[Illustration: THE OLD CLOCK TOWER, YOUGHAL]
MUNSTER
Described by Stephen Gwynn
Pictured by Alexander Williams
[Illustration]
BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY
1912
Beautiful Ireland
LEINSTER
ULSTER
MUNSTER
CONNAUGHT
_Uniform with this Series_
Beautiful England
OXFORD
THE ENGLISH LAKES
CANTERBURY
SHAKESPEARE-LAND
THE THAMES
WINDSOR CASTLE
CAMBRIDGE
NORWICH AND THE BROADS
THE HEART OF WESSEX
THE PEAK DISTRICT
THE CORNISH RIVIERA
DICKENS-LAND
WINCHESTER
THE ISLE OF WIGHT
CHESTER AND THE DEE
YORK
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
The Old Clock Tower, Youghal _Frontispiece_
The Blackwater at Dromana 8
Blarney Castle 16
Ferrybank, Waterford 20
Shandon Steeple from the River Lee 26
Entrance to Cork Harbour 32
Kenmare Bay from Templenoe 38
Macgillicuddy's Reeks 42
The Gap of Dunloe, Killarney 46
Muckross Lake, Killarney 50
Brickeen Bridge, Lower Lake, Killarney 54
Holy Island, Lough Derg 58
[Illustration: MUNSTER]
I
The best way to get to Munster nowadays is undoubtedly by the new
route from Fishguard to Rosslare, in which the Great Western Railway
has reopened what was for ancient times the natural and easy way
from England to Ireland. The Normans, as everyone knows, came across
here, an advance party landing on the coast of Wexford; but the main
force under Strongbow sailed straight up the river to Waterford. Many
another invader before the Normans took the same route: and there is
little doubt but that the peaceful invasion of Christianity had begun
in this region, or that south-eastern Ireland was already baptized,
before Patrick set out on his mission. Earlier again, the Milesians
(according to modern theory) came from Britain, a race of warriors
trained to fight on foot in the Roman fashion with sword and javelin,
and drove before them the chariot-fighting people who then held the
wide plain watered by the three great rivers which meet in Waterford
harbour.
For a good sailor, undoubtedly the long passage to Cork, ending with
a sail up the beautiful haven and the "pleasant waters of the river
Lee", is to be preferred beyond all other routes. But the mass of
mankind, and more specially of womankind, like the short sea and
quick rail, and their choice is Fishguard to Rosslare. You enter the
southern province of Ireland by a viaduct which leads from the flat
lands of Wexford, through which you will have travelled for nearly an
hour, on to the steep left bank of the river Suir facing Waterford
city. The great bridge crosses the united Barrow and Nore; half a
mile lower down is the junction with the Suir, and from the train you
have a glorious view of the wide pool made at the confluence--a noble
entrance into this province of lovely waters.
The run along the river is beautiful, too. Citizens of Waterford have
built them prosperous villas and mansions facing you along the south
bank, and a mile below the city on an island there is seen a castle of
the Fitz-Geralds--rebuilt recently, but comprising in it the walls of
an ancient place of strength which has never ceased to be a dwelling
of this strong Norman-Irish clan. It was the household, too, from
which issued a notable man in latter times, Edward Fitz-Gerald, the
translator of _Omar Khayyam_. His portrait, by Laurence, hangs there,
picturing him as a chubby, good-humoured boy.
The city itself may show to you only a line of lights, very
picturesque along its great length of quay: but by daylight you
can distinguish the low round castle which still keeps the name of
Strongbow's tower. Fragments of the old walls remain, and there are
buildings of much antiquarian interest--the restored cathedral, the
ruined Franciscan abbey. But, on the whole, you are not likely to stop
in Waterford, with Kerry and West Cork before you.
Yet let me tell a little of the things which the ordinary tourist
visiting Munster passes by in his haste. The route from Rosslare to
Killarney strikes across from the valley of the Suir into the valley
of the Blackwater, rounding the Comeragh mountains: and I do not
suppose it can be disputed that the Blackwater is the most beautiful
of Irish rivers. I have seen it at Mallow, at Fermoy, at Lismore, and
at Cappoquin, and everywhere it is the same yet different; a chain
of long wide pools, but always with a swift flow to keep the water
living and sparkling, and they are strung together with great sweeping
rapids, deep enough for salmon to lie in, the anglers' joy: while on
each shore are hill slopes receding, richly wooded, from the stream
and the meadows beside the stream. The palm of beauty belongs of
right to Lismore, where the Duke of Devonshire has his great castle
overhanging a famous pool: and below it from the bridge one looks
down the stream and the valley to a far-off blue vista between the
hills. Yonder, where the river meets the sea at Youghal is one of the
quaintest and most charming towns of Ireland. I saw it first by the
light of a long procession of tall torches which lit up delightfully
the old houses with their scrolled fronts of timber, and the pretty
faces of girls and women looking out of the first-floor windows: but
it was no little surprise to me in that march to find myself under
an archway, over which rose a tall slated tower, fully equipped with
loopholes, and from whose top (if I had only known it) arrangements
had been made to bombard me and my friends that night. In daylight I
saw, though with a hasty glance, the very beautiful fifteenth-century
church still intact (for a miracle) and still used for worship: the
still greater attraction of Sir Walter Raleigh's old house I never
visited, but I hope you may. It has a mulberry tree said to be of
his planting, and a chimney piece against which he almost certainly
reclined his shoulders while in act to toast his travelled calves.
