Here too was a ruined sort of summer-house, dedicated DEO HIBERNIÆ

LIBERATORI. When these lights were put up, I am told the proprietor of

Bunown was recommended to apply for compensation to Parliament, inasmuch

as there would be no more _wrecks_ on the coast: from which branch of

commerce the inhabitants of the district used formerly to derive a

considerable profit. Between these Sline Lights and America nothing lies

but the Atlantic. It was beautifully blue and bright on this day, and

the sky almost cloudless; but I think the brightness only made the scene

more dismal, it being of that order of beauties which cannot bear the

full light, but require a cloud or a curtain to set them off to

advantage. A pretty story was told me by the gentleman who had killed

the seals. The place where he had been staying for sport was almost as

lonely as this Bunown, and inhabited by a priest too--a young, lively,

well-educated man. ‘When I came here first,’ the priest said, ‘_I cried

for two days_’; but afterwards he grew to like the place exceedingly,

his whole heart being directed towards it, his chapel, and his cure. Who

would not honour such missionaries--the virtues they silently practise,

and the doctrines they preach? After hearing that story, I think Bunown

looked not quite so dismal, as it is inhabited, they say, by such

another character. What a pity it is that John Tuam, in the next county

of Mayo, could not find such another hermitage to learn modesty in, and

forget his Graceship, his Lordship, and the sham titles by which he sets

such store.

A moon as round and bright as any moon that ever shone, and riding in a

sky perfectly cloudless, gave us a good promise of a fine day for the

morrow, which was to be devoted to the lakes in the neighbourhood of

Ballynahinch; one of which, Lough Ina, is said to be of exceeding

beauty. But no man can speculate upon Irish weather. I have seen a day

beginning with torrents of rain, that looked as if a deluge was at hand,

clear up in a few minutes, without any reason, and against the

prognostications of the glass and all other weather-prophets; so in like

manner, after the astonishingly fine night, there came a villainous dark

day; which, however, did not set in fairly for rain until we were an

hour on our journey, with a couple of stout boatmen rowing us over

Ballynahinch Lake. Being, however, thus fairly started, the water began

to come down, not in torrents certainly, but in that steady, creeping,

insinuating mist, of which we scarce know the luxury in England; and

which, I am bound to say, will wet a man’s jacket as satisfactorily as a

cataract would do.

It was just such another day as that of the famous stag-hunt at

Killarney, in a word; and as, in the first instance, we went to see the

deer killed, and saw nothing thereof, so, in the second case, we went to

see the landscape with precisely the same good fortune. The mountains

covered their modest beauties in impenetrable veils of clouds; and the

only consolation to the boat’s crew was, that it was a remarkably good

day for trout-fishing--which amusement some people are said to prefer to

the examination of landscapes, however beautiful.

O you, who laboriously throw flies in English rivers, and catch, at the

expiration of a hard day’s walking, casting, and wading, two or three

feeble little brown trouts of two or three ounces in weight, how would

you rejoice to have but an hour’s sport in Derryclear or Ballynahinch;

where you have but to cast, and lo! a big trout springs at your fly,

and, after making a vain struggling, splashing, and plunging for a

while, is infallibly landed in the net and thence into the boat! The

single rod in the boat, caught enough fish in an hour to feast the crew,

consisting of five persons, and the family of a Herd of Mr. Martin’s,

who has a pretty cottage on Derryclear Lake, inhabited by a cow and its

calf, a score of fowls, and I don’t know how many sons and daughters.

Having caught enough trout to satisfy any moderate appetite, like true

sportsmen the gentlemen on board our boat became eager to hook a salmon.

Had they hooked a few salmons, no doubt they would have trolled for

whales, or for a mermaid; one of which finny beauties the waterman swore

he had seen on the shore of Derryclear, he with Jim Mullen being above

on a rock, the mermaid on the shore directly beneath them, visible to

the middle, and as usual ‘racking her hair.’ It was fair hair, the

boatman said; and he appeared as convinced of the existence of the

mermaid, as he was of the trout just landed in the boat.

