The Letters of "Norah" on Her Tour Through Ireland Part 23

They told me that the Galway coast has the same flowers as the coast of Spain. I can testify that flowers abound in little front gardens, and window panes, and in boxes on every window ledge. I did not go to see the iodine works, where this substance is manufactured from sea weed. I saw people burning kelp--and smelled them too--on the Larne and Carnlough coast and in Mayo. They burn the dried sea weed in long narrow places built of stone. They are not kilns, but are more like them than anything else I know of. You see stacks and ropes of the sea weed put up to dry. Kelp burning is not a fragrant occupation, and its manufacture is not specially attractive.

I think Galway is a very prosperous thriving town. I went to the bathing place of Salt Hill, a long suburb of pretty cottages, mostly to be let furnished to sea bathers. I should have gone on to Cushla Bay and to the islands of Arran, but I did not. I looked round me and returned to Galway.

There is difference perceptible to me, but hardly describable between the Galway men and the rest of the West. The expression of face among the Donegal peasantry is a patience that waits. The Mayo men seem dispirited as the Leitrim men also do, but are capable of flashing up into desperation. The Galway men seem never to have been tamed. The ferocious O'Flaherties, the fierce tribes of Galway, the dark Spanish blood, have all left their marks on and bequeathed their spirit to the men of Galway. I met one or two who, like some of the Puritans, believed that killing was not murder, who urged that if the law would not deter great men from wrong-doing it should not protect them.

When trade revives and prosperity dawns upon the West the fierce blood, like the Norman blood elsewhere, will go out in enterprise and spend itself in improvements.

Land was pointed out to me in Galway for which L4 an acre was paid by village people to plant potatoes in. This is called conacre. In going through Galway City, even in the suburbs, I did not see great appealing poverty such as I saw elsewhere. There was the bustle of work and the independence of work everywhere, but in the country, there seems poverty mixed with the fierce impatience of seeing no better way to mend matters. I heard of evictions having taken place here and there, but saw none.

LII.

THE LAKES OF KILLARNEY.

There is a good deal of disturbance about Limerick, according to the papers. A traveller would never discover it. It does not appear on the surface. I have been a little here and there in the environs of Limerick, and have seen no sign of any mob or any disturbance. Police go out unexpectedly to do eviction service and it is only known when the report comes in the papers.

I did not hear in Limerick town or county, in any place where I happened to be, of any landlord who had got renown for any special hardness.

There was a person boycotted quite near to the city who was getting help from neighboring landowners to gather in his crops. What his offence was I did not learn.

In Limerick I met with an old and very dear friend who gave me a few facts about boycotting as seen in personal experience. An outlying farm was taken by my friend from which a widow lady had been evicted before the present agitation commenced. A premium of L100 was paid for possession. My friends had congratulated themselves on this transaction having occurred before the organization of the Land League; but one night an armed and masked party took the widow lady and reinstated her in her place. My friends were startled a little by a visit from this party, who informed them that they were returning from reinstating the lady in her place. Had they any objection? No, they had no objection.

Would they disturb her in possession? No, they would not disturb her in possession. If they had only the L100 which they had invested they were quite willing to surrender the farm. Three cheers were given for my friends, three cheers for the widow lady, a gun was fired off, there was a wild cheer for Rory of the Hills, and they disappeared. The widow lady after some time quietly left the place of her own accord, and everything was as it had been before. They, the armed party, found out that they were not doing the lady a kindness by reinstating her, and so the matter ended.

Limerick, though an old city, is not a very large one. Going down the princ.i.p.al street--George's street--you can look down any of the cross streets beyond the masts on Shannon and see on the other side of the river oats, waving yellow and in stocks, up the slope. Standing on the Wellesley Bridge, where young Fitzgibbon in bronze stands on a granite pedestal, perpetually endeavoring to draw his sword--which he succeeded in drawing to some purpose at Alma and Inkerman, if we are to credit the pedestal, which we do--you can look down the Shannon, over the boats and among the steamboat chimneys and the ships' masts, and see the green banks of the Shannon, broad and wide, with cattle standing ankle deep in the rich pasture. You can see them as they extend far away, widening as they go, till the horizon shuts out any farther view. The constant rain of these two last months, I am afraid, will damage the ripening crop. It is near the close of August and there is hay yet uncut, there is hay lying out in every form of bleached windrow, or lap, or spread, under the rain. Some of it looks quite spoiled.

