The coach, like almost every other public vehicle I have seen in

Ireland, was full to the brim and over it. What can send these restless

people travelling and hurrying about from place to place as they do? I

have heard one or two gentlemen hint that they had ‘business’ at this

place or that; and found afterwards that one was going a couple of score

of miles to look at a mare, another to examine a setter-dog, and so on.

I did not make it my business to ask on what errand the gentlemen on the

coach were bound; though two of them, seeing an Englishman, very

good-naturedly began chalking out a route for him to take, and showing a

sort of interest in his affairs, which is not with us generally

exhibited. The coach, too, seemed to have the elastic hospitality of

some Irish houses; it accommodated an almost impossible number. For the

greater part of the journey the little guard sat on the roof among the

carpet-bags, holding in one hand a huge tambour-frame, in the other a

bandbox marked ‘Foggarty, Hatter.’ (What is there more ridiculous in the

name of Foggarty than in that of Smith? and yet, had Smith been the

name, I never should have laughed at or remarked it.) Presently by his

side clambered a green-coated policeman with his carbine, and we had a

talk about the vitriol-throwers at Cork, and the sentence just passed

upon them. The populace has decidedly taken part with the

vitriol-throwers; parties of dragoons were obliged to surround the

avenues of the court; and the judge who sentenced them was abused as he

entered his carriage, and called an old villain, and many other

opprobrious names.

This case the reader very likely remembers. A saw-mill was established

at Cork, by which some four hundred sawyers were thrown out of employ.

In order to deter the proprietors of this and all other mills from using

such instruments further, the sawyers determined to execute a terrible

vengeance, and cast lots among themselves which of their body should

fling vitriol into the faces of the mill-owners. The men who were chosen

by the lot were to execute this horrible office on pain of death, and

did so,--frightfully burning and blinding one of the gentlemen owning

the mill. Great rewards were offered for the apprehension of the

criminals, and at last one of their own body came forward as an

approver, and the four principal actors in this dreadful outrage were

sentenced to be transported for life. Crowds of the ragged admirers of

these men were standing round ‘the magnificent county court-house’ as we

passed the building. Ours is a strange life indeed. What a history of

poverty and barbarity, and crime, and even kindness, was that by which

we passed before the magnificent county court-house, at eight miles an

hour? What a chapter might a philosopher write on them! Look yonder at

those two hundred ragged fellow-subjects of yours; they are kind, good,

pious, brutal, starving. If the priest tells them, there is scarce any

penance they will not perform; there is scarcely any pitch of misery

which they have not been known to endure, nor any degree of generosity

of which they are not capable: but if a man comes among these people,

and can afford to take land over their heads, or if he invents a machine

which can work more economically than their labour, they will shoot the

man down without mercy, murder him, or put him to horrible tortures, and

glory almost in what they do. There stand the men; they are only

separated from us by a few paces: they are as fond of their mothers and

children as we are; their gratitude for small kindnesses shown to them

is extraordinary; they are Christians as we are; but interfere with

their interests, and they will murder you without pity.

It is not revenge so much which these poor fellows take, as a brutal

justice of their own. Now, will it seem a paradox to say, in regard to

them and their murderous system, that the way to put an end to the

latter is to _kill them no more_? Let the priest be able to go amongst

them and say, the law holds a man’s life so sacred that it will on _no

account_ take it away. No man, nor no body of men, has a right to meddle

with human life; not the Commons of England any more than the Commons of

Tipperary. This may cost two or three lives, probably, until such time

as the system may come to be known and understood: but which will be the

greatest economy of blood in the end?

By this time the vitriol-men were long passed away, and we began next to

talk about the Cork and London steamboats; which are made to pay, on

account of the number of paupers whom the boats bring over from London

at the charge of that city. The passengers found here, as in everything

else almost which I have seen as yet, another instance of the injury

which England inflicts on them. ‘As long as these men are strong and can

work,’ says one, ‘you keep them: when they are in bad health, you fling

them upon us.’ Nor could I convince him that the agricultural gentlemen

were perfectly free to stay at home if they liked: that we did for them

what was done for English paupers--sent them, namely, as far as possible

on the way to their parishes; nay, that some of them (as I have seen

with my own eyes) actually saved a bit of money during the harvest, and

took this cheap way of conveying it and themselves to their homes again.

But nothing would convince the gentlemen that there was not some wicked

scheming on the part of the English in the business; and, indeed, I find

upon almost every other subject a peevish and puerile suspiciousness

which is worthy of France itself.

By this time we came to a pretty village called Innishannon, upon the

noble banks of the Bandon river; leading for three miles by a great

number of pleasant gentlemen’s seats to Bandon town. A good number of

large mills were on the banks of the stream; and the chief part of

them, as in Carlow, useless. One mill we saw was too small for the

owner’s great speculations; and so he built another and larger one: the

big mill cost him £10,000, for which his brothers went security; and, a

lawsuit being given against the millowner, the two mills stopped, the

two brothers went off, and yon fine old house, in the style of Anne,

with terraces and tall chimneys--one of the oldest country-houses I have

seen in Ireland--is now inhabited by the natural son of the millowner,

who has more such interesting progeny. Then we came to a tall,

comfortable house, in a plantation; opposite to which was a stone

castle, in its shrubberies on the other side of the road. The tall house

in the plantation shot the opposite side of the road in a duel, and

nearly killed him; on which the opposite side of the road built this

castle, _in order to plague_ the tall house. They are good friends now;

but the opposite side of the road ruined himself in building his house.

I asked, ‘Is the house finished?’--‘_A good deal of it is_,’ was the

answer.--And then we came to a brewery, about which was a similar story

of extravagance and ruin; but, whether before or after entering Bandon,

does not matter.

We did not, it appears, pass through the best part of Bandon: I looked

along one side of the houses in the long street through which we went,

to see if there was a window without a broken pane of glass, and can

declare on my conscience that every single window had three broken

panes. There we changed horses, in a market-place, surrounded, as usual,

by beggars; then we passed through a suburb still more wretched and

ruinous than the first street, and which, in very large letters, is

called DOYLE STREET: and the next stage was at a place called Dunmanway.

Here it was market-day, too, and, as usual, no lack of attendants:

swarms of peasants in their blue cloaks, squatting by their stalls here

and there. There is a little, miserable old market-house, where a few

women were selling buttermilk; another, bullocks’ hearts, liver, and

such like scraps of meat; another had dried mackerel on a board; and

plenty of people huckstering, of course. Round the coach came crowds of

raggery, and blackguards fawning for money. I wonder who gives them any!

I have never seen any one give yet; and were they not even so numerous

that it would be impossible to gratify them all, there is something in

their cant and supplications to the Lord so disgusting to me, that I

could not give a halfpenny.

In regard of pretty faces, male or female, this road is very

unfavourable. I have not seen one for fifty miles; though, as it was

market-day all along the road, we have had the opportunity to examine

vast numbers of countenances. The women are, for the most part, stunted,

short, with flat Tartar faces; and the men no handsomer. Every woman has

bare legs, of course; and as the weather is fine, they are sitting

outside their cabins, with the pig, and the geese, and the children

sporting around.

Before many doors we saw a little flock of these useful animals, and the

family pig almost everywhere. You might see him browsing and poking

along the hedges, his fore and hind leg attached with a wisp of hay to

check his propensity to roaming. Here and there were a small brood of

turkeys; now and then a couple of sheep or a single one grazing upon a

scanty field, of which the chief crop seemed to be thistles and stone;

and, by the side of the cottage, the potato-field always.

[Illustration]

The character of the landscape for the most part is bare and sad; except

here and there in the neighbourhood of the towns, where people have

taken a fancy to plant, and where nature has helped them, as it almost

always will in this country. If we saw a field with a good hedge to it,

we were sure to see a good crop inside. Many a field was there that had

neither crop nor hedge. We passed by and over many pretty streams,

running bright through brilliant emerald meadows: and I saw a thousand

charming pictures, which want as yet an Irish Berghem. A bright road

winding up a hill; on it a country cart, with its load, stretching a

huge shadow; the before-mentioned emerald pastures and silver rivers in

the foreground; a noble sweep of hills rising up from them, and

contrasting their magnificent purple with the green; in the extreme

distance the clear cold outline of some far-off mountains, and the white

clouds tumbled about in the blue sky overhead. It has no doubt struck

all persons who love to look at nature, how different the skies are in

different countries. I fancy Irish or French clouds are as

characteristic as Irish or French landscapes. It would be well to have a

Daguerreotype and get a series of each. Some way beyond Dunmanna the

road takes us through a noble savage country of rocks and heath. Nor

must the painter forget long black tracts of bog here and there, and the

water glistening brightly at the places where the turf has been cut

away. Add to this, and chiefly by the banks of rivers, a ruined old

castle or two; some were built by the Danes, it is said. The O’Connors,

the O’Mahonys, the O’Driscolls, were lords of many others, and their

ruined towers may be seen here and along the sea.

Near Dunmanna that great coach, ‘The Skibbereen Industry,’ dashed by us

at seven miles an hour; a wondrous vehicle: there were gaps between

every one of the panels; you could see daylight through and through it.

Like our machine, it was full, with three complementary sailors on the

roof, as little harness as possible to the horses, and as long stages as

horses can well endure; ours were each eighteen-mile stages. About eight

miles from Skibbereen a one-horse car met us, and carried away an

offshoot of passengers to Bantry. Five passengers and their luggage, and

a very wild steep road; all this had one poor little pony to overcome!

About the towns there were some show of gentlemen’s cars, smart and well

appointed, and on the road great numbers of country carts; an army of

them met us coming from Skibbereen, and laden with grey sand for manure.

Before you enter the city of Skibbereen, the tall new Poorhouse presents

itself to the eye of the traveller; of the common model, being a

bastard-Gothic edifice, with a profusion of cottage-ornée (is cottage

masculine or feminine in French?)--of cottage-orné roofs, and pinnacles,

and insolent-looking stacks of chimneys. It is built for 900 people, but

as yet not more than 400 have been induced to live in it; the beggars

preferring the freedom of their precarious trade to the dismal certainty

within its walls. Next we come to the chapel, a very large

respectable-looking building of dark-grey stone; and presently, behold,

by the crowd of blackguards in waiting, the ‘Skibbereen Perseverance’

has found its goal, and you are inducted to the ‘Hotel’ opposite.

Some gentlemen were at the coach, besides those of lower degree. Here

was a fat fellow with large whiskers, a geranium, and a cigar; yonder a

tall handsome old man that I would swear was a dragoon on half-pay. He

had a little cap, a Taglioni coat, a pair of beautiful spaniels, and a

pair of knee-breeches which showed a very handsome old leg; and his

object seemed to be to invite everybody to dinner as they got off the

coach. No doubt he has seen the ‘Skibbereen Perseverance’ come in ever

since it was a ‘Perseverance.’ It is wonderful to think what will

interest men in prisons or country towns!

There is a dirty coffee-room, with a strong smell of whisky; indeed

three young ‘materialists’ are employed at the moment: and I hereby beg

to offer an apology to three other gentlemen--the Captain, another, and

the gentleman of the geranium, who had caught hold of a sketching-stool

which is my property, and were stretching it, and sitting upon it, and

wondering, and talking of it, when the owner came in, and they bounced

off to their seats like so many schoolboys. Dirty as the place was, this

was no reason why it should not produce an exuberant dinner of trout and

Kerry mutton; after which Dan the waiter, holding up a dingy decanter,

asks how much whisky I’d have.

That calculation need not be made here; and if a man sleeps well, has he

any need to quarrel with the appointments of his bedroom, and spy out

the deficiencies of the land? As it was Sunday, it was impossible for me

to say what sort of shops ‘the active and flourishing town’ of

Skibbereen contains. There were some of the architectural sort, viz.

with gilt letters and cracked mouldings, and others into which I thought

I saw the cows walking; but it was only into their little cribs and

paddocks at the back of the shops. There is a trim Wesleyan chapel,

without any broken windows; a neat church standing modestly on one side;

the lower street crawls along the river to a considerable extent, having

by-streets and boulevards of cabins here and there.

The people came flocking into the place by hundreds, and you saw their

blue cloaks dotting the road and the bare open plains beyond. The men

came with shoes and stockings to-day, the women all bare-legged, and

many of them might be seen washing their feet in the stream before they

went up to the chapel. The street seemed to be lined on either side with

blue cloaks, squatting along the doorways as is their wont. Among these,

numberless cows were walking to and fro, and pails of milk passing, and

here and there a hound or two went stalking about. Dan, the waiter,

says they are hunted by the handsome old Captain who was yesterday

inviting everybody to dinner.

Anybody at eight o’clock of a Sunday morning in summer may behold the

above scene from a bridge just outside the town. He may add to it the

river, with one or two barges lying idle upon it; a flag flying at what

looks like a custom-house; bare country all around; and the chapel

before him, with a swarm of the dark figures round about it.

I went into it, not without awe (for, as I confessed before, I always

feel a sort of tremor on going into a Catholic place of worship: the

candles, and altars, and mysteries, the priest, and his robes, and nasal

chanting, and wonderful genuflections, will frighten me as long as I

live). The chapel-yard was filled with men and women; a couple of shabby

old beadles were at the gate, with copper shovels to collect money; and

inside the chapel four or five hundred people were on their knees, and

scores more of the blue-mantles came in, dropping their curtsies as they

entered, and then taking their places on the flags.

