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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44046 ***
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD CLOCK TOWER, YOUGHAL]
+
+
+
+
+MUNSTER
+
+Described by Stephen Gwynn
+Pictured by Alexander Williams
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
+LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY
+1912
+
+
+Beautiful Ireland
+
+     LEINSTER
+     ULSTER
+     MUNSTER
+     CONNAUGHT
+
+_Uniform with this Series_
+
+
+Beautiful England
+
+     OXFORD
+     THE ENGLISH LAKES
+     CANTERBURY
+     SHAKESPEARE-LAND
+     THE THAMES
+     WINDSOR CASTLE
+     CAMBRIDGE
+     NORWICH AND THE BROADS
+     THE HEART OF WESSEX
+     THE PEAK DISTRICT
+     THE CORNISH RIVIERA
+     DICKENS-LAND
+     WINCHESTER
+     THE ISLE OF WIGHT
+     CHESTER AND THE DEE
+     YORK
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                              Page
+
+The Old Clock Tower, Youghal         _Frontispiece_
+
+The Blackwater at Dromana                        8
+
+Blarney Castle                                  16
+
+Ferrybank, Waterford                            20
+
+Shandon Steeple from the River Lee              26
+
+Entrance to Cork Harbour                        32
+
+Kenmare Bay from Templenoe                      38
+
+Macgillicuddy's Reeks                           42
+
+The Gap of Dunloe, Killarney                    46
+
+Muckross Lake, Killarney                        50
+
+Brickeen Bridge, Lower Lake, Killarney          54
+
+Holy Island, Lough Derg                         58
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: MUNSTER]
+
+I
+
+
+The best way to get to Munster nowadays is undoubtedly by the new
+route from Fishguard to Rosslare, in which the Great Western Railway
+has reopened what was for ancient times the natural and easy way
+from England to Ireland. The Normans, as everyone knows, came across
+here, an advance party landing on the coast of Wexford; but the main
+force under Strongbow sailed straight up the river to Waterford. Many
+another invader before the Normans took the same route: and there is
+little doubt but that the peaceful invasion of Christianity had begun
+in this region, or that south-eastern Ireland was already baptized,
+before Patrick set out on his mission. Earlier again, the Milesians
+(according to modern theory) came from Britain, a race of warriors
+trained to fight on foot in the Roman fashion with sword and javelin,
+and drove before them the chariot-fighting people who then held the
+wide plain watered by the three great rivers which meet in Waterford
+harbour.
+
+For a good sailor, undoubtedly the long passage to Cork, ending with
+a sail up the beautiful haven and the "pleasant waters of the river
+Lee", is to be preferred beyond all other routes. But the mass of
+mankind, and more specially of womankind, like the short sea and
+quick rail, and their choice is Fishguard to Rosslare. You enter the
+southern province of Ireland by a viaduct which leads from the flat
+lands of Wexford, through which you will have travelled for nearly an
+hour, on to the steep left bank of the river Suir facing Waterford
+city. The great bridge crosses the united Barrow and Nore; half a
+mile lower down is the junction with the Suir, and from the train you
+have a glorious view of the wide pool made at the confluence--a noble
+entrance into this province of lovely waters.
+
+The run along the river is beautiful, too. Citizens of Waterford have
+built them prosperous villas and mansions facing you along the south
+bank, and a mile below the city on an island there is seen a castle of
+the Fitz-Geralds--rebuilt recently, but comprising in it the walls of
+an ancient place of strength which has never ceased to be a dwelling
+of this strong Norman-Irish clan. It was the household, too, from
+which issued a notable man in latter times, Edward Fitz-Gerald, the
+translator of _Omar Khayyam_. His portrait, by Laurence, hangs there,
+picturing him as a chubby, good-humoured boy.
+
+The city itself may show to you only a line of lights, very
+picturesque along its great length of quay: but by daylight you
+can distinguish the low round castle which still keeps the name of
+Strongbow's tower. Fragments of the old walls remain, and there are
+buildings of much antiquarian interest--the restored cathedral, the
+ruined Franciscan abbey. But, on the whole, you are not likely to stop
+in Waterford, with Kerry and West Cork before you.
+
+Yet let me tell a little of the things which the ordinary tourist
+visiting Munster passes by in his haste. The route from Rosslare to
+Killarney strikes across from the valley of the Suir into the valley
+of the Blackwater, rounding the Comeragh mountains: and I do not
+suppose it can be disputed that the Blackwater is the most beautiful
+of Irish rivers. I have seen it at Mallow, at Fermoy, at Lismore, and
+at Cappoquin, and everywhere it is the same yet different; a chain
+of long wide pools, but always with a swift flow to keep the water
+living and sparkling, and they are strung together with great sweeping
+rapids, deep enough for salmon to lie in, the anglers' joy: while on
+each shore are hill slopes receding, richly wooded, from the stream
+and the meadows beside the stream. The palm of beauty belongs of
+right to Lismore, where the Duke of Devonshire has his great castle
+overhanging a famous pool: and below it from the bridge one looks
+down the stream and the valley to a far-off blue vista between the
+hills. Yonder, where the river meets the sea at Youghal is one of the
+quaintest and most charming towns of Ireland. I saw it first by the
+light of a long procession of tall torches which lit up delightfully
+the old houses with their scrolled fronts of timber, and the pretty
+faces of girls and women looking out of the first-floor windows: but
+it was no little surprise to me in that march to find myself under
+an archway, over which rose a tall slated tower, fully equipped with
+loopholes, and from whose top (if I had only known it) arrangements
+had been made to bombard me and my friends that night. In daylight I
+saw, though with a hasty glance, the very beautiful fifteenth-century
+church still intact (for a miracle) and still used for worship: the
+still greater attraction of Sir Walter Raleigh's old house I never
+visited, but I hope you may. It has a mulberry tree said to be of
+his planting, and a chimney piece against which he almost certainly
+reclined his shoulders while in act to toast his travelled calves.
+
+[Illustration: THE BLACKWATER, AT DROMANA]
+
+Travelling by this line of rail you will have on your right the
+Comeragh and the Knockmealdown mountains which divide the valley of
+the Blackwater from the valley of the Suir. But it may possibly be
+your pleasure, as it will certainly be your profit, to explore also
+the Suir valley, which divides the Comeraghs from the outlying mass of
+Slievenamon, and, farther west, curves northward from the base of the
+tall Galtee ranges.
+
+I came last into Munster by motor car, driving from Kilkenny to
+Clonmel over the southern shoulder of Slievenamon (Sliabh na m-Ban,
+the Witches' Mountains), and a finer journey could not be taken. We
+struck out through rich pasture and tillage, keeping this shadowy
+dome which rose from the plain as our objective, till the pass began
+to define itself. But it was when we had crossed or were crossing the
+pass that the real beauty began. Slievenamon was on our right, well
+wooded; facing us, as we ran south, were the Comeraghs, and a low foot
+ridge thrown out from them, between which and us ran the Suir. The
+valley is wider than that of the Blackwater, with less of what may be
+called fancy wooding; but it can fairly hold its own; and the quay at
+Clonmel by the shining, swirling river is as pretty as heart could
+desire.
+
+From Clonmel to Lismore a road carries you over the top of
+Knockmealdown (that is, Maeldune's Hill), and those of my companions
+who took that drive crowed over me for the rest of the journey;
+describing in glowing phrases all the glories I had missed, the
+wonderful panorama from the top, then the gradual descent down a long
+wild wooded glen into the tranquil and cultivated beauty of Lismore.
+
+Yet if I had a motor car at Clonmel and only one day's excursion to
+make, it is not south I would go. I would go north into the heart
+of Tipperary, through the Golden Vale which lies overshadowed and
+half-circled by the Galtee range, until I came to the thing best worth
+seeing in all Ireland, Cashel of the Kings.
+
+Nothing is, I repeat, better worth seeing, nothing less often seen
+by the tourist; for it lies off the track. The Rock of Cashel is a
+lone steep hillock, sharply scarped, and rising out of the plain
+which stretches from Slievenamon to Slieve Phelim, and comprises in
+fact the rich land drained by the Suir. Such a spot was inevitably
+seized on for a stronghold, and from its earliest days Milesian rule
+centred here. To Cashel it was that St. Patrick came to convert the
+king of Munster, for Cashel was to the southern half of Ireland
+what Tara was to the northern. It was the heart of Munster, whence
+principalities radiated out. Thomond, North Munster, ran west from it
+into Clare, across the Shannon; _Ormond_, _Oir Mumhan_, East Munster,
+lay away from it towards Kilkenny and Eastern Tipperary; Desmond,
+_Deas Mumhan_, the great kingdom of South Munster, comprising Cork
+and Kerry, came to its walls, for theoretically the High Kingship of
+southern Ireland alternated between Thomond and Desmond. And away
+south-east, through the gap between Slievenamon and the Comeragh
+Mountains, you can see into Waterford, which in Irish was called the
+Deisi, falling into Desmond as a separate lordship.
