ireland, seems to me almost as important as land purchase. If there is
+any class of Irish more deserving of pity than another, it is the
+agricultural labourer. He is worse off than the tenants; he has no land,
+however poor, to cultivate, except perhaps a tiny patch in front of his
+door; he has no means of livelihood except the unskilled labour of his
+hands; if he can manage to earn ten shillings a week he is unusually
+fortunate. In most cases, his average income throughout the year will be
+scarcely half that. So naturally the labourers and their families live
+in the most wretched of all the wretched hovels, in want, discomfort and
+peril of disease.
+
+It is for the relief of these unfortunate people that the new houses are
+being built. They are very plain; but they have large windows which can
+be opened, and stone floors which can be cleaned, and tight slate roofs,
+and sanitary outbuildings; and each of them has a half acre or so of
+garden, where vegetables enough to support the family can be raised
+during the summer; and they rent for from two to three shillings a
+week--just enough to pay interest on the amount invested in the house,
+with a small sinking fund for upkeep and repairs. The money needed is
+borrowed from the government by the county council, and the council has
+control of the houses, decides where they shall be built, what rent
+shall be asked for them, and exercises a general supervision over the
+tenants.
+
+The same thing is being done in the towns, where the insanitary
+dwellings of the poorer artisans are being replaced by comfortable
+houses, rented at a very low rate. Nearly a hundred thousand of these
+cottages have been built within the past ten years, replacing as many
+insanitary shacks, which, for the most part, have been torn down. The
+shacks were much more picturesque, but nobody regrets them. And the
+severely utilitarian aspect of the new dwellings will no doubt soon be
+masked with vines and climbing roses.
+
+It was such cottages as this, then, that gave the valley sloping down to
+Lough Gill an unusually prosperous appearance, and many more were in
+course of erection throughout the neighbourhood. We padded past them,
+along the road above the lake, between beautiful hedgerows, gay with
+climbing roses; and then we turned away through a luxuriant wood, where
+the bracken was almost waist-high and the trees were draped with moss
+and ferns, just as we had seen them along the southern coast. And then
+we passed through a gate and jolted down a very rough and narrow lane;
+and finally our driver stopped at the edge of a wood, and pointed to a
+path running away under the trees.
+
+"'Tis the path to St. Patrick's holy well," he said; and we clambered
+down, and made our way under the trees and up the hillside, and there
+before us was the well.
+
+It is a lively spring, which bubbles up from the ground in considerable
+volume, fills a deep basin, and then sparkles away down into the valley.
+A wall has been built around it, with an opening on one side, and steps
+by which one may descend and drink of the magic water. Just above it on
+the hillside is a shrine, something like the one we had seen at St.
+Senan's well--really an altar, where, I suppose, Mass may be
+celebrated; and it was crowded with figurines of the Virgin and small
+crucifixes and rosaries and sacred pictures, and the bushes all about
+were tied with rags and strings and other tokens which the pilgrims to
+the shrine had left behind.
+
+This well is a very famous one, and the number of pilgrims who come to
+it prove how general is the belief in its powers. It is really a belief
+in the power of prayer, for prayer is always necessary. I tried to get a
+picture of the well and the shrine above it, but it was very dark under
+the trees, and there was no place where I could rest my camera for a
+time exposure; but the photograph opposite page 408, is better than I
+had any reason to expect.
+
+We found that the rain had ceased when we came out from under the trees,
+and we jogged happily back to the highroad and on towards Sligo; and
+presently far ahead the bay opened out, rimmed by romantic hills, green
+nearly to the summit, and then culminating in steep escarpments of grey
+rock; and beneath us in the valley lay the roofs and spires of the town,
+and we were soon rattling through its streets.
+
+We went back to the hotel to change out of our wet things and get a cup
+of hot chocolate; and then we took a last stroll about the streets, and
+stopped to see the church of St. John, said to be older than the abbey,
+but recently restored and now used by a Church of Ireland congregation.
+The graveyard about it is full of interesting tombs, and the street it
+fronts is one of the most romantic in the town. Indeed, the whole town
+is interesting; its greatest drawback for the visitor being the beggars
+who infest it, and who are nearly as pertinacious as those at Killarney.
+
+We went back to the hotel, at last, and told the proprietor that we were
+going to Bundoran by the four o'clock train.
+
+"You will make a great mistake," he protested, "to leave Sligo without
+going around Lough Gill."
+
+It was then I had my revenge.
+
+"We have been around Lough Gill," I explained sweetly. "That's where we
+were this morning."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is no easy task to travel along the west coast of Ireland. The great
+bays which indent it, running far inland, and the mountain ranges which
+tower one behind the other, make it impossible to follow anything like a
+straight line. The only thing to do is to zig-zag around them. Our
+journey, that afternoon, was a striking example of this. Bundoran lies
+twenty-two miles north along the coast from Sligo; but to get there by
+rail, it was necessary to travel ninety-two--forty-eight miles
+north-eastward to Enniskillen, and then forty-four miles westward to the
+coast again.
+
+The road to Enniskillen parallels Lough Gill, though it is so hemmed in
+by hills that we caught no glimpse of the water; and then proceeds
+across a dreary bog, climbing up and up with a wide valley opening to
+the south; and then runs into woodland and even orchards--the first, I
+think, that we had seen in Ireland; and then drops down toward
+Enniskillen, whose name lives in English history as that of one of the
+most famous of its regiments. It is said to be a pretty town, nestling
+between two lakes and entirely water-girt; but we did not stop to see
+it.
+
+We changed instead to the Bundoran line, which runs along the northern
+shore of Lough Erne; and we found the train crowded with people, on
+their way to spend the week-end at that famous resort; at least so we
+supposed, but when we got to Pettigoe, there was a crowd on the
+platform, waving flags and shouting, and as the train stopped somebody
+set off a series of bombs; and most of the passengers piled out of the
+train to take part in the celebration; and then we saw a man and woman
+standing rather sheepishly in front of another man, who was evidently
+delivering an address of welcome. We asked the guard what it was all
+about, and he said that the citizens of Pettigoe were welcoming home a
+fellow-townsman who had gone to Australia and won a fortune and also a
+wife--or perhaps I should put it the other way around--and had come back
+to Pettigoe to live.
+
+I was half-inclined to get off there myself, in order to visit St.
+Patrick's Purgatory, a famous place of pilgrimage on an island in Lough
+Derg, five miles away; but from the map it looked as though it would be
+possible to drive over from Donegal, which would be much more
+convenient. I found out afterwards that there is a mountain range
+between Donegal and Lough Derg, and no direct road over it; so we did
+not get to visit the island where, so legend says, St. Patrick had a
+vision of purgatory, and which became so celebrated that pilgrims
+flocked to it from all over Europe. The time prescribed for the
+ceremonies is from the first of June to the middle of August, and the
+island is often so crowded with penitents performing the rounds that
+visitors are not permitted to land.
+
+Our train moved on, after the address of welcome was concluded, and we
+could see the blue waters of Lough Erne stretching away to the south,
+while westward the sun was setting in a glory of crimson clouds; and
+presently the broad estuary of the Erne opened below us, hemmed in with
+high banks of yellow sand; and then we were at Bundoran--a bathing
+resort, consisting of a single street of boarding-houses facing the sea;
+and a little farther on, a great hotel, built on a projecting point of
+the cliffs. As we paused at its door to look about us, we realised that
+we had come very far indeed from primitive Connemara, for the first
+thing which met our eyes was a huge sign:
+
+          BEWARE OF GOLF BALLS!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE WINING BANKS OF ERNE
+
+
+THE weather god was certainly good to us in Ireland. The occasional
+showers and two or three heavy downpours were merely short interludes,
+and by no means unpleasant ones, in the long succession of sweetly
+beautiful days which I remember when I run my mind back over those
+delightful weeks. That day at Bundoran was one of them, soft and
+fragrant and altogether perfect.
+
+There is nothing Irish about Bundoran except its climate--not, at least,
+if one stays at the hotel which has been built there by the Great
+Northern Railroad, and which is one of the most satisfactory hotels I
+was ever in. And perhaps it would be as well to say a word here about
+Irish hotels.
+
+The small, friendly inn, which is one of the delights of European
+travel, does not exist in Ireland; or, if it does, it is so carelessly
+managed that it is not endurable. Commercial hotels are also apt to be
+inferior. The only hotels that are sure to be pleasant and satisfactory
+are the large ones which cater to tourist traffic. In the more important
+towns, of course, there is never any difficulty in finding a good hotel;
+in the smaller towns, the only safe rule is to go to the best in the
+place, and if there is one managed by the railway, that is usually the
+one to choose.
+
+Some years ago, the Irish railways realised that the surest way to
+encourage tourist traffic in the west and south was to provide
+attractive hotel accommodations, and they set about doing this with the
+result that the traveller in Ireland is now well provided for. Such
+hotels as those at Bundoran, Recess and Parknasilla--and there are many
+others like them, handsome buildings, splendidly equipped, set in the
+midst of beautiful surroundings--leave nothing to be desired. Nor are
+their rates excessive, considering the excellent service they offer,
+averaging a little over three dollars a day. In the smaller towns, the
+tariff is considerably less than this, though the service is almost as
+good. In places where the railroad does not itself own or manage a
+hotel, it usually sees to it that at least one under private management
+is kept up to a satisfactory standard. So no one wishing to explore
+Ireland need hesitate on account of the hotels. They will be found, with
+a few exceptions, surprisingly good.
+
+[Illustration: THE COAST AT BUNDORAN]
+
+[Illustration: THE HOME OF "COLLEEN BAWN"]
+
+The hotel at Bundoran is set close to the edge of the scarred and
+weather-beaten cliffs, which look right out over the Atlantic toward
+America. It was along the top of these cliffs that we set out, that
+Sunday morning, and below us lay the strand where three galleons of the
+Spanish Armada went to pieces, as they were staggering homewards from
+the battle in the Channel. From time to time, an effort is made to find
+these "treasure ships," but, though cannon and anchors and such-like
+gear have been recovered, no one as yet has found any treasure.
+
+The great waves which roll right in from the Atlantic, and which proved
+too much for the galleons, have worn the cliffs into the most fantastic
+shapes; and a little way above the hotel there is a natural arch,
+called the Fairy Bridge, some twenty-five feet wide, which the water has
+cut in the rocks. When the tide comes in, it may be seen boiling and
+bubbling below the bridge, as in a witch's cauldron. Most beautiful of
+all is a wide yellow strand, a little farther on, with the rollers
+breaking far out and sweeping in, in white-topped majesty. We sat for a
+long time watching them, rolling in in long lines one behind the other;
+and then we scrambled down to the beach through the bare and shifting
+dunes. Seen thus from below, the black cliffs are most impressive.
+
+We went on again, at last, over the upland toward a wide-flung camp,
+where the Fourth Inniskillens were getting their summer practice; and
+one of the men directed us how to find a cromlech and a cairn, which we
+knew were there somewhere, but which we were unable to see amid the
+innumerable ridges. From the cairn, which crowns a little eminence
+overlooking the Erne estuary, there was supposed to be, so our
+acquaintance said, an underground passage to the other side of the
+river, where stands the old castle of the Ffolliotts; but as the estuary
+is at least a mile wide, I doubt if this ever existed except in the
+imagination of the country-side. The castle is there, however,--we could
+see its towers looming above the trees; but there was no way to get to
+it, that day, for the river lay between. I was determined to see it
+closer before we left the neighbourhood, because it was from that castle
+that the fair Colleen Bawn eloped with Willy Reilly.
+
+Farther down the stream, a two-masted schooner lay wrecked beside a
+sand-bank, and across from us some soldiers were fishing in tiny boats,
+while a company was going through some manoeuvres on the shore, so far
+away they looked like a company of ants deploying this way and that. For
+a long time we watched them; then we bade our companion good-bye, and
+went slowly back through the bracken, where Betty picked a great bouquet
+of primroses and violets and blue-bells; and we stumbled upon another
+ancient burial-place; and stopped at the ruins of an old church; and got
+back finally to the hotel to find the golf-links full of industrious
+players.
+
+Betty got into talk with the owner of a shaggy English sheep-dog--shaggy
+clear to its feet, and looking for all the world like Nana, the
+accomplished nurse of the Darling children; and I went on down to the
+beach to watch the tide come in. It was swirling threateningly about the
+black rocks; and out at the farthest point of them I found a man
+sitting. He invited me to sit down beside him, and we fell into talk. He
+was a handsome old fellow, a barrister from Dublin, who had come clear
+across Ireland (which isn't as far as it sounds) to get a breath of sea
+air. There was no air like the Bundoran air, he said, and two or three
+days of it did him a world of good. And then we began to talk about
+Ireland; and I was guilty of the somewhat banal remark that, before
+Ireland could make any real progress, life there would have to be made
+attractive enough to keep her young people at home, for she could never
+hope to get ahead as long as her best blood was drained away from her.
+
+He pooh-poohed the idea.
+
+"The best advice you can give any Irish man or Irish girl," he said,
+"is to leave the country the first chance they get; and that will always
+be good advice, because there will never be anything here for them to
+do. All this talk about the revival of industry is foolish. You can't
+revive what's dead; and industry here has been dead for three hundred
+years. Besides this is an agricultural country, and it will never be
+anything else; and over wide stretches of it, grazing pays better than
+tillage will ever do, so grazing there will be. Home Rule will make no
+difference--how can it? I suppose we're going to get it, and I'll be
+glad to see it come, if only to stop this ceaseless agitation; but as
+for its reviving any industries, or increasing wages, or making Ireland
+a place for ambitious young people to live in--I don't believe it."
+
+"You don't foresee a roseate future, then?"
+
+"Not for Ireland. All these schemes for land purchase and new cottages
+and pensions and so on may make life here a little more comfortable than
+it has been; but this country has been in a lethargy for centuries, and
+it will never be shaken off. The Irish have no ambition; they just live
+along from day to day without any thought for the future; and they will
+always be like that. It's their nature."
+
+He would doubtless have said more to the same effect, for he was very
+much in earnest, but the rising tide drove us in, and I did not see him
+again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The picturesque old town of Ballyshannon is only a few miles from
+Bundoran, and we took train for it next morning, after a last stroll
+along the cliffs and a look at the "rock-pool," a treasure-house of
+fossils and marine growths of every kind. First of all, we wanted to
+see the Colleen Bawn castle, so we got a car at the station, and set
+out.
+
+Ballyshannon, after the fashion of Irish towns, is built on the side of
+a hill, and no horse unaccustomed to mountaineering could have got up
+the street which leads from the river; but our horse had been reared in
+the town, so he managed to scramble up; and then we turned to the left
+and followed along the river to the falls--a dashing mass of spray,
+where the whole body of water which rushes down from Lough Erne sweeps
+roaring over a cliff some thirty feet high. Two or three miles along
+country roads brought us to a gate; and here our driver, looking a
+little anxious, had a short conference with a woman who lived in a neat
+labourer's cottage near by; and finally he opened the gate and drove
+through.
+
+Half a mile along this lane brought us to another gate; and there our
+driver stopped, and showed us the castle just ahead, and said that was
+all the farther he could go, and that we would have to walk the rest of
+the way. There was a certain constraint in his manner which I did not
+understand till afterwards.
+
+We went on through the gate, and across what had once been the demesne,
+but had been swept bare of trees, and was now divided between a meadow
+and a stable-yard, and in a few minutes we stood before the castle which
+was the scene of a romance very dear to Irish hearts. It is not really a
+castle, but merely a tall and ugly house, with three bays and a low
+terrace in front, and it is not very old, since it dates only from 1739,
+when it was built as the home of the Ffolliotts, a powerful English
+family into whose hands this whole neighbourhood had fallen. The
+Ffolliotts, of course, were Protestants, and Willy Reilly was a
+Catholic; but Helen Ffolliott was so ill-advised as to fall in love with
+him, and one night packed up her jewels and eloped. A hue and cry was
+raised after them, and they were soon captured, and Reilly was thrown
+into Sligo jail, and it looked for a while as though he might be
+"stretched," for all this happened about 1745, when the penal laws
+against Catholics were most severe. But the fair Helen came to the
+rescue, and swore at the trial that she had been the leader in the
+affair, not Reilly, and so he escaped with a sentence of banishment.
+What happened thereafter history does not state; but Will Carleton, who
+wove a poor romance about the affair, manages to reunite the lovers in
+the end.
+
+It is not to be wondered at that Reilly became a popular hero. Here was
+a young and handsome Catholic, who, in the most daring way, had captured
+the heart of a great Protestant heiress, the daughter of a persecutor of
+Catholics, and, in addition, a girl so lovely that she was the toast of
+the whole country-side. The ballad which celebrated the affair had an
+immense vogue. It is a real ballad, rough and halting, but rudely
+eloquent. You remember how it starts:
+
+    "Oh! rise up, Willy Reilly, and come alongst with me,
+     I mean for to go with you and leave this countrie,
+     To leave my father's dwelling, his houses and fine lands;"
+     And away goes Willy Reilly and his dear Colleen Bawn.
+
+In the ballad, the family is called Folliard, which is the way the name
+is still pronounced in the neighbourhood; but the old mansion is now
+occupied by a tenant. And pretty soon we understood our jarvey's
+uneasiness, for first a man came to the front door and looked at us, and
+then went quickly in again; and then an old woman opened the side door,
+and glared at us, and when we asked if we might have a glimpse of the
+interior, slammed the door in our faces. I must give her credit,
+however, for restraining a particularly savage-looking dog eager to be
+at us. But it was evident we weren't wanted there, for even the turkey
+gobbler resented our visit, and strutted fiercely about us, trying to
+scare us out. So we went back to the car, and our jarvey breathed a sigh
+of relief when he saw us.
+
+"Sure, I didn't know whether you'd come back alive or not," he said.
+"The master is away from home the day, and the woman that does work for
+him wouldn't be above settin' the dog on you. But it's all right, glory
+be to God," and he climbed up to his box and drove us back to
+Ballyshannon.
+
+We left our luggage at the station of the Donegal narrow-gauge railway,
+and then walked down into the town. We found it a quaint place, with the
+friendliest of people; and we were fortunate in discovering a clean inn
+on the main street, where we had the nicest of lunches, after which we
+set off to see the abbey.
+
+The road to the abbey lies through a deep, romantic dell, at the bottom
+of which we found a grain mill working, its great wheel turned by the
+brook which rushes through the glen; and a little farther on were four
+or five other mills, all fallen to decay, their wheels mere skeletons,
+and their machinery red with rust. Just beyond, a little higher up the
+hill, stands all that is left of the abbey, a few shattered fragments of
+the old walls. Yet the abbey was, in its day, a great foundation,
+patronised by the mighty Prince of Tyrconnell, and taking its name of
+Assaroe from the falls in the river--Eas Aedha Ruaidh, the Waterfall of
+Red Hugh, who was High King of Erin about three centuries before Christ,
+and who was swept over the falls and drowned while trying to cross the
+ford above them. A boy who played about the ruins described them, when
+he grew to manhood, in a musical stanza:
+
+    Grey, grey is Abbey Assaroe, by Ballyshanny town,
+    It has neither door nor window, the walls are broken down;
+    The carven stones lie scattered in briars and nettle-bed;
+    The only feet are those that come at burial of the dead.
+    A little rocky rivulet runs murmuring to the tide,
+    Singing a song of ancient days, in sorrow, not in pride;
+    The bore-tree and the lightsome ash across the portal grow,
+    And heaven itself is now the roof of Abbey Assaroe.
+
+We had heard certain legends of underground passages, which could still
+be explored, and we asked an old man who was cutting grass in the
+graveyard if he knew anything about them, and he said that he did not.
+We remarked that it was a hard task cutting the grass around the
+gravestones; and he said it was so, and would not be worth doing but
+that the grass was given to him for the cutting; but the guardians were
+unreasonable men who wanted it cut long before it was ready--it ought
+really to stand a week longer, now, but them ones would not wait!
+
+We went back past the mill, and met a man in flour-besprinkled clothes,
+who bade us good-day and stopped to talk; and it proved to be the
+miller. He invited us in to see the mill, which was grinding Russian
+corn, very red and hard, into yellow meal which was used for feeding
+cattle. We tried to tell him something of the delights of corn-bread and
+griddle-cakes, but he was plainly sceptical.
+
+He was an Ulster man, and had been running the mill for three years, but
+he said it was a hard struggle to make both ends meet. If it was not
+that his power cost him nothing, he would have had to give it up long
+ago. Power apart, I could imagine no poorer place for a mill, for it was
+at least two miles from the railway, and the road into the hollow was so
+steep that it must be a terrific struggle to get a loaded wagon into or
+out of it. There had been a number of mills in the neighbourhood at one
+time, but they had all given up the struggle long ago, except one flour
+mill, which had somehow managed to survive.
+
+We told him that we had seen the ruins of some of them as we went to the
+abbey.
+
+"Have you been to the abbey?" he asked. "Did you see the underground
+passages?"
+
+"Are there really some?"
+
+"Come along, and I'll show you."
+
+We protested that we didn't want him to leave his work, but he said the
+mill could take care of itself for awhile; and we started off together
+up the hill, through a gate to the right, and then knee-deep through the
+grass to the brook which ran at the bottom of the ravine, under the
+walls of the monastery. And there, sure enough, was the mouth of a
+passage cut in the solid rock of the bank. It was about six feet high
+by three wide, and ran in about a hundred feet, for all the world like
+the entrance to a mine. How much farther it extended I don't know, for
+an iron gate had been put across it to keep out explorers; but there can
+be no doubt that, at one time, it connected with the abbey itself, and
+formed a secret means of ingress and egress, which was no doubt often
+very convenient.
+
+And then our guide showed us something else, which was far more
+interesting. In the penal days, Catholic priests were forbidden to
+celebrate Mass under the severest penalties; but nevertheless they
+managed to hold a service now and then in some out of the way place,
+carefully concealed, with sentries posted all about to guard against
+surprise. A short distance down stream from the entrance to the secret
+passage was a shallow cave in the cliff, so overhung with ivy that it
+could scarcely be seen, and here, many times, the Catholics of the
+neighbourhood had gathered at word that a priest would celebrate Mass.
+On the heights all about lookouts would be placed, and then the men and
+women would kneel before the mouth of the little cave and take part in
+the sacrament.
+
+At the back of the cave, the shelf of rock which served as the altar
+still remains, and at one side of it is a rude piscina--a basin hollowed
+in the rock, with a small hole in the bottom to drain it; and it was
+here the vessels used in the celebration of the Mass were washed, after
+the service was over. I wanted mightily to get a picture of this cave,
+but it had started to shower, and though I got under the umbrella and
+made an exposure, the picture was a failure.
+
+We bade our guide good-bye, with many thanks for his kindness, and went
+slowly back along the highroad toward Ballyshannon; and presently from a
+tiny cottage beside the road two old women issued and greeted us with
+great cordiality. They were clean and neatly dressed, and the younger
+one, who did most of the talking, seemed to be quite unusually
+interested in our private history and solicitous for our welfare, and
+the blarney with which her tongue plastered us was the most finished I
+have ever listened to. We thanked her for her good wishes, and were
+about to go on, much pleased at this new demonstration of Irish
+cordiality, when we had a rude awakening.
+
+"Ah, your honour," she said, "would you not be giving me something for
+my poor sister here? You see she is all twisted with rheumatism, and can
+scarcely walk, and the medicine do be costing so much that she often
+must go without it. Just a small coin, God bless ye."
+
+I didn't want to give her anything, for I suspected that she made a
+practice of waylaying passers-by and begging from them; and then I
+looked at the older woman, who was standing by with her hands crossed
+before her, and I saw how the fingers were twisted and withered and how
+the face was drawn with pain--so I compromised by dropping sixpence into
+the outstretched hand.
+
+"If your honour would only be makin' it eightpence now," the woman said
+quickly; "we can get three bottles of castor-oil for eightpence--"
+
+But the other woman stopped her.
+
+"No, no," she protested; "take shame to yourself for askin' the kind
+gentleman for more. We thank your honour, and God bless ye, and may He
+bring ye safe home."
+
+And the other woman joined in the blessings too, and they continued to
+bless us, considerably to our embarrassment, until we were out of
+ear-shot.
+
+Betty had had enough of Ballyshannon; besides, the showers were coming
+with increasing force and frequency; so she elected to go back to the
+railway station and rest, while I wandered about for a last look at the
+town. And now, I suppose, I shall have to say a word about its history.
+
+All this country to the north of Lough Erne is Tyrone--Tir Owen, the
+Province of Owen--and was once a great principality, which stretched
+eastward clear to the shore of the Channel about Belfast. Northwest of
+it, answering roughly to the present county of Donegal, was
+Tyrconnell--Tir Connell, the Province of Connell; and Connell and Owen
+were brothers, sons of Nial of the Nine Hostages, who was King of
+Ireland from 379 to 405, and whose eight sons cut Ireland up between
+them into the principalities which were, in time, by their own
+internecine warfare, to make Ireland incapable of defending herself
+against the invader. Saint Patrick, about 450, found Connell in his
+castle on Lough Erne and baptised him; and then he journeyed north to
+Owen's great fortress, which we shall see before long on a hill
+overlooking Lough Swilly, and baptised him.
+
+Five centuries later, when Brian Boru had brought all Ireland to
+acknowledge his kingship, he decreed that every family should take a
+surname from some distinguished ancestor, and so began the era of the
+O's and the Macs. The two great clans of Tyrone and Tyrconnell chose the
+names of O'Neill and O'Donnell, and the river Erne was the frontier of
+the O'Donnell domain. There was a ford here at Ballyshannon, and so, of
+course, a castle to guard it, and many were the herds of lifted cattle
+which the O'Donnells, sallying south into Sligo, drove back before them
+into Donegal. Cattle was the principal form of property in those old
+days--about the only kind, at least, that could be stolen--and so it was
+always cattle that the raiders went after.
+
+The English brought a great force against the place in 1597, and for
+three days besieged the castle and tried unavailingly to carry it by
+assault; and then the O'Donnell clans poured down from the hills, and
+the English, seeing themselves trapped, tried to cross the river at the
+ford just above the falls; and the strongest managed to get across, but
+the women and the wounded and the weak were swept away.
+
+There is no trace remaining of the castle, but just below the graceful
+bridge of stone which crosses the river is the ford over which the
+English poured that day, and an ugly ford it is, for the water runs deep
+and strong, quickening at its lower edge into the rapids above the
+falls. From the centre of this bridge, some twenty-five years ago, the
+ashes of one of Ireland's truest poets were scattered on the swift,
+smooth-running water and carried down to the sea, and a tablet marks the
+spot:
+
+          WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
+          A Native of This Town
+          Born 1824; died 1889.
+
+          Here once he roved, a happy boy,
+            Along the winding banks of Erne,
+          And now, please God, with finer joy,
+            A fairer world his eyes discern.
+
+It is certainly a halting quatrain, quite unworthy the immortality of
+marble. A couplet from Allingham's own poem in praise of his birthplace
+would have been far more fitting; but I suppose that the lines on the
+tablet were composed by some local dignitary, and that nobody dared tell
+him how bad they were. I know of no more graceful tribute to any town
+than Allingham paid to Ballyshannon in his "Winding Banks of Erne." The
+first stanza gives a savour of its quality:
+
+  Adieu to Ballyshanny, where I was bred and born;
+  Go where I may, I'll think of you, as sure as night and morn:
+  The kindly spot, the friendly town, where everyone is known,
+  And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own;
+  There's not a house or window, there's not a field or hill,
+  But east or west, in foreign lands, I'll recollect them still;
+  I leave my warm heart with you, though my back I'm forced to turn--
+  Adieu to Ballyshanny, and the winding banks of Erne.
+
+You will note that the savour is the same as that of the lines I have
+already quoted describing Abbey Assaroe, and of course the same hand
+wrote them. I wish I could quote the whole poem to Ballyshannon, for it
+is worth quoting, but one more stanza must suffice, the last one:
+
+  If ever I'm a moneyed man, I mean, please God, to cast
+  My golden anchor in the place where youthful years were passed;
+  Though heads that now are black or brown must meanwhile gather grey,
+  New faces rise by every hearth, and old ones drop away--
+  Yet dearer still that Irish hill than all the world beside;
+  It's home, sweet home, where'er I roam, through lands and waters wide.
+  And if the Lord allows me, I surely will return
+  To my native Ballyshanny, and the winding banks of Erne.
+
+His birthplace is not far away--one of a row of plain old stone houses
+standing in the Mall, with a tablet:
+
+          WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
+          Poet
+          Born in This House
+          19th March, 1824
+
+I walked on past it, down to the river below the falls, where, close to
+the water's edge, a seat has been placed under a rustic canopy, and I
+sat there for a long time and watched the foaming water rushing over the
+cliff, with a crash and roar which, as Allingham says, is the voice of
+the town, "solemn, persistent, humming through the air day and night,
+summer and winter. Whenever I think of that town, I seem to hear the
+voice. The river which makes it, runs over rocky ledges into the tide.
+Before, spreads a great ocean in sunshine or storm; behind stretches a
+many-islanded lake. On the south runs a wavy line of blue mountains; and
+on the north, over green, rocky hills, rise peaks of a more distant
+range."
+
+[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF WILLIAM ALLINGHAM]
+
+[Illustration: CASTLE DONEGAL]
+
+It is up from the ocean the salmon come in the spring, seeking a place
+to spawn, and before they can get into the "many-islanded lake," they
+have to pass the falls. It is a ten-foot leap, even at flood-tide; but
+they take it, and a beautiful sight it must be to see them do it. But I
+saw none that day. Just below the falls is a little island, Inis-Saimer,
+said to be the spot where the Firbolgs, the earliest inhabitants of
+Ireland, first touched foot to Irish soil. It is given over now to some
+small buildings connected with the fishery, which is very valuable.
+There were a number of boats out, that day, with fishermen in them
+patiently whipping the water, but I did not see any fish caught.
+
+Ballyshannon is not, I judge, so prosperous as it once was, for across
+the river from where I sat were a number of tall mills and warehouses,
+empty and evidently dropping to decay. But it is more bustling than many
+other towns in Ireland, and has perhaps not sunk quite so deeply into
+the Slough of Despond. And then again, as the towering mass of the
+Belfast Bank in the main street warned me as I walked back through the
+village, we were getting nearer to the hustling north!
+
+The little train we were to take for Donegal backed up to the platform
+soon after I reached the station. It is a narrow-gauge road, and the
+coaches are miniature affairs, scarcely high enough to stand up in, as
+we found when we entered. And just then the heavens opened, and the rain
+poured down in sheets. We closed door and windows, and congratulated
+ourselves that we were snug and dry--and then the other passengers began
+to arrive, soaked through and dripping wet; and as the train consisted
+of only two coaches, our compartment was soon invaded by two women and
+two girls, whose gowns were fairly plastered to them. They dried
+themselves as well as they could, but little streams of water continued
+to trickle off of them for half an hour.
