something of what Archbishop Healy's eloquence hints at--the sense
of an open gateway beyond the sun-track through which imagination
is beckoned towards its own goal. There is a soothing and restful
influence from those vast spaces of the west. And even landward
it follows you. We crossed the neck of the Dingle Peninsula to
the pretty and prosperous town of Tralee, and all eastern Kerry
merging into Limerick stretched away to right of us, a wide rolling
expanse of land well divided into fields for tillage. Our course lay
still on north-east to Listowel, crossing the tract of land which
divides Tralee Bay from the Shannon's broad estuary; all about us,
the country was spacious, yet well inhabited, set thick with trim
little farmhouses: there was much traffic on the roads, of horse and
man--and of asses: I saw there what is not common, two donkeys
driven abreast in a little cart, stepping very smart down a long hill.
There was plenty of room for the people, yet the people were there--on
the land, living by the land, with the large air of the Atlantic
blowing in across them. Next day, since the trains were not running,
we had to proceed by motor to Limerick, and we simply ran north to
the Shannon shore at Tarbert and followed the river to Limerick for
a matter of forty miles, stretch by stretch, a broad sea lane for
vessels, but alas! no vessels there: hardly a sail on the waters;
though battleships can lie at Foynes, thirty miles in from Loop Head.
There is much to pause over on that route: Glin, where the hereditary
Knights of Glin, an offshoot of the Desmond Geraldines, have
maintained themselves, for a matter of seven centuries, even through
the "pacifications" of Elizabeth's reign: Askeaton, many miles farther
on, a chief seat of the main Desmond line, and in Ireland--so rich
in ruins, so poor in buildings that have escaped destruction--there
are few finer ruins than the Desmond Castle here, and the Franciscan
Abbey. Still nearer Limerick, at Carrigagunnel, you see the landmark
of another power, for this castle was built by the O'Briens of Thomond
and it stood over against Bunratty on the Clare bank, another great
fortress.--Yet a mere catalogue is without interest, and here is
no space to trace the interlocking fortunes and conflicts of Norman
noble, Irish chief, and Cromwellian soldier.
Let me concentrate on one spot, one group of memories. Above the
little town of Foynes is a small house on a hill, now beautifully
surrounded by plantations of shrubs and flowers; it was the home of
a lady known to the Irish people at home and abroad, for her work
in improving the lot of steerage passengers on emigrant ships, and
also for her writings in prose and verse; yet known better as the
true child of a notable father, William Smith O'Brien, Protestant,
landlord, aristocrat, rebel, and felon by the law. She was one who
felt and loved the beauty of Ireland--not only what one may call the
scenic beauty of such places as Killarney, but the essential spacious
beauty of those fertile valleys, those wide skies.
"Men come and go by this great river," she wrote, "and the
revelation of its beauty is not made to them fully, often
not at all; but let one live by it and it is the most
beautiful place in the whole world.... But to-night it was
no hidden beauty. I went down by the river in the evening.
It was full, the tide just past the turn, and sweeping down
the great mass of water at an extraordinary pace, and yet,
though the whole river was swinging along at many miles
an hour, the surface was a marvellous mirror. The glowing
masses of furze on the island, a quarter-mile away, were so
near and distinct in the wave, one could almost stretch out
a hand to gather them. Every cloud and every shade of light
and colour in the sky was again in the river, but far more
intense. At my feet and twenty yards down and across the
channel was a dense black cloud reflected, its crenellated
edge cut sharp against the reflection of silver, blue,
grey, and intense white light stretching far away westward.
I stood, as the old books used to say, 'entranced', and
still the river swept down, and still the furze and the
wonderful green and the dark cloud-bar were, as it were,
under my hand, and the glorious 'gates of the Shannon', as
the Elizabethans called this Foynes, were opened to heaven's
light beyond my touch."
From the road just beyond Foynes towards Limerick, you shall see a
round hill topped by a ruin and the tokens of a graveyard. There in
the high windy burial-place of her choice she lies, this lover of
Ireland and of the Shannon, Charlotte Grace O'Brien. And for the last
word in this little book, I, her near kinsman, whose main ties are
with other provinces, shall set down another passage of her writings,
which is curiously revealing of Munster. For behind Knockpatrick you
may see a few miles farther off another low hill which is topped
by a well-marked mound, and on the mound a great mass of shattered
masonry stands, "like a black clenched fist thrust against the western
heavens". That is Shanid, the original stronghold of the southern
Geraldines: "Shanid aboo", was their war-cry.
To this place Charlotte O'Brien, who loved flowers hardly less even
than other live things, came to look for a reported rare plant--"The
Virgin Mary's Thistle", "so-called because the leaves are all blotched
and marbled with white stains, and legend made it a sacred plant
bearing for ever stains of the Blessed Virgin's milk".
"Sure enough," she wrote, "I found a mass of it growing
together only on the southern exposure under the great
wall. Now this plant is said to exist only as an introduced
species in the British Isles. To account for it, therefore,
on this utterly lonely and desolate hilltop, we must look
back through the centuries and see the sacred plant in
the monastery garden at Askeaton--the first Geraldine
home in Desmond. We must think how the seed may--in fact,
must--have been carried up to this watch tower, perhaps
by some long-haired daughter of the Geraldines, sent for
safety to the mountain fortress. We must imagine how its
frail growth (only annual) took hold on the sheltered side;
we must see generation after generation of men swept away,
the monastery torn down and desecrated, the name of Desmond
almost forgotten, the great Geraldine race broken and
destroyed: we must see the almost impregnable castle blown
to pieces and left as a trampling ground for summer-heated
cattle; more wonderful than all, we must realize that
time has so gone, that no record is left us of that great
downfall and destruction--nothing--nothing but a few pieces
of nine-foot-thick wall, a few earth mounds, and the sacred
plant. Irishmen! What national history lies in one seed of
that plant!"
True enough! And true it is that to feel the real beauty of Ireland,
her mountains and valleys, her fields and waters, you must see them in
the light of the past as well as the present, informed by knowledge
and by love.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
_At the Villafield Press, Glasgow, Scotland_
Transcriber's Notes
Minor punctuation errors were silently corrected. Illustrations were
moved to paragraph breaks.
Page 24: Changed Roscarberry to Roscarbery.