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PEEPS AT MANY LANDS AND CITIES
EACH CONTAINING 12 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
AUSTRALIA GREECE NEW ZEALAND
BELGIUM HOLLAND NORWAY
BERLIN HOLY LAND PARIS
BURMA HUNGARY PORTUGAL
CANADA ICELAND ROME
CEYLON INDIA RUSSIA
CHINA IRELAND SCOTLAND
CORSICA ITALY SIAM
DENMARK JAMAICA SOUTH AFRICA
EDINBURGH JAPAN SOUTH SEAS
EGYPT KASHMIR SPAIN
ENGLAND KOREA SWEDEN
FINLAND LONDON SWITZERLAND
FRANCE MOROCCO TURKEY
GERMANY NEW YORK WALES
PEEPS AT NATURE
WILD FLOWERS AND THEIR WONDERFUL WAYS
BRITISH LAND MAMMALS
BIRD LIFE OF THE SEASONS
THE HEAVENS
PEEPS AT HISTORY
CANADA JAPAN
INDIA SCOTLAND
PEEPS AT GREAT RAILWAYS
THE LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY
THE NORTH-EASTERN AND GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAYS
PUBLISHED BY ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.
AGENTS
AMERICA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
AUSTRALASIA OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
205 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE
CANADA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
ST. MARTIN'S HOUSE, 70 BOND STREET, TORONTO
INDIA MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.
MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA
[Illustration: THE EAGLE'S NEST, KILLARNEY.]
[Illustration]
PEEPS AT MANY LANDS
IRELAND
BY
KATHARINE TYNAN
AUTHOR OF "THE DEAR IRISH GIRL," "AN ISLE IN THE
WATER," ETC.
WITH TWELVE FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
BY
FRANCIS S. WALKER, R.H.A.
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1911
_First printed November, 1909
Reprinted October, 1910, and September, 1911_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ARRIVAL 1
II. DUBLIN 6
III. THE IRISH COUNTRY 20
IV. THE IRISH PEOPLE 27
V. SOUTH OF DUBLIN 38
VI. THE NORTH 44
VII. CORK AND THEREABOUTS 49
VIII. GALWAY 58
IX. DONEGAL OF THE STRANGER 65
X. IRISH TRAITS AND WAYS 76
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE EAGLE'S NEST, KILLARNEY _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
A VILLAGE IN ACHILL viii
SACKVILLE STREET, DUBLIN 9
DUBLIN BAY FROM VICTORIA HILL 16
BLARNEY CASTLE 25
OFF TO AMERICA 32
A WICKLOW GLEN 41
THE RIVER LEE 48
RALEIGH'S HOUSE, MYRTLE GROVE 57
GLENCOLUMBKILLE HEAD 64
A DONEGAL HARVEST 73
A HOME IN DONEGAL 80
DIGGING POTATOES _on the cover_
_Sketch-Map of Ireland on p. vii_
[Illustration: SKETCH-MAP OF IRELAND.]
[Illustration: A VILLAGE IN ACHILL.]
IRELAND
CHAPTER I
ARRIVAL
It may safely be said that any boy or girl who takes a peep at Ireland
will want another peep. Between London and Ireland, so far as atmosphere
and the feeling of things is concerned, there is a world of distance. Of
course, it is the difference between two races, for the Irish are mainly
Celtic, and the Celtic way of thinking and speaking and feeling is as
different as possible from the Saxon or the Teuton, and the Celt has
influenced the Anglo-Irish till they are as far away from the English
nearly as the Celts themselves. If you are at all alert, you will begin
to find the difference as soon as you step off the London and North
Western train at Holyhead and go on board the steamer for Kingstown. The
Irish steward and stewardess will have a very different way from the
formal English way. They will be expansive. They will use ten words to
one of the English official. Their speech will be picturesque; and if
you are gifted with a sense of humour--and if you are not, you had
better try to beg, borrow or steal it before you go to Ireland--there
will be much to delight you. I once heard an Irish steward on a long-sea
boat at London Docks remonstrate with the passengers in this manner:
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, will yez never get to bed? Yez know as well as I
do that every light on the boat is out at twelve o'clock. It's now a
quarter to wan, and out goes the lights in ten minutes."
