The Charm Of Ireland Part 44

The cathedral was locked, as Protestant churches have a way of being; but the caretaker lives near by and came running when his wife told him that there was a strange gentleman wished to see the church. He was a very Scotch Irishman, and as he took me around the bare, white interior, he said proudly: "There's not much high church about this. Not a bit of flummery will we have here--no candles or vestments or anything of that sort. Our people wouldn't stand it--it savours too much of Romanism."

"And yet," I said, "it was Saint Patrick who founded this very church, and you have him and Saint Brigid and Saint Columba buried in your churchyard."

"Yes, and we're proud to have them," he retorted quickly, "for they weren't Romanists--they were just Christians, and good ones, too. The Protestants of Ireland can honour Patrick and Brigid just as much as the Catholics do. It wasn't till long after their day that the Irish church made submission to Rome."

There is a modic.u.m of truth in this, for, though it is probable that St.

Patrick was regularly ordained a bishop and is even sometimes a.s.serted to have been sent on his mission by Pope Celestine himself, the ties which bound Irish Catholics to Rome were for many centuries very slight indeed, and it was not until after the Norman conquest that the authority of Rome was fully acknowledged; and this independence has persisted, in a way, even to the present day; for while Irish Catholics, of course, acknowledge absolutely the supremacy of the Holy See in all spiritual affairs, they have always been quick to resent its interference in things temporal, and their tolerance toward other religions than their own stands almost unique in history. It is, perhaps, a racial characteristic, for the Pagan Irish, during all the years of Patrick's mission among them, never seriously persecuted him and never slew a Christian.

Here at the spot where that mission began it is fitting that I should say a word of it. Of Saint Patrick himself very little is certainly known, for he was a man of deeds and not of words, and left no record of his life; but there seems no valid reason to doubt the traditional account of him; that he was born at Kilpatrick, in Scotland, somewhere about 390; that his father was a Roman citizen and a Christian; that, when about sixteen years of age, he was captured by a band of raiding Irish, carried back to Ireland as a slave, sold to an Ulster chief named Milcho, and for six years tended his master's flocks on the slopes of Slemish, one of the Antrim hills. In the end he escaped and made his way back to his home in Britain; but once there his thoughts turned back to Erin, and in his dreams he heard the cries of the Pagan Irish imploring him to return, bearing the torch of Christianity.

The voices grew too strong to be resisted, and in 432 he was back on the Irish coast again, having in the meantime been ordained a bishop of the Catholic Church; and he sailed along the coast until he came to Strangford Lough, where he turned in and landed. His purpose was to go back to Slemish and ransom himself from the master from whom he had escaped, but he paused at a large sabhall, or barn, and said his first Ma.s.s on Irish soil. It was to that spot he afterwards returned, when the hand of death was upon him, to end his days; and the little village that stands there is Sabhall, or Saul, to this day. He went on, after that, to the great dun, or fort, of the kings of Ulster, which we ourselves shall visit presently, and from which Downpatrick takes its name. Then, finding his old master dead, he began his life-work. His success was so extraordinary that at the end of thirty years, the conversion of the Irish was complete.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GRAVE OF PATRICK, BRIGID AND COLUMBA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OLD CROSS AT DOWNPATRICK]

At last, feeling his end near, he made his way back to the sanctuary at Saul, died there, and was brought for burial to this bluff overlooking the great rath below. Legend has it that Saint Brigid wove his winding-sheet. She herself, when she died, was buried before the high altar of her church at Kildare; and there are two stories of why her body was removed to St. Patrick's grave. One is that, in 878, her followers, fearing that her grave would be desecrated by the Danes, removed her body to Downpatrick and buried it in the grave with the great apostle, where the remains of St. Columba had been brought from Iona and placed nearly two centuries before for the same reason. The other story is that the bones of St. Brigid and St. Columba both were brought here in 1185 by John de Courcy, to whom Ulster had been granted by the English king,--and who had surprised and captured Downpatrick eight years previously,--in the hope of conciliating the people he had conquered. Either story may be true; but all that need concern us now is that there seems to be no question that the three great apostles of Ireland really do lie at rest within this grave.

De Courcy enlarged the cathedral, which, before that, had been a poor affair, dedicated it to Saint Patrick, and caused effigies of the three saints to be placed above the east window with a Latin couplet over them:

Hi tres in duno, tumulo tumulantur in uno Brigida, Patritius, atque Columba pius.

The stone which marks the grave is in the yard just outside the church--a great, irregular monolith of Mourne granite, weatherworn and untouched by human hand, except for an incised Celtic cross and the word "Patric" in rude Celtic letters--one monument, at least, in Ireland which is wholly dignified and worthy.

