The Charm Of Ireland Part 41

This line was established in 1883, and so is the oldest electric road in the world; and I judge that it is still using the cars it started out with. At least, the two which composed the train that day were exceedingly primitive; one was open and the other was closed, and you took your choice. We chose the open one, of course, on the side overlooking the sea; and presently we started through the town, a man ringing a bell with one hand and waving a flag with the other, preceding us to make certain the track was clear. The bell, I suppose, is for blind people and the flag for deaf people, and the fact that the man is armed with both proves how thorough the Irish can be when they really put their minds to it.

Although the line has been in operation for thirty years, it is still evidently regarded with fear and wonder by the people who live along it.

Time was when the power was conveyed by means of the "third rail," so common in the United States. With us, however, the rail is only used along a guarded right-of-way. Here it was exposed close up by the fence at the roadside, and though it was well out of the way, it was nevertheless stumbled over by many men and beasts, with the usual result. There were many protests, and in the course of fifteen or twenty years, the Board of Trade was moved to investigate.

The evidence at the hearing was most conflicting. The people of the neighbourhood a.s.serted that their lives were in constant danger. The company, on the other hand, claimed that no sober man would ever step on the rail, since to get to it he had to cross the tracks. The people of the neighbourhood protested indignantly against this reflection upon their habits, and asked triumphantly if the horses and cows and other poor beasts that were killed were also drunk. The company retorted that, so far as the horses and cows were concerned, it was the practice of the natives, for miles around, whenever they had an animal about to die, to lead or, if it was unable to walk, to haul it to the railway, and prop it against the fence with a foot on the rail, and then to demand compensation for its death. There was, perhaps, a grain of truth in this; but the board, nevertheless, ordered the company to take up the rail and subst.i.tute an overhead wire for it, and this has been done.

The only way the natives can get damages now is to inveigle a car to run into them, and this is well-nigh impossible, for the cars are run very slowly and carefully, and at every curve there is a signal cabin, where a watchful guard, armed with a red flag and a white one, keeps careful eyes upon the track.

We were just gathering speed outside the town, when we saw in a near-by field an aggregation whose bills had attracted our attention, more than once, in our journeyings about Ireland. It was "Buff Bill's Circus," and the picturesqueness of its lithographs had made us most anxious to see it. Here it was, at last, and it consisted of three tiny tents and one van and three or four horses, and five or six people, who at this moment were eating their midday meal, seated on the ground about a sheet-iron stove, while the youngsters of the neighbourhood looked on. I am sorry we did not get to see the show, for I am sure we should have enjoyed it.

Then the road mounted to a terrace high above the sea, and the views over coast and water were superb. The effects of erosion are especially fantastic, and the line pa.s.ses fretted spires, and yawning caverns, and deep gullies and mighty arches, all worn in the chalk and basalt cliffs by the ceaseless action of the waves; and at one place there is a grotesque formation which does indeed, as may be seen from the picture opposite the next page, resemble a "Giant's Head."

And there is one most picturesque ruin, for, ten miles out from Portrush, all that is left of Dunluce castle overhangs the sea from the summit of a precipitous rock, separated from the mainland by a deep chasm. The chasm is twenty feet wide, and in days of old there was a drawbridge over it; but the bridge has disappeared, and now there is just an arch of masonry about two feet wide and without protection of any sort. It takes a steady head to cross it, but the Irish are fond of just such breakneck bridges. The castle itself, with its roofless gables and jagged walls, seems a part of the rock on which it is built. It is said to possess a banshee, and one can well believe it!

