"He does be out on the rocks." The spoon was pointed out of the window,
somewhat peevishly.
Looking in the direction indicated, we saw the arid shore of the bay,
where, instead of sands, grey stone in platforms and pavements met the
blue and glittering tide. From the shore the country rose in haggard
slopes of gray stone with rifts of green; cresting the height, one of
Aran's many ruined oratories lifted a naked gable in the deep of the
sky. A narrow road followed the bend of the bay, glaring white for two
shelterless miles; no living thing was visible; the pursuit of the horse
must be raging on the other side of the island. It continued for
another hour, with what episodes of crag and crevasse can scarcely be
imagined; finally a dejected and shaggy captive was led in and was
thrust into the shafts of a car.
The drive that followed is not easily forgotten. There were moments
when the car seemed to open at all its joints, as if falling asunder
from exhaustion; and the shafts swayed and swung like twin bowsprits,
the wheels creaked ominously, and one tyre left an undulating line in
the gritty dust of the road. On either side spread floors of stone, on
which sat parliaments of boulders; we passed a stone platform so large
and so level that the addition of three walls has made a creditable
ball-alley of it. The walls are said to have been built with money
given for the relief of distress in Aran; if so, relief money has often
been worse spent in the West of Ireland. The road kept in touch with
the coast, the car mounted to higher ground, with the shafts pointing
heavenward on either side of the horse's touzled mane. Pale green
fields and pale tracts of sand mitigated the tyranny of rock, as the
island sloped south-eastward into the rich and wide azure of the sea. A
village straggled along the shore, the chief mass of the low, white
houses clustered round a fragment of bastion and buttress that tells of
the days when Cromwell's arm was long enough to grasp even Aran and
build a stronghold there, what time the iron entered into the soul of
Galway.
[Illustration: "WHITE HOUSES CLUSTERED ROUND A FRAGMENT OF BASTION"]
The builders of the castle had not far to seek for their cut stone.
Four churches and a lofty and slender Round Tower were close at hand, a
constellation in the devotional system of "Ara the Holy," the mother of
many saints and many churches, and therefore peculiarly suited to the
purpose of the Cromwellians. The churches were demolished, the topmost
stones of the Tower were utilised, and its "Sweet bell" lost in the
sand. Today but twelve feet of the beautiful masonry remain to testify
to the fervid skill of its builders.
Red-shawled women sat by the white-washed doorways of the village, red
petticoated children pattered barefoot on the hot rocks by the roadside,
and behind them burned the sea's leagues of lapis lazuli; the green of
the grass lands intervened suavely in the delicious jangle of colour.
We were at our journey's end so far as the car was concerned; the
artless islander, having extorted a payment of four shillings for a
drive of two miles, retired, and we pursued our way on foot to the Lodge
above the village, which was our destination.
[Illustration: "THE OUTLINE OF CONNEMARA WAS STILL SHARP"]
Life at the Lodge on the hill during the ten days that followed had
aspects that were wholly ideal, and aspects that were unreservedly
scullion. The chief windows faced north-east, framing a splendid
outlook across a plain of sea to where the Connemara mountains have
pitched their tents in a jagged line, pale in the torpid heat of
morning, dark at evening against some lengthening creek of sunset.
When, at some ten of the clock the rooms in the lonely house had passed
from gloaming to darkness, and the paraffin lamp glared smokily at the
semi-grand piano and the horsehair sofa, the wild and noble outline of
Connemara was still sharp, the gleam behind it still a harbourage for
the daylight.
The more elementary needs of the establishment were coped with by a
henchwoman from the village below, a middle-aged and taciturn widow,
wearing a red-checked shawl over her broad chest, a smaller red shawl
over her head, an excessively short red homespun skirt, and pampooties.
In the early hours of the summer morning her step, muffled in cowhide,
traversed the house weightily; in due time followed the entrance of the
stable bucket, borne with a slow stride that showed to admiration the
grey woollen ankles under the short skirt: her eye rested askance, and
not without saturnine humour, upon the weakling of a later civilisation
who still lay in bed. As the bucket was set down a deep and serious
voice uttered the monosyllable "bath," as colourlessly as the bleat of a
sheep, and, with the exit of her sallow face and dreamy blue eyes, the
strange, arduous, trifling day began.
Breakfast was not its least achievement, prepared by our own hands at a
turf fire that added an aroma of its own to the coffee, and delicately
flavoured the hot milk. Owing to a scarcity of saucepans the eggs must
be boiled in a portly iron pot and fished from its depths with the
tongs, and through all, and impeding all, went the flushed pertinacity
of the amateur toast-maker. Dinner was a more serious affair, a
strenuous triumph of mind over matter and over the Widow Holloran, a
daily despair, by reason of potatoes whose hearts remained harder than
Pharaoh's, and chiefly by reason of the dearth of pie-dishes.
"Why wouldn't ye ax Miss O'Regan down in the town for the loan of a
pie-dish? Sure she's full up of pie-dishes." This remarkable
information came from Mrs. Holloran, but was not acted upon.
After twenty four hours of the ministry of the Widow Holloran, we found
the conclusion forced upon us that the Simple Life was far more
complicated, and infinitely more exacting than the normal existence of
the worldling. To us, nurturing a sulky flame in a gloomy pile of turf,
the truly Simple Life resolved itself into two words: good servants.
Even the least of Miss Gerraghty's nieces would have been a Godsend; the
thought of mutton chops, procurable at any instant, all but brought a
dimness to the eye that foresaw a dinner--the third in succession--of
American bacon and eggs that tasted of fish. It was in one of the long
May twilights that we were waited upon by the man who had, on the
hearthrug of Marino Cottage's Front Sitting-room, offered us mutton,
sweet as sugar. This time he offered not mutton, but sheep; he produced
a sort of subscription list, and invited us to put down our names for
any piece we might prefer of an animal which was at the moment nibbling
the dainty grass among the boulders. We subscribed, with a shudder
which was, as it proved, superfluous. The subscription list did not
fill, and two days afterwards we were told that the matter had fallen
through, and if we wanted "buttcher's mate" we must telegraph to Galway.
I have heard, in another part of Ireland, described slightingly as "a
wild westhern place in Cork," of a somewhat similar, but more elaborate
process. "When they goes to kill a cow there, they dhrive her out
through the sthreet, and a man in front of her ringing a bell, and
another man with her, and he having a bit o' chalk (and it _should_ be a
black cow). Every one then can tell what bit of her they want, and the
man dhraws it out on her with the chalk. But it _should_ be a black
cow." I think it was a relative of this butcher who, when remonstrated
with about his meat, on the ground that it had not been properly killed,
replied unanswerably, "I declare to ye, the one that had the killing of
that cow was the Lord Almighty."