+
+This rock is crowned with buildings that speak of war and peace, but
+of peace rather than war. There stands intact Cormac's Chapel, finest
+example of Irish building in the pre-Norman style; round-arched,
+solid, barrel-roofed, decorated with string-courses of dogtooth
+moulding. Beside it is the great cathedral built by the O'Brien lord
+of Thomond, cathedral and fortress in one; unroofed now, dismantled,
+and ruinous, yet hardly beyond reach of repair, since the choir was
+used as a cathedral till the latter part of the eighteenth century.
+Then an archbishop got an Act of Parliament authorizing him to
+unroof it and providing a regiment of soldiers to execute the work.
+Archbishop Price's reason for such an enterprise may not seem wholly
+conclusive; he liked--good easy man--to drive in comfortable state to
+his cathedral door, and no coach and horses could conveniently ascend
+the winding path up the Rock.
+
+Beside the cathedral is the tall Round Tower, and on the north side of
+the Rock, many remains of choir schools and other monastic buildings.
+On the level plain and in the town are other monasteries ruined yet
+not wholly shorn of their splendour; and within a few miles, Holycross
+Abbey and Athassel speak of the wealth and culture which were
+destroyed in this rich land of the Golden Vale.
+
+But the Rock itself, standing up there, crowned with such a group
+of buildings as no other of Ireland's high places can parallel, is
+the true object of pilgrimage; and the view from it over the Golden
+Vale, to the noble Galtee peaks and pinnacles due south of you, and
+the long waving line of Comeragh Mountains which runs continuously
+east from them along the valley of the Suir, is a prospect worth long
+journeying. Nor is that all. Slievenamon rises dome-shaped from the
+eastern plain, a gap between it and the outlying spurs of Comeragh
+showing where the Suir, headed off its southward course by Galteemore,
+finds a way eastward to the sea: and to the north beyond the plain is
+the far-off range of Slievebloom, dividing Leinster from the Shannon;
+and nearer towards Athlone and the Shannon are the low hills with the
+Devil's Bit nipped out of the top of them.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+If I had to see Munster by motor car, my disposition would be to
+start from Waterford, follow the valley of the Suir up to Clonmel,
+then strike north to Cashel and see it. All the monuments can be seen
+in a few hours, and no ruin or building that I ever visited has so
+intelligent a custodian. From Cashel I would go to Holycross, that
+exquisite remnant of monastic splendour, rich in historic memories,
+and thence push out across Tipperary to the north-west, steering for
+the gap between Keeper Mountain and the Silver Mines. This would
+bring me out of the Golden Vale, which is in truth the valley of the
+Suir, and into the basin of a still greater and more famous river, at
+its most famous point. For from this gap the route would descend to
+the Shannon, at the narrow gorge below Lough Derg where all its vast
+volume of water is contracted to the ford and pass at Killaloe. Here,
+if you will, is beauty: long peaceful levels above the weir where
+lake passes imperceptibly into broad river; below it huge swirling
+rapids, interspersed with wide, smooth, yet swift running salmon
+pools, all down the twelve miles of river to the head of the tideway
+at Limerick. And here, too, are historic memories more glorious than
+can be matched elsewhere in Ireland. It was here at the outflow of the
+lake, where is an unsuspected ford, that Sarsfield crossed (led by the
+rapparee, Galloping Hogan), on the raid when he stole out of Limerick
+along the Clare shore and so to this ford, on his way to lie in wait
+on the slopes of Keeper for William's expected battering train. On
+your road from Cashel you will have passed near Ballyneety, where he
+and his troopers surprised the sleeping convoy and blew the heavy
+guns into scattered shreds--a splendid foray, splendidly preluding
+Limerick's heroic and successful resistance to the great Dutchman.
+
+But here at Killaloe, and specially at this ford above it, where great
+earthworks mark the ancient fort of _Beul Boroimhe_, are memories more
+honoured than hang about even Sarsfield's name. Here it was that in
+the tenth century Brian Boru, Brian of the Tribute, built up with his
+Dalcassians of Clare the power that learnt how to resist the Danes,
+whose plundering forays threatened to blot out civilization altogether
+from northern Europe. The first defeat of moment inflicted on them
+was at Sollohed in the Golden Vale, near Limerick Junction, where the
+forces of Thomond were led by Brian's brother, King Mahon. But it was
+Brian who as a mere youth refused to join Mahon in submission (by any
+pact, however veiled) to the invaders: it was Brian who had fought
+them in desperate guerrilla warfare through the hills of Clare, and
+along the banks of the Shannon, till he was brought down to fifteen
+men, and Mahon asked him in the council chamber, "Where hast thou left
+thy followers?" And Brian answered, as the Irish poem tells:
+
+     "I have left them with the foreigners
+     After being cut down, O Mahon!
+     In hardship they followed me on every field,
+     Not like as thy people."
+
+
+It was Brian who in that council caused appeal to be made to the
+Clan Dalcais whether they would have peace or war, and "War", they
+answered, "and this was the voice of hundreds as the voice of one man".
+
+The work that was begun at Kincora was finished sixty years later
+outside Dublin when the Danish menace was finally broken and
+dispelled on the shore by Clontarf: and in that fight the old lord of
+Kincora, Brian of the Tribute, High King by then of all Ireland, fell
+gloriously in the hour of a victory almost too dearly won.
+
+You can see in Killaloe the little old church, built somewhere in the
+eighth or ninth century, with its high-pitched roof of stone slabs,
+under which Brian worshipped more than ten centuries ago. Beside it
+is the cathedral built by his descendants, and adorned with noble
+archways in the rich Romanesque style of native Irish architecture.
+
+It is probable--certain, indeed, to my thinking--that Brian's rath and
+strong place of abode was where the market-place of Killaloe still
+is, on the top of the high ground to which the streets climb from the
+river and the churches. The fort at the ford is called in Irish _Beul
+Boroimhe_, that is the "Mouth of the Tribute": and one can easily see
+how it came by its name, for here was the strategic position which
+commanded all the traffic from the long navigable reaches of the upper
+Shannon and its lakes to the tideway at Limerick. Here portage must be
+made, here toll could be taken; and not only on the river traffic but
+on all the cattle that came down from Clare into Tipperary by this the
+one really practicable ford.
+
+[Illustration: BLARNEY CASTLE]
+
+From Killaloe to Limerick the road is pleasant, along the
+ever-widening valley which is blocked by Keeper to the north, but
+trends opening and widening towards West Clare and the sea. Yet to
+understand the beauty and the charm of that characteristic piece
+of Irish landscape, you should be taken down the stream in the
+characteristic boat of those waters, the long pole-driven cot.
+Shooting the rapids in these craft is a wonderful sensation, and even
+on a chill day in February the tumult of lashing water sends warmth
+into the blood. So you can follow the stream till at last below
+Athlunkard bridge you reach the long Lax Weir, which keeps the memory
+of Scandinavian settlers in its name (_lax_ is Norse for salmon,
+to-day as then), and the memory of early Norman settlement in the odd
+little tower built in the middle of the weir to command the passage,
+as long ago as the days of King John.
+
+In Limerick itself King John's Castle with its great rounded towers
+frowns over the Bridge of the Broken Treaty, where Sarsfield and
+his men covenanted with William for protection to the property
+and the religious freedom of Irish Catholics, and then took
+ship for France--first of the Wild Geese, founders of the Irish
+Brigade--leaving no guardians but honour and justice to enforce
+the sanction of the treaty, guardians that were of no avail. Much
+has been written of the siege of Derry and in praise of its heroic
+defenders: but too little is known of Limerick's resistance, when
+the French officer, whom James II had left in charge, declared that
+the walls could be battered down with roasted apples, and Sarsfield
+answered that defended they should and must be. You can see the mark
+of William's cannon balls on the old wall near the convent hospital
+east of the town: single marks on the dark limestone here and there,
+but at the angle of the wall, where the Black Battery stood, and
+where a breach was made, there is clear trace still of the desperate
+assault--from which William's best troops, after they had effected a
+lodgment, were finally driven back pell-mell.
+
+From Limerick the West Clare Railway (whose vagaries have been made
+more famous than I ever knew them to deserve) will carry you through
+Ennis, passing near Bunratty Castle, Quin Abbey, and many another
+place of fame, to the coast where Lahinch offers one of the most
+popular golf links in Ireland. It is a wild wind-swept coast, a
+wild surf beats on the strand that divides Lahinch from Liscannor,
+and north of it are the great cliffs of Moher. Lisdoonvarna is near
+by, a spa much frequented by Irishmen, more specially by the Irish
+clergy. But the favourite place of all who visit this part of Munster
+is Kilkee, a little watering-place set above steep cliffs on which
+the Atlantic swings in with all its weight. There is no other place
+known to me in western Ireland where you can find decent seaside
+quarters in a spot that meets the full force and splendour of the
+sea. And from the Clare coast near by--even out of the window of a
+railway carriage--I saw one of the greatest prospects that eye could
+look on. To the south, some thirty or forty miles distant, the Dingle
+peninsula stretched outward, with the huge mass of Brandon rising out
+of the blue: but away north-west I could see very clear the three
+island heights of Aran, and east of them the whole group of Connemara
+mountains, beyond which again, away up into Mayo, the shapes of
+Mweelrea and Croagh Patrick were dim yet recognizable in outline.