+
+The road runs through a bare, bleak valley for the first part of the
+way, clinging perilously to the hillside, and then climbs steeply over
+the watershed into the valley of the Ballintra, which is green and
+smiling and apparently prosperous; and at last winds down along the
+shore of Donegal Bay, through a district of orchards and lush meadows
+and beautiful hedges and comfortable houses, and so into the picturesque
+town--Dunna-Gall, the Fort of the Strangers--the ancient seat of the
+O'Donnells; but to me Donegal, town and county, has one connotation
+which overshadows all others, and that is with Father O'Flynn. Just
+where he lived I don't know, but the tribute which Alfred Perceval
+Graves paid him is the most eloquent ever paid in rhyme to any
+priest--and, as a comment upon the efforts of selfish politicians to fan
+the flame of religious bigotry in Ireland, it is worth remembering that
+it was written by a Protestant! Do you know the poem? Well, if you do,
+you will be glad to read it again, and if you do not, you will have
+every reason to thank me for introducing you to it; so, just to give
+myself the pleasure of writing it, I am going to quote it entire, for it
+would be a crime to leave out a line of it.
+
+FATHER O'FLYNN
+
+    Of priests we can offer a charmin' variety,
+    Far renowned for larnin' and piety;
+    Still, I'd advance ye widout impropriety,
+      Father O'Flynn as the flower of them all.
+          Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn,
+          _Slainte_ and _slainte_ and _slainte_ agin;
+              Powerfulest preacher, and
+              Tinderest teacher, and
+          Kindliest creature in ould Donegal.
+
+    Don't talk of your Provost and Fellows of Trinity,
+    Famous forever at Greek and Latinity,
+    Faix! and the divels and all at Divinity--
+      Father O'Flynn'd make hares of them all!
+          Come, I vinture to give ye my word,
+          Niver the likes of his logic was heard,
+              Down from mythology
+              Into thayology,
+          Troth! and conchology if he'd the call.
+
+    Och! Father O'Flynn, you've the wonderful way wid you,
+    All ould sinners are wishful to pray wid you,
+    All the young childer are wild for to play wid you,
+      You've such a way wid you, Father avick!
+          Still, for all you've so gentle a soul,
+          Gad, you've your flock in the grandest control,
+              Checking the crazy ones,
+              Coaxin' onaisy ones,
+          Liftin' the lazy ones on wid the stick.
+
+    And, though quite avoidin' all foolish frivolity,
+    Still, at all seasons of innocent jollity,
+    Where was the play-boy could claim an equality
+      At comicality, Father, wid you?
+          Once the Bishop looked grave at your jest,
+          Till this remark set him off wid the rest:
+              "Is it lave gaiety
+              All to the laity?
+          Cannot the clargy be Irishmen too?"
+
+There is a quaint old inn in Donegal, with dining and sitting rooms
+crowded with "curiosities" gathered from the four quarters of the globe
+by the proprietor, who was once a soldier; and his daughter looks after
+the comfort of the guests; and we had there that night a most satisfying
+dinner. And then, as it was still quite light, I filled my pipe and
+started out to stroll about the town; but I hadn't gone far when I heard
+a bell being rung with great violence, and when I looked again, I saw
+the small boy who was ringing it; and when he passed me, I asked him
+what the matter was, and he handed me a poster, printed most gorgeously
+in red and black, and these were the first lines of it:
+
+          TOWN HALL, DONEGAL
+
+          Monday Evg., June 23rd, 1913
+
+          MONSTER ATTRACTION
+
+          Powerful Performance!
+          For the Benefit of Mr. Joe Cullen,
+          The Donegal Old Favourite
+          On which occasion the ladies and
+          gentlemen of the Donegal Amateur
+          Dramatic and Variety Club will
+          Appear.
+
+Then followed the programme. There were to be four scenes from "The Ever
+Popular Play Entitled Robert Emmet," also "The Laughable Sketch Entitled
+The Cottage by the Sea," also "The Irish Farce, Miss Muldowedy from
+Ireland," the whole to be interspersed with variety turns by members of
+the club, as well as Mr. Cullen. "Don't Miss This Treat," the poster
+concluded. "Motto, 'Fun without Vulgarity.'"
+
+Blessing the chance which had brought us to Donegal upon this day, I
+hastened back to the hotel, showed the poster to Betty, and three
+minutes later, we were sallying forth in quest of the town-hall, whose
+entrance proved to be up a little court just across the street. The
+prices of admission, so the bill announced, were "2s., 1s. and 6d.," and
+I consulted with the abashed young man at the door as to which seats we
+should take. He advised the shilling ones, and we thereupon paid and
+entered. I wondered afterwards where the two shilling seats were, for
+the shilling ones were the best in the house.
+
+Although it was nearly time for the performance to begin, we were almost
+the first arrivals; but we soon heard heavy feet mounting the stair, and
+quite a crowd of men and boys began to file into the sixpenny seats at
+the rear. A few girls and women came forward into the shilling seats;
+but from the look of them, I suspected that they were deadheads, and I
+fear that Mr. Cullen did not reap a great fortune from that benefit!
+
+There was a tiny stage at one end of the hall, and the stage-manager,
+after the habit of all such, was having his troubles, for he could not
+get the footlights--a strip of gas-pipe with holes in it--to work. We
+thought for a while that he was going to blow himself up, and the whole
+house along with him; but he gave up the struggle, at last; the pianist
+played an overture, and the curtain rose.
+
+I have never seen the whole of "Robert Emmet," but from what I saw of it
+that night, I judge that it must have been written for a star, for
+nobody does much talking except Emmet himself. He, however, does a lot;
+and it was fortunate that, in this instance, he was impersonated by Mr.
+Cullen, for I am sure none of the other actors could have learned the
+part. Mr. Cullen proved to be a hatchet-faced old gentleman without any
+teeth; but he had a pleasing voice, and Emmet's grandiloquent speech
+from the dock was greeted with applause.
+
+Of the two farces I will say nothing, except that they were really not
+so bad as one would expect, once the actors had recovered from their
+embarrassment when they perceived two strangers present; but the feature
+of the evening was the songs, which were many and various and
+well-rendered. I remember only one of them, which we then heard for the
+first time, but which we were to hear many times thereafter, a lilting,
+catchy air, in which the audience assisted with the chorus, which ran
+something like this:
+
+          It's a long way to Tipperary,
+            It's a long way to go;
+          It's a long way to Tipperary,
+            The sweetest land I know.
+          Good-bye, Piccadilly,
+            Farewell, Leicester Square;
+          It's a long, long way to Tipperary,
+            But my heart is there.
+
+It is the old, old theme of the Irish exile longing for home; the theme
+of I know not how many poems, from the time of St. Columba, banished
+overseas and "thinking long" of
+
+          Derry mine, my own oak grove,
+          Little cell, my home, my love;
+
+down through Father Dollard's lilting "Song of the Little Villages":
+
+    The pleasant little villages that grace the Irish glynns
+    Down among the wheat-fields--up amid the whins;
+    The little white-walled villages, crowding close together,
+    Clinging to the Old Sod in spite of wind and weather:
+        Ballytarsney, Ballymore, Ballyboden, Boyle,
+        Ballingarry, Ballymagorry by the Banks of Foyle,
+        Ballylaneen, Ballyporeen, Bansha, Ballysadare,
+        Ballybrack, Ballinalack, Barna, Ballyclare,
+
+to the tender verses by Stephen Gwynne with which I will close this
+already, perhaps, too-poetical chapter:
+
+    Ireland, oh, Ireland! centre of my longings,
+      Country of my fathers, home of my heart,
+    Overseas you call me, "Why an exile from me?
+      Wherefore sea-severed, long leagues apart?"
+
+    As the shining salmon, homeless in the sea-depths,
+      Hears the river call him, scents out the land,
+    Leaps and rejoices in the meeting of the waters,
+      Breasts weir and torrent, nests him in the sand;
+
+    Lives there and loves; yet with the year's returning,
+      Rusting in his river, pines for the sea;
+    Sweeps down again to the ripple of the tideway,
+      Roamer of the ocean, vagabond and free.
+
+    Wanderer am I, like the salmon of thy rivers;
+      London is my ocean, murmurous and deep,
+    Tossing and vast; yet through the roar of London
+      Reaches me thy summons, calls me in sleep.
+
+    Pearly are the skies in the country of my fathers,
+      Purple are thy mountains, home of my heart:
+    Mother of my yearning, love of all my longings,
+      Keep me in remembrance, long leagues apart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE MAIDEN CITY
+
+
+ASs far back as its history goes, Donegal was the seat of the
+O'Donnells, that powerful clan of which the choicest flowers were Hugh
+Roe and Red Hugh, and here they had their castle, on a small bluff
+overlooking the waters of the River Eask. It still stands there,
+remarkably well-preserved considering its vicissitudes, one of the
+handsomest semi-fortified buildings in existence anywhere. It is by far
+the most interesting thing to be seen in the town of Donegal, and we set
+out for it immediately after breakfast next morning.
+
+Donegal we found by daylight to be a pleasant little town, with a single
+street of two-storied houses curving down over the hill toward the
+river, and a few narrow lanes branching off from it, after the
+traditional fashion of the Irish village. The castle is nestled in a
+bend of the river, which defends it on two sides, and there is still a
+trace of the moat which used to defend the other two. The best view of
+it is from the bridge crossing the river, and surprisingly beautiful it
+is, with its gabled towers and square bartizan turrets and mullioned
+windows. The picture opposite this page shows how the castle looks from
+the land side, with one of the square turrets, perfectly preserved; but
+the mullioned windows are the most striking feature of this side of the
+building, which was the domestic side, and so had larger openings than
+the one overlooking the river, which was more open to attack.
+
+Just when the castle was built no one knows, but it was thoroughly
+restored and largely added to by Sir Basil Brooke, to whom it was
+granted after the confiscation in 1610, when the power of the O'Donnells
+was finally broken. Red Hugh was really the last of the line, and his
+short life of twenty-eight years was more crowded with adventure than
+that of most heroes of romance.
+
+He was the son of Hugh O'Donnell, head of the clan, and of a
+high-spirited daughter of the Lord of the Isles, Innen Dhu Mac Donnell,
+whom Hugh of the Red Hair resembled in more ways than one. He was
+kidnapped by the English when only thirteen, and taken to Dublin and
+imprisoned in the castle there, as a hostage for his father's good
+behaviour. A year later, he managed to escape; was recaptured, escaped
+again; and, by remarkable cunning and daring, eluded the pursuers who
+were close after him, and got through to Donegal.
+
+He arrived there to find a great force of English camped about the
+place; but, half dead with exposure as he was, he mustered a force of
+his clansmen, marched on the English and put them to rout--a good
+beginning for a boy of fourteen. From that time forward, he was the
+firebrand which kept all Ireland alight against the invaders; but at
+last, as has happened so frequently in Irish history, a traitor in his
+own camp overthrew him--his cousin and brother-in-law, Nial Garv the
+Fierce, who, being older than Hugh, thought that he should have had the
+O'Donnellship and been crowned at the Rock of Doon, and so grew jealous
+of the red haired lad, and ended by going over to the English.
+
+There was red battle between them after that, and the English were
+treated to the pleasant spectacle of Irishmen slaying each other; but
+Hugh was called away to Kinsale to join the Spaniards, stopping at Holy
+Cross on the way, as we have seen, for the Abbot's blessing, and then
+going on to a ruinous defeat. He went to Spain, after that, to plead for
+more help, and died there, of poison it is said, at the age of
+twenty-eight, and lies buried at Valladolid.
+
+His brother, Rory O'Donnell, was recognised by the English and made Earl
+of Tyrconnell, but at the end of a year or two he found himself so
+surrounded with intrigue that, in fear for his life, he gathered up such
+of his belongings as he could and fled the country. O'Neill, Earl of
+Tyrone, fled with him, and this "flight of the earls" was the end of
+Irish power in the north of Ireland, for their estates were declared
+forfeit, and divided among adherents of the English court. Nial Garv,
+who had contributed so much to the O'Donnells' overthrow, put in a claim
+for their estates, but was arrested and sent to the Tower of London and
+left to rot there till he died. Such was the end of Donegal as the seat
+of a Celtic Princedom, for the new prince was an Englishman, Sir Basil
+Brooke.
+
+It is his imprint you will see upon the castle as it exists
+to-day--particularly in the great sculptured chimney-piece which stands
+in what was once the banqueting hall, and which is a marvel of
+elaborate, though not very finished, carving. Brooke was a Catholic and
+a royalist, a supporter of Charles I, and after the fall of that unlucky
+monarch, was imprisoned in the Tower and his estate declared forfeited
+to the Parliament. The old castle, now the property of the Earl of
+Arran, fell gradually to ruin, until to-day only the shell remains.
+
+Next to the chimney-piece, the most interesting feature of the interior
+is the vaulting of the lower rooms, which are lighted only by narrow
+slits like loopholes. This vaulting is made of flat stones, an inch or
+two in thickness, set on edge, and though rough enough, is as firm
+to-day as the day it was put in place.
+
+As we came out of the grounds, we were accosted by an old man with a
+flowing white beard, who suggested that we visit his tweed depot, just
+across the street, and see for ourselves what Donegal tweeds really
+were. He was so pleasant about it that we couldn't refuse; and to say
+that we were astonished when we stepped inside his shop would be putting
+it mildly, for there, in that village of twelve hundred people, was the
+largest stock of tweeds and other Irish weaves that I have ever seen.
+The place was fairly jammed with great rolls of cloth; and when we said
+we weren't especially interested in tweeds, but might be in a
+steamer-rug, he led us up to a wide balcony and produced rug after rug;
+beautiful rugs, soft and thick, pure wool in ever fibre. Of course we
+succumbed!
+
+Mr. Timony, for such was the old man's name, was very proud of his shop,
+as he had a right to be, and of his American custom. He told us that
+President Woodrow Wilson and William Randolph Hearst had both been
+among his visitors, and he evidently considered them equally
+distinguished!
+
+It had begun to shower again by the time we tore ourselves away from Mr.
+Timony, and Betty elected to return to the hotel; but I wanted to see
+the ruins of the old abbey, a little way down the river, and walked out
+to it. There is scarcely more left of it than there is of Assaroe--just
+some fragments of ivy-clad wall standing in the midst of a graveyard, as
+may be seen from the picture opposite page 438. The graveyard is still
+used, and when I got there, I found three men trying to decide on the
+site for a grave, while the diggers stood by, with their long-handled
+spades, waiting the word to begin. They had a hard time finding a place,
+for the graveyard is crowded, like most Irish ones, and they wandered
+about from place to place for quite a while.
+
+That so little is left of the abbey is due to the fact that in 1601,
+Nial Garv took possession of the place, and Red Hugh besieged him there,
+and in some way Garv's store of gunpowder exploded and tore the
+buildings to pieces. All of which is told in that priceless volume of
+Irish history which was written here, the "Annals of the Four Masters,"
+a book of eleven hundred quarto pages, which, by some miracle of luck,
+has been preserved. The "four masters" were four monks of the abbey, and
+it is largely to their labours we owe what history we have of the times
+in which they lived.
+
+There are a few arches of the cloisters still standing, and they
+resemble those at Sligo not only in shape and character, but also in the
+fact that repeated burials have raised the ground about them many feet
+above its ancient level, so that what was once a lofty arched doorway
+can now be passed only by stooping low. Hugh Roe O'Donnell and his wife,
+Fingalla, who founded the monastery for the Franciscans in 1474, are
+said to be buried here, but I did not find their graves. There is also a
+legend that castle and abbey were at one time connected by a secret
+passage, but I scarcely believe it, for they are a long way apart.
+
+The rain was sheeting down in earnest when I finally left the place, but
+the gravediggers were bending to their task, quite oblivious of the
+downpour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We bade good-bye to Donegal that afternoon, and took train for
+Londonderry and the "Black North." And it was not long before we
+realised that we had turned our backs upon the Ireland of the Irish and
+entered the Ireland of the English and the Scotch--a very different
+country!
+
+Just outside of Donegal, we witnessed one of those leave-takings, which
+have occurred a million times in Ireland during the past fifty years. As
+the train stopped at a little station, we saw that the platform was
+crowded, and then we perceived the cause. A boy and two girls, some
+seventeen or eighteen years old, were setting out for Derry to take ship
+for America, and their relatives and friends had come down to see them
+off. There were tears in every eye, and if blessings have any virtue,
+enough were showered on that trio that afternoon to see them safely
+through life.
+
+The guard came along presently, and hustled them into the compartment
+ahead of ours--he had seen such scenes a hundred times, I suppose, and
+had long since ceased to be impressed by them--and then the three
+children hung out of the door and took a last look at their people; and
+then the engine whistled and the train started slowly, and one man, his
+face working convulsively, began to run along beside it, then suddenly
+recollected himself, and stopped with a jerk.
+
+The whole country-side must have known that the three were going, for
+every house for miles had a group of men and women out to wave at them
+as the train passed; and the exiles waved and waved back, and leaned out
+and gazed at the country they were leaving, as though to impress its
+every feature on their minds.
+
+And indeed it is a beautiful country, for the road follows the valley of
+the Eask, and presently Lough Eask opened before us, lying in a deep
+basin at the foot of lofty hills--such hills as cover the whole of
+Donegal and make it one of the most picturesque of Irish counties.
+Beyond the lake, the line traverses one of the wildest valleys we had
+seen in Ireland, the Gap of Barnesmore--a bleak, rock-strewn defile,
+with a little stream running at the bottom and the post-road following
+its windings; but the railway line has been laid, most perilously it
+seemed, right along the face of the mountain. There were evidences of
+land-slips here and there, and it was plain that great boulders were
+always rolling down, so I should fancy that a sharp watch has to be kept
+on those five miles of road-bed. But we got across without accident, and
+the views out over the valley and the Donegal mountains were superb--I
+only wish we had had time to explore them more thoroughly.
+
+Just beyond the gap, the line passes Lough Mourne, a melancholy little
+lake set in a framework of bleak hills, and then runs on across a still
+bleaker moor; but gradually, as the hills are left behind, the character
+of the country changes, the houses become more numerous, the fields
+larger and less stony, one sees an orchard here and there--and then,
+quite suddenly, the whole landscape becomes prosperous and pastoral, and
+we caught our first glimpse of wide fields covered with a light and
+vivid green, which we knew was the green of flax. After that, there was
+no time, until we left Ireland, that this new and lovely tint was not
+among the other tints of whatever landscape we might be looking at.
+
+We paused for a moment at the prosperous little town of Stranorlar, and
+then went on northwards, past one village after another, along the
+valley of the Finn, to Strabane--like Leenane, pronounced to rhyme with
+"fan." We had an hour or two to wait here, so we walked up into the
+town, and had lunch at a pleasant inn, and then took a look about the
+place; and I think it was then we began to realise that the picturesque
+part of Ireland was behind us. Certainly there is nothing picturesque
+about Strabane, although it resembles most other Irish towns in having a
+huge workhouse and jail. But it has also some large shirt-factories,
+whence came the whirr of machinery, and where we could see the girls and
+women in long rows bending to their tasks; and it has great ware-houses,
+not falling to ruin like those of Galway and Westport and Ballyshannon,
+but filled with merchandise and busy with men and drays. We were so
+unaccustomed to such a sight that we stopped and looked at it for quite
+a while.
+
+It is a fifteen mile run from Strabane to Derry, for the most part along
+the bank of the Foyle, through a beautiful and prosperous country, with
+many villages clustered among the trees; and at six o'clock we reached
+the "Maiden City,"--by far the busiest town we had seen since Dublin. In
+fact, as we turned up past the old walls and came to the centre of the
+town, the bustle of business and roar of traffic seemed to me to surpass
+Dublin; and more than once, when we were settled in our room, the
+unaccustomed noise drew us to the window to see what was going on. We
+went out, presently, to see that portion of the town which stands within
+the ancient walls; but before I describe that excursion, I shall have to
+tell something of what those walls stand for.
+
+Fourteen hundred years ago--in 546, to be exact--Columba, greatest of
+Irish saints after Patrick and Brigid, passed this way, and stopping in
+the oak grove which clothed the hill on which the town now stands, was
+so impressed with the lovely situation, that he founded an abbey there,
+which was known as Daire-Columbkille--Columba's Oak-grove.
+
+There was another reason, perhaps, besides the beauty of the spot, which
+persuaded the Saint to choose this site for his monastery, and that was
+the nearness of the great fort on Elagh mountain, the stronghold of the
+Lord of Tyrone. He doubtless hoped that, in the shadow of that mighty
+cashel, his abbey would be safe from spoliation; but in this he was
+disappointed, for its position on a navigable river, so close to the
+sea, made it easy prey to the Danes and the Saxons, and they sailed up
+to it time and again and laid it waste. But it grew in importance in
+spite of repeated burnings, and it held off the English longer than
+most, for, though it was plundered by Strongbow's men in 1195, and
+included in the grant to Richard de Burgo, the Red Earl of Ulster, in
+1311, it was not until 1609, two years after that "flight of the earls"
+which left Tyrone and Tyrconnell confiscated to the English, that it was
+really conquered.
+
+In confiscating this vast domain, as in all previous and subsequent
+confiscations in Ireland, the English crown proceeded upon the theory
+that all the land a chief ruled over belonged to that chief; but in
+Ireland this was not at all the case, for there the land belonged, and
+always had belonged, not to the chief but to his people. This, however,
+was not allowed to interfere in any way with its re-apportionment among
+court favourites and companies of adventurers; and Derry, together with
+a vast tract of land about it, was granted to the Corporation of London,
+which thereupon proceeded to re-name it Londonderry, in token of its
+subserviency. Three years later, the Irish Society for the New
+Plantation in Ulster was formed, and to it was granted the towns of
+Coleraine and Londonderry, with seven thousand acres of land and the
+fisheries of the Foyle and the Bann. The society was pledged to enclose
+Derry with walls, and these were laid out and built in 1617. They were
+strong and serviceable, as may be seen to this day, and so wide that a
+carriage and four could drive along the top of them.
+
+The new colonists were mostly Protestants, and in the war which soon
+followed between King Charles and the Parliament naturally chose the
+Republican side, so that Derry quickly became the centre of resistance
+to royalty in Ulster. The town prospered under the Commonwealth, but the
+ups and downs of Irish politics after the Restoration kept it in a
+perpetual turmoil.
+
+I have already told how, after the fall of Charles I, Cromwell's army
+conquered Ireland, drove the Irish to the hills west of the Shannon, and
+divided the fertile land among the Puritan soldiers and the adherents of
+the Parliament. When Charles II was restored to the throne, part of the
+price exacted from him for that restoration was the so-called Act of
+Settlement, in which this division of the land among its Protestant
+conquerors was confirmed. That the Irish should protest against the
+injustice of this was natural enough; and that, once seated on the
+throne, the king should give ear to the protestations was natural too,
+since the Irish had been his father's allies and had lost their lands in
+fighting his battles for him. So, while Irish Catholic Ireland brought
+heavy pressure to bear on the king, English Protestant Ireland was on
+pins and needles through fear of what might happen. Finally the
+Cromwellians agreed to surrender a third of the estates in their
+possession, and on this basis peace of a sort was patched up.
+
+That was in 1665, and it looked for a while as though Protestant and
+Catholic would thereafter be able to live together in amity, for there
+was a general revival of industry which resulted in a prosperity the
+country had seldom known, and a consequent abatement of religious
+discord. But Charles died, and his brother, James II, at once proceeded
+to remodel the Irish army upon a Catholic basis, even going so far as
+partially to disarm the Protestants, who of course immediately concluded
+that they were all going to be massacred in revenge for Drogheda.
+
+But James soon found himself facing a rebellion in England, and in 1688
+a large force of Irish troops were transported to England to help him
+hold his throne. Among these troops was the regiment which had been
+stationed at Derry; and when, alarmed at the attitude of the town, the
+king attempted to throw another garrison into it, rebellion flamed up
+swift and fierce, and some apprentice boys seized the keys of the city
+gates and closed and locked them in the face of the royal army.
+Enniskillen followed suit, and everywhere throughout the north of
+Ireland, the Protestants began to form town companies and to arm and
+drill for their own defence. Thus was organised the first "army of
+Ulster"! It was soon to be needed--as I hope and believe the latest one
+will never be!
+
+Certain English leaders, determined to get rid of James at any cost, had
+invited William Prince of Orange to bring an army to England to restore
+liberty and rescue Protestantism from the destruction which seemed to
+threaten it. William, it should be remembered, stood very near the
+English throne, for his mother was the eldest daughter of Charles I, and
+his wife was his own cousin, the eldest daughter of Charles's son, James
+II. William, who had been expecting such an invitation, at once gathered
+a great army together and landed in England in November. James, finding
+himself detested and deserted by all parties, fled to France; and
+William and Mary were proclaimed King and Queen of Great Britain and
+Ireland.
+
+Ireland, of course, was still in rebellion. There is no more pathetic
+page of Irish history than that which tells of Irish loyalty to the
+Stuarts; for the Stuarts cared nothing for Ireland, but only for
+themselves, and used the Irish merely as pawns in their selfish struggle
+for power. The poor Irish stood firm for James, and got a great army
+together; and James came over from France with a small French force, and
+together they marched against Derry, which the Protestants still held,
+but which James expected to capture with little difficulty. The
+commander at Derry was a man named Robert Lundy, a Protestant and
+soldier of some experience, but he seems to have been a Jacobite at
+heart for, after one skirmish near Strabane, he held a council of war,
+recommended immediate surrender, ordered that there should be no firing,
+and sent word to James that the city was ready to submit. But he had
+reckoned without Derry's militant spirit; for when news of his decision
+got abroad, the people sprang to arms, and Lundy escaped with his life
+only by fleeing in disguise.
+
+Meanwhile, the Rev. George Walker and Major Henry Baker and Captain Adam
+Murray, three militants to the backbone, took charge of affairs and put
+Derry in the best state of defence possible; but the outlook was not
+bright. Military opinion was agreed that the town could not hold out
+against such an army as James was bringing against it; it seemed likely
+that to defend it would be to invite another Drogheda; and while the
+debate in the town council was still raging, James appeared under the
+walls expecting an immediate surrender.
+
+Negotiations were begun; but the sight of the Catholic army was the last
+thing needed to inflame the townsmen. A group of them managed to get a
+cannon pointed in the king's direction and touched it off. The ball is
+said to have passed so close to him that the wind of it blew off his
+hat; at any rate, the negotiations ended then and there, and with a
+shout of "No surrender!" Derry prepared for the struggle.
+
+That was the eighteenth day of April, 1689, and for fifteen weeks the
+town held out against a strict siege, which nothing could break. There
+were assaults and sallies, a bombardment which killed many people--all
+the accompaniments of a siege, with the final accompaniment of famine.
+It was the old story of horseflesh, mice and rats and even salted hides
+being greedily devoured; of a garrison thinning wofully from death and
+disease; but though there seemed to be no choice except starvation or
+surrender, nobody thought of surrender. And then, on Sunday, July 28th,
+a relief fleet which had been hovering uncertainly at the mouth of the
+harbour for some weeks, ran the batteries, broke the boom across the
+river, swept up to the city, and the siege was ended.
+
+Such was the siege of Derry. A thousand incidents, impossible to set
+down here, are treasured in the minds of every inhabitant; and, lest the
+great event should ever be forgotten, two anniversaries connected with
+it are celebrated every year, on December 18th the Closing of the Gates
+against the King's Army, and on August 12th the Raising of the Siege.
+There are processions and meetings and speeches of a very Protestant
+character, and at the December festival the effigy of the perfidious
+Lundy is hanged and burnt--not without some little rioting, for rather
+more than half the population of Derry is Catholic and Nationalist. One
+of the popular airs upon these occasions is, of course, "Boyne Water,"
+and another is about Derry herself. It is called
+
+
+THE MAIDEN CITY
+
+  Where Foyle his swelling waters rolls northward to the main,
+  Here, Queen of Erin's daughters, fair Derry fixed her reign;
+  A holy temple crowned her, and commerce graced her street,
+  A rampart wall was round her, the river at her feet;
+  And here she sat alone, boys, and, looking from the hill,
+  Vowed the Maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.
+
+  From Antrim crossing over, in famous eighty-eight,
+  A plumed and belted lover came to the Ferry Gate:
+  She summoned to defend her our sires--a beardless race--
+  They shouted "No Surrender!" and slammed it in his face.
+  Then, in a quiet tone, boys, they told him 'twas their will
+  That the Maiden on her throne, boys, should be a Maiden still.
+
+  Next, crushing all before him, a kingly wooer came
+  (The royal banner o'er him blushed crimson deep for shame);
+  He showed the Pope's commission, nor dreamed to be refused;
+  She pitied his condition, but begged to stand excused.
+  In short, the fact is known, boys, she chased him from the hill,
+  For the Maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.
+
+  On our peaceful sires descending, 'twas then the tempest broke,
+  Their peaceful dwellings rending, 'mid blood and flame and smoke.
+  That hallowed graveyard yonder swells with the slaughtered dead--
+  O brothers! pause and ponder--it was for us they bled;
+  And while their gift we own, boys--the fane that tops our hill--
+  Oh! the Maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still!
+
+  Nor wily tongue shall move us, nor tyrant arm affright,
+  We'll look to One above us who ne'er forsook the right;
+  Who will, may crouch and tender the birthright of the free,
+  But, brothers, "No Surrender!" no compromise for me!
+  We want no barrier stone, boys, no gates to guard the hill,
+  Yet the Maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still!
+
+There is a good marching song, if there ever was one--a song to make the
+heart leap and the spirit sing, when a thousand voices roar it in
+unison; and it very fairly represents the spirit of Derry and of the
+whole of Protestant Ulster--a spirit which is admirable, though often
+mistaken, and sometimes made use of for base and selfish ends. The song
+was written by a woman, a native of Derry, of course, Charlotte Tonna,
+some sixty years ago; and it is a song of which Ireland, north and
+south, should be proud.
+
+Let me tell here, as briefly as may be, the rest of the story of that
+ill-fated rebellion, of which Derry wrote one terrific chapter, for
+unless we know it, it will be impossible for us to understand Ulster.
+
+The relief of the Maiden City was followed by the complete defeat of the
+royal army before Enniskillen, and no further attempt was made to
+subjugate the north of Ireland. James took up headquarters at Dublin,
+and every nerve was strained to recruit an army capable of withstanding
+the one which William was certain to bring into Ireland. The king of
+France sent seven thousand veterans, with a park of artillery and large
+stores of arms and ammunition, every device of religious and racial
+hatred was employed to persuade Irishmen to enlist; so that when, on
+June 30, 1690, the Protestant and Catholic armies stood facing each
+other on either side Boyne River, a few miles above Drogheda, the
+Protestants had no very great numerical advantage. In discipline and
+general efficiency, however, their advantage was immense, and the odds
+against James were so great that it was folly for him to risk a battle;
+but he could not make up his mind what to do, and in consequence, when
+William threw his troops across the river, he caught the Irish
+unprepared, and defeated them after a brisk engagement.