Meals at the Lodge were not things done in a corner. Sheep cropped the
grass to the edge of the window sill, village children loitered
observantly on their way to the well, tall brindled dogs, in whom must
lurk some strain of the old Irish wolfhound, gnawed sapless bones in the
porch, as in an accustomed sanctuary. The cuckoo, that pretended
recluse, passed and repassed in clumsy flight, even perching on the roof
of the house, and sending a hoarse and hollow cry down the chimney.
Sitting on the rock ledges in the long morning, the chiefest concern of
idleness was to note his short and graceless flittings from boulder to
wall, his tactless call, coarsened by nearness and the lack of illusion.
Not thus does the spirit voice poise the twin notes in tireless mystery,
among the wooded shores of Connemara lakes.
Below the Lodge, to the south-east, the restless sand has smothered many
a landmark, obliterated many a grave. Lie down in it, it is a soft bed;
let it slip through your fingers, dry and fine and delicate, while the
sea line is high and blue above you, and the light breaker strikes the
slow moments in rhythm. Saint and oratory, cloghaun and cromlech, lie
deep in its oblivion, their memory living faintly and more faintly from
lip to lip through the years; around the saints their halos still
linger, pale in this age's noonday, and the fishermen still strike sail
at the corner of the island to the little crumbling tower that is
supposed to mark the grave of Saint Gregory.
The ridge of the island runs in table lands of rock, dropping in cliffs
to the sea along its south-western face. These heights are level
deserts of stone, streaked with soft grass where the yellow vetch blazes
and a myriad wild roses lay their petals against the boulders. Yet even
these handmaids of the rock are not the tenderest of its surprises. Look
down the slits and fissures as you step across them on a May day, and
you will see fronds of maiden hair climbing out of the darkness and warm
mud below. A month later they will be strong and tall above the
surface; the clots of foam may often strike them when, below their
platform, the piled-up Atlantic rolls its vastness to the attack, with
the cruel green of the up-drawn wave, with the hurl of the pent tons
against crag and cliff. But for us, on that May morning, land and sea
lay in rapt accord, and the breast of the brimming tide was laid to the
breast of the cliff, with a low and broken voice of joy.
The walk here became finally and definitely a steeplechase, and those
not bred in Galway had better think twice before attempting an Aran
stone wall; indeed, when five feet of ponderous and trembling stone
lattice work has to be dealt with, the native himself will probably
adopt the simple course of throwing it down, building it up again or
not, according to the dictates of conscience. If the explorer survives
two hours of this exercise, he will have reached the fort of Dun AEngus,
built in days when Christianity, a climbing sunrise, was as yet far
below the Irish horizon. Of its kind, it is reputed to be as perfect as
anything in Europe, but it is an unlovely kind. Three invertebrate
walls of loose stones, eighteen feet high and fifteen feet thick, sprawl
in a triple horseshoe to the edge of a cliff, which, with its sheer drop
of three hundred feet to the sea, completes the line of defence. The
innermost of the three ramparts encloses a windy plateau where, in times
of siege, the Firbolg Prince AEngus, son of Huamor, probably enjoyed the
society of all the cattle in the island, and of an indefinite number of
wives. The outermost rampart girdles eleven acres of rocky hillside,
and here the unwearied savage labour constructed a chevaux-de-frise by
wedging slabs and splinters of stone into every crevice. Hardly now, in
the intelligent calm of sight-seeing, can the invader make a way through
the ankle-breaking confusion, where, in the gloaming centuries before
St. Patrick, bloody hands clutched the limestone edges in the death
stagger, and matted heads crashed dizzily down, in unrecorded death and
courage and despair.
After those days Danes and Irish and English plundered in their turn,
but the stillness of the rock and the loneliness of the sea closed in
again on the islands, while on the mainland rebellion and conquest
alternated in a various agony, and the civilisation thrust on Ireland
was a coat of many colours, dipped in blood. These Aras of the Sea rest
in their primitive calm, nurturing a strong, leisurely people, with the
patience and hardiness of the rock in their blood; equipped physically
for any destiny, equipped mentally with the quick financial ability and
shrewdness of the Irish, yet slow to imitate, slow in the adoption of
what others initiate, regarding, I fear, their country as the invalid
and ill-used wife of the British ogre, a wife of the admired Early
Victorian type, unoriginative, prolific, and unable to support herself.
Looking down from Dun AEngus there is little expression of the three
thousand lives that are hemmed in this floating parish. No wheel is
audible along the nine miles of Irish moor; the other two islands lie
gray and still, rimmed by fawning and flashing tides, lifeless save
where the smoke of burning kelp creeps blue by the water's edge.
It is a pleasant descent to the village of Kilmurvey, down through the
buoyant air of the hill side; the grass steals its way among the
outposts of rock, till the foot travels with unfamiliar ease in level
fields. Near Kilmurvey the Resident Magistrate's house shows a trim
roof among young larch and spruce, a miracle of modernity and right
angles after the strewn monstrosities of the ridge above; passing near
it, a piano gave forth a Nocturne of Chopin's to the solitude, a
patrician lament, a skilled passion, in a land where ear and voice have
preserved the single threads of melody, and harmony is as yet unwoven.
With its barbaric novelties of colour, its wild, red-clad women, its
background of grey rock, its glare of sunshine, Aran should be a place
known to painters, but at the first sight of even the sketch book the
village street becomes a desert; the mothers, spitting to avert the "bad
eye," snatch their children into their houses, and bang their doors. The
old women vanish from the door steps, the boys take to the rocks. As it
is the creed of Aran that any one that has his "likeness dhrew out" will
die within the year, it seems unfeeling to urge the matter upon them.
Here and there the mission shilling makes its convert; an old woman
braced herself to the risk on the excellent ground that she would
probably die before the year was out, and might as well make the most of
her chances. She found the idea highly humorous, and so did several of
the neighbours.
Our departure from Aran was not out of keeping with the general run of
events there. Struggling with painting materials, plants of maidenhair
fern, and the usual oversights and overflows of packing, scantily
enveloped in newspaper, we made our way on foot from the Lodge to the
bay below it, a distance of some two or three hundred yards, and there
embarked, attended to the boat by Mrs. Holloran and her next of kin--in
other words, a crowd of some twenty deeply interested persons. We had
shoved off and were moving out towards the steamer over the transparent
green deeps of the bay, when I remembered the little boy who had driven
our portmanteaux down to the beach in a donkey cart, and I flung a
shilling to one of the next-of-kin in settlement of the obligation. We
saw the emissary present the tribute.
"He'll not take it!" was shouted from the shore.
I protested at the full pitch of my voice to the effect that he must not
allow his magnanimity to interfere with his just dues, that I was very
glad to give it to him.
"He'll take three!" travelled to us like a cannon ball across the
translucent water.
Nothing travelled back. Nothing, that is, except the Galway steamer,
which presently flapped its paddles into the falling tide, and took us
away to regions where we ourselves were natives, and viewed the tourist
with a proper hauteur.
