should really make the voyage to Aran: a little steamer in these
bustling times plies in and out twice or thrice weekly. In the sail
down the bay you have the long low shore of Connemara on your right
with the Twelve Pins rising in superbly grouped mass behind it: on your
left, the steep shore of Burren, its rocks shining in the sun, and as
you open out, the cliffs of Moher dark and frowning away south of you.
Between you and America lie the islands--three of them, Inishmore,
Inishmaan, and Inishere--stretching a vast breakwater against gales
from the west and sou'west. Inishmore, the Big Island, lies nearest,
and when you are landed at Kilronan, the adjacent fields and hill
slopes are not much stonier than Connemara. But on Inishmaan you land
direct on to a formation of vast, flat flagstones, stepped upwards
tier by tier, and you walk as if on pavement, though a pavement filled
with deep chinks and crevices in which grow quantities of maidenhair
fern. You have easy walking, perhaps, for ten yards together, then a
kind of a leap. Here, still, most of the people wear not boots but
pampooties--moccasins of raw hide: and men and women alike have the
free forward rising gait of those who walk as nature designed man to
walk, springing off the ball of the toe. Nearly all are in homespun
homewoven cloth, grey or dyed with indigo and madder: the women wear
grey shawls, the men frequently a tam-o'-shanter, but oftener the
black corded _caubeen_ which is the most picturesque of headgear.
Inishmaan is the place to see Aran in its most characteristic aspect
and community, hardly touched by the modern world--though many a man
and woman there knows well the great cities of eastern America. I
heard of a man who made his journey across every autumn: he had been
gardener to a rich American, and the millionaire would let no other
prune his grapes but this handy islander. So back and forward he went,
year by year, on this errand, returning always to his own cabin, his
shelter under the thatch which strong lashings held in place against
the storm.
But the extraordinary interest of these islands lies in the abundance
of prehistoric forts and of very early Christian buildings. The
greatest of the forts is Dun Conor on Inishmaan, with walls of dry
masonry eighteen feet in thickness; but by far the most famous is Dun
Angus on Inishmore which, built on the edge of a steep cliff, needed
no protection that way, but turned landward a semicircular front of
four vast ring fences of stone--the innermost eighteen feet in height.
Between the second and third walls is a chevaux de frise formed by
sharp, jagged stones set endwise, very difficult to pass over in times
of peace. We have it under Dr. Healy's own hand that an archbishop
broke his shins there. This fort might have seemed defence enough for
the island, but it is studded over with duns--one of them, Dun
Eochail, is only half an hour's walk from the pier, and being set high
was once utilized for a lighthouse station. To reach it gives one some
idea of the island economy, for half a dozen high-piled walls of loose
stone have to be crossed or knocked down. There are no gates in these
fields; to let in a cow you "knock" the wall, and then pile it again.
But you will not easily knock the walls of Dun Eochaill. The outer
ring is only some eight foot high and six wide, but the inner circle
rises sixteen foot, and may be twelve in thickness. Who built these
fortresses, no man can say; probably that early race whom the
Milesians superseded. Yet the population of Aran is by no means the
little dark type; many fair-haired women, many a red-headed man are
among them, and not a few of almost giant stature. It is not
surprising, since for many centuries the O'Briens of Clare were
overlords of the islands, and the Clan Dalcais were Milesian, if any
ever could claim that title.
Generally speaking, too, Aran is more in touch with Clare than with
Connemara; though it serves as an intermediate centre for the traffic
in poteen--illicit whisky--distilled in creeks and bogs along Galway
Bay. Aran brings its turf from Connemara and carries them limestone in
exchange. Stand on Dun Eochaill, the most commanding point, and you may
see the two shores, Clare and Connemara, so near, yet so different in
their peoples, and you shall have one of the noblest views in Ireland:
southward, away past Loophead and the Shannon mouth to the great
mountain promontory of Brandon in Kerry; northward, past the Twelve
Pins to Mweelrea and Croaghpatrick and Achill even. Or if, as happened
when I saw it last, the view is obscured with driving mist, still you
may have a glint of sun between showers to fling a rainbow across the
wide water; and you may watch a squall of wind and rain pass flickering
over the sound, raising a patch of whitening foam where its fierce edge
strikes the surface.