And now the pangs of hunger beginning to make themselves felt, it became

necessary for your humble servant (after making several useless

applications to a bell, which properly declined to work on Sundays) to

make a personal descent to the inn-kitchen, where was not a bad study

for a painter. It is a huge room, with a peat fire burning, and a

staircase walking up one side of it, on which stair was a damsel in a

partial though by no means picturesque dishabille. The cook had just

come in with a great frothing pail of milk, and sat with her arms

folded; the hostler’s boy sat dangling his legs from the table; the

hostler was dandling a noble little boy of a year old, at whom Mrs. Cook

likewise grinned delighted. Here, too, sat Mr. Dan, the waiter; and no

wonder breakfast was delayed, for all three of these worthy domestics

seemed delighted with the infant.

He was handed over to the gentleman’s arms for the space of thirty

seconds; the gentleman being the father of a family, and of course an

amateur.

‘Say Dan for the gentleman,’ says the delighted cook.

‘Dada,’ says the baby; at which the assembly grinned with joy: and Dan

promised I should have my breakfast ‘in a hurry.’

But of all the wonderful things to be seen in Skibbereen, Dan’s pantry

is the most wonderful: every article within is a makeshift, and has been

ingeniously perverted from its original destination. Here lie bread,

blacking, fresh butter, tallow-candles, dirty knives--all in the same

cigar-box with snuff, milk, cold bacon, brown sugar, broken teacups,

and bits of soap. No pen can describe that establishment, as no English

imagination could have conceived it. But lo! the sky has cleared after a

furious fall of rain--(in compliance with Dan’s statement to that

effect, ‘that the weather would be fine’)--and a car is waiting to carry

us to Loughine.

Although the description of Loughine can make but a poor figure in a

book, the ride thither is well worth the traveller’s short labour. You

pass by one of the cabin-streets out of the town, into a country which

for a mile is rich with grain, though bare of trees; then through a

boggy bleak district, from which you enter into a sort of sea of rocks,

with patches of herbage here and there. Before the traveller, almost all

the way, is a huge pile of purple mountain, on which, as one comes

nearer, one perceives numberless waves and breaks, as you see small

waves on a billow in the sea; then clambering up a hill, we look down

upon a bright green flat of land, with the lake beyond it, girt round by

grey melancholy hills. The water may be a mile in extent; a cabin tops

the mountain here and there; gentlemen have erected one or two anchorite

pleasure-houses on the banks, as cheerful as a summer-house would be on

Salisbury Plain. I felt not sorry to have seen this lonely lake, and

still happier to leave it. There it lies with crags all round it, in the

midst of desolate plains; it escapes somewhere to the sea; its waters

are salt; half a dozen boats lie here and there upon its banks, and we

saw a small crew of boys plashing about and swimming in it, and laughing

and yelling. It seemed a shame to disturb the silence so.

The crowd of swaggering ‘gents’ (I don’t know the corresponding phrase

in the Anglo-Irish vocabulary to express a shabby dandy) awaiting the

Cork mail, which kindly goes twenty miles out of its way to accommodate

the town of Skibbereen, was quite extraordinary. The little street was

quite blocked up with shabby gentlemen, and shabby beggars, awaiting

this daily phenomenon. The man who had driven us to Loughine did not

fail to ask for his fee as driver; and then, having received it, came

forward in his capacity of boots, and received another remuneration. The

ride is desolate, bare, and yet beautiful. There are a set of hills that

keep one company the whole way; they were partially hidden in a grey

sky, which flung a general hue of melancholy too over the green country

through which we passed. There was only one wretched village along the

road, but no lack of population; ragged people who issued from their

cabins as the coach passed, or were sitting by the wayside. Everybody

seems sitting by the wayside here: one never sees this general repose in

England--a sort of ragged lazy contentment. All the children seemed to

be on the watch for the coach; waited very knowingly and carefully their

opportunity, and then hung on by scores behind. What a pleasure, to run

over flinty roads with bare feet, to be whipped off, and to walk back to

the cabin again! These were very different cottages to those neat ones I

had seen in Kildare. The wretchedness of them is quite painful to look

at; many of the potato-gardens were half dug up, and it is only the

first week in August, near three months before the potato is ripe and at

full growth; and the winter still six months away. There were chapels

occasionally, and smart new-built churches--one of them has a

congregation of ten souls, the coachman told me. Would it not be better

that the clergyman should receive them in his room, and, that the

church-building money should be bestowed otherwise?

At length, after winding up all sorts of dismal hills speckled with

wretched hovels, a ruinous mill every now and then, black bog-lands, and

small winding streams, breaking here and there into little falls, we

come upon some grounds well tilled and planted, and descending (at no

small risk from stumbling horses) a bleak long hill, we see the water

before us, and turning to the right by the handsome little park of Lord

Bearhaven, enter Bantry. The harbour is beautiful. Small mountains in

pretty green undulations rising on the opposite side; great grey ones

farther back; a pretty island in the midst of the water, which is

wonderfully bright and calm. A handsome yacht, and two or three vessels

with their Sunday colours out, were lying in the bay. It looked like a

seaport scene at a theatre, gay, cheerful, neat, and picturesque. At a

little distance the town, too, is very pretty. There are some smart

houses on the quays, a handsome court-house as usual, a fine large

hotel, and plenty of people flocking round the wonderful coach.

The town is most picturesquely situated, climbing up a wooded hill, with

numbers of neat cottages here and there, an ugly church with an air of

pretension, and a large grave Roman Catholic chapel, the highest point

of the place. The main street was as usual thronged with the squatting

blue cloaks, carrying on their eager trade of buttermilk and green

apples, and such cheap wares. With the exception of this street and the

quay, with their whitewashed and slated houses, it is a town of cabins.

The wretchedness of some of them is quite curious; I tried to make a

sketch of a row which lean against an old wall, and are built upon a

rock that tumbles about in the oddest and most fantastic shapes, with a

brawling waterfall dashing down a channel in the midst. These are, it

appears, the beggars’ houses; any one may build a lodge against that

wall, rent-free; and such places were never seen! As for drawing them,

it was in vain to try; one might as well make a sketch of a bundle of

rags. An ordinary pigsty in England is really more comfortable. Most of

them were not six feet long or five feet high, built of stones huddled

together, a hole being left for the people to creep in at, a ruined

thatch to keep out some little portion of the rain. The occupiers of

these places sat at their doors in tolerable contentment, or the

children came down and washed their feet in the water. I declare I

believe a Hottentot kraal has more comforts in it; even to write of the

place makes one unhappy, and the words move slow. But in the midst of

all this misery there is an air of actual cheerfulness; and go but a few

score of yards off, and these wretched hovels lying together look really

picturesque and pleasing.

CHAPTER IX

RAINY DAYS AT GLENGARIFF

A smart two-horse car takes the traveller thrice a week from Bantry to

Killarney, by way of Glengariff and Kenmare. Unluckily, the rain was

pouring down furiously as we passed to the first-named places, and we

had only opportunity to see a part of the astonishing beauties of the

country. What sends picturesque tourists to the Rhine and Saxon

Switzerland? within five miles round the pretty inn of Glengariff there

is a country of the magnificence of which no pen can give an idea. I

would like to be a great prince, and bring a train of painters over to

make, if they could, and according to their several capabilities, a set

of pictures of the place. Mr. Creswick would find such rivulets and

waterfalls, surrounded by a luxuriance of foliage and verdure that only

his pencil can imitate. As for Mr. Cattermole, a red-shanked Irishman

should carry his sketching-books to all sorts of wild, noble heights,

and vast, rocky valleys, where he might please himself by piling crag

upon crag, and by introducing, if he had a mind, some of the wild

figures which peopled this country in old days. There is the Eagles’

Nest, for instance, regarding which the Guide-book gives a pretty

legend. The Prince of Bantry being conquered by the English soldiers,

fled away, leaving his Princess and children to the care of a certain

faithful follower of his, who was to provide them with refuge and food.

But the whole country was overrun by the conquerors; all the flocks

driven away by them, all the houses ransacked, and the crops burnt off

the ground, and the faithful servitor did not know where he should find

a meal or a resting-place for the unhappy Princess O’Donovan.

He made, however, a sort of shed by the side of a mountain, composing it

of sods and stones so artfully that no one could tell but that it was a

part of the hill itself; and here, having speared or otherwise obtained

a salmon, he fed their Highnesses for the first day; trusting to Heaven

for a meal when the salmon should be ended.

[Illustration]

The Princess O’Donovan and her princely family soon came to an end of

the fish; and cried out for something more.

So the faithful servitor, taking with him a rope and his little son

Shamus, mounted up to the peak where the eagles rested; and, from the

spot to which he climbed, saw their nest, and the young eaglets in it,

in a cleft below the precipice.

‘Now,’ said he, ‘Shamus my son, you must take these thongs with you, and

I will let you down by the rope’ (it was a straw-rope, which he had made

himself, and though it might be considered a dangerous thread to hang by

in other countries, you’ll see plenty of such contrivances in Ireland to

the present day).

‘I will let you down by the rope, and you must tie the thongs round the

necks of the eaglets, not so as to choke them, but to prevent them from

swallowing much.’ So Shamus went down, and did as his father bade him,

and came up again when the eaglets were doctored.

Presently the eagles came home: one bringing a rabbit and the other a

grouse. These they dropped into the nest for the young ones; and soon

after went away in quest of other adventures.

Then Shamus went down into the eagles’ nest again, gutted the grouse and

rabbit, and left the garbage to the eaglets (as was their right), and

brought away the rest. And so the Princess and Princes had game that

night for their supper. How long they lived in this way, the Guide-book

does not say: but let us trust that the Prince, if he did not come to

his own again, was at least restored to his family and decently

mediatised: and, for my part, I have very little doubt but that Shamus,

the gallant young eagle-robber, created a favourable impression upon one

of the young princesses, and (after many adventures in which he

distinguished himself) was accepted by her Highness for a husband, and

her princely parents for a gallant son-in-law.

And here, while we are travelling to Glengariff, and ordering painters

about with such princely liberality (by the way, Mr. Stanfield should

have a boat in the bay, and paint both rock and sea at his ease), let me

mention a wonderful, awful incident of real life which occurred on the

road. About four miles from Bantry, at a beautiful wooded place, hard by

a mill and waterfall, up rides a gentleman to the car with his luggage,

going to Killarney races. The luggage consisted of a small carpet-bag

and a pistol-case. About two miles farther on, a fellow stops the car:

‘Joe,’ says he, ‘my master is going to ride to Killarney, so you please

to take his luggage.’ The luggage consisted of a small carpet-bag,

and--a pistol-case as before. Is this a gentleman’s usual travelling

baggage in Ireland?

As there is more rain in this country than in any other, and as,

therefore, naturally, the inhabitants should be inured to the weather,

and made to despise an inconvenience which they cannot avoid, the

travelling conveyances are arranged so that you may get as much practice

in being wet as possible. The travellers’ baggage is stowed in a place

between the two rows of seats, and which is not inaptly called the well,

as in a rainy season you might possibly get a bucketful of water out of

that orifice. And, I confess, I saw, with a horrid satisfaction, the

pair of pistol-cases lying in this moist aperture, with water pouring

above them and lying below them; nay, prayed that all such weapons might

one day be consigned to the same fate. But as the waiter at Bantry, in

his excessive zeal to serve me, had sent my portmanteau back to Cork by

the coach, instead of allowing me to carry it with me to Killarney, and

as the rain had long since begun to insinuate itself under the

seat-cushion, and through the waterproof apron of the car, I dropped off

at Glengariff, and dried the only suit of clothes I had by the kitchen

fire. The inn is very pretty; some thorn-trees stand before it, where

many bare-legged people were lolling, in spite of the weather. A

beautiful bay stretches out before the house, the full tide washing the

thorn-trees; mountains rise on either side of the little bay, and there

is an island, with a castle in it in the midst, near which a yacht was

moored. But the mountains were hardly visible for the mist, and the

yacht, island, and castle looked as if they had been washed against the

flat grey sky in India-ink.

The day did not clear up sufficiently to allow me to make any long

excursion about the place, or indeed to see a very wide prospect round

about it: at a few hundred yards, most of the objects were enveloped in

mist; but even this, for a lover of the picturesque, had its beautiful

effect, for you saw the hills in the foreground pretty clear, and

covered with their wonderful green, while immediately behind them rose

an immense blue mass of mist and mountain that served to _relieve_ (to

use the painter’s phrase) the nearer objects. Annexed to the hotel is a

flourishing garden, where the vegetation is so great that the landlord

told me it was all he could do to check the trees from growing; round

about the bay, in several places, they come clustering down to the water

edge, nor does the salt water interfere with them.

Winding up a hill to the right, as you quit the inn, is the beautiful

road to the cottage and park of Lord Bantry. One or two parties on

pleasure bent went so far as the house, and were partially consoled for

the dreadful rain which presently poured down upon them, by wine,

whisky, and refreshments which the liberal owner of the house sent out

to them. I myself had only got a few hundred yards when the rain

overtook me, and sent me for refuge into a shed, where a blacksmith had

arranged a rude furnace and bellows, and where he was at work, with a

rough gilly to help him, and, of course, a lounger or two to look on.

The scene was exceedingly wild and picturesque, and I took out a

sketch-book and began to draw. The blacksmith was at first very

suspicious of the operation which I had commenced, nor did the poor

fellow’s sternness at all yield until I made him a present of a shilling

to buy tobacco, when he, his friend, and his son became good-humoured,

and said their little say. This was the first shilling he had earned

these three years: he was a small farmer, but was starved out, and had

set up a forge here, and was trying to get a few pence. What struck me

was the great number of people about the place. We had at least twenty

visits while the sketch was being made; cars, and single and double

horsemen, were continually passing; between the intervals of the shower

a couple of ragged old women would creep out from some hole and display

baskets of green apples for sale: wet or not, men and women were

lounging up and down the road. You would have thought it was a fair, and

yet there was not even a village at this place, only the inn and

post-house, by which the cars to Tralee pass thrice a week.