Dunluce is interesting because it was once a stronghold of the Scotch invaders who succeeded in conquering all this northeast coast of Ireland from here around to Carlingford Lough, away below Belfast. Scotland is only a few miles away across the North Channel--one can see its coast on a clear day from the cliffs above Benmore; and it was natural enough that there should be sailing back and forth. Owen, first lord of Tyrone, brought a wife from Scotland--that Aileach, after whom he named his fortress; and they had many children, one of whom went back to Scotland and became the head of that princedom whose chief afterwards called himself "Lord of the Isles." In Ireland, the family was O'Donnell; but in Scotland the members of Clandonnell were not Os but Macs. Angus MacDonnell married a daughter of the great house of O'Cahan, and by this means and by that, the Scotch gradually won a foothold on the Irish coast and built castles up and down it; and finally, in a pitched battle, defeated the Irish who held the land about Dunluce and had built this castle here.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "GIANT'S HEAD," NEAR PORTRUSH]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RUINS OF DUNLUCE CASTLE]

It was besieged and captured after that, once by the Irish under Shane O'Neill, and once by the English under Sir John Perrot; and during the troubled times of the Commonwealth and Restoration fell into ruins and was never restored--partly, no doubt, because it was no longer safe; for one night in 1639, there was a great party in the castle, and a storm arose, and the waves dashed against the rock below it, and suddenly part of the rock gave way and carried the kitchen and eight servants down into the abyss.

Just beyond the castle, the road rounds a point and runs down into the valley of the Bush River, where stands the little town of Bushmills, known all over the world because of the whiskey which is made there; and then it pa.s.ses a great house on a cliff overlooking the sea, Runkerry Castle; and then high up on the slope ahead loom two big hotels, and the tram stops, for this is the Causeway.

Both the hotels at the Causeway are owned by the same man, but each maintains its runner, and each runner makes a lively bid for your custom; and then, when you have made your choice and started toward it, you will suddenly be conscious of a rough voice speaking over your shoulder, and you will turn to find a man striding at your heels, a man unshaven and clad in nondescript clothes; and if you listen very attentively you will presently understand that he is offering to guide you about the Causeway.

Everybody in the vicinity of the Causeway makes his living off the people who visit it, and the favourite profession is that of guide. Now a guide is wholly unnecessary, for a broad road leads directly to the Causeway, and once there it is simply a question of using one's eyes.

But from the persistence of the guides, one would think there was great danger of getting lost, or of falling overboard, or of experiencing some other horrible misfortune, if one ventured there unattended. Every guide carries also in his waistcoat pocket one or more fossils, which he found himself and prizes very highly, but is willing to sell for a small sum, as a personal favour. When his supply is exhausted, he goes and buys some more from the syndicate which ships them in in quant.i.ty.

For it should be remembered that the Causeway is as strictly organised for profit and as carefully exploited as is Killarney.

As soon as we had arranged for our room, we set off for the Causeway, running the gauntlet of guides posted on both sides of the road. Then a man with a pony-cart wanted to drive us to our destination, and one would have thought, from the way he spoke, that it was a long and trying journey; then we refused three or four offers of fossils and postcards; and finally we found ourselves alone on a road which swept round the edge of a great amphitheatre of cliff; and the face of that cliff is worth examining, for it is formed of the lava flow from some long-extinct crater, and the successive flows, separated by the so-called ochre beds, or strata of dark-red volcanic ash, can be plainly distinguished. The road gradually drops, until it is quite near the sea; and then it pa.s.ses a number of shanties, from which old women issue to waylay the pa.s.ser-by with offers of fossils and post-cards and various curios; and then the visitor is confronted by a high wire fence, beyond which, if he looks closely, he will see a little neck of land running out into the water--and that is the celebrated Giant's Causeway.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CLIFFS BEYOND THE CAUSEWAY]

It is so small and so seemingly insignificant that Betty and I stared at it through the fence with a distinct shock of disappointment; then we went on to the gate, paid the sixpence which is extorted from every visitor, registered ourselves on the turnstile, and entered.

The misfortune of the Causeway is that its fame is too great. The visitor, expecting to see something magnificent and grandiose, is rather dashed at first to find how small it is; but after a few minutes'

wandering over the queer columns of basalt, this feeling pa.s.ses, and one begins to realise that it is really one of the wonders of the world. I am not going to describe it--every one has seen photographs of it, or if any one hasn't, he will find some opposite this page; and the photographs picture it much better than I can.

There are some forty thousand of the pillars, the guide-book says; five-sided or six-sided for the most part, averaging, I should say, about fifteen inches in diameter, and so close together that a lead pencil is too thick to be thrust between them. The pillars are divided into regular, worm-like segments, some six or eight inches thick, and there are quite a lot of segments lying about, broken off from the columns. The whole bed is said by geologists to be nothing but a lava-flow, which broke up into these columnar shapes when it cooled and contracted.