+
+James was the first to gallop from the field. He reached Dublin that
+night, snatched a few hours' rest, and then pressed on to Waterford,
+where he took ship for France. Deprived of their cowardly leader, and
+perhaps with some comprehension of how they had been betrayed, the Irish
+would have been glad to lay down their arms on terms of a general
+amnesty, which William, for his part, was willing to grant. But the
+English settlers intervened. They had been compelled to restore to the
+Irish a third of the estates which the Commonwealth had confiscated;
+there were thousands of other fertile acres which the settlers coveted;
+and, as a result of their influence, the amnesty, when finally
+published, was confined to the tenant and the landless man. In
+consequence, the Irish army was held together by Tyrconnell and
+Sarsfield, and the rebellion did not end until Athlone, Cork, Kinsale,
+Limerick, and finally Galway had been captured by the English. The
+Irish troops were permitted to go to France and enlist in the king's
+army, as has been told already; and so ended the hope of placing a
+Catholic monarch on the English throne. So ended, too, for more than two
+centuries, Catholic liberty in Ireland.
+
+It is this Protestant triumph which is so dear to Ulster, and which the
+walls of Derry have been preserved to commemorate. Their preservation is
+a great inconvenience to the inhabitants of that town, but any one who
+proposed to remove them would be treated as a traitor. They circle the
+steep hill upon which the oldest part of the town is built, and when one
+wishes to enter it, one must go around to one of the gates. There are
+seven gates, now, instead of the original four; but it takes quite a
+walk, sometimes, to get to one, for the walls are something over a mile
+around. But no patriotic resident would think of objecting to
+this--indeed, the walk gives him time to meditate upon his city's glory
+and to thank the Lord that he was born there. I suspect that the
+Catholics of Derry are just as proud of the walls as the Protestants
+are.
+
+It so happened that there was a gate not far from our hotel, so we
+passed through it, and found ourselves confronted by one of the steepest
+streets I have ever seen. The hill on which the old citadel was built
+slopes very abruptly on this side toward the river, and no attempt has
+been made to cut it down. We managed to climb it, and came out upon the
+so-called Diamond--the square at the centre of the town where the old
+town hall once stood, but which has now, to quote Murray, "been
+converted into a pleasant garden by the London Companies." For it
+should be remembered that the grant made to the London Companies three
+hundred years ago is still in force.
+
+The Diamond is the heart of the town, and from it four arteries radiate,
+running to the four original gates; other smaller streets zig-zag away
+in various directions, and everywhere is the vigorous flow of life and
+trade. The shops are bright and attractive, and that evening crowds of
+girls, freed from the day's labour in the factories, were loitering past
+them, arm in arm, staring in at the windows and chattering among
+themselves. They were distinctly livelier than the factory girls of
+Athlone, and I judge that life is easier for them and that they are
+better paid.
+
+We walked about for a long time, and then, for want of something better
+to do, went to a moving-picture show. I have forgotten all the pictures
+but two--a meeting of the Knights of the Garter at Windsor and a review
+of a body of English cavalry. In the former, King George and Queen Mary
+twice passed slowly before the audience; in the latter, the king, on a
+spirited horse, cantered down the field and then took his station in the
+foreground while his troops galloped past. It was a stirring scene; but
+the audience watched it in stony, almost breathless silence, without the
+shadow of applause--and this in "loyal Derry"! I am inclined to think
+that, with reference to England, the north of Ireland and the south of
+Ireland are "sisters under their skins."
+
+We had been wondering, during the final reel, how we were going to find
+our way back to the hotel through the dark and unfamiliar streets, for
+it was nearly ten o'clock; and we came out into them with a start of
+astonishment, for it was still quite light, with the street lights not
+yet on. So we loitered about for half an hour longer; and then, from the
+balcony in front of our window, sat watching for an hour more the
+fascinating life flowing past below us.
+
+One feature of it was a boy quartette,--one of the boys with a clear,
+high soprano voice,--which sang very sweetly, "It's a long way to
+Tipperary"; and then, just as we began to think everybody had gone to
+bed, there came a blast of martial music down the street, and the tramp
+of feet, and a company of men swung past, going heaven knows where; but
+the fife-and-drum corps which marched at their head was making the
+windows rattle with
+
+    "The Maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still!"
+
+It was the first of many such processions we were to see during our
+remaining weeks in Ireland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH
+
+
+DERRY has a charm--the charm of the hive--for it is a busy town, and a
+cheerful one. It is only on mooted anniversaries, I fancy, or when some
+fire-brand politician comes to town, that the Protestants and Catholics
+amuse themselves by breaking each other's heads. At other times they
+must work amicably side by side. At least, I saw nobody idle; and
+Catholics and Protestants alike were plainly infected by the same spirit
+of hustle.
+
+The cause of the difference between the north and south of Ireland has
+been hotly debated for a hundred years. Why is the north energetic and
+prosperous, while the south is lazy and poverty-stricken? Some say
+it is the difference in climate, others the difference in religion.
+I could perceive no great difference in the climate, and as for
+religion--strange as it may seem to those who think of Ulster only in
+the light of Orange manifestoes--there are almost as many Catholics as
+Protestants in the north of Ireland. My own opinion is that the Celt is
+easy-going in the south and industrious in the north because of the
+environment. "Canny" is undoubtedly the best of all adjectives to apply
+to the Scotch--they are congenitally thrifty and industrious. The Celt,
+on the other hand, is congenitally easy-going and unambitious. Left to
+himself, among his own people, weighted with centuries of repression, he
+falls into a lethargy from which it is impossible to awaken him--from
+which, I sometimes think, he will never be awakened. But put him in
+another environment, and he soon catches its spirit. At least, his
+children catch it, and their children are confirmed in it--and there you
+are. Put them back in the old environment, and in another generation or
+two they will have slipped back into the old habits of carelessness and
+improvidence. This, it seems to me, is the Irishman's history not only
+in the north of Ireland, but here in America. He is adaptable,
+impressionable, and plastic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It would be absurd for any one to go to Derry without making a circuit
+of the walls, and this we proceeded to do next morning. We mounted them
+at the New Gate, where they are at least twenty-five feet high. There is
+a promenade on top about fifteen feet wide, and along the outer edge the
+old cannon given by the London companies still frown down through the
+embrasures of the battlement. Outside the wall there was originally a
+moat, but this has disappeared, and so have many of the old bastions. A
+few of them still remain--the double bastion where the fruitful gallows
+stood, and from which the noisy old gun, affectionately christened
+"Roaring Meg," still points out over the town. And back of the
+cathedral, the old wall stands as it stood during the siege, with its
+high protecting parapet, crowned with little loop-holed turrets.
+
+The cathedral itself is a quaint, squat structure, with pinnacled tower,
+standing in the midst of a crowded graveyard, the most prominent object
+in which is an obelisk erected over the bodies of those who fell in the
+siege. The inscription, as is fitting, is long and eloquent. The church
+itself is comparatively modern and uninteresting, but it is filled with
+trophies of the siege--a bomb-shell containing a summons to surrender
+which fell in the cathedral yard, the flags taken from the French during
+a sally, memorials of the Rev. Mr. Walker, and so on. It is still called
+after St. Columba, although the abbey built by the Saint stood outside
+the present walls.
+
+A little distance past the cathedral is another bastion which has been
+turned into a foundation for the great monument to Walker--a fluted
+column ninety feet high, surmounted by a statue of the hero, his Bible
+in one hand. Time was when he held a sword in the other, but legend has
+it that the sword fell with a crash on the day that O'Connell won
+Catholic emancipation for Ireland.
+
+A fierce controversy has raged about the part Walker really played in
+the siege; and it is probable that he at least shared the honours with
+Murray and Baker. However that may be, he must have been an inspiring
+figure, as he walked about the walls, with his white hair and
+impassioned face and commanding vigour--a vigour which his seventy-two
+years seem nowise to have impaired; and his end was inspiring, too, for
+he did not rest quietly at home, content with his laurels, as most men
+would have done. Instead, he joined William's army, was in the forefront
+at the Battle of the Boyne, and managed to get killed there while
+exhorting the troops to do their duty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The town of Derry has long since outgrown the old walls, but there is
+little else worth seeing there, unless one is interested in a busy
+port, or in humming factories, or rumbling mills, or clattering
+foundries. Of these there is full store. But a few miles to the west, on
+the summit of a hill looking down upon Lough Swilly, is the cashel which
+was once the stronghold of the Kings of Ulster, and for it I set out
+that afternoon.
+
+Murray, with that vagueness delightful in the Irish but exasperating in
+a guide-book, remarks that "it can be reached from Bridge End Station on
+the Buncrana line," so I proceeded to the station of the Buncrana line
+on the outskirts of the town, and bought a ticket to Bridge End Station.
+The ticket seller had apparently never heard of the Grainan of Aileach,
+as the cashel is called, and seemed rather to doubt if such a thing
+existed at all; but I determined to trust to luck, and took my seat in
+the little train which presently backed in along the platform.
+
+The Buncrana line is, I judge, a small affair; at any rate, the train
+was very primitive, and the two men who shared the compartment with me
+complained bitterly of the poor service the railroads give the people of
+Ireland. They said it was a shame and a disgrace, and that no free
+people would put up with the insults and ignominy which the railroads
+heap upon the Irish, and much more to the same effect. I had heard this
+complaint before and have read it in more than one book; but I never had
+any real cause of complaint myself. Beyond a tendency to let the
+passengers look out for themselves, the guards are as courteous as
+guards anywhere; and only once, on the occasion of the race-meeting at
+Charleville, did we suffer from crowding. This was not because we
+travelled first, because we didn't--we travelled second; and when I was
+alone, I always travelled third, as I would advise any one to do who
+wishes really to meet the people.
+
+Bridge End Station is only a few minutes' run from Derry, and when I got
+off there, I asked the man who took my ticket if he could direct me to
+the cashel.
+
+"I can," he said; "but it is a long way from here, and a stiff climb. Do
+you see that hill yonder?" and he pointed to a lofty peak some miles
+away. "It is there you will find the fort, right on the very top."
+
+"Have you ever been there?" I asked.
+
+"I have not, though I'm thinking I will go some day, for them that have
+seen it tell me it is a wonderful sight. But 'tis a long walk."
+
+"Well, I'm going to try for it," I said, and hitched my camera under my
+arm. "How do I start?"
+
+"By that road yonder; and turn to your right at the village. Good luck
+to you, sir."
+
+I could see he didn't really believe I would get to the cashel; but I
+set off happily along the road, between high hedges; and presently I
+passed a village, and turned to the right, as he had told me; and then
+two barefooted children caught up with me, on their way home from
+school. They knew the way to the cashel very well, though they had never
+been there either; and presently they left me and struck off across the
+fields; and then I came to a place where the road forked, and stopped to
+ask a man who was wheeling manure from a big stable which way to go. He
+too was astonished that any one should start off so carelessly on such
+an expedition; but he directed me up a narrow by-way, which soon began
+to climb steeply; and then the valley beneath me opened more and more,
+and finally I saw to my right the summit I was aiming for, and struck
+boldly toward it along a boggy path.
+
+The path led me to the rear of a thatched cottage, where two men were
+stacking hay. They assured me that I was on the right road, and I pushed
+on again for the summit, past another little house, from which a man
+suddenly emerged and hailed me.
+
+"Where be you going?" he demanded.
+
+"To the fort," I said. "It's up this way, isn't it?"
+
+"It might be."
+
+"Am I trespassing?" I asked, for there seemed to be an unfriendly air
+about him.
+
+"You are so," he answered.
+
+"I'm sorry," I stammered; "if there's another way--"
+
+"There is no other way."
+
+"Well, then, I'll have to go this way," I said. "I'll not do any harm."
+
+"That's as may be. You must pay three-pence if you wish to pass."
+
+I paid the three-pence rather than waste time in argument, which, of
+course, wouldn't have done any good; and his countenance became
+distinctly more pleasant when the pennies were in his hand, and he
+directed me how to go; and I started up again, over springy heather now,
+along a high wall of stones gathered from the field; and then the ground
+grew wet and boggy, just as it is on the mountains of Connemara, and I
+had to make a detour--the man who directed me, probably thought nothing
+of a little bog! A ploughman in a neighbouring field stopped work to
+watch me with interest until I passed from sight, and two red calves
+also came close to investigate the stranger; and then I crested the last
+ridge and saw towering before me the stronghold where Owen, son of Nial
+the Great, established himself to rule over his province, Tyrone.
+
+For a moment I was fairly startled at the huge apparition, grey and
+solitary and impressive, for I had expected no such monster edifice--a
+cyclopean circle of stone, looking like the handiwork of some race of
+giants, three hundred feet around and eighteen feet high, with a wall
+fourteen feet in thickness!
+
+The outer face of the wall is inclined slightly inwards, and is very
+smooth and regular. It is made of flat, hammer-dressed stones of various
+sizes, carefully fitted together, but uncemented, as with all these old
+forts. The stones are for the most part quite small, very different from
+the great blocks used in the other cashels I had seen. There is a single
+entrance, a doorway some five feet high by two wide, slightly inclined
+inward toward the top, and looking very tiny indeed in that great
+stretch of wall; and then my heart stood still with dismay, for there
+was an iron gate across the entrance, and I thought for a moment that it
+was locked. With a sigh of relief I found that the padlock which held it
+was not snapped shut, and I opened it and entered.
+
+It was as though I had stepped into some old Roman amphitheatre, for the
+terraces which run around it from top to bottom have the appearance of
+tiers of seats. They mount one above the other to the narrow platform at
+the top, which is guarded by a low parapet. Two flights of steps run up
+the slope, but an active man would have no need of them. On either side
+of the entrance door a gallery runs away in the thickness of the wall,
+opening some distance away on the interior, and designed, I suppose, to
+enable an extra force to defend the entrance.
+
+Of the castle which once stood within that stone circle not a trace
+remains, and the circle itself, as it stands to-day, is largely a
+restoration, for Murtagh O'Brien captured it in 1101 and did his best to
+destroy it, and the storms of the centuries that followed beat it down
+stone by stone. But these fragments have all been gathered up and put
+back into place, so that the great fort stands to-day much as it did in
+the days of its glory, except that the outworks of earth and stone which
+formed the first lines of defence, have disappeared. The cashel was to
+this great fortification what the donjon tower was to the later Norman
+castle--the ultimate place of refuge for the garrison.
+
+"Grainan" means a royal seat, and "Aileach," so say the Four Masters of
+Donegal, was a Scotch princess, "modest and blooming," who lost her
+heart to Owen of the Hy-Nial, and followed him back to Erin. After the
+division of the north of Ireland with his brother Connell, he set up his
+palace here--Connell's you will remember was at Donegal--and so this
+became the royal seat of the rulers of Tyrone. Hither came St. Patrick
+to baptise Owen and his family; hither came St. Columba before his exile
+to Iona; hither captive Danes were dragged in triumph. But at last
+Murtagh O'Brien, King of Munster, led a great raid to the north, and
+defeated the army of Tyrone and captured the mighty fortress, and made
+each of his soldiers carry away a stone of it in token of his triumph.
+
+[Illustration: THE WALLS OF DERRY]
+
+[Illustration: THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH]
+
+That ended its earthly glory, but it remains glorious in legend; for it
+is beneath its old grey walls that the Knights of the Gael stand
+deathless and untiring, each beside his steed with his hand upon the
+saddlebow, waiting the trumpet-call that shall break the charm that
+binds them, and release them to win back their heritage in Erin. In the
+caves within the hill the knights stand waiting--great vaulted chambers
+whose entrance no man knows. Nor does any man know when their release
+will come, whether to-morrow or not till centuries hence, for 'tis
+Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan herself who must choose the day and hour.
+
+    Sore disgrace it is to see the Arbitress of thrones
+    Vassal to a Saxoneen of cold and sapless bones!
+    Bitter anguish wrings our souls; with heavy sighs and groans
+      We wait the Young Deliverer of Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan.
+
+Glorious is the view from the top of those old walls. To the right is
+Lough Foyle, to the left Lough Swilly, with the hills of Donegal, draped
+in silver mist, beyond--wild, grey crags, rising one behind the other;
+and away to the north, beyond the wide valley, are the hills of
+Inishowen--Owen's Island, if you know your Irish. I have never gazed
+upon a more superb picture of alternating lake and hill and meadow, of
+flashing mountain-top and dark green valley.
+
+But if I was to get back to Derry that night, I had need to hasten; so I
+clambered down, after one long last look. I had still my picture to
+take, and made two exposures, but they give only a faint idea of the
+majesty of this great fort, standing here on this wild, deserted
+hilltop; and then I started downwards, with long steps, past the
+cottages, with the beautiful valley before me, back to the highway, down
+and down among the trees, past the village and so to the station. The
+guard was waiting there.
+
+"Well," he said, as I sat down mopping my face, for I had covered three
+miles in half an hour, "did you see the fort?"
+
+"I did so," I answered, for I had long since fallen naturally into the
+Irish idiom; and I told him what it was like; but I think he was
+unconvinced.
+
+"Was there a man stopped you?" he asked.
+
+"There was--a man at the end of the lane right under the fort, who made
+me pay three-pence before he would let me pass."
+
+"Ah, that would be O'Donnell," said the guard, convinced at last. "He
+has been given the key to keep. Did he give you the key?"
+
+"He did not. But the iron gate was unlocked."
+
+"That was by accident, I'm thinking," said the guard. "He is not caring
+whether one can enter or not, so long as he has his three-pence."
+
+So I would advise all wayfarers to the Grainan of Aileach to make sure
+that the gate of it is unlocked, or to demand the key, before
+surrendering their three-pence to O'Donnell.
+
+When I got into the train again, I found as a fellow-passenger one of
+the men who had come out from Derry with me, and after I had described
+the cashel to him--for he had never seen it--we got to talking about
+Home Rule. In spite of its militant Protestantism, Derry has a very
+large Catholic population, and my companion said that opinion in the
+town was about equally divided for and against Home Rule.
+
+"The result is," he went on, "that whenever we have a meeting, no matter
+which side it's on, there's sure to be a shindy, and the police has
+their hands full. Most of the fellys who do the fighting don't care a
+rap about Home Rule, but they just take pleasure in layin' a stick
+against somebody's head. It's all done in a friendly spirit, and next
+day they will be workin' side by side the same as ever. The only ones
+who are really fighting Home Rule are the big landlords and
+manufacturers, who imagine they'll get the worst of it in the matter of
+taxation at the hands of a Catholic parliament, and they do everything
+they can to keep their people stirred up. That has always been their
+policy; and the big Catholic employers in the south--what few of them
+there are--aren't a whit better. They're all afraid that if the Catholic
+workingmen and the Protestant workingmen once get together they'll fix
+up some kind of a union, and demand better wages. As long as they can be
+kept fighting each other, there's no danger of that; and the poor idiots
+haven't sense enough to see how they're being made fools of. But they'll
+see it some day, and then look out!"
+
+"How about this army of Ulster the papers are so full of?"
+
+My companion laughed.
+
+"There isn't any army around here, unless you can call a few hundred
+devil-may-care boys an army. I did hear something about some drill going
+on, but as far as fighting goes that's all nonsense. The boys are ready
+enough to crack a head with a stick, but they're the first to run when
+the police arrive, and they'll think a long time before they try to
+stand up against the British army. I'll not say that they're not more in
+earnest over Belfast way; but even there, a few politicians have stirred
+up most of the talk--Sir Edward Carson and the likes of him. It's all a
+political game, that's how I look at it."
+
+I walked around Derry for a time that afternoon, and so far as public
+buildings go, Catholicism and Protestantism seem about equally
+represented--and with the strangest contrasts. Across the road from St.
+Columb's College are the Nazareth Homes; around the corner from St.
+Augustine's Church is the Apprentice Boys' Hall; a few steps farther on
+is a Presbyterian church, and the Freemasons' Hall, and then St.
+Columb's Temperance Hall, and then a convent; and if you walk back again
+to the Diamond and make some inquiries, you will find that one of the
+radiating streets is the home of militant Catholics, and the next the
+home of militant Orangemen, and you will be accommodated with a fight at
+any time if you go into the latter and shout "To hell with King Billy,"
+or into the former and shout "To hell with the Pope!" And if you buy one
+of the two papers which the town supports, you will read denunciations
+of Home Rule and contemptuous references to "croppies," while, if you
+buy the other, you will read denunciations just as fierce of Orange
+plots against Ireland.
+
+I have wondered since how much of this agitation is subsidised and how
+much is real. I have heard both Catholics and Protestants complain that
+it is kept alive in great part by professional agitators, working in
+very diverse interests but to a common selfish end--and that end, as my
+friend of the morning pointed out, the continuance and, if possible, the
+deepening of the rift between the two religions. On the other hand,
+there can be no doubt that Protestants and Catholics alike take a fierce
+joy in an occasional fight, as lending a real interest to life. But I am
+convinced that religion has really little to do with this--that it is
+just the peg upon which the quarrels are hung. If it wasn't that, it
+would probably be something else, for Irishmen have been fighting each
+other ever since history began. The fights at Donnybrook were as fierce
+as any, though there wasn't a Protestant in the crowd!
+
+The Orange Societies, of course, with their parades and taunting songs
+and flaunting banners and praise of Cromwell and "King Billy," do not
+make for peace. Usually, on such occasions, blows are exchanged; and so
+the name of Orangeman has come to be associated with riots. But, as
+another writer has pointed out, in considering these things, "you should
+not forget the common pugnacity. Only an Irishman can appreciate the
+fierce joy of shouting 'To hell with the Pope!' Many a man who had no
+claim to belong to the Orange Society has known the delight of breaking
+Catholic heads or of going down in a lost battle, outnumbered but
+damaging his foes to the last. And many who are slow to attend Mass, are
+quick to seize their cudgels when they hear the Orange bands play the
+tune of Boyne Water. Like the Crusaders, the Protestant and Catholic
+champions alike feel that by their battles they make amends for the
+errors and shortcomings of peace."
+
+So it is a mistake to take these rows too seriously. To an Irishman
+they are never serious; they are rather the innocent and natural
+diversions of a holiday, small events which add to the savour of
+existence; and, indeed, they are far less numerous and far less deadly
+than they once were. In time, if the people are let alone and old sores
+are allowed quietly to heal, they will probably cease altogether.
+
+It is a mistake, too, I think to take the Orangemen too seriously. They
+have such a habit of hyperbole that most Irishmen smile at their
+hysterics and threats of civil war as at sheer fudge. In fact, the
+Ulster controversy is so full of comic opera elements that it is
+difficult to keep from smiling at it. For instance, Sir Edward Carson's
+elder son is a member of the United Irish League because he believes in
+a united Ireland, while John Redmond's nephew and adopted son is
+enrolled among the Ulster Volunteers because he is opposed to coercion!
+Gilbert and Sullivan never invented anything more fantastic.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS
+
+
+THERE is no busier place in Derry than the stretch of quays along the
+river, and one may see ships there not only from England and Belgium and
+France, but from Australia and Argentina and India and Brazil. The river
+is wide and deep, with the channel carefully marked by a line of buoys
+extending clear out into Lough Foyle; but there are no better facilities
+here for shipping than at any one of half a dozen ports along the
+western coast, all of which are silent and deserted. For a port is of no
+use unless there is something to ship out of it in exchange for the
+things which are shipped in, or money to pay for them--and there is
+neither in the west of Ireland.
+
+And, just as there is no more dismal sight than a line of deserted
+quays, so there is no more interesting sight than a line of busy ones,
+and we loitered for a long time, next morning, along those of Derry, on
+our way to the Midland station, on the other side of the river. There is
+a big iron bridge across the river just above the quays, but that seemed
+a long way around, so when we came to a sign-board announcing a ferry we
+stopped. My first thought was that the ferry-boat was on the other side;
+then I perceived a small motor-propelled skiff moored beside the quay,
+and one of the two men in it asked me if we were looking for the ferry,
+and I said yes, and he said that that was it.
+
+So we clambered down into the boat and started off; and I scarcely think
+that that trip paid, for we were the only passengers, and the river is
+wide, and gasolene is expensive, and somebody had to pay the men their
+wages--and the fare is only a penny.
+
+The part of the town which lies east of the river is industrial and
+unattractive. There are some big distilleries there, and a lot of mills
+and a fish-market, and row upon row of dingy dwellings; but the biggest
+building of all is the workhouse--one point, at least, in which the
+towns of the north resemble those of the south. There is another point,
+too--the jail, without which no Irish town is complete. Derry has one of
+which it is very proud--the latest word in jails, in fact--a great,
+circular affair, with the cells arranged in so-called "panoptic"
+galleries, that is in such a fashion that the guards stationed in the
+centre of the jailyard can see into all of them.
+
+But we had crossed the river not to see the town which lay beyond it,
+but to take train for Portrush, and we were soon rolling northward close
+beside the bank of the river, with a splendid view of "The Maiden on her
+hill, boys," on the opposite shore, dominated by the cathedral tower and
+Walker's white monument. Just before the river begins to widen into the
+lough, the train passes the ruins of an old castle of the O'Dohertys,
+standing on a point which juts out into the water--a castle which saw
+rather more than its share of siege and sally; for this is Culmore,
+which was always the first point of attack when any expedition advanced
+against Derry.
+
+Beyond it the water widens, and on the farther shore, which is
+Inishowen, there are pretty villas, standing in luxuriant woods--the
+homes of some of Derry's wealthy citizens. Then the train turned inland
+across a stretch of country so flat and carefully cultivated that it
+might have been Holland; and then the hills began to crowd closer and
+closer to the shore, until the train was running along its very edge,
+under precipitous crags, past grotesque pinnacles of white chalk or
+black basalt, and fantastic caverns worn in the cliffs by the
+century-long action of the waves. For that stretch of blue water
+stretching away to the north, so calm and beautiful, was the Atlantic,
+and it thunders in upon this coast, sometimes, with a fury even the
+rocks cannot withstand.
+
+We turned away from it, at last, up the wide estuary of the River Bann,
+and so we came to Coleraine, chiefly connected in my mind with that
+beautiful Kitty, who, while tripping home from the fair one morning with
+a pitcher of buttermilk, looked at Barney MacCleary instead of at the
+path, and stumbled and let the pitcher drop; but, instead of crying over
+the spilt milk, accepted philosophically the kiss which Barney gave her;
+with the result that
+
+      "very soon after poor Kitty's disaster
+    The divil a pitcher was whole in Coleraine."
+
+Among the innumerable other laws for which Lloyd-George is responsible,
+there is one requiring all the shop-keepers of the United Kingdoms to
+close their places of business one afternoon every week in order to give
+their employes a short vacation; and in every town the shop-keepers get
+together and decide which afternoon it shall be; and if you arrive in
+the town on that afternoon, you will find every shop closed tight, often
+to your great inconvenience. It was Thursday afternoon when we reached
+Coleraine, and Thursday is closing day there; and we found that not only
+were the shops closed, but the train schedule was so altered that we had
+a long wait ahead of us.
+
+But we were richly compensated for the delay, for, as we started out to
+explore the town, we saw written in chalk on a wall just outside the
+station,
+
+          To hell with the pope!
+
+and under it in another hand,
+
+          To hell with King Billy!
+
+and then a third hand had added,
+
+          God save King Will! No more pope!
+
+I had heard, of course, that the accepted retort for Catholics to make,
+when the Pope was insulted, was to consign William of Orange to the
+infernal regions; but such a retort seemed so weak and ineffective that
+I could hardly believe in its reality. Yet here it was, and some
+Orangeman had paused long enough to add what is probably the usual third
+article of the controversy. What the fourth article is I can't guess;
+perhaps it is at this point that the cudgels rise and the rocks begin to
+fly. And it seems to me characteristic of Ireland that the Catholic in
+this case, instead of erasing the offending sentence, should have let it
+stand and answered it in kind.
+
+Cheered and heartened by this encounter, we walked on to look at
+Coleraine, but found it an uninteresting manufacturing town, with
+nothing in it of historical importance, for it is one of the plantations
+made by the London Companies, some time after 1613. It was closed as
+tightly, that afternoon, as on a Sunday, and we soon wearied of looking
+at ugly houses and silent factories, and made our way back to the
+station, meditating upon that black day for the Irish when this whole
+county, having been duly confiscated, was made over by royal edict to
+the hundred London adventurers, whose heirs or assigns still own it. Yet
+the conquest had one advantage: the O'Dohertys and the O'Cahans knew
+only the arts of war; the newcomers brought with them the arts of peace.
+One of them was distilling, and the Irish had never drunk such whiskey
+as the "Coleraine" which was produced here in the succeeding years.
+There is no more popular story in this region than that of the priest
+who was preaching a temperance sermon, and, after pointing out the evils
+of over-indulgence, continued with great earnestness, "And, me boys,
+'tis the bad stuff you be takin' that does the worst of the mischief. I
+niver touch a drop meself--but the best Coleraine!"
+
+We got away from Coleraine, at last, and ran northward toward the sea
+again, across uneven sand-drifts, past Port Stewart, where Charles Lever
+was once a dispensary doctor and occupied his leisure hours, which were
+many, in setting down the adventures of Harry Lorrequer; and then the
+road ran on close beside the sea to Portrush, with its pleasant beach
+and rock-bound bathing-pool, which was full of people on this holiday.
+But Portrush is a place of summer hotels, so we did not linger there,
+but transferred quickly to the electric line which runs on to the
+Giant's Causeway, fourteen miles away.
+
+This line was established in 1883, and so is the oldest electric road in
+the world; and I judge that it is still using the cars it started out
+with. At least, the two which composed the train that day were
+exceedingly primitive; one was open and the other was closed, and you
+took your choice. We chose the open one, of course, on the side
+overlooking the sea; and presently we started through the town, a man
+ringing a bell with one hand and waving a flag with the other, preceding
+us to make certain the track was clear. The bell, I suppose, is for
+blind people and the flag for deaf people, and the fact that the man is
+armed with both proves how thorough the Irish can be when they really
+put their minds to it.
+
+Although the line has been in operation for thirty years, it is still
+evidently regarded with fear and wonder by the people who live along it.
+Time was when the power was conveyed by means of the "third rail," so
+common in the United States. With us, however, the rail is only used
+along a guarded right-of-way. Here it was exposed close up by the fence
+at the roadside, and though it was well out of the way, it was
+nevertheless stumbled over by many men and beasts, with the usual
+result. There were many protests, and in the course of fifteen or twenty
+years, the Board of Trade was moved to investigate.
+
+The evidence at the hearing was most conflicting. The people of the
+neighbourhood asserted that their lives were in constant danger. The
+company, on the other hand, claimed that no sober man would ever step
+on the rail, since to get to it he had to cross the tracks. The people
+of the neighbourhood protested indignantly against this reflection upon
+their habits, and asked triumphantly if the horses and cows and other
+poor beasts that were killed were also drunk. The company retorted that,
+so far as the horses and cows were concerned, it was the practice of the
+natives, for miles around, whenever they had an animal about to die, to
+lead or, if it was unable to walk, to haul it to the railway, and prop
+it against the fence with a foot on the rail, and then to demand
+compensation for its death. There was, perhaps, a grain of truth in
+this; but the board, nevertheless, ordered the company to take up the
+rail and substitute an overhead wire for it, and this has been done.
