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
amusement 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
pass. Followed the path along the water side, and came to the crowd
round the four bodies laid upon the wet meadow grass. 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 grass, 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 noble 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.
The first accounts put the number of wounded at twenty, to-day they are
reduced to five--perhaps that is the proportion of exaggeration in
newspaper accounts of outrage generally. The newly-made bride and
bridegroom went to see the wounded, leaving cordials and money at every
house.
One thing is observable in Cork, the determination to make an effort to
restore native industry from its present languishing condition. Passing
along the streets I notice clerks in the windows affixing labels on
goods with the words, "Irish Manufactures," "Cork made goods," "Blarney
tweeds," "Irish blankets," "Cork made furniture." There have been
meetings held on the subject since I came here. No city in the world
could appear to be more quiet and law-abiding than Cork to all
appearance.
As one instance of the exaggeration of reports concerning outrages, I
see the disturbance in Cork that took place at the rejoicings about Sir
George Colthurst's marriage advertised with the heading 20 men shot. The
local report says five injured, one shot, but not fatally.
Went down the river Lee to Queenstown. It did not rain except a few
drops during the whole time. The sun shone, the clouds, some of them
were billowy and white, and massed themselves on a deep, blue sky. The
little steamer was crowded fore and aft with holiday passengers, and a
large quantity of small babies. The river Lee, from Cork to Queenstown,
wears a green color, as if it were akin to the ocean. Flocks of sea
gulls flying about, or perching on the ooze where the tide is out, make
one think of the sea, but the green banks of the river are there to
testify against it.
We expected to find that the scenery from Cork to Queenstown was
beautiful, and so it is. There is no use in trying to praise it, for all
praise seems flat compared with the reality. There are glorious, steep
slopes leading up to fair, round hills, waving with golden grain, or
green with aftermath, checked off into fields by gay, green hedges or
files of stately trees. On the slope, half way up the slope, snuggling
down at the foot of the slope, are residences of every degree of beauty.
Houses, square and solid, with wide porticos; houses rising into many
gabled peaks; houses that have swollen into all sorts of bay windows
running up to the roof, or stopping with the first story. Houses that
fling themselves up into the sky in towers and turrets, and assert
themselves to be, indeed, castles.
Queenstown comes at last, a town hung up on a steep hillside, and on the
very brow of the hill is an immense cathedral, unfinished like St. Finn
Barre's, of Cork. In these cathedrals two forms of religious belief are
slowly and expensively trying to express themselves in stone, chiselled
and cut into a thousand forms of beauty, in marbles, polished and
carved, in painted windows, in gildings and draperies of the costliest.
Looking at these costly fanes erected to be a local spot where Jehovah's
presence shall dwell, one can scarcely believe that He will dwell in the
heart of the poor who are willing to receive Him in the day of His
power. Is the soul of the beggar more dear to God as a dwelling place
than these lofty temples? Forever the world is saying "Lord, behold what
manner of stones and what buildings are here?" And the Lord cares more
for the toiling fisherman, the poor disheartened widow, and the laboring
and heavy laden peasant than the grandest buildings. The cost of these
churches would buy out Achil island and the appurtenances thereof, I
think. It would maybe purchase the wildest tract of the Donegal
mountains. I wonder if a hardy mountain people, who could live on their
own soil, and begin to feel the stirrings of enterprise and energy,
would be as acceptable to Him who came anointed to preach the gospel to
the poor as these poems in stone. Who knows?
We sat on a bench under the trees and looked at the harbor--its waters
cut by many a flying keel, at Spike Island lying in the sun, all its
fortifications as silent and lonely looking as if no convict nor any
other living creature was there. Steamboats for "a' the airts the winds
can blaw," were passing out and away, leaving a train of smoke behind
them, and big sail vessels, three-masted and with sails packed up, are
waiting to go, and revenue cutters and small passenger boats are flying
about each on their way.
A lady sits by me and is drawn to talk to the stranger of the greenness
of the grass here winter and summer, of the beauty spread out all
around. She tells of one who died away in another land brought home to
lie under the daisies here, just twenty years ago to-day. Other people,
she says, are proud of their country, are fond of their country, but
none have the same love for their country as the Irish have for green
Erin. Every inch of ground; every blade of grass in Ireland is holy,
says this lady with tears in her eyes. She is thinking of the dust that
Irish grass covers from her sight. It is on an anniversary we meet; she
cannot help speaking on this day of sacred things. The steamboat is
wading up to the wharf. We do not know one another's names, but we have
drawn near to each other--we clasp hands and part with a mutual God
bless you. The little boat swallows up all that are willing to come on
board, and like a black swan she sails up over the calm river, under the
bright sky, past the handsome houses and the lovely grounds, among the
clustering masts back to the rich city of Cork.
All the people injured in the attack on the rejoicing at Sir George
Colthurst's marriage are pronounced recovered to-day, except the one who
was wounded by a shot; he is still in the infirmary. A dignitary of the
Catholic Church who preached at Millstreet, where the disturbance took
place, introduced into his sermon remarks on the state of society there,
when his hearers became affected with coughing to such a degree that the
rev. gentleman had to stop for a time and speak directly to his hearers.
After the sermon most of the congregation left the church before mass--
few remaining.
The sun has come out and the harvest will be greatly benefited by this
tardy warmth, I am sure.
There has been some marching of soldiers--dragoons--fine looking men on
fine horses--through the streets to-day, to the blare of a military
band, accompanied and escorted by all the loose population of Cork. I
was much interested to see among the running crowd the good pace made by
a man with a wooden leg, who really could hop along with the best of
them. This is all the apology for a crowd which I have seen in Cork. I
have not heard the roar of one belated drunkard; such sounds have broken
slumber in other towns. Whatever excitement may be in the county, the
city of Cork seems as quiet, as orderly and as thriving as any city in
the kingdom.
I have discovered that, though the lower part of the river Lee is
crowded with masts and alive with traffic, the upper part, flowing along
under the shadow of green trees and bordered by wide meadows, is as
quiet as if it were flowing through the country miles from any city. I
have discovered the magnificent promenade called the Mardyke, a wide,
gravelled road overarched with trees, running along by the river. When
the evening lamps are lit, the susceptibility of Cork wander here in
pairs and "in couples agree." There are plenty of comfortable seats in
which to rest, for the promenade is a very long one, and the shimmer of
the many lamps among the green foliage has a pretty effect.