The weather, instead of mending, on the second day was worse than ever.

All the view had disappeared now under a rushing rain, of which I never

saw anything like the violence. We were visited by five maritime, nay

buccaneering-looking gentlemen in mustachios, with fierce caps and

jackets, just landed from a yacht: and then the car brought us three

Englishmen wet to the skin and thirsting for whisky-and-water.

And with these three Englishmen a great scene occurred, such as we read

of in Smollett’s and Fielding’s inns. One was a fat old gentleman from

Cambridge, who, I was informed, was a fellow of a College in that

University, but whom I shrewdly suspect[23] to be a butler or steward of

the same. The younger men, burly, manly, good-humoured fellows of

seventeen stone, were the nephews of the elder, who, says one, ‘could

draw a cheque for his thousand pounds.’

Two-and-twenty years before, on landing at the Pigeon-House at Dublin,

the old gentleman had been cheated by a carman, and his firm opinion

seemed to be that all carmen, nay, all Irishmen, were cheats.

And a sad proof of this depravity speedily showed itself: for having

hired a three-horse car at Killarney, which was to carry them to Bantry,

the Englishmen saw, with immense indignation, after they had drunk a

series of glasses of whisky, that the three-horse car had been removed,

a one-horse vehicle standing in its stead.

Their wrath no pen can describe. ‘I tell you they are all so!’ shouted

the elder. ‘When I landed at the Pigeon-House----’ ‘Bring me a

post-chaise!’ roars the second. ‘Waiter, get some more whisky!’ exclaims

the third. ‘If they don’t send us on with three horses, I’ll stop here

for a week.’ Then issuing, with his two young friends, into the

passage, to harangue the populace assembled there, the elder Englishman

began a speech about dishonesty, ‘d----d rogues and thieves,

Pigeon-House; he was a gentleman, and wouldn’t be done, d----n his eyes

and everybody’s eyes.’ Upon the affrighted landlord, who came to

interpose, they all fell with great ferocity: the elder man swearing,

especially, that he ‘would write to Lord Lansdowne regarding his

conduct, likewise to Lord Bandon, also to Lord Bantry: he was a

gentleman; he’d been cheated in the year 1815, on his first landing at

the Pigeon-House: and d----n the Irish, they were all alike.’ After

roaring and cursing for half an hour, a gentleman at the door, seeing

the meek bearing of the landlord--who stood quite lost and powerless in

the whirlwind of rage that had been excited about his luckless ears,

said, ‘If men cursed and swore in that way in his house, he would know

how to put them out.’

‘Put _me_ out!’ says one of the young men, placing himself before the

fat old blasphemer, his relative. ‘Put me out, my fine fellow!’ But it

was evident the Irishman did not like his customer. ‘Put _me_ out!’

roars the old gentleman, from behind his young protector; ’----n my

eyes, who are _you_, sir? who _are_ you, sir? I insist on knowing who

you are?’

‘And who are you?’ asks the Irishman.

‘Sir, I’m a gentleman, and _pay my way_!--and as soon as I get into

Bantry, I swear I’ll write a letter to Lord Bandon Bantry, and complain

of the treatment I have received here.’

Now, as the unhappy landlord had not said one single word, and as, on

the contrary, to the annoyance of the whole house, the stout old

gentleman from Cambridge had been shouting, raging, and cursing for two

hours, I could not help, like a great ass as I was, coming forward and

(thinking the landlord might be a tenant of Lord Bantry’s) saying,

‘Well, sir, if you write and say the landlord has behaved ill, I will

write to say that he has acted with extraordinary forbearance and

civility.’

O fool! to interfere in disputes where one set of the disputants have

drunk half a dozen glasses of whisky in the middle of the day! No sooner

had I said this than the other young man came and fell upon me, and in

the course of a few minutes found leisure to tell me ‘that I was no

gentleman; that I was ashamed to give my name, or say where I lived;

that I was a liar, and didn’t live in London, and couldn’t mention the

name of a single respectable person there; that he was a merchant and

tradesman, and hid his quality from nobody;’ and finally, ‘that though

bigger than himself, there was nothing he would like better than that I

should come out on the green and stand to him like a man.’

This invitation, although repeated several times, I refused with as much

dignity as I could assume; partly because I was sober and cool, while

the other was furious and drunk; also because I felt a strong suspicion

that in about ten minutes the man would manage to give me a tremendous

beating, which I did not merit in the least; thirdly, because a victory

over him would not have been productive of the least pleasure to me; and

lastly, because there was something really honest and gallant in the

fellow coming out to defend his old relative. Both of the younger men

would have fought like tigers for this disreputable old gentleman, and

desired no better sport. The last I heard of the three was that they and

the driver made their appearance before a magistrate in Bantry; and a

pretty story will the old man have to tell to his club at the Hoop, or

the Red Lion, of those swindling Irish, and the ill-treatment he met

with in their country.

As for the landlord, the incident will be a blessed theme of

conversation to him for a long time to come. I heard him discoursing of

it in the passage during the rest of the day; and next morning when I

opened my window and saw with much delight the bay clear and bright as

silver--except where the green hills were reflected in it, the blue sky

above, and the purple mountains round about with only a few clouds

veiling their peaks--the first thing I heard was the voice of Mr. Eccles

repeating the story to a new customer.

‘I thought thim couldn’t be gintlemin,’ was the appropriate remark of

Mr. Tom the waiter, ‘from the way in which they took their whishky,--raw

with cold wather, widout _mixing or inything_.’ Could an Irish waiter

give a more excellent definition of the ungenteel?

At nine o’clock in the morning of the next day, the unlucky car which

had carried the Englishmen to Bantry came back to Glengariff; and as the

morning was very fine, I was glad to take advantage of it, and travel

some five-and-thirty English miles to Killarney.

CHAPTER X

FROM GLENGARIFF TO KILLARNEY

The Irish car seems accommodated for any number of persons: it appeared

to be full when we left Glengariff, for a traveller from Bearhaven, and

the five gentlemen from the yacht, took seats upon it with myself, and

we fancied it was impossible more than seven should travel by such a

conveyance; but the driver showed the capabilities of his vehicle

presently. The journey from Glengariff to Kenmare is one of astonishing

beauty; and I have seen Killarney since, and am sure that Glengariff

loses nothing by comparison with this most famous of lakes. Rock, wood,

and sea stretch around the traveller--a thousand delightful pictures:

the landscape is at first wild without being fierce, immense woods and

plantations enriching the valleys--beautiful streams to be seen

everywhere.

Here again I was surprised at the great population along the road; for

one saw but few cabins, and there is no village between Glengariff and

Kenmare. But men and women were on banks and in fields; children, as

usual, came trooping up to the car; and the jovial men of the yacht had

great conversations with most of the persons whom we met on the road. A

merrier set of fellows it were hard to meet. ‘Should you like anything

to drink, sir?’ says one, commencing the acquaintance. ‘We have the best

whisky in the world, and plenty of porter in the basket.’ Therewith the

jolly seamen produced a long bottle of grog, which was passed round from

one to another; and then began singing, shouting, laughing, roaring, for

the whole journey. ‘British sailors have a knack, pull away ho, boys!

Hurroo, my fine fellow, does your mother know you’re out? Hurroo, Tim

Herlihy! you’re a _fluke_, Tim Herlihy.’ One man sang on the roof, one

_hurrooed_ to the echo, another apostrophised the aforesaid Herlihy as

he passed grinning on a car; a third had a pocket-handkerchief flaunting

from a pole, with which he performed exercises in the face of any

horsemen whom we met; and great were their yells as the ponies shied off

at the salutation and the riders swerved in their saddles. In the midst

of this rattling chorus we went along: gradually the country grew wilder

and more desolate, and we passed through a grim mountain region, bleak

and bare, the road winding round some of the innumerable hills, and once

or twice, by means of a tunnel, rushing boldly through them. One of

these tunnels, they say, is a couple of hundred yards long; and a pretty

howling, I need not say, was made through that pipe of rock by the jolly

yacht’s crew. ‘We saw you sketching in the blacksmith’s shed at

Glengariff,’ says one, ‘and we wished we had you on board. Such a jolly

life we led of it!’--They roved about the coast, they said, in their

vessel; they feasted off the best of fish, mutton, and whisky; they had

Gamble’s turtle-soup on board, and fun from morning till night, and

_vice versâ_. Gradually it came out that there was not, owing to the

tremendous rains, a dry corner in their ship; that they slung two in a

huge hammock in the cabin, and that one of their crew had been ill, and

shirked off. What a wonderful thing pleasure is! To be wet all day and

night; to be scorched and blistered by the sun and rain; to beat in and

out of little harbours, and to exceed diurnally upon whisky-punch--‘faith,

London, and an arm-chair at the club, are more to the tastes of some men.

After much mountain-work of ascending and descending (in which latter

operation, and by the side of precipices that make passing cockneys

rather squeamish, the carman drove like mad to the hooping and

screeching of the red rovers), we at length came to Kenmare, of which

all that I know is that it lies prettily in a bay or arm of the sea;

that it is approached by a little hanging-bridge, which seems to be a

wonder in these parts; that it is a miserable little place when you

enter it; and that, finally, a splendid luncheon of all sorts of meat

and excellent cold salmon may sometimes be had for a shilling at the

hotel of the place. It is a great vacant house, like the rest of them,

and would frighten people in England; but after a few days one grows

used to the Castle Rackrent style. I am not sure that there is not a

certain sort of comfort to be had in these rambling rooms, and among

these bustling, blundering waiters, which one does not always meet with

in an orderly English house of entertainment.

After discussing the luncheon, we found the car with fresh horses,

beggars, idlers, policemen, etc., standing round, of course; and now the

miraculous vehicle, which had held hitherto seven with some difficulty,

was called upon to accommodate thirteen.

A pretty noise would our three Englishmen of yesterday, nay, any other

Englishmen for the matter of that, have made, if coolly called upon to

admit an extra party of four into a mail-coach! The yacht’s crew did not

make a single objection; a couple clambered up on the roof, where they

managed to locate themselves with wonderful ingenuity, perched upon hard

wooden chests, or agreeably reposing upon the knotted ropes which held

them together: one of the new passengers scrambled between the

driver’s legs, where he held on somehow, and the rest were pushed and

squeezed astonishingly in the car.

[Illustration: A CAR TO KILLARNEY]

Now the fact must be told, that five of the new passengers (I don’t

count a little boy besides) were women, and very pretty, gay,

frolicsome, lively, kind-hearted, innocent women too; and for the rest

of the journey there was no end of laughing, and shouting, and singing,

and hugging, so that the caravan presented the appearance which is

depicted in the opposite engraving.

Now it may be a wonder to some persons, that with such a cargo the

carriage did not upset, or some of us did not fall off; to which the

answer is that we _did_ fall off. A very pretty woman fell off, and

showed a pair of never-mind-what-coloured garters, and an interesting

English traveller fell off too: but, Heaven bless you! these cars are

made to fall off from; and considering the circumstances of the case,

and in the same company, I would rather fall off than not. A great

number of polite allusions and genteel inquiries were, as may be

imagined, made by the jolly boat’s crew. But though the lady affected to

be a little angry at first, she was far too good-natured to be angry

long, and at last fairly burst out laughing with the passengers. We did

not fall off again, but held on very tight, and just as we were reaching

Killarney, saw somebody else fall off from another car. But in this

instance the gentleman had no lady to tumble with.

For almost half the way from Kenmare, this wild, beautiful road commands

views of the famous lake and vast blue mountains about Killarney. Turk,

Tomies, and Mangerton were clothed in purple like kings in mourning;

great, heavy clouds were gathered round their heads, parting away every

now and then, and leaving their noble features bare. The lake lay for

some time underneath us, dark and blue, with dark misty islands in the

midst. On the right-hand side of the road would be a precipice covered

with a thousand trees, or a green rocky flat, with a reedy mere in the

midst, and other mountains rising as far as we could see. I think of

that diabolical tune in _Der Freischütz_, while passing through this

sort of country. Every now and then, in the midst of some fresh country

or enclosed trees, or at a turn of the road, you lose the sight of the

great, big, awful mountain; but, like the aforesaid tune in _Der

Freischütz_, it is always there close at hand. You feel that it keeps

you company. And so it was that we rode by dark old Mangerton, then

presently past Mucruss, and then through two miles of avenues of

lime-trees, by numerous lodges and gentlemen’s seats, across an old

bridge, where you see the mountains again and the lake, until, by Lord

Kenmare’s house, a hideous row of houses informed us that we were at

Killarney.

Here my companion suddenly let go my hand, and, by a certain uneasy

motion of the waist, gave me notice to withdraw the other too; and so we

rattled up to the Kenmare Arms; and so ended, not without a sigh on my

part, one of the merriest six-hour rides that five yachtsmen, one

cockney, five women and a child, the carman, and a countryman with an

alpeen, ever took in their lives.

As for my fellow-companion, she would hardly speak the next day; but all

the five maritime men made me vow and promise that I would go and see

them at Cork, where I should have horses to ride, the fastest yacht out

of the harbour to sail in, and the best of whisky, claret, and welcome.

Amen, and may every single person who buys a copy of this book meet with

the same deserved fate!