It is likely that the nearness of warrior tribes in Clare may account
for the number and the strength of these stone fortresses; the island
folk, Firbolgs or whoever they were, would not have so ensconced
themselves without grim necessity for the labour. Yet all this is
conjectural. What lies well within the bounds of historic knowledge is
the Christian history of Aran--_Ara na naomh_, Aran of the Saints,
not rashly so entitled.
Enda, the first founder of the famous monastic settlement, was a king's
son when St. Patrick came to Ireland. His father ruled the kingdom of
Oriel, the southern tract of Ulster, reaching across Cavan and
Monaghan. Enda's sister took the veil from the hands of Patrick, and
she it was, according to legend, who turned her brother from his career
as a prince and a warrior. He underwent long training in Louth and over
the seas in Britain before he returned to Oriel; but there he found no
peace. He wanted solitude, and he begged the islands of Aran from the
King of Munster. And, if tradition be accurate, he made his way to them
miraculously wafted on a great boat-shaped stone which lies till this
day on the shore at Killeany, _Cill Eadna_, Enda's Church.
[Illustration: WRACK-GATHERING ON THE WEST COAST]
The fame of his settlement spread rapidly, for the missionary period
was now being succeeded by an enthusiasm for the contemplative life;
and all the great saints of the sixth century came to Aran and were his
disciples. St. Brendan the Navigator came there, already prospecting
his journey to the unknown land of the west; Columbkille, prince of
Tirconnell, the apostle of Scotland, came thither, subduing his proud
and fierce temper; and there, too, was nurtured Ciaran, the founder of
Clonmacnoise, best loved of Irish saints. All these men were not only
centres of piety, but lamps and torches of learning in a dark age: only
scholars can estimate what it meant to civilization that this home of
studious thought should be maintained outside the weltering chaos of
Rome's disruption when sheer barbarism threatened to engulf the world.
There are many ancient churches on Aran: seven or eight, says
Archbishop Healy, in the single town-land of Killeany, and one called
after Saint Benen is virtually intact and may date from the sixth
century. But the most interesting of all, _Teglach Eadna_, St. Enda's
oratory, is a mere ruin: though outside of it pious islanders can show
you the _leac_, or flagstone, under which the saint lies buried. In
such places tradition passes from father to son unbroken, with a
fidelity that has often been verified; and there is much reputable
evidence which I would less readily believe.
At all events there is enough and to spare of interest in Aran for a
week's visit or a month's; and if you spend that time there, it is odds
but you shall run up against some scholar, German, Dane, or Frenchman,
of European repute in Celtic scholarship, who has come here to study
the ancient language and tradition where they are best preserved.
Incidentally you may follow out the history of a great experiment in
paternal legislation, the Congested Districts Board's successful
attempt to develop a well-equipped fishing industry among these
islanders, who had neither seaworthy boats nor nets of any considerable
dimensions, nor when they caught it, any means of marketing their fish.
All this is changed and much more with it: there are no more famines in
Aran: and even in Aran an industrious and courageous man may gather a
little prosperity about him without leaving the island of the saints
and the way of life in which he was brought up.
II
That part of Mayo which adjoins Joyce country and Connemara is most
easily reached by the coast road from Clifden by Leenane; and the drive
from Leenane to Westport is famous. You pass through the defile of the
Bundorragha river flowing into the north of Killary Bay--a mountain
pass with Mweelrea gigantic on your left; and beyond that, farther
along the same route, Croaghpatrick divides you from the sea, while
inland is Nephin, the great cone that rises above Lough Conn.