[Illustration: THE BLACKWATER, AT DROMANA]
Travelling by this line of rail you will have on your right the
Comeragh and the Knockmealdown mountains which divide the valley of
the Blackwater from the valley of the Suir. But it may possibly be
your pleasure, as it will certainly be your profit, to explore also
the Suir valley, which divides the Comeraghs from the outlying mass of
Slievenamon, and, farther west, curves northward from the base of the
tall Galtee ranges.
I came last into Munster by motor car, driving from Kilkenny to
Clonmel over the southern shoulder of Slievenamon (Sliabh na m-Ban,
the Witches' Mountains), and a finer journey could not be taken. We
struck out through rich pasture and tillage, keeping this shadowy
dome which rose from the plain as our objective, till the pass began
to define itself. But it was when we had crossed or were crossing the
pass that the real beauty began. Slievenamon was on our right, well
wooded; facing us, as we ran south, were the Comeraghs, and a low foot
ridge thrown out from them, between which and us ran the Suir. The
valley is wider than that of the Blackwater, with less of what may be
called fancy wooding; but it can fairly hold its own; and the quay at
Clonmel by the shining, swirling river is as pretty as heart could
desire.
From Clonmel to Lismore a road carries you over the top of
Knockmealdown (that is, Maeldune's Hill), and those of my companions
who took that drive crowed over me for the rest of the journey;
describing in glowing phrases all the glories I had missed, the
wonderful panorama from the top, then the gradual descent down a long
wild wooded glen into the tranquil and cultivated beauty of Lismore.
Yet if I had a motor car at Clonmel and only one day's excursion to
make, it is not south I would go. I would go north into the heart
of Tipperary, through the Golden Vale which lies overshadowed and
half-circled by the Galtee range, until I came to the thing best worth
seeing in all Ireland, Cashel of the Kings.
Nothing is, I repeat, better worth seeing, nothing less often seen
by the tourist; for it lies off the track. The Rock of Cashel is a
lone steep hillock, sharply scarped, and rising out of the plain
which stretches from Slievenamon to Slieve Phelim, and comprises in
fact the rich land drained by the Suir. Such a spot was inevitably
seized on for a stronghold, and from its earliest days Milesian rule
centred here. To Cashel it was that St. Patrick came to convert the
king of Munster, for Cashel was to the southern half of Ireland
what Tara was to the northern. It was the heart of Munster, whence
principalities radiated out. Thomond, North Munster, ran west from it
into Clare, across the Shannon; _Ormond_, _Oir Mumhan_, East Munster,
lay away from it towards Kilkenny and Eastern Tipperary; Desmond,
_Deas Mumhan_, the great kingdom of South Munster, comprising Cork
and Kerry, came to its walls, for theoretically the High Kingship of
southern Ireland alternated between Thomond and Desmond. And away
south-east, through the gap between Slievenamon and the Comeragh
Mountains, you can see into Waterford, which in Irish was called the
Deisi, falling into Desmond as a separate lordship.
This rock is crowned with buildings that speak of war and peace, but
of peace rather than war. There stands intact Cormac's Chapel, finest
example of Irish building in the pre-Norman style; round-arched,
solid, barrel-roofed, decorated with string-courses of dogtooth
moulding. Beside it is the great cathedral built by the O'Brien lord
of Thomond, cathedral and fortress in one; unroofed now, dismantled,
and ruinous, yet hardly beyond reach of repair, since the choir was
used as a cathedral till the latter part of the eighteenth century.
Then an archbishop got an Act of Parliament authorizing him to
unroof it and providing a regiment of soldiers to execute the work.
Archbishop Price's reason for such an enterprise may not seem wholly
conclusive; he liked--good easy man--to drive in comfortable state to
his cathedral door, and no coach and horses could conveniently ascend
the winding path up the Rock.
Beside the cathedral is the tall Round Tower, and on the north side of
the Rock, many remains of choir schools and other monastic buildings.
On the level plain and in the town are other monasteries ruined yet
not wholly shorn of their splendour; and within a few miles, Holycross
Abbey and Athassel speak of the wealth and culture which were
destroyed in this rich land of the Golden Vale.
But the Rock itself, standing up there, crowned with such a group
of buildings as no other of Ireland's high places can parallel, is
the true object of pilgrimage; and the view from it over the Golden
Vale, to the noble Galtee peaks and pinnacles due south of you, and
the long waving line of Comeragh Mountains which runs continuously
east from them along the valley of the Suir, is a prospect worth long
journeying. Nor is that all. Slievenamon rises dome-shaped from the
eastern plain, a gap between it and the outlying spurs of Comeragh
showing where the Suir, headed off its southward course by Galteemore,
finds a way eastward to the sea: and to the north beyond the plain is
the far-off range of Slievebloom, dividing Leinster from the Shannon;
and nearer towards Athlone and the Shannon are the low hills with the
Devil's Bit nipped out of the top of them.