+
+The day was of astonishing clearness, yet, as so often happens in
+western Ireland, its clearness had nothing hard: the Atlantic blue was
+deep and sombre, the mountain shapes, exquisite in line, were vested
+in colour that had a magic and a mystery all their own. Sunlight
+across that brine-laden air, across those pungent expanses of bog, is
+never crudely definite in its revelation; there is a hint of romance
+and glamour in the pearly shimmer of its brightness.
+
+Clare has noble traditions: and no one should visit it without a
+pilgrimage to the castle of Carrigaholt on the Shannon estuary near
+Kilrush; for this was the ancestral home of that branch of the
+O'Briens who made the ancient name illustrious on every stricken field
+in Europe. They got their title, the Viscounts Clare, from Charles
+II, but after the Williamite wars they were attainted; and from
+Sarsfield's death onward it was always a Lord Clare who commanded the
+Irish Brigade--that wonderful fighting force whose chief recruiting
+ground was here in south-western Ireland. Two Lords Clare got their
+death at the head of their men, one at Massaglia in 1693 when Prince
+Eugene was beaten: the second at Ramillies, where in the general
+disaster the Irish Brigade not only saved its own colours, but carried
+two British standards back to Bruges. The third and last earl, who had
+refused restitution to all the estates and titles if only he would
+forswear his religion, led the immortal charge at Fontenoy, when
+Ireland's banished men snatched in a desperate feat of arms fierce
+requital for the penal laws that had left them a choice between exile
+and slavery. Among all the writers who ever handled that period of
+history, whatever their prepossessions, none ever wrote the name of
+"Clare's brigade", save with honour and admiration; and no nationalist
+poet has told their praise so eloquently as the Unionist, Miss Emily
+Lawless, in two sister poems. One of the two depicts the eve of
+Fontenoy in the exiles' camp, and the wild stirring in men's hearts.
+"The wind is wild to-night, and it seems to blow from Clare"--blows
+with a memory in it and a vision of all that has been left, blows with
+a promise of things long hoped for, since "Clare's brigade may claim
+its own" wherever the fight rages.
+
+     "Send us, ye western breezes, our full, our rightful share,
+     For faith and home and country and the ruined hearths of Clare."
+
+[Illustration: FERRYBANK, WATERFORD]
+
+And the second tells how, on the morrow of the battle, strange craft
+with strange bodiless sailors were seen on the Western coast,
+making swift way like homing birds to Corcabascinn, this westernmost
+barony of Clare.
+
+     "Men of Corcabascinn, men of Clare's brigade,
+     Hearken, stony hills of Clare, hear the charge we made,
+     See us come together, singing from the fight,
+     Back to Corcabascinn in the morning light."
+
+Yet in truth it may be that only the native born will find any special
+charm in this stormy Corcabascinn or its wild winds and waters; for of
+prettiness and favour it has none, owning grandeur rather than beauty.
+The counties of Munster which appeal to every human being who has eyes
+in his head to see with are Cork and Kerry--but Kerry above all.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The unhappy inconveniences of sea travel prevent most folk from
+visiting County Cork under the best conditions. Access should be by
+boat: and surely the entrance into that wonderful Cove where the
+great liners halt to take off mails is noblest of all gateways into
+Ireland. All the encircling ring of hills is rich with vegetation, but
+above all on the east by Queenstown is the choicest and most varied
+wooding. Anything will grow there and nearly everything has been made
+to grow. The little town itself is picturesque, climbing the steep
+slope and dominated by Pugin's great cathedral, which stands on the
+disembarkation quay, making a centre for the last impressions and
+emotions of those--alas! how many thousands yearly--who leave Ireland.
+
+It is not now as I saw it in the early 'eighties, when hopeless,
+broken, half-famished peasants were pouring out in a ghastly torrent,
+mere wreckage on the flood: emigration was then eighty thousand a
+year, to-day it is less than half that number. Those who go to-day,
+go reasonably equipped, go for the most part to friends in cities, of
+which they have heard so much, where they have so many kindred and
+acquaintances, that the journey seems hardly into exile--hardly to a
+strange land. Yet, even to-day, every train that brings the emigrants
+leaves behind it, through the West and South and Midlands, its wake
+of bitter weeping; at station after station it has gone out amid
+tearing away of locked hands, last embraces severed, faces of old
+men twitching, faces of women convulsed with sobs, and sped on its
+journey to the accompaniment of that dreadful heartrending "keene",
+the Irish wail, which is heard nowadays more often at the ship's side,
+or on the railway platform, than at the grave. "Och, the poor soft
+Irish," I heard a woman say this year, leaving some platform in Cork;
+on her way, evidently, to a home in the States, where she had lived,
+no doubt for many years, with the hard-faced, swaggering Yankee, who
+accompanied her, and who looked with ill-concealed contempt on the
+tears and emotions of the "poor soft Irish"; but she at least still
+kept the homely tongue and kind heart.
+
+From Queenstown up to Cork is one of the loveliest waterways in the
+world, little towns on either bank under the steep wooded shores, and
+here and there some old castle. Cork itself may have no very great
+architectural beauties, but the whole lie of the city, spread between
+its hills, divided by the various streams of that delightful river,
+makes a beauty of its own: you see it best from the high ground over
+against the famous steeple where hang "the bells of Shandon that sound
+so grand on the pleasant waters of the river Lee".
+
+"Pleasant" is the word for Cork, the county, and its soft-voiced,
+quick-speaking people, with the odd little turn upwards at the end
+of their sentence. It was called "the Athens of Ireland", though I
+would say rather, the Naples: in any case, Cork has always sent out
+far more than its share of brains. In the days of "Father Prout", who
+wrote the "Bells of Shandon" and other immortal ditties, Cork had a
+regular coterie of wits--among the best known being a Dowden, father
+or grandfather of the illustrious man of letters who is to-day one of
+the chief lights in Trinity College. The late Provost, Dr. Salmon, a
+still greater luminary, came also from the southern county--as did
+half a dozen more of the Fellows whose names are familiar enough to
+all in Ireland; though some, perhaps, enriched legend and chronicle
+rather than history, and survive as remembered oddities--after all,
+not the least loveable of survivals.
+
+The south coast of Cork, from Youghal to the Kenmare River, is the
+pick of Ireland for yachtsmen. Endless is the succession, from Cork
+itself with all its lesser creeks and havens, Carrigalo, Carrigaline,
+and Ringabella, on past Kinsale harbour, Courtmacsherry and Clonakilty
+bays, Roscarbery, Glandore, and west to Baltimore and Roaring Water,
+off which lies Cape Clear. Then past Mizen Head, on the west shore,
+are greater bays, harbours not for yachts, but for navies--Dunmanus,
+Bantry, and the Kenmare River, whose northern shore belongs to Kerry,
+but which has a frontier certainly in paradise.
+
+I write of what I have seen, in the Kenmare River: all these southern
+harbourages are to me only names on the map, save for the quaint
+little bay of Roscarbery and the long winding creek of Baltimore--both
+of which I know only as winter shows them, and shows them from
+the land. Yet of the people of Roscarbery I form at least some
+picture from the sketches drawn by the two ladies who relate the
+varied _Experiences of an Irish R.M._--though West Cork needs to be
+supplemented by knowledge of Connemara, to realize the scenes that
+they have in mind. And from Baltimore, or rather from a mile outside
+it, I carry away a picture of a congregation dividing after mass into
+two rival political assemblies, and the one that I addressed consisted
+largely of women wearing the great black cloak, with black hood giving
+an odd framework to the wearer's face, which is one of the few and
+cherished relics of traditional costume. I was told on good authority
+(when I lamented myself) that if I had the women I had the votes, for
+West Cork was in all matters under female governance. But of that I
+cannot testify.
+
+Baltimore is one of the great fishing stations of Ireland, and to
+it the population of Cape Clear comes for most necessaries of life.
+Along that coast many craft are familiar, but an odd name hangs
+about one set: the fishermen from near Dungarvan are always known as
+"the Turks". In 1631 Algerine pirates made a descent on the town of
+Baltimore, sacked it and carried a hundred of its folk into slavery:
+and it was a fisherman from Dungarvan who (under threat of death)
+piloted the corsairs.
+
+All this shore had fine natural advantages for smuggling which in old
+days were not neglected: and still, I am told, certain places could
+be named where cigars and wines of excellent quality can be had at
+surprisingly moderate price.
+
+Kinsale is a greater haven, fit in old days to be the rival of Cork;
+and the town there speaks of prosperous merchant folk, with its
+quaint weather-slated houses, each having the little bow-window which
+eighteenth-century mariners would seem to have specially affected, and
+its very old-world bowling green.