All this very wild district was the territory of the O'Malleys, just as
Connemara was of the O'Flahertys, but the O'Malleys have left a greater
name in history--and a stronger stock, for to-day they have overflowed
into the country of the other clan and dominate Connemara and Joyce
country alike. But they have departed from their old tradition which
linked them to the sea: and the most famous of all these western
sea-rovers was a woman, Grace O'Malley, Granuaile, whose name has
become one of the titles by which the spirit of nationalist Ireland is
known in song. "Poor old Granuaile" is another appellation of the Shan
van Vocht. This ruler of men and warrioress was a contemporary of
Elizabeth's, and no mean opponent of Gloriana's power in the west. She
married, diplomatically, first an O'Flaherty by whom she spread her
influence over the shores of Galway as well as of Mayo, and what was
more to her purpose, got control of his galleys as well as hers, and
with them raided so far, that she carried over Lord Howth's heir from
the strong castle a bare ten miles from Dublin. O'Flaherty dying, she
bestowed her hand on a man of Norman stock, one of the Burkes, the
MacWilliam, and through him got her own adherents posted in a string of
castles--which purpose accomplished, so they say, she declared the
union at an end. All the castles along the Mayo shore are associated
with her name; but the place of her resting is in the little old church
with vaulted roof (and still a trace of colour in the stonework) on
Clare Island--most important of the long line which fringes that
dangerous coast, from Inishboffin northwards. Aran belongs to a
different grouping, its amazing formation links it to Burren, and it
was, in truth, always owned by the O'Briens, lords of Thomond, the
heart of which was Clare. But this string of petty island communities
lies nearer the coast, is less separate from it--and yet, after all,
very distinct. Land on Inishturk or Inishark, and the headman of the
island will receive you with majestic courtesy--and he is still in some
cases called the "king". But if you go there to collect rates for the
county, I cannot promise you so kind a hospitality: there is unending
though intermittent war, the islanders affirming (not unreasonably)
that it is no business of theirs to pay for maintaining roads and
bridges on the mainland.
[Illustration: CROAGH PATRICK, FROM OLDHEAD, CLEW BAY]
Clare Island is somewhat unlike the rest, its people having always
depended on agriculture rather than on fishing; and it is one of the
best examples of the Congested Districts Board's beneficent work in
purchasing the whole, reselling to the tenants, re-allotting farms,
dividing off commonage, and providing materials and instruction for the
islanders to put up decent dwellings for themselves. In earlier days
rents were collected there at huge cost by the aid of posses of police;
now instalments of purchase come in regularly and smoothly, and people
who have begun to prosper a little by their holdings see no reason why
they should not add to prosperity by taking their share of the sea's
harvest. Herrings have come back to those waters, and it is no longer
as it was when a spokesman of the people declared that "the shoals came
and there was no one to catch them, and so the fish went away"--slighted,
it would seem.
But Clare Island belongs to the outer fringe of the isles which lie
across the entrance to Clew Bay, whose waters are sprinkled with little
points and fields of sod-covered rock in a labyrinth past counting.
Some affirm that the view from Westport over this blue water so
bespeckled with green is the finest thing in all Ireland--and
Croaghpatrick rising over against the little town is certainly a
mountain worthy of all its associations.
Here takes place annually one of the most impressive ceremonies to be
witnessed at home or abroad--the saying of mass at the summit to which
St. Patrick, they say, pushed his western journey, and looking out over
the Atlantic blessed all that he beheld. Ruder legend, with its touch
of grotesque, tells that from this steep height he drove out into the
deep all venomous things that had haunted unchristian Ireland, tumbling
toads and snakes by his white wizardry into the ocean depths.
Be that as it may, there are no snakes in Ireland, and St. Patrick's
name is great there still--fitly celebrated when the archbishop of the
West and of the isles climbs that long steep path, and there in the
face of heaven celebrates the mysteries which link times old and times
new, before a multitude which extends far away from him down the hill
slope--for there are always laggards whose attendance at that strange
mass finds them kneeling half a mile away.
Westport town has, what is rare in western Ireland, the look of being
cared for: trees planted in a Mall by the little river make a pleasant
feature, due to the fact that Lord Sligo's demesne adjoins the town,
and that the lords territorial have here always been resident and
always capable and executive persons. Wooded slopes, planted with an
eye to beauty as well as to shelter, tell the same story and enrich the
landscape, which is best seen from a low hill above the parsonage. But
Westport town and its neighbourhood have been so often and so well
described by the sharp-pointed pen which "George A. Birmingham" handles
that one need only recall those witty volumes. I cannot pretend to
place the island where "J. J.", the resourceful and philosophic curate,
went to discover Spanish gold; but nearly any of them all would do.
A little farther along the coast on the way towards Achill is Newport,
on a salmon river of some repute, which flows from the most enchanting
lake to which my fishing ever took me. I reached Lough Beltra by a long
ride from the other direction, and found it away in the hills with
Nephin high over the eastern end, and Croaghpatrick filling the
south-western outlook. The fishing was nothing to brag of, and I ate
most of the few small sea trout that I caught in the kitchen at the
keeper's cottage--but how good they were, grilled fresh out of the
water, with mealy potatoes and butter, and an egg or two, and a dash of
whisky in the tumbler of fresh milk. I should have liked to stay a week
or a month in that neat, wholesome, comfortable cottage--where the only
serious trouble was that pike had somehow got into this mountainy
water, where no such brutes should be.