Meditating on those May days, winnowed now of their husk of culinary
difficulties, they seem the most purely lonely, the most crowded with
impressions, that could befall. Habituated to the stillness of West
Galway life, these stillnesses were vast and expressive beyond any
previous experience of mine; in the shadeless brilliance, the bare
grayness, I breathed a foreign and tingling air. The people's
profoundly self-centred existence has "no thoroughfare" written across
it; lying on the warm rocks, they see Ireland stretched silent,
enigmatic, apart from them, and are content that it is so. Their
poverty is known to many, their way of thought to a few; they remain
motionless on the edge of Europe, with the dust of the saints beneath
their feet.
*PICNICS*
A kettle seated decorously on a kitchen range is far less likely to be
smoked than one propped precariously on a heap of smouldering sticks.
It is also ordained by the forces of civilisation that it shall
eventually boil; a point by no means to be taken for granted in the
matter of the sticks. A sparcity of saucers, an apostolic community of
teaspoons; no one would suspect the hidden humour in such disabilities
if confronted with them at an ordinary "At Home," and however excellent
the appetite brought to bear upon a chicken pie at a luncheon party, in
the lack of knives and forks it would scarce nerve its possessor to eat
with his fingers. And yet, so skin deep a fraud is civilisation, the
chicken bone to which, through the years, I look back most fondly, was
gnawed, warm from the pocket, on the top of one of the Bantry mountains.
[Illustration: "THE ELDER TURF-BOY"]
The first picnic in which I clearly recall taking part was, like many
that succeeded it, illicit. It unconsciously adhered to the great and
golden precept that picnics should be limited in number and select in
company. It consisted, in fact, of no more than four, which, with a
leggy deerhound, a turf fire, and the smoke from the turf fire, were as
much as could be fitted in. Why a ruinous lime-kiln should have been
chosen is not worth inquiring into. It probably conformed best with
those ideals of cave-dwelling, secrecy, and rigorous discomfort that are
treasured by the young. We were, indeed, excessively young, and should
have been walking in all godliness with the governess; two of us at
least should. The other two were turf-boys, who should have been
carrying baskets of turf on their backs into the kitchen, and submitting
themselves reverently to the innumerable oppressions of the cook, who,
they assured us, had already pitched them to the Seventeen Divils three
times that same day. The lime-kiln was sketchily roofed with branches,
thatched with sedge and was entered by the hole at which the smoke came
out. It was a feat of some skill to lower oneself through this hole,
avoid the fire, grope for the table--a packing-case--with one toe, and
thence fall on top of the rest of the party. Except in the item of
sociability I do not think that the deerhound can have enjoyed himself
much; he spent most of the time in dodging the transits of the kettle,
and it was our malign custom to wipe the knives on his back, in places
just beyond the flaps of a tongue as long and red as a slice of ham.
What we ate is best forgotten. Something disgusting with carraway seeds
in it, kneaded by our own filthy hands, lubricated with lard, and baked
in a frying pan in the inmost heart of the turf smoke. The drink was
claret, stolen from the dining-room, and boiled with a few handfuls of
the snow that lay sparsely under the fir trees round the lime-kiln. Why
the claret should have been boiled with snow is hard to explain. I
think it must have been due to its suggestion of Polar expeditions and
Roman Feasts; subjects both of them, that lent themselves to learned and
condescending explanation to the turf-boys. Afterwards, when the elder
turf-boy, Sonny Walsh, produced a pack of cards from a cavity in his
coat that had begun life as a pocket, and dealt them out for "Spoilt
Five" it was the turf-boy's turn to condescend. "Spoilt Five" is not in
any sense child's play; its rules are complicated, and its play overlaid
with weird usages and expressions. For the uninitiated it was out of
the question to distinguish kings from queens, or the all-important
"Five-Fingers" from any other five, through the haze of dirt with which
all were befogged. The turf-boys knew them as the shepherd knows his
flock, and at the end of the game had become possessors of our
stock-in-trade, consisting of a Manx halfpenny, a slate pencil with
plaid paper gummed round its shank, two lemon drops, and a livery
button.
This was a good and thoroughly enjoyable picnic, containing within
itself all the elements of success, difficult as these may be to define,
and still more difficult as they are to secure.
[Illustration: AN AUGUST AFTERNOON]
I remember an August afternoon, and a long island that lay sweltering in
a sea of flat and streaky blue. Two heated boatloads approached it at
full speed, each determined to get there first, and equally determined
not to seem aware of any emulation. Simultaneously the keels drove like
ploughs into the hot shingle, the inevitable troop of dogs flung
themselves ashore--it is noteworthy that all dogs dash into a boat as if
they were leading a forlorn hope, and leave it as if they were escaping
from a fire--the party spread itself over the beach in cheerful argument
as to the most suitable place for the repast, and while the contention
was still hot as to the relative merits of a long disused churchyard,
with an ancient stone coffin lid for a table, or a baking corner of the
strand, where a thin stream trickled over the cliffs to the sea, one
came from the boats with a stricken face, and said that all the food had
been left behind. There was silence for a space. Then, while the
accusers answered one another, the remembrance of Mrs. Driscoll's
cottage shone like a star on a stormy night into the minds of the
castaways. Under happier circumstances the metaphor might have seemed
inappropriate, but there is a time for everything, and the time for Mrs.
Driscoll's cottage to pose as a star of hope and deliverance had
arrived. Mrs. Driscoll herself, emerging from her cowhouse,
sympathetic, hospitable, and very dirty, was equal to the occasion.
Would she lend us a skillet? Sure, why not! An' eggs is it? an'
praties? an' a sup o' milk, and the sign o' butther? Well, well! the
cratures! An' they come to this lonesome place to ate their dinner, an'
to lave it afther them afther! Glory be to mercy! Well, the genthry is
quare, but for all they're very good! She led the foraging party in to
her cottage. It was the only house on the island, and, in rough
weather, as solitary and cut off from humanity as was Noah's Ark.
Indeed, solitariness was not the only point wherein a resemblance to the
Ark was suggested. A cloud of hens screeched forth over the half door
in our faces; two cats and a pig sped out as we opened it; a small but
determined mother goat dared us to force the fortalice of the inner
chamber in which her offspring were, no doubt, in laager; a gander
lifted his clattering bill from a skillet--the skillet, I may say, in
which our subsequent meal was to be prepared--to hiss alarmingly at us;
two children and, I think, a calf, shuddered noiselessly out of sight
into the brown vault of the fireplace, and through it all, as Mrs.
Browning sings, "The nightingales" (or, strictly speaking, the ducks)
"drove straight and full their long clear call."
Mrs. Driscoll drove, headlong as an ocean steamer, through her _menage_.
The skillet was snatched from the gander; with one sweeping cuff a
low-growling, elderly dog was dashed from its seat on the potato sack
under the table. The dresser yielded a bowl full of eggs; from the
bedroom came milk and butter (happily, none of us, save the goat, was
made free of the mysteries of their place of keeping), and a little girl
was plucked from the depths of the chimney and commanded to "run away to
the well for a pitcher of water."