No one, I suppose, leaves Limerick without gazing at and perhaps wishing for some of the beautiful specimens of Limerick lace that are displayed in the shop-windows.

From Limerick to Killarney in the rain through a country gradually growing poorer. At the junction there was a detention which enabled me to walk about a little. There was a detachment of police that filled a couple of car pa.s.sing on their way to eviction in one direction; a large detachment returning from eviction got out of the cars here. Eviction in this part of Ireland is feverishly active, and on every hand you hear of Mr. Clifford Lloyd. A person with whom I had some conversation told me I could have no idea of the state of the country without penetrating through it away from the line of rail. Of course this is so.

As we neared Killarney the waters were out over the low lying lands and the hay looked pitiful. In a pelting rain we steamed into Killarney, pa.s.sed through the army of cabmen and their allies and were whirled away to Lakeview House on the banks of the lower Killarney lake, a pretty place standing in its own grounds. Killarney is a nice little town with some astonishing buildings. I have heard it styled as a dirty town; it struck me as both clean and rather stylish in its general appearance. It seems to depend almost entirely on tourists. Unlike Limerick, unlike Galway, but very like other western towns the number of people standing idly at the corners, or leaning against a tree to shelter from the rain, strikes a stranger painfully. The lounging gait and alert eyes mark people who have no settled industry, but are watching their chance.

We were allured to Lakeview Hotel by a printed card of terms and found it delightfully situated. Did not intend to linger here any time, did not seem to care much for the lakes now when I had got to see them. It was a damp evening, the mountains, that loom up on every hand, were wrapped in their gray cloaks, the lake whipped up by the squally winds had risen in swells and everything looked dismal. I shall see some one convenient sight and look round me and leave in the morning, I said.

The only available sight to be seen that night was Torc Cascade--well, I will be content with that. I must take a car; bargained for that, and drove through the walled-up country. Every place here is walled up, enclosed, fenced in. I noticed some cottages that were pictures of rustic beauty, others that were dirty hovels. The pretty cottages were occupied by laborers on the estates that border on the lake. Pa.s.sed a handsome, little Episcopalian church in a sheltered place; near it were two monumental crosses of the ancient Irish pattern, erected by the tenants to the memory of Mr. Herbert, who was their landlord and who is spoken of by the people as one who deserved that they should devote some of their scant earnings to raise a cross to his memory.

In due time we arrived at a little door in the wall, where a man stood in Mr. Herbert's interest, who gave a small ticket for sixpence, unlocked the little arched door and admitted the stranger into this temple of nature and art. A board hung on a tree was the first object, warning visitors not to pluck ferns or flowers, the man at the gate having notice to deprive marauding visitors of anything so gathered.

There is a winding gravel walk leading up the height almost alongside of the brawling stream that leaps from rock to rock. I did not see any flowers at all, but the common heather bell in two varieties and the large coa.r.s.e fern so common in our Canadian woods. There are many cascades unnamed and unnoticed in our Canadian forests as handsome as Torc Cascade. When you get up a good way you come to a black fence that bars the way. You are above the tall firs, and the solemn Torc Mountain rises far above you. I would have been lost in admiration had I never seen the upper Ottawa or the River aux Lievres. Feeling no inclination to commit petty larceny on the ferns, I descended slowly and returned.

The ruined abbey of Muckross is another of the sights of Killarney.

Every visitor pays a shilling to Mr. Herbert for permission to enter here. I did not go to see it, but some of the party at the hotel did.

They described the cloisters as being in a good state of preservation-- cloisters are a kind of arched piazza running round a court yard, in this case having in its centre a magnificent yew tree. These ruins are taken great care of, therefore parts of the abbey are in a pretty good state of preservation. They tell of a certain man named John Drake, who took possession of the abbey kitchen about one hundred years ago, lived there as a hermit for about eleven years in the odor of sanct.i.ty.

