exquisite beauty of these capacious bays and mountain
promontories, softened in the pale moonlight which shines
this lovely evening, till all which during the day
was grand and terrific has become serene in the silent
tranquillity of the clear night--perhaps you would readily
admit that the man who has so often been called a ferocious
demagogue is in truth a gentle lover of nature, an
enthusiast of all her beauties 'fond of each gentle and each
dreary scene', and catching from the loveliness as well as
from the dreariness of the ocean and the Alpine scenes with
which it is surrounded, a greater ardour to procure the good
of man in his overwhelming admiration of the mighty works of
God."
That was how O'Connell thought of Kerry; and as you drive on from
Caherdaniel along the high pass of Coomakista, which brings you out
across a shoulder of mountain from the view across Kenmare River to
a wider outlook full west on the Atlantic--why, you will have some
inkling of the sublimity which he felt.
Below you is the little harbour to and from which the O'Connells
worked their smuggling craft; and you can discern a narrow cleft in
the rocks making a short cut for row boats on a calm day. Once, they
say, a sloop of the smugglers lay in the harbour and was suddenly
aware of a revenue brig rounding the headland from the south. The wind
blew into the harbour. It was impossible to escape, and the sloop
lay motionless and to all appearance idle. But just as the pursuer
tacked and ran straight into the harbour mouth a sail was hoisted on
the sloop, she began to move, and in a minute her sides were scraping
through the tiny passage, while men with sweeps out fended her off
this and that sunken rock; and in another minute she was out and
away, cracking on full sail with a good half-hour's lead before the
revenue boat could beat out of the narrow sound to chase her.
[Illustration: MACGILLICUDDY'S REEKS]
From Coomakista the road descends steeply to Waterville, a famous
place for anglers, where a new town has grown up about the outlet to
Lough Currane, for here is now the chief station of the transatlantic
cables. The first of these cables was laid from Valentia Island some
ten miles farther north opposite the town of Cahirciveen, which will
be your destination if you purpose to return by rail along the shore
of Dingle Bay. But I commend to all, motorist, cyclist, or foot
traveller (if such a one be left in these degenerate days), another
way of exploring Iveragh. Also, if the sea is not your enemy, it is
worth while to stay in Waterville--where the sea as well as the lake
offer great chance to fishers--and try an expedition to the Skellig
Rocks. Fine weather is needed, for there is difficulty in landing on
these astonishing places where the gannets are the chief habitants:
strong flyers, they nest nowhere between this point and the Bass Rock
in Scotland, yet you may see them by dozens anywhere along the west
coast even in the breeding season. On the Skelligs are old stone
stairs of tremendous height, the work of old-time anchorite monks who
established themselves here in stone beehive-shaped cells--still
intact, for you to wonder at the discomforts of piety. And in the
crevices of these rocks rare birds breed--the stormy petrel, the Manx
shearwater, along with legions of puffin, guillemot, razorbill, shag,
and the rest. But do not go there even with a light easterly wind, for
it blows direct on to the rocky landing place; and if it blows at all
from the south-west the swell may be too big even on the sheltered
side. Nature is on a big scale, a rough playfellow, out here in the
Atlantic.
Even landward from Lough Currane, it is a wild nature that you must
encounter on the old mountain road to Killarney, which you should
travel for choice.
This way follows up the valley of the Eany River (but you may take the
main road skirting Lough Currane and turn in west to this same valley
at Owroe bridge) to the pass of _Bealach Oisin_ (Ossian's Track)
between Coolee and Knocknagapple. At the crest one must be close on a
thousand feet up, and the view back over Ballinskelligs bay with the
Atlantic beyond, to which the eye is led by a long winding thread of
river between steep mountain sides, is a splendid prospect. Once over
the neck, sea, river, and tilled land all disappear: nothing is seen
but heath and rock and mountain. On the right is the high ridge which
makes the backbone of Iveragh: in front of you the Reeks fill the
eastern sky. Not a house can be seen--and there are very few places
in Ireland (so thickly scattered are people over the poorest land)
from which human habitation cannot be discerned.
