The Charm Of Ireland Part 36

The great waves which roll right in from the Atlantic, and which proved too much for the galleons, have worn the cliffs into the most fantastic shapes; and a little way above the hotel there is a natural arch, called the Fairy Bridge, some twenty-five feet wide, which the water has cut in the rocks. When the tide comes in, it may be seen boiling and bubbling below the bridge, as in a witch's cauldron. Most beautiful of all is a wide yellow strand, a little farther on, with the rollers breaking far out and sweeping in, in white-topped majesty. We sat for a long time watching them, rolling in in long lines one behind the other; and then we scrambled down to the beach through the bare and shifting dunes. Seen thus from below, the black cliffs are most impressive.

We went on again, at last, over the upland toward a wide-flung camp, where the Fourth Inniskillens were getting their summer practice; and one of the men directed us how to find a cromlech and a cairn, which we knew were there somewhere, but which we were unable to see amid the innumerable ridges. From the cairn, which crowns a little eminence overlooking the Erne estuary, there was supposed to be, so our acquaintance said, an underground pa.s.sage to the other side of the river, where stands the old castle of the Ffolliotts; but as the estuary is at least a mile wide, I doubt if this ever existed except in the imagination of the country-side. The castle is there, however,--we could see its towers looming above the trees; but there was no way to get to it, that day, for the river lay between. I was determined to see it closer before we left the neighbourhood, because it was from that castle that the fair Colleen Bawn eloped with w.i.l.l.y Reilly.

Farther down the stream, a two-masted schooner lay wrecked beside a sand-bank, and across from us some soldiers were fishing in tiny boats, while a company was going through some manoeuvres on the sh.o.r.e, so far away they looked like a company of ants deploying this way and that. For a long time we watched them; then we bade our companion good-bye, and went slowly back through the bracken, where Betty picked a great bouquet of primroses and violets and blue-bells; and we stumbled upon another ancient burial-place; and stopped at the ruins of an old church; and got back finally to the hotel to find the golf-links full of industrious players.

Betty got into talk with the owner of a s.h.a.ggy English sheep-dog--s.h.a.ggy clear to its feet, and looking for all the world like Nana, the accomplished nurse of the Darling children; and I went on down to the beach to watch the tide come in. It was swirling threateningly about the black rocks; and out at the farthest point of them I found a man sitting. He invited me to sit down beside him, and we fell into talk. He was a handsome old fellow, a barrister from Dublin, who had come clear across Ireland (which isn't as far as it sounds) to get a breath of sea air. There was no air like the Bundoran air, he said, and two or three days of it did him a world of good. And then we began to talk about Ireland; and I was guilty of the somewhat ba.n.a.l remark that, before Ireland could make any real progress, life there would have to be made attractive enough to keep her young people at home, for she could never hope to get ahead as long as her best blood was drained away from her.

He pooh-poohed the idea.

"The best advice you can give any Irish man or Irish girl," he said, "is to leave the country the first chance they get; and that will always be good advice, because there will never be anything here for them to do. All this talk about the revival of industry is foolish. You can't revive what's dead; and industry here has been dead for three hundred years. Besides this is an agricultural country, and it will never be anything else; and over wide stretches of it, grazing pays better than tillage will ever do, so grazing there will be. Home Rule will make no difference--how can it? I suppose we're going to get it, and I'll be glad to see it come, if only to stop this ceaseless agitation; but as for its reviving any industries, or increasing wages, or making Ireland a place for ambitious young people to live in--I don't believe it."

"You don't foresee a roseate future, then?"

"Not for Ireland. All these schemes for land purchase and new cottages and pensions and so on may make life here a little more comfortable than it has been; but this country has been in a lethargy for centuries, and it will never be shaken off. The Irish have no ambition; they just live along from day to day without any thought for the future; and they will always be like that. It's their nature."

He would doubtless have said more to the same effect, for he was very much in earnest, but the rising tide drove us in, and I did not see him again.

The picturesque old town of Ballyshannon is only a few miles from Bundoran, and we took train for it next morning, after a last stroll along the cliffs and a look at the "rock-pool," a treasure-house of fossils and marine growths of every kind. First of all, we wanted to see the Colleen Bawn castle, so we got a car at the station, and set out.