II
If I had to see Munster by motor car, my disposition would be to
start from Waterford, follow the valley of the Suir up to Clonmel,
then strike north to Cashel and see it. All the monuments can be seen
in a few hours, and no ruin or building that I ever visited has so
intelligent a custodian. From Cashel I would go to Holycross, that
exquisite remnant of monastic splendour, rich in historic memories,
and thence push out across Tipperary to the north-west, steering for
the gap between Keeper Mountain and the Silver Mines. This would
bring me out of the Golden Vale, which is in truth the valley of the
Suir, and into the basin of a still greater and more famous river, at
its most famous point. For from this gap the route would descend to
the Shannon, at the narrow gorge below Lough Derg where all its vast
volume of water is contracted to the ford and pass at Killaloe. Here,
if you will, is beauty: long peaceful levels above the weir where
lake passes imperceptibly into broad river; below it huge swirling
rapids, interspersed with wide, smooth, yet swift running salmon
pools, all down the twelve miles of river to the head of the tideway
at Limerick. And here, too, are historic memories more glorious than
can be matched elsewhere in Ireland. It was here at the outflow of the
lake, where is an unsuspected ford, that Sarsfield crossed (led by the
rapparee, Galloping Hogan), on the raid when he stole out of Limerick
along the Clare shore and so to this ford, on his way to lie in wait
on the slopes of Keeper for William's expected battering train. On
your road from Cashel you will have passed near Ballyneety, where he
and his troopers surprised the sleeping convoy and blew the heavy
guns into scattered shreds--a splendid foray, splendidly preluding
Limerick's heroic and successful resistance to the great Dutchman.
But here at Killaloe, and specially at this ford above it, where great
earthworks mark the ancient fort of _Beul Boroimhe_, are memories more
honoured than hang about even Sarsfield's name. Here it was that in
the tenth century Brian Boru, Brian of the Tribute, built up with his
Dalcassians of Clare the power that learnt how to resist the Danes,
whose plundering forays threatened to blot out civilization altogether
from northern Europe. The first defeat of moment inflicted on them
was at Sollohed in the Golden Vale, near Limerick Junction, where the
forces of Thomond were led by Brian's brother, King Mahon. But it was
Brian who as a mere youth refused to join Mahon in submission (by any
pact, however veiled) to the invaders: it was Brian who had fought
them in desperate guerrilla warfare through the hills of Clare, and
along the banks of the Shannon, till he was brought down to fifteen
men, and Mahon asked him in the council chamber, "Where hast thou left
thy followers?" And Brian answered, as the Irish poem tells:
"I have left them with the foreigners
After being cut down, O Mahon!
In hardship they followed me on every field,
Not like as thy people."
It was Brian who in that council caused appeal to be made to the
Clan Dalcais whether they would have peace or war, and "War", they
answered, "and this was the voice of hundreds as the voice of one man".
The work that was begun at Kincora was finished sixty years later
outside Dublin when the Danish menace was finally broken and
dispelled on the shore by Clontarf: and in that fight the old lord of
Kincora, Brian of the Tribute, High King by then of all Ireland, fell
gloriously in the hour of a victory almost too dearly won.
You can see in Killaloe the little old church, built somewhere in the
eighth or ninth century, with its high-pitched roof of stone slabs,
under which Brian worshipped more than ten centuries ago. Beside it
is the cathedral built by his descendants, and adorned with noble
archways in the rich Romanesque style of native Irish architecture.
It is probable--certain, indeed, to my thinking--that Brian's rath and
strong place of abode was where the market-place of Killaloe still
is, on the top of the high ground to which the streets climb from the
river and the churches. The fort at the ford is called in Irish _Beul
Boroimhe_, that is the "Mouth of the Tribute": and one can easily see
how it came by its name, for here was the strategic position which
commanded all the traffic from the long navigable reaches of the upper
Shannon and its lakes to the tideway at Limerick. Here portage must be
made, here toll could be taken; and not only on the river traffic but
on all the cattle that came down from Clare into Tipperary by this the
one really practicable ford.
[Illustration: BLARNEY CASTLE]
From Killaloe to Limerick the road is pleasant, along the
ever-widening valley which is blocked by Keeper to the north, but
trends opening and widening towards West Clare and the sea. Yet to
understand the beauty and the charm of that characteristic piece
of Irish landscape, you should be taken down the stream in the
characteristic boat of those waters, the long pole-driven cot.
Shooting the rapids in these craft is a wonderful sensation, and even
on a chill day in February the tumult of lashing water sends warmth
into the blood. So you can follow the stream till at last below
Athlunkard bridge you reach the long Lax Weir, which keeps the memory
of Scandinavian settlers in its name (_lax_ is Norse for salmon,
to-day as then), and the memory of early Norman settlement in the odd
little tower built in the middle of the weir to command the passage,
as long ago as the days of King John.
In Limerick itself King John's Castle with its great rounded towers
frowns over the Bridge of the Broken Treaty, where Sarsfield and
his men covenanted with William for protection to the property
and the religious freedom of Irish Catholics, and then took
ship for France--first of the Wild Geese, founders of the Irish
Brigade--leaving no guardians but honour and justice to enforce
the sanction of the treaty, guardians that were of no avail. Much
has been written of the siege of Derry and in praise of its heroic
defenders: but too little is known of Limerick's resistance, when
the French officer, whom James II had left in charge, declared that
the walls could be battered down with roasted apples, and Sarsfield
answered that defended they should and must be. You can see the mark
of William's cannon balls on the old wall near the convent hospital
east of the town: single marks on the dark limestone here and there,
but at the angle of the wall, where the Black Battery stood, and
where a breach was made, there is clear trace still of the desperate
assault--from which William's best troops, after they had effected a
lodgment, were finally driven back pell-mell.