There was quite a party going through the gap of Dunloe, which reduced the price of the trip to very little, comparatively speaking, and I was persuaded to join it. Every available spot about here has a lordly tower, a lady's bower, an old ruin or a new castle. The Workhouse is fine enough and extensive enough for a castle, and the Lunatic Asylum might be a palace for a crowned head. There are the ruins of Aghadon Castle on one ridge and the shrunk remains of a round tower. A brother of the great O'Connell lives here in a white house bearing the same name as the hotel, Lakeview House. We look with some interest at Dunloe Castle. once the residence of O'Sullivan Mor, and listen to the car-man who tells us of the glories of the three great families that owned Kerry, O'Sullivan Mor, O'Sullivan Bear and great O'Donoghoe.

Of course we hear legend after legend of the threadbare tales of the Lakes. We heard much of the cave of Dunloe which has many records, in the Ogham character, of Ireland in the days of the Druids. All this time we were driving along a road with bare mountains, and tree-covered mountains rising on every hand. It reminded me in some places of the long glen in Leitrim, in others of Canadian scenes among the mountains.

We began to be beset by mounted men on scrubby ponies. They gathered round us, riding along as our escort, behind and before and alongside urging on us the necessity of a pony to cross the road through the gap.

Their pertinacity was something wonderful.

The carman stopped at a miserable cabin said to have been the residence of the Kate Kearney of Lady Morgan's song. That heroine's modern representative expects everyone to take a dose of goat's milk in poteen from her, and leave some gratuity in return. The whole population turned out to beg under some pretext or another. One very handsome girl, bareheaded and barefooted, and got up light and airy as to costume, begged unblushingly without any excuse. She gathered up her light drapery with one hand, and kept up with the horse, skelping along through mud and mire as if she liked it. I noticed that she was set on by her parents who were the occupiers of a little farm.

Suddenly our car stopped at a house where all sorts of lake curiosities were exposed for sale. From this point it was four miles, Irish miles, through the gap to the lake to the point where we took the boat. This was one circ.u.mstance of which we were not aware when we started; it was therefore a surprize. I am sorry to say that this gap was a disappointment to me. It was a difficult path among bare mountains, but nothing startling or uncommon.

What was uncommon was the relays of indefatigable women that lay in wait for us at every turn. Goats' milk and poteen, photographs, knitted socks, carved knick-nacks in bog oak; everything is offered for sale; denial will not be taken. You pa.s.s one detachment to come upon another lurking in ambush at a corner. There are men with small cannons who will wake the echoes for a consideration; there are men with key bugles who will wake the echoes more musically for a consideration; there is the blind fiddler of the gap who fiddles away in hopes of intercepting some stray pennies from the shower. One impudent woman followed us for quite a way to sell us her photograph, as the photograph of Eily O'Connor, murdered here by her lover many years ago--murdered not at the gap but in the lake. There was a large party of us and these followers, horse, foot and artillery, I may say were a persistent nuisance all the way.

The ponies, crowds of them, followed us to the entrance of the Gap, where they disappeared, but the women and girls never faltered for the five miles. The reiterated and re-reiterated offer of goat's milk and poteen became exasperating; the bodyguard of these pertinacious women that could not be shaken off was most annoying. The tourists are to the inhabitants of Killarney what a wreck used to be to the coast people of Cornwall, a G.o.d-send.

One does feel inclined to lose all patience as they run the gauntlet here, and then one looks around at the miserable cabins built of loose stones, at the thatch held on by ropes weighted with stones, the same as are to be seen in Achil Island, among the Donegal hills, or the long glens of Leitrim, notices the patches of pale, sickly, stunted oats, the little corners of pinched potatoes--a girl pa.s.sed us with a tin dish of potatoes for the dinner, they were little bigger than marbles--the little rickles of turf that the constant rain is spoiling, and one sees that as there is really no industry in the place, of loom or factory, that want and encouragement have combined to make them come down like the wolf on the fold to the attack of tourists. It spoiled the view, it destroyed any pleasure the scenery might have afforded, and yet under the circ.u.mstances it was natural enough on their part. "We depend on the tourists, this is our harvest," the carmen explained to us. From the hotel keeper to the beggar all depend on the tourist season.