There is what the Englishman calls an Irish bull in this speech; but the
Irish bull usually means that something is left to the imagination. I
will leave you to discover for yourself the hiatus which would have made
the steward's remark a sober English statement.
These things make an Irish heart bound up as exultantly as the lark
springs to the sky of a day of April--that is to say, of an Irish exile
home-returning--for the dweller in Ireland grows used to such pearls of
speech.
Said a stewardess to whom I made a request that she would bring to my
cabin a pet-dog who, under the charge of the cook, was making the night
ring with his lamentations: "Do you want to have me murdered?" This
only conveyed that it was against the regulations. But while she looked
at me her eye softened. "I'll do it for _you_," she said, with a subtle
suggestion that she wouldn't do it for anyone else; and then added
insinuatingly, "if the cook was to mind the basket?" "To be sure," said
I, being Irish. "Ask the cook if he will kindly mind the basket and let
me have the dog." And so it was done, and the cook had his perquisite,
while I had the dog.
At first, unless you have a very large sense of humour--and many English
people have, though the Irish who do not know anything about them deny
it to them _en bloc_--you will be somewhat bewildered. Apropos of the
same little dog, we asked a policeman at the North Wall, one wintry
morning of arrival, if the muzzling order was in force in Dublin.
"Well, it is and it isn't," he said. "Lasteways, there's a muzzlin'
order on the south side, but there isn't on the north, through Mr. L----
on the North Union Board, that won't let them pass it. If I was you I'd
do what I liked with the dog this side of the river, but when I crossed
the bridge I'd hide him. You'll be in a cab, won't you?"
After you've had a few peeps at Ireland, you won't want the jokes
explained to you, perhaps, or the picturesqueness of speech
demonstrated.
Before you glide up to the North Wall Station you will have discovered
some few things about Ireland besides the picturesqueness of the Irish
tongue. You will have seen the lovely coast-line, all the townships
glittering in a fairy-like atmosphere, with the mountains of Dublin and
Wicklow standing up behind them. You will have passed Howth, that
wonderful rock, which seems to take every shade of blue and purple, and
silver and gold, and pheasant-brown and rose. You will have felt the
Irish air in your face; and the Irish air is soft as a caress. You will
have come up the river, its squalid and picturesque quays. You will have
noticed that the poor people walking along the quay-side are far more
ragged and unkempt generally than the same class in England. The women
have a way of wearing shawls over their heads which does not belong
naturally to the Western world, and sets one to thinking of the curious
belief some people have entertained about the Irish being descended from
the lost tribes. A small girl in a Dublin street will hold her little
shawl across her mouth, revealing no more of the face than the eyes and
nose, with an effect which is distinctly Eastern. The quay-side streets
are squalid enough, and the people ragged beyond your experience, but
there will be no effect of depression and despondency such as assails
you in the East End of London. The people are much noisier. They greet
each other with a shrillness that reminds you of the French. The streets
are cheerful, no matter how poor they may be. I have always said that
there is ten times the noise in an Irish street, apart from mere
traffic, than in an English one. An Irish village is full of noise,
chatter of women, crying of children, barking of dogs, lowing of cattle,
bleating of sheep, crowing of cocks, cackling of hens, quacking of
ducks, grunting of pigs. The people talk at the top of their voices, so
that you might suppose them to be quarrelling. It is merely the dramatic
sense. I have heard an Irish peasant make a bald statement--or, at
least, it would have been bald in an English mouth--as though she
pleaded, argued, remonstrated, scolded, deprecated.
Accustomed to Irish ways, English villages have always appeared very
dead to me. Unless it be on market morning, one might be in the Village
of the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty. I once visited Dunmow of the
Flitch of a golden May-day. It was neither Flitch Day nor Market Day,
and I aver that I walked through the town and saw no living creature,
except a cat fast asleep, right in the midst of the sun-baked roadway.
Such a thing could not have happened in Ireland.