From Limerick the West Clare Railway (whose vagaries have been made
more famous than I ever knew them to deserve) will carry you through
Ennis, passing near Bunratty Castle, Quin Abbey, and many another
place of fame, to the coast where Lahinch offers one of the most
popular golf links in Ireland. It is a wild wind-swept coast, a
wild surf beats on the strand that divides Lahinch from Liscannor,
and north of it are the great cliffs of Moher. Lisdoonvarna is near
by, a spa much frequented by Irishmen, more specially by the Irish
clergy. But the favourite place of all who visit this part of Munster
is Kilkee, a little watering-place set above steep cliffs on which
the Atlantic swings in with all its weight. There is no other place
known to me in western Ireland where you can find decent seaside
quarters in a spot that meets the full force and splendour of the
sea. And from the Clare coast near by--even out of the window of a
railway carriage--I saw one of the greatest prospects that eye could
look on. To the south, some thirty or forty miles distant, the Dingle
peninsula stretched outward, with the huge mass of Brandon rising out
of the blue: but away north-west I could see very clear the three
island heights of Aran, and east of them the whole group of Connemara
mountains, beyond which again, away up into Mayo, the shapes of
Mweelrea and Croagh Patrick were dim yet recognizable in outline.
The day was of astonishing clearness, yet, as so often happens in
western Ireland, its clearness had nothing hard: the Atlantic blue was
deep and sombre, the mountain shapes, exquisite in line, were vested
in colour that had a magic and a mystery all their own. Sunlight
across that brine-laden air, across those pungent expanses of bog, is
never crudely definite in its revelation; there is a hint of romance
and glamour in the pearly shimmer of its brightness.
Clare has noble traditions: and no one should visit it without a
pilgrimage to the castle of Carrigaholt on the Shannon estuary near
Kilrush; for this was the ancestral home of that branch of the
O'Briens who made the ancient name illustrious on every stricken field
in Europe. They got their title, the Viscounts Clare, from Charles
II, but after the Williamite wars they were attainted; and from
Sarsfield's death onward it was always a Lord Clare who commanded the
Irish Brigade--that wonderful fighting force whose chief recruiting
ground was here in south-western Ireland. Two Lords Clare got their
death at the head of their men, one at Massaglia in 1693 when Prince
Eugene was beaten: the second at Ramillies, where in the general
disaster the Irish Brigade not only saved its own colours, but carried
two British standards back to Bruges. The third and last earl, who had
refused restitution to all the estates and titles if only he would
forswear his religion, led the immortal charge at Fontenoy, when
Ireland's banished men snatched in a desperate feat of arms fierce
requital for the penal laws that had left them a choice between exile
and slavery. Among all the writers who ever handled that period of
history, whatever their prepossessions, none ever wrote the name of
"Clare's brigade", save with honour and admiration; and no nationalist
poet has told their praise so eloquently as the Unionist, Miss Emily
Lawless, in two sister poems. One of the two depicts the eve of
Fontenoy in the exiles' camp, and the wild stirring in men's hearts.
"The wind is wild to-night, and it seems to blow from Clare"--blows
with a memory in it and a vision of all that has been left, blows with
a promise of things long hoped for, since "Clare's brigade may claim
its own" wherever the fight rages.
"Send us, ye western breezes, our full, our rightful share,
For faith and home and country and the ruined hearths of Clare."
[Illustration: FERRYBANK, WATERFORD]
And the second tells how, on the morrow of the battle, strange craft
with strange bodiless sailors were seen on the Western coast,
making swift way like homing birds to Corcabascinn, this westernmost
barony of Clare.
"Men of Corcabascinn, men of Clare's brigade,
Hearken, stony hills of Clare, hear the charge we made,
See us come together, singing from the fight,
Back to Corcabascinn in the morning light."
Yet in truth it may be that only the native born will find any special
charm in this stormy Corcabascinn or its wild winds and waters; for of
prettiness and favour it has none, owning grandeur rather than beauty.
The counties of Munster which appeal to every human being who has eyes
in his head to see with are Cork and Kerry--but Kerry above all.
III
The unhappy inconveniences of sea travel prevent most folk from
visiting County Cork under the best conditions. Access should be by
boat: and surely the entrance into that wonderful Cove where the
great liners halt to take off mails is noblest of all gateways into
Ireland. All the encircling ring of hills is rich with vegetation, but
above all on the east by Queenstown is the choicest and most varied
wooding. Anything will grow there and nearly everything has been made
to grow. The little town itself is picturesque, climbing the steep
slope and dominated by Pugin's great cathedral, which stands on the
disembarkation quay, making a centre for the last impressions and
emotions of those--alas! how many thousands yearly--who leave Ireland.
