DONEGAL OF THE STRANGERS
It once fell to my lot to make a hasty scamper through Donegal from end
to end; that is to say, as far as possible, I made the circuit of the
county, beginning with Ballyshannon, following the coast-line, with
divergences, from Donegal to Gweedore, going round by Bloody Foreland,
by Falcarragh and Dunfanaghy, and ending up by way of Letterkenny at
Ballyshannon again. I took ten or twelve days to do it--perhaps a
fortnight--staying each night at an inn. To Gweedore I devoted the best
portion of a week. Now, in that scamper I had a very characteristic peep
at Ireland. I missed, indeed, the wild gaiety of the South. Donegal
people are somewhat sorrowful. But I found plenty of types and racy life
nevertheless.
It is a good many years ago now; and travelling in Donegal has been
simplified since then by the light railways with which the names of Mr.
Arthur Balfour and Mr. Gerald Balfour are gratefully associated. When I
was there I drove through the country, only taking the train from
Letterkenny to Ballyshannon on my return journey; and it was an
excellent, though somewhat expensive, way of seeing the country.
However, the hospitality was so wonderful that one only slept and
breakfasted in one's hotel. For the rest, the kind priests were only too
eager to give hospitality to myself and my companion.
At Ballyshannon we stayed a night in one of those enormous old hotels
with a maze of winding passages, which suggest to one in the dead waste
and middle of the night that in case of a fire one never could get out.
The next day we came upon the first of the priests, who carried us off
to see everything that could be seen of Ballyshannon, including a visit
to Abbey Assaroe, which we knew already in William Allingham's poetry.
To the grief of these kind friends of ours, we insisted on going off the
same afternoon to Donegal town, to which we were driven by "Wullie"--the
first "Wullie"--a red-haired, taciturn youth, who suspected us of
laughing at him and was closer than an oyster. Your English man or woman
is the truly expansive person. When you want to get at anything from an
Irishman you've got to sit down and wait for the charmed moment when his
suspicion of you is put to sleep. Dr. Douglas Hyde got his Religious
Songs and Love Songs of Connacht by sitting over the turf fire in a
cabin, taking a "shaugh" of the pipe and offering a fill of it, passing
round a flask of poteen, perhaps. It might be hours, and it might be
days, and it might be weeks before you broke down the barrier of
reserve, well worth the breaking-down if you have "worlds enough and
time." You can't travel twenty miles in an English third-class carriage
before you have the intimate confidence of your fellow-passengers. You
are told which relative died of cancer, with harrowing details, which is
in a madhouse, and which in gaol; for the plain English people are the
most unreserved in the world, while the Irish are the most reticent.
And if you win a flow of talk from the Irish peasants, be sure they are
talking round what they have to tell by way of leading you away from it;
for an Irishman uses language to conceal his thoughts.
We hadn't "worlds enough and time" for "Wullie." His lips were
tight-locked from Ballyshannon to Donegal.
The next day we saw what was to be seen of the Castle, under the
guidance of the parish priest, whom we met walking in the Diamond. We
introduced ourselves to him. He was a delightful, humorous, stately,
kindly old man, and he looked at us when he met us with an eye that
asked: "Who are you and what is your business in Donegal?" It is a way
the priests have in the remote parts of Ireland, where they are
everything to their flocks. Being reassured, he gave his day to our
entertainment, taking us to see some of his parishioners when he had
shown us all the town contained of interest.
Killybegs I remember as a beautiful bay, big enough to take in the whole
English fleet. The next day we went on to Kilcar, where we found our
third priest, who lived in a delightfully clean little cabin with a clay
floor. His housekeeper was barefooted, but he had dainty table
appointments. I remember that he had very good china, and he explained
that his mother had given it to him. He was the son of rather wealthy
people. We had a meal of fish, with a little fruit to follow; and while
we ate it a messenger was out prospecting for the loan of an outside car
for the priest. Sure enough, by the time we had finished the meal the
car was at the door, and our host carried us off to see the Caves of
Muckross, some six miles away. Incidentally, we saw Bunglass, that
magnificent cliff-face where Slieve League drops into the sea. I
remember a visit we paid to a cottage where a father sat at the loom
weaving, the mother was carding wool, and a black-haired daughter was
sprigging muslin by the little narrow square window. A scarlet geranium
in the window seemed to be in her night-black hair, and her tears flowed
when our little priest spoke to her. He told us that her lover had
married a richer girl and gone to America. I can remember quite well
walking up a mountain road where the friendly little lambs came and
trotted a bit of the way with us, and the voice of the young priest as
he told us of the innocence of the people--"not a sin in it from year's
end to year's end," for they were too poor to drink--and how his
ambition was to get away to the East End of London, where there was
something to do for a born fighter.
A night at the excellent hotel at Carrick and the next day we were at
Glencolumkille, that wild and lonely glen between the mountains and the
sea, with the majestic Glen Head standing out into the Atlantic. In the
Glen are twelve crosses of stone, where pilgrims make the stations in
honour of St. Columba or Columkille, the Dove of the Churches. Above
Lough Gartan, on Eithne's Bed, he was born, and any who lie there shall
not have the pangs of home-sickness; wherefore many emigrants stretch
themselves upon that rocky couch before they cross "the Green Fields to
America." The Glen is full of the noise and thunder of the waves, and
Slieve League lies superbly up in the sky, reminding one of Browning--
"The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay."
At Glencolumkille we met the fourth of our priests--a tall, thin,
Spanish-looking youth, who came to meet us with a collie at his heels.