+
+The only way the natives can get damages now is to inveigle a car to run
+into them, and this is well-nigh impossible, for the cars are run very
+slowly and carefully, and at every curve there is a signal cabin, where
+a watchful guard, armed with a red flag and a white one, keeps careful
+eyes upon the track.
+
+We were just gathering speed outside the town, when we saw in a near-by
+field an aggregation whose bills had attracted our attention, more than
+once, in our journeyings about Ireland. It was "Buff Bill's Circus," and
+the picturesqueness of its lithographs had made us most anxious to see
+it. Here it was, at last, and it consisted of three tiny tents and one
+van and three or four horses, and five or six people, who at this moment
+were eating their midday meal, seated on the ground about a sheet-iron
+stove, while the youngsters of the neighbourhood looked on. I am sorry
+we did not get to see the show, for I am sure we should have enjoyed
+it.
+
+Then the road mounted to a terrace high above the sea, and the views
+over coast and water were superb. The effects of erosion are especially
+fantastic, and the line passes fretted spires, and yawning caverns, and
+deep gullies and mighty arches, all worn in the chalk and basalt cliffs
+by the ceaseless action of the waves; and at one place there is a
+grotesque formation which does indeed, as may be seen from the picture
+opposite the next page, resemble a "Giant's Head."
+
+And there is one most picturesque ruin, for, ten miles out from
+Portrush, all that is left of Dunluce castle overhangs the sea from the
+summit of a precipitous rock, separated from the mainland by a deep
+chasm. The chasm is twenty feet wide, and in days of old there was a
+drawbridge over it; but the bridge has disappeared, and now there is
+just an arch of masonry about two feet wide and without protection of
+any sort. It takes a steady head to cross it, but the Irish are fond of
+just such breakneck bridges. The castle itself, with its roofless gables
+and jagged walls, seems a part of the rock on which it is built. It is
+said to possess a banshee, and one can well believe it!
+
+Dunluce is interesting because it was once a stronghold of the Scotch
+invaders who succeeded in conquering all this northeast coast of Ireland
+from here around to Carlingford Lough, away below Belfast. Scotland is
+only a few miles away across the North Channel--one can see its coast on
+a clear day from the cliffs above Benmore; and it was natural enough
+that there should be sailing back and forth. Owen, first lord of
+Tyrone, brought a wife from Scotland--that Aileach, after whom he named
+his fortress; and they had many children, one of whom went back to
+Scotland and became the head of that princedom whose chief afterwards
+called himself "Lord of the Isles." In Ireland, the family was
+O'Donnell; but in Scotland the members of Clandonnell were not Os but
+Macs. Angus MacDonnell married a daughter of the great house of O'Cahan,
+and by this means and by that, the Scotch gradually won a foothold on
+the Irish coast and built castles up and down it; and finally, in a
+pitched battle, defeated the Irish who held the land about Dunluce and
+had built this castle here.
+
+[Illustration: THE "GIANT'S HEAD," NEAR PORTRUSH]
+
+[Illustration: THE RUINS OF DUNLUCE CASTLE]
+
+It was besieged and captured after that, once by the Irish under Shane
+O'Neill, and once by the English under Sir John Perrot; and during the
+troubled times of the Commonwealth and Restoration fell into ruins and
+was never restored--partly, no doubt, because it was no longer safe; for
+one night in 1639, there was a great party in the castle, and a storm
+arose, and the waves dashed against the rock below it, and suddenly part
+of the rock gave way and carried the kitchen and eight servants down
+into the abyss.
+
+Just beyond the castle, the road rounds a point and runs down into the
+valley of the Bush River, where stands the little town of Bushmills,
+known all over the world because of the whiskey which is made there; and
+then it passes a great house on a cliff overlooking the sea, Runkerry
+Castle; and then high up on the slope ahead loom two big hotels, and the
+tram stops, for this is the Causeway.
+
+Both the hotels at the Causeway are owned by the same man, but each
+maintains its runner, and each runner makes a lively bid for your
+custom; and then, when you have made your choice and started toward it,
+you will suddenly be conscious of a rough voice speaking over your
+shoulder, and you will turn to find a man striding at your heels, a man
+unshaven and clad in nondescript clothes; and if you listen very
+attentively you will presently understand that he is offering to guide
+you about the Causeway.
+
+Everybody in the vicinity of the Causeway makes his living off the
+people who visit it, and the favourite profession is that of guide. Now
+a guide is wholly unnecessary, for a broad road leads directly to the
+Causeway, and once there it is simply a question of using one's eyes.
+But from the persistence of the guides, one would think there was great
+danger of getting lost, or of falling overboard, or of experiencing some
+other horrible misfortune, if one ventured there unattended. Every guide
+carries also in his waistcoat pocket one or more fossils, which he found
+himself and prizes very highly, but is willing to sell for a small sum,
+as a personal favour. When his supply is exhausted, he goes and buys
+some more from the syndicate which ships them in in quantity.
+
+For it should be remembered that the Causeway is as strictly organised
+for profit and as carefully exploited as is Killarney.
+
+As soon as we had arranged for our room, we set off for the Causeway,
+running the gauntlet of guides posted on both sides of the road. Then a
+man with a pony-cart wanted to drive us to our destination, and one
+would have thought, from the way he spoke, that it was a long and
+trying journey; then we refused three or four offers of fossils and
+postcards; and finally we found ourselves alone on a road which swept
+round the edge of a great amphitheatre of cliff; and the face of that
+cliff is worth examining, for it is formed of the lava flow from some
+long-extinct crater, and the successive flows, separated by the
+so-called ochre beds, or strata of dark-red volcanic ash, can be plainly
+distinguished. The road gradually drops, until it is quite near the sea;
+and then it passes a number of shanties, from which old women issue to
+waylay the passer-by with offers of fossils and post-cards and various
+curios; and then the visitor is confronted by a high wire fence, beyond
+which, if he looks closely, he will see a little neck of land running
+out into the water--and that is the celebrated Giant's Causeway.
+
+[Illustration: THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY]
+
+[Illustration: THE CLIFFS BEYOND THE CAUSEWAY]
+
+It is so small and so seemingly insignificant that Betty and I stared at
+it through the fence with a distinct shock of disappointment; then we
+went on to the gate, paid the sixpence which is extorted from every
+visitor, registered ourselves on the turnstile, and entered.
+
+The misfortune of the Causeway is that its fame is too great. The
+visitor, expecting to see something magnificent and grandiose, is rather
+dashed at first to find how small it is; but after a few minutes'
+wandering over the queer columns of basalt, this feeling passes, and one
+begins to realise that it is really one of the wonders of the world. I
+am not going to describe it--every one has seen photographs of it, or if
+any one hasn't, he will find some opposite this page; and the
+photographs picture it much better than I can.
+
+There are some forty thousand of the pillars, the guide-book says;
+five-sided or six-sided for the most part, averaging, I should say,
+about fifteen inches in diameter, and so close together that a lead
+pencil is too thick to be thrust between them. The pillars are divided
+into regular, worm-like segments, some six or eight inches thick, and
+there are quite a lot of segments lying about, broken off from the
+columns. The whole bed is said by geologists to be nothing but a
+lava-flow, which broke up into these columnar shapes when it cooled and
+contracted.
+
+The native Irish have a far better explanation than that. In the old
+days, the mighty Finn MacCool, annoyed at the boasting of a Caledonian
+rival on the hills across the channel, invited him to step over and see
+which was the better man. And the giant said he would be glad to come
+over and show Finn a thing or two, if it wasn't for wetting his feet. So
+Finn, in a rage, built a causeway right over to Scotland, and the Scotch
+giant came across on it; and of course Finn beat him well (for this is
+an Irish legend); but with that generosity which has always been
+characteristic of Irishmen after they have whipped their opponents, he
+permitted his humbled rival to choose a wife from the many fair girls of
+the neighbourhood, and to build him a house and settle down; which the
+Scotch giant was very glad to do; for every one knows that the Scotch
+women are rough and hard-bitten, also that Scotland is a land of mist
+and snow, not fair like Ireland, which has always been the loveliest
+country in the world. And presently, since the causeway wasn't needed
+any more and impeded navigation, Finn gave it a kick with the foot of
+him and sunk it in the sea, all but this little end against the Irish
+coast. And there it stands unto this day to witness if I lie.
+
+Whatever you think of the Causeway, you will certainly be impressed when
+you pass out between the clustered columns of the Giant's Gateway, and
+start on the walk under the beetling cliffs beyond. The narrow path
+mounts up and up, under overhanging masses of columnar stone, which all
+too evidently crashes down from time to time, for there are great piles
+of debris below, and the path is either swept away in places or recently
+repaired; so most visitors hurry past with one eye upward, and the other
+contemplating the beauty of the scene below.
+
+At least we did; and then we came out at Chimney Point, crowned with its
+chimney-like columns--a mass of basalt on top of a red ochre bed. And
+here there was a seat where we sat down to contemplate one of the most
+impressive views in Ireland--a combination of blue sea and white surf
+and black crag and columned cliff not soon to be forgotten.
+
+We went on, at last, around the point of the cliff, where the path
+overhangs the depths below and is guarded by an iron railing; on and on,
+past clusters of columns named looms or organ pipes, or whatever Irish
+fancy may have suggested; and at last we turned slowly back, and spent
+another half hour at the Causeway, hunting out the wishing-chair, and
+the giant's cannon, and Lord Antrim's parlour--all of which may easily
+be found; and then we took a drink from the giant's well, a spring of
+pure, cold water, bubbling up from among the rocks; and so back to the
+hotel and to dinner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE GLENS OF ANTRIM
+
+
+THERE are some caves at the Causeway which are said to be well worth
+visiting, but we found, next morning, that a stiff wind during the night
+had kicked up such a sea that it was impossible to get to them. So we
+spent the morning walking down to a beautiful beach some distance below
+the hotel, and building a driftwood fire there, and watching the waves
+roll in. Then, while Betty went in to read some just-arrived letters
+from home, I went on along the top of the cliffs above the Causeway.
+
+There is a path which follows the edge of the cliff closely, and a more
+magnificent view I have never seen. At Chimney Point the rollers were
+breaking in especial violence over the black rocks, on which one of the
+galleons of the Armada went to pieces. Her name was the Gerona, and some
+of her guns were rescued from the surf and added to the armament of
+Dunluce castle. Legend has it that she brought her disaster upon herself
+by running in too near the coast to fire at the chimney rocks, which she
+mistook for the towers of Dunluce. The bay where the bodies of her crew
+were washed ashore has been called Port-na-Spania ever since.
+
+A little farther on is the uttermost point of all, Pleaskin, where the
+view reaches its greatest grandeur, for one is here four hundred feet
+above the sea, and on that bright, clear, wind-swept morning, I could
+see the purple peaks of the Donegal coast stretching far to the west,
+while to the northeast loomed the misty outline of the Scottish hills,
+scarcely discernible against the sky. And all between stretched the
+white-capped waters of the North Channel, with a tossing boat here and
+there, and at my feet were the last black basalt outposts of Erin, with
+the rollers curling over them in regular, heavy rhythm. If Ireland has
+anything to show more fair I did not see it.
+
+I went slowly back, at last, along the path, over the springy heather;
+and an hour later we had said good-bye to the Causeway, and were
+rattling away along a pleasant road toward Ballycastle. We were the only
+voyagers, that day, so instead of the heavy bus, a side-car had been
+placed at our disposal. It was the first car we had mounted since our
+ride around Lough Gill; and how good it felt to settle back again into
+the corner of the seat, and swing along mile after mile!
+
+Our jarvey was an old fellow who was loquacious enough, at first, and
+who stopped to show us, in a ravine not far from the Causeway, a crevice
+in the rock which he said was used as a pulpit by the first Presbyterian
+preacher in Ulster--for it should be remembered that for many years the
+Presbyterians and other nonconformists were treated as harshly by the
+established church as the Catholics were. And then we came to a little
+village where the children were gathering for school, and our jarvey
+stopped to water the horse, which gave us the opportunity to have a word
+with the children.
+
+And fairly surprised we were when they began to talk, for they spoke a
+Scotch as broad as any to be heard in the Highlands. Their names were
+Scotch, too--Fergus and Angus; and the only thing we encountered on that
+drive which astonished us more were the sign-posts at the cross-roads,
+the directions on which are all in Gaelic. We had seen Gaelic sign-posts
+before, in the west, but they always had the direction in English, too.
+Here there was no English. It is a riddle that I have never unravelled,
+for I heard no Gaelic spoken here. Of course it is spoken; but so many
+wayfarers along this road speak only English that I cannot understand
+the contempt for them which the sign-boards indicate.
+
+I have referred already to the Irishman's love for breakneck bridges,
+and the prize one of all is at the village of Ballintoy, into which the
+road drops down the steepest of hills. A little distance away along the
+cliffs is an isolated rock some sixty feet from the shore, and spanning
+the abyss between cliff and rock is the craziest bridge ever devised by
+man. Two rings, about eighteen inches apart, have been embedded in the
+rock on either side, and between these rings two ropes have been
+stretched. These are lashed together at intervals by transverse cords,
+and to these cords short lengths of narrow plank have been tied side by
+side. For a handrail, a slender rope has been stretched between two
+rings some three feet higher than the others--and there you are. It is
+hardly correct to say that any of the ropes have been "stretched," for
+they hang in a long curve, and in the wind that was blowing that morning
+the bridge swung to and fro in the dizziest fashion. There was a crowd
+of small boys at its land end, who offered to negotiate the passage for
+a penny each, but we refused to pay for the privilege of seeing them
+risk their lives.
+
+And yet, probably, it would not have been risking them, for they were
+used to the bridge and thought nothing of crossing it. Nay, more, the
+men of the neighbourhood cross it carrying heavy burdens, for they are
+fishermen and keep all their ropes and nets and even their boats out on
+the rock, round which, at certain stages of the tide, the salmon circle,
+so that they can be caught by nets shot out from the rock. There is no
+harbour for the boats, so they have to be hoisted up to a terrace in the
+rock some twenty feet above the water by means of a windlass; and then,
+having made everything snug, the fishermen cross back over the bridge
+with the catch on their shoulders. It need scarcely be added that I, who
+had balked at the far more substantial bridges at Dromahair and Dunluce,
+never for an instant thought of crossing this one.
+
+We climbed out to the top of the cliffs again, and jogged along with the
+beautiful sea to our left, and the beautiful rolling country to our
+right, its meadows brilliant with the lush green of the young flax; and
+then we turned back inland between high hedgerows; and the bright sun
+and the soft air proved too much for our jarvey, who dropped gently to
+sleep--a fact we didn't notice until the horse, after a backward glance,
+stopped to take a few bites from the hedge. The driver woke with a start
+and jerked the horse angrily back into the middle of the road, and then
+glanced guiltily at us, but we were gazing far away into the distance;
+and then he dropped off again, and again the horse, feeling the
+slackened reins, stopped for a bite; and then, for fear that a
+motor-cycle or something might run into us, I filled my pipe and offered
+my pouch to the driver, and he filled up thankfully, and that kept him
+awake until we dropped down into the beautiful old town of Ballycastle,
+nestling under the high hills of Antrim. "Bally," which figures in so
+many Irish place-names, is from the Gaelic "baile," meaning town or
+village, and so Ballycastle is merely the Irish form of what in English
+would be prosaic Castletown.
+
+We had tea at a clean and pleasant inn, and then spent an hour wandering
+about the place--to the site of the old abbey, near a sweet little
+river, and then down to the shore, which has been desecrated with
+golf-links; but the green slopes of Rathlin Island, just off the coast,
+are very lovely, and just outside the bay the cliffs culminate in a
+mighty bluff called Fairhead; and then back to the town along an avenue
+of beautiful trees, for a visit to the "Home Industry Depot," a room
+crowded with fantastic toys and some good wood-carving, all done in the
+neighbourhood--about the only industry of any kind, so the keeper of the
+shop said, now carried on in Ballycastle.
+
+Time was when Ballycastle fancied it was destined for greatness, for a
+seam of coal was discovered in the hill above the town, and an
+enterprising Scotchman named Hugh Boyd leased the right to work it from
+the Earl of Antrim, and built foundries and tanneries and breweries to
+consume it; but unfortunately the seam turned down instead of up, Boyd
+died, and nobody was found with sufficient energy to contend against so
+many difficulties; so the whole enterprise dropped dead. I don't know
+how the inhabitants came to turn to toy-making and wood-carving; perhaps
+some expatriated Swiss settled here,--that shop certainly did remind us
+of Lucerne!
+
+There are far older memories which cluster around Ballycastle; for the
+stream which ripples past the abbey was in the old days called the
+Margy, and it was here, according to the most ancient of Irish legends,
+that the children of Lir, King of the Isle of Man, sought shelter after
+they had been turned into four white swans by their step-mother. I
+should like to tell that story, but there is no space here--besides, it
+has already been most nobly told by Mr. Rolleston. It will be found,
+with many others, in his "High Deeds of Finn," a book I most heartily
+recommend.
+
+We were not yet at the end of our day's journey, for we had still to go
+on to Cushendall, sixteen miles away, and so we went back to the hotel,
+to find a long inside-car waiting. There were two other passengers,
+women of the neighbourhood, who had come in to town to do some shopping;
+and their gossip was most entertaining; but we dropped them before long,
+and then the road mounted up and up along the valley of a little river,
+which we could see gleaming far below us; and at last we came out upon a
+bog as wild and desolate as any in Connemara. There were again the
+familiar black cuttings, the piles of turf, and here and there a group
+of men and women labouring at the wet, back-breaking work. This bog, so
+our driver said, supplied the fuel for the whole district, and nobody
+hereabouts ever thought of burning coal.
+
+The road was quite deserted, save for a cart now and then, loaded high
+with turf, lumbering heavily down toward the town; and presently even
+these ceased, and there was no single sign of life as far as the eye
+could reach--only the silent bog, desolate, vast, impressive, rolling
+away into the distance with a beauty all its own--a beauty difficult to
+express, but very poignant.
+
+How high we were upon that moor we did not realise until we came to the
+verge of one of the beautiful Glens of Antrim and saw, nestling away
+below us, the spires and roofs of Cushendall. They were perhaps half a
+mile away, but we travelled at least three miles to get down to them,
+winding back and forth along the side of the glen, crossing a great
+viaduct eighty feet high, past picturesque thatched houses, past the
+fairy thorn which no man in the village would touch for love or money,
+past a fragment of ruin which was once the castle where the MacDonnells
+stood off the English; and then we turned away to the right and began to
+climb again; and presently we had climbed out of Glendun into Glenaan,
+and I should hate to have to decide which is the more lovely.
+
+We emerged, at last, into more open country, with high hills at our
+right pierced by shadowy valleys; and then the houses became more
+frequent, and we could see the people gathering down from the fields for
+the night. Twilight was at hand; but, though it must have been nearly
+nine o'clock, we were amused to see that the ducks and chickens were
+still pecking cheerfully about the door-steps, apparently with no
+thought of retiring. Poultry, in Ireland, leads a strenuous life, for in
+summer the sun rises at three and does not set till nine. Perhaps it is
+these long hours which give Irish chickens an indolent air, and which
+explain the frequent naps one sees them taking on the family doorstep.
+
+The houses grew more and more frequent, until we were rattling down a
+wide street of them, under an avenue of lofty trees, and knew we were at
+Cushendall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some three miles west of the town, on the top of a bare and windy hill
+looking down over the Glenaan valley, is a circle of stones placed
+there, so legend asserts, to mark the grave of Ossian, son of Finn
+MacCool, and sweet singer of the Fianna of Erin; and it was to find this
+spot I set out next morning, through fine, windy weather. I knew where
+the valley of the Glenaan was, for we had passed its mouth the evening
+before, but as to the position of the grave itself I knew nothing. The
+guide-book devoted only a vague line to it; but I have a firm belief in
+my luck, and I knew I should find it somehow.
+
+For a mile or more my road lay back over the way we had come, mounting
+steadily toward the entrance to the Glenaan Valley; and I met many
+little carts coming in to market, for it was Saturday; and every one who
+wasn't going into town was taking advantage of the fine day by working
+in the fields, or putting new coats of dazzling whitewash upon their
+houses, or digging in the little flower-gardens in front of them. And
+everybody was in cheerful humour and passed the time of day with the
+heartiest good will.
+
+And then I came to the entrance of the valley, and turned westward along
+the road which traverses it. The mountains soon began to close in on
+either hand, and the houses strung along the road or perched on narrow
+plateaus grew smaller and smaller; slate gave way to thatch, stone
+floors gave way to dirt ones, and the windows shrank to a single
+immovable sash of four small panes. In a word, as the land grew poorer,
+the people grew poorer, too; and the conditions of life seemed not so
+very different from those in far Connaught. Indeed it may very well be
+that this is one of those "congested districts" which are scattered over
+the east of Ireland.
+
+I stopped, at last, and asked an old man in a blue flannel smock if he
+could tell me the way to Ossian's grave; and he told me to fare straight
+on till I came to some stepping-stones, and to cross the stones and push
+right up the hill. So I went on happily, for the air was very sweet, and
+the sun just warm enough, and the great wind was driving white clouds
+before it across the sky, and the sunshine in the faces of the people I
+met added to the beauty of the day; and at last I came to a cluster of
+thatched cottages where the little river turned in close to the road and
+rippled between a row of stepping-stones; and I asked a pleasant-faced
+woman if that was the way to Ossian's grave, and she said it was; to
+cross the stones and go right up the hill, and I would find a house
+there where I could get further directions.
+
+The road beyond the stones ran up the hill and into the yard of a
+farm-house; and in the yard there was a dog with a very savage bark; but
+there was also a blue-eyed girl who quieted him, while she stared at me
+curiously. I asked her the way to the grave, and she pointed up the
+hill, with a little motion of her hand toward the right, and I set off
+again. The road had dwindled to the merest mountain path, with a wall on
+either side of earth and stones, crested with prickly gorse; but I came
+to a break in it, at last, opening to the right, and scrambled through;
+and then, a minute later, in the midst of a heather-carpeted field on
+the very summit of the hill, I saw the grave.
+
+It is formed of standing stones, covered with lichen and crumbling under
+the storms of centuries, and the vestibule, so to speak, is a
+semi-circle some twenty feet in diameter opening toward the east. Back
+of this are two chambers, one behind the other, divided by two large
+uprights, and I suppose it was in one of these that the body of the bard
+was laid--if it was laid here at all. My own guess would be that these
+weather-beaten stones, like those others on the hill beside Lough Gill,
+antedate Ossian by at least two thousand years. But that is an
+unimportant detail; and it may be, indeed, that when the great singer
+died, his comrades could think of no more fitting place to lay him than
+within the guardian circle of this monument of an older race, looking
+down across the valley and out toward the sea.
+
+Fact and fancy have been so mingled in the Ossianic legend that it is
+impossible to disentangle them, nor is it profitable to try. It is
+fairly certain that he was born somewhere about the middle of the third
+century after Christ, and legend has it that he spent two hundred years
+in the Land of Youth with Niam of the Golden-hair. When, homesick for
+Erin, he returned to it, it was to find his father's courts overgrown
+with grass and St. Patrick preaching there, and his disputes with
+Patrick are recorded at great length in the tales of the Fenian cycle;
+for Ossian bewailed the vanished days of those mighty fighters, and
+wished for nothing better than to join them, in whatever world they
+might be, while Patrick laboured to convert him from such heathen
+fancies and to save his soul. It is to this story reference is made in
+the stanza from Lionel Johnson's "Ode to Ireland," which I quoted on
+page 221.
+
+Up there on the bleak hill-top the wind was roaring; but I found a nook
+between two of the great stones where it could not reach me, and I
+lighted my pipe and sat there and looked down over the valley and
+thought of the old days, and so spent a sweet half hour. The valley had
+changed but little, I fancied, with the rolling centuries; there were
+tiny, high-walled fields and low thatched houses on the lower slopes;
+but above them sprang the primal hills, clothed with heather, their
+bones of granite gleaming here and there, back and back over the Glens
+of Antrim, through which the red tide of tribal warfare had poured so
+many times. And over eastward lay Cushendall, nestling among its trees,
+with the gaunt, truncated mass of Lurigethan hill overshadowing it, and
+beyond that, faint and far and scarcely distinguishable from the blue
+sky, lay the blue sea.
+
+That valley and those hills belong to the Earl of Antrim--his estate
+includes some thirty-five thousand acres of Irish soil, around which he
+may build walls and post notices and set guards; and as I sat there
+gazing out at them, I realised far more keenly than I had ever done the
+absurdity of the idea that any portion of this earth's surface can
+rightfully belong to any man. Trace any title back, for a hundred years,
+or a thousand years, or two thousand years, and one finds that it
+started in a theft--theft on the part of an individual from the tribe
+which held the land in common; and the solemn farce of sale and transfer
+and inheritance after that was merely the passing on of stolen goods.
+Perhaps some day we may win through to the ideal of an earth belonging
+equally to all men, with private right only in the things man's industry
+creates.
+
+[Illustration: THE GRAVE OF OSSIAN]
+
+[Illustration: AN ANTRIM LANDSCAPE]
+
+I knocked out my pipe, at last, reluctantly enough, and took the picture
+of the stones which is opposite this page, but which gives a poor idea
+of them; and then I started downward, through the break in the hedge,
+through the farmyard, going warily for fear of the dog, and so to the
+stepping-stones; and when I looked at them, I saw what a perfect picture
+they made, with the stream rippling through, and the thatched cottages
+beyond, with the smoke whipped from their chimneys, and a single tree
+bending before the wind. That picture in miniature is opposite this
+page; but I could not snare with my camera the tang of the turf, the
+softness of the air, the glory of the sun, nor the murmur of the water.
+Those you will have to evoke for yourself, as best you can.
+
+In the road beyond I found a mail-carrier, who had completed his
+morning-round among the hillside dwellings, and who was turning back to
+Cushendall; and we went on together. He was a tall, lithe lad, as he
+had need to be to get over his daily route among these hills; and, like
+every one else, he hoped some day to win his way to America. He knew
+many of its towns from the postmarks on the letters he carried. In the
+last month, he said, there had been fully a hundred from America, and
+welcome letters they were, for nearly all of them contained a bit of
+money. Many of the dwellers in these hills--like thousands more all over
+Ireland--would find life outside the work-house impossible but for the
+help from their sons and daughters in America; and it gives one a good
+feeling at the heart to think of those devoted boys and girls putting by
+every month a portion of the money which was hard to win and harder
+still to save, to send to the old people who were left at home.
+
+By the side of the road, as we walked along, I saw a hovel more
+primitive and comfortless than most--just a tiny hut of a single room,
+dark and cold and bare; but against one end of it grew a great fuchsia
+bush, clothing it with glory. A wrinkled old woman, clad in filthy
+clothes, was standing in the doorway, and my companion passed the time
+of day with her, while I unslung my camera, for I wanted a picture of
+the tiny house and the great bush. I would have liked a picture of the
+old woman, too; but she said she was too dirty, and went in until the
+picture was taken which is opposite the next page. Then she came out and
+asked if I would send her one. It was the first time, she said, that any
+one had thought her houseen worth a picture; so I promised she should
+have one, and she gave me her name, and the postman promised it should
+reach her.
+
+We went on together, after that, and I asked him what the people of the
+neighbourhood thought about Home Rule.
+
+[Illustration: A HUMBLE HOME IN ANTRIM]
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD JAIL AT CUSHENDALL]
+
+"The truth is, sir," he answered, "that we don't know what to think,
+what with this man telling us one thing and that man another; but most
+of the poor people about here would be glad to see it, for they can't be
+worse off than they are, and a change might better them. Drilling and
+arming? Ah, there's none of that around here; there's no army of Ulster
+in these parts. That's just talk."
+
+He left me at the crossroads, for he had still a letter or two to
+deliver farther down the road, and I went on by myself toward the town.
+There were more whitewashers out, and they were splashing the lime about
+in the most reckless fashion, besprinkling the hedges and the shrubbery
+and even the road, somewhat to the danger of the passers-by; and at the
+first houses of the town I met Betty. She had been talking to the
+caretaker of the churchyard about the true shamrock; and he said that it
+did not grow wild thereabouts, but that he had some in a pot at home and
+would be glad to bring her a spray; and he told her of a ruined church
+and an old Celtic cross out along the road above the cliffs, very near,
+he said--not over eight minutes' walk at the most.
+
+So we determined to take a look at it; but first we walked about the
+town a little, and found it quite an ordinary town, except for a great
+square tower at the intersection of the principal streets--a tower
+erected, so the tablet on it says, "as a place of confinement for
+rioters and idlers." I suppose the town has a modern jail now--perhaps
+even with panoptic galleries! At any rate, the tower is no longer
+used. I took a picture of it, and if you will look at the picture
+closely, you will see a girl drawing water from the town pump just below
+the tower.
+
+We started off finally for the ruins, first to the cliffs along the sea,
+and then on along the path which runs at their very edge. The view was
+very lovely, and we didn't notice how the time was flying; but I looked
+at my watch presently and found that we had been walking twenty minutes,
+with no ruins in sight. We pushed on ten minutes longer, and had about
+given them up, when some children directed us which way to go, and we
+finally found the few remaining fragments of Layd Church, so overgrown
+with ivy and embowered in trees that they were scarcely recognisable as
+ruins at all. The cross proved to be a very modern one; and the
+graveyard is sadly neglected, with the grass knee-deep among the tombs,
+which have fallen into sorry disarray. Most of them cover some long-dead
+MacDonnell--they were all MacDonnells, in the old days, who lived in the
+Glens of Antrim.
+
+The "eight minute walk" had taken more than half an hour, and we had
+need to hasten if we were to get back to the hotel in time for lunch,
+for the car which was to take us to Larne was to start at two; but we
+made it, and when the car drove up, we found it was a long outside-car
+with room for five people on each side. We chose the forward end of the
+side next the sea; and then the car proceeded to another hotel in the
+town, where five or six more people were waiting; and the two women who
+were condemned to the landward side complained bitterly. They were
+making the trip, they said, just to see the sea, and here they would be
+compelled to sit the whole way facing the blank cliff.
+
+"Sure, there's nothing I can do, miss," said the jarvey, who had
+listened sympathetically; "I can't make the car any longer, now can I?
+Maybe you might be glancin' over your shoulder from time to time; anyway
+I'm thinkin' you'll be seein' enough of the sea before you're home
+again."
+
+And with that they had to be consoled.
+
+The road runs inland for about a mile beyond Cushendall, and then turns
+down close to the shore of Red Bay, a vast amphitheatre of red sandstone
+cliffs, in whose face the road is cut. At the deepest point of the
+circle, where the Vale of Glenariff opens up into the mountains, is
+clustered a little village of white houses; and then the road runs on
+round the base of towering precipices; and suddenly the red sandstone
+changes to chalk, and the water washing against the shore, which has
+been a lovely green, turns milky white, with outstanding pinnacles of
+chalk, worn to fantastic shapes, keeping guard above it.