After all it was something to have pa.s.sed through between the Macgillicuddy's Reeks and the purple mountain; something to see water like spun silver flinging itself from the mountain top in leaps to the valley below, to struggle up and up to the highest point of the gap and look back at the serpentine road winding in and out beside small still lakes through the valley far below. Of course we look into the Black Lough where St. Patrick imprisoned the last snake. Of course we had pointed out to us the top of Mangerton, and were told of the devil's punch bowl up there. Down through the Black Valley we came to the point where the boats waited for us, leaving the black rocks, the bare mountains, the poor little patches of tillage, the miserable huts and the mult.i.tudinous vendors of goat's milk and poteen behind. To our surprise the way to the boats was barred by a gate, and at the gate stood a man of Mr. Herbert's to receive a shilling for each pa.s.senger before they could pa.s.s to the boats. "He makes a good thing out of it,"

remarked the boatmen. I do not know how many more fees are to be paid for a look about the lakes of Killarney, but this gate, Torc Cascade and Muckross Abbey cost each tourist two shillings and sixpence to look at them.

The upper lake is beautiful, fenced around by mountains of every size and variety of appearance. Of course they are the same mountains you have been seeing all day, but seen from a different standpoint. The Eagle's Nest towers up like an attenuated pyramid, partly clothed with trees, and is grand enough and high enough for the eagles to build on its summit, which they do. Here were men stationed to wake the echoes with the bugle. As our boat swept round, recognizing that we had not employed them, they ceased the strain until we pa.s.sed, but the echoes followed us and insisted on being heard.

There are many, many spots on the Upper Ottawa as fair and as romantic as the Lakes of Killarney, and they are very lovely. The trees on the islands have a variety that do not grow in our Canada, princ.i.p.ally the glossy-leaved arbutus. From the upper lake we slid down a baby rapid under an old bridge--built by the Danes of course, the arch formed as the arches of the castles in the west--into the middle lake.

The day had been one of dim showers, but in the middle lake the sun streamed out and touched the peak of the purple mountain and all the mountain sides and woody islands with splendor, that streamed down in golden shafts along the rain that was falling on some, and chased for a moment the shadows that lay on others. We slid down a fainter rapid under another bridge into the last and largest lake. On every lake there are buildings of glory and beauty to be seen nestling on the banks among the trees, or towering on the heights, owned by the wealthy and t.i.tled people that own the land round the lakes. A cottage built for Her Majesty was pointed out to us, and we heard of a royal deer hunt held here. We heard rapturous accounts of stags hunted to the verge of death, and saved alive to repeat the enn.o.bling sport. And we censure without measure the Spanish bull fight where the animals are killed once! How many deaths do these timid deer suffer? I am afraid we are not as n.o.ble and merciful a people as we think we are.

There are sights to be seen and tales to be heard about these lakes of loveliness that would occupy weeks, but a glimpse and away must suffice for some, and our party all left Killarney on the next morning. I must say that the wealth and the poverty, the unblushing begging, the want of any remunerative industry, the idle listless people about the corners, made Killarney a sad place to me.

LIII.

CORK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD.

After returning from the lakes the rain came down in such torrents as made us feel very thankful to be indoors again. We heard it raining all through the night as if the days of Noah were returned once more. Every one became anxious about the harvest in consequence of this steady rain.

The bishop has recommended prayer in all the Catholic churches for seasonable weather to save the harvest. Murmurs of the appearance of rot in the potatoes reach me frequently. I have noticed disease in the potatoes appearing on the dinner table, a kind of dry rot, only to be noticed after cutting the potato.

From Killarney to Cahirciveen is forty-five miles; beyond that is the island of Valentia. There are many wild views to be seen on this island, the property of the Knight of Kerry. The traveller here can notice how the Atlantic is wearing away the Kerry coast.