Ballyshannon, after the fashion of Irish towns, is built on the side of a hill, and no horse unaccustomed to mountaineering could have got up the street which leads from the river; but our horse had been reared in the town, so he managed to scramble up; and then we turned to the left and followed along the river to the falls--a dashing ma.s.s of spray, where the whole body of water which rushes down from Lough Erne sweeps roaring over a cliff some thirty feet high. Two or three miles along country roads brought us to a gate; and here our driver, looking a little anxious, had a short conference with a woman who lived in a neat labourer's cottage near by; and finally he opened the gate and drove through.

Half a mile along this lane brought us to another gate; and there our driver stopped, and showed us the castle just ahead, and said that was all the farther he could go, and that we would have to walk the rest of the way. There was a certain constraint in his manner which I did not understand till afterwards.

We went on through the gate, and across what had once been the demesne, but had been swept bare of trees, and was now divided between a meadow and a stable-yard, and in a few minutes we stood before the castle which was the scene of a romance very dear to Irish hearts. It is not really a castle, but merely a tall and ugly house, with three bays and a low terrace in front, and it is not very old, since it dates only from 1739, when it was built as the home of the Ffolliotts, a powerful English family into whose hands this whole neighbourhood had fallen. The Ffolliotts, of course, were Protestants, and w.i.l.l.y Reilly was a Catholic; but Helen Ffolliott was so ill-advised as to fall in love with him, and one night packed up her jewels and eloped. A hue and cry was raised after them, and they were soon captured, and Reilly was thrown into Sligo jail, and it looked for a while as though he might be "stretched," for all this happened about 1745, when the penal laws against Catholics were most severe. But the fair Helen came to the rescue, and swore at the trial that she had been the leader in the affair, not Reilly, and so he escaped with a sentence of banishment.

What happened thereafter history does not state; but Will Carleton, who wove a poor romance about the affair, manages to reunite the lovers in the end.

It is not to be wondered at that Reilly became a popular hero. Here was a young and handsome Catholic, who, in the most daring way, had captured the heart of a great Protestant heiress, the daughter of a persecutor of Catholics, and, in addition, a girl so lovely that she was the toast of the whole country-side. The ballad which celebrated the affair had an immense vogue. It is a real ballad, rough and halting, but rudely eloquent. You remember how it starts:

"Oh! rise up, w.i.l.l.y Reilly, and come alongst with me, I mean for to go with you and leave this countrie, To leave my father's dwelling, his houses and fine lands;"

And away goes w.i.l.l.y Reilly and his dear Colleen Bawn.

In the ballad, the family is called Folliard, which is the way the name is still p.r.o.nounced in the neighbourhood; but the old mansion is now occupied by a tenant. And pretty soon we understood our jarvey's uneasiness, for first a man came to the front door and looked at us, and then went quickly in again; and then an old woman opened the side door, and glared at us, and when we asked if we might have a glimpse of the interior, slammed the door in our faces. I must give her credit, however, for restraining a particularly savage-looking dog eager to be at us. But it was evident we weren't wanted there, for even the turkey gobbler resented our visit, and strutted fiercely about us, trying to scare us out. So we went back to the car, and our jarvey breathed a sigh of relief when he saw us.

"Sure, I didn't know whether you'd come back alive or not," he said.

"The master is away from home the day, and the woman that does work for him wouldn't be above settin' the dog on you. But it's all right, glory be to G.o.d," and he climbed up to his box and drove us back to Ballyshannon.

We left our luggage at the station of the Donegal narrow-gauge railway, and then walked down into the town. We found it a quaint place, with the friendliest of people; and we were fortunate in discovering a clean inn on the main street, where we had the nicest of lunches, after which we set off to see the abbey.

The road to the abbey lies through a deep, romantic dell, at the bottom of which we found a grain mill working, its great wheel turned by the brook which rushes through the glen; and a little farther on were four or five other mills, all fallen to decay, their wheels mere skeletons, and their machinery red with rust. Just beyond, a little higher up the hill, stands all that is left of the abbey, a few shattered fragments of the old walls. Yet the abbey was, in its day, a great foundation, patronised by the mighty Prince of Tyrconnell, and taking its name of a.s.saroe from the falls in the river--Eas Aedha Ruaidh, the Waterfall of Red Hugh, who was High King of Erin about three centuries before Christ, and who was swept over the falls and drowned while trying to cross the ford above them. A boy who played about the ruins described them, when he grew to manhood, in a musical stanza:

Grey, grey is Abbey a.s.saroe, by Ballyshanny town, It has neither door nor window, the walls are broken down; The carven stones lie scattered in briars and nettle-bed; The only feet are those that come at burial of the dead.