+
+We had noticed an increasing crowd upon the road, all walking or riding
+southwards; and presently two barefooted boys jumped up on the footboard
+and asked if they might ride a little way; and they told us that there
+was a circus at Carnlough to which every one was going; and they each
+had the tuppence necessary for admission gripped in a grimy fist, and
+were very excited indeed. Carnlough, as we soon found, is a small town
+consisting principally of a curving beach, where a few people were
+bathing; and the white tent of Duffy's Circus--a much larger affair than
+Buff Bill's--was pitched close beside the road. The urchins dropped off
+and made for the entrance; and as we passed, we caught a strain of "The
+Stars and Stripes Forever," painfully rendered by the circus band.
+
+We rolled on around another wide bay, and came to Glenarm, where we
+paused to change horses; and then on again, under the white cliffs, past
+quarries where flint and chalk are mined for the Belfast market; and
+always at our feet lay the Irish Sea, stretching away to the dim
+horizon, its colour changing with every passing cloud. In and out the
+road circled, following the long curves of the coast; past the ruins of
+a castle which O'Halloran, a famous outlaw, built for himself on the top
+of a small rock with the sea washing round it; past another amphitheatre
+where the rocks change back from chalk to basalt; through a short tunnel
+and so to Larne.
+
+The most interesting thing about Larne is its handsome new harbour built
+for the express steamers which cross several times daily to Stranrear,
+the shortest of the routes to Scotland. Edward Bruce chose this route
+when he came over with an army of six thousand men to help the Irish
+drive the English from Ireland, as his brother Robert had driven them
+from Scotland the year before at Bannockburn. It was in May, 1315, that
+the Scotch drew up in battle array along this strand; and a year later
+Bruce was crowned King of Ireland; but though at first he drove the
+Normans before him, his own army was gradually worn down by privation
+and disease, and he himself was killed at the battle of Faughart. So
+ended one more Irish dream!
+
+We changed at Larne from road to rail, and were soon rolling southward,
+still close beside the water, past a string of seaside resorts, each of
+which added its quota of passengers--perspiring men and women and tired
+but happy children; and so we came to the old town of Carrickfergus,
+with its magnificent castle overlooking Belfast Lough. Its great square
+keep, ninety feet high, looked most imposing in the gathering
+twilight--how many assaults had it withstood in the seven centuries of
+its existence! Bruce captured it, but the MacDonnells failed. Schomberg,
+William's general, had better luck, and it was on the quay below it that
+the great Orangeman first set foot in Ireland. It has some American
+associations, too; for John Paul Jones sailed his good ship _Ranger_
+under its walls in 1778, and captured the British ship-of-war _Drake_.
+Murray, good British guide-book that it is, refers to the founder of the
+American navy as "the pirate Paul Jones." But we can afford to smile at
+that!
+
+Carrickfergus is doubtless worth a visit, though the castle is used as
+an ordnance depot now, and visitors are admitted only to the outer
+court. But even that would be worth seeing; and the town possesses an
+old church, and some fragments of its old walls, and doubtless many
+interesting old houses. I am sorry we did not spend a day there.
+
+But our train rolled on, close beside the border of Belfast Lough, and
+presently, far ahead, we saw the gleaming spires and clustered roofs of
+the citadel of Ulster.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+BELFAST
+
+
+IT had been on a Saturday evening that we first saw Dublin, and it was
+on a Saturday evening that we reached Belfast; and we had thought the
+streets of Dublin crowded, but compared with those of Belfast, they were
+nowhere. Even in our first ride up from the station, along York Street
+and Royal Avenue, it was evident that here was a town where life was
+strenuous and eager; there was no mistaking its air of alert prosperity;
+and when, after dinner, we sallied forth on foot to see more of it, we
+found the sidewalks so crowded that it was possible to move along them
+only as the crowd moved.
+
+It was a better-dressed crowd than the Dublin one, but I fancied its
+cheeks were paler and its bodies less robust. Indeed, I am inclined to
+think the average stature in Belfast an inch or so under the average
+elsewhere. Great numbers of the men and women we saw on the streets that
+night were obviously undersized. I am by no means tall; five feet eight
+inches is, here in America, about the average; but when I walked among
+that Belfast crowd, I overtopped it by half a head. It was this strange
+sensation--the sensation of being a tall man, which I had never before
+experienced--which first drew my attention to the stature of the crowd.
+
+There must be several regiments of British troops stationed at Belfast,
+for soldiers were much in evidence that evening, and in a great
+diversity of uniform. They, too, for the most part, seemed undersized,
+in spite of their erect carriage; and they were, as is the way with
+soldiers everywhere, much interested in the girls; and the girls, after
+the fashion of girls everywhere, were much interested in the
+soldiers--and there was a great deal of flirting and coquetting and
+glancing over shoulders and stopping to talk, and walking about with
+clasped hands.
+
+Next to the crowd, the most interesting feature of Belfast is the shops,
+which are very bright and attractive. The Scotch have a genius for fancy
+breads and cakes, and the bakers' shops here were extremely alluring.
+There seemed to be also an epidemic of auction sales and closing out
+sales and cut price sales, announced by great placards pasted all over
+the windows; but there were so many of them that I fancy most of them
+were fakes.
+
+One notices also in Belfast the multiplicity of bands. It seemed to me
+that night that a band, playing doggedly away, was passing all the time.
+Sometimes the band would be followed by a body of marching men,
+sometimes by men and women together, sometimes it would be just playing
+itself along without any one behind it. Nobody in the crowd paid much
+attention, not even when a big company of boy scouts marched past,
+looking very clever in their broad hats with the little chin-straps, and
+grey flannel shirts and flapping short trousers showing their bare
+knees.
+
+What I am setting down here are merely my first impressions of Belfast.
+I do not allege that they were correct impressions, or that they fairly
+describe the town, but, as we were fresh from many weeks in the south
+and west of Ireland, the sense of contrast we experienced that first
+evening is not without significance.
+
+We went back to the hotel, finally, for we had had a strenuous day; but
+for long and long we could hear the bands passing in the street below;
+and then the martial rattle of drums and scream of fifes brought us to
+the window, and we saw a great crowd of children march past, with
+banners waving and tin buckets and shovels rattling. It was a Sunday
+School picnic, just back from a day at the seashore; and the air which
+the fifes and drums were playing with a vigour that made the windows
+rattle was "Work, for the Night is Coming!" I had never before realised
+what a splendid marching tune it is!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am sorry we did not go to church, next morning, for the pulpits of
+Belfast were thundering against Home Rule, as we saw by the Monday
+papers. Instead, we walked down to the river, for a look at the harbour
+and custom house, and then about the streets to the city hall, with its
+dome and corner towers oddly reminiscent of St. Paul's Cathedral; and
+then we took a tram to the Botanical Gardens. The tram ran along a
+tree-embowered street, lined on either side with villas set in the midst
+of grounds so beautiful that any of them might have been the gardens;
+but when we reached the end of the line, we found we had come too far.
+The conductor was greatly chagrined that he had forgot to tell us where
+to get off, and sternly refused to accept any fare for the return trip.
+
+The gardens, which we finally reached, are very attractively laid out,
+but far more interesting than the flowers and the shrubs was the crowd
+which was coming home from church. There seems to be a church on every
+square in Belfast, and I judge they were all full that day--as they no
+doubt are every Sunday, for church-going is still fashionable in the
+British Isles; and the crowd which poured along the walks of the gardens
+was as well-dressed and handsome as could be seen anywhere. It was a
+crowd made up of people evidently and consciously well-to-do, and one
+distinctive characteristic was a certain severity of aspect, a certain
+prevalence of that black-coated, side-whiskered, stern-lipped type which
+was much more common in America thirty years ago than it is now. Our
+type has changed--has softened and grown more urbane; but I should judge
+that the cold steel of Calvinism is as sharp and merciless as ever in
+Belfast.
+
+The men walked slowly along in twos and threes, talking over the sermons
+they had just listened to; and the sermons, judging from the newspapers,
+were all cast in the same mould; and that mould gives so clearly the
+Orange attitude toward Home Rule, that I shall try to outline it here,
+quoting literally from the newspaper accounts.
+
+Home Rule, then, according to the Belfast preachers, is a Papal-inspired
+movement, whose object is "to thrust out of their birthright over one
+million enterprising, industrious, and peaceable citizens, whose only
+crime was their loyalty to Crown and Constitution, and to put them under
+that Papal yoke from which their sires had purchased their liberty.
+Their beloved island home had never been more prosperous. They were
+grateful and they were satisfied, but their Roman Catholic fellow
+countrymen seemed to have no sense of satisfaction or gratitude. The
+Irish Nationalists had entered into a movement to sacrifice
+Protestantism upon the altar of Home Rule, but Orangemen and Protestants
+had entered into a covenant the object of which was the maintenance of
+their rightful heritage of British citizenship, of their commercial and
+industrial progress, and of their freedom. In the same spirit of
+patriotic Protestantism as was displayed at the siege of Derry, they
+would go forth to combat the onslaughts of Rome, and they would show
+that the same spirit lived in them as in their illustrious sires." Some
+of the services concluded with singing a new version of the National
+Anthem:
+
+          Ulster will never yield;
+          God is our strength and shield,
+            On Him we lean.
+          Free, loyal, true and brave,
+          Our liberties we'll save.
+          Home Rule we'll never have.
+            God save the King.
+
+That last line is so perfunctory that it provokes a smile.
+
+I am anxious to state the case against Home Rule as fairly as I can, the
+more so because, as the readers of this book must have suspected before
+this, I have little sympathy with the die-hard Unionists. I do not
+believe that they represent Ulster in any such absolute sense as they
+claim to do, for in the first place they hold only sixteen out of the
+thirty-three Ulster seats in Parliament, and in the second place, even
+in the four counties which are largely Protestant, there is a very
+strong Nationalist sentiment. My own conviction is that the Orange
+Societies are being be-fooled by a clique of politicians and aristocrats
+whose quarrel is not with Home Rule but with the Liberal party. Nobody
+denies that the funds for the organisation and equipment of the Orange
+army have been supplied by the Conservative party, whose campaign chest
+has been sadly depleted by the immense sums needed to keep the agitation
+going. Certain leaders of that party have done their utmost to foment
+religious and racial hatred, not because of any religious convictions of
+their own, nor because of any special sympathy for Ulster, but in the
+hope of overthrowing the government and stopping the march of social
+reform. They might just as well try to stop the march of time--and some
+day, perhaps, they will realise it!
+
+          And yet--
+
+These fighting preachers, these uncompromising, wrong-headed, upright
+old Calvinists, are undoubtedly in earnest. The congregations which sat
+in grim-faced silence that day listening to this oratory, were in
+earnest, too. But I cannot believe that, in their inmost heart of
+hearts, they really dread the subversion of Protestantism. What they
+dread is, in the first place, some diminution of their supremacy in
+Irish politics, and, in the second place, some diminution of their
+control of Irish industry. In other words, the attack they really fear
+is against their pocket-books, not against their creed. And it is not
+impossible that their pocket-books may suffer; indeed, I think it
+probable that when the Home Rule Parliament has made its final
+adjustments of revenue, Ulster will be found to be bearing somewhat more
+of the burden than she now does, though perhaps not more than her just
+share. But this doesn't make the situation any the less serious, for
+ever since the world began it has been proved over and over again that
+the very surest way to drive men to frenzied resistance is to attack
+their pocket-books. As for the religious bogy, I personally believe most
+sincerely that it _is_ a bogy. Such danger to Protestantism as exists
+comes, not from the Irish Catholics, but from the politicians who are
+using it as a football.
+
+There was a sentence in one of the sermons preached that day to the
+effect that Irish Protestants laboured to help Irish Catholics to civil
+and religious liberty, when Irish Catholics were unable to help
+themselves, and this is a fact which I am sure Irish Catholics will be
+the last to forget. A century ago, Ulster was as fiercely Nationalist as
+she is fiercely Unionist to-day; it was in Belfast that the Society of
+United Irishmen was organised, and its leader was Theobald Wolfe Tone, a
+Protestant, and its first members were Presbyterians, and one of its
+objects was Catholic Emancipation. And, as a close to these disconnected
+remarks, I cannot do better than repeat an anecdote I saw the other day
+in the _Nineteenth Century_. Some sympathetic neighbours called upon the
+mother of Sir David Baird to condole with her over her son's
+misfortunes, and they told her, with bated voices, how he had been
+captured by Tippoo Sultan, and chained to a soldier and thrust into a
+dungeon. Baird's mother listened silently, and then a little smile
+flitted across her lips.
+
+"God help the laddie that's chained to my Davie!" she said softly.
+
+And anybody that's chained to Ulster will undoubtedly have a strenuous
+time!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _News-Letter_ is the great Belfast daily, and while I was looking
+through it, Monday, for fear I had missed some of the pulpit and
+platform fulminations, I chanced upon another article which interested
+me deeply, as showing the Protestant attitude toward control of the
+schools. The article in question was a long account of the awarding of
+prizes at one of the big Belfast National schools, as a result of the
+religious education examination, and it was most illuminating.
+
+The chairman began his remarks by saying that "nothing is pleasanter
+than to hear a pupil repeat faultlessly the answers to the one hundred
+and seven questions in the Shorter Catechism, without a stumble, placing
+the emphasis where it is due, and attending to the stops," and he went
+on to report that these one hundred and seven questions had been asked
+orally of each of 396 children, that there was not a single failure, and
+that practically all the children were in the first honour list--that
+is, had answered faultlessly the whole one hundred and seven.
+
+And then another speaker, a clergyman, of course, like the first, told
+impressively of the meaning of education. It was, he said, the duty of
+every child to store his mind with all manner of knowledge and to seek
+diligently to gain information from day to day. But religion was the sum
+and complement of all education. Without it, all other acquirements
+would be little better than the beautiful flush upon the consumptive's
+cheek, the precursor of sure death and decay. He reminded them that even
+the very youngest there was guilty in the sight of God, for that awful
+word sinner described them all.
+
+Then a third speaker remarked that while the staff of the school was
+doing a fine work in teaching the boys and girls to read and write and
+cast up accounts, that that wasn't nearly so fine as teaching them the
+catechism and encouraging them to study their Bibles. And then a fourth
+speaker emphasised this; and then there was a vote of thanks to all the
+speakers, and the prize Bibles were distributed, and everybody went away
+happy--at least, the adults were all happy, and I can only hope the
+children were.
+
+From all which it is evident that the Presbyterians will fight for their
+schools as hard, if not harder, than the Catholics will for theirs. But
+to me, the thought of those poor children being drilled and drilled in
+the proper answers to the 107 questions of the Catechism, until they
+could answer them all glibly and without stopping to think, is a painful
+and depressing one. I suppose that is the way good Orangemen are made;
+but the Catechism has always seemed to me a rickety ladder to climb to
+heaven by.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was fortunate enough to witness another peculiar symptom of Belfast's
+temper, that afternoon, when I went down to the Custom House, which
+stands near the river. It is a large building occupying a full block,
+and there is a wide esplanade all around it; and this esplanade has,
+from time immemorial, been the platform which any speaker, who could
+find room upon it, was privileged to mount, and where he might
+promulgate any doctrine he could get the crowd to listen to.
+
+There was a great throng of people about the place, that afternoon, and
+a liberal sprinkling of policemen scattered through it; and then I
+perceived that it wasn't one big crowd but a lot of smaller crowds, each
+listening to a different orator, whose voices met and clashed in the air
+in a most confusing manner. And I wish solemnly to assert that the list
+which follows is a true list in every detail.
+
+At the corner of the building, a reformed drunkard, with one of those
+faces which are always in need of shaving, stood, Bible in hand,
+recounting his experiences. At least, he said he had reformed; but the
+pictures he painted of the awful depravity of his past had a lurid tinge
+which held his auditors spell-bound, and it was evident from the way he
+smacked his lips over them that he was proud of having been such a devil
+of a fellow.
+
+Next to him a smartly-dressed negro was selling bottles of medicine,
+which, so far as I could judge from what I heard, was guaranteed to cure
+all the ills that flesh is heir to. The formula for this wonderful
+preparation, he asserted, had been handed down through his family from
+his great-great-grandmother, who had been a famous African voodoo
+doctor, and it could be procured nowhere else. The open-mouthed
+Belfasters listened to all this with a deference and patience which no
+American audience would have shown, and the fakir took in many
+shillings.
+
+Next to him, a company of the Salvation Army was holding a meeting after
+the explosive fashion familiar all the world over; and at the farther
+corner, a white-bearded little fellow was describing the horrors of hell
+with an unction and exactitude far surpassing Dante. I don't know what
+his formula was for avoiding these horrors, for I didn't wait to hear
+his peroration.
+
+Just around the corner, two blind men were singing dolefully, with a tin
+cup on the pavement before them, and straining their ears for the rattle
+of a copper that never came; and farther along, a sharp-faced Irishman
+was delivering a speech, which I judged to be political, but it was so
+interspersed with anecdote and invective and personal reminiscence,
+that, though I listened a long time, I couldn't make out who he was
+talking against, or which side he was on. His audience seemed to follow
+him without difficulty, however, and laughed and applauded; and then a
+little fellow with a black moustache advised the crowd, in a loud voice,
+not to listen to him, for he was a jail-bird. I saw the constables edge
+in a little closer; but the speaker took the taunt in good part,
+admitted that he had done twelve months for some offence, and thanked
+the crowd with tears in his voice because they had raised two pounds a
+week, during that time, for the support of his family. The crowd
+cheered, and the fellow who had tried to start trouble hastened to take
+himself off. Thinking over all which, now, it occurs to me that the
+speech may have been a labour speech, and not a political one at all.
+
+I gave it up, at last, and moved on to where a man was making an
+impassioned plea for contributions for an orphan asylum. He had a
+number of sample orphans of both sexes ranged about him, and he painted
+a lively picture of the good his institution was doing; but how he hoped
+to extract donations from a crowd so evidently down at heel I don't see.
+Next to him, a frightful cripple, who could stand erect only by leaning
+heavily upon two canes, was telling the crowd how exceedingly difficult
+it was for a rich man to get into heaven. Next to him, a lot of women
+were holding some sort of missionary meeting; and just around the last
+corner, a roughly-dressed man, with coarse, red-bearded face, whose
+canvas placard described him as a "Medical Herbalist," was selling
+medicines of his own concoction.
+
+He had no panacea, but a separate remedy for every ill; and I listened
+to his patter for a long time, though obviously he didn't welcome my
+presence. He proved that slippery-elm was harmless by eating some of it,
+and argued that plantain, "which ignorant people regarded as a weed,
+made the best medicine a man could put into his inside," and he proved
+this proposition by saying that it must be so because plantain had no
+other known use, and it was inconceivable that the Lord would have taken
+the trouble to create it without some purpose. He also proved that he
+was a capable doctor because he was not a doctor at all, but a
+working-man, and it was the working-man who made the world go round.
+Inconceivable as it may seem, this ignorant and maudlin talk was
+listened to seriously and even respectfully, and he sold a lot of his
+medicines. Medicine seems to be one of the dissipations of the Belfast
+folk.
+
+The largest crowd of all was gathered before a man who held the centre
+of the fourth side of the esplanade, and who was talking, or rather
+shouting, against Home Rule. He was garbed as a clergyman, and he wore
+an Orange badge, and he was listened to with religious attention as he
+painted the iniquity of the Catholic church and the horrible dangers of
+Catholic domination. His references to King Billy and the Boyne and the
+walls of Derry were many and frequent, and he had all sorts of newspaper
+clippings in his pockets, from which he read freely, and though he was
+very hoarse and bathed in perspiration, he showed no sign of stopping.
+He intimated that, once Home Rule was established, the revival of the
+inquisition would be but a matter of a short time, that no Protestant
+would be allowed to own property, that no Protestant labourer could
+expect employment anywhere until he had abjured his religion, that their
+children would be taken away from them and reared in Catholic schools,
+and he called upon them to arm and stand firm, to offer their lives upon
+the altar of their country, and not retreat a step before the
+aggressions of the Scarlet Woman. I don't know how much of this farrago
+his audience believed, but their faces were intent and serious, and I
+fear they believed much more than was good for them. I happened upon a
+song of Chesterton's the other day which brought those strained and
+intent faces vividly before me:
+
+   The folks that live in black Belfast, their heart is in their mouth;
+   They see us making murders in the meadows of the South;
+   They think a plow's a rack, they do, and cattle-calls are creeds,
+   And they think we're burnin' witches, when we're only burnin' weeds.
+
+Those lines are scarcely an exaggeration; and after I had stood there
+listening for half an hour, I began to feel uneasily that perhaps, after
+all, there is in Ulster a dour fanaticism which may lead to an ugly
+conflict. Those political adventurers who have preached armed resistance
+so savagely, without really meaning a word of it, may have raised a
+Frankenstein which they will find themselves unable to control.
+
+[Illustration: THE CITY HALL, BELFAST]
+
+[Illustration: HIGH STREET, BELFAST]
+
+As I turned away, at last, sick at heart that such things should be, I
+passed close by a little group of men who were standing on the sidewalk
+opposite, listening to the denunciations of Rome with flushed faces and
+clenched hands.
+
+"Let's have a go at him!" said one of them hoarsely; and then he caught
+my eye, as I lingered to see what would happen. "What do you think of
+that, anyway, sir?" he asked.
+
+"I think it's outrageous," I said. "But I wouldn't raise a row, if I
+were you boys; you'll just be playing into his hands if you do."
+
+Their leader considered this for a moment.
+
+"I guess you're right, sir," he agreed, at last. "Come on, boys," and
+they slouched away around the corner.
+
+But perhaps, afterwards, when they had got a few more drinks, they came
+back again. It is a peculiarity of Belfast that the public houses are
+allowed to open at two o'clock Sunday afternoon, and they are crammed
+from that time forward with a thirsty crowd.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is nothing of antiquarian interest at Belfast, and its public
+buildings, though many and various, are in no way noteworthy. The
+sycophancy of the town is evidenced by a tall memorial to Prince
+Albert, not quite so ugly however, as the one at London; while in front
+of the city hall stands a heroic figure of Victoria. There is a statue
+to the Marquis of Dufferin, and one to Harland the ship-builder, and one
+to Sir James Haslett; and many militant divines, in flowing robes, are
+immortalised in marble. But search the streets as you may, you will find
+no statue to any Irish patriot or Irish poet.
+
+Nor will you find a street named after one--yes, there is Patrick
+Street, but it is a very short and unimportant street, and may easily
+escape notice. The shadow of the Victorian Age lies deeply over the
+place. The greatest quay is Albert Quay, and the ship channel is
+Victoria Channel, and the square at the custom house is Albert Square,
+and a little farther along is Victoria Square, and just around the
+corner is Arthur Square, and the principal avenue is Royal Avenue, and
+the broad street which leads into it is York Street, and the street next
+to it is Queen Street, and leading off of that is Kent Street, and a
+little distance away is Albert Street leading up to Great Victoria
+Street, and I am sure that somewhere in the town there is a Prince
+Consort Street, though I didn't happen upon it!
+
+The churches are all modern and uninteresting, though, strangely enough,
+the Catholic ones are as large and ornate as any. You wouldn't think it
+from the way Ulster talks, but about a fourth of the population of
+Belfast is Catholic. There are two small museums, neither of which is
+worth visiting; in a word, the whole interest of Belfast is in its
+shops, its factories and its commerce.
+
+The shops are wonderfully attractive, especially, of course, in objects
+made of linen. For Belfast is the world-centre of the linen trade, whose
+foundations were laid by the Huguenots who found a refuge here after
+Louis XIV banished them from France. It was the one Irish industry which
+England did not interfere with, because England produced no linen; and
+consequently it prospered enormously, until to-day there are single
+factories at Belfast where four thousand people bend over a thousand
+looms or watch ten thousand spindles, and the annual value of the trade
+is more than sixty million dollars. There are great tobacco factories,
+too, covering acres of ground; and the biggest rope-walk in the world;
+and a distillery which covers nineteen acres and--but the list is
+interminable.
+
+The most interesting and spectacular of all these mighty industries will
+be found along the river banks, where the great ship-building yards are
+ranged, where such monsters as the _Olympic_ and the fated _Titanic_
+were built and launched, and where the rattle and clangour of steel upon
+steel tells of the labour of twenty thousand men. And surely the clang
+and clatter of honest toil which rises from Belfast on week days must be
+more pleasing to the Almighty than the clang and clatter which rises
+from it on Sunday! I should think He would be especially disgusted with
+the noises which emanate from about the Custom House!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE GRAVE OF ST. PATRICK
+
+
+THE shops of Belfast, with their embroidered linens (duty, forty-five
+per cent!), proved a magnet too great for Betty to resist, but I hied me
+away, next day, into County Down, on a pilgrimage to the grave which is
+said to hold the three great apostles of Erin--Saint Brigid and Saint
+Patrick and Saint Columba. It is in the churchyard of the village of
+Downpatrick that the grave lies, and the thirty mile run thither from
+Belfast is through a green and fertile country covered with broad fields
+of flax. There are raths and tumuli here and there, and a few ruins
+topping the neighbouring slopes, but it is not until one reaches
+Downpatrick that one comes upon a really impressive memorial of the old
+days.
+
+The cathedral is visible long before the train reaches the town,
+standing on the edge of a high bluff overlooking the valley of the
+Quoile, and it was to it I made my way from the station, up a very steep
+street, for Downpatrick, following the fashion of Irish towns, is built
+on the side of a hill--and also follows the fashion in having an Irish
+Street and an English Street and even a Scotch Street, the surviving
+names, I suppose, of the quarters where the people of those various
+nations once lived close together for mutual protection.
+
+The cathedral was locked, as Protestant churches have a way of being;
+but the caretaker lives near by and came running when his wife told him
+that there was a strange gentleman wished to see the church. He was a
+very Scotch Irishman, and as he took me around the bare, white interior,
+he said proudly: "There's not much high church about this. Not a bit of
+flummery will we have here--no candles or vestments or anything of that
+sort. Our people wouldn't stand it--it savours too much of Romanism."
+
+"And yet," I said, "it was Saint Patrick who founded this very church,
+and you have him and Saint Brigid and Saint Columba buried in your
+churchyard."
+
+"Yes, and we're proud to have them," he retorted quickly, "for they
+weren't Romanists--they were just Christians, and good ones, too. The
+Protestants of Ireland can honour Patrick and Brigid just as much as the
+Catholics do. It wasn't till long after their day that the Irish church
+made submission to Rome."
+
+There is a modicum of truth in this, for, though it is probable that St.
+Patrick was regularly ordained a bishop and is even sometimes asserted
+to have been sent on his mission by Pope Celestine himself, the ties
+which bound Irish Catholics to Rome were for many centuries very slight
+indeed, and it was not until after the Norman conquest that the
+authority of Rome was fully acknowledged; and this independence has
+persisted, in a way, even to the present day; for while Irish Catholics,
+of course, acknowledge absolutely the supremacy of the Holy See in all
+spiritual affairs, they have always been quick to resent its
+interference in things temporal, and their tolerance toward other
+religions than their own stands almost unique in history. It is,
+perhaps, a racial characteristic, for the Pagan Irish, during all the
+years of Patrick's mission among them, never seriously persecuted him
+and never slew a Christian.
+
+Here at the spot where that mission began it is fitting that I should
+say a word of it. Of Saint Patrick himself very little is certainly
+known, for he was a man of deeds and not of words, and left no record of
+his life; but there seems no valid reason to doubt the traditional
+account of him; that he was born at Kilpatrick, in Scotland, somewhere
+about 390; that his father was a Roman citizen and a Christian; that,
+when about sixteen years of age, he was captured by a band of raiding
+Irish, carried back to Ireland as a slave, sold to an Ulster chief named
+Milcho, and for six years tended his master's flocks on the slopes of
+Slemish, one of the Antrim hills. In the end he escaped and made his way
+back to his home in Britain; but once there his thoughts turned back to
+Erin, and in his dreams he heard the cries of the Pagan Irish imploring
+him to return, bearing the torch of Christianity.
+
+The voices grew too strong to be resisted, and in 432 he was back on the
+Irish coast again, having in the meantime been ordained a bishop of the
+Catholic Church; and he sailed along the coast until he came to
+Strangford Lough, where he turned in and landed. His purpose was to go
+back to Slemish and ransom himself from the master from whom he had
+escaped, but he paused at a large sabhall, or barn, and said his first
+Mass on Irish soil. It was to that spot he afterwards returned, when the
+hand of death was upon him, to end his days; and the little village
+that stands there is Sabhall, or Saul, to this day. He went on, after
+that, to the great dun, or fort, of the kings of Ulster, which we
+ourselves shall visit presently, and from which Downpatrick takes its
+name. Then, finding his old master dead, he began his life-work. His
+success was so extraordinary that at the end of thirty years, the
+conversion of the Irish was complete.
+
+[Illustration: THE GRAVE OF PATRICK, BRIGID AND COLUMBA]
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD CROSS AT DOWNPATRICK]
+
+At last, feeling his end near, he made his way back to the sanctuary at
+Saul, died there, and was brought for burial to this bluff overlooking
+the great rath below. Legend has it that Saint Brigid wove his
+winding-sheet. She herself, when she died, was buried before the high
+altar of her church at Kildare; and there are two stories of why her
+body was removed to St. Patrick's grave. One is that, in 878, her
+followers, fearing that her grave would be desecrated by the Danes,
+removed her body to Downpatrick and buried it in the grave with the
+great apostle, where the remains of St. Columba had been brought from
+Iona and placed nearly two centuries before for the same reason. The
+other story is that the bones of St. Brigid and St. Columba both were
+brought here in 1185 by John de Courcy, to whom Ulster had been granted
+by the English king,--and who had surprised and captured Downpatrick
+eight years previously,--in the hope of conciliating the people he had
+conquered. Either story may be true; but all that need concern us now is
+that there seems to be no question that the three great apostles of
+Ireland really do lie at rest within this grave.
+
+De Courcy enlarged the cathedral, which, before that, had been a poor
+affair, dedicated it to Saint Patrick, and caused effigies of the
+three saints to be placed above the east window with a Latin couplet
+over them:
+
+          Hi tres in duno, tumulo tumulantur in uno
+          Brigida, Patritius, atque Columba pius.
+
+The stone which marks the grave is in the yard just outside the
+church--a great, irregular monolith of Mourne granite, weatherworn and
+untouched by human hand, except for an incised Celtic cross and the word
+"Patric" in rude Celtic letters--one monument, at least, in Ireland
+which is wholly dignified and worthy.
+
+One other thing of antiquarian interest there is near by, and that is an
+ancient cross, said to have stood originally on the fort of the King of
+Ulster, but removed by De Courcy and set up in front of his castle in
+the centre of the town, as a sign of his sovereignty, where it was
+knocked to pieces when the castle was. The fragments have been put
+together, and battered and worn as it is, the carvings can still be
+dimly seen--the crucifixion in the centre, with stiff representations of
+Bible scenes below. It is ruder than most, as may be seen from the
+photograph opposite page 522, for the circle which surrounds the cross
+is merely indicated and not cut through. There has been much controversy
+as to the origin of this circle, which is the distinctive feature of the
+Celtic cross; but I have never yet seen any theory which seemed anything
+more than a guess--and not a particularly good guess, either.