The first part of this drive of forty-five miles is through a poor, poverty-stricken country, with such cabins of mud and misery as are an amus.e.m.e.nt to the tourist and a pain and a shame to the Irish lover of his country. There is nothing about these habitations to hint that any idea of comfort had ever penetrated here. For the reason of pelting rain and driving winds I was forced to give up my intention of going across by car to Kenmare, and from thence to Skibbereen, and took the train for Cork. The land seems to grow better the nearer we come to Cork.

Arrived at Cork, the first object which attracted my attention was the monument to Father Mathew. The temperance cause to which he dedicated his life sadly needs another champion. Will another Father Mathew arise?

As soon after my arrival in Cork as I was comfortably settled, I sallied out to discover the river Lee with an insane notion that I would hear "the bells of Shandon that sound so grand on" its pleasant waters. I discovered the river with tree-shaded, secluded dwellings on one bank and a wide green pasture on another. There was a bridge at the place where I first came in sight of the river, and a great crowd, so eager as to be silent, gazing up the stream. Thinking it was a boat race that drew their attention, I crossed the bridge to gain the green pasture at the other side. The pasture was reached by a little arched door through a boundary wall, where a policeman kept guard. There was a great crowd around this little door. There had been an accident, a boat had upset and all in it had been lost; they were searching for the bodies. I asked for admittance and the policeman unlocked the door and allowed me to pa.s.s. Followed the path along the water side, and came to the crowd round the four bodies laid upon the wet meadow gra.s.s. A father, so quiet, partially gray, trim and respectable looking, a young lad in blue boating costume, a young girl in black, farther on another in whom they thought there were signs of life, and about her two doctors were working, applying a galvanic battery. The mother had been restored and was conveyed into one of the houses.

I never saw any attempts to recover a drowned person before. I wondered that they left the body lying on the damp earth in wet clothing. They told me that it might be fatal to move her before they succeeded in bringing her back to life. They tried a long time in vain, then they laid the four bodies all in a row for the coroner. The damp gra.s.s, the trampling and sympathetic crowd, the four bodies in their wet garments laid on the bank, will always rise in my memory along with my first sight of the river Lee.

Cork seems a rich city, full of business, bustle on all the wharves, buying and selling on all the streets. The buildings are very grand.

Alongside the river is a long ridge rising up to a tree-crowned summit.

On that hillside is tier upon tier of grand houses, grand churches, fine convents and public buildings of one kind and another. You come upon fine churches through the town in corners where you do not expect them.

The church of churches in Cork is the Protestant Cathedral, of St. Finn Barre--whoever he was. This church sits high up on a rocky foundation, its pointed spires of exquisite stone-work pierce the sky. It is not finished, scaffoldings are there, and skilled chisels and cunning hammers have been knapping and polishing there for many a day, and are likely to continue hammering and chiselling for many a day more. Inside, it is marble of Cork, marble of Connemara, marble of Italy, polished to the brightest. The gates which admit from one ecclesiastical division to another are wrought in flowers that blaze in gold. Before the altar, parables of our Lord are wrought in mosaic on the floor. On the wall the different n.o.ble families who belong here, or have money invested here, have their shields containing their coats of arms on the wall. Into this grand church have been wrought the religious ideas of the church people for years, at the cost of L100,000, and there is an immense golden angel on the point of a gable calling with two trumpets for L25,000 more to finish it.

None but a rich city could afford the splendid buildings that are in Cork. The evening on which I arrived in Cork was signalized not only by the boat accident, but by a grand wedding, the wedding of a Sir George Colthurst in the splendid cathedral church just mentioned, and there was any amount of fashion, and high birth and young beauty gathered there.

The bride was beautiful, the bride was "tall," and not yet, they say, out of her teens. She was dressed in white satin and silver cloth, Irish lace and orange blossoms, and wore no jewels. None but invited eyes were allowed to look at the grand ceremony which made the fair bride and the lord of Blarney castle one. Some tenants of the bridegroom got up a bonfire, had some barrels of beer given them to rejoice withal, and were dancing to the music produced by six fiddlers, when they were surrounded by a small army of disguised people, fired into, beaten and dispersed.