A few miles down brings you into the valley of the Caragh river which
flows out from Loughs Reagh and Cloon and after a course of some ten
miles enters the long and deep Caragh Lake, whence another short run
brings it to the sea. This is the valley which lies west of the Reeks,
and, for my own part, I count this aspect of them finer than anything
you will see at Killarney. There is a big, new hotel at the outfall
of Caragh Lake on the railway, much frequented now: but all my time
among these hills and waters has been given to a little oldfashioned
anglers' inn, the Glencar hotel, on the reach of river between
Bealalaw bridge and Lickeen rapids. Here you may fish for salmon at a
nominal charge in one of the best waters in Ireland: on the evening
when I got there this summer, they were jumping everywhere in the
beautiful Long Range pool where the little Caragh joins the main
stream; red, ugly fish, it must be owned, for this was in September
and they had lain there since June without a fresh to move them--but
still there were salmon and plenty of them. Or you can fish free of
charge at Lough Acoose at the headwaters of Caraghbeg, in under the
flank of Carrantuohil, with better prospect of a full basket than
anywhere else known to me. The trout are not big anywhere in Kerry,
but in Acoose they run to a good herring size, and the man who fished
it the day when I was at Glencar got something over two dozen--a usual
bag. My companion and I had gone farther afield, to the headwaters of
Caragh itself, right up into the great ring of mountains through which
the pass of Bealachbeama lets you out to the Kenmare side. Little need
be said about our fishing, which was interrupted by the fact that our
boat, leaking like a sieve, finally foundered while we were trying
to get her ashore--a new boat too, wanting nothing but a couple of
good coats of paint. Yet the chance which drove us off Cloon, while
the boat was being got ashore and emptied, sent us up across a mile
of bog to fish the upper lake from the shore; and what a lake! lying
right in under the steep side of a mountain almost precipitous, where
the eagles built till a year or two back, and for three parts of its
circumference ringed about like the crater of a volcano.
It was a day of dry wind, northerly to north-easterly, and of hard
lights: one lacked the magical enchantment of westerly air over the
whole: yet for sheer grandeur I do not know that all my wanderings
after fish in Ireland have ever taken me to so fine a scene.
[Illustration: THE GAP OF DUNLOE, KILLARNEY]
That little hotel, primitive in its equipment but most friendly, has
its attractions to offer all the year round, for the salmon fishing
begins in earnest in February, and through the winter months there is
rough shooting (grouse, cock, and snipe), to be had over the great
expanses of heather and those broad belts of native wooding which
grow about the river in its lower course. From the hotel down to the
lake your path lies between this scrub of oak and holly and birch and
a water, swift yet deep, where pool succeeds pool, each divided from
the next only by strong rapids. You have no monopoly there: the river
is fished from both banks and can be covered right across, though it
needs a good man to do it; but it is practically a free fishing and
the best free river fishing that I know in Ireland--absolutely an
ideal spot for the holiday-maker who does not insist on being near the
sea. You can walk from it all the finest mountains in Kerry since it
lies in the very centre: and away west of you is Glenbeigh, another
valley where decent quarters can be had amid landscape of the same
type. Of the same type--but I cannot believe that anywhere in Kerry or
out of it you will match the journey which convoyed me from Glencar
to my next stage at the Caragh Lake hotel. It was inland scenery no
doubt, but the breath and the feeling of the sea is over all this
neck of sea-washed Iveragh, and that river valley seemed no more
than an avenue through the hills leading to the gateway of ocean.
We walked along the river bank, often shoulder high in fern, often
stopping to pull the blackberry clusters, and we studied the pools
set in, here among trees, there with open sward on both sides and
moor stretching away behind. Below the rapids we took boat, and for a
mile or more rowed through level bogland, with groups of Scotch fir,
purple stemmed in the afternoon light, rising from the river bank.