A little rocky rivulet runs murmuring to the tide, Singing a song of ancient days, in sorrow, not in pride; The bore-tree and the lightsome ash across the portal grow, And heaven itself is now the roof of Abbey a.s.saroe.

We had heard certain legends of underground pa.s.sages, which could still be explored, and we asked an old man who was cutting gra.s.s in the graveyard if he knew anything about them, and he said that he did not.

We remarked that it was a hard task cutting the gra.s.s around the gravestones; and he said it was so, and would not be worth doing but that the gra.s.s was given to him for the cutting; but the guardians were unreasonable men who wanted it cut long before it was ready--it ought really to stand a week longer, now, but them ones would not wait!

We went back past the mill, and met a man in flour-besprinkled clothes, who bade us good-day and stopped to talk; and it proved to be the miller. He invited us in to see the mill, which was grinding Russian corn, very red and hard, into yellow meal which was used for feeding cattle. We tried to tell him something of the delights of corn-bread and griddle-cakes, but he was plainly sceptical.

He was an Ulster man, and had been running the mill for three years, but he said it was a hard struggle to make both ends meet. If it was not that his power cost him nothing, he would have had to give it up long ago. Power apart, I could imagine no poorer place for a mill, for it was at least two miles from the railway, and the road into the hollow was so steep that it must be a terrific struggle to get a loaded wagon into or out of it. There had been a number of mills in the neighbourhood at one time, but they had all given up the struggle long ago, except one flour mill, which had somehow managed to survive.

We told him that we had seen the ruins of some of them as we went to the abbey.

"Have you been to the abbey?" he asked. "Did you see the underground pa.s.sages?"

"Are there really some?"

"Come along, and I'll show you."

We protested that we didn't want him to leave his work, but he said the mill could take care of itself for awhile; and we started off together up the hill, through a gate to the right, and then knee-deep through the gra.s.s to the brook which ran at the bottom of the ravine, under the walls of the monastery. And there, sure enough, was the mouth of a pa.s.sage cut in the solid rock of the bank. It was about six feet high by three wide, and ran in about a hundred feet, for all the world like the entrance to a mine. How much farther it extended I don't know, for an iron gate had been put across it to keep out explorers; but there can be no doubt that, at one time, it connected with the abbey itself, and formed a secret means of ingress and egress, which was no doubt often very convenient.

And then our guide showed us something else, which was far more interesting. In the penal days, Catholic priests were forbidden to celebrate Ma.s.s under the severest penalties; but nevertheless they managed to hold a service now and then in some out of the way place, carefully concealed, with sentries posted all about to guard against surprise. A short distance down stream from the entrance to the secret pa.s.sage was a shallow cave in the cliff, so overhung with ivy that it could scarcely be seen, and here, many times, the Catholics of the neighbourhood had gathered at word that a priest would celebrate Ma.s.s.

On the heights all about lookouts would be placed, and then the men and women would kneel before the mouth of the little cave and take part in the sacrament.

At the back of the cave, the shelf of rock which served as the altar still remains, and at one side of it is a rude piscina--a basin hollowed in the rock, with a small hole in the bottom to drain it; and it was here the vessels used in the celebration of the Ma.s.s were washed, after the service was over. I wanted mightily to get a picture of this cave, but it had started to shower, and though I got under the umbrella and made an exposure, the picture was a failure.

We bade our guide good-bye, with many thanks for his kindness, and went slowly back along the highroad toward Ballyshannon; and presently from a tiny cottage beside the road two old women issued and greeted us with great cordiality. They were clean and neatly dressed, and the younger one, who did most of the talking, seemed to be quite unusually interested in our private history and solicitous for our welfare, and the blarney with which her tongue plastered us was the most finished I have ever listened to. We thanked her for her good wishes, and were about to go on, much pleased at this new demonstration of Irish cordiality, when we had a rude awakening.

