The Charm Of Ireland Part 34

There are really more than 366 of the cromlechs, though n.o.body knows the exact number; and they are the most venerable monuments reared by man in Ireland. The growth of peat around certain of them proves that they have stood where they now stand for at least four thousand years. How the huge covering stones, sometimes weighing hundreds of tons, were lifted into place, no one knows, just as no one knows how the Egyptians raised their great monoliths from the quarry.

There are two most impressive cromlechs at Carrowmore, quite close together, and my pictures of them are opposite the next page. The first one we came to stands near the road in a pasture, and it was merely a question of clambering over a wall to get to it; but to reach the other, it was necessary to cross a newly-cultivated field; and as there were some men working in it, I asked permission to do so.

"Ah," said one of them, "so it is the big stones you have come to see.

You're very welcome. I only wish you could take them with you."

"So do I," I said. "We haven't anything like them in America. Everybody would want to see them."

"That is just the trouble here. There are always people coming to see them, and they tramp about over my field, with no thought of the damage they will be doing, and without asking my leave, as you have done. And then it is at least half an acre of good land that the stones make good for naught, and good land is not that plentiful in Ireland that we can afford to waste any of it. And then there's the trouble of ploughing around them."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CROMLECHS AT CARROWMORE]

The farmer was right, in a way, for a half acre of good land would have been of far more value to him than this beautiful cromlech in the midst of its circle of stones; but how happy I would have been to give it half an acre, if I could have wafted it home to America! The circle is considerably more than a hundred feet in diameter, and the stones which compose it are great boulders, four or five feet high, set on end. The cromlech itself is very imposing, with ma.s.sive side supports, six or seven feet high, and a mighty covering stone, flat on the under side. It is like a giant bestriding the landscape; and Betty remarked that it reminded her of the legs of Uncle Pumblechook, with several miles of open country showing between them. My picture of it has Knocknarea in the background, and if you look closely, you will see the little b.u.mp in the middle of its summit which is the cairn of Queen Meave.

The hill was only a mile or so away, and I proposed going over to it, but Betty vetoed that, for it meant some stiff climbing, and we had already walked a good many miles; so we started back slowly along the road to Sligo, and a beautiful road it was, with the purple hills in the distance, and the green rolling fields on either side, and the whitewashed cottages gathered close beside it. And the doors of all of them were wide open, and the people who lived in them, hearing our footsteps, came out to pa.s.s the time of day and make some comment on the weather; and one old woman, who had been hoeing her potatoes, was so eager to talk that we stopped and sat down on the low wall in front of her cottage, and stayed for half an hour.

She began with the usual questions--where we were from, if we were married, how old we were, and so on; and then she started to tell us about herself, omitting no detail, however intimate.

"I have been to America," she said; "for seven years I lived there, and a grand place it is; and you will be wondering why I ever came back to County Sligo. 'Twas because of this bit of land, which would be mine, and this houseen, which is a poor one, but I was born there, and I will die there, glory be to G.o.d. I would ask you in, but it is that dirty, I am ashamed of it. There is so much to be done in the field that I have had no time for the house; besides, I am getting old and my legs are very bad. I got a bottle from the doctor, and I do be taking a sip of it now and then, but it does me no good. I am thinking there is nothing will cure me.

"We were not always down in the world like this," she rattled on. "There was a time when we were well off. That was before my man was hurted. He was a county councillor, then, and as handsome a man as you would be seeing in a day's walk; and many's the time he has gone to Dublin with a flower in his b.u.t.ton-hole, and me looking after him with pride, for he was always a good head to me. But a horse kicked him, and broke his leg and his arm, and he has not had the right use of either since; and so we started going down; and when one starts doing that, there's no stopping.

"That's himself going there," she added, indicating an unkempt figure limping painfully along the road with the help of a heavy cane. "He's ashamed for you to see him, he's that dirty;" but curiosity proved stronger than pride, in the end, and he finally came hobbling up to us, a wreck of a man with dirty clothes and unkempt hair and unshaven face and battered derby hat--and yet one could see that he had been a handsome fellow once.

We mentioned our stopping at the house of the bachelor who owned Tricker, and both our companions grew serious.