Between their trunks, or in the open gaps, we could see the peaked
mass of Carrantuohil, rising in the south-east, the light on its high
ridges, but the valleys and chasms on its sides deep in shadow. As
we neared the lake the flat land broadened, and from across it came
the aromatic, pungent smell of bog myrtle, distinct as the scent from
a beanfield, but strong and tonic as brine. Then for an hour and
half we paddled down the lake between mountain and mountain, winding
round promontory after promontory into sight of reach after reach of
the lake. Finally as we entered the wide northern stretch--for our
course was due north--all the shore was seen divided into demesnes,
big and little, each with its own wooding. The hotel lies farthest of
all towards the river's outflow in the north-west, and whoever chose
that site deserves credit, for across the wide shining water rise the
whole ring of mountains--Carrantuohil away to the south-east, and
all the other heights that close in the valley behind Cloon Lake and
Bealachbeama spreading fan-wise across the horizon as you look out
from the pleasant terrace where palm and hydrangea grow. It is not so
finished, not so exquisite, as Killarney; but I should rather choose
it for a holiday. I sat on the terrace for an hour that Sunday and
watched the sunlight fade off Carrantuohil: all was green and olive
when we sat down, for it was a coldish evening and the air northerly;
but cloud lay on the peaks, or rather caught the peaks intermittently
as it drifted in wreaths across, so that at no time was the whole
mountain visible. But gradually as the sun sank these wreaths became
touched with a rosy glow, and below them what had been olive-green
took on deep tints of coppery purple, rich and glowing, the purple
gaining as the rose deepened on the cloud wreath; and higher and
higher the shaft of light struck, reaching now only the very topmost
pinnacles, till finally it faded out, and all lay before as in a
sombre stillness waiting for the fall of night.
Nothing that I carry away from Killarney haunts me with the same
fullness of beauty, but perhaps only because Killarney is no one's
discovery; it has no secret lover. You might as well seek to praise
Sarah Bernhardt's genius or Tennyson's charm of style. Yet I suppose
each one will discern for himself some passing perfection, some
special facet of that loveliness--as I indeed remember the wonderful,
shadowed, lucid green of water reflecting darkly the bank of tall
reeds which grow westward of the landing stage to which we rowed in
after fishing: and remember, too, the singular sight of a man's naked
body, as he stood poised before plunging in to bathe, some hundred
yards from us; for the low sun caught his figure, outlined against the
long line of dark foliage behind him, and made it at once the glowing
centre of a beautiful landscape.
This was on the lower lake, largest by far of the three which form
a crescent, compassing from south to north (as the water runs) the
eastern flank of the Reeks.
My last visit found me at the Victoria Hotel where the lake is broad
and open to the Purple Mountain, a noble landscape: but to reach what
is my idea of Killarney proper, you must row across to the narrows
between the lovely isle of Inisfallen and the east shore, so reaching
Ross Bay and a more confined water, studded over with island rocks.
Here the shores are of that peculiar limestone which the lapping of
water frets into numberless quaint crannies and fissures till the
verge of the water looks as though it were a frame intricately carved
by some patient craftsman; and in all these chinks and crevices ferns
and other wild and beautiful herbage grow with exquisite profusion.
That is what makes to my mind the essence of Killarney's charm, this
wealth of intricate detail making a foreground to mountain and lake
scenery as bold and wild as any highlands can show. Add to this
the presence of unfamiliar foliage, here native, exotic everywhere
else--notably the arbutus with its dark, glossy leaf and ruddy stem,
handsomest of all shrubs; dark yew also, and juniper, mingled in with
native growth of oak and birch, yet through all, skilful plantation
has set in this and that graceful foreign tree, this and that bright
berry. It is no wonder that such a place should have become one of
the world's great tourist centres, especially when to these beauties
are added the distinction and interest of fine ruins--Ross Castle
where the O'Donoghues were lords till Cromwell's forces drove them
out; Inisfallen where St. Finian's pious monks had their abbey through
untroubled centuries. And, being as it is, Killarney is equipped for
the tourist as is no other place in Ireland: all the excursions have
been thought and planned, and your hotelkeeper will have arrangements
fully made; nor is the plague of beggars at all the annoyance that
it used to be--a blessed reform. The boatmen have learnt their trade
of cicerone to perfection, and will not only tell you the standard
yarns and jests and legends of the place if you desire them, but
will have the tact to discriminate serious-minded folk--such as
anglers--who may probably not want this form of entertainment.