One other thing of antiquarian interest there is near by, and that is an ancient cross, said to have stood originally on the fort of the King of Ulster, but removed by De Courcy and set up in front of his castle in the centre of the town, as a sign of his sovereignty, where it was knocked to pieces when the castle was. The fragments have been put together, and battered and worn as it is, the carvings can still be dimly seen--the crucifixion in the centre, with stiff representations of Bible scenes below. It is ruder than most, as may be seen from the photograph opposite page 522, for the circle which surrounds the cross is merely indicated and not cut through. There has been much controversy as to the origin of this circle, which is the distinctive feature of the Celtic cross; but I have never yet seen any theory which seemed anything more than a guess--and not a particularly good guess, either.

Of the first church which was built here not a trace remains, and even of the structure of 1137 there is little left. For Downpatrick, with the priories and monasteries and hospitals and convents and other religious establishments which had grown up around the sacred grave of the saints, was one of the first objects of attack when Henry VIII began his suppression of the religious houses. Lord Grey marched hither at the head of a regiment of soldiers and plundered the place and set fire to it, so that only an empty sh.e.l.l was left. The crumbling and blackened ruin stood undisturbed for more than two hundred years, and when its restoration was finally undertaken, it was found that only five arches of the nave were solid enough to be retained. So the present structure is only about a century old, except for that one stretch of wall and a recessed doorway under the east window. The old effigies of Brigid and Patrick and Columba, which Grey pulled down and knocked to pieces, have been replaced in the niches above the window, but they are sadly mutilated. In the vestry is a portrait of Jeremy Taylor, who was Bishop of Down for nearly seventy years, but there is little else of interest in the church. The most imposing thing about it is its position at the edge of the high bluff, looking out across the valley of the Quoire to the Mourne mountains.

Just to the north of this bluff and almost in its shadow, close to the bank of a little stream, still stands the enormous rath built two thousand years ago by Celtchair, one of the heroes of the Red Branch of Ulster, and here he and the chiefs who came after him had their stronghold. So great was its fame that Ptolemy, in far off Egypt, heard of it, and it was gradually enlarged and strengthened until there were few in Ireland to equal it. The sea helped to guard it, for at high tide the water flowed up over the flats along the Quoile and lapped against it; but the erection of sluice-gates farther down the stream has shut away the tide, and it stands now in the midst of a marsh.

To get to it, one pa.s.ses along the wall of the jail--one of the largest I had seen anywhere in Ireland, and which Murray proudly says cost $315,000--and scrambles down into the marsh, and there before one is the rath. My picture of it, the top one opposite the next page, was taken from close beside the jail, many hundreds of yards away, and gives no idea of its size, except for the thread-like path which you may perceive running up one end, which is two or three feet wide, and fully seventy feet long.

The rath is an immense circular rampart of earth, nearly three quarters of a mile in circ.u.mference, fifty feet high, and so steep that I had great difficulty in getting up it, even by the path. Around it runs a fosse or ditch some forty feet wide and nine or ten feet deep. This, of course, was deeper in the old days, and would remain filled with water even when the tide was out. Inside the circular rampart, the ground drops some twenty feet into a large enclosure, near the centre of which a great mound, surrounded by a ditch ten feet deep, towers sixty feet into the air.

The central mound corresponds to the keep or donjon tower of more modern forts, the last place of refuge and defence when the outer ramparts had been forced; and it was on this mound that the dwellings of the chiefs stood, rude enough, no doubt, though they were the palaces of kings. The tribal huts cl.u.s.tered in the enclosure about the foot of the mound; and so perfectly is the whole place preserved--though of course there is now no trace of hut or palace--that one has little difficulty in picturing the busy life which went on there--the throngs of men and women and children, the tribal council gathered on the summit of the great mound to listen to the chief, the departure of expeditions for war or for the chase, the arrival of envoys from some other chieftain or perhaps of some minstrel, his harp slung across his shoulder. . . .

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREAT RATH AT DOWNPATRICK]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE INNER AND OUTER CIRCLES]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CENTRAL MOUND]

I tore myself away, at last, for there was another place I wished to visit, and it was three miles distant--the Holy Wells of Struell. The caretaker at the cathedral had pointed out the route, so I climbed back past the prison, and went down through the town and up Irish Street beyond, and over Gallows Hill, where some unfortunate Irishmen were hanged during the rebellion of '98. The road beyond ran between high hedge-rows and under arching trees, whose shade was very grateful, for the day was the hottest I had experienced in Ireland; and then it crossed the white high-road and ran close under a long stretch of wall which surrounded an enormous and ornate building. I asked a pa.s.ser-by what it was, and he answered that it was a madhouse, and big as it was, was none too big. Murray supplies the information that it cost half a million.