"Not from the well in the bohireen," we said quickly, "it doesn't look
very--"
"Sure that's grand wather, asthore," replied Mrs. Driscoll, "if ye'll
take the green top off it there's no better wather in the globe of
Ireland, nor in Carbery nayther!"
We accepted the reassurance. When one is less than twenty and more than
half-starved, one accepts a good deal, and I cannot remember that any of
us were any the worse for the water. At all events the potatoes were
boiled in it, the eggs nestling amicably among them (this to save time
and fuel). Ultimately there was made a comprehensive blend of
everything--eggs, potatoes, milk and butter, the whole served hot, on
flat stones, and eaten with pocket knives and cockleshells.
Over our heads the unsophisticated seagulls swooped and screamed--I
remember that one of them nearly knocked my hat off on that island one
day--the air quivered like hot oil between us and the purple distance of
the mainland, and yet there was the island freshness in it; we lay on
our backs on the heathery verge of the cliffs and drowsed off the
potatoes. There were no plates to wash, no forks to clean. It was an
admirable picnic. So every one thought, save the dogs, who found
egg-shells and potato-skins a poor substitute for chicken bones.
There is, I think, in the matter of picnics no middle course endurable.
If they cannot attain to the untrammelled simplicity of the savage, they
require all the resources of civilisation to justify them. Let there be
men-servants, and maid-servants, and cattle--for carting purposes--and,
in fact, all the things enumerated in the Tenth Commandment, including
your neighbour's wife. Let there also be champagne--and yet, not even
champagne will alleviate much if your neighbour's wife be dull and
greedy, and how often, how almost invariably is she, at a picnic, both
these things! There certainly is something in the conditions of set
feasts out of doors that induces an unusual measure of gluttony.
Primarily, of course, there is the lack of other occupation, but
chiefly, I think, there is the instinctive wish to lessen the labours of
packing up. Packing up is the dark feature of the best picnic. I have
often pitied the Apostles for the seven basketfuls that they found left
on their hands.
If an instance of all that is worst in a picnic be required I may
lightly record some of the features of an entertainment which, one
summer, I was by Heaven's help and a little lower diplomacy, enabled to
evade. The drag-net of the African war had gone heavily over the
neighbourhood, and to the forty women who had unflinchingly accepted,
but two men were found to preserve the just balance of the sexes. These
numbers are not fictitious. They may be found seared upon the heart of
the hostess.
The forty, with a singular fatuity, seem to have been as tenacious of
their dignity as jurymen at a Coroner's inquest. It was theirs, as
females, to sit still and be fed, and this they did, even though the
feeding process was conducted solely by the two heroes of the afternoon,
and was necessarily of the most gradual character. The kettle, or
rather kettles, were--it is the only bright spot in the affair--ably
manipulated by serfs in the background, and in their hands was also the
grosser conduct of the feast, the unpacking, the setting forth on the
grass of a table cloth of about half an acre in area, and the placing on
its unattainable central plateaux those matters--such as cream-jugs and
fruit salads--in greatest request and most prone to disaster. They,
also, had been the selectors of a ruined cottage as the site of the camp
fires, and it was only when these were being prepared that a swarm of
bees discovered itself in the chimney. Fortunately, however, before it
went on to discover the picnic, some one, with the Irish gift of using
the wrong thing in the right place, stopped the flue with a hamper and a
carriage rug, thus heading off the worst of the bees, while the fires
were relit in the corners of the cottage. The two men faced the
position. Through smoke and bees they did their duty, carting back and
forth the eighty cups of tea which the occasion demanded; but they said
afterwards that more than patriotism barbed the regret that their
country had deemed them too old for active service. As for the forty
ladies, they sat and fulfilled what was for them the primary, if not the
only object of the picnic, by eating and drinking, without haste,
without rest, till the kettles gave out. Then, like a flock of gorged
birds, they rose heavily, and unaffectedly begged to be allowed to order
their carriages, and so went home. The hostess had held a walk and a
view in reserve, in case of emergencies, but it was not for her to
complain. The two men then had their tea.
It has been my fate to take part in several yachting picnics. They have
all had one common and hideous feature--even as a cocked-nose or a
squint will run in families--the yachts have invariably been becalmed.
Their other conditions have been various. Sometimes the food was sent by
land to meet the yachters at the chosen rendezvous; sometimes the
picnicking contingent rode bicycles and sent the food by sea, and
sometimes the yacht alone took the whole outfit, food and feeders, and
putting forth to sea, incontinently fell upon flat calms, and the slow
pulsing swell of the Atlantic, and thus, though the direct cause varied,
the net result was ever the same--starvation. There is hidden away in
West Cork a most lovely and lonely lake. It is joined with the sea by a
narrow neck, up which at high water boats can come. To landward is a
great hill, thickly grown with firs, and aboriginal oaks, and hollies,
wherein on a still night you may hear the wild screech of the
martin-cats, ripping the darkness blood-curdlingly, like a woman's
scream. From its summit is a view of wondrous beauty and expanse (not
necessarily synonymous terms, though often reckoned so), and it was
there that we were to picnic, bicycling as near the top as might be,
while hirelings from the yacht were to carry provisions up the hill for
us. It was a luncheon picnic, the blackest kind of all. The yacht
started at daybreak; all was to be ready on the hill top by our arrival.
I should think the least intelligent would have already gathered the
_denouement_ of this "Cautionary Tale," as Mrs. Sherwood would call it,
and I need do no more than indicate the closing scene of the day's
tragedy. On a sea of turquoise, far-away sails, saffron-coloured, and
motionless in the afternoon sunlight. On the mud floor of a roadside
public house, a small company of bicyclists, drearily preserving life by
means of sour porter, flat, sweet lemonade, and probably the stalest
biscuits in the wide province of Munster.
Many high authorities, including, I am told, Mr. Herbert Spencer, assure
us that it is the inherited influences of prehistoric ancestors that
breed in otherwise decent and home-keeping souls the love of the lawless
freedom of a picnic, and, to be sure, the pleasure that we had in our
island orgy, with its plateless, spoonless indecorums, can best be
explained on some such theory. None the less, I maintain that the ideal
picnic is only achieved by the most super-civilised elimination and
selection. Two, or at most four, congenial souls, and a tea basket of
latest device and most expert equipment--these things, and thoroughly
dry grass, and I ask no more of heaven.
*BOON COMPANIONS*
"D'ye remember of Gill and Poor Fellow, greyhounds that was in it long
ago?"
I did not. In the long and tear-stained annals of the family dogs but
one greyhound was in my memory, the saintly and beautiful Gazelle, own
niece to "Master McGrath," as was recited with bated breath to new
governesses and other of the unenlightened, coupled with large
statements as to her uncomputable value had not her tail in youth been
shut into a stable door and given a double angle like a bayonet.