It is not now as I saw it in the early 'eighties, when hopeless,
broken, half-famished peasants were pouring out in a ghastly torrent,
mere wreckage on the flood: emigration was then eighty thousand a
year, to-day it is less than half that number. Those who go to-day,
go reasonably equipped, go for the most part to friends in cities, of
which they have heard so much, where they have so many kindred and
acquaintances, that the journey seems hardly into exile--hardly to a
strange land. Yet, even to-day, every train that brings the emigrants
leaves behind it, through the West and South and Midlands, its wake
of bitter weeping; at station after station it has gone out amid
tearing away of locked hands, last embraces severed, faces of old
men twitching, faces of women convulsed with sobs, and sped on its
journey to the accompaniment of that dreadful heartrending "keene",
the Irish wail, which is heard nowadays more often at the ship's side,
or on the railway platform, than at the grave. "Och, the poor soft
Irish," I heard a woman say this year, leaving some platform in Cork;
on her way, evidently, to a home in the States, where she had lived,
no doubt for many years, with the hard-faced, swaggering Yankee, who
accompanied her, and who looked with ill-concealed contempt on the
tears and emotions of the "poor soft Irish"; but she at least still
kept the homely tongue and kind heart.
From Queenstown up to Cork is one of the loveliest waterways in the
world, little towns on either bank under the steep wooded shores, and
here and there some old castle. Cork itself may have no very great
architectural beauties, but the whole lie of the city, spread between
its hills, divided by the various streams of that delightful river,
makes a beauty of its own: you see it best from the high ground over
against the famous steeple where hang "the bells of Shandon that sound
so grand on the pleasant waters of the river Lee".
"Pleasant" is the word for Cork, the county, and its soft-voiced,
quick-speaking people, with the odd little turn upwards at the end
of their sentence. It was called "the Athens of Ireland", though I
would say rather, the Naples: in any case, Cork has always sent out
far more than its share of brains. In the days of "Father Prout", who
wrote the "Bells of Shandon" and other immortal ditties, Cork had a
regular coterie of wits--among the best known being a Dowden, father
or grandfather of the illustrious man of letters who is to-day one of
the chief lights in Trinity College. The late Provost, Dr. Salmon, a
still greater luminary, came also from the southern county--as did
half a dozen more of the Fellows whose names are familiar enough to
all in Ireland; though some, perhaps, enriched legend and chronicle
rather than history, and survive as remembered oddities--after all,
not the least loveable of survivals.
The south coast of Cork, from Youghal to the Kenmare River, is the
pick of Ireland for yachtsmen. Endless is the succession, from Cork
itself with all its lesser creeks and havens, Carrigalo, Carrigaline,
and Ringabella, on past Kinsale harbour, Courtmacsherry and Clonakilty
bays, Roscarbery, Glandore, and west to Baltimore and Roaring Water,
off which lies Cape Clear. Then past Mizen Head, on the west shore,
are greater bays, harbours not for yachts, but for navies--Dunmanus,
Bantry, and the Kenmare River, whose northern shore belongs to Kerry,
but which has a frontier certainly in paradise.
I write of what I have seen, in the Kenmare River: all these southern
harbourages are to me only names on the map, save for the quaint
little bay of Roscarbery and the long winding creek of Baltimore--both
of which I know only as winter shows them, and shows them from
the land. Yet of the people of Roscarbery I form at least some
picture from the sketches drawn by the two ladies who relate the
varied _Experiences of an Irish R.M._--though West Cork needs to be
supplemented by knowledge of Connemara, to realize the scenes that
they have in mind. And from Baltimore, or rather from a mile outside
it, I carry away a picture of a congregation dividing after mass into
two rival political assemblies, and the one that I addressed consisted
largely of women wearing the great black cloak, with black hood giving
an odd framework to the wearer's face, which is one of the few and
cherished relics of traditional costume. I was told on good authority
(when I lamented myself) that if I had the women I had the votes, for
West Cork was in all matters under female governance. But of that I
cannot testify.
Baltimore is one of the great fishing stations of Ireland, and to
it the population of Cape Clear comes for most necessaries of life.
Along that coast many craft are familiar, but an odd name hangs
about one set: the fishermen from near Dungarvan are always known as
"the Turks". In 1631 Algerine pirates made a descent on the town of
Baltimore, sacked it and carried a hundred of its folk into slavery:
and it was a fisherman from Dungarvan who (under threat of death)
piloted the corsairs.
All this shore had fine natural advantages for smuggling which in old
days were not neglected: and still, I am told, certain places could
be named where cigars and wines of excellent quality can be had at
surprisingly moderate price.
Kinsale is a greater haven, fit in old days to be the rival of Cork;
and the town there speaks of prosperous merchant folk, with its
quaint weather-slated houses, each having the little bow-window which
eighteenth-century mariners would seem to have specially affected, and
its very old-world bowling green.
[Illustration: SHANDON STEEPLE, FROM THE RIVER LEE]
Here was the theatre on which Ireland saw a great game played out--the
last and losing throw in the war of O'Neill and O'Donnell against the
forces of Elizabeth. At the long last, the promised help from the
Continent had come; a Spanish fleet under Don Juan d'Aquila entered
the harbour, seized and held the town, which was beleaguered by the
English (and Irish allies) under Mountjoy and Carew. O'Neill and
O'Donnell, marching down from the north, drew an outer line about
the besiegers, and on December 21st battle was joined. Tyrone would
have waited, wisely, till the siege could be raised by cutting the
English communications, and the force attacked on the march. But Red
Hugh was always bad at waiting, and forced the attack. The combination
failed, the Spaniards gave no help, and Mountjoy drove back the
Ulstermen. D'Aquila surrendered on good terms, and O'Donnell in hot
fury went to Spain to complain of his incompetence and to press for a
new expedition. But Elizabeth had her agents in Spain also, and one
of them did her such service as was freely rendered in those days.