The town of Killarney was in a violent state of excitement with a series

of horse-races, hurdle-races, boat-races, and stag-hunts by land and

water, which were taking place, and attracted a vast crowd from all

parts of the kingdom. All the inns were full, and lodgings cost five

shillings a day, nay, more in some places; for though my landlady, Mrs.

Macgillicuddy, charges but that sum, a leisurely old gentleman whom I

never saw in my life before, made my acquaintance by stopping me in the

street yesterday, and said he paid a pound a day for his two bedrooms.

The old gentleman is eager for company; and, indeed, when a man travels

alone, it is wonderful how little he cares to select his society; how

indifferent company pleases him; how a good fellow delights him; how

sorry he is when the time for parting comes, and he has to walk off

alone, and begin the friendship hunt over again.

The first sight I witnessed at Killarney was a race-ordinary, where for

a sum of twelve shillings any man could take his share of turbot,

salmon, venison, and beef, with port, and sherry, and whisky-punch at

discretion. Here were the squires of Cork and Kerry, one or two

Englishmen, whose voices, amidst the rich humming brogue round about,

sounded quite affected (not that they were so, but there seems a sort of

impertinence in the shrill, high-pitched tone of the English voice

here). At the head of the table, near the chairman, sat some brilliant

young dragoons, neat, solemn, dull, with huge mustachios, and boots

polished to a nicety.

And here of course the conversation was of the horse, horsy. How Mr.

This had refused fifteen hundred guineas for a horse which he bought for

a hundred; how Bacchus was the best horse in Ireland; which horses were

to run at Something races; and how the Marquis of Waterford gave a

plate or a purse. We drank ‘the Queen,’ with hip, hip, hurra! The

‘winner of the Kenmare stakes,’ hurray! Presently the gentleman next me

rose and made a speech; he had brought a mare down, and won the stakes,

a hundred and seventy guineas, and I looked at him with a great deal of

respect. Other toasts ensued, and more talk about horses; nor am I in

the least disposed to sneer at gentlemen who like sporting and talk

about it; for I do believe that the conversation of a dozen fox-hunters

is just as clever as that of a similar number of merchants, barristers,

or literary men. But to this trade, as to all others, a man must be

bred; if he has not learnt it thoroughly or in early life, he will not

readily become a proficient afterwards, and when therefore the subject

is broached, had best maintain a profound silence.

A young Edinburgh cockney, with an easy self-confidence that the reader

may have perhaps remarked in others of his calling and nation, and who

evidently knew as much of sporting matters as the individual who writes

this, proceeded nevertheless to give the company his opinions, and

greatly astonished them all; for these simple people are at first

willing to believe that a stranger is sure to be a knowing fellow, and

did not seem inclined to be undeceived even by this little pert grinning

Scotsman. It was good to hear him talk of Haddington, Musselburgh--and

Heaven knows what strange outlandish places, as if they were known to

all the world. And here would be a good opportunity to enter into a

dissertation upon national characteristics; to show that the bold

swaggering Irishman is really a modest fellow, while the canny Scot is a

most brazen one; to wonder why the inhabitant of one country is ashamed

of it, which is in itself so fertile and beautiful, and has produced

more than its fair proportion of men of genius, valour, and wit; whereas

it never enters into the head of a Scotchman to question his own

equality (and something more) at all: but that such discussions are

quite unprofitable; nay, that exactly the contrary propositions may be

argued to just as much length. Has the reader ever tried with a dozen of

Mr. Tocqueville’s short crisp philosophic apothegms and taken the

converse of them? The one or other set of propositions will answer

equally well, and it is the best way to avoid all such. Let the above

passage, then, simply be understood to say, that on a certain day the

writer met a vulgar little Scotchman--not that all Scotchmen are

vulgar;--that this little pert creature prattled about his country as if

he and it were ornaments to the world, which the latter is no doubt; and

that one could not but contrast his behaviour with that of great big

stalwart simple Irishmen, who asked your opinion of their country with

as much modesty as if you--because an Englishman--must be somebody, and

they the dust of the earth.

Indeed, this want of self-confidence at times becomes quite painful to

the stranger. If, in reply to their queries, you say you like the

country, people seem really quite delighted. Why should they? Why should

a stranger’s opinion who doesn’t know the country be more valued than a

native’s who does?--Suppose an Irishman in England were to speak in

praise or abuse of the country, would one be particularly pleased or

annoyed? One would be glad that the man liked his trip; but as for his

good or bad opinion of the country, the country stands on its own

bottom, superior to any opinion of any man or men.

I must beg pardon of the little Scotchman for reverting to him (let it

be remembered that there were _two_ Scotchmen at Killarney, and that I

speak of the other one); but I have seen no specimen of that sort of

manners in any Irishman since I have been in the country. I have met

more gentlemen here than in any place I ever saw, gentlemen of high and

low ranks, that is to say: men shrewd and delicate of perception,

observant of society, entering into the feelings of others, and anxious

to set them at ease or to gratify them; of course exaggerating their

professions of kindness, and in so far insincere; but the very

exaggeration seems to be a proof of a kindly nature, and I wish in

England we were a little more complimentary. In Dublin, a lawyer left

his chambers, and a literary man his books, to walk the town with

me--the town, which they must know a great deal too well; for, pretty as

it is, it is but a small place after all, not like that great bustling,

changing, struggling world, the Englishman’s capital. Would a London man

leave his business to trudge to the Tower or the Park with a stranger?

We would ask him to dine at the club, or to eat whitebait at

Lovegrove’s, and think our duty done, neither caring for him, nor

professing to care for him; and we pride ourselves on our honesty

accordingly. Never was honesty more selfish. And so a vulgar man in

England disdains to flatter his equals, and chiefly displays his

character of snob by assuming as much as he can for himself, swaggering

and showing off in his coarse, dull, stupid way.

‘I am a gentleman, and pay my way,’ as the old fellow said at

Glengariff. I have not heard a sentence near so vulgar from any man in

Ireland. Yes, by the way, there was another Englishman at Cork: a man in

a middling, not to say humble, situation of life. When introduced to an

Irish gentleman, his formula seemed to be, ‘I think, sir, I have met you

somewhere before.’ ‘I am sure, sir, I have met you before,’ he said, for

the second time in my hearing, to a gentleman of great note in Ireland.

‘Yes, I have met you at Lord X----‘s.’ ‘I don’t know my Lord X----,’

replied the Irishman. ‘Sir,’ says the other, ‘_I shall have great

pleasure in introducing you to him_.’ Well, the good-natured simple

Irishmen thought this gentleman a very fine fellow. There was only one,

of some dozen who spoke about him, that found out Snob. I suppose the

Spaniards lorded it over the Mexicans in this way: their drummers

passing for generals among the simple red men, their glass beads for

jewels, and their insolent bearing for heroic superiority.

Leaving, then, the race-ordinary (that little Scotchman with his airs

has carried us the deuce knows how far out of the way), I came home just

as the gentlemen of the race were beginning to ‘mix,’ that is, to

forsake the wine for the punch. At the lodgings I found my five

companions of the morning with a bottle of that wonderful whisky of

which they spoke; and which they had agreed to exchange against a bundle

of Liverpool cigars: so we discussed them, the whisky, and other topics

in common. Now there is no need to violate the sanctity of private life,

and report the conversation which took place, the songs which were sung,

the speeches which were made, and the other remarkable events of the

evening. Suffice it to say, that the English traveller gradually becomes

accustomed to whisky-punch (in moderation, of course), and finds the

beverage very agreeable at Killarney; against which I recollect a

protest was entered at Dublin.

But after we had talked of hunting, racing, regatting, and all other

sports, I came to a discovery which astonished me, and for which these

honest kind fellows are mentioned publicly here. The portraits, or a

sort of resemblance of four of them, may be seen in the foregoing

drawing of the car. The man with the straw hat and handkerchief tied

over it is the captain of an Indiaman; three others, with each a pair of

mustachios, sported yacht-costumes, jackets, club-anchor buttons, and so

forth; and, finally, one on the other side of the car (who cannot be

seen on account of the portmanteaus, otherwise the likeness would be

perfect), was dressed with a coat and hat in the ordinary way. One with

the gold band and mustachios is a gentleman of property, the other three

are attorneys every man of them. Two in large practice in Cork and

Dublin; the other, and owner of the yacht, under articles to the

attorney of Cork. Now did any Englishman ever live with three attorneys

for a whole day, without hearing a single syllable of law spoken? Did we

ever see in our country attorneys with mustachios; or, above all, an

attorney’s clerk the owner of a yacht of thirty tons? He is a gentleman

of property too--the heir, that is, to a good estate; and has had a

yacht of his own, he says, ever since he was fourteen years old. Is

there any English boy of fourteen who commands a ship with a crew of

five men under him? We all agreed to have a boat for the stag-hunt on

the lake next day; and I went to bed wondering at this strange country

more than ever. An attorney with mustachios! What would they say of him

in Chancery Lane?

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XI

KILLARNEY--STAG-HUNTING ON THE LAKE

Mrs. Macgillicuddy’s house is at the corner of the two principal streets

of Killarney town, and the drawing-room windows command each a street.

Before one window is a dismal, rickety building, with a slated face,

that looks like an ex-town hall. There is a row of arches to the ground

floor, the angles at the base of which seem to have mouldered or to have

been kicked away. Over the centre arch is a picture with a flourishing

yellow inscription above, importing that it is the meeting-place of the

Total Abstinence Society. Total abstinence is represented by the figures

of a gentleman in a blue coat and drab tights, with gilt garters, who is

giving his hand to a lady; between them is an escutcheon, surmounted

with a cross and charged with religious emblems. Cupids float above the

heads and between the legs of this happy pair, while an exceedingly

small tea-table with the requisite crockery reposes against the lady’s

knee; a still, with death’s-head and bloody bones, filling up the vacant

corner near the gentleman. A sort of market is held here, and the place

is swarming with blue cloaks and groups of men talking; here and there

is a stall with coarse linens, crockery, a cheese; and crowds of egg-and

milk-women are squatted on the pavement, with their ragged customers or

gossips; and the yellow-haired girl, on the opposite page, with a barrel

containing nothing at all, has been sitting, as if for her portrait,

this hour past.

[Illustration: THE MARKET OF KILLARNEY]

Carts, cars, jingles, barouches, horses, and vehicles of all

descriptions rattle presently through the streets; for the town is

crowded with company for the races and other sports, and all the world

is bent to see the stag-hunt on the lake. Where the ladies of the

Macgillicuddy family have slept, heaven knows, for their house is full

of lodgers. What voices you hear! ‘Bring me some hot wa_tah_,’ says a

genteel, high-piped English voice. ‘Hwhere’s me hot wather?’ roars a

deep-toned Hibernian. See over the way, three ladies in ringlets and

green tabinet taking their ‘tay’ preparatory to setting out. I wonder

whether they heard the sentimental songs of the law-marines last night?

They must have been edified if they did.

My companions came, true to their appointment, and we walked down to the

boats, lying at a couple of miles from the town, near the Victoria Inn,

a handsome mansion, in pretty grounds, close to the lake, and owned by

the patriotic Mr. Finn. A nobleman offered Finn eight hundred pounds for

the use of his house during the races, and, to Finn’s eternal honour be

it said, he refused the money, and said he would keep his house for his

friends and patrons, the public. Let the Cork Steam Packet Company think

of this generosity on the part of Mr. Finn, and blush for shame; at the

Cork Agricultural Show they raised their fares, and were disappointed in

their speculation, as they deserved to be, by indignant Englishmen

refusing to go at all.

The morning had been bright enough, but for fear of accidents we took

our macintoshes, and at about a mile from the town found it necessary to

assume those garments and wear them for the greater part of the day.

Passing by the Victoria, with its beautiful walks, park, and lodge, we

came to a little creek where the boats were moored; and there was the

wonderful lake before us, with its mountains, and islands, and trees.

Unluckily, however, the mountains happened to be invisible; the islands

looked like grey masses in the fog, and all that we could see for some

time was the grey silhouette of the boat ahead of us, in which a

passenger was engaged in a witty conversation with some boat still

farther in the mist.

[Illustration]

Drumming and trumpeting was heard at a little distance, and presently we

found ourselves in the midst of a fleet of boats upon the rocky shores

of the beautiful little Innisfallen.

Here we landed for a while, and the weather clearing up, allowed us to

see this charming spot. Rocks, shrubs, and little abrupt rises and falls

of ground, covered with the brightest emerald grass; a beautiful little

ruin of a Saxon chapel, lying gentle, delicate, and plaintive on the

shore; some noble trees round about it, and beyond, presently, the tower

of Ross Castle, island after island appearing in the clearing sunshine,

and the huge hills throwing their misty veils off, and wearing their

noble robes of purple. The boats’ crews were grouped about the place,

and one large barge especially had landed some sixty people, being the

Temperance band, with its drums, trumpets, and wives. They were

marshalled by a grave old gentleman with a white waistcoat and queue, a

silver medal decorating one side of his coat, and a brass heart reposing

on the other flap. The horns performed some Irish airs prettily; and, at

length, at the instigation of a fellow who went swaggering about with a

pair of whirling drumsticks, all formed together, and played

‘Garryowen’--the active drum of course most dreadfully out of time.

Having strolled about the island for a quarter of an hour, it became

time to take to the boats again, and we were rowed over to the wood

opposite Sullivan’s cascade, where the hounds had been laid in in the

morning, and the stag was expected to take water. Fifty or sixty men are

employed on the mountain to drive the stag lakewards, should he be

inclined to break away; and the sport generally ends by the stag, a wild

one, making for the water with the pack swimming afterwards; and here he

is taken and disposed of, how I know not. It is rather a parade than a

stag-hunt: but, with all the boats around and the noble view, must be a

fine thing to see.

