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
principal 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 passing 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,
passed 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. Passed 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 coarse 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 sanctity.
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 circumstance 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 pass 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 God-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 passed 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 circumstances 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 passed 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 multitudinous 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 passenger
before they could pass 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 passed, 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, principally 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 titled
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 ennobling 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 noble
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.