O'Donnell drank a poisoned cup at Simancas, and died of it, and the
State Papers contain the poisoner's account of his own exploit and
demand for fitting payment. It was only after this that Carew was able
to write of _Pacata Hibernia_, an Ireland, where, in truth, he and his
had made a wilderness and called it peace. They themselves tell how
from the Rock of Cashel to Dingle Bay the voice of man or the lowing
of cattle could not be heard.
Loveliest of all regions in Ireland, this country of Desmond has
suffered worst of all. Elizabeth's soldiers attempted here, and nearly
carried out, a complete extermination of the native race by the sword
and by starvation. And when after centuries the folk had multiplied
again and were, by universal testimony, gay even in their rags, the
famine of 1847 fell upon them, and in the blackest horrors of that
time Skibbereen and West Cork attained an awful notoriety. Nowhere
else did such heaps of famished and plague-stricken dead defy all
efforts even to bury them.
The shadow of those days has not yet entirely passed: but the stranger
will see little of it, following the famous route which leads up the
Lee valley to Macroom (where the rail ends), and so past Inchigeela
and Ballingarry, past Gouganebarra by Keimaneigh, through the
mountains to Bantry and Glengariff. And here confession must be made.
I have never seen these famous beauties. I have followed the Lee only
to Inchigeela where it breaks into a score of channels between little
islands covered with scrub oak and birch and hazel, a piece of river
scenery whose like I never saw. And I have driven along the road from
Macroom to Killarney, along the Sullane River to Ballyvourney, which
tens of thousands know as "the metropolis of Irish-speaking Ireland".
For, as it chances, Cork alone, of the more prosperous counties,
has kept the Irish speech, and kept it in a form the least modified
by modern simplifications. Irish is still to-day the language of
well-to-do and well-educated men and women. My host at Ballyvourney
had received his education in Paris, more than that, had been through
all the Franco-Prussian war, and had seen more of the world than is
given to most men; but for many years he has been back, a kind of king
among his own people, and a real repository of the ancient scholarship
and traditions of the Gael. At Ballingeary, a few miles from him, was
founded the first of those "summer schools" where men and women, boys
and girls, of all sorts and conditions, and from many corners of the
world, unite for common study of the noble language which careless
generations had nearly suffered to die out. That settlement is now one
of the objects of interest on the coach road, and travellers, if not
tourists, may well find it the most interesting of all.
Bantry is one of the great naval stations, one of the great recruiting
grounds for the navy. I saw it, as it should be seen, from the sea.
It, too, is associated with the memory of one of those failures which
stud the course of Irish history like sinister beacons: for here
Hoche with a fleet aimed to land in 1796, and here half of his fleet
actually arrived, with no one to oppose them. Hoche was then at the
pinnacle of his power and fame, an idealist of the early Republican
movement, consumed with that real passion for spreading freedom which
Napoleon was destined to replace by a very different conception. But
Hoche and half of the ships were tempest-driven far out of their
course, and it was Grouchy, the slow mover, the man of hesitations,
who reached the goal, and, having reached it, failed to act. History
hinges on odd chances. Humbert's achievements, two years later, with
a mere handful of men, when England had an army in Ireland, put it
beyond dispute that Grouchy, even with what he had, could have set on
foot a movement that would have driven English power out of Ireland
at least for a time: and Wellington himself has told how great a part
in breaking down the power of France, from those conflicts in the
Peninsula on to the climax of Waterloo, was borne by the unemancipated
Catholic Irish peasants, who formed the very bone and sinew of the
British line.
It may well be that all was for the best in the best possible of
worlds: that it was best that Ireland, instead of freeing herself with
the help of Republican France, should help greatly to deliver Europe
from the menace of Imperial France--and hand it over to the tender
mercies of the Holy Alliance. Yet it needs the faith of Voltaire's
philosopher to believe that anything could have been worse for Ireland
than the historic evolution which she was actually fated to undergo.
Beyond Bantry is Glengarriff, of which Thackeray wrote that "such a
bay, were it lying upon English shores, would be a world's wonder".
I have only seen it off the deck of a steamer, away in a smother of
cloud; but everyone confirms Thackeray. Castletown Beare, farther
west on the north shore of Bantry Bay, I have seen, and the Castle
of Dunboy, where was the seat of the O'Sullivan Beare, lord of this
region, from which after the rout at Kinsale he and his people fled
in a body, marching north amid dreadful privations till they crossed
the Shannon and ultimately reached some protection in Ulster. But
O'Sullivan's fighting men were left in the Castle under their captain
MacGeoghegan, who prolonged resistance to the point of desperation
against Carew's artillery. Mortally wounded at last, he succumbed
in an attempt to reach the magazine to blow all, assailants and
defenders, sky high. It would have been better for the garrison had
he succeeded, since Carew hanged every man of them. There is the ruin
to-day, breached and battered, standing in a grove of ilex on a very
beautiful promontory.
