The Charm Of Ireland Part 38

Just when the castle was built no one knows, but it was thoroughly restored and largely added to by Sir Basil Brooke, to whom it was granted after the confiscation in 1610, when the power of the O'Donnells was finally broken. Red Hugh was really the last of the line, and his short life of twenty-eight years was more crowded with adventure than that of most heroes of romance.

He was the son of Hugh O'Donnell, head of the clan, and of a high-spirited daughter of the Lord of the Isles, Innen Dhu Mac Donnell, whom Hugh of the Red Hair resembled in more ways than one. He was kidnapped by the English when only thirteen, and taken to Dublin and imprisoned in the castle there, as a hostage for his father's good behaviour. A year later, he managed to escape; was recaptured, escaped again; and, by remarkable cunning and daring, eluded the pursuers who were close after him, and got through to Donegal.

He arrived there to find a great force of English camped about the place; but, half dead with exposure as he was, he mustered a force of his clansmen, marched on the English and put them to rout--a good beginning for a boy of fourteen. From that time forward, he was the firebrand which kept all Ireland alight against the invaders; but at last, as has happened so frequently in Irish history, a traitor in his own camp overthrew him--his cousin and brother-in-law, Nial Garv the Fierce, who, being older than Hugh, thought that he should have had the O'Donnellship and been crowned at the Rock of Doon, and so grew jealous of the red haired lad, and ended by going over to the English.

There was red battle between them after that, and the English were treated to the pleasant spectacle of Irishmen slaying each other; but Hugh was called away to Kinsale to join the Spaniards, stopping at Holy Cross on the way, as we have seen, for the Abbot's blessing, and then going on to a ruinous defeat. He went to Spain, after that, to plead for more help, and died there, of poison it is said, at the age of twenty-eight, and lies buried at Valladolid.

His brother, Rory O'Donnell, was recognised by the English and made Earl of Tyrconnell, but at the end of a year or two he found himself so surrounded with intrigue that, in fear for his life, he gathered up such of his belongings as he could and fled the country. O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, fled with him, and this "flight of the earls" was the end of Irish power in the north of Ireland, for their estates were declared forfeit, and divided among adherents of the English court. Nial Garv, who had contributed so much to the O'Donnells' overthrow, put in a claim for their estates, but was arrested and sent to the Tower of London and left to rot there till he died. Such was the end of Donegal as the seat of a Celtic Princedom, for the new prince was an Englishman, Sir Basil Brooke.

It is his imprint you will see upon the castle as it exists to-day--particularly in the great sculptured chimney-piece which stands in what was once the banqueting hall, and which is a marvel of elaborate, though not very finished, carving. Brooke was a Catholic and a royalist, a supporter of Charles I, and after the fall of that unlucky monarch, was imprisoned in the Tower and his estate declared forfeited to the Parliament. The old castle, now the property of the Earl of Arran, fell gradually to ruin, until to-day only the sh.e.l.l remains.

Next to the chimney-piece, the most interesting feature of the interior is the vaulting of the lower rooms, which are lighted only by narrow slits like loopholes. This vaulting is made of flat stones, an inch or two in thickness, set on edge, and though rough enough, is as firm to-day as the day it was put in place.

As we came out of the grounds, we were accosted by an old man with a flowing white beard, who suggested that we visit his tweed depot, just across the street, and see for ourselves what Donegal tweeds really were. He was so pleasant about it that we couldn't refuse; and to say that we were astonished when we stepped inside his shop would be putting it mildly, for there, in that village of twelve hundred people, was the largest stock of tweeds and other Irish weaves that I have ever seen.

The place was fairly jammed with great rolls of cloth; and when we said we weren't especially interested in tweeds, but might be in a steamer-rug, he led us up to a wide balcony and produced rug after rug; beautiful rugs, soft and thick, pure wool in ever fibre. Of course we succ.u.mbed!