Mallaranny farther along the coast is the place where most people go to
see Clew Bay, for the railway has put a good hotel there; but the real
attraction of this coast is the amazing island of Achill, to which the
railway has now been carried; or rather, to the bridge across the
narrow sound which divides Achill from the mainland, and under which
such a tide sweeps as can be seen hardly anywhere else.
[Illustration: THE MINAUN CLIFFS, ACHILL ISLAND]
Achill is virtually all one mountain which has its highest points,
Slievemore and Croghaun, on the outer seaward rim and they drop almost
sheer into the sea. Slieve League itself in Donegal cannot vie with the
wonder of those cliffs; and the little bays of Kim and Keel on the
southward, with their curve of pure sand, have a kind of daintiness of
beauty most bewitching in that grim landscape. From Dugort on the north
shore there is boating to be had, which in fine weather may bring you
into seal-haunted caves, under cliffs where the wild goats scramble in
herds; and you may see readily enough strange creatures of the deep,
sunfish, huge basking sharks, with every seabird that frequents these
islands. Once it was my luck to effect a landing on a flat island rock
some ten miles out, called the Bills of Achill, where I suppose not
once in three years man sets his foot. It was the breeding season and
the birds hardly moved to let us pass: puffins sat in the quaintest
droves, three or four hundred together, staring at us with parrot eyes
barely out of arm's reach. I looked over a ledge of rock and saw below
me a guillemot on her eggs, so near that I could touch her--and as she
fluttered off, realized why these birds have an egg so big at one end
that it cannot roll except round in a circle--for they are laid by two
and three on a bare shelf of rock where the bird has hardly room to
cover them. Only the great black-backed gulls forsook the island and
their nests, soaring high into the air in hundreds where we landed, and
leaving their big, ugly eggs and their big, ungainly young ones
sprawling all over the turf. They are great robbers of other people's
nests, worse than hawks on a grouse moor: but they provide securely for
their own young, building only here and in one or two other places
equally inaccessible.
But for all that it may offer of wildness, of grandeur, and of
interest, Achill has no charm for me. Poverty is a show there: in the
village of Keel can still be seen beehive-shaped wigwams rather than
houses; and it always seems as if the elements there had been too
strong for man and left him huddled and cowering on the earth. Famine,
or at least continuous underfeeding through generations, has helped
that work. Yet the Achill folk set out hardily year by year in
companies, men in their troops, girls in theirs, to field labour in
different parts of Great Britain. It is thus that the population of
some thousands supports itself on that barren promontory--pitifully
enough, heaven knows. No doubt the sea is at their doors rich in fish;
but the sea that runs off Achill Head is a very different antagonist
from what men wrestle with in the English Channel.
Yet Achill has been just big enough to encourage its people with a
barren hope of finding a living on the land. It is the real islanders
who reap the harvest: and now a strange new source of prosperity has
come to one of these communities. Just north of Achill Head, outside
the long peninsula of Belmullet which encloses Blacksod Bay, lie the
two islands of Inishkee, and on the south island some few years ago a
Norwegian company established a whaling station of the new type.
The Gulf Stream sweeps along here within a few miles of the coast, and
whales, it seems, spend their lives strolling peaceably along its
course, following always one direction. They stroll less peaceably
nowadays, for from these islands steamers push out and harry them with
new-fangled harpoons fired from a gun and headed with a bomb as well as
the barb. The result is that whereas old-time whalers could only kill
the "right" whale which is fat and leisurely, and stays long on the
surface, your modern captain makes prey of everything, manoeuvring
his steamer so as to get on to the whale's line, and fire the harpoon
into him when he rises porpoise fashion for one swift tumble. In this
way they kill--not without difficulty and danger--the lean, swift
monsters, eighty or ninety feet in length, rorquals, and the rest,
which can drag even the steamers about after them; and, having killed,
they couple up the whale beside the steamer, as you may see a barge
beside a tug-boat on the Thames, and run back to their station where
the huge fish is dragged on shore, cut up, separated into its
constituents of blubber, bone, and entrails--but every particle of it
converted into some kind of use; what is not oil is desiccated and
makes feeding cake, and what is not feeding cake makes manure. All this
boiling down has two effects--one a prodigious stench which, some say,
makes houses uninhabitable on the mainland six miles off; the second, a
vast deal of employment for the islanders--of one island only. Work on
the whaling station is jealously guarded for southern Inishkee; woe
betide the man even of the northern island who should try to get a
share of it. As for the folk of the mainland, Inishkee employs them (at
a very modest wage) to attend to its potato patches and oat fields in
the summer, while the privileged folk are at a special wage on the
whaler's work. So far as I can learn, protection has never been more
rigorously employed than by this energetic community.