[Illustration: MUCKROSS LAKE, KILLARNEY]
Yet, for all that, it is a place for tourists, and, as such, commands
only my reluctant tribute. But the drive from Killarney to Kenmare
which, skirting Muckross and the upper lake, carries you gradually
circling round the whole crescent till you rise into the Black Valley
where the Gap of Dunloe breaks in--well, that drive, I must say,
fairly broke down my coldness: I grew no less enthusiastic than the
famous Scottish expert on salmon fishing who was of the party and
declared the whole thing equal to the Trossachs--from which I gather
that Scotland at least has not anything to show more fair. Moreover,
fishing on the lakes is free and good; there is a chance of salmon,
and trout are both plenty and sizeable. That is to say, on a good day
they should average close on half a pound, and this means that a pound
fish is no great rarity--as he certainly would be in Glencar. Also in
Killarney town you have the best fly tier in Ireland; many a friend of
mine in Donegal who never saw Kerry could swear to Mr. Courtney's work
in this delicate craft, almost an art in itself.
But that is all I have to say about "Heaven's reflex, Killarney".
V
My last visit to Kerry was on a commission of enquiry into fisheries
which took us driving round in motors to places off the usual track;
and a railway strike came in, to complete our survey of West Munster.
We had come up from Waterville, along the backbone of the peninsula,
crossing Bealach Oisin, so that the coast road by Dingle Bay is known
to me now only by far-off memory of a forty-miles drive in a long
car--which the railway has for many years superseded. But I revived my
memory of a bit of it, coming up in the morning from Caragh Lake to
Killorglin, where we held our court, at the outfall of the Lowne which
drains the lakes of Killarney. Opposite us across the bay was that
other mountainous region of Corcaguiney, the Dingle Peninsula, which
differs from Iveragh in this, that from the high point of the Reeks
Iveragh slopes westward by a gradual declension of peaks and ridges;
whereas Corcaguiney rises continuously westward and seaward till it
reaches its climax in Brandon Hill rising majestically from the very
limit of the land. So rises Mweelrea at the mouth of Killery, and I
imagine that on a clear day from Brandon's top you would see Mweelrea,
and from Mweelrea again might distinguish the peak of Errigal far
north in Donegal. At all events I knew an old gentleman who told me
that he had seen the whole length of Ireland in one field of vision,
and he took either Mweelrea or Croagh Patrick as his midland centre
and Errigal or Brandon (or the Reeks) as his two extremes.
This Dingle Peninsula is explored by very few, unexplored by me, alas!
I could see from the road the dark outline of Cahirconree, a wonderful
stone fort, built two thousand feet up on the side of the Sliabh
Mish mountains: and away out to the west the Blasket Islands were in
sight, hardly more accessible than the Skelligs, but inhabited by a
race of Irish-speaking fisher folk, among whom a Norse student of the
Celtic languages settled himself the other day and was overjoyed to
find a stone inscription in Runic characters, containing the mind of
some Scandinavian forebear of his own, set down in the Norse that was
spoken a thousand years ago and had waited ten centuries for him to
decipher it.
Under Brandon, on the extreme west of the peninsula, lies Smerwick
Bay, where in Elizabeth's reign a small detachment of Spaniards landed
and established themselves; their earthworks at Fort del Oro (so
called because Frobisher was wrecked there with a cargo of pyrites
which he took to be gold) can be traced easily. Kingsley in _Westward
Ho!_ has dealt, not overfaithfully, with the story of that enterprise
which ended in the wholesale butchery of combatants who surrendered
at discretion--suggesting, very unworthily, that the brutal deed was
excused by its deterrent effect. We have never heard that it stopped
the landing at Kinsale not many years later. There is ground to hope
that Raleigh has been wrongfully charged with the actual perpetration
of that black deed. But in truth the blackest chapter in all Irish
history is precisely that which deals with the Desmond wars under
Elizabeth, which ended in the complete devastation of this lovely
province. Not far from Tralee they show you the spot where the last
Earl of Desmond was captured and the rough mound a little way from it
that marks his grave: and still when the moaning of wind and wave is
heard over that countryside, they call it the Desmond's keene.