+
+[Illustration: SHANDON STEEPLE, FROM THE RIVER LEE]
+
+Here was the theatre on which Ireland saw a great game played out--the
+last and losing throw in the war of O'Neill and O'Donnell against the
+forces of Elizabeth. At the long last, the promised help from the
+Continent had come; a Spanish fleet under Don Juan d'Aquila entered
+the harbour, seized and held the town, which was beleaguered by the
+English (and Irish allies) under Mountjoy and Carew. O'Neill and
+O'Donnell, marching down from the north, drew an outer line about
+the besiegers, and on December 21st battle was joined. Tyrone would
+have waited, wisely, till the siege could be raised by cutting the
+English communications, and the force attacked on the march. But Red
+Hugh was always bad at waiting, and forced the attack. The combination
+failed, the Spaniards gave no help, and Mountjoy drove back the
+Ulstermen. D'Aquila surrendered on good terms, and O'Donnell in hot
+fury went to Spain to complain of his incompetence and to press for a
+new expedition. But Elizabeth had her agents in Spain also, and one
+of them did her such service as was freely rendered in those days.
+O'Donnell drank a poisoned cup at Simancas, and died of it, and the
+State Papers contain the poisoner's account of his own exploit and
+demand for fitting payment. It was only after this that Carew was able
+to write of _Pacata Hibernia_, an Ireland, where, in truth, he and his
+had made a wilderness and called it peace. They themselves tell how
+from the Rock of Cashel to Dingle Bay the voice of man or the lowing
+of cattle could not be heard.
+
+Loveliest of all regions in Ireland, this country of Desmond has
+suffered worst of all. Elizabeth's soldiers attempted here, and nearly
+carried out, a complete extermination of the native race by the sword
+and by starvation. And when after centuries the folk had multiplied
+again and were, by universal testimony, gay even in their rags, the
+famine of 1847 fell upon them, and in the blackest horrors of that
+time Skibbereen and West Cork attained an awful notoriety. Nowhere
+else did such heaps of famished and plague-stricken dead defy all
+efforts even to bury them.
+
+The shadow of those days has not yet entirely passed: but the stranger
+will see little of it, following the famous route which leads up the
+Lee valley to Macroom (where the rail ends), and so past Inchigeela
+and Ballingarry, past Gouganebarra by Keimaneigh, through the
+mountains to Bantry and Glengariff. And here confession must be made.
+I have never seen these famous beauties. I have followed the Lee only
+to Inchigeela where it breaks into a score of channels between little
+islands covered with scrub oak and birch and hazel, a piece of river
+scenery whose like I never saw. And I have driven along the road from
+Macroom to Killarney, along the Sullane River to Ballyvourney, which
+tens of thousands know as "the metropolis of Irish-speaking Ireland".
+For, as it chances, Cork alone, of the more prosperous counties,
+has kept the Irish speech, and kept it in a form the least modified
+by modern simplifications. Irish is still to-day the language of
+well-to-do and well-educated men and women. My host at Ballyvourney
+had received his education in Paris, more than that, had been through
+all the Franco-Prussian war, and had seen more of the world than is
+given to most men; but for many years he has been back, a kind of king
+among his own people, and a real repository of the ancient scholarship
+and traditions of the Gael. At Ballingeary, a few miles from him, was
+founded the first of those "summer schools" where men and women, boys
+and girls, of all sorts and conditions, and from many corners of the
+world, unite for common study of the noble language which careless
+generations had nearly suffered to die out. That settlement is now one
+of the objects of interest on the coach road, and travellers, if not
+tourists, may well find it the most interesting of all.
+
+Bantry is one of the great naval stations, one of the great recruiting
+grounds for the navy. I saw it, as it should be seen, from the sea.
+It, too, is associated with the memory of one of those failures which
+stud the course of Irish history like sinister beacons: for here
+Hoche with a fleet aimed to land in 1796, and here half of his fleet
+actually arrived, with no one to oppose them. Hoche was then at the
+pinnacle of his power and fame, an idealist of the early Republican
+movement, consumed with that real passion for spreading freedom which
+Napoleon was destined to replace by a very different conception. But
+Hoche and half of the ships were tempest-driven far out of their
+course, and it was Grouchy, the slow mover, the man of hesitations,
+who reached the goal, and, having reached it, failed to act. History
+hinges on odd chances. Humbert's achievements, two years later, with
+a mere handful of men, when England had an army in Ireland, put it
+beyond dispute that Grouchy, even with what he had, could have set on
+foot a movement that would have driven English power out of Ireland
+at least for a time: and Wellington himself has told how great a part
+in breaking down the power of France, from those conflicts in the
+Peninsula on to the climax of Waterloo, was borne by the unemancipated
+Catholic Irish peasants, who formed the very bone and sinew of the
+British line.
+
+It may well be that all was for the best in the best possible of
+worlds: that it was best that Ireland, instead of freeing herself with
+the help of Republican France, should help greatly to deliver Europe
+from the menace of Imperial France--and hand it over to the tender
+mercies of the Holy Alliance. Yet it needs the faith of Voltaire's
+philosopher to believe that anything could have been worse for Ireland
+than the historic evolution which she was actually fated to undergo.
+
+Beyond Bantry is Glengarriff, of which Thackeray wrote that "such a
+bay, were it lying upon English shores, would be a world's wonder".
+I have only seen it off the deck of a steamer, away in a smother of
+cloud; but everyone confirms Thackeray. Castletown Beare, farther
+west on the north shore of Bantry Bay, I have seen, and the Castle
+of Dunboy, where was the seat of the O'Sullivan Beare, lord of this
+region, from which after the rout at Kinsale he and his people fled
+in a body, marching north amid dreadful privations till they crossed
+the Shannon and ultimately reached some protection in Ulster. But
+O'Sullivan's fighting men were left in the Castle under their captain
+MacGeoghegan, who prolonged resistance to the point of desperation
+against Carew's artillery. Mortally wounded at last, he succumbed
+in an attempt to reach the magazine to blow all, assailants and
+defenders, sky high. It would have been better for the garrison had
+he succeeded, since Carew hanged every man of them. There is the ruin
+to-day, breached and battered, standing in a grove of ilex on a very
+beautiful promontory.
+
+That Castle of Dunboy gave its name to Froude's famous romance _The
+Two Chiefs of Dunboy_--a romance founded on historic fact--perhaps not
+more coloured in the telling than in the same author's volumes on the
+history of Ireland. For here in this peninsula between Bantry Bay and
+the Kenmare River, which was the special hold of the O'Sullivans, clan
+loyalty and the clan name did not die out. Here as elsewhere, English
+settlers were brought in as lords of the land, with enormous power
+over the native Irish, whose loyalty still held to the representative
+of their old chiefs. The O'Sullivans were chiefs now principally in
+the extensive smuggling operations--and let it be remembered that
+under the laws made by England to crush out Irish trade, contraband
+was almost the one outlet for Irish commerce. If Irishmen wanted to
+export the wool of their sheep, the hides of their cattle, the meat
+that they salted, all this traffic was by law forbidden. Such laws
+make smuggling necessary and beneficent, and the O'Sullivans on the
+south of the Kenmare River, like the O'Connells on its northern shore,
+brought in their cargoes of wine, tobacco, silks, and laces, and sent
+back ships laden with wool. With those cargoes went out too that other
+contraband, the supply of officers and men for the Irish brigade. The
+English landlord-settler was the representative of English law, and
+between him and the O'Sullivans conflict was certain. In 1754, Murtagh
+Oge O'Sullivan shot the Puxley of that day. Law was moved to great
+efforts, and two months later the O'Sullivan was surrounded in his
+house at the village of Eyeries, and, after a desperate resistance,
+driven out of it by fire: he tried to cut his way out but was shot
+down in escaping. That was a great day for the law, and they towed
+O'Sullivan's body by a rope at the stern of a king's ship to Cork,
+where they cut his head off and spiked it over the city gate.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO CORK HARBOUR]
+
+Irish memory keeps vividly the detail of such events, and you can
+find men in that district to tell you the whole as if it had happened
+yesterday. I heard it all, though at secondhand, on a sail from
+the Kenmare River to Bantry, one night when the sea was all fire, and
+the mackerel shoals dashing this way and that, made flashes like a
+Catherine wheel, and porpoises or dolphins following them left long
+trails of light on the surface with sudden sparkles wherever the great
+fish came up to roll. Out to sea was the recurring flash of the Bull
+Light, for which ships steer on their way from America; and though
+there was no moon I could still distinguish this huge island rock, and
+its neighbour the Cow. The Calf, where the light used to be, is lower,
+and lies close in by Dursey Island--in that year much talked of,
+for a party of police who had crossed to collect rents from the few
+islanders, were effectively marooned, as the boat they had chartered
+left them, and every other craft was suddenly spirited away.
+
+I think, perhaps, that night was lovelier on the Kenmare River--under
+a sky ablaze with stars--than even the days of sun had been; but
+nothing else in Ireland is so perfect, to my fancy, as this long,
+narrow sea lough between the two mountainous peninsulas, and having
+inland of it the full vista of those higher mountains which encircle
+Killarney's lakes.
+
+On the Kenmare shore of the southern peninsula is Lord Lansdowne's
+famous seat, Derreen, set among rivers and lakes, and backed with
+mountains. Derreen means the little oak grove, and as Mr. Cooke
+well observes in his _Murray_, the native wooding here escaped
+"the general destruction" of the forest trees to feed the iron
+furnaces of Sir William Petty, ancestor of the Lansdowne family.