That Castle of Dunboy gave its name to Froude's famous romance _The
Two Chiefs of Dunboy_--a romance founded on historic fact--perhaps not
more coloured in the telling than in the same author's volumes on the
history of Ireland. For here in this peninsula between Bantry Bay and
the Kenmare River, which was the special hold of the O'Sullivans, clan
loyalty and the clan name did not die out. Here as elsewhere, English
settlers were brought in as lords of the land, with enormous power
over the native Irish, whose loyalty still held to the representative
of their old chiefs. The O'Sullivans were chiefs now principally in
the extensive smuggling operations--and let it be remembered that
under the laws made by England to crush out Irish trade, contraband
was almost the one outlet for Irish commerce. If Irishmen wanted to
export the wool of their sheep, the hides of their cattle, the meat
that they salted, all this traffic was by law forbidden. Such laws
make smuggling necessary and beneficent, and the O'Sullivans on the
south of the Kenmare River, like the O'Connells on its northern shore,
brought in their cargoes of wine, tobacco, silks, and laces, and sent
back ships laden with wool. With those cargoes went out too that other
contraband, the supply of officers and men for the Irish brigade. The
English landlord-settler was the representative of English law, and
between him and the O'Sullivans conflict was certain. In 1754, Murtagh
Oge O'Sullivan shot the Puxley of that day. Law was moved to great
efforts, and two months later the O'Sullivan was surrounded in his
house at the village of Eyeries, and, after a desperate resistance,
driven out of it by fire: he tried to cut his way out but was shot
down in escaping. That was a great day for the law, and they towed
O'Sullivan's body by a rope at the stern of a king's ship to Cork,
where they cut his head off and spiked it over the city gate.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO CORK HARBOUR]
Irish memory keeps vividly the detail of such events, and you can
find men in that district to tell you the whole as if it had happened
yesterday. I heard it all, though at secondhand, on a sail from
the Kenmare River to Bantry, one night when the sea was all fire, and
the mackerel shoals dashing this way and that, made flashes like a
Catherine wheel, and porpoises or dolphins following them left long
trails of light on the surface with sudden sparkles wherever the great
fish came up to roll. Out to sea was the recurring flash of the Bull
Light, for which ships steer on their way from America; and though
there was no moon I could still distinguish this huge island rock, and
its neighbour the Cow. The Calf, where the light used to be, is lower,
and lies close in by Dursey Island--in that year much talked of,
for a party of police who had crossed to collect rents from the few
islanders, were effectively marooned, as the boat they had chartered
left them, and every other craft was suddenly spirited away.
I think, perhaps, that night was lovelier on the Kenmare River--under
a sky ablaze with stars--than even the days of sun had been; but
nothing else in Ireland is so perfect, to my fancy, as this long,
narrow sea lough between the two mountainous peninsulas, and having
inland of it the full vista of those higher mountains which encircle
Killarney's lakes.
On the Kenmare shore of the southern peninsula is Lord Lansdowne's
famous seat, Derreen, set among rivers and lakes, and backed with
mountains. Derreen means the little oak grove, and as Mr. Cooke
well observes in his _Murray_, the native wooding here escaped
"the general destruction" of the forest trees to feed the iron
furnaces of Sir William Petty, ancestor of the Lansdowne family.
Most of the woods of Ireland--and Munster was covered with timber in
Elizabeth's reign--were ruthlessly squandered in this way, during the
first century of English occupation, by grantees or purchasers of
confiscated land, whose one idea was a savage exploitation of what
could immediately be cashed. However, let it be said that Petty's
successors, coming into great part of the Desmond inheritance, and
adopting the Desmond name, Fitzmaurice, took high place among that
Irish nobility of the latter type. They were not absentees but
landowners with some sense of what was owing to their estates, and
with a sentiment to the country from which they drew their revenues,
which is best evidenced by their close friendship with Maria Edgeworth
and Thomas Moore. Yet it was always at Bowood, in Wiltshire, that Miss
Edgeworth and Moore knew the great Whig statesman and his belongings:
neither the poet nor the novelist ever penetrated to Derreen.
Had they done so, they might have learnt more than ever either of
them came to realize about the greatest Irishman of their day--the
greatest power that has ever come out of purely Celtic Ireland in
modern times: for Iveragh, the peninsula over against Derreen, was the
birthplace and the home of Daniel O'Connell; it gave the climate and
the environment which determined him to what he was.
I am not going to write much--because no writing can do it justice--of
Iveragh, which is bounded on the south by the Kenmare River, on the
north by Dingle Bay, on the west by the Atlantic Ocean (with the
Skelligs lying off in it), and on the east by Magillicuddy's Reeks and
the lakes of Killarney; which is set therefore in beauty and majesty
and splendour and has interest and charm at every turn of every road.
But I am going to write a little of Daniel O'Connell and his people,
for it is stupid to go to Kerry, and know nothing of the greatest
Kerryman that ever lived, only--first, a little practical geography.