Rickeen was occupied, to some extent, in felling a young ash tree. He
swung in half a score of blows that made it shiver, and presently came
to the expected pause.
"Faith thim was the dogs--! My brother Tom was butler here the same
time. B'leeve me 'twas himself was souple! He'd run home any minute in
the day, two miles, and ye wouldn't hardly feel him gone."
This remarkable accomplishment on the part of the butler was allowed to
sink in, as it deserved.
"He had a tarrier, and one day going through the Wood of Annagh himself
and the tarrier wakened a hare, and the two o' thim was hunting her
through and fro, and he cursing the full of a house on the tarrier. He
shtud then on the big rock that's in it, and he let a whistle on his two
fingers. The two greyhounds was sthretched within at the kitchen fire up
at the Big House, and sorra word of lie I'm tellin', but Poor Fellow put
an ear on him, and the two of them legged it out of the kitchen and away
with them to the wood, and they never stopped nor stayed till they found
Tom, and themselves and the tarrier killed the hare."
The big rock and the Big House were severed by an Irish mile of tree
trunks and briars, but criticism is the last thing required from a
listener, and I hope I played my part.
[Illustration: RICKEEN]
Rickeen was again possessed by a spasm of industry: the chips flew out,
the tall young ash cracked, and sank into the arms of its neighbours.
There was a singular simplicity about the forestry of the establishment.
When the bitter cry of the cook went forth for wood wherewith to cook
the impending meal, Rickeen prayed that the divil might roast and baste
all the women in Ireland, and cut down a convenient young tree. By this
means the plantations were lightly thinned at the ends nearest the
house, and as a general thing the cook gave notice every three weeks,
which prevented any unwholesome stagnation.
"But as for dogs," continued Rickeen, a little later, as he snicked off
the greeny-grey branches, "the grandest dog ever was in this counthry
was Mullowny's. Ye couldn't know what kind of a breed was in him, but
ye'd _have_ to like him, he was that spotted."
Here a long-drawn yell came forth from the yard, resolving itself
gradually into a statement to Rickeen that the Misthress wanted her
keys, and himself was the last one she seen them with.
Rickeen put down his hatchet in fateful silence. His dog, couched in a
brake where the young bracken stems curled like bishops' croziers round
her crafty snout, raised one yellow eyebrow out of what was apparently
deep sleep, arose, and followed him with her wonted gravity. Her cold
manner was the next thing to good breeding; in spite of a family tree
exclusively composed of crosses, in spite of a coat suggestive of a
badger skin that has been used as a door mat, there was that in her pale
eyes and in the set smile at the corners of her mouth that discouraged
familiarity, and induced other dogs to feign a sudden interest in their
own affairs as she approached. To follow Rickeen she gnawed ropes, and
swam lakes, and ate her way through doors, and Rickeen never to my
knowledge addressed her, except with the command to drive in the cows.
In her next incarnation she will probably be the ideal colonist's wife.
I remained sitting on a stump in the silence, and thought of my first
love, Bran. Through the tree stems I could see a grassy hill sloping to
the lake side, where, at the age of nine, I grovelled one morning among
the cowslips and mopped my soaking tears with my holland waggoner, and
wished for death, because Bran had been drowned. Bran was a cur, half
silky and gracious Gordon setter, half woolly vulgarian of the Irish
cottage breed, and to us, his comrades, a hero, an object of passionate
faith, and, as such, the victim of many well-meant but excruciating
honours. He wore, with docile consciousness of his absurdity,
ornamental harness of strangling complications, and with it drew at a
foot pace a grocer's box, mounted on wheels, while we walked before and
after with fixed bayonets and all the gravity befitting a guard of
honour operating in shrubberies teeming with banditti. It was not till
an attempt was made to put the new bull dog into double harness with him
that Bran showed symptoms of resentment, and the battle that then raged
in the tangle of the shoulder straps and traces placed him, if possible,
higher in our respect. The matter was patched up with the bull dog,
who, though instant in quarrel, was not without good feeling, and next
morning, at an early hour, I saw his frightful face protruding from
under the bedclothes of my brother's bed, framed in a poke bonnet of
sheet, while two long tails, languidly waving in welcome, hung down over
the valance like bell-ropes, and witnessed to the presence of Bran and
of the young deerhound, Kilfane, hidden in the deepest heart of the bed.
Perhaps Sunday was the day that Bran was most satiating to us. To go to
church on the top of the family omnibus was at any time the summit of
ambition; with Bran speeding easily in front, or slackening for a
hurried exchange of ferocities with cabin acquaintances, the five miles
(invariably driven in the teeth of a north-westerly wind) were all too
short. Those inside, whose turn it would be to sit on top coming home,
yearned with crooked necks through the side windows, and stimulated by
glimpses of the hero, were enabled to struggle successfully with the
hideous tendency of childhood to be sea-sick in covered vehicles.
During church time Bran was immured in the lock-up at the police
station, and many a wriggling half-hour's endurance of the sermon was
gilded by expectancy of the moment when the sorrowful sighing of the
prisoner would turn to ardent sniffing under the door of the lockup, and
the hand of the sergeant would restore to us "life's greatest
possibility."
One summer night, at about this time, as I lay in my bed, the spirits of
prophecy and of poesy came upon me hand in hand, quite inexplicably.
Bran was in his usual health, and, as I afterwards found, was at that
very hour engaged in stealing mutton hash from the back hall: but it was
decreed that I should compose an ode fatefully commemorating his violent
death.
"Oh, Bran, thou wert gentle and sweet," I began, without an effort,
while Mattel's Valse swung and crashed its way up through two ceilings
from the drawing-room,
But now thou art past and gone,
Like a wave on the ocean so fleet,
And the deed of death was done.
Even here inspiration did not flag.
'Tis no use to wail or to weep.
For oh, alas and alack!
Thou'st gone to that eternal sleep,
From which none can bring thee back.
The magnificence of the close was almost stupefying to the author; even
the second line of the verse had seemed full of a rending passion. I
sank to sleep, aware that I had taken my place in literature.
A year afterwards came the miserable tears among the cowslips, the first
taste of the bitter core of sentiment, and the discovery that the
prophetic ode did not express the position.
Bran occupies the whole foreground of the history of pets, but there
were many of a lesser sort. There was even another elegy, beginning:
Stranger, with reverence draw near,
A Linnet lies below.
But birds were not our foible.