The native Irish have a far better explanation than that. In the old days, the mighty Finn MacCool, annoyed at the boasting of a Caledonian rival on the hills across the channel, invited him to step over and see which was the better man. And the giant said he would be glad to come over and show Finn a thing or two, if it wasn't for wetting his feet. So Finn, in a rage, built a causeway right over to Scotland, and the Scotch giant came across on it; and of course Finn beat him well (for this is an Irish legend); but with that generosity which has always been characteristic of Irishmen after they have whipped their opponents, he permitted his humbled rival to choose a wife from the many fair girls of the neighbourhood, and to build him a house and settle down; which the Scotch giant was very glad to do; for every one knows that the Scotch women are rough and hard-bitten, also that Scotland is a land of mist and snow, not fair like Ireland, which has always been the loveliest country in the world. And presently, since the causeway wasn't needed any more and impeded navigation, Finn gave it a kick with the foot of him and sunk it in the sea, all but this little end against the Irish coast. And there it stands unto this day to witness if I lie.

Whatever you think of the Causeway, you will certainly be impressed when you pa.s.s out between the cl.u.s.tered columns of the Giant's Gateway, and start on the walk under the beetling cliffs beyond. The narrow path mounts up and up, under overhanging ma.s.ses of columnar stone, which all too evidently crashes down from time to time, for there are great piles of debris below, and the path is either swept away in places or recently repaired; so most visitors hurry past with one eye upward, and the other contemplating the beauty of the scene below.

At least we did; and then we came out at Chimney Point, crowned with its chimney-like columns--a ma.s.s of basalt on top of a red ochre bed. And here there was a seat where we sat down to contemplate one of the most impressive views in Ireland--a combination of blue sea and white surf and black crag and columned cliff not soon to be forgotten.

We went on, at last, around the point of the cliff, where the path overhangs the depths below and is guarded by an iron railing; on and on, past cl.u.s.ters of columns named looms or organ pipes, or whatever Irish fancy may have suggested; and at last we turned slowly back, and spent another half hour at the Causeway, hunting out the wishing-chair, and the giant's cannon, and Lord Antrim's parlour--all of which may easily be found; and then we took a drink from the giant's well, a spring of pure, cold water, bubbling up from among the rocks; and so back to the hotel and to dinner.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE GLENS OF ANTRIM

THERE are some caves at the Causeway which are said to be well worth visiting, but we found, next morning, that a stiff wind during the night had kicked up such a sea that it was impossible to get to them. So we spent the morning walking down to a beautiful beach some distance below the hotel, and building a driftwood fire there, and watching the waves roll in. Then, while Betty went in to read some just-arrived letters from home, I went on along the top of the cliffs above the Causeway.

There is a path which follows the edge of the cliff closely, and a more magnificent view I have never seen. At Chimney Point the rollers were breaking in especial violence over the black rocks, on which one of the galleons of the Armada went to pieces. Her name was the Gerona, and some of her guns were rescued from the surf and added to the armament of Dunluce castle. Legend has it that she brought her disaster upon herself by running in too near the coast to fire at the chimney rocks, which she mistook for the towers of Dunluce. The bay where the bodies of her crew were washed ash.o.r.e has been called Port-na-Spania ever since.

A little farther on is the uttermost point of all, Pleaskin, where the view reaches its greatest grandeur, for one is here four hundred feet above the sea, and on that bright, clear, wind-swept morning, I could see the purple peaks of the Donegal coast stretching far to the west, while to the northeast loomed the misty outline of the Scottish hills, scarcely discernible against the sky. And all between stretched the white-capped waters of the North Channel, with a tossing boat here and there, and at my feet were the last black basalt outposts of Erin, with the rollers curling over them in regular, heavy rhythm. If Ireland has anything to show more fair I did not see it.