Presently, steering his barge, the _Erin_, with twelve oars and a green

flag sweeping the water, came by the president of the sports, Mr. John

O’Connell, a gentleman who appears to be liked by rich and poor here,

and by the latter especially is adored. ‘Sure we’d dhrown ourselves for

him,’ one man told me; and proceeded to speak eagerly in his praise, and

to tell numberless acts of his generosity and justice. The justice is

rather rude in this wild country sometimes, and occasionally the judges

not only deliver the sentence but execute it; nor does any one think of

appealing to any more regular jurisdiction. The likeness of Mr.

O’Connell to his brother is very striking; one might have declared it

was the Liberator sitting at the stern of the boat.

Some scores more boats were there, darting up and down in the pretty,

busy waters. Here came a Cambridge boat; and where, indeed, will not the

gentlemen of that renowned University be found? Yonder were the dandy

dragoons, stiff, silent, slim, faultlessly appointed, solemnly puffing

cigars. Every now and then a hound would be heard in the wood, whereon

numbers of voices, right and left, would begin to yell in

chorus--Hurroo! Hoop! Yow--yow--yow! in accents the most shrill or the

most melancholious. Meanwhile the sun had had enough of the sport, the

mountains put on their veils again, the islands retreated into the mist,

the word went through the fleet to spread all umbrellas, and ladies took

shares of macintoshes and disappeared under the flaps of silk cloaks.

The wood comes down to the very edge of the water, and many of the crews

thought fit to land and seek this green shelter. There you might see how

the _dandium summâ genus hæsit ulmo_, clambering up thither to hide from

the rain, and many ‘_membra_’ in dabbled russia-ducks, cowering _viridi

sub arbuto, ad aquæ lene caput_. To behold these moist dandies the

natives of the country came eagerly. Strange, savage faces might be seen

peering from out of the trees; long-haired, bare-legged girls came down

the hill, some with green apples and very sickly-looking plums; some

with whisky and goat’s-milk; a ragged boy had a pair of stag’s-horns to

sell: the place swarmed with people. We went up the hill to see the

noble cascade, and when you say that it comes rushing down over rocks

and through tangled woods, alas! one has said all the dictionary can

help you to, and not enough to distinguish this particular cataract from

any other. This seen and admired, we came back to the harbour where the

boats lay, and from which spot the reader might have seen the following

view of the lake--that is, you _would_ see the lake, if the mist would

only clear away.

But this for hours it did not seem inclined to do. We rowed up and down

industriously for a period of time which seemed to me atrociously long.

The bugles of the _Erin_ had long since sounded ‘Home, sweet home!’ and

the greater part of the fleet had dispersed. As for the stag-hunt, all I

saw of it was four dogs that appeared on the shore at different

intervals, and a huntsman in a scarlet coat, who similarly came and

went: once or twice we were gratified by hearing the hounds; but at last

it was agreed that there was no chance for the day, and we rowed off to

Kenmare Cottage--where, on the lovely lawn, or in a cottage adjoining,

the gentry picnic, and where, with a handkerchief full of potatoes, we

made as pleasant a meal as ever I recollect. Here a good number of the

boats were assembled; here you might see cloths spread and dinner going

on; here were those wonderful officers, looking as if they had just

stepped from bandboxes, with, by heavens! not a shirt-collar disarranged

nor a boot dimmed by the wet. An old piper was making a very feeble

music, with a handkerchief spread over his face; and farther on a little

smiling German boy was playing an accordion, and singing a ballad of

Hauff’s. I had a silver medal in my pocket, with Victoria on one side

and Britannia on the other, and gave it him, for the sake of old times

and his round friendly face. Oh, little German boy, many a night as you

trudge lonely through this wild land, must you yearn after _Brüderlein_

and _Schwesterlein_ at home--yonder in stately Frankfurt city that lies

by silver Mayn. I thought of vineyards and sunshine, and the greasy

clock in the theatre, and the railroad all the way to Wiesbaden, and the

handsome Jew country-houses by the Bockenheimer-Thor.... ‘Come along,’

says the boatman, ‘all the gintlemin are waiting for your honour.’ And I

found them finishing the potatoes, and we all had a draught of water

from the lake, and so pulled to the middle of Turk lake, through the

picturesque green rapid that floats under Brickeen bridge.

[Illustration]

What is to be said about Turk Lake? When there, we agreed that it was

more beautiful than the large lake, of which it is not one-fourth the

size; then, when we came back, we said, ‘No, the large lake is the most

beautiful.’ And so, at every point we stopped at, we determined that

that particular spot was the prettiest in the whole lake. The fact is,

and I don’t care to own it, they are too handsome. As for a man coming

from his desk in London or Dublin and seeing ‘the whole lakes in a day,’

he is an ass for his pains; a child doing sums in addition might as well

read the whole multiplication table, and fancy he had it by heart. We

should look at these wonderful things leisurely and thoughtfully; and

even then, blessed is he who understands them. I wonder what impression

the sight made upon the three tipsy Englishmen at Glengariff? What idea

of natural beauty belongs to an old fellow who says he is ‘a gentleman,

and pays his way’? What to a jolly fox-hunter, who had rather see a good

‘screeching’ run with the hounds than the best landscape ever painted?

And yet they all come hither, and go through the business regularly, and

would not miss seeing every one of the lakes and going up every one of

the hills--by which circumlocution the writer wishes ingenuously to

announce that he will not see any more lakes, ascend any mountains or

towers, visit any gaps of Dunloe, or any prospects whatever, except such

as nature shall fling in his way in the course of a quiet reasonable

walk.

In the middle lake we were carried to an island where a ceremony of

goat’s-milk and whisky is performed by some travellers, and where you

are carefully conducted to a spot that ‘Sir Walter Scott admired more

than all.’ Whether he did or not, we can only say on the authority of

the boatman; but the place itself was a quiet nook, where three waters

meet, and indeed of no great picturesqueness when compared with the

beauties around. But it is of a gentle, homely beauty--not like the

lake, which is as a princess dressed out in diamonds and velvet for a

drawing-room, and knowing herself to be faultless too. As for

Innisfallen, it was just as if she gave one smiling peep into the

nursery before she went away, so quiet, innocent, and tender is that

lovely spot; but, depend on it, if there is a lake fairy or princess, as

Crofton Croker and other historians assert, she is of her nature a vain

creature, proud of her person, and fond of the finest dresses to adorn

it. May I confess that I would rather, for a continuance, have a house

facing a paddock, with a cow in it, than be always looking at this

immense overpowering splendour? You would not, my dear brother-cockney

from Tooley Street,--no, those brilliant eyes of thine were never meant

to gaze at anything less bright than the sun. Your mighty spirit finds

nothing too vast for its comprehension, spurns what is humble as

unworthy, and only, like Foot’s bear, dances to ‘the genteelest of

tunes.’

The long and short of the matter is, that on getting off the lake, after

seven hours’ rowing, I felt as much relieved as if I had been dining for

the same length of time with her Majesty the Queen, and went jumping

home as gaily as possible; but those marine lawyers insisted so

piteously upon seeing Ross Castle, close to which we were at length

landed, that I was obliged (in spite of repeated oaths to the contrary)

to ascend that tower, and take a bird’s-eye view of the scene. Thank

Heaven, I have neither tail nor wings, and have not the slightest wish

to be a bird; that continual immensity of prospect which stretches

beneath those little wings of theirs must deaden their intellects,

depend on it. Tomkins and I are not made for the immense. We can enjoy a

little at a time, and enjoy that little very much; or if like birds, we

are like the ostrich--not that we have fine feathers to our backs, but

because we cannot fly. Press us too much, and we become flurried and run

off, and bury our heads in the quiet bosom of dear mother earth, and so

get rid of the din, and the dazzle, and the shouting.

Because we dined upon potatoes, that was no reason we should sup on

buttermilk: well, well! salmon is good, and whisky is good too.

CHAPTER XII

KILLARNEY--THE RACES--MUCROSS

The races were as gay as races could be, in spite of one or two untoward

accidents that arrived at the close of the day’s sport. Where all the

people came from that thronged out of the town was a wonder; where all

the vehicles, the cars, barouches, and shandrydans, the carts, the

horse-and donkey-men, could have found stable and shelter, who can tell?

Of all these equipages and donkeypages I had a fine view from Mrs.

Macgillicuddy’s window, and it was pleasant to see the happy faces

shining under the blue cloaks as the carts rattled by.

A very handsome young lady--I presume Miss MacG.--who gives a hand to

the drawing-room, and comes smiling in with the teapot,--Miss MacG., I

say, appeared to-day in a silk bonnet and stiff silk dress, with a

brooch and a black mantle, as smart as any lady in the land, and looking

as if she was accustomed to her dress too, which the housemaid on banks

of Thames does not. Indeed, I have not met a more ladylike young person

in Ireland than Miss MacG.; and when I saw her in a handsome car on the

course, I was quite proud of a bow.

Tramping thither, too, as hard as they could walk, and as happy and

smiling as possible, were Mary the coachman’s wife, of the day before,

and Johanna with the child, and presently the other young lady--the man

with the stick, you may be sure; he would toil a year for that day’s

pleasure: they are all mad for it; people walk for miles and miles round

to the race; they come without a penny in their pockets often, trusting

to chance and charity, and that some worthy gentleman may fling them a

sixpence. A gentleman told me that he saw on the course persons from his

part of the country, who must have walked eighty miles for the sport.

For a mile and a-half to the racecourse there could be no pleasanter

occupation than looking at the happy multitudes who were thronging

thither; and, I am bound to say, that on rich or poor shoulders I never

saw so many handsome faces in my life. In the carriages, among the

ladies of Kerry, every second woman was handsome; and there is something

peculiarly tender and pleasing in the looks of the young female

peasantry that is perhaps even better than beauty. Beggars had taken

their stations along the road in no great numbers, for I suspect they

were most of them on the ground, and those who remained were

consequently of the oldest and ugliest. It is a shame that such horrible

figures are allowed to appear in public as some of the loathsome ones

which belong to these unhappy people. On went the crowd, however,

laughing and gay as possible; all sorts of fun passing from car to foot

passengers as the pretty girls came clattering by, and the ‘boys’ had a

word for each. One lady with long flowing auburn hair, who was turning

away her head from some ‘boys’ very demurely, I actually saw, at a pause

of the cart, kissed by one of them. She gave the fellow a huge box on

the ear, and he roared out ‘Oh, murther!’ and she frowned for some time

as hard as she could, whilst the ladies in the blue cloaks at the back

of the car uttered a shrill rebuke in Irish. But in a minute the whole

party was grinning, and the young fellow who had administered the salute

may, for what I know, have taken another without the slap on the face,

by way of exchange.

And here, lest the fair public may have a bad opinion of the personage

who talks of kissing with such awful levity, let it be said that with

all this laughing, romping, kissing, and the like, there are no more

innocent girls in the world than the Irish girls; and that the women of

our squeamish country are far more liable to err. One has but to walk

through an English and Irish town, and see how much superior is the

morality of the latter. That great terror-striker, the Confessional, is

before the Irish girl, and, sooner or later, her sins must be told

there.

By this time we are got upon the course, which is really one of the most

beautiful spots that ever was seen; the lake and mountains lying along

two sides of it, and of course visible from all. They were busy putting

up the hurdles when we arrived--stiff bars and poles, four feet from the

ground, with furze-bushes over them. The grand stand was already full;

along the hedges sate thousands of the people, sitting at their ease

doing nothing, and happy as kings. A daguerreotype would have been of

great service to have taken their portraits, and I never saw a vast

multitude of heads and attitudes so picturesque and lively. The sun

lighted up the whole course and the lakes with amazing brightness,

though behind the former lay a huge rack of the darkest clouds, against

which the cornfields and meadows shone in the brightest green and gold,

and a row of white tents was quite dazzling.

There was a brightness and intelligence about this immense Irish crowd,

which I don’t remember to have seen in an English one. The women in

their blue cloaks, with red smiling faces peering from one end, and bare

feet from the other, had seated themselves in all sorts of pretty

attitudes of cheerful contemplation; and the men, who are accustomed to

lie about, were doing so now with all their might--sprawling on the

banks, with as much ease and variety as club-room loungers on their soft

cushions--or squatted leisurely among the green potatoes. The sight of

so much happy laziness did one good to look on. Nor did the honest

fellows seem to weary of this amusement. Hours passed on, and the

gentlefolks (judging from our party) began to grow somewhat weary; but

the finest peasantry in Europe never budged from their posts, and

continued to indulge in talk, indolence, and conversation.

When we came to the row of white tents, as usual it did not look so

brilliant or imposing as it appeared from a little distance, though the

scene around them was animating enough. The tents were long humble

booths stretched on hoops, each with its humble streamer or ensign

without, and containing, of course, articles of refreshment within. But

Father Mathew has been busy among the publicans, and the consequence is

that the poor fellows are now condemned for the most part to sell ‘tay’

in place of whisky; for the concoction of which beverage huge caldrons

were smoking, in front of each hut-door, in round graves dug for the

purpose and piled up with black smoking sod.

Behind this camp were the carts of the poor people, which were not

allowed to penetrate into the quarter where the quality cars stood. And

a little way from the huts, again, you might see (for you could scarcely

hear) certain pipers executing their melodies and inviting people to

dance.

Anything more lugubrious than the drone of the pipe, or the jig danced

to it, or the countenances of the dancers and musicians, I never saw.