There is a workhouse in the town which, from the look of it, must have cost $300,000--or say a million dollars for the three together, the jail, the workhouse and the asylum, every cent of it, of course, raised by taxation from the poorest people in the world! Sadly pondering this, I went on along the lane, and the heat made the way seem very long. But a girl I met a.s.sured me that I had not much farther to go--only past the farm at the foot of the hill; and presently I came to the farm, a handsome one, with the dwelling-house surrounded by well-built barns and stables, and a man there directed me to the wells, down a little by-road. Five minutes later, I had reached the rude stone huts which cover the Holy Wells of Struell.

Down the middle of a pretty valley, a small stream leaps from rock to rock, pausing here and there in little pools, and these pools are the "wells." Each of them is protected by a stone-walled, stone-roofed cell, built in the old days when the wells were in their glory, and now falling to decay. Just beyond the wells is a group of thatched cottages, and a girl of eight or nine, seeing my approach, hurried out from one of them and volunteered to act as guide, scenting, of course, the chance to earn a penny. And she took me first to what she said was the drinking-well, a little gra.s.s-grown pool in a fence-corner, and though she seemed to expect me to drink, I didn't, for the water looked stale and sc.u.mmy.

Then we climbed a wall, and walked over to a stone cubicle, which stood in the middle of a potato patch. This is the eye-well, and the cell over it is just large enough to permit a person to enter and kneel down above the water and bathe the affected parts. I took a picture of it which you will find opposite the next page. Then she led me to the largest well of all, the body well, or well of sins, where it is necessary to undress and immerse the whole body.

The stone building over the body well is divided into two parts by a solid wall, and one part is for men and the other for women. The disrobing is done in the outer chamber, which has a low stone bench running around three sides, and then the penitent enters a small inner chamber, descends some six or seven steps into the pool of water, and, I suppose, places himself below the stream which falls into the pool from the end of a pipe. As its name indicates, this well was supposed to have the power of washing away all disease, both physical and moral, and time was when it was very popular. The effect of the cold bath was so exhilarating, and the sudden sense of freedom from sin and disease so uplifting, that the penitents would sometimes rush forth to proclaim their blessed state without pausing to resume their garments. Naturally a lot of impious Orangemen would gather to see the fun; and finally both the secular authorities and the Catholic clergy set their faces against the practices, with the result that they gradually fell into disuse.

Only single pilgrims, or small companies, at most, come now to bathe in the magic waters, and their behaviour is most circ.u.mspect. The cells, themselves, are well-nigh in ruins. A chapel to Saint Patrick, from whom these waters derive their efficacy, was begun during the day of their popularity, but was never finished, and now only a fragment of it remains.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE EYE WELL AT STRUELL]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WELL OF SINS AT STRUELL]

While I was manoeuvring for a photograph of the well of sins, a middle-aged woman came out of a near-by cottage to advise me where to stand. She had seen many pictures taken of the well, she said, and the place that made the best picture was on top of the wall around her garden, and I climbed up on it, and found that she was right.

"'Tis a warm day," she went on, when I descended, "and your honour must be tired with the long walk. Will you not come in and sit a spell?"

"Thank you," I said; "I'll be glad to--it _is_ hot," and I followed her into a lovely old kitchen, with floor of flags, and whitewashed walls gleaming with pots and pans, and with a tall dresser in one corner glittering with a brave array of china. In here it was quite cool, so that after the first moment, the open grate of glowing coals, with the usual bubbling pot above it and the usual kettle on the hob, felt very pleasant.

I expressed surprise that she was burning coal, and she said the landlords of the neighbourhood had shut up the peat-bogs, in order to make every one buy English coal; and it was very hard indeed on the poor people, who had always been used to getting their fuel for the labour of cutting it, besides shutting them off from earning a little money by selling the turf to the people in the town, who would rather have it than coal. But the landlords were always doing things like that, and it did no good to complain. She had two brothers in America, she said, and lived here at Struell and kept house for a third. She and her brother were both unmarried, and would probably always remain so. Then, of course, she wanted to know about my condition in life, and I described it as freely as she had described her own. And then she asked me if I wouldn't like a gla.s.s of milk, and when I said I would, she hastened to get it from the milk-house, through which a clear little stream trickled, and very sweet and cool it was.

And then we got to talking about Ulster's att.i.tude toward Home Rule.

County Down, you should remember, is one of the nine counties which form the Province of Ulster, and is the most strongly Protestant of all of them outside of Belfast and Antrim, for only about one third of its 200,000 people are Catholic.

"G.o.d knows what will happen," said my hostess, very seriously. "I have been hearing a lot of wild talk, but paid no heed to it, for these Orangemen are always talkin' about this or that, and their talk means nothing. But I've come to think it may be more than just talk this time.