+Most of the woods of Ireland--and Munster was covered with timber in
+Elizabeth's reign--were ruthlessly squandered in this way, during the
+first century of English occupation, by grantees or purchasers of
+confiscated land, whose one idea was a savage exploitation of what
+could immediately be cashed. However, let it be said that Petty's
+successors, coming into great part of the Desmond inheritance, and
+adopting the Desmond name, Fitzmaurice, took high place among that
+Irish nobility of the latter type. They were not absentees but
+landowners with some sense of what was owing to their estates, and
+with a sentiment to the country from which they drew their revenues,
+which is best evidenced by their close friendship with Maria Edgeworth
+and Thomas Moore. Yet it was always at Bowood, in Wiltshire, that Miss
+Edgeworth and Moore knew the great Whig statesman and his belongings:
+neither the poet nor the novelist ever penetrated to Derreen.
+
+Had they done so, they might have learnt more than ever either of
+them came to realize about the greatest Irishman of their day--the
+greatest power that has ever come out of purely Celtic Ireland in
+modern times: for Iveragh, the peninsula over against Derreen, was the
+birthplace and the home of Daniel O'Connell; it gave the climate and
+the environment which determined him to what he was.
+
+I am not going to write much--because no writing can do it justice--of
+Iveragh, which is bounded on the south by the Kenmare River, on the
+north by Dingle Bay, on the west by the Atlantic Ocean (with the
+Skelligs lying off in it), and on the east by Magillicuddy's Reeks and
+the lakes of Killarney; which is set therefore in beauty and majesty
+and splendour and has interest and charm at every turn of every road.
+But I am going to write a little of Daniel O'Connell and his people,
+for it is stupid to go to Kerry, and know nothing of the greatest
+Kerryman that ever lived, only--first, a little practical geography.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The train will take you to Kenmare, where the railway company
+has a really comfortable hotel, in whose garden you will see the
+characteristic subtropical vegetation which can be produced in
+this climate--palms, yuccas, New Zealand flax with its sword-shaped
+fronds, bamboos, and the rest, "all standing naked in the open air"
+like the heathen goddesses in the Groves of Blarney. From Kenmare the
+beautifully engineered road, which was a joy to man and beast till
+heavy motor coaches began to destroy it, runs along the north shore of
+the sea lough and a few miles out crosses the Kerry Blackwater by the
+most picturesque bridge over the loveliest stream that anyone could
+ever hope to throw a fly in. A little farther along is Parknasilla,
+the big hotel which has been built at a point where the coast breaks
+up into a number of wooded islets, with bridges connecting them, and
+meandering walks--well, nothing could be prettier. Then you go along
+through Sneem, getting into opener, wilder country. As you approach
+West Cove, Staigue Fort is on your right, a great circular structure
+of dry masonry, more developed than the similar buildings in Aran, for
+it has chambers in the thickness of the wall and stairs leading to
+platforms for defence. From this monument of prehistoric times, whose
+date can be measured by thousands of years, look across to your left,
+where another stone building is in progress--a large hospital designed
+to benefit the poor folk of this district: the bounty of a lady
+belonging to one of the families who profited by confiscation and for
+too long drew absentee rents. What may be the success of the scheme
+cannot be foretold: but the beauty of her desire to make restitution
+is not the least among the beauties of the Kenmare River.
+
+At West Cove I have been lucky enough to stay with the man who knows
+the west of Ireland in its present life and its past history better
+perhaps than any living soul. In the great plot where cars draw up
+outside his door, great plants of Arum lilies shoot up and flourish,
+blooming luxuriantly in spring. They say that in Valentia an improving
+gardener thought them too profuse in the Knight of Kerry's garden,
+and pitched the roots out over the cliffs; but some caught on ledges,
+fastened there, and sent up white lilies in niches of the crags--so
+kind is that soft air.
+
+Two or three miles beyond West Cove is the village of Caherdaniel and
+under it comes in Darrynane Bay, on whose shore is a little hotel,
+simple enough, but friendly; lying among Irish fisher folk who gather
+of a summer evening to dance on the crisp turf that covers the sand.
+Beside it is a small wood, and in the wood is Darrynane, a place of
+pilgrimage, for here O'Connell lived and here his descendants remain.
+The case of the O'Connells was typical. Driven by Cromwell out of
+the fertile lands of Limerick they took root among the mountains of
+Kerry and of Clare. The builder of Darrynane--that is of the original
+habitation--was a Daniel or Donal who married a daughter of the
+O'Donoghues--another great Kerry clan. This lady--Máire Dubh--was a
+fruitful mother of children--she bore twenty-two of them and brought
+twelve to full age; but she was also notable as a poetess in the Irish
+tongue. Her second son, Maurice, inherited Darrynane, and was known
+all over the country as Hunting Cap O'Connell, for a tax was put on
+beaver hats, and from that day he wore nothing but the velvet cap in
+which he was used to hunt hare and fox on the mountains of Iveragh.
+Daniel O'Connell, his nephew, was a great votary of that sport, and
+I have talked with a man who had hunted in his company. And still in
+autumn you may see the harriers out on these hills and a namesake and
+descendant of his hallooing them on.
+
+[Illustration: KENMARE BAY, FROM TEMPLENOE]
+
+Old Hunting Cap as head of the family played a great part in his
+nephew's youth, providing, it would seem, for the later stages of his
+education. The early one was cheap enough, for he was fostered on the
+mountains in the cabin of his father's herd (that tie of fosterage
+bound Catholic Ireland together, gentle and simple, with a strange
+intimacy), and he got his first lessons in one of the hedge schools
+which flourished in defiance of penal laws. It was no less typical
+of Catholic Ireland that he should go abroad to finish his training,
+or that he should have a kinsman high placed in the service of France.
+His father's younger brother, Count O'Connell, was the last colonel
+of the Irish Brigade: and when he was consulted concerning a place to
+send his nephews, in 1790, found himself much perplexed to answer, so
+troubled was the state of all the Continent. Daniel and his brother
+Maurice were sent first to the Jesuits at St. Omer; they were trained
+to detest the revolution which was driving their uncle out of the
+service of France: and soon the flood of turmoil drove them from Douay
+whither they had moved. At Calais, they learnt the news of Louis XVI's
+execution: on the boat were two passengers who spoke of it as willing
+eyewitnesses. These men were Irish Protestants, the brothers Sheares,
+afterwards executed for conspiracy. It is very notable that although
+Protestant Ireland, especially in Ulster, was much affected by the
+revolutionary and republican doctrines, these found very little echo
+in the Catholic part of the nation--and none at all among survivors of
+the old Catholic gentry, such as the O'Connells. Yet when the young
+O'Connell settled down to read for the bar in London, harsh measures
+of repression and the violent Toryism of that day soon drove him into
+revolt. He had a genuine hatred of oppression, of unfair play: later
+in life this devoutest of Roman Catholics was the most powerful
+advocate of equality for the Jews.
+
+However, this is no place to talk of the great orator's career or his
+triumphs. To his own folk in Kerry he was always "the Counsellor",
+the wonderful advocate whose genius was like a flaming sword drawn
+for the terrified prisoner. No other Irish leader has ever been so
+near akin to the common folk; it was not for nothing he suckled
+the breast of a Kerry peasant, and learnt to speak his first words
+in the Irish tongue. Yet, oddly enough and pathetically enough,
+so little of a "nationalist" in our modern sense was he, that he
+welcomed and encouraged the growing disuse of Irish speech; all
+diversity of tongues seemed hateful to him, in his eighteenth-century
+cosmopolitanism. But no man was ever more in love with Ireland, or
+more devoted to one spot of earth than he to his Darrynane. He wrote
+to Walter Savage Landor of himself that he "was born within the sound
+of the everlasting wave", and that his "dreamy boyhood fed its fancies
+upon the ancient and long-faded glories of that land which preserved
+Christianity when the rest of now civilized Europe was shrouded in the
+darkness of godless ignorance".
+
+     "Perhaps," he went on, "if I could show you the calm and
+     exquisite beauty of these capacious bays and mountain
+     promontories, softened in the pale moonlight which shines
+     this lovely evening, till all which during the day
+     was grand and terrific has become serene in the silent
+     tranquillity of the clear night--perhaps you would readily
+     admit that the man who has so often been called a ferocious
+     demagogue is in truth a gentle lover of nature, an
+     enthusiast of all her beauties 'fond of each gentle and each
+     dreary scene', and catching from the loveliness as well as
+     from the dreariness of the ocean and the Alpine scenes with
+     which it is surrounded, a greater ardour to procure the good
+     of man in his overwhelming admiration of the mighty works of
+     God."
+
+That was how O'Connell thought of Kerry; and as you drive on from
+Caherdaniel along the high pass of Coomakista, which brings you out
+across a shoulder of mountain from the view across Kenmare River to
+a wider outlook full west on the Atlantic--why, you will have some
+inkling of the sublimity which he felt.