Rabbits followed each other in bewildering succession, and travelled to
their doom by the same track. We fed them with milk and water out of
eggspoons, with daisies, and with clover, but the morning always came
when the foundling lay stiff in its hay, its black eyes glazed, and the
limp daisies untouched beside it. One notable exception is recorded, a
young rabbit brought in with a broken leg, who out of pure contrariety
and improbability lived for a year. It became precocious beyond belief,
and sat all day observing life from the arm of its proprietor. At night
it slept, or affected to sleep, in a box in her room, biding its time
till the candle was put out. Under cover of darkness it would then
stealthily come forth and would buck with precision from the floor on to
the face of the sleeper, repeating the feat as often as repulsed, until
a burrow in some corner of the bed was granted. (It is not out of place
here to mention that its nails were cut with extreme care and
regularity.) Its diet presented no difficulty, save in the matter of
restriction. It partook of the family meals as they came: porridge,
marmalade, bread and butter, meat; uncooked green vegetables were not so
much as mentioned in its presence. It even, horrible to confess,
frequently ate rabbit-pie, and cracked and crunched the bones of its
relatives with cannibal glee. On these scandalous foods it throve, but
remained dwarfish and uncanny. It had moods of suspicion and brooding,
when it sat in the chimney of an empty room. Once, under the protection,
no doubt, of the evil spirits with whom it was in league, it leaped from
a window sill forty feet above the ground, alighted with a flop, and
greeted those who rushed to pick up the corpse with a cold stare of
inquiry as to what the excitement was about. It met its death by
presuming in the open field upon the long-suffering of the dogs whom it
terrorised in the house.
Outside the inner circle of pets, and within the outer circle of the
donkeys whom we partly loved, partly scorned, and daily martyrised, kids
held a certain position of their own. They are not to be commended,
being skittish, peevish, tactless and strong, but they were not without
attraction. One of them, black and white, with oblique barley-sugar
eyes, showed much inclination towards the profession of house dog, and
learned many essentials of that trade; the doors that were worth waiting
at, the perils and rich prizes of the kitchen passages, the moment to
intrude, the moment to fly. An incident of its career can best be told
in the words of a certain Bridget, a notable member of the long dynasty
of Bridgets that passed processionally through the establishment _en
route_ for America.
"The Misthress was below in the hall and she heard one above on the top
landin', walkin' as sthrong as a man. 'Bridget!' says she," (the voice
of command was given with great elegance and hauteur), "and what was in
it but the young goat, and it commenced walkin' down the stairs. 'Come
here, Bridget!' says the Misthress, and sure of course the goat said
nothing, but goin' on always from step to step. 'Arrah musha! The divil
go from ye,' says the Misthress, 'why don't ye spake? What sort of
hoppin' is it ye have up there?'" (The elegance of the imitation here
yielded to the narrator's sense of what was fitting.) "Faith, the goat
stood then, like it'd be afraid. 'The Lord save us, it's the fairies!'
says the Misthress, an' there wasn't one in the house but she called,
and what did they get in it but the goat, an' it having a stocking half
ate!"
Not long afterwards (next day probably) the kid was sent back on an
outside car to its native place, a region of bog and rock and scrub,
where its lamentations for the schoolroom fire had ample scope. It was
escorted to its Siberia by a large party from the schoolroom, filled
with curiosity to see how it would be received in its family circle.
The boy who was left to hold the horse became also impelled to see the
meeting, with the result that the horse and car were found a little
later on their backs in a bog ditch, which conclusion is not to this
hour known to the authorities.
It was in the winter that the Reign of Terror of the Monkeys began. The
first of them, large and grey, wearing the name of Lizzie, and a red
flannel coat, arrived in December, and it was humanely arranged that she
should live close to the kitchen fire on the flour bin. It was also
enacted that she was to be chained to the wall "until she got to know
people a little."
There are Northern stories, Eastern ones, too, I believe, of houses in
which evil spirits having once gained entrance, remained in immutable
possession. Thus it was with us. In a short time Lizzie got to know
every one very thoroughly. She bit each visitor indiscriminately, and
having analysed the samples, she arranged a sliding scale of likes and
dislikes, on the negative principle. That is to say, she would tolerate
A till B arrived, when she bit A. On C's appearance she bit both A and
B, and so on up to Z. The master of the house was Z. (Herein she
showed her infernal cunning.) Z was never bitten. The kitchenmaid, in
whose control were the dainties that Lizzie's soul loved, was Y, _i.e._,
she was only bitten on the arrival of the master. Lizzie's bad life had
the sole merit of brevity. One of her customs was to strike a match,
and having burnt the hair on her grimy, nervous little arm, to eat the
frizzled remains. (Thus invalidating the vaunt that man is the only
animal that cooks.) Having on several occasions nearly set the house on
fire, matches were forbidden to her, but one fortunate day a new boxful
somehow fell into her possession, and, varying her wonted practice, she
ate off the heads of most of the matches. Therewith her spirit passed;
but only temporarily. In less than a year she was with us again. This
time in the guise of a small brown monkey, that went by the name of
Jack. A clear proof of obsession by the spirit of Lizzie was afforded
in the fact that precisely the same sliding scale of hatred was
observed, culminating as before in the master of the house. Jack was in
some particulars less repellent than his predecessor. He was smaller,
and was given to fits, which gave a hope that his life might not long be
spared. By this time the flour-bin from long camping would have supplied
the germs of enteric to an entire army corps. (I hasten to say that,
being in Ireland, it was never used as a flour-bin having been thus
temporarily styled as a concession to convention during the brief reign
of an English cook who had long before fled to her native land.)
Between the flour-bin and the wall Jack's fits usually took place, and
it was the wont of the tender-hearted kitchenmaid (known to this day
among her fellows as "Mary-the-Monkey." The suffix "the Monkey" being a
distinguishing mark; as "Philippe-le-Bel," "Robert-the-Lion") to unchain
him after one of these seizures and to sit before the fire with him on
her lap. No experience seemed to teach her that his first act on
recovery was to bite her suddenly and then escape. The alarm was spread
in precisely the same manner on each successive occasion. First a
shrill and piercing scream from "Mary-the-Monkey," usually coupled with
an appeal to her God. Then an answering yell from the next victim in
the pantry. Then a shouting, and an earthquake slamming of doors
through the house as its occupants one and all sped to safety. Finally
the voice of the master assuring the invisible household that all was
well, and that the monkey would never bite any one if they did not show
that they were afraid of him.
Jack died in a fit, and was mourned only by the master and the faithful
kitchenmaid. Yet had he and his fellow had any desire for social success
it would have been easy for them to have achieved it in a family so
inured to pets as ours.
But monkeys are worse than tactless. They understand their own
hideousness and unpopularity, yet will not make a step towards
amiability. A little leaning to the pathetic would have made us adore
them, but they prefer to remain malevolent, remote, uttering coarse,
mysterious grunts and screeches, out of hearts full of cold devilry. It
is in keeping with their vulgarity that they should thrust their way
into an assemblage of pets; an insult even to the kid and the rabbit, an
outrage to the memory of Bran.
*THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PUMP*
The date of its birth is uncertain. A torpid tradition places it in the
Early Victorian Era, but the Regency is more probable; even the
Rebellion of '96 may not have been beyond its ken. Being a native of
West Galway, neither Regency nor Early Victorian Era was likely to be an
epoch in its surroundings. It belonged to the period when
"... Dick Martin ruled
The trackless wilds of Connemara;"
and the men who put it in its place scarcely knew whether king or queen
ruled in an England that was as remote from them as the India of to-day.