"Ah, poor boy," said the woman, "he does be havin' a hard time. There was no one but his mother--all the others had gone to America; and he looked after her as careful as a daughter could; but she was very feeble, and he come home from the field one day to find her dead on the hearth. She had fallen in the fire and burned, bein' too weak to get up.

It was a great shock to him, her dyin' in a way so painful and without a priest; and we all felt for him, though he was to blame for not marryin'

some girl who could have looked after the old woman. He is well off, but there's no girl could put the comether on him, though many have tried,--nice girls, too, as nice as ever put a shawl across their heads."

I remarked that we had been surprised at the number of bachelors in Ireland; we had supposed that all Irishmen married and had "long families," but it was not so at all. Some were too poor to marry, and that we could understand; but many that were not poor preferred to stay single. There were the Rafferty brothers, owners of the Connemara marble quarry; there was the proprietor of the hotel at Castleconnell; and now here was this man.

"It is so," the old woman agreed. "There be many bachelors hereabouts--men too who could well afford to take a wife. The priest gets very warm over it. Not long ago, he said some words about it in the church--he said if it was left to him, he would be puttin' all these bachelors in a boat with a rotten bottom, and sendin' them out to sea, and sink or swim, small loss it would be whatever happened. For he said they were poor creatures, who thought of nothing but their own pleasure, who wasted their money in Dublin, instead of raising a family with it, and who would come to no good end. And I'm thinking that was nothing to what he had been saying to them in private. For of course, before he said anything in public, he had been after them to let him speak to the fathers of some of the nice girls there be about here."

Among the Irish, especially the Irish peasantry, marriage is still largely a matter of arrangement between the families of the young people; though I doubt if it is ever quite so carelessly done as in one of Lever's books, where, after the bargain has been made, the father of three daughters asks the suitor which one it is he wants, and the suitor has them all brought in so that he may inspect them before he makes up his mind. It is always a solemn occasion, however, with the suitor's relatives ranged along one side of a table, and the bride's relatives along the other--male relatives, be it understood, for it is not lucky for a woman to take part in a match-making; and the bargaining is very shrewd and quite without sentiment; but the marriages thus arranged usually turn out well. For, if they are without romance, they are also without illusion. The woman knows beforehand what will be expected of her as wife and mother; the man is quite aware that matrimony has its rough side; and so there is no rude awakening for either. It is really a partnership, in which both are equal, and which both work equally hard to make successful.

But I suspect that, in Ireland as elsewhere, marriage is not the inevitable thing it once was, especially for the men. It may be, as the priest said, that they have grown selfish and think only of their own comfort; or it may be that their needs have become more complex and their ideals harder to satisfy. Whatever the cause, Ireland certainly has her full share of bachelors.

We went to a picture-show at Sligo, that night, and I have never seen a livelier audience. There was, of course, a cowboy film which was received with the keenest pleasure; and there was a lurid melodrama, which culminated in the hero flinging the villain over a high cliff, at which those present rose to their feet and stamped and cheered; and then King George was shown reviewing the Life Guards, and the crowd watched in moody silence--a silence that was painful and threatening. As the troops marched past, gallant and glittering, a sight to stir the blood, there was not the suspicion of a cheer or hand-clap--just a strange, breathless silence. We were to witness the same thing thereafter in "loyal" Derry--the most convincing evidence imaginable of the feeling toward England which every Irishman, Protestant or Catholic, carries deep in his heart.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS

WE wanted to drive around Lough Gill, a distance of about twenty-five miles, and I had mentioned this project to our landlord the day before, and asked the price of a car. He said it was a long trip and a trying one on a horse, and that the price would be twenty shillings, and I saw the same glitter in his eye which had been there when he named the price of a room.

That afternoon, I happened to see a sign over a shop announcing that posting was done in all its branches. Remembering the glitter in the landlord's eye, I stopped in and asked the woman in charge if a car could be had for the trip around Lough Gill. She said it might, and the price would be twelve shillings, including the driver. I closed with her on the spot, and told her to have the car ready at nine o'clock next morning; and somewhat to my surprise it was; and we set forth on what was to prove one of the most beautiful and adventurous excursions we had had in Ireland.

