The Charm Of Ireland Part 35

The rapids are just above the mill, and are quite imposing; and there, just beyond them, is the abbey. I was near enough to see it fairly well, though not, of course, in detail as I should have liked to do; but I comforted myself with the thought that it is a comparatively modern one, dating from the sixteenth century, when Margaret, the wife of another O'Rourke, having, perhaps, like Dervorgilla, done something she regretted, built it for the Franciscans.

I had another comfort, too; for I asked the Englishman if he had seen the Leacht-Con-Mic-Ruis; and he said that he had been hunting for it for a week, but hadn't been able to find it, as none of the people thereabouts seemed to know where it was; and he was astonished when I told him that we had found it, and commented with envy upon the energy of Americans. He asked me where it was, and I told him as nearly as I could; and then he wanted me to come in and have tea, and was for sending up to the hotel for Betty; but I had to decline that invitation.

I think he was lonely and glad to find some one to talk to, for he was unusually expansive for an Englishman; and he said he would send his car in to Sligo after us, if we would come out next day; but I told him we were going on to Bundoran.

And then I left him and went back up the hill to the ivy-covered ruin which was really the castle of Tiernan O'Rourke. It stands on the edge of the hill overlooking the valley--the same valley which lay smiling before him that evening he came back from his pilgrimage to Lough Derg; and up there was the battlement from which no light burned. It was battered down in the sixteenth century, in some obscure fight, and all that is left of the castle now is the sh.e.l.l of its walls.

I am afraid Tom Moore, as well as O'Connell, journeyman tailor, has invested the story with a glamour which did not belong to it; for Tiernan O'Rourke was a one-eyed bandit who had sacked the abbey of Clonard a few years before, and who certainly had need of pilgrimages to shrive him from his sins; and Dervorgilla, so far from being a "young false one," was forty-two years old; and MacMurrough took care to carry off, not only the lady's person, but all her movable property, and most of her husband's, as well.

The clouds were gathering in the west as we set out from Dromahair, and presently the rain began to slant down, slowly and softly at first, and then in a regular torrent. I do not know when I have seen it rain harder; but we were soon fixed for it and didn't mind. Dromahair is about twelve miles from Sligo, and they are hilly miles, so we knew that we had at least three hours of this wet work ahead of us; but the people working in the fields or plodding along the road paid no attention to the rain, so why should we? In fact, most of them, though without any sort of protection, seemed to be quite unconscious that it was raining at all.

And then, just when the rain was hardest, I saw to the left a circle of stones crowning a little hill, and I knew it was a cashel. A cashel, as I have explained already, is a fort made of stones, just as a rath is a fort made of earth, both being in the form of a circle; and I knew I could get pictures of raths without much difficulty, but I didn't know when I would see another cashel; so I made the driver stop, and got my camera out of the well, and started off through a field to get a picture of this one, not heeding Betty's anxious inquiry if I had suddenly gone mad.

That field into which I plunged was thigh-deep with dripping gra.s.s, and I didn't realise how wet it was until I was well into it, and then there was nothing to do but go on. So I scrambled up the hill and took two pictures, shielding my lens, as well as I could, against the driving rain; and I hadn't any idea that the pictures would be good ones, but they were, and one of them is opposite the next page.

There was no vantage point from which I could take a picture which would show the circular shape of the cashel; but it had been built in a perfect circle about sixty feet in diameter. It was on top of a steep hillock, of which it occupied nearly the whole summit. The walls, pierced only by a single narrow entrance, were about six feet high, and four or five feet thick, and the lower stones were very ma.s.sive, as the picture shows. They had been roughly dressed and laid without mortar--the ancient Irish knew nothing of mortar, apparently, for all these old stone circles are uncemented; but they had been so nicely fitted that they were still in place after many centuries, though the clambering ivy was doing its best to pull them down.

Right in the middle of the circle was a great stone slab, flush with the ground. The only use I could imagine for it was as a base for a shrine or altar; but as I went down to the road again, an old man came out of a little house to talk, and he said that some antiquarians from Sligo, who believed the slab covered the entrance to a secret pa.s.sage, had taken it up and found beneath it, not a pa.s.sage, but a beautifully fitted pavement; and that the parish priest, investigating on his own account, had dug up some wood ashes, and so decided that this was the place where the fire was built.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CASHEL NEAR DROMAHAIR]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. PATRICK'S HOLY WELL]

"But no one knows," my informant rambled on. "Maybe some day some wise man like yourself will be able to tell us what it was for."

I remarked that the man who did so would have to be far wiser than I; but he protested that he knew a wise man when he saw one; and I suspect that there is a blarney stone in some of these ruins, which the general public doesn't know about.

I was sorry it was raining, for there was another cashel on a hill to the right, and a great rath a little farther off, and I should have liked to explore both of them; but really the weather was too bad, so I went back reluctantly to the car, which our jarvey had driven close under a clump of trees for shelter, and we were soon jogging contentedly on again.