+
+Below you is the little harbour to and from which the O'Connells
+worked their smuggling craft; and you can discern a narrow cleft in
+the rocks making a short cut for row boats on a calm day. Once, they
+say, a sloop of the smugglers lay in the harbour and was suddenly
+aware of a revenue brig rounding the headland from the south. The wind
+blew into the harbour. It was impossible to escape, and the sloop
+lay motionless and to all appearance idle. But just as the pursuer
+tacked and ran straight into the harbour mouth a sail was hoisted on
+the sloop, she began to move, and in a minute her sides were scraping
+through the tiny passage, while men with sweeps out fended her off
+this and that sunken rock; and in another minute she was out and
+away, cracking on full sail with a good half-hour's lead before the
+revenue boat could beat out of the narrow sound to chase her.
+
+[Illustration: MACGILLICUDDY'S REEKS]
+
+From Coomakista the road descends steeply to Waterville, a famous
+place for anglers, where a new town has grown up about the outlet to
+Lough Currane, for here is now the chief station of the transatlantic
+cables. The first of these cables was laid from Valentia Island some
+ten miles farther north opposite the town of Cahirciveen, which will
+be your destination if you purpose to return by rail along the shore
+of Dingle Bay. But I commend to all, motorist, cyclist, or foot
+traveller (if such a one be left in these degenerate days), another
+way of exploring Iveragh. Also, if the sea is not your enemy, it is
+worth while to stay in Waterville--where the sea as well as the lake
+offer great chance to fishers--and try an expedition to the Skellig
+Rocks. Fine weather is needed, for there is difficulty in landing on
+these astonishing places where the gannets are the chief habitants:
+strong flyers, they nest nowhere between this point and the Bass Rock
+in Scotland, yet you may see them by dozens anywhere along the west
+coast even in the breeding season. On the Skelligs are old stone
+stairs of tremendous height, the work of old-time anchorite monks who
+established themselves here in stone beehive-shaped cells--still
+intact, for you to wonder at the discomforts of piety. And in the
+crevices of these rocks rare birds breed--the stormy petrel, the Manx
+shearwater, along with legions of puffin, guillemot, razorbill, shag,
+and the rest. But do not go there even with a light easterly wind, for
+it blows direct on to the rocky landing place; and if it blows at all
+from the south-west the swell may be too big even on the sheltered
+side. Nature is on a big scale, a rough playfellow, out here in the
+Atlantic.
+
+Even landward from Lough Currane, it is a wild nature that you must
+encounter on the old mountain road to Killarney, which you should
+travel for choice.
+
+This way follows up the valley of the Eany River (but you may take the
+main road skirting Lough Currane and turn in west to this same valley
+at Owroe bridge) to the pass of _Bealach Oisin_ (Ossian's Track)
+between Coolee and Knocknagapple. At the crest one must be close on a
+thousand feet up, and the view back over Ballinskelligs bay with the
+Atlantic beyond, to which the eye is led by a long winding thread of
+river between steep mountain sides, is a splendid prospect. Once over
+the neck, sea, river, and tilled land all disappear: nothing is seen
+but heath and rock and mountain. On the right is the high ridge which
+makes the backbone of Iveragh: in front of you the Reeks fill the
+eastern sky. Not a house can be seen--and there are very few places
+in Ireland (so thickly scattered are people over the poorest land)
+from which human habitation cannot be discerned.
+
+A few miles down brings you into the valley of the Caragh river which
+flows out from Loughs Reagh and Cloon and after a course of some ten
+miles enters the long and deep Caragh Lake, whence another short run
+brings it to the sea. This is the valley which lies west of the Reeks,
+and, for my own part, I count this aspect of them finer than anything
+you will see at Killarney. There is a big, new hotel at the outfall
+of Caragh Lake on the railway, much frequented now: but all my time
+among these hills and waters has been given to a little oldfashioned
+anglers' inn, the Glencar hotel, on the reach of river between
+Bealalaw bridge and Lickeen rapids. Here you may fish for salmon at a
+nominal charge in one of the best waters in Ireland: on the evening
+when I got there this summer, they were jumping everywhere in the
+beautiful Long Range pool where the little Caragh joins the main
+stream; red, ugly fish, it must be owned, for this was in September
+and they had lain there since June without a fresh to move them--but
+still there were salmon and plenty of them. Or you can fish free of
+charge at Lough Acoose at the headwaters of Caraghbeg, in under the
+flank of Carrantuohil, with better prospect of a full basket than
+anywhere else known to me. The trout are not big anywhere in Kerry,
+but in Acoose they run to a good herring size, and the man who fished
+it the day when I was at Glencar got something over two dozen--a usual
+bag. My companion and I had gone farther afield, to the headwaters of
+Caragh itself, right up into the great ring of mountains through which
+the pass of Bealachbeama lets you out to the Kenmare side. Little need
+be said about our fishing, which was interrupted by the fact that our
+boat, leaking like a sieve, finally foundered while we were trying
+to get her ashore--a new boat too, wanting nothing but a couple of
+good coats of paint. Yet the chance which drove us off Cloon, while
+the boat was being got ashore and emptied, sent us up across a mile
+of bog to fish the upper lake from the shore; and what a lake! lying
+right in under the steep side of a mountain almost precipitous, where
+the eagles built till a year or two back, and for three parts of its
+circumference ringed about like the crater of a volcano.
+
+It was a day of dry wind, northerly to north-easterly, and of hard
+lights: one lacked the magical enchantment of westerly air over the
+whole: yet for sheer grandeur I do not know that all my wanderings
+after fish in Ireland have ever taken me to so fine a scene.
+
+[Illustration: THE GAP OF DUNLOE, KILLARNEY]
+
+That little hotel, primitive in its equipment but most friendly, has
+its attractions to offer all the year round, for the salmon fishing
+begins in earnest in February, and through the winter months there is
+rough shooting (grouse, cock, and snipe), to be had over the great
+expanses of heather and those broad belts of native wooding which
+grow about the river in its lower course. From the hotel down to the
+lake your path lies between this scrub of oak and holly and birch and
+a water, swift yet deep, where pool succeeds pool, each divided from
+the next only by strong rapids. You have no monopoly there: the river
+is fished from both banks and can be covered right across, though it
+needs a good man to do it; but it is practically a free fishing and
+the best free river fishing that I know in Ireland--absolutely an
+ideal spot for the holiday-maker who does not insist on being near the
+sea. You can walk from it all the finest mountains in Kerry since it
+lies in the very centre: and away west of you is Glenbeigh, another
+valley where decent quarters can be had amid landscape of the same
+type. Of the same type--but I cannot believe that anywhere in Kerry or
+out of it you will match the journey which convoyed me from Glencar
+to my next stage at the Caragh Lake hotel. It was inland scenery no
+doubt, but the breath and the feeling of the sea is over all this
+neck of sea-washed Iveragh, and that river valley seemed no more
+than an avenue through the hills leading to the gateway of ocean.
+We walked along the river bank, often shoulder high in fern, often
+stopping to pull the blackberry clusters, and we studied the pools
+set in, here among trees, there with open sward on both sides and
+moor stretching away behind. Below the rapids we took boat, and for a
+mile or more rowed through level bogland, with groups of Scotch fir,
+purple stemmed in the afternoon light, rising from the river bank.
+Between their trunks, or in the open gaps, we could see the peaked
+mass of Carrantuohil, rising in the south-east, the light on its high
+ridges, but the valleys and chasms on its sides deep in shadow. As
+we neared the lake the flat land broadened, and from across it came
+the aromatic, pungent smell of bog myrtle, distinct as the scent from
+a beanfield, but strong and tonic as brine. Then for an hour and
+half we paddled down the lake between mountain and mountain, winding
+round promontory after promontory into sight of reach after reach of
+the lake. Finally as we entered the wide northern stretch--for our
+course was due north--all the shore was seen divided into demesnes,
+big and little, each with its own wooding. The hotel lies farthest of
+all towards the river's outflow in the north-west, and whoever chose
+that site deserves credit, for across the wide shining water rise the
+whole ring of mountains--Carrantuohil away to the south-east, and
+all the other heights that close in the valley behind Cloon Lake and
+Bealachbeama spreading fan-wise across the horizon as you look out
+from the pleasant terrace where palm and hydrangea grow. It is not so
+finished, not so exquisite, as Killarney; but I should rather choose
+it for a holiday. I sat on the terrace for an hour that Sunday and
+watched the sunlight fade off Carrantuohil: all was green and olive
+when we sat down, for it was a coldish evening and the air northerly;
+but cloud lay on the peaks, or rather caught the peaks intermittently
+as it drifted in wreaths across, so that at no time was the whole
+mountain visible. But gradually as the sun sank these wreaths became
+touched with a rosy glow, and below them what had been olive-green
+took on deep tints of coppery purple, rich and glowing, the purple
+gaining as the rose deepened on the cloud wreath; and higher and
+higher the shaft of light struck, reaching now only the very topmost
+pinnacles, till finally it faded out, and all lay before as in a
+sombre stillness waiting for the fall of night.
+
+Nothing that I carry away from Killarney haunts me with the same
+fullness of beauty, but perhaps only because Killarney is no one's
+discovery; it has no secret lover. You might as well seek to praise
+Sarah Bernhardt's genius or Tennyson's charm of style. Yet I suppose
+each one will discern for himself some passing perfection, some
+special facet of that loveliness--as I indeed remember the wonderful,
+shadowed, lucid green of water reflecting darkly the bank of tall
+reeds which grow westward of the landing stage to which we rowed in
+after fishing: and remember, too, the singular sight of a man's naked
+body, as he stood poised before plunging in to bathe, some hundred
+yards from us; for the low sun caught his figure, outlined against the
+long line of dark foliage behind him, and made it at once the glowing
+centre of a beautiful landscape.