It was a bright, warm day, and our jarvey, a picturesque old fellow, was quite certain it would not rain; but we put our rain-coats and all our other waterproof paraphernalia in the well of the car, so as to be prepared for the worst; and we elected to go out by the northern sh.o.r.e and come back by the southern one. For a mile or two our road lay through beautiful fragrant woods, and then we came out high above the lake.

There is no prettier lake in Ireland than Lough Gill, with its green islands, and its blue water reflecting the blue sky and the fleecy clouds, and its banks covered with a vegetation almost as varied and luxuriant as that about Killarney, and the purple mountains crowding down upon it--only it is hardly fair to call them purple, for they are of many colours--the grey granite of their towering escarpments gleaming in the sun, the wide stretches of heather just showing a flush of lavender, the clumps of dark woodland clothing the glens, the broad spread of green pastures along their lower slopes, all combining in a picture not soon forgotten. For two or three miles we trotted on with this fairy scene stretched before us, and then we turned back into the hills, for we wanted to see the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis, the Stone of Conn the Son of Rush, set up on a neighbouring hilltop as a warning and a sign.

At least, Murray calls it the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis, but our driver had never heard of it, though he protested that he knew every foot of the neighbourhood. Perhaps he did not recognise the words as I p.r.o.nounced them, and as he could not read, it did no good for me to show them to him in the book. So I described it to him as well as I was able, never having seen it myself and having only the vaguest idea what it looked like, as a collection of great standing stones on top of a hill not far away; and still he had never heard of it. He was inclined to turn back to the lake, but I persisted; and finally he stopped a man who was driving a cart in to Sligo, and they talked together awhile in Irish, and then our driver turned up another road, not very hopefully.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SLIGO ABBEY FROM THE CLOISTER]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LEACHT-CON-MIC-RUIS]

It was a very hilly road, and our horse developed an alarming propensity to gallop--a propensity which the driver encouraged rather than strove to check, so that we felt, a good part of the time, as though we were riding to a fire at break-neck speed. The jaunting-car, it should be remembered, is a two-wheeled vehicle, and when the animal between the shafts takes it into his head to gallop, it describes violent arcs through the air. But we hung grimly on, and finally our driver drew up at a house near the roadside.

"'Tis here," he said.

We got down and looked around, but saw nothing that resembled the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis; and then a woman came out of the house, and we asked her if she knew where it was, and, wonder of wonders! she did.

Most wonderful of all, she had been to see it herself, so she knew where it was not vaguely but precisely, and she told us just how to go. It was on the hill back of the house, and she showed us the path which we must follow, and told us to look out for the rabbit-warrens, or we might sprain an ankle; and we set off through knee-deep heather up over the hill. It was quite a climb, and when we got to the top we saw no standing stones, and I wondered if we were going to miss them, after all; but we pressed on, and then, as we topped the next rise, my heart gave a leap--for there before us was the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis--the most remarkable stone enclosure I have seen anywhere, with the exception of Stonehenge--and Stonehenge is more remarkable only because its stones are larger.

In every other way--in extent and in complexity--this enclosure far outranks Stonehenge. Great upright rocks, lichened and weatherbeaten by the rains and winds of forty centuries, form a rude oblong, about a hundred and fifty feet in length by fifty feet across. It stretches east and west, and at the western end is a square projection like a vestibule, divided into two chambers; while at the eastern end are two smaller oblongs some ten or twelve feet square, and their doorways are two trilithons--that is to say, two great rocks set on end with another rock laid across them, just as at Stonehenge. I despair of trying to picture it in words, but I took two photographs, one of which is opposite the preceding page, and gives some idea of the appearance of this remarkable monument--at least of the trilithons. But it gives no idea of its shape or its extent. There was no vantage point from which I could get a photograph that would do that.

