The Charm Of Ireland Part 18

But it is too tragic to think about!

The shower pa.s.sed, 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 sh.o.r.e of the lake, at last, where the waves have carved the rocks into beautiful and fantastic shapes, and we followed the sh.o.r.e 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 circ.u.mstances and overlooked them; he p.r.o.nounced Kerry the most G.o.d-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 Sat.u.r.day 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sed 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-pa.s.sengers.

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 pa.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al 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 surpa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.al 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 ma.s.sive, and the windows small, and there is a surprising number of dark little chapels--the princ.i.p.al 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 Th.o.m.ond 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sing 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 impa.s.sable 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 impa.s.sable 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 pa.s.sed 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--pa.s.sed 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 impa.s.sioned 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sert that there is only one cause--unjust and discriminating laws pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.al 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.