Round each set of dancers the people formed a ring, in the which the

_figurantes_ and _coryphées_ went through their operations. The toes

went in and the toes went out; then there came certain mystic figures of

hands across, and so forth. I never saw less grace or seemingly less

enjoyment, no, not even in a quadrille. The people, however, took a

great interest, and it was ‘Well done, Tim!’ ‘Step out, Miss Brady!’ and

so forth, during the dance.

Thimble-rig too obtained somewhat, though in a humble way. A ragged

scoundrel--the image of Hogarth’s Bad Apprentice--went bustling and

shouting through the crowd with his dirty tray and thimble, and, as soon

as he had taken his post, stated that this was the ‘royal game of

thimble,’ and calling upon ‘gintlemin’ to come forward; and then a

ragged fellow would be seen to approach, with as innocent an air as he

could assume, and the bystanders might remark that the second ragged

fellow almost always won. Nay, he was so benevolent, in many instances,

as to point out to various people who had a mind to bet, under which

thimble the pea actually was; meanwhile, the first fellow was sure to be

looking away and talking to some one in the crowd. But somehow it

generally happened, and how of course I can’t tell, that any man who

listened to the advice of rascal No. 2 lost his money. I believe it is

so even in England.

[Illustration]

Then you would see gentlemen with halfpenny roulette-tables; and, again,

here were a pair (indeed they are very good portraits) who came forward

disinterestedly with a table and a pack of cards, and began playing

against each other for ten shillings a game, betting crowns as freely as

possible.

Gambling, however, must have been fatal to both of these gentlemen, else

might not one have supposed that, if they were in the habit of winning

much, they would have treated themselves to better clothes? This,

however, is the way with all gamblers, as the reader has, no doubt,

remarked; for, look at a game of loo or _vingt-et-un_ played in a

friendly way, and where you, and three or four others, have certainly

lost three or four pounds: well, ask at the end of the game who has

won, and you invariably find that nobody has. Hopkins has only covered

himself; Snooks has neither lost nor won; Smith has won four shillings;

and so on. Who gets the money? The devil gets it, I dare say; and so, no

doubt, he has laid hold of the money of yonder gentleman in the handsome

greatcoat.

But, to the shame of the stewards be it spoken, they are extremely

averse to this kind of sport; and presently comes up one, a stout old

gentleman on a bay horse, wielding a huge hunting-whip, at the sight of

which all fly, amateurs, idlers, professional men, and all. He is a rude

customer to deal with, that gentleman with the whip: just now he was

clearing the course, and cleared it with such a vengeance that a whole

troop on a hedge retreated backwards into a ditch opposite, where was

rare kicking, and sprawling, and disarrangement of petticoats, and cries

of ‘Oh, murther!’ ‘Mother of God!’ ‘I’m kilt!’ and so on. But as soon as

the horsewhip was gone, the people clambered out of their ditch again,

and were as thick as ever on the bank.

The last instance of the exercise of the whip shall be this. A groom

rode insolently after a gentleman, and calling him names, and inviting

him to fight. This the great flagellator hearing, rode up to the groom,

lifted him gracefully off his horse, into the air, and on to the ground,

and when there administered to him a severe and merited fustigation;

after which he told the course-keepers to drive the fellow off the

course, and enjoined the latter not to appear again at his peril.

As for the races themselves, I won’t pretend to say that they were

better or worse than other such amusements; or to quarrel with gentlemen

who choose to risk their lives in manly exercise. In the first race

there was a fall; one of the gentlemen was carried off the ground, and

it was said _he was dead_. In the second race, a horse and man went over

and over each other, and the fine young man (we had seen him five

minutes before, full of life and triumph, clearing the hurdles on his

grey horse, at the head of the race):--in the second heat of the second

race, the poor fellow missed his leap, was carried away stunned and

dying,--and the bay horse won.

I was standing, during the first heat of this race (this is the second

man the grey has killed--they ought to call him the Pale Horse), by half

a dozen young girls from the gentleman’s village, and hundreds more of

them were there, anxious for the honour of their village, the young

squire, and the grey horse. Oh, how they hurra’d as he rode ahead! I saw

these girls--they might be fourteen years old--after the catastrophe.

‘Well,’ says I, ‘this is a sad end to the race.’ ‘_And is it the pink

jacket or the blue has won this time?_’ says one of the girls. It was

poor Mr. C----‘s only epitaph: and wasn’t it a sporting answer? That

girl ought to be a hurdle-racer’s wife; and I would like, for my part,

to bestow her upon the groom who won the race.

I don’t care to confess that the accident to the poor young gentleman so

thoroughly disgusted my feelings as a man and a cockney, that I turned

off the racecourse short, and hired a horse for sixpence to carry me

back to Miss Macgillicuddy. In the evening, at the inn (let no man who

values comfort go to an Irish inn in race-time), a blind old piper, with

silvery hair, and of a most respectable, bard-like appearance, played a

great deal too much for us after dinner. He played very well, and with

very much feeling, ornamenting the airs with flourishes and variations

that were very pretty indeed, and his pipe was by far the most melodious

I have heard: but honest truth compels me to say that the bad pipes are

execrable, and the good inferior to a clarionet.

Next day, instead of going back to the racecourse, a car drove me out to

Mucross, where, in Mr. Herbert’s beautiful grounds, lies the prettiest

little _bijou_ of a ruined abbey ever seen--a little chapel with a

little chancel, a little cloister, a little dormitory, and in the midst

of the cloister a wonderful huge yew-tree which darkens the whole place.

The abbey is famous in book and legend; nor could two young lovers, or

artists in search of the picturesque, or picnic-parties with the cold

chicken and champagne in the distance, find a more charming place to

while away a summer’s day than in the park of Mr. Herbert. But depend on

it, for show-places and the due enjoyment of scenery, that distance of

cold chickens and champagne is the most pleasing perspective one can

have. I would have sacrificed a mountain or two for the above, and would

have pitched Mangerton into the lake for the sake of a friend with whom

to enjoy the rest of the landscape.

The walk through Mr. Herbert’s domain carries you through all sorts of

beautiful avenues, by a fine house which he is building in the

Elizabethan style, and from which, as from the whole road, you command

the most wonderful rich views of the lake. The shore breaks into little

bays, which the water washes; here and there are picturesque grey rocks

to meet it, the bright grass as often, or the shrubs of every kind which

bathe their roots in the lake. It was August, and the men before Turk

Cottage were cutting a second crop of clover, as fine, seemingly as a

first crop elsewhere; a short walk from it brought us to a neat lodge,

whence issued a keeper with a key, quite willing, for the consideration

of sixpence, to conduct us to Turk waterfall.

Evergreens and other trees, in their brightest livery; blue sky; roaring

water, here black, and yonder foaming of a dazzling white; rocks shining

in the dark places, or frowning black against the light, all the leaves

and branches keeping up a perpetual waving and dancing round about the

cascade: what is the use of putting down all this? A man might describe

the cataract of the Serpentine in exactly the same terms, and the reader

be no wiser. Suffice it to say, that the Turk cascade is even handsomer

than the before-mentioned waterfall of O’Sullivan, and that a man may

pass half an hour there, and look, and listen, and muse, and not even

feel the want of a companion, or so much as think of the iced champagne.

There is just enough of savageness in the Turk cascade to make the view

_piquante_. It is not, at this season at least, by any means fierce,

only wild; nor was the scene peopled by any of the rude, red-shanked

figures that clustered about the trees of O’Sullivan’s

waterfall--savages won’t pay sixpence for the prettiest waterfall ever

seen,--so that this only was for the best of company.

The road hence to Killarney carries one through Mucross village, a

pretty cluster of houses, where the sketcher will find abundant

materials for exercising his art and puzzling his hand. There are not

only noble trees, but a green common and an old water-gate to a river,

lined on either side by beds of rushes, and discharging itself beneath

an old mill-wheel. But the old mill-wheel was perfectly idle, like most

men and mill-wheels in this country: by it is a ruinous house, and a

fine garden of stinging-nettles; opposite it, on the common, is another

ruinous house, with another garden containing the same plant; and far

away are sharp ridges of purple hills, which make as pretty a landscape

as the eye can see. I don’t know how it is, but throughout the country

the men and the landscapes seem to be the same, and one and the other

seem rugged, ruined, and cheerful.

Having been employed all day (making some abominable attempts at

landscape-drawing, which shall not be exhibited here), it became

requisite, as the evening approached, to recruit an exhausted cockney

stomach, which, after a very moderate portion of exercise, begins to

sigh for beefsteaks in the most peremptory manner. Hard by is a fine

hotel with a fine sign stretching along the road for the space of a

dozen windows at least, and looking inviting enough. All the doors were

open, and I walked into a great number of rooms, but the only person I

saw was a woman with trinkets of arbutus, who offered me, by way of

refreshment, a walking-stick or a card-rack. I suppose everybody was at

the races; and an evilly-disposed person might have laid _main-basse_

upon the greatcoats which were there, and the silver spoons, if by any

miracle such things were kept--but Britannia-metal is the favourite

composition in Ireland, or else iron by itself, or else iron that has

been silvered over, but that takes good care to peep out at all the

corners of the forks: and blessed is the traveller who has not other

observations to make regarding his fork, besides the mere abrasion of

the silver.

This was the last day’s race, and on the next morning (Sunday) all the

thousands who had crowded to the race seemed trooping to the chapels,

and the streets were blue with cloaks. Walking in to prayers, and

without his board, came my young friend of the thimble rig, and

presently after sauntered in the fellow with the long coat, who had

played at cards for sovereigns. I should like to hear the confession of

himself and friend the next time they communicate with his reverence.

[Illustration]

The extent of this town is very curious, and I should imagine its

population to be much greater than five thousand, which was the number,

according to Miss Macgillicuddy. Along the three main streets are

numerous arches, down every one of which runs an alley, intersected by

other alleys, and swarming with people. A stream or gutter runs commonly

down these alleys, in which the pigs and children are seen paddling

about. The men and women loll at their doors or windows, to enjoy the

detestable prospect. I saw two pigs under a fresh-made deal staircase in

one of the main streets near the Bridewell: two very well-dressed girls,

with their hair in ringlets, were looking out of the parlour-window:

almost all the glass in the upper rooms was of course smashed, the

windows patched here and there (if the people were careful), the

woodwork of the door loose, the whitewash peeling off,--and the house

evidently not two years old.

By the Bridewell is a busy potato-market, picturesque to the sketcher,

if not very respectable to the merchant: here were the country carts and

the country cloaks, and the shrill beggarly bargains going on--a world

of shrieking, and gesticulating, and talk, about a pennyworth of

potatoes.

All round the town miserable streets of cabins are stretched. You see

people lolling at each door, women staring and combing their hair, men

with their little pipes, children whose rags hang on by a miracle,

idling in a gutter. Are we to set all this down to absenteeism, and pity

poor injured Ireland? Is the landlord’s absence the reason why the house

is filthy, and Biddy lolls in the porch all day? Upon my word, I have

heard people talk as if, when Pat’s thatch was blown off, the landlord

ought to go fetch the straw and the ladder, and mend it himself. People

need not be dirty if they are ever so idle; if they are ever so poor,

pigs and men need not live together. Half an hour’s work, and digging a

trench, might remove that filthy dunghill from that filthy window. The

smoke might as well come out of the chimney as out of the door. Why

should not Tim do that, instead of walking a hundred-and-sixty miles to

a race? The priests might do much more to effect these reforms than even

the landlords themselves: and I hope, now that the excellent Father

Mathew has succeeded in arraying his clergy to work with him in the

abolition of drunkenness, they will attack the monster Dirt with the

same good-will, and surely with the same success.

CHAPTER XIII

TRALEE--LISTOWEL--TARBERT

I made the journey to Tralee next day, upon one of the famous Bianconi

cars--very comfortable conveyances too, if the booking officers would

only receive as many persons as the car would hold, and not have too

many on the seats. For half an hour before the car left Killarney, I

observed people had taken their seats: and, let all travellers be

cautious to do likewise, lest, although they have booked their places,

they be requested to mount on the roof, and accommodate themselves on a

bandbox, or a pleasant deal trunk with a knotted rope, to prevent it

from being slippery, while the corner of another box jolts against your

ribs for the journey. I had put my coat on a place, and was stepping to

it, when a lovely lady with great activity jumped up and pushed the

cloak on the roof, and not only occupied my seat, but insisted that her

husband should have the next one to her. So there was nothing for it but

to make a huge shouting with the book-keeper, and call instantly for the

taking down of my luggage, and vow my great gods that I would take a

postchaise and make the office pay; on which, I am ashamed to say, some

other person was made to give up a decently comfortable seat on the

roof, which I occupied, the former occupant hanging on--Heaven knows

where or how.

A company of young squires were on the coach, and they talked of

horse-racing and hunting punctually for three hours, during which time I

do believe they did not utter one single word upon any other subject.

What a wonderful faculty it is! The writers of Natural Histories, in

describing the noble horse, should say he is made not only to run, to

carry burdens, etc., but to be talked about. What would hundreds of

thousands of dashing young fellows do with their tongues, if they had

not this blessed subject to discourse on?

As far as the country went, there was here, to be sure, not much to be

said. You pass through a sad-looking, bare, undulating country, with few

trees, and poor stone-hedges, and poorer crops; nor have I yet taken in

Ireland so dull a ride. About half-way between Tralee and Killarney is a

wretched town, where horses are changed, and where I saw more hideous

beggary than anywhere else, I think. And I was glad to get over this

gloomy tract of country, and enter the capital of Kerry.

It has a handsome description in the guide-books; but, if I mistake not,

the English traveller will find a stay of a couple of hours in the town

quite sufficient to gratify his curiosity with respect to the place.