Glencolumkille is very lonesome. There is only an Irish-speaking peasant
population of the very poorest, and the nearest one with whom our priest
could exchange a word on his own level was some seven Irish miles away.
He gave us an impression of immense loneliness, although his joy at
having someone to entertain irradiated his melancholy, handsome face
with cheerfulness. He was rejoiced that by the greatest of good luck he
had a bit of meat for dinner, for fish is the staple food of the Glen.
He was very much interested in news from the great world, and produced
with some pride a copy of the _Daily Telegraph_, several days old, to
prove that he kept in touch with the world. He told us that he was the
youngest of a large family, and his home was as far away as Dublin. Over
nearly a score of years I have the most vivid impression of the lonely
figure, the dog at his heels, as we left Glencolumkille behind us. He
had made us free of his house and hospitality, and parted from us with
the utmost unwillingness.
Ardara, Glenties, Dungloe--I think of them, little villages lying
amongst gorgeous mountains, and remember that in those gloomy and
frowning fastnesses the Irish were safe against Cromwell's planters,
since what man who could choose, not being Irish, would desire to live
in such a place? A Donegal farm is something to remember. The one crop
the ground grows freely is stones--stones in millions, boulders as great
sometimes as a small house. There are glens that are nothing but stones
from end to end, about as promising ground as the Giant's Causeway for a
farmer. In such places you may see a little field, the size of a
tablecloth, snatched from the aridity of Nature by the incredible
industry of man. Everywhere in Donegal man asks Nature for bread and she
gives him a stone, unless it be the harvest of the sea, which he
snatches from her at the price of his life, it may be.
I saw Donegal in April, softened as much as might be by the wild April
showers and the bursts of April sunshine. The clouds and the mountains,
the cliffs and the sea--Slieve League, Errigal, Muckish, Bunglass, Horn
Head, the Glen Head, Tory Island--were all beautiful beyond telling,
with a wild and stormy magnificence of beauty. I try to imagine their
desolation in winter and fail to realize it.
Ardara I remember by the beauty of Glengesh on an April day, with a
hundred streams running down its sides; and at Ardara we halted on
Sunday, and knelt in the gallery of the church, looking down at the
peasants kneeling in rows on the stone floor before the altar. The doors
were wide open, and birds wheeled in from the sunlight and out again
with flashing wings; and the air was exquisite, fresh and wild and
sweet.
At Gweedore, as I have said, we tarried nearly a week, held there by the
hospitality of the parish priest, who would have us see everything
thoroughly. We stayed at an idyllic little inn, and were fed on the
best and simplest fare: stirabout, made as only the Irish can make it;
home-made bread; delicious butter, new-laid eggs; little delicate
chickens, with green parsley sauce and boiled bacon, potatoes, and
cabbage, cooked as only the Irish can cook them; for in certain simple
dishes of their own the Irish cannot be beaten.
[Illustration: A DONEGAL HARVEST.]
There was a most picturesque waiting-maid, a shy little girl, as pretty
as a picture, who wore a pink cotton frock, and had pink bare feet
showing under it, who had the softest, most appealing of voices.
At the inn our priest found us, sallying in with his great blackthorn in
his hand to see who were the strange visitors to the Glen. He was a
redoubtable priest--the Law of Gweedore, they called him--and he
sheltered his people as the hen sheltereth her chickens. The Glen was
exquisitely clean from end to end, though starveling poor. But the
priest saw to it that they did not starve.
For four or five days, perhaps, we abode in this little inn, where the
Glen opens out to the sea. We visited the people in their cottages,
under the guidance of our redoubtable _padre_, and saw all there was to
be seen. His hospitality was unbounded, although at the time there was a
wide and bitter division in politics between us.
I shall not soon forget the manner of our going. We had come now almost
to the end of our journey, and it was desirable that we should return to
Dublin as quickly as possible. He wanted us to make the journey round by
Bloody Foreland, and we wanted to do it as shortly as possible, striking
inland to meet the mail-car for Letterkenny at, I think, Gortahork. But
we knew better than to say "No" to the Law of Gweedore; so we thought to
slip away early in the morning, and made our arrangements the last thing
at night, after leaving his hospitable roof.
But the Law of Gweedore knew all that happened in Gweedore. A full hour
before we had appointed for being called we were called. His Reverence
had arranged our conveyance, and _paid for it_--paid also, I think, for
a luncheon-basket. Willy-nilly, we went round by Bloody Foreland and
visited the evicted tenants, crouching under scraws and twigs, in
shelters which suggested the caves of the earth-dwellers rather than
anything fit for man.
Gortahork I remember as a place where we had a good meal of tea and hot
cakes and eggs, and other things thrown in, for a shilling. And I
remember also the long, long drive to Letterkenny--some forty miles it
was, I seem to remember, but shall not pledge myself to it lest I be
confuted--and how we dashed along the sides of precipices, we on one
side of the car, with our feet almost touching earth, the other side
high in air, being weighted only with empty parcel-post hampers, of
which Donegal needs no great supply; below us--far, far below--a valley
filled in with mighty stones and rocks. The pace was so fast that we
could hardly keep our seats, though well accustomed to that car which
the unlettered English tripper is apt to call "a jolting car"; and the
driver was quite unaware of our discomfort, assuring us with as much
jocularity as a Donegal man permits himself that the horses never were
known to stumble, and that, although an occasional English tourist did
fall off, he or she always "fell soft."
After all, when I look back to that scamper through Donegal sixteen
years ago, I remember the mountains and the priests. Monuments of a
beautiful hospitality, the priests for me mark the wild ways up and down
Donegal.