I went slowly back, at last, along the path, over the springy heather; and an hour later we had said good-bye to the Causeway, and were rattling away along a pleasant road toward Ballycastle. We were the only voyagers, that day, so instead of the heavy bus, a side-car had been placed at our disposal. It was the first car we had mounted since our ride around Lough Gill; and how good it felt to settle back again into the corner of the seat, and swing along mile after mile!

Our jarvey was an old fellow who was loquacious enough, at first, and who stopped to show us, in a ravine not far from the Causeway, a crevice in the rock which he said was used as a pulpit by the first Presbyterian preacher in Ulster--for it should be remembered that for many years the Presbyterians and other nonconformists were treated as harshly by the established church as the Catholics were. And then we came to a little village where the children were gathering for school, and our jarvey stopped to water the horse, which gave us the opportunity to have a word with the children.

And fairly surprised we were when they began to talk, for they spoke a Scotch as broad as any to be heard in the Highlands. Their names were Scotch, too--Fergus and Angus; and the only thing we encountered on that drive which astonished us more were the sign-posts at the cross-roads, the directions on which are all in Gaelic. We had seen Gaelic sign-posts before, in the west, but they always had the direction in English, too.

Here there was no English. It is a riddle that I have never unravelled, for I heard no Gaelic spoken here. Of course it is spoken; but so many wayfarers along this road speak only English that I cannot understand the contempt for them which the sign-boards indicate.

I have referred already to the Irishman's love for breakneck bridges, and the prize one of all is at the village of Ballintoy, into which the road drops down the steepest of hills. A little distance away along the cliffs is an isolated rock some sixty feet from the sh.o.r.e, and spanning the abyss between cliff and rock is the craziest bridge ever devised by man. Two rings, about eighteen inches apart, have been embedded in the rock on either side, and between these rings two ropes have been stretched. These are lashed together at intervals by transverse cords, and to these cords short lengths of narrow plank have been tied side by side. For a handrail, a slender rope has been stretched between two rings some three feet higher than the others--and there you are. It is hardly correct to say that any of the ropes have been "stretched," for they hang in a long curve, and in the wind that was blowing that morning the bridge swung to and fro in the dizziest fashion. There was a crowd of small boys at its land end, who offered to negotiate the pa.s.sage for a penny each, but we refused to pay for the privilege of seeing them risk their lives.

And yet, probably, it would not have been risking them, for they were used to the bridge and thought nothing of crossing it. Nay, more, the men of the neighbourhood cross it carrying heavy burdens, for they are fishermen and keep all their ropes and nets and even their boats out on the rock, round which, at certain stages of the tide, the salmon circle, so that they can be caught by nets shot out from the rock. There is no harbour for the boats, so they have to be hoisted up to a terrace in the rock some twenty feet above the water by means of a windla.s.s; and then, having made everything snug, the fishermen cross back over the bridge with the catch on their shoulders. It need scarcely be added that I, who had balked at the far more substantial bridges at Dromahair and Dunluce, never for an instant thought of crossing this one.

We climbed out to the top of the cliffs again, and jogged along with the beautiful sea to our left, and the beautiful rolling country to our right, its meadows brilliant with the lush green of the young flax; and then we turned back inland between high hedgerows; and the bright sun and the soft air proved too much for our jarvey, who dropped gently to sleep--a fact we didn't notice until the horse, after a backward glance, stopped to take a few bites from the hedge. The driver woke with a start and jerked the horse angrily back into the middle of the road, and then glanced guiltily at us, but we were gazing far away into the distance; and then he dropped off again, and again the horse, feeling the slackened reins, stopped for a bite; and then, for fear that a motor-cycle or something might run into us, I filled my pipe and offered my pouch to the driver, and he filled up thankfully, and that kept him awake until we dropped down into the beautiful old town of Ballycastle, nestling under the high hills of Antrim. "Bally," which figures in so many Irish place-names, is from the Gaelic "baile," meaning town or village, and so Ballycastle is merely the Irish form of what in English would be prosaic Castletown.