It is probable that in the youth of the pump its labours were light.
Baths were the eccentricity of a few, a revival of the corrupt days of
the Roman Empire; and the process by which the stalwart fox-hunter of
the beginning of this century got into his clothes was one that it might
be well to slur over, invaluable as he and his costume have been to the
Christmas numbers. Vast and simple cooking operations, conducted on an
open grate four feet long; vats of meat pickle lying in cellars where
the light came greenly through ivied windows; cauldrons of potatoes, and
possibly cauldrons of punch; these formed the highest claims on the
water-supply before the dynasty of the bath was proclaimed in the
establishment. The deathless discontent that followed the innovation
has produced many stirring household episodes, none of them more sudden
and complete than that which occurred on the day when one of those
vessels of wrath, the bath, was repainted for the first time. The local
carpenter had arrived for the purpose, with what disdain for such
trifling can be imagined. Arriving early, he discovered the bath as yet
unemptied, an added insult to a man whose time was much occupied with
fishing on the lake, and other serious matters. The housemaid, with
ill-timed coquetry, put out her tongue at him when approached on the
subject. In silence more bodeful than repartee he returned to the bath,
carried it to the door, and emptied its contents down the passage. A
stupefied stillness fell upon the bystanders, then arose outcry almost
choked by rage, while behind a locked door the carpenter whistled and
audibly chuckled over his work.
In those days the turf-boy was an institution, oppressive, but
necessitated by an establishment where coal had never been seen, and an
armful of turf burned away in an hour. All day they plied bare-foot
between the turf-house and the various fuel depots of the house with
baskets of the long, hard sods on their backs, and guile and mutiny in
their hearts, because that with the office of turf-boy was linked the
hated one of water-carrier. About this latter clustered battles of
endless variety, involving the sacred person of the cook, and frequently
topped as with a banner by her giving of warning. After long warfare it
was lightly thought that the exodus of cooks might be stayed by the
introduction of a self-filling boiler supplied from a small tank, which
must, by Median and Persian law, be replenished every morning. It was
done, and for an incredible fortnight the charm of novelty retained its
hold on the turf-boys; the tank was filled, the ball-cock did its work
like a book, and the Dublin cook was fain to seek another grievance.
The inevitable hour drew on when the tank, like any other entertainment,
must cease to amuse, the hour in which it ebbed unreplenished to its
dregs, while the turf-boys, much preoccupied with making a wicker snare
for blackbirds, known as a cradle-bird, sat round the fire, and
dismissed the boiler from their minds with a calm, native trust in
Providence. It was in the meridian of this peace that the boiler burst,
with a single and shattering report. What followed on that crack of
doom it is not necessary to record; the imagination of any householder
can shadow forth the attitude of the cook, and no living pen could
reproduce the flight of the turf-boys.
It is more agreeable to turn to another scene, in which the pump played
its part to a limited extent, when, on the last night of the old year,
the coach-house was garlanded with holly and ivy, and "Pete-een bawn,"
the Albino fiddler, sat on high on a window-sill, twitching out jigs and
reels from the fiddle that he played on his knee, while the thick boots
of a roomful of dancers kept light and unflagging time. As the crowning
hour of twelve drew on, preparations began for the brew of punch that
was to usher in the new year, and a tasting committee, formed of the
gamekeeper and the kitchenmaid, was met by the supreme question of what
to brew it in. A bucket was considered too small, the churn was rejected
because it had "an ugly smell." Finally some genius bethought him of a
hip-bath. The bath was snatched from the nearest bedroom by a bevy of
turf-boys, the stone jar of John Jameson was emptied into it, and
followed with more reticence by kettles of boiling water; all that
remained was to provide each guest with a cup to dip into the reeking
pool. Ten minutes later the bath was empty, and a ring of boys radiated
from it at full length, lapping the last drops, and even licking the
enamel, while the dancing was resumed with startling emphasis. Outside,
a light snow was on the ground, the north wind blew dark in that bitter
midnight, and the ice on the lake uttered strange sounds--hollow,
musical shocks with the voice of the imprisoned water in them. Every
tree in the woods stood separate in white silhouette, the rime sifting
through the branches in a dry whisper. Upon this subtle mood of winter
came forth from the open doors of the coach-house the light of lamps
with tin reflectors, the shrewish scream of the fiddle as Pete-een bawn
jerked his white head in accord with "The hare was in the corn," the
aroma of punch and of clothes seasoned in turf smoke. It is better to
withdraw from these early hours of the new year, before the uncertain
homeward footsteps blotted the thin snow, and the exponents of the
genial first stage of drunkenness assisted the exponents of the
aggressive second stage to pull themselves together for early Mass.
[Illustration: ROSS LAKE]
It has been mentioned that the pump was subject to chronic and
mysterious ailments, on which every skilled opinion in the country was
brought to bear, while the water famine was sore in the land, and the
turf-boys plied with buckets and bewailings between the lake and the
cook, and unearthly pronged creatures gyrated in the water-bottles. It
was during one of these visitations, when the back yard was torn up into
entrenchments, and the pump lay two miles away at the forge, that the
Garrygillihy horse races were held, and with this event the revolt of
the turf-boys broke forth. On the previous day they concealed
themselves in an old limekiln and mended their trousers; on the morning
itself they made the simple statement that "if the servants was to die
dancing for turf and wather they'll not get it to-day," after which
ultimatum they were seen no more. Many things happened in their absence,
not at first sight connected with it; the cook went to bed in the
afternoon, the hens walked upstairs to the pantry, and picked out the
inside of a plum cake, and a cow got into the coach-house, and ate the
cushion of the car. The cook gave warning next day, the kitchenmaid, in
tears, followed suit, because the cook had called her a "jumper"
(_i.e._, a pervert to Protestantism); the housemaid, also in tears,
asserted that the kitchenmaid "had a spleen agin her," and the stableman
was heard darkly soliloquising over the cleaning of the bits that "a lie
was _something_, but there was no dealing with a d--d lie." All these
things were subsequently traced by tortuous ways to the grand central
fact that the turf-boys had gone to the Garrygillihy races.
There came at length a notable crisis, when the pump showed that it had,
like most of its countrymen, a power of rising to the occasion. It was
on a bright morning in May that the kitchen chimney caught fire, an
event of yearly occurrence, and by no means displeasing to the
authorities. The big shaft roared with furnace heat up its eighty feet,
the ugly blaze wavered from the chimney top; a few buckets of water were
poured down, and all became quiet. It had happened in the immemorial
manner, but just once too often. Four hours later, in the stillness of
the hot afternoon, the voice of the fire was heard again, a soft, busy
crackling in the timbers of the roof, a muffled booming sound that grew
above it; a tongue of flame through the slates, a drip of melted lead
from the eaves, and the house was full of shouts and rushing feet. An
hour afterwards the battle was over, and the toilers could fling
themselves down, breathless, to realise an incredible escape, and the
clang of the pump handle ceased. Throughout that hour of stress none of
the pump's repertoire of evil symptoms was exhibited, nor did it fail to
respond to the astonishing variety of receptacles presented to its grim
beak. Next day it gasped forth the mud of the bottom of the well, and
fell into a fractious disorder from which it has never rallied; but none
the less the old house at its back owes its life to the allegiance of
its comrade of a hundred years.