+
+Of the first church which was built here not a trace remains, and even
+of the structure of 1137 there is little left. For Downpatrick, with the
+priories and monasteries and hospitals and convents and other religious
+establishments which had grown up around the sacred grave of the saints,
+was one of the first objects of attack when Henry VIII began his
+suppression of the religious houses. Lord Grey marched hither at the
+head of a regiment of soldiers and plundered the place and set fire to
+it, so that only an empty shell was left. The crumbling and blackened
+ruin stood undisturbed for more than two hundred years, and when its
+restoration was finally undertaken, it was found that only five arches
+of the nave were solid enough to be retained. So the present structure
+is only about a century old, except for that one stretch of wall and a
+recessed doorway under the east window. The old effigies of Brigid and
+Patrick and Columba, which Grey pulled down and knocked to pieces, have
+been replaced in the niches above the window, but they are sadly
+mutilated. In the vestry is a portrait of Jeremy Taylor, who was Bishop
+of Down for nearly seventy years, but there is little else of interest
+in the church. The most imposing thing about it is its position at the
+edge of the high bluff, looking out across the valley of the Quoire to
+the Mourne mountains.
+
+Just to the north of this bluff and almost in its shadow, close to the
+bank of a little stream, still stands the enormous rath built two
+thousand years ago by Celtchair, one of the heroes of the Red Branch of
+Ulster, and here he and the chiefs who came after him had their
+stronghold. So great was its fame that Ptolemy, in far off Egypt, heard
+of it, and it was gradually enlarged and strengthened until there were
+few in Ireland to equal it. The sea helped to guard it, for at high tide
+the water flowed up over the flats along the Quoile and lapped against
+it; but the erection of sluice-gates farther down the stream has shut
+away the tide, and it stands now in the midst of a marsh.
+
+To get to it, one passes along the wall of the jail--one of the largest
+I had seen anywhere in Ireland, and which Murray proudly says cost
+$315,000--and scrambles down into the marsh, and there before one is the
+rath. My picture of it, the top one opposite the next page, was taken
+from close beside the jail, many hundreds of yards away, and gives no
+idea of its size, except for the thread-like path which you may perceive
+running up one end, which is two or three feet wide, and fully seventy
+feet long.
+
+The rath is an immense circular rampart of earth, nearly three quarters
+of a mile in circumference, fifty feet high, and so steep that I had
+great difficulty in getting up it, even by the path. Around it runs a
+fosse or ditch some forty feet wide and nine or ten feet deep. This, of
+course, was deeper in the old days, and would remain filled with water
+even when the tide was out. Inside the circular rampart, the ground
+drops some twenty feet into a large enclosure, near the centre of which
+a great mound, surrounded by a ditch ten feet deep, towers sixty feet
+into the air.
+
+The central mound corresponds to the keep or donjon tower of more modern
+forts, the last place of refuge and defence when the outer ramparts had
+been forced; and it was on this mound that the dwellings of the chiefs
+stood, rude enough, no doubt, though they were the palaces of kings. The
+tribal huts clustered in the enclosure about the foot of the mound; and
+so perfectly is the whole place preserved--though of course there is
+now no trace of hut or palace--that one has little difficulty in
+picturing the busy life which went on there--the throngs of men and
+women and children, the tribal council gathered on the summit of the
+great mound to listen to the chief, the departure of expeditions for war
+or for the chase, the arrival of envoys from some other chieftain or
+perhaps of some minstrel, his harp slung across his shoulder. . . .
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT RATH AT DOWNPATRICK]
+
+[Illustration: THE INNER AND OUTER CIRCLES]
+
+[Illustration: THE CENTRAL MOUND]
+
+I tore myself away, at last, for there was another place I wished to
+visit, and it was three miles distant--the Holy Wells of Struell. The
+caretaker at the cathedral had pointed out the route, so I climbed back
+past the prison, and went down through the town and up Irish Street
+beyond, and over Gallows Hill, where some unfortunate Irishmen were
+hanged during the rebellion of '98. The road beyond ran between high
+hedge-rows and under arching trees, whose shade was very grateful, for
+the day was the hottest I had experienced in Ireland; and then it
+crossed the white high-road and ran close under a long stretch of wall
+which surrounded an enormous and ornate building. I asked a passer-by
+what it was, and he answered that it was a madhouse, and big as it was,
+was none too big. Murray supplies the information that it cost half a
+million.
+
+There is a workhouse in the town which, from the look of it, must have
+cost $300,000--or say a million dollars for the three together, the
+jail, the workhouse and the asylum, every cent of it, of course, raised
+by taxation from the poorest people in the world! Sadly pondering this,
+I went on along the lane, and the heat made the way seem very long. But
+a girl I met assured me that I had not much farther to go--only past
+the farm at the foot of the hill; and presently I came to the farm, a
+handsome one, with the dwelling-house surrounded by well-built barns and
+stables, and a man there directed me to the wells, down a little
+by-road. Five minutes later, I had reached the rude stone huts which
+cover the Holy Wells of Struell.
+
+Down the middle of a pretty valley, a small stream leaps from rock to
+rock, pausing here and there in little pools, and these pools are the
+"wells." Each of them is protected by a stone-walled, stone-roofed cell,
+built in the old days when the wells were in their glory, and now
+falling to decay. Just beyond the wells is a group of thatched cottages,
+and a girl of eight or nine, seeing my approach, hurried out from one of
+them and volunteered to act as guide, scenting, of course, the chance to
+earn a penny. And she took me first to what she said was the
+drinking-well, a little grass-grown pool in a fence-corner, and though
+she seemed to expect me to drink, I didn't, for the water looked stale
+and scummy.
+
+Then we climbed a wall, and walked over to a stone cubicle, which stood
+in the middle of a potato patch. This is the eye-well, and the cell over
+it is just large enough to permit a person to enter and kneel down above
+the water and bathe the affected parts. I took a picture of it which you
+will find opposite the next page. Then she led me to the largest well of
+all, the body well, or well of sins, where it is necessary to undress
+and immerse the whole body.
+
+The stone building over the body well is divided into two parts by a
+solid wall, and one part is for men and the other for women. The
+disrobing is done in the outer chamber, which has a low stone bench
+running around three sides, and then the penitent enters a small inner
+chamber, descends some six or seven steps into the pool of water, and, I
+suppose, places himself below the stream which falls into the pool from
+the end of a pipe. As its name indicates, this well was supposed to have
+the power of washing away all disease, both physical and moral, and time
+was when it was very popular. The effect of the cold bath was so
+exhilarating, and the sudden sense of freedom from sin and disease so
+uplifting, that the penitents would sometimes rush forth to proclaim
+their blessed state without pausing to resume their garments. Naturally
+a lot of impious Orangemen would gather to see the fun; and finally both
+the secular authorities and the Catholic clergy set their faces against
+the practices, with the result that they gradually fell into disuse.
+Only single pilgrims, or small companies, at most, come now to bathe in
+the magic waters, and their behaviour is most circumspect. The cells,
+themselves, are well-nigh in ruins. A chapel to Saint Patrick, from whom
+these waters derive their efficacy, was begun during the day of their
+popularity, but was never finished, and now only a fragment of it
+remains.
+
+[Illustration: THE EYE WELL AT STRUELL]
+
+[Illustration: THE WELL OF SINS AT STRUELL]
+
+While I was manoeuvring for a photograph of the well of sins, a
+middle-aged woman came out of a near-by cottage to advise me where to
+stand. She had seen many pictures taken of the well, she said, and the
+place that made the best picture was on top of the wall around her
+garden, and I climbed up on it, and found that she was right.
+
+"'Tis a warm day," she went on, when I descended, "and your honour must
+be tired with the long walk. Will you not come in and sit a spell?"
+
+"Thank you," I said; "I'll be glad to--it _is_ hot," and I followed her
+into a lovely old kitchen, with floor of flags, and whitewashed walls
+gleaming with pots and pans, and with a tall dresser in one corner
+glittering with a brave array of china. In here it was quite cool, so
+that after the first moment, the open grate of glowing coals, with the
+usual bubbling pot above it and the usual kettle on the hob, felt very
+pleasant.
+
+I expressed surprise that she was burning coal, and she said the
+landlords of the neighbourhood had shut up the peat-bogs, in order to
+make every one buy English coal; and it was very hard indeed on the poor
+people, who had always been used to getting their fuel for the labour of
+cutting it, besides shutting them off from earning a little money by
+selling the turf to the people in the town, who would rather have it
+than coal. But the landlords were always doing things like that, and it
+did no good to complain. She had two brothers in America, she said, and
+lived here at Struell and kept house for a third. She and her brother
+were both unmarried, and would probably always remain so. Then, of
+course, she wanted to know about my condition in life, and I described
+it as freely as she had described her own. And then she asked me if I
+wouldn't like a glass of milk, and when I said I would, she hastened to
+get it from the milk-house, through which a clear little stream
+trickled, and very sweet and cool it was.
+
+And then we got to talking about Ulster's attitude toward Home Rule.
+County Down, you should remember, is one of the nine counties which form
+the Province of Ulster, and is the most strongly Protestant of all of
+them outside of Belfast and Antrim, for only about one third of its
+200,000 people are Catholic.
+
+"God knows what will happen," said my hostess, very seriously. "I have
+been hearing a lot of wild talk, but paid no heed to it, for these
+Orangemen are always talkin' about this or that, and their talk means
+nothing. But I've come to think it may be more than just talk this time.
+I heard a few days since that all the Orangemen hereabouts have been
+getting together three evenings every week in a meadow over beyont, and
+an officer of the army comes there and drills them till it is too dark
+to see. And they say, too, that there is a gun ready for each of them,
+with plenty of powder and lead to put into it; and they've sleuthered a
+lot of poor boys into joinin' with them who have not the courage to say
+no. But I'm hoping it will pass by, and that no trouble will come of it.
+I am a Catholic myself, but we have never had any trouble with the
+Protestants. We get along very well together, and why shouldn't we? Some
+of my best friends are Protestants, and I know they wish us no harm. No,
+no, we are well-placed here, though them ones in the south do be calling
+us the black north."
+
+I told her something of the destitution and misery I had seen in the
+south and west; but she showed no great sympathy--rather a contempt, I
+fancied, for people who could be so easy-going and unambitious. She
+herself seemed of a very different breed; and the shining kitchen, as
+clean as a new pin, proved what a delight and pride she took in her
+home and how energetic a housewife she was. Personally she was just as
+clean and tidy as her kitchen, with hair neatly brushed and a bit of
+white about her throat; and the apron she had on was a fresh one,
+newly-ironed--something I never saw upon any peasant woman of the south.
+She brought out an album of photographs, presently--photographs of
+herself and of her brother, and various photographs of the wells, and I
+promised to send her a print of mine, if it proved to be a good one. And
+then I bade her good-bye and started back the way I came; but I can
+still see her shrewd and kindly face, with the little wrinkles at the
+corners of the eyes, and the cool, sweet-smelling kitchen where I spent
+that pleasant hour.
+
+I walked about the steep streets of Downpatrick quite a while, after I
+reached the town, and found them unusually quaint. Like so many other
+towns in Ireland, this one is all too evidently on the down grade. The
+tall houses, which were once the residences of the well-to-do, have been
+turned into tenements, and while they are not so dirty and repulsive as
+those of Dublin and Limerick, they are still bad enough. Others of the
+houses are empty and falling into ruin. One curious thing about the
+place is that from any quarter of it the town-hall is visible, standing
+in the hollow at the bottom of the hill, for the five principal streets
+start from it--Irish Street and English Street and Scotch Street and two
+others whose names I have forgotten, but which were, perhaps, the
+neutral ground of trade.
+
+I made my way down to the station, at last, and as the train started, a
+young fellow in the same compartment with me bade a tearful farewell to
+the relatives and friends who had gathered to see him off, and sat for
+some time thereafter weeping unaffectedly into his handkerchief. When he
+was a little calmer, I asked him if he was going to America. He said no;
+he was going only to Belfast, but that was a long way!
+
+It is really only about thirty miles; but thirty miles is a great
+journey to the average Irishman. For the Irishman is no traveller; he is
+quite content to spend his life within the circle of one small horizon,
+and never so happy as when sitting at his own fireside. Indeed, he is
+apt to regard with suspicion those who have nothing better to do than
+wander about the world. Mayo tinkers have always had a bad name in
+Ireland, not because they do anything especially to deserve it, but
+merely because they make their living in an unnatural fashion by roaming
+from place to place. Surely there must be something wrong with a man who
+does that!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night, at Belfast, we went to a variety show. The Wild West film
+seems as popular here as in the rest of Ireland, for a particularly
+sensational one, where the heroine escaped from the Indians by going
+hand over hand along a rope above a deep ravine, into which the Indians
+were precipitated by the hero, who cut the rope when they started to
+cross by it, was received with great enthusiasm. There were also some
+scattered cheers when a conjuror, with carefully calculated effect,
+produced portraits of the King and Queen from somewhere and waved them
+before the audience. But the cheers were thin and forced, and by far the
+most of those present sat grimly silent and stared at the pictures with
+set faces.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE
+
+
+I HAD one other trip to make in Ireland. That was to the scene of the
+battle of the Boyne, to the tombs of the kings at Dowth and Newgrange,
+and to the ruins near-by of two of the most famous and beautiful of the
+old abbeys, Mellifont and Monasterboice. Readers of this book will
+remember that, early in the narrative, Betty and I had journeyed up from
+Dublin to Drogheda for the purpose of visiting these historic places,
+but had been prevented by a combination of unforeseen circumstances.
+
+It was, then, for Drogheda that I set out next morning, Betty having
+voted for another day in the Belfast shops; and by a singular
+coincidence it was the first day of July, the anniversary of that other
+day in 1690 when the army of William of Orange defeated the battalions
+of Irishmen who had rallied around James--and surely never had braver
+men a poorer leader! But it was not really the anniversary, for the
+change in the calendar has shifted the date to July 12th, and it is on
+that day the Orangemen celebrate.
+
+It is an eighty mile run from Belfast to Drogheda, and one of the most
+picturesque and interesting in the east of Ireland; and the weather god
+was kind to the last, for a brighter, sweeter day it would be impossible
+to imagine. As the train leaves the city, there are glimpses to the
+right of the purple hills of Antrim; and then the train pauses at the
+busy town of Lisbun, and continues on over the Ulster canal, past the
+battlefield of Moira, past the beautiful woods of Lurgan, and then
+through a prosperous and fertile country, with broad fields of grain and
+flax, and pretty villages, and so into Portadown, once the stronghold of
+the McCahans.
+
+I was travelling third that day, as always when alone, and the
+compartment had four or five people in it; and I had noticed that one of
+them, a man poorly clad and with a kit of tools in a little bag, had
+been looking anxiously from the window for some time. Finally he leaned
+over and touched me on the knee.
+
+"Can you tell me, sir, if this is the train to Derry?" he asked.
+
+"No; it's going to Dublin," I said; and just then it rumbled to a stop,
+and he opened the door and slipped hastily out.
+
+What happened to him I don't know, but he was in no way to blame for the
+mistake, which was due to the abominable custom they have in Ireland of
+starting trains for different places from the same platform, within a
+minute or two of each other. That morning, at Belfast, there had been a
+long line of coaches beside one of the platforms; no engines were as yet
+attached to them, but the front part of the line was destined for
+Dublin, and the rear portion for Derry, but there was no way to tell
+where one train ended and the other began, and no examination was made
+of the passengers' tickets before the trains started.
+
+I was wary, for I had been caught in exactly the same way once before,
+at Claremorris Junction, and had escaped being carried back to Westport
+only by stopping the train, amid great excitement, after it had started.
+So, that morning at Belfast, I had assured myself by repeated inquiry of
+various officials that the carriage I was in was going the way I wanted
+to go; but any traveller unwary or unaccustomed to the vagaries of Irish
+roads, such as this poor fellow, might easily have been caught napping.
+Where it is necessary to start two trains close together from the same
+platform, it would seem to be only ordinary precaution to examine the
+passengers' tickets before locking the doors.
+
+From Portadown, the road runs along the valley of the Bann, past the
+ruins of the old fortress of Redmond O'Hanlon, an outlaw almost as
+famous in Irish history as Robin Hood is in English; and then it passes
+Scarva, with a mighty cairn marking the grave of Fergus Fogha, who fell
+in battle here sixteen centuries ago. Here, too, are the ruins of one of
+General Monk's old castles, and on a neighbouring slope the grass-green
+walls of a great rath, the stronghold of some more ancient chieftain.
+Indeed, there are raths and cashels and ivy-draped ruins all about, the
+work of Irish and Dane and Norman and later English, for here was a pass
+across the bog from Down into Armagh, and so a chosen spot for defence
+and the exacting of tribute.
+
+Then the train is carried by a viaduct half a mile long over the deep
+and wild ravine of Craigmore, leaves Newry on the left and climbs
+steadily, with beautiful views of the Mourne mountains to the right,
+plunges at last through a deep cutting, and comes out under the shadow
+of the Forkhill mountains, with the mighty mass of Slieve Gullion
+overtopping them. Just beyond is Mowry Pass, the only pass between
+north and south, except round by the coast, and so, of course, the scene
+of many a desperate conflict.
+
+From this point on, for many miles, the scenery is very wild and
+beautiful, and every foot of it has been a battle-ground. Just before
+the train reaches Dundalk, it passes close to the hill of Faughart,
+topped by a great earthwork, and it was here that Edward Bruce was slain
+in battle a year after he had been crowned king of Ireland; and farther
+on is another rath, the Dun of Dealgan, where dwelt Cuchulain, chief of
+the Red Branch Knights, and one of the great heroes of Irish legend. It
+was from Dun Dealgan that Dundalk took its name, and Dundalk was for
+centuries the key to the road to Ulster and the northern limit of the
+English pale, which had Dublin for its centre. Merely to enumerate the
+battles which have been fought here would fill a page; but the train
+rumbles on, past a little church which uses the fragment of a round
+tower for a belfry, past the modern castle of the Bellinghams, built
+from the proceeds of a famous brewery, past a wayside Calvary, and so at
+last into Drogheda. And when I arrived there, I had completed the
+circuit of Ireland.
+
+The car which was to make the round of the Boyne valley was waiting
+outside the station, at the top of that long, ugly street which looked
+so familiar now that I saw it again; and after waiting awhile for other
+passengers and finding there was none, we drove down into the town,
+where another passenger was waiting--a clergyman with grey hair and blue
+eyes and white refined face, Church of England by his garb, and, as I
+found out afterwards, Oxford by residence.
+
+And here again it looked for a moment as though I was to be balked a
+second time of seeing Mellifont and Monasterboice, for it was Tuesday,
+and on Tuesday, it seemed, the round was by way of Slane; but the driver
+left the choice of routes to his passengers, and the clergyman said he
+didn't care where we went so we saw the Boyne battlefield; and with that
+we set off westward along the pleasant road, and soon, far ahead, we saw
+the top of the great obelisk opposite the place where Schomberg fell.
+The road dips steeply into King William's Glen, along which the centre
+of the Protestant army advanced to the river, and then we were on the
+spot where the cause of Protestant ascendency in Ireland triumphed
+finally and irrevocably and where the Cromwellian settlements were
+sealed past overthrow.
+
+William, with his English and his Dutch, had marched down from Dundalk,
+and James, with his Irish and his French, had marched up from Dublin,
+and here on either side of this placid little river, where the hills
+slope down to the Oldbridge ford, the armies took their station; and
+here, a little after ten o'clock in the morning, brave old Schomberg,
+whose tomb, you will remember, we saw in St. Patrick's at Dublin (how
+long ago that seems!), led his Dutch guards and his regiment of
+Huguenots into the water, across the ford, and up the bank on the other
+side. There, for a moment, his troops fell into disorder before the
+fierce attack of the Irish, and as he tried to rally them, a band of
+Irish horse rushed upon him, circled round him and left him dead upon
+the ground. Almost at the same moment, the white-haired Walker, who had
+exhorted the defenders of Derry never to surrender, was shot dead while
+urging on the men of Ulster. But though the Irish were able to hold
+their ground at first, and even to drive their assailants back into the
+river, a long flanking movement which William had set on foot earlier in
+the day, caught them unprepared, and they gave way, at last, before
+superior numbers and superior discipline.
+
+Long before that, King James had fled the field, and, without stopping,
+spurred on to Dublin, thirty miles away. He reached that city at ten
+o'clock that night, tired, hungry, and complaining bitterly to Lady
+Tyrconnell that the Irish had run faster than he had ever seen men do
+before. Lady Tyrconnell was an Irishwoman, and her eyes blazed. "In
+that, as in all other things," she said, "it is evident that Your
+Majesty surpasses them"; and Patrick Sarsfield, who had been placed that
+day in command of the king's bodyguard, and so had got nowhere near the
+fighting, sent back to the Protestants his famous challenge, "Change
+kings, and we will fight it over again!"
+
+Well, all that was more than two centuries ago; there is no more
+placidly beautiful spot in Ireland than this green valley, with the
+silver stream rippling past; but the staunch Protestants of the north
+still baptise their babies with water dipped from the river below the
+obelisk. And they are not altogether wrong, for that river is the river
+of their deliverance; and perhaps, in some distant day, when new justice
+has wiped out the memory of ancient wrong, Irish Catholics will agree
+with Irish Protestants that it was better William should have won that
+day than James.
+
+[Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY]
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO DOWTH TUMULUS]
+
+My clerical companion, guide-book in hand, had carefully noted every
+detail of the field, and it was evident from his shining eyes how his
+soul was stirred by the thought of that old victory. But our driver sat
+humped on his box, smoking silently, his face very grim. This job of
+driving Protestant clergymen to Boyne battlefield must be a trying one
+for the followers of Brigid and Patrick! But at last my companion had
+seen enough, and closed his book with a little sigh of happiness and
+satisfaction; and our driver whistled to his horse, and we climbed
+slowly out of the valley.
+
+We had about a mile of hedge-lined road, after that, and, looking down
+from it, we caught glimpses of wooded demesnes across the river, with
+the chimneys of handsome houses showing above the trees--and they, too,
+are the symbols of William's victory, for they are the homes of the
+conquerors, the visible signs of that social order which Boyne battle
+established, and which still endures.
+
+And then our driver, who had recovered his good-humour, pointed out to
+us a great mound in the midst of a level field--a circular mound, with
+steep sides and flat top, and a certain artificial appearance, though it
+seemed too big to be artificial. And yet it is, for it was built about
+two thousand years ago as a sepulchre for the mighty dead.
+
+For all this left bank of the river was the so-called Brugh-na-Boinne,
+the burying-ground of the old Milesian kings of Tara; and two great
+tumuli are left to show that the kings of Erin, like the kings of
+ancient Egypt and the kings of the still more ancient Moundbuilders,
+were given sepulchres worthy of their greatness. Yet there is a
+difference. The tombs of the Moundbuilders were mere earthen tumuli
+heaped above the dead; the pyramids of the Egyptians were carefully
+wrought in stone. The tumuli of the ancient Irish stand midway between
+the two. First great slabs were placed on end, and other slabs laid
+across the uprights; and in this vaulted chamber the ashes of the dead
+were laid; and then loose stones were heaped above it until it was
+completely covered. Sometimes a passage would be left, but that would be
+a secret known to few, and when the tomb was done it would seem to be
+nothing more than a great circular mound of stones. As the years passed,
+the stones would be covered gradually with earth, and then with grass
+and bushes, and trees would grow upon it, until there would be nothing
+left to distinguish it from any other hill. Only within the last half
+century have the tumuli been explored, and then it was to find that the
+Danes had spared not even these sanctuaries, but had entered them and
+despoiled the inner chambers. Nevertheless, they remain among the most
+impressive human monuments to be found anywhere.
+
+This first tumulus we came to is the tumulus of Dowth, and a woman met
+us at the gate opening into the field where it stands, gave us each a
+lighted candle, and led the way to the top of an iron ladder which ran
+straight down into the bowels of the earth. We descended some twenty
+feet into a cavity as cold as ice; then, following the light of the
+woman's candle, we squeezed along a narrow passage made of great stones
+tilted together at the top, so low in places that we had to bend double,
+so close together in others that we had to advance sideways blessing
+our slimness; and finally we came to the great central chamber where the
+dead were placed.
+
+It is about ten feet square, and its walls, like those of the passage,
+are formed by huge blocks of stone set on end. Then other slabs were
+laid a-top them, and then on one another, each slab overlapping by eight
+or ten inches the one below, until a last great stone closed the central
+aperture and the roof was done. In the centre the chamber is about
+twelve feet high. Many of the stones are carved with spirals and
+concentric circles and wheel-crosses and Ogham writing--yes, and with
+the initials of hundreds of vandals!
+
+In the centre of the floor is a shallow stone basin, about four feet
+square, used perhaps for some ceremony in connection with the
+burials--sacrifice naturally suggests itself, such as tradition connects
+with Druid worship; and opening from the chamber are three recesses,
+about six feet deep, also constructed of gigantic stones, and in these,
+it is surmised, the ashes of the dead were laid. From one of these
+recesses a passage, whose floor is a single cyclopean stone eight feet
+long, leads to another recess, smaller than the first ones. When the
+tomb was first entered, little heaps of burned bones were found, many of
+them human--for it should be remembered that the ancient Irish burned
+their dead before enclosing them in cists or burying them in tumuli.
+There were also unburned bones of pigs and deer and birds, and glass and
+amber beads, and copper pins and rings; and before the Danes despoiled
+it, there were doubtless torques of gold, and brooches set with
+jewels--but the robbers left nothing of that sort behind them.
+
+Nobody knows when this mound was built; but the men who cut the spirals
+and circles--and in one place a leaf, not incised, but standing out in
+bold relief--must have had tools of iron or bronze to work with; so the
+date of the mound's erection can be fixed approximately at about the
+beginning of the Christian era. For the rest, all is legend. But as one
+stands there in that cyclopean chamber, the wonder of the thing, its
+uncanniness, its mystery, grow more and more overwhelming, until one
+peers around nervously, in the dim and wavering candle-light, expecting
+to see I know not what. With me, that sensation passed; for I happened
+suddenly to remember how George Moore and A. E. made a pilgrimage to
+this spot, one day, and sat in this dark chamber, cross-legged like
+Yogin, trying to evoke the spirits of the Druids, and just when they
+were about to succeed, or so it seemed, the vision was shattered by the
+arrival of two portly Presbyterian preachers.
+
+There is another entrance to the tumulus, about half way up, which opens
+into smaller and probably more recent chambers; and after a glance at
+them, we clambered to the top. Far off to the west, we could see the
+hill of Tara, where the old kings who are buried here held their court
+and gave great banquets in a hall seven hundred feet long, of which
+scarce a trace remains; and a little nearer, to the north, is the hill
+of Slane, where, on that Easter eve sixteen centuries ago, St. Patrick
+lighted his first Paschal fire in Ireland, in defiance of a Druidic law
+which decreed that in this season of the Festival of Spring, no man
+should kindle a fire in Meath until the sacred beacon blazed from Tara.
+You may guess the consternation of the priests when, through the
+gathering twilight, they first glimpsed that little flame which Patrick
+had kindled on the summit of Slane, just across the valley. That, I
+think, is easily the most breathless and dramatic moment in Irish
+history. The king sent his warriors to see what this defiance meant, and
+Patrick was brought to Tara, and he came into the assembly chanting a
+verse of Scripture: "Some in chariots and some on horses, but we in the
+name of the Lord our God." And so his mission began.
+
+On the other side of the mound, across a field and beyond a wall, I
+could see what seemed to be an ivy-draped ruin, and I asked our guide
+what it might be, and she said it was the birthplace of John Boyle
+O'Reilly. It was but a short walk, and my companion said he would wait
+for me; so I hastened down the mound and across the field and over the
+wall, and found that what I had seen was indeed a tall old house, draped
+with ivy and falling into ruin. Just back of it is a church, also in
+ruins, and again its wall is a granite monument to O'Reilly, more
+remarkable for its size than for any other quality. There is a bust of
+the poet at the top, and on either side a weeping female figure, and a
+long inscription in Gaelic, which of course I couldn't read; and which
+may have been very eloquent. But if it had been for me to write his
+epitaph, I would have chosen a single verse of his as all-sufficient:
+
+          Kindness is the Word.
+
+Then, as I was wading out through the meadow to get a picture of the
+house, I met with a misadventure, for, disturbed by my passage, a bee
+started up out of the grass, struck me on the end of the nose, clung
+wildly there an instant, and then stung viciously. It was with tears of
+anguish streaming down my cheeks that I snapped the picture opposite the
+preceding page.
+
+Dowth Castle is not the ancestral home of the O'Reillys; that stood on
+Tullymongan, above the town of Cavan, of which they were lords for
+perhaps a thousand years. Dowth Castle, on the other hand, was built by
+Hugh de Lacy, as an outpost of the English pale; but it came at last
+into the hands of an eccentric Irishman who, about a century ago,
+bequeathed it and some of the land about it as a school for orphans and
+a refuge for widows. The Netterville Institution, as it was called, came
+to comprise also a National school, and of this school John Boyle
+O'Reilly's father, William David O'Reilly, was master for thirty-five
+years. He and his wife lived in the castle, here in 1844 the poet was
+born, and here he spent the first eleven years of his life. What fate
+finally overtook the castle I don't know, but only the ivy-draped outer
+walls remain. The trim modern buildings of the Institution cluster in
+its shadow.
+
+I made my way back to the car, where my companion, who was not
+interested in O'Reilly, was awaiting me somewhat impatiently, and I
+think he regarded the bee which had stung me as an agent of Providence.
+But we set off again, and the car climbed up and up to the summit of the
+ridge which overlooks the river; and presently we were rolling along a
+narrow road bordered with lofty elms, and then, in a broad pasture to
+our right, we saw another mound, far larger than the first, and knew
+that it was Newgrange.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO NEWGRANGE]
+
+[Illustration: THE RUINS OF MELLIFONT]
+
+Four mighty stones stand like sentinels before it. The largest of them
+is eight or nine feet high above the ground and at least twenty in
+girth; and they are all that are left of a ring of thirty-five similar
+monsters which once guarded the great cairn with a circle a quarter of a
+mile around. Like the tumulus of Dowth, this of Newgrange is girdled by
+a ring of great stone blocks, averaging eight or ten feet in length, and
+laid closely end to end; and on top of them is a wall of uncemented
+stones three or four feet high. Behind the wall rises the cairn,
+overgrown with grass and bushes and even trees; but below the skin of
+earth is the pile of stones, heaped above the chambers of the dead.
+
+The entrance here is a few feet above the level of the ground, and is
+the true original entrance, which the one at Dowth is not, for the level
+of the ground there has risen. This little door consists of two upright
+slabs and a transverse one. Below it is placed a great stone, covered
+with a rich design of that spiral ornamentation peculiar to the ancient
+Irish--emblematic, it is said, of eternity, without beginning and
+without end. The stone above the door is also carved, and my photograph,
+opposite this page, gives a very fair idea of how the entrance looks.