I heard a few days since that all the Orangemen hereabouts have been getting together three evenings every week in a meadow over beyont, and an officer of the army comes there and drills them till it is too dark to see. And they say, too, that there is a gun ready for each of them, with plenty of powder and lead to put into it; and they've sleuthered a lot of poor boys into joinin' with them who have not the courage to say no. But I'm hoping it will pa.s.s by, and that no trouble will come of it.

I am a Catholic myself, but we have never had any trouble with the Protestants. We get along very well together, and why shouldn't we? Some of my best friends are Protestants, and I know they wish us no harm. No, no, we are well-placed here, though them ones in the south do be calling us the black north."

I told her something of the dest.i.tution and misery I had seen in the south and west; but she showed no great sympathy--rather a contempt, I fancied, for people who could be so easy-going and unambitious. She herself seemed of a very different breed; and the shining kitchen, as clean as a new pin, proved what a delight and pride she took in her home and how energetic a housewife she was. Personally she was just as clean and tidy as her kitchen, with hair neatly brushed and a bit of white about her throat; and the ap.r.o.n she had on was a fresh one, newly-ironed--something I never saw upon any peasant woman of the south.

She brought out an alb.u.m of photographs, presently--photographs of herself and of her brother, and various photographs of the wells, and I promised to send her a print of mine, if it proved to be a good one. And then I bade her good-bye and started back the way I came; but I can still see her shrewd and kindly face, with the little wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, and the cool, sweet-smelling kitchen where I spent that pleasant hour.

I walked about the steep streets of Downpatrick quite a while, after I reached the town, and found them unusually quaint. Like so many other towns in Ireland, this one is all too evidently on the down grade. The tall houses, which were once the residences of the well-to-do, have been turned into tenements, and while they are not so dirty and repulsive as those of Dublin and Limerick, they are still bad enough. Others of the houses are empty and falling into ruin. One curious thing about the place is that from any quarter of it the town-hall is visible, standing in the hollow at the bottom of the hill, for the five princ.i.p.al streets start from it--Irish Street and English Street and Scotch Street and two others whose names I have forgotten, but which were, perhaps, the neutral ground of trade.

I made my way down to the station, at last, and as the train started, a young fellow in the same compartment with me bade a tearful farewell to the relatives and friends who had gathered to see him off, and sat for some time thereafter weeping unaffectedly into his handkerchief. When he was a little calmer, I asked him if he was going to America. He said no; he was going only to Belfast, but that was a long way!

It is really only about thirty miles; but thirty miles is a great journey to the average Irishman. For the Irishman is no traveller; he is quite content to spend his life within the circle of one small horizon, and never so happy as when sitting at his own fireside. Indeed, he is apt to regard with suspicion those who have nothing better to do than wander about the world. Mayo tinkers have always had a bad name in Ireland, not because they do anything especially to deserve it, but merely because they make their living in an unnatural fashion by roaming from place to place. Surely there must be something wrong with a man who does that!

That night, at Belfast, we went to a variety show. The Wild West film seems as popular here as in the rest of Ireland, for a particularly sensational one, where the heroine escaped from the Indians by going hand over hand along a rope above a deep ravine, into which the Indians were precipitated by the hero, who cut the rope when they started to cross by it, was received with great enthusiasm. There were also some scattered cheers when a conjuror, with carefully calculated effect, produced portraits of the King and Queen from somewhere and waved them before the audience. But the cheers were thin and forced, and by far the most of those present sat grimly silent and stared at the pictures with set faces.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE

I HAD one other trip to make in Ireland. That was to the scene of the battle of the Boyne, to the tombs of the kings at Dowth and Newgrange, and to the ruins near-by of two of the most famous and beautiful of the old abbeys, Mellifont and Monasterboice. Readers of this book will remember that, early in the narrative, Betty and I had journeyed up from Dublin to Drogheda for the purpose of visiting these historic places, but had been prevented by a combination of unforeseen circ.u.mstances.

It was, then, for Drogheda that I set out next morning, Betty having voted for another day in the Belfast shops; and by a singular coincidence it was the first day of July, the anniversary of that other day in 1690 when the army of William of Orange defeated the battalions of Irishmen who had rallied around James--and surely never had braver men a poorer leader! But it was not really the anniversary, for the change in the calendar has shifted the date to July 12th, and it is on that day the Orangemen celebrate.

It is an eighty mile run from Belfast to Drogheda, and one of the most picturesque and interesting in the east of Ireland; and the weather G.o.d was kind to the last, for a brighter, sweeter day it would be impossible to imagine. As the train leaves the city, there are glimpses to the right of the purple hills of Antrim; and then the train pauses at the busy town of Lisbun, and continues on over the Ulster ca.n.a.l, past the battlefield of Moira, past the beautiful woods of Lurgan, and then through a prosperous and fertile country, with broad fields of grain and flax, and pretty villages, and so into Portadown, once the stronghold of the McCahans.