Mr. Timony, for such was the old man's name, was very proud of his shop, as he had a right to be, and of his American custom. He told us that President Woodrow Wilson and William Randolph Hearst had both been among his visitors, and he evidently considered them equally distinguished!

It had begun to shower again by the time we tore ourselves away from Mr.

Timony, and Betty elected to return to the hotel; but I wanted to see the ruins of the old abbey, a little way down the river, and walked out to it. There is scarcely more left of it than there is of a.s.saroe--just some fragments of ivy-clad wall standing in the midst of a graveyard, as may be seen from the picture opposite page 438. The graveyard is still used, and when I got there, I found three men trying to decide on the site for a grave, while the diggers stood by, with their long-handled spades, waiting the word to begin. They had a hard time finding a place, for the graveyard is crowded, like most Irish ones, and they wandered about from place to place for quite a while.

That so little is left of the abbey is due to the fact that in 1601, Nial Garv took possession of the place, and Red Hugh besieged him there, and in some way Garv's store of gunpowder exploded and tore the buildings to pieces. All of which is told in that priceless volume of Irish history which was written here, the "Annals of the Four Masters,"

a book of eleven hundred quarto pages, which, by some miracle of luck, has been preserved. The "four masters" were four monks of the abbey, and it is largely to their labours we owe what history we have of the times in which they lived.

There are a few arches of the cloisters still standing, and they resemble those at Sligo not only in shape and character, but also in the fact that repeated burials have raised the ground about them many feet above its ancient level, so that what was once a lofty arched doorway can now be pa.s.sed only by stooping low. Hugh Roe O'Donnell and his wife, Fingalla, who founded the monastery for the Franciscans in 1474, are said to be buried here, but I did not find their graves. There is also a legend that castle and abbey were at one time connected by a secret pa.s.sage, but I scarcely believe it, for they are a long way apart.

The rain was sheeting down in earnest when I finally left the place, but the gravediggers were bending to their task, quite oblivious of the downpour.

We bade good-bye to Donegal that afternoon, and took train for Londonderry and the "Black North." And it was not long before we realised that we had turned our backs upon the Ireland of the Irish and entered the Ireland of the English and the Scotch--a very different country!

Just outside of Donegal, we witnessed one of those leave-takings, which have occurred a million times in Ireland during the past fifty years. As the train stopped at a little station, we saw that the platform was crowded, and then we perceived the cause. A boy and two girls, some seventeen or eighteen years old, were setting out for Derry to take ship for America, and their relatives and friends had come down to see them off. There were tears in every eye, and if blessings have any virtue, enough were showered on that trio that afternoon to see them safely through life.

The guard came along presently, and hustled them into the compartment ahead of ours--he had seen such scenes a hundred times, I suppose, and had long since ceased to be impressed by them--and then the three children hung out of the door and took a last look at their people; and then the engine whistled and the train started slowly, and one man, his face working convulsively, began to run along beside it, then suddenly recollected himself, and stopped with a jerk.

The whole country-side must have known that the three were going, for every house for miles had a group of men and women out to wave at them as the train pa.s.sed; and the exiles waved and waved back, and leaned out and gazed at the country they were leaving, as though to impress its every feature on their minds.

And indeed it is a beautiful country, for the road follows the valley of the Eask, and presently Lough Eask opened before us, lying in a deep basin at the foot of lofty hills--such hills as cover the whole of Donegal and make it one of the most picturesque of Irish counties.

Beyond the lake, the line traverses one of the wildest valleys we had seen in Ireland, the Gap of Barnesmore--a bleak, rock-strewn defile, with a little stream running at the bottom and the post-road following its windings; but the railway line has been laid, most perilously it seemed, right along the face of the mountain. There were evidences of land-slips here and there, and it was plain that great boulders were always rolling down, so I should fancy that a sharp watch has to be kept on those five miles of road-bed. But we got across without accident, and the views out over the valley and the Donegal mountains were superb--I only wish we had had time to explore them more thoroughly.