There seems to be a great deal of poor business going on; the town

thronged with people as usual; the shops large and not too splendid.

There are two or three rows of respectable houses, and a mall, and the

townspeople have the further privilege of walking in the neighbouring

grounds of a handsome park, which the proprietor has liberally given to

their use. Tralee has a newspaper, and boasts of a couple of clubs; the

one I saw was a big white house, no windows broken, and looking

comfortable. But the most curious sight of the town was the chapel, with

the festival held there. It was the feast of the Assumption of the

Virgin (let those who are acquainted with the calendar and the facts it

commemorates say what the feast was, and when it falls), but all the

country seemed to be present on the occasion, and the chapel and the

large court leading to it were thronged with worshippers, such as one

never sees in our country, where devotion is by no means so crowded as

here. Here, in the courtyard, there were thousands of them on their

knees, rosary in hand, for the most part, praying, and mumbling, and

casting a wistful look round as the strangers passed. In a corner was an

old man groaning in the agonies of death or colic, and a woman got off

her knees to ask us for charity for the unhappy old fellow. In the

chapel the crowd was enormous: the priest and his people were kneeling,

and bowing, and humming, and chanting, and censer-rattling: the ghostly

crew being attended by a fellow that I don’t remember to have seen in

Continental churches, a sort of Catholic clerk, a black shadow to the

parson, bowing his head when his reverence bowed, kneeling when he

knelt, only three steps lower.

But we who wonder at copes and candlesticks, see nothing strange in

surplices and beadles. A Turk, doubtless, would sneer equally at each,

and have you to understand that the only reasonable ceremonial was that

which took place at his mosque.

Whether right or wrong, in point of ceremony, it was evident the heart

of devotion was there: the immense dense crowd moaned and swayed, and

you heard a hum of all sorts of wild ejaculations, each man praying

seemingly for himself, while the service went on at the altar. The altar

candles flickered red in the dark, steaming place, and every now and

then from the choir you heard a sweet female voice chanting Mozart’s

music, which swept over the heads of the people a great deal more pure

and delicious than the best incense that ever smoked out of the pot.

On the chapel-floor, just at the entry, lay several people moaning, and

tossing, and telling their beads. Behind the old woman was a font of

holy water, up to which little children were clambering; and in the

chapel-yard were several old women, with tin cans full of the same

sacred fluid, with which the people, as they entered, aspersed

themselves with all their might, flicking a great quantity into their

faces, and making a curtsey and a prayer at the same time. ‘A pretty

prayer, truly!’ says the parson’s wife. ‘What sad, sad benighted

superstition!’ says the Independent minister’s lady. Ah! ladies, great

as your intelligence is, yet think, when compared with the Supreme One,

what a little difference there is after all between your husbands’ very

best extempore oration, and the poor Popish creatures’! One is just as

far off Infinite Wisdom as the other: and so let us read the story of

the woman and her pot of ointment, that most noble and charming of

histories; which equalises the great and the small, the wise and the

poor in spirit, and shows that their merit before Heaven lies _in doing

their best_.

[Illustration]

When I came out of the chapel, the old fellow on the point of death was

still howling and groaning in so vehement a manner, that I heartily

trust he was an impostor, and that on receiving a sixpence he went home

tolerably comfortable, having secured a maintenance for that day. But it

will be long before I can forget the strange, wild scene, so entirely

different was it from the decent and comfortable observances of our own

church.

Three cars set off together from Tralee to Tarbert: three cars full to

overflowing. The vehicle before us contained nineteen persons, half a

dozen being placed in the receptacle called the well, and one clinging

on as if by a miracle at the bar behind. What can people want at

Tarbert? I wondered; or anywhere else, indeed, that they rush about from

one town to another in this inconceivable way? All the cars in all the

towns seem to be thronged: people are perpetually hurrying from one

dismal tumbledown town to another; and yet no business is done anywhere

that I can see. The chief part of the contents of our three cars was

discharged at Listowel, to which, for the greater part of the journey,

the road was neither more cheerful nor picturesque than that from

Killarney to Tralee. As, however, you reach Listowel, the country

becomes better cultivated, the gentlemen’s seats are more frequent, and

the town itself, as seen from a little distance, lies very prettily on a

river, which is crossed by a handsome bridge, which leads to a

neat-looking square, which contains a smartish church, which is flanked

by a big Roman Catholic chapel, etc. An old castle, grey and

ivy-covered, stands hard by. It was one of the strongholds of the Lords

of Kerry, whose burying-place (according to the information of the

coachman) is seen at about a league from the town.

But pretty as Listowel is from a distance, it has, on a more intimate

acquaintance, by no means the prosperous appearance which a first glance

gives it. The place seemed like a scene at a country theatre, once

smartly painted by the artist; but the paint has cracked in many places,

the lines are worn away, and the whole piece only looks more shabby for

the flaunting strokes of the brush which remain. And here, of course,

came the usual crowd of idlers round the car: the epileptic idiot

holding piteously out his empty tin snuff-box; the brutal idiot, in an

old soldier’s coat, proffering his money-box, and grinning, and

clattering the single halfpenny it contained; the old man with no

eyelids, calling upon you in the name of the Lord; the woman with a

child at her hideous, wrinkled breast; the children without number. As

for trade, there seemed to be none; a great Jeremy-Diddler kind of hotel

stood hard by, swaggering and out-at-elbows, and six pretty girls were

smiling out of a beggarly straw-bonnet shop, dressed as smartly as any

gentleman’s daughters of good estate. It was good, among the crowd of

bustling, shrieking fellows, who were ‘jawing’ vastly and doing nothing,

to see how an English bagman, with scarce any words, laid hold of an

ostler, carried him off, _vi et armis_, in the midst of a speech, in

which the latter was going to explain his immense activity and desire to

serve, pushed him into a stable, from which he issued in a twinkling,

leading the ostler and a horse, and had his bag on the car and his horse

off in about two minutes of time, while the natives were still shouting

round about other passengers’ portmanteaus.

Some time afterwards, away we rattled on our own journey to Tarbert,

having a postillion on the leader, and receiving, I must say, some

graceful bows from the young bonnet-makeresses. But of all the roads

over which human bones were ever jolted, the first part of this from

Listowel to Tarbert deserves the palm. It shook us all into headaches;

it shook some nails out of the side of a box I had; it shook all the

cords loose in a twinkling, and sent the baggage bumping about the

passengers’ shoulders. The coachman at the call of another English

bagman, who was a fellow-traveller,--the postillion at the call of the

coachman, descended to re-cord the baggage. The English bagman had the

whole mass of trunks and bags stoutly corded and firmly fixed in a few

seconds; the coachman helped him as far as his means allowed; the

postillion stood by with his hands in his pockets, smoking his pipe, and

never offering to stir a finger. I said to him that I was delighted to

see in a youth of sixteen that extreme activity and willingness to

oblige, and that I would give him a handsome remuneration for his

services at the end of the journey: the young rascal grinned with all

his might, understanding the satiric nature of the address perfectly

well; but he did not take his hands out of his pockets for all that,

until it was time to get on his horse again, and then, having carried us

over the most difficult part of the journey, removed his horse and pipe,

and rode away with a parting grin.

The cabins along the road were not much better than those to be seen

south of Tralee, but the people were far better clothed, and indulged in

several places in the luxury of pigsties. Near the prettily situated

village of Ballylongford, we came in sight of the Shannon mouth; and a

huge red round moon, that shone behind an old convent on the banks of

the bright river, with dull green meadows between it and us, and wide

purple flats beyond, would be a good subject for the pencil of any

artist whose wrist had not been put out of joint by the previous ten

miles’ journey.

The town of Tarbert, in the guide-books and topographical dictionaries,

flourishes considerably. You read of its port, its corn and provision

stores, etc., and of certain good hotels; for which, as travellers, we

were looking with a laudable anxiety. The town, in fact, contains about

a dozen of houses, some hundreds of cabins, and two hotels; to one of

which we were driven, and a kind landlady, conducting her half-dozen

guests into a snug parlour, was for our ordering refreshment

immediately,--which I certainly should have done, but for the ominous

whisper of a fellow in the crowd as we descended (of course a

disinterested patron of the other house), who hissed into my ears, ‘_Ask

to see the beds_,’ which proposal, accordingly, I made before coming to

any determination regarding supper.

The worthy landlady eluded my question several times with great skill

and good-humour, but it became at length necessary to answer it; which

she did by putting on as confident an air as possible, and leading the

way upstairs to a bedroom, where there was a good large comfortable bed,

certainly.

The only objection to the bed, however, was that it contained a sick

lady, whom the hostess proposed to eject without any ceremony, saying

that she was a great deal better, and going to get up that very evening.

However, none of us had the heart to tyrannise over lovely woman in so

painful a situation, and the hostess had the grief of seeing four out of

her five guests repair across the way to Brallaghan’s or Gallagher’s

Hotel,--the name has fled from my memory, but it is the big hotel in the

place; and unless the sick lady has quitted the other inn, which most

likely she has done by this time, the English traveller will profit by

this advice, and on arrival at Tarbert will have himself transported to

Gallagher’s at once.

The next morning a car carried us to Tarbert Point, where there is a

pier not yet completed, and a Preventive station, and where the Shannon

steamers touch, that ply between Kilrush and Limerick. Here lay the

famous river before us, with low banks and rich pastures on either side.

CHAPTER XIV

LIMERICK

A capital steamer, which on this day was thronged with people, carried

us for about four hours down the noble stream and landed us at Limerick

Quay. The character of the landscape on either side the stream is not

particularly picturesque, but large, liberal, and prosperous. Gentle

sweeps of rich meadows and cornfields cover the banks, and some, though

not too many, gentlemen’s parks and plantations rise here and there.

But the landscape was somehow more pleasing than if it had been merely

picturesque; and, especially after coming out of that desolate county of

Kerry, it was pleasant for the eye to rest upon this peaceful, rich, and

generous scene. The first aspect of Limerick is very smart and pleasing;

fine neat quays with considerable liveliness and bustle, a very handsome

bridge (the Wellesley Bridge) before the spectator, who, after a walk

through two long and flourishing streets, stops at length at one of the

best inns in Ireland--the large, neat, and prosperous one kept by Mr.

Cruise. Except at Youghal, and the poor fellow whom the Englishman

belaboured at Glengarriff, Mr. Cruise is the only landlord of an inn I

have had the honour to see in Ireland. I believe these gentlemen

commonly (and very naturally) prefer riding with the hounds, or manly

sports, to attendance on their guests; and the landladies, if they

prefer to play the piano, or to have a game of cards in the parlour,

only show a taste at which no one can wonder: for who can expect a lady

to be troubling herself with vulgar chance-customers, or looking after

Molly in the bedroom or waiter Tim in the cellar?

Now, beyond this piece of information regarding the excellence of Mr.

Cruise’s hotel, which every traveller knows, the writer of this doubts

very much whether he has anything to say about Limerick that is worth

the trouble of saying or reading. I can’t attempt to describe the

Shannon, only to say that on board the steamboat there was a piper and a

bugler, a hundred of genteel persons coming back from donkey-riding and

bathing at Kilkee, a couple of heaps of raw hides that smelt very

foully, a score of women nursing children, and a lobster-vendor, who

vowed to me on his honour that he gave eightpence apiece for his fish,

and that he had boiled them only the day before; but when I produced the

Guide-book, and solemnly told him to swear upon that to the truth of his

statement, the lobster-seller turned away, quite abashed, and would not

be brought to support his previous assertion at all. Well, this is no

description of the Shannon, as you have no need to be told, and other

travelling cockneys will, no doubt, meet neither piper nor

lobster-seller nor raw hides; nor, if they come to the inn where this is

written, is it probable that they will hear, as I do at this present

moment, two fellows with red whiskers, and immense pomp and noise and

blustering with the waiter, conclude by ordering a pint of ale between

them. All that one can hope to do is, to give a sort of notion of the

movement and manners of the people; pretending by no means to offer a

description of places, but simply an account of what one sees in them.

So that if any traveller after staying two days in Limerick should

think fit to present the reader with forty or fifty pages of

dissertation upon the antiquities and history of the place, upon the

state of commerce, religion, education, the public may be pretty well

sure that the traveller has been at work among the guide-books, and

filching extracts from the topographical and local works.

They say there are three towns to make one Limerick: there is the Irish

town on the Clare side; the English town with its old castle (which has

sustained a deal of battering and blows from Danes, from fierce Irish

kings, from English warriors who took an interest in the place, Henry

Secundians, Elizabethians, Cromwellians, and _vice versâ_, Jacobites,

King Williamites,--and nearly escaped being in the hands of the Robert

Emmetites); and finally the district called Newtown-Pery. In walking

through this latter tract, you are, at first, half led to believe that

you are arrived in a second Liverpool, so tall are the warehouses and

broad the quays; so neat and trim a street of near a mile which

stretches before you. But even this mile-long street does not, in a few

minutes, appear to be so wealthy and prosperous as it shows at first

glance; for of the population that throng the streets, two-fifths are

barefooted women, and two-fifths more ragged men: and the most part of

the shops which have a grand show with them appear, when looked into, to

be no better than they should be, being empty makeshift-looking places

with their best goods outside.

Here, in this handsome street too, is a handsome club-house, with plenty

of idlers, you may be sure, lolling at the portico; likewise you see

numerous young officers, with very tight waists and absurd brass

shell-epaulettes to their little absurd frock-coats, walking the

pavement--the dandies of the street. Then you behold whole troops of

pear-, apple-, and plum-women, selling very raw, green-looking fruit,

which, indeed, it is a wonder that any one should eat and live. The

houses are bright red--the street is full and gay, carriages and cars in

plenty go jingling by--dragoons in red are every now and then clattering

up the street; and as upon every car which passes with ladies in it you

are sure (I don’t know how it is) to see a pretty one, the great street

of Limerick is altogether a very brilliant and animated sight.