From the point of the Mullet to Erris Head, and across Broadhaven to
Benwee Head and Portacloy, runs the wildest country and the most
inaccessible in these islands. I have reached it only from the sea, and
never anywhere in Ireland have I seen people so far removed from
civilization as rowed out in their curraghs to meet us. Yet--so odd a
place is Ireland--it is ten chances to one but in the loneliest of
these creeks and mountains you would find folk who knew the great
cities of America, and who if they landed in Boston or New York would
find friends and kindred in plenty to greet them and help them to a
living. Life is not so difficult here as it was formerly: for nowadays
the trade in lobster fishing becomes very profitable on this
unexploited coast, with its profusion of kelp-covered rocks and
islands, and they have learnt in late years to take their toll of the
salmon droves that pass this headland, making for Galway or the
Shannon. What they have to sell, what they win at risk of life in the
tremendous sea that runs among their rocks, they can sell now at a fair
price. There is talk, too, of carrying a railway along the Mullet, in
the hope of making Blacksod a haven for transatlantic commerce, and
when that happens, the country will be gradually changed, as I have
seen in my lifetime similar regions changed in Donegal; but till that
day, whoever wants to see Ireland as Ireland has been any time for
three or thirteen centuries (altered only by the introduction of three
things, tea, paraffin oil, and American flour) can see it only in the
northern parts of the Barony of Erris. It is no place to go for
comfort; but "for to admire and for to see" it is well worth while.
[Illustration: NEPHIN, FROM LOUGH CONN]
The train will take you to Ballina, a considerable town, with a famous
fishing on the River Moy, which can be had on easy terms--and nowadays
even so far as Killala, on a bay which is for ever associated with a
romantic episode in Irish history. Here Humbert landed in 1798--a month
too late, for the great Wexford rising had been crushed out by July,
and when he came in August all the forces in the country could be
mobilized to meet his tiny army of republican French (Humbert was no
Bonapartist) and their backing of half-armed and untrained
Connaughtmen. Yet against all odds, the republican, with Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity in his heart as well as on his lips, pushed
from Ballina to Castlebar, the capital town of Mayo, and there
inflicted upon General Lake such a defeat as finally branded a name
already deeply disgraced by the most brutal cruelties. It was a
wonderful feat but wholly useless, for Humbert after forcing his way
actually into Leinster was surrounded and forced to surrender without
making terms for his Irish backers--upon whom Lake was free to avenge
his own repulse in massacre. One of the strangest documents in history
is the narrative of the Protestant Bishop of Killala, Dr. Stock, who
was captured and most kindly treated during the raid.
All the shores of Killala Bay are prosperous and planted; you reach the
beginning of wild country at Ballycastle, where I have pleasant
memories of a little inn kept by the postmistress. Beyond that, the
road is unknown to me; but another way into the heart of Erris leads
out from Ballina through Crossmolina on Lough Conn. So far as this all
is level land; and about this wide lake, famous for fishing (though its
repute has sadly fallen away), are plenty of places to stay in. Nephin
rises from its west shore, a magnificent mountain; and the whole place
is well worth seeing, and the best way to see it is to fish a day on
the lake, trolling or casting as you will--with the chance, especially
if you troll, of big pike or salmon.
Beyond Crossmolina one runs into the wilds, with no stopping place for
many miles till you reach Bangor Erris on the lower waters of the
Owenmore River, which flows into Blacksod Bay. Here is a hotel, not so
famous as it used to be in old days--but you will be all the better for
that. The host of those days provided entertainment for the mind, but
the bodies of his guests suffered some discomfort. "I left my boots
outside my door last night and they were never touched," said one
indignant protester. "And if you left a watch and a purse of gold with
it, it's the same way they would be," the host answered triumphantly.