"Ah, your honour," she said, "would you not be giving me something for my poor sister here? You see she is all twisted with rheumatism, and can scarcely walk, and the medicine do be costing so much that she often must go without it. Just a small coin, G.o.d bless ye."

I didn't want to give her anything, for I suspected that she made a practice of waylaying pa.s.sers-by and begging from them; and then I looked at the older woman, who was standing by with her hands crossed before her, and I saw how the fingers were twisted and withered and how the face was drawn with pain--so I compromised by dropping sixpence into the outstretched hand.

"If your honour would only be makin' it eightpence now," the woman said quickly; "we can get three bottles of castor-oil for eightpence--"

But the other woman stopped her.

"No, no," she protested; "take shame to yourself for askin' the kind gentleman for more. We thank your honour, and G.o.d bless ye, and may He bring ye safe home."

And the other woman joined in the blessings too, and they continued to bless us, considerably to our embarra.s.sment, until we were out of ear-shot.

Betty had had enough of Ballyshannon; besides, the showers were coming with increasing force and frequency; so she elected to go back to the railway station and rest, while I wandered about for a last look at the town. And now, I suppose, I shall have to say a word about its history.

All this country to the north of Lough Erne is Tyrone--Tir Owen, the Province of Owen--and was once a great princ.i.p.ality, which stretched eastward clear to the sh.o.r.e of the Channel about Belfast. Northwest of it, answering roughly to the present county of Donegal, was Tyrconnell--Tir Connell, the Province of Connell; and Connell and Owen were brothers, sons of Nial of the Nine Hostages, who was King of Ireland from 379 to 405, and whose eight sons cut Ireland up between them into the princ.i.p.alities which were, in time, by their own internecine warfare, to make Ireland incapable of defending herself against the invader. Saint Patrick, about 450, found Connell in his castle on Lough Erne and baptised him; and then he journeyed north to Owen's great fortress, which we shall see before long on a hill overlooking Lough Sw.i.l.l.y, and baptised him.

Five centuries later, when Brian Boru had brought all Ireland to acknowledge his kingship, he decreed that every family should take a surname from some distinguished ancestor, and so began the era of the O's and the Macs. The two great clans of Tyrone and Tyrconnell chose the names of O'Neill and O'Donnell, and the river Erne was the frontier of the O'Donnell domain. There was a ford here at Ballyshannon, and so, of course, a castle to guard it, and many were the herds of lifted cattle which the O'Donnells, sallying south into Sligo, drove back before them into Donegal. Cattle was the princ.i.p.al form of property in those old days--about the only kind, at least, that could be stolen--and so it was always cattle that the raiders went after.

The English brought a great force against the place in 1597, and for three days besieged the castle and tried unavailingly to carry it by a.s.sault; and then the O'Donnell clans poured down from the hills, and the English, seeing themselves trapped, tried to cross the river at the ford just above the falls; and the strongest managed to get across, but the women and the wounded and the weak were swept away.

There is no trace remaining of the castle, but just below the graceful bridge of stone which crosses the river is the ford over which the English poured that day, and an ugly ford it is, for the water runs deep and strong, quickening at its lower edge into the rapids above the falls. From the centre of this bridge, some twenty-five years ago, the ashes of one of Ireland's truest poets were scattered on the swift, smooth-running water and carried down to the sea, and a tablet marks the spot:

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM A Native of This Town Born 1824; died 1889.

Here once he roved, a happy boy, Along the winding banks of Erne, And now, please G.o.d, with finer joy, A fairer world his eyes discern.

It is certainly a halting quatrain, quite unworthy the immortality of marble. A couplet from Allingham's own poem in praise of his birthplace would have been far more fitting; but I suppose that the lines on the tablet were composed by some local dignitary, and that n.o.body dared tell him how bad they were. I know of no more graceful tribute to any town than Allingham paid to Ballyshannon in his "Winding Banks of Erne." The first stanza gives a savour of its quality:

Adieu to Ballyshanny, where I was bred and born; Go where I may, I'll think of you, as sure as night and morn: The kindly spot, the friendly town, where everyone is known, And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own; There's not a house or window, there's not a field or hill, But east or west, in foreign lands, I'll recollect them still; I leave my warm heart with you, though my back I'm forced to turn-- Adieu to Ballyshanny, and the winding banks of Erne.