The valley which slopes down here to Lough Gill seems very fertile, and the little farms have a more prosperous look than is usual in Ireland.

This is partly due to the fact that a number of neat labourers' cottages have been built to replace the usual tumbledown hovels, and still more are going up.

This erection of labourers' cottages, which is going on to-day all over Ireland, seems to me almost as important as land purchase. If there is any cla.s.s of Irish more deserving of pity than another, it is the agricultural labourer. He is worse off than the tenants; he has no land, however poor, to cultivate, except perhaps a tiny patch in front of his door; he has no means of livelihood except the unskilled labour of his hands; if he can manage to earn ten shillings a week he is unusually fortunate. In most cases, his average income throughout the year will be scarcely half that. So naturally the labourers and their families live in the most wretched of all the wretched hovels, in want, discomfort and peril of disease.

It is for the relief of these unfortunate people that the new houses are being built. They are very plain; but they have large windows which can be opened, and stone floors which can be cleaned, and tight slate roofs, and sanitary outbuildings; and each of them has a half acre or so of garden, where vegetables enough to support the family can be raised during the summer; and they rent for from two to three shillings a week--just enough to pay interest on the amount invested in the house, with a small sinking fund for upkeep and repairs. The money needed is borrowed from the government by the county council, and the council has control of the houses, decides where they shall be built, what rent shall be asked for them, and exercises a general supervision over the tenants.

The same thing is being done in the towns, where the insanitary dwellings of the poorer artisans are being replaced by comfortable houses, rented at a very low rate. Nearly a hundred thousand of these cottages have been built within the past ten years, replacing as many insanitary shacks, which, for the most part, have been torn down. The shacks were much more picturesque, but n.o.body regrets them. And the severely utilitarian aspect of the new dwellings will no doubt soon be masked with vines and climbing roses.

It was such cottages as this, then, that gave the valley sloping down to Lough Gill an unusually prosperous appearance, and many more were in course of erection throughout the neighbourhood. We padded past them, along the road above the lake, between beautiful hedgerows, gay with climbing roses; and then we turned away through a luxuriant wood, where the bracken was almost waist-high and the trees were draped with moss and ferns, just as we had seen them along the southern coast. And then we pa.s.sed through a gate and jolted down a very rough and narrow lane; and finally our driver stopped at the edge of a wood, and pointed to a path running away under the trees.

"'Tis the path to St. Patrick's holy well," he said; and we clambered down, and made our way under the trees and up the hillside, and there before us was the well.

It is a lively spring, which bubbles up from the ground in considerable volume, fills a deep basin, and then sparkles away down into the valley.

A wall has been built around it, with an opening on one side, and steps by which one may descend and drink of the magic water. Just above it on the hillside is a shrine, something like the one we had seen at St.

Senan's well--really an altar, where, I suppose, Ma.s.s may be celebrated; and it was crowded with figurines of the Virgin and small crucifixes and rosaries and sacred pictures, and the bushes all about were tied with rags and strings and other tokens which the pilgrims to the shrine had left behind.

This well is a very famous one, and the number of pilgrims who come to it prove how general is the belief in its powers. It is really a belief in the power of prayer, for prayer is always necessary. I tried to get a picture of the well and the shrine above it, but it was very dark under the trees, and there was no place where I could rest my camera for a time exposure; but the photograph opposite page 408, is better than I had any reason to expect.

We found that the rain had ceased when we came out from under the trees, and we jogged happily back to the highroad and on towards Sligo; and presently far ahead the bay opened out, rimmed by romantic hills, green nearly to the summit, and then culminating in steep escarpments of grey rock; and beneath us in the valley lay the roofs and spires of the town, and we were soon rattling through its streets.

We went back to the hotel to change out of our wet things and get a cup of hot chocolate; and then we took a last stroll about the streets, and stopped to see the church of St. John, said to be older than the abbey, but recently restored and now used by a Church of Ireland congregation.

The graveyard about it is full of interesting tombs, and the street it fronts is one of the most romantic in the town. Indeed, the whole town is interesting; its greatest drawback for the visitor being the beggars who infest it, and who are nearly as pertinacious as those at Killarney.

We went back to the hotel, at last, and told the proprietor that we were going to Bundoran by the four o'clock train.

"You will make a great mistake," he protested, "to leave Sligo without going around Lough Gill."

It was then I had my revenge.

"We have been around Lough Gill," I explained sweetly. "That's where we were this morning."

It is no easy task to travel along the west coast of Ireland. The great bays which indent it, running far inland, and the mountain ranges which tower one behind the other, make it impossible to follow anything like a straight line. The only thing to do is to zig-zag around them. Our journey, that afternoon, was a striking example of this. Bundoran lies twenty-two miles north along the coast from Sligo; but to get there by rail, it was necessary to travel ninety-two--forty-eight miles north-eastward to Enniskillen, and then forty-four miles westward to the coast again.