+
+This was on the lower lake, largest by far of the three which form
+a crescent, compassing from south to north (as the water runs) the
+eastern flank of the Reeks.
+
+My last visit found me at the Victoria Hotel where the lake is broad
+and open to the Purple Mountain, a noble landscape: but to reach what
+is my idea of Killarney proper, you must row across to the narrows
+between the lovely isle of Inisfallen and the east shore, so reaching
+Ross Bay and a more confined water, studded over with island rocks.
+Here the shores are of that peculiar limestone which the lapping of
+water frets into numberless quaint crannies and fissures till the
+verge of the water looks as though it were a frame intricately carved
+by some patient craftsman; and in all these chinks and crevices ferns
+and other wild and beautiful herbage grow with exquisite profusion.
+That is what makes to my mind the essence of Killarney's charm, this
+wealth of intricate detail making a foreground to mountain and lake
+scenery as bold and wild as any highlands can show. Add to this
+the presence of unfamiliar foliage, here native, exotic everywhere
+else--notably the arbutus with its dark, glossy leaf and ruddy stem,
+handsomest of all shrubs; dark yew also, and juniper, mingled in with
+native growth of oak and birch, yet through all, skilful plantation
+has set in this and that graceful foreign tree, this and that bright
+berry. It is no wonder that such a place should have become one of
+the world's great tourist centres, especially when to these beauties
+are added the distinction and interest of fine ruins--Ross Castle
+where the O'Donoghues were lords till Cromwell's forces drove them
+out; Inisfallen where St. Finian's pious monks had their abbey through
+untroubled centuries. And, being as it is, Killarney is equipped for
+the tourist as is no other place in Ireland: all the excursions have
+been thought and planned, and your hotelkeeper will have arrangements
+fully made; nor is the plague of beggars at all the annoyance that
+it used to be--a blessed reform. The boatmen have learnt their trade
+of cicerone to perfection, and will not only tell you the standard
+yarns and jests and legends of the place if you desire them, but
+will have the tact to discriminate serious-minded folk--such as
+anglers--who may probably not want this form of entertainment.
+
+[Illustration: MUCKROSS LAKE, KILLARNEY]
+
+Yet, for all that, it is a place for tourists, and, as such, commands
+only my reluctant tribute. But the drive from Killarney to Kenmare
+which, skirting Muckross and the upper lake, carries you gradually
+circling round the whole crescent till you rise into the Black Valley
+where the Gap of Dunloe breaks in--well, that drive, I must say,
+fairly broke down my coldness: I grew no less enthusiastic than the
+famous Scottish expert on salmon fishing who was of the party and
+declared the whole thing equal to the Trossachs--from which I gather
+that Scotland at least has not anything to show more fair. Moreover,
+fishing on the lakes is free and good; there is a chance of salmon,
+and trout are both plenty and sizeable. That is to say, on a good day
+they should average close on half a pound, and this means that a pound
+fish is no great rarity--as he certainly would be in Glencar. Also in
+Killarney town you have the best fly tier in Ireland; many a friend of
+mine in Donegal who never saw Kerry could swear to Mr. Courtney's work
+in this delicate craft, almost an art in itself.
+
+But that is all I have to say about "Heaven's reflex, Killarney".
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+My last visit to Kerry was on a commission of enquiry into fisheries
+which took us driving round in motors to places off the usual track;
+and a railway strike came in, to complete our survey of West Munster.
+We had come up from Waterville, along the backbone of the peninsula,
+crossing Bealach Oisin, so that the coast road by Dingle Bay is known
+to me now only by far-off memory of a forty-miles drive in a long
+car--which the railway has for many years superseded. But I revived my
+memory of a bit of it, coming up in the morning from Caragh Lake to
+Killorglin, where we held our court, at the outfall of the Lowne which
+drains the lakes of Killarney. Opposite us across the bay was that
+other mountainous region of Corcaguiney, the Dingle Peninsula, which
+differs from Iveragh in this, that from the high point of the Reeks
+Iveragh slopes westward by a gradual declension of peaks and ridges;
+whereas Corcaguiney rises continuously westward and seaward till it
+reaches its climax in Brandon Hill rising majestically from the very
+limit of the land. So rises Mweelrea at the mouth of Killery, and I
+imagine that on a clear day from Brandon's top you would see Mweelrea,
+and from Mweelrea again might distinguish the peak of Errigal far
+north in Donegal. At all events I knew an old gentleman who told me
+that he had seen the whole length of Ireland in one field of vision,
+and he took either Mweelrea or Croagh Patrick as his midland centre
+and Errigal or Brandon (or the Reeks) as his two extremes.
+
+This Dingle Peninsula is explored by very few, unexplored by me, alas!
+I could see from the road the dark outline of Cahirconree, a wonderful
+stone fort, built two thousand feet up on the side of the Sliabh
+Mish mountains: and away out to the west the Blasket Islands were in
+sight, hardly more accessible than the Skelligs, but inhabited by a
+race of Irish-speaking fisher folk, among whom a Norse student of the
+Celtic languages settled himself the other day and was overjoyed to
+find a stone inscription in Runic characters, containing the mind of
+some Scandinavian forebear of his own, set down in the Norse that was
+spoken a thousand years ago and had waited ten centuries for him to
+decipher it.
+
+Under Brandon, on the extreme west of the peninsula, lies Smerwick
+Bay, where in Elizabeth's reign a small detachment of Spaniards landed
+and established themselves; their earthworks at Fort del Oro (so
+called because Frobisher was wrecked there with a cargo of pyrites
+which he took to be gold) can be traced easily. Kingsley in _Westward
+Ho!_ has dealt, not overfaithfully, with the story of that enterprise
+which ended in the wholesale butchery of combatants who surrendered
+at discretion--suggesting, very unworthily, that the brutal deed was
+excused by its deterrent effect. We have never heard that it stopped
+the landing at Kinsale not many years later. There is ground to hope
+that Raleigh has been wrongfully charged with the actual perpetration
+of that black deed. But in truth the blackest chapter in all Irish
+history is precisely that which deals with the Desmond wars under
+Elizabeth, which ended in the complete devastation of this lovely
+province. Not far from Tralee they show you the spot where the last
+Earl of Desmond was captured and the rough mound a little way from it
+that marks his grave: and still when the moaning of wind and wave is
+heard over that countryside, they call it the Desmond's keene.
+
+[Illustration: BRICKEEN BRIDGE, LOWER LAKE, KILLARNEY]
+
+To escape from all this record of civilized barbarity, the mind gladly
+turns back to far older and by far less barbarous days. Brandon
+keeps the name of the most picturesque figure in the long roll of
+Irish saints--St. Brendan, the Navigator, who was born a little west
+of Tralee, at Barra, close to the promontory of Fenit, in or about
+the year 484. He was baptized by a bishop named Erc, whose name
+still lingers in Termon Eirc, a townland three miles north of
+Ardfert: and a well near Ardfert which keeps St. Brendan's name is
+still a place of pilgrimage and votive offering, more specially on
+the saint's own day. Under Erc's guidance the lad was brought up,
+though he got some of his schooling at Killeady, the convent where
+St. Ita had established her religious house near Newcastle West in
+county Limerick. Later, Erc sent him to travel that he might "see
+the lives of some of the holy fathers in Erin"; and he went north to
+Connacht where the school of St. Jarlath at Tuam was already famous
+(as Archbishop Healy, who sits in St. Jarlath's chair to-day, tells
+with natural pride in his book on the _Ancient Schools and Scholars
+of Ireland_, which I am pillaging, not for the first time). He went
+farther north still in Connacht, and is said to have established a
+settlement of Kerrymen in the plains near Castlebar; but he returned
+to Kerry to get his priestly orders from the hands of his tutor Erc,
+now nearing death.
+
+"It was probably at this time," says Archbishop Healy, "that St.
+Brendan built his oratory on the summit of Brandon hill", and there
+was fired with the project of setting sail across the Atlantic in
+search of a Promised Land--_Tir-nan-Og_, the Country of the Young.
+For there on Brandon top, a man can see--even without the vision of
+faith--"over half the south of Ireland, mountain and valley, lake and
+stream, plain and town, stretching far away to the east and south.
+But the eye ever turns seaward to the grand panorama presented by the
+ultimate ocean." Brendan from his watch tower
+
+     "Saw it in all its varying moods--but above all, at even,
+     when the setting sun went to his caverns below the sea,
+     and the line of light along the glowing west seemed a road
+     to the Fortunate Islands where the sorrows of earth never
+     enter, and peace and beauty for ever dwell. It was a dim
+     tradition of man's lost paradise, floating down the stream
+     of time, for with curious unanimity the poets and sages both
+     of Greece and Rome spoke of these Islands of the Blessed
+     as located somewhere in the Western Ocean. The same idea
+     from the earliest times has taken strong hold of the Celtic
+     imagination, and reveals itself in many strange tales, which
+     were extremely popular, especially with the peasantry on
+     the western coast. To this day the existence of Hi Brasail,
+     an enchanted land of joy and beauty, is very confidently
+     believed by our western fishermen. It is seen from Aran once
+     every seven years, as Brendan saw it in olden times, like a
+     fairy city on the far horizon's verge."