+
+We found a woman waiting for us--she had heard the rattle of our wheels
+far down the road, and had hastened from her house near by to earn
+sixpence by providing us with candles; and she led the way through the
+entrance into the passage beyond. As at Dowth, it is formed of huge
+slabs inclined against each other, but here they have given way under
+the great weight heaped upon them, and the passage grew lower and lower,
+until the woman in front of us was crawling on her hands and knees. The
+clergyman, who was behind her, examined the low passage by the light of
+his candle, and then said he didn't think he'd try it.
+
+"Oh, come along, sir," urged the woman's voice. "'Tis only a few yards,
+and then you can stand again. If you was a heavy man, now, I wouldn't be
+advisin' it; I've seen more than one who had to be pulled out by his
+feet; but for a slim man the likes of you sure it is nothing."
+
+He still held back, so I squeezed past him, and went down on hands and
+knees, and crawled slowly forward in three-legged fashion holding my
+candle in one hand, over the strip of carpet which had been laid on the
+stones to protect the clothing of visitors. As our guide had said, the
+passage soon opened up so that it was possible to stand upright again. I
+called back encouragement to my companion, and he finally crawled
+through too; and then, as I held my candle aloft, I saw that we had come
+out into a great vaulted chamber at least twenty feet high. Here, as at
+Dowth, the sides are formed of mammoth slabs, and the vault of other
+slabs laid one upon the other, each row projecting beyond the row below
+until the centre is reached. Here too there are three recesses; but
+everything is on a grander scale than at Dowth, and the ornamentation is
+much more elaborate. It consists of intricate and beautifully formed
+spirals, coils, lozenges and chevrons; and here, also, the vandal had
+been at work, scratching his initials, sometimes even his detested name,
+upon these sacred stones. There was one especially glaring set of
+initials right opposite the entrance, deeply and evidently freshly cut,
+and I asked the woman how such a thing could happen.
+
+"Ah, sir," she said, "that was done by a young man who you would never
+think would be doing such a thing. He come here one day, not long since,
+and with him was a young woman, and they were very quiet and
+nice-appearing, so after I had brought them in, I left them to
+theirselves, for I had me work to do; but when I came in later, with
+another party, that was what I saw. And I made the vow then that never
+again would I be leaving any one alone here, no matter how respectable
+they might look."
+
+We commended her wisdom, and turned back to an inspection of the
+carvings. It was noticeable that there was no attempt at any general
+scheme of decoration, for the spirals and coils were scattered here and
+there without any reference to each other, some of them in inaccessible
+corners which proved they had been made before the stones were placed in
+position. Evidently they had been carved wherever the whim of the
+sculptor suggested; and so, in spite of their delicacy and beauty, they
+are in a way supremely childish.
+
+But there is nothing childish about the tomb itself. Nobody knows from
+what forgotten quarry these great slabs were cut. Wherever it was, they
+had to be lifted out and dragged to the top of this hill and set in
+position--and many of them weigh more than a hundred tons. The passage
+from the central chamber to the edge of the mound is sixty-two feet
+long; the mound itself is eight hundred feet around and fifty high, and
+some one has estimated that the stones which compose it weigh more than
+a hundred thousand tons.
+
+For whom was it built? Perhaps for Conn, the Hundred Fighter, for
+tradition records that he was buried here, and he was worthy of such a
+tomb. If it was for Conn--and of course that is only a guess--it dates
+from about 200 A. D., for tradition has it that it was in 212 that Conn
+was treacherously slain at Tara, while preparing for the great festival
+of the Druids. Conn's son, Art, was the last of the Pagan kings to be
+buried in the Druid fashion, for Art's great son, Cormac, who came to
+the throne in 254, chose another sepulchre. He seems to have got some
+inkling of Christianity, perhaps from traders from other lands who
+visited his court. At any rate, he turned away from the Druids, and they
+put a curse upon him and caused a devil to attack him while at table, so
+that the bone of a salmon stuck in his throat and he died. But with his
+last breath he forbade his followers to bury him at Brugh-na-Boinne, in
+the tumulus with Conn and the rest, because that was a grave of
+idolaters; he worshipped another God who had come out of the East; and
+he commanded them to bury him on the hill called Rosnaree, with his face
+to the sunrise. They disregarded his command, and tried to carry his
+body across the Boyne to the tumulus; but the water rose and snatched
+the body from them, and carried it to Rosnaree; and so there it was
+buried. From Newgrange, one can see the slope of Rosnaree, just across
+the river; but there is nothing to mark the grave of the greatest of the
+early kings of Erin.
+
+          Round Cormac spring renews her buds;
+          In march perpetual by his side,
+          Down come the earth-fresh April floods,
+          And up the sea-fresh salmon glide.
+
+          And life and time rejoicing run
+          From age to age their wonted way;
+          But still he waits the risen Sun,
+          For still 'tis only dawning Day.
+
+The road to the ruins of the abbey of Mellifont runs back from the
+river, up over the hills, past picturesque villages, through a portion
+of the Balfour estate, and then dips down into the valley of the
+Mattock, on whose banks a company of Cistercians, who had come from
+Clairvaux at the invitation of the Archbishop of Armagh, chose to build
+their monastery. They called it Mellifont--"Honey Fountain"--and the
+buildings which they put up were a revelation to the Irish builders, who
+had been contented with small and unambitious churches, divided only
+into nave and chancel. Here at Mellifont was erected a great cruciform
+church, with a semi-circular chapel in each transept, as at Clairvaux;
+and to this were added cloister and chapter-house and refectory, and a
+most beautiful octagonal building which was used as a lavatory. It
+marked, in a word, the introduction of continental elaborations and
+refinements and luxuries into a land where, theretofore, austerity had
+been the ruling influence.
+
+That was in 1142, and there is not much left now of that mighty
+edifice--a portion of the old gate-tower, some fragments of the church,
+and a little more than half of the octagonal lavatory. Five of its eight
+sides remain, and they show how beautiful it must once have been--as
+you may see from the photograph opposite page 546. Another thing may be
+seen in that photograph--the corner of a huge, empty, decaying mill,
+such as dot all Ireland, symbols of her ruined industry!
+
+A clean, pleasant-faced old woman, who opened the gate for us, intimated
+that we could get lunch at her cottage, which overlooked the ruins; but
+my companion had brought his lunch in his pocket and presently sat down
+to eat it, while I made my way alone up to the cottage. There was a long
+table spread in one room, and while the tea was drawing, I told my
+hostess and her daughter about my encounter with the bee, and asked if I
+might have some hot water with which to bathe the sting. They hastened
+to get me a basin of steaming water and a clean towel, and then they
+talked together a moment in low tones, and then the old woman came
+hesitatingly forward.
+
+"If you please, sir," she said, "I have often been told that with a
+sting or bite or anything of the sort a little blueing in the water
+works wonders, and indeed I have tried it myself, and have found it very
+good. Would your honour be trying it, now, if I would get my blueing
+bag?"
+
+"Why of course I would!" I cried; "and thank you a thousand times for
+thinking of it!"
+
+Whereupon, her face beaming, she snatched the blueing bag from her
+daughter, who had it ready, and gave it to me, and I sloshed it around
+in the basin until the water was quite blue, and bathed my face in it;
+and whether it was the heat of the water or the blueing I don't know,
+but the sting bothered me very little after that, except for the
+swelling, and that was not so bad as I had feared it would be.
+
+I sat down finally to a delightful lunch of tea and bread and butter and
+cold meat and jam; and then I got out my pipe and joined my hostess on
+the bench in front of the house, and her daughter stood in the door and
+listened, and we had a long talk. As usual, it was first about herself,
+and then about myself. Her husband was dead and she suffered a great
+deal from rheumatism, which seems to be the bane of the Irish; but she
+had her little place, glory be to God, and she picked up a good many
+shillings in the summer time from visitors to the ruins, though many
+that came to see them cared nothing for them nor understood them.
+Indeed, many just came and looked at them over the gate, and then went
+away again.
+
+And just then I witnessed a remarkable confirmation of this; for a
+motor-car, with two men and two or three women in it, whirled up the
+road below and stopped at the gate outside the ruins. My hostess caught
+up her keys and started hastily down to open it, but before she had
+taken a dozen steps, the man on the front seat spoke to the chauffeur,
+and he spun the car around and in another moment it had disappeared down
+the road in a cloud of dust. I confess that I was hot with anger when my
+hostess, with a sad little smile, came back and sat down again beside
+me, for I felt somehow as though she had been affronted.
+
+I went back to the ruins presently, and my new friend came along,
+finding I was interested, and we spent half an hour wandering about
+them, while she pointed out various details which I might otherwise
+have missed. Next to the lavatory, the most interesting feature of the
+place is a beautiful pavement of decorated tiles which is preserved in
+St. Bernard's chapel. The whole church was at one time floored with
+these tiles, and a few detached ones may still be seen at the base of
+the pillars. There also remain many details of sculpture which show the
+loving labour lavished on the place when it was built--the individual
+work of the artisan, embodying something of his own soul, which gives
+these old churches a life and beauty sadly wanting in most new ones.
+
+The cemetery is near the bank of the river; but potatoes are raised
+there now, in a soil made fertile by royal as well as sacred dust; for
+here Dervorgilla, the false wife of Tiernan O'Rourke, chose to be laid
+to rest, in the hope, perhaps, that in the crowd of holy abbots and
+monks which would rise from this place, she might slip into heaven
+unobserved.
+
+Three miles away from Mellifont stand the ruins of another abbey,
+centuries older and incomparably greater in its day--an abbey absolutely
+Irish, with rude, small buildings, but with a giant round-tower and two
+of the loveliest sculptured crosses in existence on this earth.
+Monasterboice it is called--Mainister Buithe, the abbey of Boetius--and
+the way thither lies along a pleasant road, through a wooded
+valley--which, fertile as it is, is not without its traces of
+desolation, for we passed more than one vast empty mill, falling to
+decay. Then, on the slope of a hillside away ahead, we saw the round
+tower, or what is left of it, for the top of it is broken off, struck by
+lightning, perhaps. But the fragment that remains is 110 feet high! And
+seeing it thus, across the valley, with the low little church nestling
+at its base, one is inclined to think that Father Dempsey was not
+altogether wrong when he said he cared nothing about the theories of
+antiquarians concerning the round towers, for he knew what they
+were--the forefingers of the early church pointing us all to God.
+
+[Illustration: THE ROUND TOWER, MONASTERBOICE]
+
+[Illustration: THE HIGH CROSS, MONASTERBOICE]
+
+My companion and I were discussing these theories, when our jarvey saw
+the opportunity to spring a joke, which I have since discovered to be a
+time-honoured one.
+
+"Your honours are all wrong," he said, "if you will excuse my sayin' so.
+It has been proved that the round towers was built by the government."
+
+"Built by the government?" repeated my companion. "How can you prove
+that?"
+
+"Easy enough, your honour. Seein' they're no manner of use and cost a
+lot of money, who else could have built them?"
+
+And this, I take it, was his revenge for the Boyne battlefield.
+
+We stopped presently beside a stile leading over the stone wall at the
+side of the road, and here there was waiting another old woman, to
+unlock the entrance to the tower. We clambered over the stile and made
+our way up through the grass-grown, unkempt graveyard, first to the
+tower--one of the mightiest of these monuments of ancient Erin, for it
+is seventeen yards around at the base, and tapers gradually toward the
+top, and the only entrance is a small doorway six feet above the ground;
+and it takes no great effort of imagination to fancy the monks
+clambering wildly up to it, clutching the treasures of the monastery to
+their bosoms, whenever word came that the raiding Danes were in the
+neighbourhood. Ladders have been fixed so that one can climb to the top,
+but we did not essay them.
+
+No trace remains of the monastic buildings which clustered at the tower
+foot; for, unlike those at Mellifont and in England and on the
+continent, these were not wrought of stone, but were mere shacks, as in
+every truly Irish abbey, scarcely strong enough to screen from wind and
+weather the groups of scholars who gathered to study here. They lived a
+strait and austere life, and the only permanent structures they built
+were the churches. Here, as usual, they were small, the largest one
+being only forty feet in length; and the walls that remain prove how
+bare and mean they must have looked beside the carved and columned
+splendours of Mellifont.
+
+But Monasterboice has one glory, or rather two, beside which those that
+remain at Mellifont are as nothing; and these are the huge Celtic
+crosses, the most perfect and beautiful in the land. One of them is tall
+and slender and the other is short and sturdy, and both are absolute
+masterpieces.
+
+The high cross, as the tall one is called, stands near the tower-foot
+and close beside the crumbling wall of one of the old churches. It is
+twenty-seven feet high, and is composed of three stones, the shaft, the
+cross with its binding circle, and the cap. The shaft, which is about
+two feet square and eighteen feet high, is divided into seven compartments
+on either face, and in each of them is an elaborately-sculptured
+representation of some Bible scene, usually with three figures.
+Although much worn, it is still possible easily to decipher some of
+them, for there is Eve accepting the apple from the serpent while Adam
+looks mildly on, and here they are fleeing from Paradise before the
+angel with the flaming sword, and next Cain is hitting Abel on the head
+with a club while a third unidentified person watches the scene without
+offering to interfere. At the crossing there is a splendid crucifixion,
+with the usual crowded heaven and hell to left and right; the binding
+circle is beautifully ornamented with an interlacing design; and the
+cap-stone represents one of those high-pitched cells or churches, such
+as we saw at Killaloe and Glendalough.
+
+[Illustration: MUIREDACH'S CROSS, MONASTERBOICE]
+
+Beautiful as this cross is, it is surpassed by the other one,
+Muiredach's Cross, from the inscription about its base: "A prayer for
+Muiredach for whom this cross was made." That inscription gives us its
+date, at least within a century, for two Muiredachs were abbots here.
+One of them died in 844 and the other in 924, and as the latter was the
+richer and more distinguished, it is presumed that the cross is his.
+That would make its age almost exactly ten centuries.
+
+And yet, in spite of those ten centuries, the sculptures which enrich it
+from top to bottom are as beautiful to-day as they ever were. Look at
+the picture opposite this page--it is not my picture, though I took one,
+but there is an iron fence about the cross now which spoils every recent
+photograph--and you will see what a wonderful thing it is. It is a
+monolith--one single stone, fifteen feet high and six feet across the
+arms--and every inch of it is covered with ornamentation. It is the
+western face the picture shows, with the crucifixion occupying its usual
+position. Below it are three panels of extraordinary interest, for they
+show Irish warriors and clerics in the costumes of the period, all of
+them wearing fierce mustachios. In the upper panel are three clerics in
+flowing robes, the central one giving a book to one of his companions
+and a staff to the other; in the central panel are three ecclesiastics
+each holding a book; and in the lower panel a cleric in a long cloak,
+caught together at the throat with a brooch, stands staff in hand
+between two soldiers armed with Danish swords. At the foot of the shaft
+two dogs lie head to head.
+
+On the other side, the central panel shows Christ sitting in judgment,
+with a joyous devil kicking a damned soul into an already-crowded hell.
+The method of separating the blessed from the damned is shown just
+below, where a figure is carefully weighing souls in a pair of scales--a
+subject familiar to every one who has visited the Gothic cathedrals of
+France, where almost invariably a devil is trying to cheat by crouching
+below the scales and pulling down one side. The lower panels in the
+cross represent the usual Scriptural subjects--the fall of man, the
+expulsion from Eden, the adoration of the magi, and so on; and again at
+the base there are two dogs, only this time they are playing, and one is
+holding the other by the ear. All of this sculpture is done with spirit,
+with taste and with fine artistry; and another glory of the cross is the
+elaborate tracery of the side panels, and of the front, back, inside and
+outside of the circle. Of this, the photograph gives a better notion
+than any description could.
+
+          Who was he? Was he sad or glad
+            Who knew to carve in such a fashion?
+
+Those questions we may never answer. All we can say certainly is that he
+was a great artist; and his is the artist's reward:
+
+          But he is dust; we may not know
+            His happy or unhappy story:
+          Nameless, and dead these centuries,
+            His work outlives him,--there's his glory!
+
+We tore ourselves away at last from the contemplation of this consummate
+masterpiece, and drove slowly back to Drogheda, through a beautiful and
+fertile country, which, save for the thatched cottages, and
+gorse-crowned walls and hedges, did not differ greatly in appearance
+from my own. And I was very happy, for it had been a perfect day.
+Nowhere else in Ireland is it possible to crowd so much of loveliness
+and interest into so short a space. All unwittingly, I had saved the
+best for the last.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE END OF THE PILGRIMAGE
+
+
+I CAN imagine no greater contrast to the quiet and peaceful valley of
+the Boyne than was Belfast that night. The Orangemen had already begun
+to celebrate King Billy's victory, and were practising for the great
+demonstration of the twelfth, when England was to be shown, once for all
+and in a manner unmistakable, that Ulster was in earnest.
+
+As I came up on the tram from the station, we ran into a mob of people,
+marching along in the middle of the street and yelling at the tops of
+their voices, and we had to wait until they had passed. I asked a
+fellow-passenger what was going on, and he answered with a little smile
+that the Orange societies had all been given new banners that night and
+were flinging them to the breeze for the first time. I asked him who had
+given the banners, and he said he didn't know.
+
+At the hotel, I found that Betty had sought the sanctuary of our room,
+and was watching the tumult from the window. She said it reminded her of
+the French Revolution, and the comparison was natural enough. The
+especial scene she had in mind, I think, was that draggled procession of
+shrieking fishwives which escorted the king and his family in from
+Versailles.
+
+I do not know how many Orange societies there are at Belfast, but we saw
+at least a dozen march past that night, each of them headed by a band
+or drum-corps, and each with a bright new Orange banner flaunting
+proudly in the breeze. Each banner bore a painted representation of some
+Orange victory; King Billy on his white horse fording the Boyne being a
+favourite subject; and the banners were very large and fringed with gold
+lace and most expensive-looking; and before them and beside them and
+behind them trailed a mob of shrieking girls and women and ragamuffin
+boys, locked arm and arm half across the street, breaking into a clumsy
+dance now and then, or shouting the lines of some Orange ditty. There
+were many men in line, marching along more or less soberly; but these
+bacchantes outnumbered them two to one. They blocked the street from
+side to side, stopped traffic, and conducted themselves as though they
+had suddenly gone mad.
+
+Presently all the societies, which had been collecting at some
+rendezvous, marched back together, with the mob augmented a
+hundred-fold, so that, looking down from our window, we could see
+nothing but a mass of heads filling the street from side to
+side--thousands and thousands of women and girls and boys, all
+vociferous with a frenzied intoxication--and in the midst of them the
+thin stream of Orangemen trudging along behind their banners.
+
+I went down into the street to view this demonstration more closely, for
+it was evident that here at last was the spirit of Ulster unveiled for
+all to see; but at close quarters much of its impressiveness vanished,
+for the mob was composed largely of boys and girls out for a good time,
+and rejoicing in the unaccustomed privilege of yelling and hooting to
+their hearts' content. A few policemen would have been quite capable of
+dealing with that portion of it. But the men marching grimly along
+behind their banners were of different stuff; they were ready,
+apparently, for any emergency, ready for a holy war; and I wondered if
+their leaders, who had sown the wind so blithely as part of the game of
+politics, were quite prepared to reap the whirlwind which might follow.
+
+A man with whom I fell into talk said there would be a procession like
+this every evening until the twelfth; but I should think the drummers
+would be exhausted long before that. I have described the contortions of
+the Dublin drummers, but they are nowhere as compared with the drummers
+of Belfast. And, though about a fourth of Belfast's population is
+Catholic, you would never have suspected it that night, for there was no
+disorder of any kind, except the wild disorder of the Orangemen and
+their adherents. I suspect that, in Belfast, wise Catholics spend the
+early evenings of July at home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We went out, next morning, to Ardoyne village, to see one of the few
+establishments where linen is still woven by hand. A beautiful old
+factory it is, with the work-rooms grouped around an open court which
+reminded us of the Plantin-Moretus at Antwerp; and the Scotchman in
+charge of it took us through from top to bottom. I have forgotten how
+many looms there are--some thirty or forty; and it was most interesting
+to watch the weavers as they shot the shuttle swiftly back and forth
+with one hand and worked the heavy beam with the other, while with
+their feet they controlled the pattern. Nearly all the weavers were old
+men, and our guide told us it was growing more and more difficult to
+replace them, because hand-weaving had been so largely displaced by
+machine-work that it was rapidly becoming a lost art. Few young men were
+willing to undertake the long apprenticeship which was necessary before
+they could become expert weavers, and he foresaw the time when
+hand-weaving would cease altogether.
+
+Then we went upstairs, where the pattern mechanism is mounted above each
+loom; and though I understood it, in a way, after long and careful
+explanation, I am quite incapable of explaining it to anybody else,
+except to say that the threads which run down to the loom below are
+governed by a lot of stiff cards laced together into a long roll, and
+cut with many perforations, so that the roll looks something like the
+music-rolls used in mechanical piano-players.
+
+Last of all we were shown some of the finished product, and very
+beautiful it was, strong as iron--far stronger than machine-woven linen,
+for the shuttle can be thrown by hand more often to the inch than is
+possible by machine; and some of the patterns, too, were very lovely;
+one, in especial, from the Book of Kells, the interwoven Celtic
+ornamentation, the symbol of eternity.
+
+Of course we talked about Home Rule, and our Scotch host, who was
+evidently a devoted Orangeman, was very certain Ulster would fight
+before she would acquiesce. If the fight went against her, he prophesied
+that no Protestant industry which could get out of Ireland would stay
+to be taxed out of existence by a Dublin Parliament, and he said that
+many of the great factories had already secured options on English
+sites, and were prepared to move at any time.
+
+I remarked that it seemed to me the wiser plan would be to wait and see
+how Home Rule worked before plunging into revolution; then, if it was
+found that Ulster was really oppressed, it would be time enough for her
+army to take the field. And I told him something of what I had seen and
+heard in the south and west of Ireland--that, among all the people I had
+talked with, not one had expressed himself with any bitterness toward
+Ulster, and that many had said frankly that the leaders of the Irish
+people would be largely Protestant in the future, just as they had been
+in the past. But he was unconvinced, and very gloomy over the outlook.
+
+We came away finally, and took a last look about Belfast--at the busy
+streets, the bright shops, the humming factories, the clattering
+foundries; and then the hour of departure came. The jarvey who drove us
+to the boat was a jovial, loquacious son of the Church, with
+good-natured laughter for Orange excesses.
+
+"Why should we Catholics interfere wid them?" he asked. "We'd only be
+gettin' our heads broke, and all the papers would be full of the riots
+in Ulster. Sure, haven't I seen them before this treatin' a small fight
+at the corner as though it was a revolution? No, no; we'll just stay
+quiet and let them have their fun. It does good to them and no harm to
+us. They'll settle down again when the Home Rule bill is passed, and
+then we'll be Irishmen all, please God!"
+
+From the bottom of my heart I said I hoped so. Indeed, I can think of no
+better watch-word to replace "No Surrender!" and curses on King Billy
+and the Pope than "Irishmen All!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are few busier ports than Belfast, and we made our way down to the
+quay through a tangle of drays that would have done no discredit to the
+New York water-front; and at last we found our boat and got aboard. And
+presently the ropes were cast off, and we steamed slowly down the river,
+between long lines of lofty scaffolding shrouding the hulls of scores of
+mighty ships, one day to play their part in the commerce of the world.
+
+And then we were in Belfast Lough, with the grim keep of Carrickfergus
+looming on the western shore; and then the bay widened, the shores
+dropped away, and we headed out across the white-capped waters of the
+Irish Sea. For long and long in the distance, we could see the purple
+masses of the Antrim hills, growing fainter and ever fainter, until at
+last they merged into the purple of the western sky. And so we looked
+our last upon the Island of the Saints.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Abbeys, 21-22, 99-102, 108-109, 110-112, 193-196, 199, 229-233,
+        266, 269-271, 280, 285-291, 346-347, 379-382, 405, 422-423,
+        442-443, 550-558
+
+  Adare, 226-236
+
+  Aghadoe, 180, 198-200, 201
+
+  Aideen, 23
+
+  Aileach, 465, 480
+
+  Allen, Hill of, 93
+
+  Allen, Lough, 242
+
+  Allingham, William, 428-430
+
+  Allua, Lough, 141, 144
+
+  America, Irish Idea of, 24, 170-174
+
+  Annals of the Four Masters, The, 442, 465
+
+  Antrim, County, 489, 521, 530, 534, 564
+
+  Antrim, Earl of, 489, 495-496
+
+  Antrim, Glens of, 491, 495, 499
+
+  Arbutus Island, 186
+
+  Archdeckan, John, 136
+
+  Architecture, see Irish Architecture
+
+  Ardilaun, Lord, see Guinness
+
+  Ardoyne, 561-563
+
+  Armada, The, 416, 485
+
+  Armagh, 103, 536, 550
+
+  Arran, Earl of, 441
+
+  Art, see Irish Art
+
+  Ashford House, 347-348
+
+  Assaroe, Abbey, 422-423, 429
+
+  Asylums, 180, 240, 266, 375, 526
+
+  Athenry, 266, 268-272, 292
+
+  Athlone, 207, 209, 252, 259, 265, 272-285, 292, 390, 454, 456
+
+  Auburn, see Lissoy
+
+  Avoca, Vale of, 61
+
+  Avonbeg, The, 60
+
+  Avonmore, The, 59, 60
+
+
+  Baedeker, Karl, 385
+
+  Baird, Sir David, 509-510
+
+  Baker, Henry, 450, 460
+
+  Balbriggan, 85
+
+  Ballina, 351
+
+  Ballintoy, 487
+
+  Ballintra, The, 432
+
+  Ballycastle, 486, 489-490
+
+  Ballysadare, 377
+
+  Ballyshannon, 419-431, 445
+
+  Balor of the Evil Eye, 384
+
+  Banishment to Connaught, The, 331-333
+
+  Bank of Ireland, 13
+
+  Bann, The, 447, 474, 536
+
+  Bantry Bay, 139, 151, 159
+
+  Barnesmore, Gap of, 444
+
+  Beggars, 109-110, 144, 173-174, 183-184, 186, 283-284, 310, 364,
+        375, 412, 426-427
+
+  Belfast, 89, 205, 427, 469, 479, 501, 502, 503-519, 530, 532-533,
+        534, 535, 536, 559-564
+
+  Belfast Lough, 502, 564
+
+  Bird Hill, 251
+
+  Birmingham, George A., see Hannay, J. A.