Just beyond the gap, the line pa.s.ses Lough Mourne, a melancholy little lake set in a framework of bleak hills, and then runs on across a still bleaker moor; but gradually, as the hills are left behind, the character of the country changes, the houses become more numerous, the fields larger and less stony, one sees an orchard here and there--and then, quite suddenly, the whole landscape becomes prosperous and pastoral, and we caught our first glimpse of wide fields covered with a light and vivid green, which we knew was the green of flax. After that, there was no time, until we left Ireland, that this new and lovely tint was not among the other tints of whatever landscape we might be looking at.

We paused for a moment at the prosperous little town of Stranorlar, and then went on northwards, past one village after another, along the valley of the Finn, to Strabane--like Leenane, p.r.o.nounced to rhyme with "fan." We had an hour or two to wait here, so we walked up into the town, and had lunch at a pleasant inn, and then took a look about the place; and I think it was then we began to realise that the picturesque part of Ireland was behind us. Certainly there is nothing picturesque about Strabane, although it resembles most other Irish towns in having a huge workhouse and jail. But it has also some large shirt-factories, whence came the whirr of machinery, and where we could see the girls and women in long rows bending to their tasks; and it has great ware-houses, not falling to ruin like those of Galway and Westport and Ballyshannon, but filled with merchandise and busy with men and drays. We were so unaccustomed to such a sight that we stopped and looked at it for quite a while.

It is a fifteen mile run from Strabane to Derry, for the most part along the bank of the Foyle, through a beautiful and prosperous country, with many villages cl.u.s.tered among the trees; and at six o'clock we reached the "Maiden City,"--by far the busiest town we had seen since Dublin. In fact, as we turned up past the old walls and came to the centre of the town, the bustle of business and roar of traffic seemed to me to surpa.s.s Dublin; and more than once, when we were settled in our room, the unaccustomed noise drew us to the window to see what was going on. We went out, presently, to see that portion of the town which stands within the ancient walls; but before I describe that excursion, I shall have to tell something of what those walls stand for.

Fourteen hundred years ago--in 546, to be exact--Columba, greatest of Irish saints after Patrick and Brigid, pa.s.sed this way, and stopping in the oak grove which clothed the hill on which the town now stands, was so impressed with the lovely situation, that he founded an abbey there, which was known as Daire-Columbkille--Columba's Oak-grove.

There was another reason, perhaps, besides the beauty of the spot, which persuaded the Saint to choose this site for his monastery, and that was the nearness of the great fort on Elagh mountain, the stronghold of the Lord of Tyrone. He doubtless hoped that, in the shadow of that mighty cashel, his abbey would be safe from spoliation; but in this he was disappointed, for its position on a navigable river, so close to the sea, made it easy prey to the Danes and the Saxons, and they sailed up to it time and again and laid it waste. But it grew in importance in spite of repeated burnings, and it held off the English longer than most, for, though it was plundered by Strongbow's men in 1195, and included in the grant to Richard de Burgo, the Red Earl of Ulster, in 1311, it was not until 1609, two years after that "flight of the earls"

which left Tyrone and Tyrconnell confiscated to the English, that it was really conquered.

In confiscating this vast domain, as in all previous and subsequent confiscations in Ireland, the English crown proceeded upon the theory that all the land a chief ruled over belonged to that chief; but in Ireland this was not at all the case, for there the land belonged, and always had belonged, not to the chief but to his people. This, however, was not allowed to interfere in any way with its re-apportionment among court favourites and companies of adventurers; and Derry, together with a vast tract of land about it, was granted to the Corporation of London, which thereupon proceeded to re-name it Londonderry, in token of its subserviency. Three years later, the Irish Society for the New Plantation in Ulster was formed, and to it was granted the towns of Coleraine and Londonderry, with seven thousand acres of land and the fisheries of the Foyle and the Bann. The society was pledged to enclose Derry with walls, and these were laid out and built in 1617. They were strong and serviceable, as may be seen to this day, and so wide that a carriage and four could drive along the top of them.