*HUNTING MAHATMAS*
Many people have learnt from "Kim" what it is to be a "Chela," and there
was a time, not long ago, when every self-respecting evening paper and
most of the magazines had something sufficiently--or
self-sufficiently--illuminating to say about Karma or the Mahatma. I am
not skilled in Buddhism, but I have assimilated a fact or two about
Mahatmas, and in so doing have become aware of wider issues.
A Mahatma, I believe, implies primarily a teacher, an instructor, a sage
or hermit with intermittently social tendencies; it also implies the
possession of many useful endowments. Matter and space appear to be
negligible accidents to the competent Mahatma. As a mere after-dinner
triviality he will summon you a cigarette from infinity and will
materialise it on the table; moving to higher things, he can produce a
copy of the _Times_ in the remoter parts of Tibet on the day on which it
appears in London, advertisements and all, but exclusive, I fancy, of
library privileges. Transcending these lighter accomplishments,
however, is his power of transporting himself to a chosen place at a
chosen time without visible means of progression. He, we are assured,
can fade from the landscape with the beautiful elusiveness of a rainbow,
and can develop himself elsewhere, in or out of the landscape, with a
precision with which the rainbow cannot hope to compete.
There is a matter that seems to me to have escaped observation--it
certainly is not generally admitted--that in society not notably occult,
in what, in fact, are often spoken of as Hunting Circles (though why
circles, save with a very bad fox, it is hard to say), these privileged
beings are found. Unsuspected, unappreciated, his high gifts often
despised, even disliked, the Mahatma blooms in what might seem the
uncongenial soil of many a hunting country.
There is a difference, distinct and, in my mind, well defined, between
the people who hunt and the people who go hunting. The people who hunt
are the professionals; serious, impassioned even, but with subdued
emotion; fanatics who live only to conjugate the verb To Hunt in all its
moods and tenses; recognising implicitly the force of its imperative,
accepting its future with joy, its past with loquacity. For them hunt
numbers are compiled, and runs recorded with geographical accuracy and
microscopic detail; they cut out the work, they give the time. Yet it
is not among their thrusting ranks that the Mahatma is found. He is
evolved, in perfect response to the need for him, among the wider
brotherhood of those who go hunting. These are the true free lances of
the chase. Having cast off the fear of public opinion, and purged
themselves of the love of display, they have no conventions to respect
and no position to lose. Hand in hand with their devotion to sport goes
the most saving good sense. How despicable to these enfranchised minds
must be the meaningless twists, the desperate endeavours of the zealots
who, infatuated as a string of ants, surmount unwaveringly every
obstacle that lies in their path! As, from a pleasant hill side, the
Mahatma views these struggles, he must surely feel how well it is with
him, and how useful a thing it is to combine moral courage with
intelligence.
[Illustration: "THE HOVERING HORDE VACILLATES NO LONGER"]
But in a hilly and gateless country, such as Ireland excels in, moral
courage and intelligence will not suffice; inspiration is needed, and
straightway, out of a hovering and uncertain horde of riders, the
Mahatma materialises. The hour has come, and the man. (These things, it
may be noted, often synchronise with the interposition of the class of
fence that is like an east wind, in being neither good for man nor
beast.) Without a shadow of hesitation the Mahatma turns his horse at a
right angle from the line the hounds are running, possibly even in a
diametrically opposite direction. It matters not; the result will
justify him. The hovering horde vacillates no longer; no word is
spoken, no allegiance sworn; his sovereignty is as instant and
unquestioned as that of the queen bee; one telepathic moment has
transformed them into his disciples.
It is here that the superiority of the hunting Mahatma to the religious
variety makes itself felt. Like the Magic Carpet in the "Arabian
Nights" he has the mystic power of transporting not only himself but his
adherents. One moment and you may see him skilfully "knocking a gap"
(_i.e._, unbuilding a wall) or opening a gate, as the case may be, while
the disciples wait respectfully; the next they are lost, swallowed up in
the Fifth Dimension, or wherever it is that Mahatmas move and have their
being. It may be a quarter of an hour afterwards, it may be twenty
minutes; the hunt arrives, heated, something blown, and very proud of
itself, at a road where there is a momentary check. There, drawn up,
calm and omniscient, is the Mahatma, with the disciples. He has seen
the fox (who, it may not be out of place to note, is on these occasions
always the largest dog-fox that the country has ever produced). He
advises the huntsman, with perfect knowledge, where to cast his hounds,
and once more betakes himself, with his party, to the Fifth Dimension.
During the various turns and chances of the average hunting run in rough
country, he is met with on every road that is crossed by the hunt. He
is a directory of the most obscure and unsuspected gaps, an amateur of
padlocks, a Samson who can lift from their hinges the gates of Gaza, or
any other gates that may intervene. He is present at all disasters, and
acts as a sort of convalescent home for their victims, and as a
rallying-place for those who have been thrown out.
As I muse over his gifts, and the benevolence with which they are
exercised, my heart warms to him and his compeers. Had I my way no hunt
establishment should be without its own accredited Mahatma. He should
be entitled to the letters M.F.H. as unquestioningly as the Master. I
would blazon them on his broad back (the Mahatma's figure is wont to be
a fine one), plain for all men to see, and brand them on his ample
sandwich-case. "Mahatma to the Meaths!" Any man might be pleased to
have some such an inscription on his tombstone. "Mahatma to the
Blazers" might hold some hint of incongruity; yet, however blazing one
may be, there are moments----
It has happened to me, in a remote part of the County Waterford, to have
lost the hounds, and at the same moment to find myself confronted by a
frowning bank, hollow-faced, afforested with furze, wholly, as it seemed
to me, impassable. While I surveyed it in dejection the cry of the
hounds was borne to me on the wind; the music had a dying fall, they
were running hard, and away from me. It was then that the voice of the
local Mahatma fell like a falling star from the hillside above me.
"Go on a small piece to the right and ye'll get a passage."
I obeyed, and saw that hoof marks of cattle led to a cleft in the bank,
so masked with furze bushes as to be invisible. I squeezed through it,
and found the valley smiling before me, and the hounds still within
reach. But the Mahatma had gone.
I met him at the next check, cool and unruffled, silent as to the
miraculous nature of his transit.
"Ye're barefooted," he said briefly.
[Illustration: "A VOICE FELL LIKE A FALLING STAR"]