+
+According to the records, Brendan was not first on this quest.
+Barinthus, a neighbouring monk, had fared seaward in search of a
+truant brother and had found him in the island called "Delicious",
+from which they sailed yet farther west and found other wonders. But
+at all events, however moved, Brendan bade his monks to fast with him
+forty days, then choosing fourteen of them, he built a great curragh,
+with ribs and frame of willow, hide-covered, and so with forty days
+of provisions they set out upon the trackless sea, steering for the
+"summer solstice".
+
+Seven years that voyage lasted: they reached island after island in
+the Atlantic main, "following God's guidance, fed by his Providence,
+and protected by his power". At length, it is said, they reached the
+continent of America and found the place where they landed "to be
+indeed a delicious country abounding in everything to gratify the
+palate and please the eye"; and they were about to push across the
+swift, silvery current that had borne them to the verge of this land,
+when an angel rose before their path and bid them turn homeward,
+instead of resting to enjoy. And so back to Ireland came Brendan the
+Navigator, the travelled Ulysses among Irish saints.
+
+What lies behind all this, who knows exactly? but certainly those
+dwellers on the outermost verge of Europe always had vague yet
+glorious rumours of a land beyond the sea--a land in truth whose
+flotsam and jetsam, strange nuts and weeds, the ocean current casts
+from time to time on their shores. And heaven knows, that this
+Western people, since Columbus brought promise into fulfilment and
+imagining into sure knowledge, have found in the west there a haven,
+a refuge from the miseries into which they were born. America has
+been a strange and often a sinister realization of the Fortunate
+Islands--yet conceive of Ireland's history for the past century
+without America to lean on, to look to for help. Its streets have not
+been paved with gold, no easily-won sustenance has been there: yet to
+the fisher folk and farmers it has offered the fulfilment of desire,
+the enlargement of aspiration; and the course that St. Brendan first
+charted, though it is more frequented now than could be wished, though
+it leads often enough to unhappy wreckage, has yet been to Ireland a
+blessed road.
+
+[Illustration: HOLY ISLAND, LOUGH DERG]
+
+No man who visits this Atlantic seaboard of Ireland but must feel
+something of what Archbishop Healy's eloquence hints at--the sense
+of an open gateway beyond the sun-track through which imagination
+is beckoned towards its own goal. There is a soothing and restful
+influence from those vast spaces of the west. And even landward
+it follows you. We crossed the neck of the Dingle Peninsula to
+the pretty and prosperous town of Tralee, and all eastern Kerry
+merging into Limerick stretched away to right of us, a wide rolling
+expanse of land well divided into fields for tillage. Our course lay
+still on north-east to Listowel, crossing the tract of land which
+divides Tralee Bay from the Shannon's broad estuary; all about us,
+the country was spacious, yet well inhabited, set thick with trim
+little farmhouses: there was much traffic on the roads, of horse and
+man--and of asses: I saw there what is not common, two donkeys
+driven abreast in a little cart, stepping very smart down a long hill.
+There was plenty of room for the people, yet the people were there--on
+the land, living by the land, with the large air of the Atlantic
+blowing in across them. Next day, since the trains were not running,
+we had to proceed by motor to Limerick, and we simply ran north to
+the Shannon shore at Tarbert and followed the river to Limerick for
+a matter of forty miles, stretch by stretch, a broad sea lane for
+vessels, but alas! no vessels there: hardly a sail on the waters;
+though battleships can lie at Foynes, thirty miles in from Loop Head.
+
+There is much to pause over on that route: Glin, where the hereditary
+Knights of Glin, an offshoot of the Desmond Geraldines, have
+maintained themselves, for a matter of seven centuries, even through
+the "pacifications" of Elizabeth's reign: Askeaton, many miles farther
+on, a chief seat of the main Desmond line, and in Ireland--so rich
+in ruins, so poor in buildings that have escaped destruction--there
+are few finer ruins than the Desmond Castle here, and the Franciscan
+Abbey. Still nearer Limerick, at Carrigagunnel, you see the landmark
+of another power, for this castle was built by the O'Briens of Thomond
+and it stood over against Bunratty on the Clare bank, another great
+fortress.--Yet a mere catalogue is without interest, and here is
+no space to trace the interlocking fortunes and conflicts of Norman
+noble, Irish chief, and Cromwellian soldier.
+
+Let me concentrate on one spot, one group of memories. Above the
+little town of Foynes is a small house on a hill, now beautifully
+surrounded by plantations of shrubs and flowers; it was the home of
+a lady known to the Irish people at home and abroad, for her work
+in improving the lot of steerage passengers on emigrant ships, and
+also for her writings in prose and verse; yet known better as the
+true child of a notable father, William Smith O'Brien, Protestant,
+landlord, aristocrat, rebel, and felon by the law. She was one who
+felt and loved the beauty of Ireland--not only what one may call the
+scenic beauty of such places as Killarney, but the essential spacious
+beauty of those fertile valleys, those wide skies.
+
+     "Men come and go by this great river," she wrote, "and the
+     revelation of its beauty is not made to them fully, often
+     not at all; but let one live by it and it is the most
+     beautiful place in the whole world.... But to-night it was
+     no hidden beauty. I went down by the river in the evening.
+     It was full, the tide just past the turn, and sweeping down
+     the great mass of water at an extraordinary pace, and yet,
+     though the whole river was swinging along at many miles
+     an hour, the surface was a marvellous mirror. The glowing
+     masses of furze on the island, a quarter-mile away, were so
+     near and distinct in the wave, one could almost stretch out
+     a hand to gather them. Every cloud and every shade of light
+     and colour in the sky was again in the river, but far more
+     intense. At my feet and twenty yards down and across the
+     channel was a dense black cloud reflected, its crenellated
+     edge cut sharp against the reflection of silver, blue,
+     grey, and intense white light stretching far away westward.
+     I stood, as the old books used to say, 'entranced', and
+     still the river swept down, and still the furze and the
+     wonderful green and the dark cloud-bar were, as it were,
+     under my hand, and the glorious 'gates of the Shannon', as
+     the Elizabethans called this Foynes, were opened to heaven's
+     light beyond my touch."
+
+From the road just beyond Foynes towards Limerick, you shall see a
+round hill topped by a ruin and the tokens of a graveyard. There in
+the high windy burial-place of her choice she lies, this lover of
+Ireland and of the Shannon, Charlotte Grace O'Brien. And for the last
+word in this little book, I, her near kinsman, whose main ties are
+with other provinces, shall set down another passage of her writings,
+which is curiously revealing of Munster. For behind Knockpatrick you
+may see a few miles farther off another low hill which is topped
+by a well-marked mound, and on the mound a great mass of shattered
+masonry stands, "like a black clenched fist thrust against the western
+heavens". That is Shanid, the original stronghold of the southern
+Geraldines: "Shanid aboo", was their war-cry.
+
+To this place Charlotte O'Brien, who loved flowers hardly less even
+than other live things, came to look for a reported rare plant--"The
+Virgin Mary's Thistle", "so-called because the leaves are all blotched
+and marbled with white stains, and legend made it a sacred plant
+bearing for ever stains of the Blessed Virgin's milk".
+
+     "Sure enough," she wrote, "I found a mass of it growing
+     together only on the southern exposure under the great
+     wall. Now this plant is said to exist only as an introduced
+     species in the British Isles. To account for it, therefore,
+     on this utterly lonely and desolate hilltop, we must look
+     back through the centuries and see the sacred plant in
+     the monastery garden at Askeaton--the first Geraldine
+     home in Desmond. We must think how the seed may--in fact,
+     must--have been carried up to this watch tower, perhaps
+     by some long-haired daughter of the Geraldines, sent for
+     safety to the mountain fortress. We must imagine how its
+     frail growth (only annual) took hold on the sheltered side;
+     we must see generation after generation of men swept away,
+     the monastery torn down and desecrated, the name of Desmond
+     almost forgotten, the great Geraldine race broken and
+     destroyed: we must see the almost impregnable castle blown
+     to pieces and left as a trampling ground for summer-heated
+     cattle; more wonderful than all, we must realize that
+     time has so gone, that no record is left us of that great
+     downfall and destruction--nothing--nothing but a few pieces
+     of nine-foot-thick wall, a few earth mounds, and the sacred
+     plant. Irishmen! What national history lies in one seed of
+     that plant!"
+
+True enough! And true it is that to feel the real beauty of Ireland,
+her mountains and valleys, her fields and waters, you must see them in
+the light of the past as well as the present, informed by knowledge
+and by love.
+
+
+PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
+_At the Villafield Press, Glasgow, Scotland_
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes
+
+Minor punctuation errors were silently corrected. Illustrations were
+moved to paragraph breaks.
+
+Page 24: Changed Roscarberry to Roscarbery.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Munster, by Stephen Lucius Gwynn
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44046 ***