Its effect, here on this bleak hilltop, with other bleak hills all around as far as the eye could see, was tremendously impressive. n.o.body knows who built it, nor when it was built, nor why. That it was a shrine of some sort, a holy place, seems evident; and to me it seemed also evident that the holy of holies were those two little chambers back of the trilithic doorways; and it seemed to me also significant that they should be at the east end, nearest the sunrise, just as the altars in Gothic churches are, and that there should be a vestibule or entrance at the west end. Surely it was built with some reference to the sun; and I tried to picture the horde of panting men, who had, with incredible labour, hacked out these giant stones from some quarry now unknown, and pulled them up the steep hillside and somehow manoeuvred them into place. Some powerful motive must have actuated them, and I can think of none powerful enough except the motive of religion--the motive of building a great temple to the G.o.d they worshipped, in the hope of pleasing Him and winning His favour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RUIN ON THE Sh.o.r.e OF LOUGH GILL]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LAST FRAGMENT OF AN ANCIENT STRONGHOLD]

What strange rites, I wondered, had these old stones witnessed; what pageantries, what sacrifices, what incantations? Of all that ancient people there remains on earth not a single trace, except in such silent monuments of stone as this, so mighty the pa.s.sing centuries have been powerless to destroy them, more mysterious, more inscrutable than the Sphinx.

We tore ourselves away, at last, and went silently down through the heather, which was fairly swarming with rabbits; and we mounted our car and headed back toward the lake. We came out presently close beside the sh.o.r.e, and followed it around its upper end. Just there, out at the end of a point of land, stands the fragment of a tower, and our jarvey told us it was all that was left of the castle from which Dervorgilla eloped with Dermot MacMurrough--a tale already told by the little tailor of Limerick.

Of course I wanted a picture of it, and after much manoeuvring, I managed to get the one opposite this page, which I include only because of the beautiful j.a.panesy branch across one corner; for this wasn't Breffni's castle at all, as we were presently to find. A little farther on, and quite near the road, was another ruin, and a most imposing one, with drum towers at the four corners, and a dilapidated cottage hugging its wall; and I took a peep within the square enclosure, used now as a kind of barnyard. There were little turrets looking out over the lake, and a spiral stair in one corner, and mullioned windows and tall chimneys and yawning fireplaces; and it looked a most important place, but I have not been able to discover anything of its history. Then we went on again, with beautiful views of the lake at our right, and high on our left the flat-topped mountain called O'Rourke's Table, where, once upon a time, as told by the old ballad, "O'Rourke's n.o.ble Feast"

was spread:

O'Rourke's n.o.ble fare will ne'er be forgot By those who were there, or those who were not.

His revels to keep, we sup and we dine On seven score sheep, fat bullocks and swine,

and so on. It is, indeed, a table fit for such a celebration--a rock plateau with sheer escarpments of grey granite dropping away from it, and a close cover of purple heather for a cloth.

The road curved on along the lake; then turned away from it through a beautiful ravine; and then a sparkling river was dashing along at our right, and beyond it loomed the grey walls of a most extensive ruin; and then we dropped steeply down into the town of Dromahair, and stopped at a pretty inn to bait the horse.

I wanted to get closer to the ruins, and I asked if there was a bridge across the river, and was told that there was, just behind the hotel. So I made my way down to it, to find that the "bridge" was a slender plank, without handrail or guard, spanning some ugly-looking rapids. I looked at the plank, and I looked at the swirling water, and I looked at the grey ruins on the farther sh.o.r.e, and I hesitated for a long time; but I wasn't equal to it; and I turned away at last and made my way back to the village in the hope of finding some more stable bridge there.

The dominating feature of the village is not the workhouse or lunatic asylum, but an enormous mill, five stories high, built of black stone as hard as flint, to endure for all eternity, but forlorn and deserted; and while I was gazing at it and wondering where the money had come from to build it, a man came out of the house attached to it and spoke to me. He was an Englishman, he said, who was spending his vacation at Dromahair.

I asked him if there was any other bridge across the river except the slender plank, and he said there was not; and that it was characteristic of the Irish that there should not be, for a more careless, shiftless, happy-go-lucky race did not exist anywhere on earth.

I asked him about the mill, and he said that it was just another example of Irish inefficiency and wrong-headedness; that it had been erected at great expense and equipped with the most costly machinery to grind American grain, which was to be brought up Sligo Bay from the sea, and up the river and across the lake; and then, when all was ready, there was no grain to grind--or none, at least, which could be brought to the mill without prohibitive expense. Furthermore, the power was so poor and costly that it would have been impossible to operate the mill profitably even if there had been plenty of grain. But the owner of the mill, with some sort of dim faith in the power of Home Rule to produce the grain, was preparing to install a turbine to run the machinery, and had already started to build a big aqueduct to bring the water in from above the rapids.