The road to Enniskillen parallels Lough Gill, though it is so hemmed in by hills that we caught no glimpse of the water; and then proceeds across a dreary bog, climbing up and up with a wide valley opening to the south; and then runs into woodland and even orchards--the first, I think, that we had seen in Ireland; and then drops down toward Enniskillen, whose name lives in English history as that of one of the most famous of its regiments. It is said to be a pretty town, nestling between two lakes and entirely water-girt; but we did not stop to see it.

We changed instead to the Bundoran line, which runs along the northern sh.o.r.e of Lough Erne; and we found the train crowded with people, on their way to spend the week-end at that famous resort; at least so we supposed, but when we got to Pettigoe, there was a crowd on the platform, waving flags and shouting, and as the train stopped somebody set off a series of bombs; and most of the pa.s.sengers piled out of the train to take part in the celebration; and then we saw a man and woman standing rather sheepishly in front of another man, who was evidently delivering an address of welcome. We asked the guard what it was all about, and he said that the citizens of Pettigoe were welcoming home a fellow-townsman who had gone to Australia and won a fortune and also a wife--or perhaps I should put it the other way around--and had come back to Pettigoe to live.

I was half-inclined to get off there myself, in order to visit St.

Patrick's Purgatory, a famous place of pilgrimage on an island in Lough Derg, five miles away; but from the map it looked as though it would be possible to drive over from Donegal, which would be much more convenient. I found out afterwards that there is a mountain range between Donegal and Lough Derg, and no direct road over it; so we did not get to visit the island where, so legend says, St. Patrick had a vision of purgatory, and which became so celebrated that pilgrims flocked to it from all over Europe. The time prescribed for the ceremonies is from the first of June to the middle of August, and the island is often so crowded with penitents performing the rounds that visitors are not permitted to land.

Our train moved on, after the address of welcome was concluded, and we could see the blue waters of Lough Erne stretching away to the south, while westward the sun was setting in a glory of crimson clouds; and presently the broad estuary of the Erne opened below us, hemmed in with high banks of yellow sand; and then we were at Bundoran--a bathing resort, consisting of a single street of boarding-houses facing the sea; and a little farther on, a great hotel, built on a projecting point of the cliffs. As we paused at its door to look about us, we realised that we had come very far indeed from primitive Connemara, for the first thing which met our eyes was a huge sign:

BEWARE OF GOLF b.a.l.l.s!

CHAPTER XXIV

THE WINING BANKS OF ERNE

THE weather G.o.d was certainly good to us in Ireland. The occasional showers and two or three heavy downpours were merely short interludes, and by no means unpleasant ones, in the long succession of sweetly beautiful days which I remember when I run my mind back over those delightful weeks. That day at Bundoran was one of them, soft and fragrant and altogether perfect.

There is nothing Irish about Bundoran except its climate--not, at least, if one stays at the hotel which has been built there by the Great Northern Railroad, and which is one of the most satisfactory hotels I was ever in. And perhaps it would be as well to say a word here about Irish hotels.

The small, friendly inn, which is one of the delights of European travel, does not exist in Ireland; or, if it does, it is so carelessly managed that it is not endurable. Commercial hotels are also apt to be inferior. The only hotels that are sure to be pleasant and satisfactory are the large ones which cater to tourist traffic. In the more important towns, of course, there is never any difficulty in finding a good hotel; in the smaller towns, the only safe rule is to go to the best in the place, and if there is one managed by the railway, that is usually the one to choose.

Some years ago, the Irish railways realised that the surest way to encourage tourist traffic in the west and south was to provide attractive hotel accommodations, and they set about doing this with the result that the traveller in Ireland is now well provided for. Such hotels as those at Bundoran, Recess and Parknasilla--and there are many others like them, handsome buildings, splendidly equipped, set in the midst of beautiful surroundings--leave nothing to be desired. Nor are their rates excessive, considering the excellent service they offer, averaging a little over three dollars a day. In the smaller towns, the tariff is considerably less than this, though the service is almost as good. In places where the railroad does not itself own or manage a hotel, it usually sees to it that at least one under private management is kept up to a satisfactory standard. So no one wishing to explore Ireland need hesitate on account of the hotels. They will be found, with a few exceptions, surprisingly good.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COAST AT BUNDORAN]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HOME OF "COLLEEN BAWN"]

The hotel at Bundoran is set close to the edge of the scarred and weather-beaten cliffs, which look right out over the Atlantic toward America. It was along the top of these cliffs that we set out, that Sunday morning, and below us lay the strand where three galleons of the Spanish Armada went to pieces, as they were staggering homewards from the battle in the Channel. From time to time, an effort is made to find these "treasure ships," but, though cannon and anchors and such-like gear have been recovered, no one as yet has found any treasure.