If the ladies of the place are pretty, indeed, the vulgar are scarcely

less so. I never saw a greater number of kind, pleasing, clever-looking

faces among any set of people. There seem, however, to be two sorts of

physiognomies which are common; the pleasing and somewhat melancholy one

before mentioned, and a square, high-cheeked, flat-nosed physiognomy not

uncommonly accompanied by a hideous staring head of dry, red hair.

Except, however, in the latter case, the hair flowing loose and long is

a pretty characteristic of the women of the country; many a fair one do

you see at the door of the cabin, or the poor shop in the town, combing

complacently that ‘greatest ornament of female beauty,’ as Mr. Rowland

justly calls it.

The generality of the women here seem also much better clothed than in

Kerry; and I saw many a one going barefoot whose gown was nevertheless a

good one, and whose cloak was of fine cloth. Likewise it must be

remarked that the beggars in Limerick were by no means so numerous as

those in Cork, or in many small places through which I have passed.

There were but five, strange to say, round the mail-coach as we went

away; and, indeed, not a great number in the streets.

The belles-lettres seem to be by no means so well cultivated here as in

Cork. I looked in vain for a Limerick guide-book: I saw but one good

shop of books, and a little trumpery circulating library, which seemed

to be provided with those immortal works of a year old, which, having

been sold for half a guinea the volume at first, are suddenly found to

be worth only a shilling. Among these, let me mention, with perfect

resignation to the decrees of fate, the works of one Titmarsh: they were

rather smartly bound by an enterprising publisher, and I looked at them

in Bishop Murphy’s library at Cork, in a bookshop in the remote little

town of Ennis, and elsewhere, with a melancholy tenderness. Poor

flowerets of a season! (and a very short season too), let me be allowed

to salute your scattered leaves with a passing sigh!... Besides the

bookshops, I observed in the long, best street of Limerick a half-dozen

of what are called French shops, with nick-nacks, German-silver chimney

ornaments, and paltry finery. In the windows of these you saw a card

with ‘Cigars’; in the bookshop, ‘Cigars’; at the grocer’s, the

whisky-shop, ‘Cigars’: everybody sells the noxious weed, or makes

believe to sell it, and I know no surer indication of a struggling,

uncertain trade than that same placard of ‘Cigars.’ I went to buy some

of the pretty Limerick gloves (they are chiefly made, as I have since

discovered, at Cork). I think the man who sold them had a patent from

the Queen, or his Excellency, or both, in his window: but, seeing a

friend pass just as I entered the shop, he brushed past, and held his

friend in conversation for some minutes in the street,--about the

Killarney races, no doubt, or the fun going on at Kilkee. I might have

swept away a bagful of walnut-shells containing the flimsy gloves; but

instead walked out, making him a low bow, and saying I would call next

week. He said, wouldn’t I wait? and resumed his conversation; and, no

doubt, by this way of doing business, is making a handsome

independence. I asked one of the ten thousand fruit-women the price of

her green pears. ‘Twopence apiece,’ she said; and there were two little

ragged beggars standing by, who were munching the fruit. A

bookshop-woman made me pay threepence for a bottle of ink which usually

costs a penny; a potato-woman told me that her potatoes cost

fourteenpence a stone; and all these ladies treated the stranger with a

leering, wheedling servility, which made me long to box their ears, were

it not that the man who lays his hand upon a woman is an----, etc., whom

‘twere gross flattery to call a what-d’ye-call-‘em. By the way, the man

who played Duke Aranza at Cork delivered the celebrated claptrap above

alluded to as follows:--

‘The man who lays his hand upon a woman,

Save in the way of kindness, is a villain,

Whom ‘twere _a gross piece_ of flattery to call a coward;’

and looked round calmly for the applause, which deservedly followed his

new reading of the passage.

To return to the apple-women;--legions of ladies were employed through

the town upon that traffic; there were really thousands of them,

clustering upon the bridges, squatting down in doorways and vacant sheds

for temporary markets, marching and crying their sour goods in all the

crowded lanes of the city. After you get out of the main street the

handsome part of the town is at an end, and you suddenly find yourself

in such a labyrinth of busy swarming poverty and squalid commerce as

never was seen--no, not in St. Giles’s, where Jew and Irishman side by

side exhibit their genius for dirt. Here every house almost was a half

ruin, and swarming with people; in the cellars you looked down and saw a

barrel of herrings, which a merchant was dispensing; or a sack of meal,

which a poor dirty woman sold to people poorer and dirtier than herself:

above was a tinman, or a shoemaker, or other craftsman, his battered

ensign at the door, and his small wares peering through the cracked

panes of his shop. As for the ensign, as a matter of course, the name is

never written in letters of the same size. You read--

[Illustration: PAT^K HANLAH^an TAILOR]

[Illustration: JAME^S HURL^EY SHOE MAK^er]

or some similar signboard. High and low, in this country, they begin

things on too large a scale. They begin churches too big and can’t

finish them; mills and houses too big, and are ruined before they are

done; letters on signboards too big, and are up in a corner before the

inscription is finished--there is something quite strange, really, in

this general consistency.

Well, over James Hurley, or Pat Hanlahan, you will most likely see

another board of another tradesman, with a window to the full as

curious. Above Tim Carthy evidently lives another family. There are

long-haired girls of fourteen at every one of the windows, and dirty

children everywhere. In the cellars, look at them in dingy white

nightcaps over a bowl of stirabout; in the shop, paddling up and down

the ruined steps, or issuing from beneath the black counter; up above,

see the girl of fourteen is tossing and dandling one of them; and a

pretty tender sight it is, in the midst of this filth and wretchedness,

to see the women and children together. It makes a sunshine in the dark

place, and somehow half reconciles one to it. Children are

everywhere--look out of the nasty streets into the still more nasty back

lanes; there they are, sprawling at every door and court, paddling in

every puddle; and in about a fair proportion to every six children an

old woman--a very old, blear-eyed, ragged woman--who makes believe to

sell something out of a basket, and is perpetually calling upon the name

of the Lord. For every three ragged old women you will see two ragged

old men, praying and moaning like the females. And there is no lack of

young men, either, though I never could make out what they were about:

they loll about the street, chiefly conversing in knots; and in every

street you will be pretty sure to see a recruiting sergeant, with gay

ribands in his cap, loitering about with an eye upon the other loiterers

there. The buzz, and hum, and chattering of this crowd is quite

inconceivable to us in England, where a crowd is generally silent: as a

person with a decent coat passes, they stop in their talk and say, ‘God

bless you for a fine gentleman!’ In these crowded streets, where all are

beggars, the beggary is but small: only the very old and hideous venture

to ask for a penny, otherwise the competition would be too great.

As for the buildings that one lights upon every now and then in the

midst of such scenes as this, they are scarce worth the trouble to

examine: occasionally you come on a chapel, with sham Gothic windows and

a little belfry, one of the Catholic places of worship; then, placed in

some quiet street, a neat-looking dissenting meeting-house. Across the

river yonder, as you issue out from the street, where the preceding

sketch was taken, is a handsome hospital; near it the old cathedral, a

barbarous old turreted edifice, of the fourteenth century it is said;

how different to the sumptuous elegance which characterises the English

and Continental churches of the same period! Passing by it, and walking

down other streets,--black, ruinous, swarming, dark, hideous,--you come

upon the barracks and the walks of the old castle, and from it on to an

old bridge, from which the view is a fine one. On one side are the grey

bastions of the castle; beyond them, in the midst of the broad stream,

stands a huge mill that looks like another castle; farther yet is the

handsome new Wellesley Bridge, with some little craft upon the river,

and the red warehouses of the new town looking prosperous enough. The

Irish town stretches away to the right; there are pretty villas beyond

it, and on the bridge are walking twenty-four young girls, in parties of

four and five, with their arms round each other’s waists, swaying to and

fro, and singing or chattering, as happy as if they had shoes to their

feet. Yonder you see a dozen pair of red legs glittering in the water,

their owners being employed in washing their own or other people’s rags.

The Guide-book mentions that one of the aboriginal forests of the

country is to be seen at a few miles from Limerick; and thinking that an

aboriginal forest would be a huge discovery, and form an instructive and

delightful feature of the present work, I hired a car in order to visit

the same, and pleased myself with visions of gigantic oaks, Druids,

Norma, wildernesses and awful glooms, which would fill the soul with

horror. The romance of the place was heightened by a fact stated by the

carman, viz., that until late years robberies were very frequent about

the wood; the inhabitants of the district being a wild lawless race.

Moreover, there are numerous castles round about,--and for what can a

man wish more than robbers, castles, and an aboriginal wood?

The way to these wonderful sights lies through the undulating grounds

which border the Shannon; and though the view is by no means a fine one,

I know few that are pleasanter than the sight of these rich, golden,

peaceful plains, with the full harvest waving on them and just ready for

the sickle. The hay harvest was likewise just being concluded, and the

air loaded with the rich odour of the hay. Above the trees, to your

left, you saw the mast of a ship, perhaps moving along, and every now

and then caught a glimpse of the Shannon, and the low grounds and

plantations of the opposite county of Limerick. Not an unpleasant

addition to the landscape, too, was a sight which I do not remember to

have witnessed often in this country--that of several small and decent

farmhouses, with their stacks and sheds and stables, giving an air of

neatness and plenty that the poor cabin with its potato-patch does not

present. Is it on account of the small farms that the land seems richer

and better cultivated here than in most other parts of the country?

Some of the houses in the midst of the warm summer landscape had a

strange appearance, for it is often the fashion to whitewash the roofs

of the houses, leaving the slates of the walls of their natural colour;

hence, and in the evening especially, contrasting with the purple sky,

the house-tops often looked as if they were covered with snow.

According to the Guide-book’s promise, the castles began soon to appear;

at one point we could see three of these ancient mansions in a line,

each seemingly with its little grove of old trees, in the midst of the

bare but fertile country. By this time, too, we had got into a road so

abominably bad and rocky, that I began to believe more and more with

regard to the splendour of the aboriginal forest, which must be most

aboriginal and ferocious indeed when approached by such a savage path.

After travelling through a couple of lines of wall with plantations on

either side, I at length became impatient as to the forest, and, much to

my disappointment, was told this was it. For the fact is, that though

the forest has always been there, the trees have not, the proprietors

cutting them regularly when grown to no great height, and the monarchs

of the woods which I saw round about would scarcely have afforded timber

for a bedpost. Nor did any robbers make their appearance in this

wilderness: with which disappointment, however, I was more willing to

put up than with the former one.

But if the wood and the robbers did not come up to my romantic notions,

the old castle of Bunratty fully answered them, and indeed should be

made the scene of a romance, in three volumes at least.

‘It is a huge, square tower, with four smaller ones at each angle; and

you mount to the entrance by a steep flight of steps, being commanded

all the way by the crossbows of two of the Lord De Clare’s retainers,

the points of whose weapons may be seen lying upon the ledge of the

little narrow _meurtrière_ on each side of the gate. A venerable

seneschal, with the keys of office, presently opens the little back

postern, and you are admitted to the great hall--a noble chamber,

_pardi_! some seventy feet in length, and thirty high. ‘Tis hung round

with a thousand trophies of war and chase,--the golden helmet and spear

of the Irish king, the long yellow mantle he wore, and the huge brooch

that bound it. Hugo De Clare slew him before the castle in 1305, when he

and his kernes attacked it. Less successful in 1314, the gallant Hugo

saw his village of Bunratty burned round his tower by the son of the

slaughtered O’Neill; and, sallying out to avenge the insult, was brought

back--a corpse! Ah! what was the pang that shot through the fair bosom

of the _Lady Adela_, when she knew that ‘twas the hand of _Redmond

O’Neill_ sped the shaft which slew her sire!

‘You listen to this sad story, reposing on an oaken settle (covered with

deer’s-skin taken in the aboriginal forest of Carclow hard by), and

placed at the enormous hall-fire. Here sits Thonom an Diaoul, “Dark

Thomas,” the blind harper of the race of De Clare, who loves to tell the

deeds of the lordly family. “Penetrating in disguise,” he continues,

“into the castle, Redmond of the golden locks sought an interview with

the lily of Bunratty; but she screamed when she saw him under the

disguise of the gleeman, and said, My father’s blood is in the hall! At

this, up started fierce Sir Ranulph. Ho, Bludyer! he cried to his

squire, call me the hangman and Father John; seize me, vassals, yon

villain in gleeman’s guise, and hang him on the gallows on the tower!

‘“Will it please ye walk to the roof of the old castle and see the beam

on which the lords of the place execute the refractory?” “Nay, marry,”

say you, “by my spurs of knighthood, I have seen hanging enough in merry

England, and care not to see the gibbets of Irish kernes.” The harper

would have taken fire at this speech reflecting on his country; but

luckily here Gulph, your English squire, entered from the pantler (with

whom he had been holding a parley), and brought a manchet of bread, and

bade ye, in the Lord De Clare’s name, crush a cup of Ypocras, well

spiced, _pardi_, and by the fair hands of the Lady Adela.

‘“The Lady Adela!” say you, starting up in amaze. “Is not this the year

of grace 1600, and lived she not three hundred years syne?”

‘“Yes, Sir Knight, but Bunratty tower hath _another lily_: will it

please you see your chamber?”