IV
The train will take you to Kenmare, where the railway company
has a really comfortable hotel, in whose garden you will see the
characteristic subtropical vegetation which can be produced in
this climate--palms, yuccas, New Zealand flax with its sword-shaped
fronds, bamboos, and the rest, "all standing naked in the open air"
like the heathen goddesses in the Groves of Blarney. From Kenmare the
beautifully engineered road, which was a joy to man and beast till
heavy motor coaches began to destroy it, runs along the north shore of
the sea lough and a few miles out crosses the Kerry Blackwater by the
most picturesque bridge over the loveliest stream that anyone could
ever hope to throw a fly in. A little farther along is Parknasilla,
the big hotel which has been built at a point where the coast breaks
up into a number of wooded islets, with bridges connecting them, and
meandering walks--well, nothing could be prettier. Then you go along
through Sneem, getting into opener, wilder country. As you approach
West Cove, Staigue Fort is on your right, a great circular structure
of dry masonry, more developed than the similar buildings in Aran, for
it has chambers in the thickness of the wall and stairs leading to
platforms for defence. From this monument of prehistoric times, whose
date can be measured by thousands of years, look across to your left,
where another stone building is in progress--a large hospital designed
to benefit the poor folk of this district: the bounty of a lady
belonging to one of the families who profited by confiscation and for
too long drew absentee rents. What may be the success of the scheme
cannot be foretold: but the beauty of her desire to make restitution
is not the least among the beauties of the Kenmare River.
At West Cove I have been lucky enough to stay with the man who knows
the west of Ireland in its present life and its past history better
perhaps than any living soul. In the great plot where cars draw up
outside his door, great plants of Arum lilies shoot up and flourish,
blooming luxuriantly in spring. They say that in Valentia an improving
gardener thought them too profuse in the Knight of Kerry's garden,
and pitched the roots out over the cliffs; but some caught on ledges,
fastened there, and sent up white lilies in niches of the crags--so
kind is that soft air.
Two or three miles beyond West Cove is the village of Caherdaniel and
under it comes in Darrynane Bay, on whose shore is a little hotel,
simple enough, but friendly; lying among Irish fisher folk who gather
of a summer evening to dance on the crisp turf that covers the sand.
Beside it is a small wood, and in the wood is Darrynane, a place of
pilgrimage, for here O'Connell lived and here his descendants remain.
The case of the O'Connells was typical. Driven by Cromwell out of
the fertile lands of Limerick they took root among the mountains of
Kerry and of Clare. The builder of Darrynane--that is of the original
habitation--was a Daniel or Donal who married a daughter of the
O'Donoghues--another great Kerry clan. This lady--Máire Dubh--was a
fruitful mother of children--she bore twenty-two of them and brought
twelve to full age; but she was also notable as a poetess in the Irish
tongue. Her second son, Maurice, inherited Darrynane, and was known
all over the country as Hunting Cap O'Connell, for a tax was put on
beaver hats, and from that day he wore nothing but the velvet cap in
which he was used to hunt hare and fox on the mountains of Iveragh.
Daniel O'Connell, his nephew, was a great votary of that sport, and
I have talked with a man who had hunted in his company. And still in
autumn you may see the harriers out on these hills and a namesake and
descendant of his hallooing them on.
[Illustration: KENMARE BAY, FROM TEMPLENOE]
Old Hunting Cap as head of the family played a great part in his
nephew's youth, providing, it would seem, for the later stages of his
education. The early one was cheap enough, for he was fostered on the
mountains in the cabin of his father's herd (that tie of fosterage
bound Catholic Ireland together, gentle and simple, with a strange
intimacy), and he got his first lessons in one of the hedge schools
which flourished in defiance of penal laws. It was no less typical
of Catholic Ireland that he should go abroad to finish his training,
or that he should have a kinsman high placed in the service of France.
His father's younger brother, Count O'Connell, was the last colonel
of the Irish Brigade: and when he was consulted concerning a place to
send his nephews, in 1790, found himself much perplexed to answer, so
troubled was the state of all the Continent. Daniel and his brother
Maurice were sent first to the Jesuits at St. Omer; they were trained
to detest the revolution which was driving their uncle out of the
service of France: and soon the flood of turmoil drove them from Douay
whither they had moved. At Calais, they learnt the news of Louis XVI's
execution: on the boat were two passengers who spoke of it as willing
eyewitnesses. These men were Irish Protestants, the brothers Sheares,
afterwards executed for conspiracy. It is very notable that although
Protestant Ireland, especially in Ulster, was much affected by the
revolutionary and republican doctrines, these found very little echo
in the Catholic part of the nation--and none at all among survivors of
the old Catholic gentry, such as the O'Connells. Yet when the young
O'Connell settled down to read for the bar in London, harsh measures
of repression and the violent Toryism of that day soon drove him into
revolt. He had a genuine hatred of oppression, of unfair play: later
in life this devoutest of Roman Catholics was the most powerful
advocate of equality for the Jews.
However, this is no place to talk of the great orator's career or his
triumphs. To his own folk in Kerry he was always "the Counsellor",
the wonderful advocate whose genius was like a flaming sword drawn
for the terrified prisoner. No other Irish leader has ever been so
near akin to the common folk; it was not for nothing he suckled
the breast of a Kerry peasant, and learnt to speak his first words
in the Irish tongue. Yet, oddly enough and pathetically enough,
so little of a "nationalist" in our modern sense was he, that he
welcomed and encouraged the growing disuse of Irish speech; all
diversity of tongues seemed hateful to him, in his eighteenth-century
cosmopolitanism. But no man was ever more in love with Ireland, or
more devoted to one spot of earth than he to his Darrynane. He wrote
to Walter Savage Landor of himself that he "was born within the sound
of the everlasting wave", and that his "dreamy boyhood fed its fancies
upon the ancient and long-faded glories of that land which preserved
Christianity when the rest of now civilized Europe was shrouded in the
darkness of godless ignorance".