The new colonists were mostly Protestants, and in the war which soon followed between King Charles and the Parliament naturally chose the Republican side, so that Derry quickly became the centre of resistance to royalty in Ulster. The town prospered under the Commonwealth, but the ups and downs of Irish politics after the Restoration kept it in a perpetual turmoil.

I have already told how, after the fall of Charles I, Cromwell's army conquered Ireland, drove the Irish to the hills west of the Shannon, and divided the fertile land among the Puritan soldiers and the adherents of the Parliament. When Charles II was restored to the throne, part of the price exacted from him for that restoration was the so-called Act of Settlement, in which this division of the land among its Protestant conquerors was confirmed. That the Irish should protest against the injustice of this was natural enough; and that, once seated on the throne, the king should give ear to the protestations was natural too, since the Irish had been his father's allies and had lost their lands in fighting his battles for him. So, while Irish Catholic Ireland brought heavy pressure to bear on the king, English Protestant Ireland was on pins and needles through fear of what might happen. Finally the Cromwellians agreed to surrender a third of the estates in their possession, and on this basis peace of a sort was patched up.

That was in 1665, and it looked for a while as though Protestant and Catholic would thereafter be able to live together in amity, for there was a general revival of industry which resulted in a prosperity the country had seldom known, and a consequent abatement of religious discord. But Charles died, and his brother, James II, at once proceeded to remodel the Irish army upon a Catholic basis, even going so far as partially to disarm the Protestants, who of course immediately concluded that they were all going to be ma.s.sacred in revenge for Drogheda.

But James soon found himself facing a rebellion in England, and in 1688 a large force of Irish troops were transported to England to help him hold his throne. Among these troops was the regiment which had been stationed at Derry; and when, alarmed at the att.i.tude of the town, the king attempted to throw another garrison into it, rebellion flamed up swift and fierce, and some apprentice boys seized the keys of the city gates and closed and locked them in the face of the royal army.

Enniskillen followed suit, and everywhere throughout the north of Ireland, the Protestants began to form town companies and to arm and drill for their own defence. Thus was organised the first "army of Ulster"! It was soon to be needed--as I hope and believe the latest one will never be!

Certain English leaders, determined to get rid of James at any cost, had invited William Prince of Orange to bring an army to England to restore liberty and rescue Protestantism from the destruction which seemed to threaten it. William, it should be remembered, stood very near the English throne, for his mother was the eldest daughter of Charles I, and his wife was his own cousin, the eldest daughter of Charles's son, James II. William, who had been expecting such an invitation, at once gathered a great army together and landed in England in November. James, finding himself detested and deserted by all parties, fled to France; and William and Mary were proclaimed King and Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.

Ireland, of course, was still in rebellion. There is no more pathetic page of Irish history than that which tells of Irish loyalty to the Stuarts; for the Stuarts cared nothing for Ireland, but only for themselves, and used the Irish merely as p.a.w.ns in their selfish struggle for power. The poor Irish stood firm for James, and got a great army together; and James came over from France with a small French force, and together they marched against Derry, which the Protestants still held, but which James expected to capture with little difficulty. The commander at Derry was a man named Robert Lundy, a Protestant and soldier of some experience, but he seems to have been a Jacobite at heart for, after one skirmish near Strabane, he held a council of war, recommended immediate surrender, ordered that there should be no firing, and sent word to James that the city was ready to submit. But he had reckoned without Derry's militant spirit; for when news of his decision got abroad, the people sprang to arms, and Lundy escaped with his life only by fleeing in disguise.

Meanwhile, the Rev. George Walker and Major Henry Baker and Captain Adam Murray, three militants to the backbone, took charge of affairs and put Derry in the best state of defence possible; but the outlook was not bright. Military opinion was agreed that the town could not hold out against such an army as James was bringing against it; it seemed likely that to defend it would be to invite another Drogheda; and while the debate in the town council was still raging, James appeared under the walls expecting an immediate surrender.