[Illustration: BRICKEEN BRIDGE, LOWER LAKE, KILLARNEY]
To escape from all this record of civilized barbarity, the mind gladly
turns back to far older and by far less barbarous days. Brandon
keeps the name of the most picturesque figure in the long roll of
Irish saints--St. Brendan, the Navigator, who was born a little west
of Tralee, at Barra, close to the promontory of Fenit, in or about
the year 484. He was baptized by a bishop named Erc, whose name
still lingers in Termon Eirc, a townland three miles north of
Ardfert: and a well near Ardfert which keeps St. Brendan's name is
still a place of pilgrimage and votive offering, more specially on
the saint's own day. Under Erc's guidance the lad was brought up,
though he got some of his schooling at Killeady, the convent where
St. Ita had established her religious house near Newcastle West in
county Limerick. Later, Erc sent him to travel that he might "see
the lives of some of the holy fathers in Erin"; and he went north to
Connacht where the school of St. Jarlath at Tuam was already famous
(as Archbishop Healy, who sits in St. Jarlath's chair to-day, tells
with natural pride in his book on the _Ancient Schools and Scholars
of Ireland_, which I am pillaging, not for the first time). He went
farther north still in Connacht, and is said to have established a
settlement of Kerrymen in the plains near Castlebar; but he returned
to Kerry to get his priestly orders from the hands of his tutor Erc,
now nearing death.
"It was probably at this time," says Archbishop Healy, "that St.
Brendan built his oratory on the summit of Brandon hill", and there
was fired with the project of setting sail across the Atlantic in
search of a Promised Land--_Tir-nan-Og_, the Country of the Young.
For there on Brandon top, a man can see--even without the vision of
faith--"over half the south of Ireland, mountain and valley, lake and
stream, plain and town, stretching far away to the east and south.
But the eye ever turns seaward to the grand panorama presented by the
ultimate ocean." Brendan from his watch tower
"Saw it in all its varying moods--but above all, at even,
when the setting sun went to his caverns below the sea,
and the line of light along the glowing west seemed a road
to the Fortunate Islands where the sorrows of earth never
enter, and peace and beauty for ever dwell. It was a dim
tradition of man's lost paradise, floating down the stream
of time, for with curious unanimity the poets and sages both
of Greece and Rome spoke of these Islands of the Blessed
as located somewhere in the Western Ocean. The same idea
from the earliest times has taken strong hold of the Celtic
imagination, and reveals itself in many strange tales, which
were extremely popular, especially with the peasantry on
the western coast. To this day the existence of Hi Brasail,
an enchanted land of joy and beauty, is very confidently
believed by our western fishermen. It is seen from Aran once
every seven years, as Brendan saw it in olden times, like a
fairy city on the far horizon's verge."
According to the records, Brendan was not first on this quest.
Barinthus, a neighbouring monk, had fared seaward in search of a
truant brother and had found him in the island called "Delicious",
from which they sailed yet farther west and found other wonders. But
at all events, however moved, Brendan bade his monks to fast with him
forty days, then choosing fourteen of them, he built a great curragh,
with ribs and frame of willow, hide-covered, and so with forty days
of provisions they set out upon the trackless sea, steering for the
"summer solstice".
Seven years that voyage lasted: they reached island after island in
the Atlantic main, "following God's guidance, fed by his Providence,
and protected by his power". At length, it is said, they reached the
continent of America and found the place where they landed "to be
indeed a delicious country abounding in everything to gratify the
palate and please the eye"; and they were about to push across the
swift, silvery current that had borne them to the verge of this land,
when an angel rose before their path and bid them turn homeward,
instead of resting to enjoy. And so back to Ireland came Brendan the
Navigator, the travelled Ulysses among Irish saints.
What lies behind all this, who knows exactly? but certainly those
dwellers on the outermost verge of Europe always had vague yet
glorious rumours of a land beyond the sea--a land in truth whose
flotsam and jetsam, strange nuts and weeds, the ocean current casts
from time to time on their shores. And heaven knows, that this
Western people, since Columbus brought promise into fulfilment and
imagining into sure knowledge, have found in the west there a haven,
a refuge from the miseries into which they were born. America has
been a strange and often a sinister realization of the Fortunate
Islands--yet conceive of Ireland's history for the past century
without America to lean on, to look to for help. Its streets have not
been paved with gold, no easily-won sustenance has been there: yet to
the fisher folk and farmers it has offered the fulfilment of desire,
the enlargement of aspiration; and the course that St. Brendan first
charted, though it is more frequented now than could be wished, though
it leads often enough to unhappy wreckage, has yet been to Ireland a
blessed road.
[Illustration: HOLY ISLAND, LOUGH DERG]