We had tea at a clean and pleasant inn, and then spent an hour wandering about the place--to the site of the old abbey, near a sweet little river, and then down to the sh.o.r.e, which has been desecrated with golf-links; but the green slopes of Rathlin Island, just off the coast, are very lovely, and just outside the bay the cliffs culminate in a mighty bluff called Fairhead; and then back to the town along an avenue of beautiful trees, for a visit to the "Home Industry Depot," a room crowded with fantastic toys and some good wood-carving, all done in the neighbourhood--about the only industry of any kind, so the keeper of the shop said, now carried on in Ballycastle.

Time was when Ballycastle fancied it was destined for greatness, for a seam of coal was discovered in the hill above the town, and an enterprising Scotchman named Hugh Boyd leased the right to work it from the Earl of Antrim, and built foundries and tanneries and breweries to consume it; but unfortunately the seam turned down instead of up, Boyd died, and n.o.body was found with sufficient energy to contend against so many difficulties; so the whole enterprise dropped dead. I don't know how the inhabitants came to turn to toy-making and wood-carving; perhaps some expatriated Swiss settled here,--that shop certainly did remind us of Lucerne!

There are far older memories which cl.u.s.ter around Ballycastle; for the stream which ripples past the abbey was in the old days called the Margy, and it was here, according to the most ancient of Irish legends, that the children of Lir, King of the Isle of Man, sought shelter after they had been turned into four white swans by their step-mother. I should like to tell that story, but there is no s.p.a.ce here--besides, it has already been most n.o.bly told by Mr. Rolleston. It will be found, with many others, in his "High Deeds of Finn," a book I most heartily recommend.

We were not yet at the end of our day's journey, for we had still to go on to Cushendall, sixteen miles away, and so we went back to the hotel, to find a long inside-car waiting. There were two other pa.s.sengers, women of the neighbourhood, who had come in to town to do some shopping; and their gossip was most entertaining; but we dropped them before long, and then the road mounted up and up along the valley of a little river, which we could see gleaming far below us; and at last we came out upon a bog as wild and desolate as any in Connemara. There were again the familiar black cuttings, the piles of turf, and here and there a group of men and women labouring at the wet, back-breaking work. This bog, so our driver said, supplied the fuel for the whole district, and n.o.body hereabouts ever thought of burning coal.

The road was quite deserted, save for a cart now and then, loaded high with turf, lumbering heavily down toward the town; and presently even these ceased, and there was no single sign of life as far as the eye could reach--only the silent bog, desolate, vast, impressive, rolling away into the distance with a beauty all its own--a beauty difficult to express, but very poignant.

How high we were upon that moor we did not realise until we came to the verge of one of the beautiful Glens of Antrim and saw, nestling away below us, the spires and roofs of Cushendall. They were perhaps half a mile away, but we travelled at least three miles to get down to them, winding back and forth along the side of the glen, crossing a great viaduct eighty feet high, past picturesque thatched houses, past the fairy thorn which no man in the village would touch for love or money, past a fragment of ruin which was once the castle where the MacDonnells stood off the English; and then we turned away to the right and began to climb again; and presently we had climbed out of Glendun into Glenaan, and I should hate to have to decide which is the more lovely.

We emerged, at last, into more open country, with high hills at our right pierced by shadowy valleys; and then the houses became more frequent, and we could see the people gathering down from the fields for the night. Twilight was at hand; but, though it must have been nearly nine o'clock, we were amused to see that the ducks and chickens were still pecking cheerfully about the door-steps, apparently with no thought of retiring. Poultry, in Ireland, leads a strenuous life, for in summer the sun rises at three and does not set till nine. Perhaps it is these long hours which give Irish chickens an indolent air, and which explain the frequent naps one sees them taking on the family doorstep.

The houses grew more and more frequent, until we were rattling down a wide street of them, under an avenue of lofty trees, and knew we were at Cushendall.

Some three miles west of the town, on the top of a bare and windy hill looking down over the Glenaan valley, is a circle of stones placed there, so legend a.s.serts, to mark the grave of Ossian, son of Finn MacCool, and sweet singer of the Fianna of Erin; and it was to find this spot I set out next morning, through fine, windy weather. I knew where the valley of the Glenaan was, for we had pa.s.sed its mouth the evening before, but as to the position of the grave itself I knew nothing. The guide-book devoted only a vague line to it; but I have a firm belief in my luck, and I knew I should find it somehow.