+
+  Black Lough, 184
+
+  Black Valley, The, 185
+
+  Blackrock, 100
+
+  Blackwater, The, 138, 164, 203
+
+  Blarney Castle, 115-127, 190, 205
+
+  Bogs, 93, 267-268, 315-316, 370, 490-491
+
+  Book of Kells, see Kells
+
+  Boru, Brian, see Brian Boru
+
+  Boycott, Captain Charles C., 346
+
+  Boyd, Hugh, 489-490
+
+  Boyne, The, 85, 221, 454, 537, 538-540, 549, 559
+
+  Boyne, Battle of the, 31, 85, 274, 453-454, 460, 534, 538-540
+
+  Bray, 59
+
+  Breffni, Prince of, see O'Rourke, Tiernan
+
+  Brian Boru, 18-20, 34, 41, 100, 103, 107, 204, 208, 251-259,
+        273, 288, 427
+
+  Bridge End, 461, 462
+
+  Brigid, see St. Brigid
+
+  Brooke, Sir Basil, 439-441
+
+  Brown Valley, The, 165
+
+  Bruce, Edward, 208, 269, 501, 502, 537
+
+  Brugh-na-Boinne, 540-550
+
+  Bundoran, 405, 412-419
+
+  Burgo, Richard de, 271, 293, 354, 447
+
+  Burial, Ancient Irish, 38, 540-544
+
+  Bushmills, 480
+
+
+  Cairns, 345-346, 377-78, 384, 392, 417, 536, 540-550
+
+  Callanan, Jeremiah, 149
+
+  Cannera, 248
+
+  Cape Clear, 161
+
+  Cappoquin, 138
+
+  Car, see Jaunting-car
+
+  Carleton, Will, 421
+
+  Carlingford, 21, 479
+
+  Carnach, Conal, 377
+
+  Carnlough, 500-501
+
+  Carrick-a-Rede, 487-488
+
+  Carrickfergus, 502, 564
+
+  Carrowmore, 384, 385
+
+  Carson, Sir Edward, 469, 471
+
+  Casey, John Keegan, 278-279
+
+  Cashel, Rock of, 49, 94, 102-112, 148, 178, 229, 253, 254, 279
+
+  Cashels, 103, 406-408, 461, 462-467, 536
+
+  Castlebar, 375
+
+  Castleconnell, 242-251, 263-264
+
+  Castlemaine, 191
+
+  Castles, 116-125, 207, 230-234, 243, 265, 268-269, 283-285,
+        353-354, 402-403, 438-441, 479-480
+
+  Catholic Emancipation, 218, 460
+
+  Cavan, 545
+
+  Celbridge, 92
+
+  Celtchair, 524
+
+  Celtic Crosses, see Crosses
+
+  Champneys, Arthur, 110
+
+  Charles I, 86, 441, 447, 449
+
+  Charles II, 86, 210, 448
+
+  Charleville, 113-114, 461
+
+  Children, 32, 98, 106, 109-110, 320-321, 358-360
+
+  Church of Ireland, 30, 75, 411
+
+  Churches, 21-22, 30-32, 34-37, 87, 131-132, 138, 200, 206, 213,
+        233-234, 255-257, 303, 459-460, 519-524
+
+  Ciaran, see St. Kieran
+
+  Civilization, Ancient Irish, see Irish Civilization, Ancient
+
+  Claddagh, The, 298-300
+
+  Clandonnell, see MacDonnell
+
+  Clanricarde, Earls of, 269
+
+  Clara, Vale of, 60
+
+  Clare, Abbey, 266
+
+  Clare, Richard de, see Strongbow
+
+  Clare, County, 209, 258, 265-266
+
+  Claremorris, 375-377, 535
+
+  Cleeve, The Messrs., 215, 236-239
+
+  Clew Bay, 371-372
+
+  Clifden, 324-325, 331, 370
+
+  Climate, 28, 60, 128, 161-162, 179, 358, 398, 415
+
+  Clonard, 406
+
+  Clonbur, 345
+
+  Clondalkin, 42-57, 67, 75, 92
+
+  Clonmacnoise, 274, 285-291
+
+  Clonmell, Lord, 16
+
+  Clontarf, 18-20, 107, 251, 252, 254, 288
+
+  Cloyne, 138
+
+  Coleraine, 447, 474-476
+
+  Colleen Bawn, 417, 420-422
+
+  Collooney, 377
+
+  Colman, Abbot, 289
+
+  Colman's Leap, 187
+
+  Columba, see St. Columba
+
+  Cong, 339, 345, 350-352, 354, 358
+
+  Cong, Abbey of, 39, 290, 346-348
+
+  Cong, Cross of, 26, 37, 39-40, 100, 204, 346
+
+  Congested Districts Board, 331-336
+
+  Conn the Hundred Fighter, 204, 291, 549
+
+  Conn, Lough, 351
+
+  Connaught, 17, 19, 27, 178, 258, 267, 269, 274, 293, 306, 314-369,
+        375, 493
+
+  Connell of the Hy-Nial, 427-428, 465
+
+  Connemara, 200, 292, 293, 300, 314-336, 346, 414, 463, 490
+
+  Connemara Marble, 306, 316-318
+
+  Constabulary, see Royal Irish Constabulary
+
+  Convent Schools, 133-134, 163
+
+  Cook's Tours, 177-178, 182, 382-383
+
+  Cork, 114-116, 128-138, 139, 147, 149, 151, 174, 205, 214, 331,
+        352, 454
+
+  Cork, County, 19, 162
+
+  Cork, Earl of, 32
+
+  Cormac, see MacArt or MacCarthy
+
+  Cormac's Chapel, 107-108, 148
+
+  Corrib, Lough, 39, 304, 314, 346, 347, 348, 350, 351, 352-354
+
+  Corrib, River, 298, 300, 303, 314, 347
+
+  Cottages, 88, 141-144, 181, 195, 225-226, 320-321, 354-355,
+        362-363, 384-385, 497
+
+  Craigmore, 536
+
+  Cratloe, 265
+
+  Crime, 55-56, 327-328, 344
+
+  Croagh Patrick, 372-373
+
+  Cromlechs, 23, 384, 385, 386, 388-392, 417
+
+  Cromwell, Oliver, 76, 86-87, 105, 116, 118, 190, 208, 231, 270,
+        293, 331-332, 448, 470, 538
+
+  Cross of Cong, see Cong, Cross of
+
+  Crosses, Celtic, 37, 288-289, 351-352, 523, 553-558
+
+  Crowe, O'Brien, 351-352
+
+  Cuchulain, 377, 537
+
+  Cullen, Joe, 434-436
+
+  Culmore, 473
+
+  Curran, John Philpot, 134
+
+  Cushendall, 490, 492, 495, 496, 498-500
+
+  Cushendun, 491
+
+
+  Dalcassians, 253
+
+  Danes, The 17, 18-20, 22, 33, 34, 44, 50, 65, 66, 130, 147, 199,
+        204, 207, 242, 252-254, 287-288, 446-447, 465, 522, 536,
+        541, 542, 555
+
+  Dargle, The, 59
+
+  Dark Rosaleen, 14-15
+
+  Darrow, Book of, 41
+
+  Day, Length of Irish, 23, 338, 456-457, 491-492
+
+  De Courcy, John, 522-523
+
+  De Dananns, The, 346, 384
+
+  De Lacy, Hugh, 545
+
+  De Vere, Aubrey, 259
+
+  Derg, Lough, 207, 219, 242, 252, 258-259, 406, 413
+
+  Derry, 76, 397, 443, 446-461, 466, 467-474, 535, 539
+
+  Derryclare, 319
+
+  Dervorgilla, 35, 219-221, 402, 405-406, 553
+
+  D'Esterre, 92
+
+  Devil's Bit, The, 94, 106
+
+  Devil's Mother Mountain, 340
+
+  Diarmuid, 389-391
+
+  Dillisk, 296-297, 299
+
+  Dollard, James B., 436
+
+  Donegal, 413, 431, 432-443, 465
+
+  Donegal, County, 388, 427, 428, 440, 444, 466, 486
+
+  Donnybrook, 470
+
+  Doon, Rock of, 440
+
+  Doonas, Falls of, 245-246
+
+  Down, County, 519, 530, 536
+
+  Downpatrick, 519-532
+
+  Dowth, 85, 534, 540-544, 546, 547
+
+  Dowth Castle, 544-545
+
+  Drogheda, 85-89, 449, 450, 454, 534, 537, 538
+
+  Dromahair, 403-406, 488
+
+  Druids, The, 44, 542, 543-544, 549
+
+  Drummers, 24-25, 561
+
+  Dublin, 4-41, 56, 58, 59, 85, 86, 89, 92, 102, 104, 114, 115, 128,
+        137, 173, 174, 193, 205, 229, 230, 418, 439, 446, 453, 454,
+        503, 531, 534, 535, 537, 538, 539, 561
+
+  Dublin Bay, 17-18, 21
+
+  Dublin Castle, 18, 32, 33-34, 74, 327
+
+  Dundalk, 537, 538
+
+  Dunleary, 137
+
+  Dunloe, Gap of, 165, 177, 181-186, 192, 201
+
+  Dunluce Castle, 479-480, 485, 488
+
+  Dunraven, Earl of, 229, 233-234
+
+
+  Eask, Lough, 444
+
+  Eask, River, 438, 444
+
+  Education, see Schools
+
+  Emigration, 131, 138, 330-331, 418-419, 443-444
+
+  Ennis, 265-266
+
+  Enniskillen, 412-413, 449, 453
+
+  Episcopal Church, see Church of Ireland
+
+  Erne, Lough, 413, 414, 420, 427
+
+  Erne, River, 414, 417-418, 420, 428-431
+
+  Established Church, see Church of Ireland
+
+  Eugenius, see St. Eugenius
+
+  Eyre, Jane, 303
+
+
+  Famine, 93, 131, 195, 351
+
+  Faughart, 501, 537
+
+  Ffolliotts, The, 417, 420-422
+
+  Fianna, The, 23, 106, 390, 492
+
+  Fin Barre, see St. Fin Barre
+
+  Fingalla, 443
+
+  Finn MacCool, 106-107, 184, 204, 275, 389-391, 483-484, 492
+
+  Firbolgs, The, 299-300, 346, 431
+
+  Fishing, 169, 178-179, 191, 242-245, 263-264, 303-306, 326, 431
+
+  Fitzgibbon, Lord, 237
+
+  Fitzstephen, James Lynch, 301-303
+
+  Flann, High King of Erin, 288-289, 290
+
+  Flax, 445, 488, 519, 535
+
+  Flesk, The, 167, 203
+
+  Flight of the Earls, The, 440, 447
+
+  Flowers, 43, 57, 60, 152, 154, 164-165, 418
+
+  Fogha, Fergus, 536
+
+  Formorians, The, 384
+
+  Foyle, Lough, 466, 472
+
+  Foyle, River, 446, 447
+
+  Fuchsias, 152-153, 326, 497
+
+  Funerals, 194-195
+
+
+  Gaelic, 161, 242, 363, 487, 489
+
+  Gaels, The, 293, 300, 384, 466, 540-544
+
+  Galtees, The, 106, 113
+
+  Galway, 102, 292-313, 314, 317, 331, 351, 352, 445, 455
+
+  Game Preserves, 61, 345, 348-349
+
+  George II, 14, 105
+
+  George IV, 137
+
+  George V, 396, 456
+
+  Geraldines, see Kildare, Earls of
+
+  Giant's Causeway, The, 477, 480-486
+
+  Gill, Lough, 219-220, 384, 398-412, 486, 494
+
+  Ginkle, Gen. Godert de, 209, 243, 274, 285
+
+  Glenaan, 491, 492-496
+
+  Glenariff, Vale of, 500
+
+  Glenarm, 501
+
+  Glendalough, 59, 62-84, 133, 248, 286, 556
+
+  Glendining Monument, The, 370-371, 372, 375
+
+  Glendun, 491
+
+  Glenealy, 62
+
+  Glengarriff, 139, 152-162, 174, 326, 382
+
+  Goldsmith, Oliver, 274-279
+
+  Goold's Cross, 105, 113
+
+  Gougane Barra, 139, 145-149
+
+  Government, The, 34, 54-55, 74, 79, 104, 327-328, 351, 372
+
+  Grainan of Aileach, The, 461, 462-467
+
+  Grainne, 107, 389-391
+
+  Grattan, Henry, 11
+
+  Graves, Alfred Perceval, 432-433
+
+  Grazing, 90-91, 93, 335, 419
+
+  Griffin, Gerald, 213
+
+  Guinness, Sir Benjamin, 30, 344, 345, 346, 347-349
+
+  Gwynne, Stephen, 110, 391, 437
+
+
+  Hannay, J. A., 170, 372, 373-374
+
+  Heather, 60, 399, 400, 402
+
+  Hen Castle, 353-354
+
+  Henry II, 33
+
+  Henry VII, 229
+
+  Henry VIII, 30, 230, 524
+
+  Hill of Howth, see Howth
+
+  Hinkson, Katherine Tynan, 57
+
+  Holy Cross Abbey, 98-102, 178, 440
+
+  Holy Wells, 147-148, 245-249, 262, 365, 410-411, 526-531
+
+  Home Rule, 12, 20, 56, 77, 82, 83, 89-91, 155-157, 216-218, 236,
+        404, 419, 467-469, 498, 505-510, 514-516, 529-530, 559-564
+
+  Hore Abbey, 110-112
+
+  Hospitality, 41, 45-46, 50-57, 95-96, 110, 154-155, 244, 305-309,
+        354-355, 551-552
+
+  Howth, 4, 16-18, 20-23
+
+  Howth, Lord, 22-23
+
+  Hy Many, 19
+
+  Hy-Nial, see Nial, Connell, Owen
+
+
+  Idioms, 46, 66-67, 368-369
+
+  Inagh, 319
+
+  Inchigeelagh, 141-144
+
+  Indian Corn, 154-155, 260, 309
+
+  Industrial Depression, 54-55, 212-213, 215-216, 371-372, 404-405,
+        419, 422-424, 489-490
+
+  Inebriety, 5-6, 33, 114, 196-197, 306-307
+
+  Inisfallen, 189, 199
+
+  Inishowen, 466, 474
+
+  Inis-Saimer, 431
+
+  Inns, 66-67, 94-98, 164-166, 174-175, 224, 228-229, 242-244, 315,
+        322, 326, 346, 371, 378-379, 415-416, 433-434, 480-481
+
+  Inny, The, 278
+
+  Insurance, Workman's, 52, 84, 222-223
+
+  Ireland's Eye, 21
+
+  Ireton, Gen. Henry, 208
+
+  Irish Architecture, 21-22, 101, 103, 107-108, 111-112, 193-196,
+        199, 231-233, 255-257, 261, 270-271, 285-290, 307-308
+
+  Irish Art, 26, 37-41, 288-289, 543, 547-548, 555-558
+
+  Irish Brigade, The, 210
+
+  Irish Character, 3, 37, 98, 114, 159-161, 196-197, 214-215,
+        386-389, 393-396, 404, 458-459, 470-471, 475, 532
+
+  Irish Civilization, Ancient, 18, 19, 38, 99-100, 204, 286-290,
+        525-526
+
+  Irish Girls, 41, 115, 124, 163-164, 214-215, 315, 323-324
+
+  Irish Sea, 1, 21, 35, 59, 220, 495, 500, 501, 564
+
+
+  Jails, 55-56, 240, 266, 375, 473, 525
+
+  James II, 36, 208, 210, 449-455, 534, 538-540
+
+  Jarvey, The, 29-30, 88, 129, 168, 274-275, 398, 399, 486,
+        488-489, 500, 563
+
+  Jaunting-Car, The, 8, 26-30, 60, 88, 98, 128-130, 400, 486
+
+  Johnson, Mrs. Hester, 30-31
+
+  Johnson, Lionel, 221, 495
+
+  Jones, John Paul, 502
+
+  Joyce's Country, 79, 339-357
+
+
+  Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan, 466
+
+  Kearney, Kate, 181-182
+
+  Keimaneigh, Pass of, 150-151
+
+  Kells, Book of, 26, 37, 40-41, 193, 204
+
+  Kenmare, 163, 200
+
+  Kenmare, Earl of, 198
+
+  Kenmare, River, 164, 384
+
+  Kenny, Donal, 278-279
+
+  Kerry, County, 19, 162, 197
+
+  Kevin, see St. Kevin
+
+  Kieran, see St. Kieran
+
+  Kilcrea Abbey, 140
+
+  Kildare, 522
+
+  Kildare, Curragh of, 89, 92-93
+
+  Kildare, Earls of, 229-231
+
+  Killaloe, 207, 242, 248, 250 251-263, 286, 556
+
+  Killarney, 138, 139, 165-203, 242, 319, 412, 481
+
+  Killary Bay, 326, 369
+
+  Killone Abbey, 266
+
+  Kilpatrick, 521
+
+  Kincora, 251-263, 273
+
+  Kingstown, 4, 21
+
+  Kinsale, 102, 440, 454
+
+  Knocknarea, 377-378, 384, 385, 392
+
+  Knocktow, 230
+
+  Kylemore, Pass of, 326
+
+
+  Labour Problem, 23-25, 54-55, 61-62, 83-84, 90-91, 281, 330-331,
+        332-333, 349-350, 468
+
+  Labourers' Cottages, 342, 408-410
+
+  Lace-making, 133-134, 163, 239
+
+  Land League, The, 344, 346, 352, 353
+
+  Land Problem, 90-91, 266-267, 330-336, 340-342, 348-350, 353
+
+  Landlords, 332-333, 334-336, 345, 349-350, 529
+
+  Larne, 499, 501, 502
+
+  Layd Church, 499
+
+  Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis, The, 384, 398-402, 405
+
+  Leane, Lough, 165
+
+  Lee, The, 130, 132, 140, 141, 144, 146
+
+  Leenane, 325, 326-338, 339, 352, 357, 358-369, 445
+
+  Legends, 48-49, 62-65, 68-69, 70-71, 92-93, 94, 106-107, 117, 120,
+        126, 136, 146-147, 159-162, 184-185, 187, 188, 190, 194,
+        199, 219-221, 246-247, 248-249, 275, 286-291, 292-293,
+        301-303, 346, 351-352, 353-354, 372-373, 377-378, 389-391,
+        413, 465-466, 483-484, 485, 490, 494-495, 521-522, 549
+
+  Leinster, Province, 19
+
+  Letterfrank, 326
+
+  Lever, Charles, 214, 395, 476
+
+  Liffey, The, 5, 18, 33, 59
+
+  Limerick, 76, 106, 204-227, 236-242, 243, 251, 252, 254, 264, 265,
+        274, 402, 454, 531
+
+  Limerick, Treaty of, 208-210
+
+  Limerick Junction, 113, 204, 254
+
+  Limericks, 240
+
+  Linen, 518, 519, 561-563
+
+  Lir, Children of, 490
+
+  Lisbun, 535
+
+  Lissoughter, 306, 315-320
+
+  Lissoy, 274-279
+
+  Lloyd-George, David, 158-159, 474
+
+  Loe, The, 184
+
+  Londonderry, see Derry
+
+  Lord of the Isles, The, 439, 480
+
+  Loughs, see name of each
+
+  Lover, Samuel, 214
+
+  Loyalty, 396-397, 456, 532-533
+
+  Ludlow, Gen. Edmund, 190-191
+
+  Lundy, Robert, 450, 452
+
+  Lurgan, 535
+
+  Lynch, James, 301-303
+
+  Lyons Hill, 92
+
+
+  MacArt, Cormac, 106-108, 389, 549-550
+
+  MacCarthy, Cormac, 103, 116-117, 126, 204
+
+  McCarthy, Denis A., 94
+
+  McCarthy, Dermot, 117
+
+  MacCool or MacCumhal, Finn, see Finn MacCool
+
+  MacDonnell, Angus, 480
+
+  MacDonnell, Innen Dhu, 439
+
+  MacDonnells, The, 491, 499, 502
+
+  Macgillicuddy's Reeks, 165, 184, 185
+
+  McKeown, R. H., 326-327, 368
+
+  MacLiag, 251-252
+
+  MacMurrough, Dermot, 35, 219-221, 402
+
+  MacNatfraich, Aengus, 49, 107
+
+  Maam, 354-355
+
+  Maamturk Mountains, 314, 319
+
+  Macroom, 139, 140, 382
+
+  Magrath, Milar, 104
+
+  Mahon, King of Munster, 253-254
+
+  Mahony, Francis Sylvester (Father Prout), 118, 132, 136
+
+  Mail, 330, 337-338, 496-497
+
+  Mallow, 204
+
+  Mangan, James Clarence, 14-15, 251
+
+  Marconi, Guglielmo, 325
+
+  Margy, The, 490
+
+  Markets, 98, 200, 294-297, 311
+
+  Marriage Contract, 54, 395-396
+
+  Mask, Lough, 339, 343-345, 346, 347, 350, 351, 384
+
+  Matthew, Father, 206
+
+  Mattock, The, 550
+
+  Maynooth, 3
+
+  Mayo, County, 375, 377
+
+  Meath, 19, 543
+
+  Meave, 377-378, 392
+
+  Meeting of the Waters, The, 60-61
+
+  Mellifont, 85, 178, 221, 534, 538, 550-553
+
+  Milcho, 521
+
+  Milesians, The, see Gaels
+
+  Milliken, Richard, 116, 118
+
+  Minogue, John, 105-111, 173, 279
+
+  Moira, 535
+
+  Molua, see St. Molua
+
+  Monasterboice, 37, 85, 88, 178, 534, 538, 553-558
+
+  Monasteries, 18, 19, 21-22, 65-66, 99-102, 103, 108-109, 110-112,
+        230-234, 268-271, 285-291, 379-382
+
+  Monastic Schools, 19, 38, 104, 268-269, 285-291
+
+  Monk, Gen. George, 536
+
+  Monkey Trees, 201-202
+
+  Monkstown, 136
+
+  Moore, George, 374, 543
+
+  Moore, Thomas, 14, 19, 60-61, 63-64, 219-220, 221, 248, 406
+
+  Mount Melleray, 138
+
+  Mountmorris, Lord, 352
+
+  Mourne, Lough, 445
+
+  Mourne Mountains, 524, 536
+
+  Moytura, 346, 384
+
+  Moytura, Northern, 384
+
+  Muckross Abbey, 193-196, 231-232
+
+  Muckross Lake, 165, 201
+
+  Muiredach, 556
+
+  Munster, 19, 20, 103, 107, 116, 253, 254, 465
+
+  Murray, Adam, 450, 460
+
+  Murray's Guidebook, 348, 375, 381, 385, 399, 455-456, 461, 502,
+        525, 526
+
+
+  Nafooey, Lough, 343
+
+  Nally, John, 278
+
+  National Education Board, The, 74-82
+
+  National Gallery of Ireland, The, 15-16
+
+  National Museum of Science and Art, The, 15, 37-40, 373
+
+  National Schools, see Schools
+
+  National University of Ireland, The, 306-307
+
+  Nationalists, see Home Rule
+
+  Nelson, Horatio, 6, 8, 12, 16
+
+  Netterville Institution, The, 545
+
+  Newgrange, 85, 534, 546-550
+
+  Newry, 536
+
+  Nial Garv, 439-440, 442
+
+  Nial of the Nine Hostages, 427, 464
+
+  Normans, The, 22-23, 33, 35, 38, 65, 130, 199, 207, 208, 220-221,
+        274, 288, 293, 354, 379-382, 501, 520, 536
+
+
+  O'Brien, Donall, 206, 255
+
+  O'Brien, Murtagh, 256, 465
+
+  O'Brien, Smith, 11
+
+  O'Cahans, The, 476, 480
+
+  O'Connell, Daniel, 10, 12, 20, 92, 115, 205, 217, 218, 460
+
+  O'Conor, Rory, 39, 290
+
+  O'Conor, Turlough, 39, 40, 220
+
+  O'Dee, Bishop, 306-307, 352
+
+  O'Dohertys, The, 473, 476
+
+  O'Donaghue, The, 187, 188, 190
+
+  O'Donnell, Hugh, 439
+
+  O'Donnell, Hugh Roe, 438, 443
+
+  O'Donnell, Red Hugh, 102, 269, 379, 438-440, 442
+
+  O'Donnell, Rory, 440
+
+  O'Donnells, The, 428, 432, 438-439, 480
+
+  O'Duffy, Gilbert and Nicol, 351
+
+  O'Echon, Maelisu MacBraddan, 40
+
+  O'Flaherty, Rory, 325
+
+  O'Flaherty, The, 293, 314, 339, 353-354
+
+  O'Gillan, Enoch, 290
+
+  O'Hanlon, Redmond, 536
+
+  O'Hurley, Dermot, 104
+
+  O'Malleys, The, 79, 344, 353-354
+
+  O'Neill, Hugh, 208
+
+  O'Neill, Owen Roe, 86
+
+  O'Neill, Shane, 480
+
+  O'Neills, The, 428, 440
+
+  O'Reilly, John Boyle, 544-545
+
+  O'Reilly, William David, 545
+
+  O'Rourke, Tiernan, 35, 219-221, 405-406, 553
+
+  O'Rourke's Table, 403
+
+  O'Sullivan's Punchbowl, 188
+
+  Old Age Pensions, see Pensions
+
+  Ormonde, Earl of, 100
+
+  Orangemen, 197, 458, 469, 470-471, 475, 506-508, 511, 514-516,
+        528, 530, 534, 559-564
+
+  Oscar, 23, 390
+
+  Ossian, 23, 106, 204, 221, 390, 492-495
+
+  Oughterard, 323
+
+  Owen of the Hy-Nial, 427-428, 464, 465-466, 479-480
+
+  Owengarriff, The, 201
+
+
+  Parades, 23-24, 457, 504, 505, 559-560
+
+  Parknasilla, 164, 416
+
+  Parnell, Charles Stewart, 12, 60, 217-219
+
+  Patrick, see St. Patrick
+
+  Peat, see Turf
+
+  Pembroke, Earl of, see Strongbow
+
+  Pensions, 52-54, 196-197, 223
+
+  Perrot, Sir John, 480
+
+  Pettigoe, 413
+
+  Plantation of Ulster, The, 447-448, 476
+
+  Pleaskin, 485-486
+
+  Poor Relief, 363-368
+
+  Portadown, 535, 536
+
+  Portrush, 473, 476-477
+
+  Port Stewart, 476
+
+  Potheen, 181-182, 184
+
+  Presbyterians, 75, 486, 506-509, 510-511
+
+  Price, Archbishop, 104-105
+
+  Priests, 1-3, 56-57, 74-75, 77, 89, 155-161, 217, 305-309, 395
+
+  Prout, Father, see Mahony, Francis Sylvester
+
+
+  Queen's College, Galway, 306-307, 352
+
+  Queenstown, 115, 136, 137, 138
+
+  Quoile, The, 519, 524, 525
+
+
+  Race-meetings, 113-114
+
+  Rafferty, Mr., 316-318
+
+  Railroads, 42-43, 59, 88-89, 250, 272-273, 415-416, 461-462,
+        535-536
+
+  Rain, 28, 66-67, 73, 111, 161-162, 179, 180-183, 185, 192, 224,
+        227, 406-408, 431-432
+
+  Raleigh, Sir Walter, 16
+
+  Rathdrum, 59, 60, 84
+
+  Rathlin Island, 489
+
+  Raths, 103, 258, 407, 519, 522, 524-526
+
+  Recess, 315-325, 416
+
+  Red Bay, 500
+
+  Red Branch Knights, 524, 537
+
+  Red Hugh, 423
+
+  Redmond, John, 471
+
+  Ree, Lough, 207, 273, 275, 279, 286, 377
+
+  Reilly, Willy, 180-181, 417, 420-422
+
+  Religion, 75-77, 208-210, 216-217, 257-258, 332-333, 447-455,
+        458-459, 467-471, 475, 506-509, 510-511, 520-521, 539
+
+  Repartee, 58, 68, 278, 500, 539, 554
+
+  Roads, 28, 61-62, 158-159
+
+  Rock of Cashel, see Cashel
+
+  Roe, Henry, 35
+
+  Rolleston, T. W., 490
+
+  Roman Catholic Church, The, 30, 74-75, 155, 508-509, 520-521
+
+  Roscommon, 279
+
+  Rosnaree, 549-550
+
+  Ross Castle, 177, 186, 190-191
+
+  Rosshill, 345
+
+  Ross Island, 188-189
+
+  Round Towers, 42, 43-45, 65, 83, 103, 109, 199, 288, 553-555
+
+  Royal Irish Constabulary, The, 7, 10, 17, 88, 157, 184, 327-329
+
+  Ruins, 21-22, 65, 73, 76, 83, 99-112, 115-125, 193-196, 198-200,
+        229-234, 265-266, 268-271, 285-290, 346-347, 353-354,
+        379-382, 402-403, 422-423, 438-441, 442-443, 479-480, 499,
+        536, 550-558
+
+
+  St. Anne Shandon, 131-132
+
+  St. Brigid, 92-93, 108, 446, 519, 520, 522, 540
+
+  St. Columba, 436, 446, 460, 465, 519, 520, 522
+
+  St. Eugenius, 62
+
+  St. Fin Barre, 130, 139, 145-149
+
+  St. Finian the Leper, 199
+
+  St. Kevin, 62-84, 119, 248
+
+  St. Kieran, 286-291
+
+  St. Mary's Abbey, Howth, 21-22, 230
+
+  St. Molua, 259-262, 286
+
+  St. Patrick, 30, 34, 38, 39, 48-49, 62, 103, 107, 108, 115, 146,
+        150, 184, 221, 286, 372, 410, 427, 446, 465, 495, 519,
+        520-522, 528, 540, 543-544
+
+  St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, 26, 30-32, 35
+
+  St. Patrick's Purgatory, 219, 413, 414
+
+  St. Petroc, 62
+
+  St. Senan, 245-249, 410
+
+  Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 12
+
+  Salthill, 309, 311-313
+
+  Sarsfield, Patrick, 204, 207, 208-210, 213-214, 237, 258-259,
+        454, 539
+
+  Saul, 521-522
+
+  Scarva, 536
+
+  Scattery Island, 248-249
+
+  Scenery, 42, 43, 59, 60-62, 65-66, 92-94, 99, 106-107, 113, 116,
+        145-146, 150-152, 162-166, 183-187, 195-196, 243, 266-267,
+        314-322, 325-326, 343-345, 354, 398-399, 417, 444-445,
+        466-467, 479, 482-486, 490-492, 535-537
+
+  Schomberg, Gen. Frederick Herman, 31-32, 502, 538
+
+  Schoolbooks, 359, 360-362
+
+  Schools, 46-47, 74-82, 358-363, 510-511
+
+  Scotch-Irish, The, 458-459, 479-480, 487, 520, 562-563
+
+  Shamrock, The, 46, 47-50, 67, 103, 107, 498
+
+  Shannon, The, 106, 205, 207-208, 212-213, 215, 227, 236-237, 240,
+        242-265, 273, 284, 285, 332, 333, 390, 448
+
+  Sheela-na-gig, The, 279-283
+
+  Sheen, The, 162
+
+  Shrines, see Holy Wells
+
+  Side-car, see Jaunting-car
+
+  Silken Thomas, see Kildare, Earls of
+
+  Slane, 538, 543-544
+
+  Slemish, 521
+
+  Slievenamon, 94, 106-107, 389
+
+  Sligo, 378-385, 392, 396, 406, 411-412, 421, 442
+
+  Sligo, County, 377, 428
+
+  Sligo, O'Conor, 380
+
+  Slums, 9, 32-33, 132, 210-214
+
+  Smoking, 2-3, 194-195
+
+  Snakes, 111, 146, 184-185, 372-373
+
+  Statues, 10, 15, 35-36, 213-214
+
+  Stella, see Johnson, Mrs. Hester
+
+  Stone Circles, 384, 389, 392, 406-408, 492, 494-495, 546
+
+  Strabane, 445-446, 450
+
+  Strangford, Lough, 521
+
+  Stranorlar, 445
+
+  Stranrear, 501
+
+  Strongbow, 26, 33, 34, 35-36, 220-221, 288, 447
+
+  Struell, 526-531
+
+  Suir, The, 99
+
+  Sullivan, Timothy, 221-222
+
+  Swift, Jonathan, 26, 30-32, 34, 92
+
+  Swilly, Lough, 427, 461, 466
+
+
+  Tara, 41, 107, 389, 390, 540, 543-544, 549
+
+  Taylor, Jeremy, 524
+
+  Tenements, 9, 13, 33, 210-214
+
+  Thomond, 251
+
+  Thomond, Earl of, 206, 265
+
+  Thurles, 94-99, 174
+
+  Tillage, 140, 266-267, 340-342
+
+  Timony, John, 441-442
+
+  Tipperary, Vale of, 90, 93-94, 103, 106, 113, 204
+
+  Tomies, The, 184
+
+  Tone, Theobald Wolfe, 509
+
+  Tonna, Charlotte, 453
+
+  Tore Cascade, 201-202
+
+  Trams, 16, 17, 28, 309-310
+
+  Trinity College, 10, 14, 40-41, 193, 307
+
+  Tristram, Sir Almericus, 22-23
+
+  Tuam, 2
+
+  Tullymongan, 545
+
+  Turf, 98, 142, 267-268, 300-301, 355-357, 388, 490-491, 529
+
+  Twelve Pins of Bunnabeola, The, 318, 319, 325
+
+  Tyrconnell, Earl of, 423, 440, 454
+
+  Tyrconnell, Lady, 539
+
+  Tyrconnell, Province, 427-428, 447
+
+  Tyrone, 427-428, 446, 447, 464, 465, 479
+
+
+  Ulster, 36, 86, 87, 155, 157, 197, 216-217, 424, 448, 449, 453,
+        455, 458-459, 461, 468-469, 486, 498, 502, 506-518, 521,
+        522, 529-530, 537, 539, 559-564
+
+  Union, Act of, 13, 35
+
+  Unionists, see Home Rule
+
+
+  Vanessa, 92
+
+  Victoria, Queen, 137, 166, 201, 352, 517
+
+
+  Wages, 61, 84, 90-91, 98, 143, 222, 267-268, 281, 337, 409, 419
+
+  Walker, Rev. George, 450-451, 460, 538-539
+
+  Warbeck, Perkin, 131
+
+  Waterford, 454
+
+  Weather, see Climate and Rain
+
+  Westmeath, 277, 280, 284
+
+  Westport, 369, 370-375, 377, 382, 445, 536
+
+  Wicklow, 18, 21, 59, 62
+
+  Wild West Films, 24, 396, 532
+
+  William III of Orange, 12, 76, 208-210, 294, 449-450, 453-455,
+        460, 470, 475, 502, 534, 538-540, 559
+
+  Wilson, Woodrow, 377, 441-442
+
+  Workhouses, 54-56, 84, 87, 143-144, 180, 375, 473
+
+  Workman's Insurance, see Insurance
+
+  Wyatt, Henry, 16
+
+
+  Youghal, 138
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Inconsistent hyphenation has been retained. Obvious punctuation
+errors have been corrected.
+
+Page 215, "enought" changed to "enough" (enough to meet one)
+
+Page 298, "whereever" changed to "wherever" (have been built wherever)
+
+Page 425, "celebate" changed to "celebrate" (forbidden to celebrate
+Mass)
+
+Page 517, "visting" changed to "visiting" (which is worth visiting)
+
+Page 576, "Tyrconnel" changed to "Tyrconnell" (Tyrconnell, Province)
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHARM OF IRELAND***
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