Negotiations were begun; but the sight of the Catholic army was the last thing needed to inflame the townsmen. A group of them managed to get a cannon pointed in the king's direction and touched it off. The ball is said to have pa.s.sed so close to him that the wind of it blew off his hat; at any rate, the negotiations ended then and there, and with a shout of "No surrender!" Derry prepared for the struggle.

That was the eighteenth day of April, 1689, and for fifteen weeks the town held out against a strict siege, which nothing could break. There were a.s.saults and sallies, a bombardment which killed many people--all the accompaniments of a siege, with the final accompaniment of famine.

It was the old story of horseflesh, mice and rats and even salted hides being greedily devoured; of a garrison thinning wofully from death and disease; but though there seemed to be no choice except starvation or surrender, n.o.body thought of surrender. And then, on Sunday, July 28th, a relief fleet which had been hovering uncertainly at the mouth of the harbour for some weeks, ran the batteries, broke the boom across the river, swept up to the city, and the siege was ended.

Such was the siege of Derry. A thousand incidents, impossible to set down here, are treasured in the minds of every inhabitant; and, lest the great event should ever be forgotten, two anniversaries connected with it are celebrated every year, on December 18th the Closing of the Gates against the King's Army, and on August 12th the Raising of the Siege.

There are processions and meetings and speeches of a very Protestant character, and at the December festival the effigy of the perfidious Lundy is hanged and burnt--not without some little rioting, for rather more than half the population of Derry is Catholic and Nationalist. One of the popular airs upon these occasions is, of course, "Boyne Water,"

and another is about Derry herself. It is called

THE MAIDEN CITY

Where Foyle his swelling waters rolls northward to the main, Here, Queen of Erin's daughters, fair Derry fixed her reign; A holy temple crowned her, and commerce graced her street, A rampart wall was round her, the river at her feet; And here she sat alone, boys, and, looking from the hill, Vowed the Maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.

From Antrim crossing over, in famous eighty-eight, A plumed and belted lover came to the Ferry Gate: She summoned to defend her our sires--a beardless race-- They shouted "No Surrender!" and slammed it in his face.

Then, in a quiet tone, boys, they told him 'twas their will That the Maiden on her throne, boys, should be a Maiden still.

Next, crushing all before him, a kingly wooer came (The royal banner o'er him blushed crimson deep for shame); He showed the Pope's commission, nor dreamed to be refused; She pitied his condition, but begged to stand excused.

In short, the fact is known, boys, she chased him from the hill, For the Maiden on her throne, boys, would be a Maiden still.

On our peaceful sires descending, 'twas then the tempest broke, Their peaceful dwellings rending, 'mid blood and flame and smoke.

That hallowed graveyard yonder swells with the slaughtered dead-- O brothers! pause and ponder--it was for us they bled; And while their gift we own, boys--the fane that tops our hill-- Oh! the Maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still!

Nor wily tongue shall move us, nor tyrant arm affright, We'll look to One above us who ne'er forsook the right; Who will, may crouch and tender the birthright of the free, But, brothers, "No Surrender!" no compromise for me!

We want no barrier stone, boys, no gates to guard the hill, Yet the Maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still!

There is a good marching song, if there ever was one--a song to make the heart leap and the spirit sing, when a thousand voices roar it in unison; and it very fairly represents the spirit of Derry and of the whole of Protestant Ulster--a spirit which is admirable, though often mistaken, and sometimes made use of for base and selfish ends. The song was written by a woman, a native of Derry, of course, Charlotte Tonna, some sixty years ago; and it is a song of which Ireland, north and south, should be proud.

Let me tell here, as briefly as may be, the rest of the story of that ill-fated rebellion, of which Derry wrote one terrific chapter, for unless we know it, it will be impossible for us to understand Ulster.