In regard of mermaids, there is a gentleman living near Killala Bay,

whose name was mentioned to me, and who declares solemnly, that one day,

shooting on the sands there, he saw a mermaid, and determined to try her

with a shot. So he drew the small-shot charge from his gun and loaded

with ball, that he always had by him for seal-shooting, fired, and hit

the mermaid through the breast. The screams and moans of the creature,

whose person he describes most accurately, were the most horrible

heart-rending noises that he ever, he said, heard: and not only were

they heard by him, but by the fishermen along the coast, who were

furiously angry against Mr. A----n, because, they said, the injury done

to the mermaid would cause her to drive all the fish away from the bay

for years to come.

But we did not, to my disappointment, catch a glimpse of one of these

interesting beings, nor of the great sea-horse which is said to inhabit

these waters, nor of any fairies (of whom the stroke-oar, Mr. Marcus,

told us not to speak, for they didn’t like bein’ spoken of); nor even of

a salmon, though the fishermen produced the most tempting flies. The

only animal of any size that was visible, we saw while lying by a swift

black river, that comes jumping with innumerable little waves into

Derryclear, and where the salmon are especially suffered to “stand”;

this animal was an eagle--a real wild eagle, with grey wings and a white

head and belly; it swept round us, within gunshot reach, once or twice,

through the leaden sky, and then settled on a grey rock, and began to

scream its shrill, ghastly, aquiline note.

The attempts on the salmon having failed, the rain continuing to fall

steadily, the Herd’s cottage before named was resorted to: when Marcus,

the boatman, commenced forthwith to gut the fish, and, taking down some

charred turf-ashes from the blazing fire, on which about a hundredweight

of potatoes were boiling, he--Marcus--proceeded to grill on the floor

some of the trout, which we afterwards ate with immeasurable

satisfaction. They were such trouts as, when once tasted, remain for

ever in the recollection of a commonly grateful mind--rich, flaky,

creamy, full of flavour. A Parisian _gourmand_ would have paid ten

francs for the smallest _cooleen_ among them; and, when transported to

his capital, how different in flavour would they have been!--how

inferior to what they were as we devoured them, fresh from the fresh

waters of the lake, and jerked as it were from the water to the

gridiron! The world had not had time to spoil those innocent beings

before they were gobbled up with pepper and salt, and missed, no doubt,

by their friends. I should like to know more of their ‘_set_.’ But

enough of this: my feelings overpower me: suffice it to say, they were

red or salmon trouts--none of your white-fleshed brown-skinned river

fellows.

When the gentlemen had finished their repast, the boatmen and the family

set to work upon the ton of potatoes, a number of the remaining fish,

and a store of other good things; then we all sat round the turf-fire in

the dark cottage, the rain coming down steadily outside, and veiling

everything except the shrubs and verdure immediately about the cottage.

The Herd, the Herd’s wife, and a nondescript female friend, two healthy

young herdsmen in corduroy rags, the herdsman’s daughter paddling about

with bare feet, a stout black-eyed wench with her gown over her head,

and a red petticoat not quite so good as new, the two boatmen, a badger

just killed and turned inside out, the gentlemen, some hens cackling and

flapping about among the rafters, a calf in a corner cropping green meat

and occasionally visited by the cow her mama, formed the society of the

place. It was rather a strange picture; but as for about two hours we

sat there, and maintained an almost unbroken silence, and as there was

no other amusement but to look at the rain, I began, after the

enthusiasm of the first half-hour, to think that after all London was a

bearable place, and that for want of a turf-fire and a bench in

Connemara, one _might_ put up with a sofa and a newspaper in Pall Mall.

This, however, is according to tastes; and I must say that Mr. Marcus

betrayed a most bitter contempt for all cockney tastes, awkwardness, and

ignorance: and very right too. The night, on our return home, all of a

sudden cleared; but though the fishermen, much to my disgust--at the

expression of which, however, the rascals only laughed--persisted in

making more casts for trout, and trying back in the dark upon the spots

which we had visited in the morning, it appeared the fish had been

frightened off by the rain; and the sportsmen met with such indifferent

success that at about ten o’clock we found ourselves at Ballynahinch.

Dinner was served at eleven: and, I believe, there was some whisky-punch

afterwards, recommended medicinally and to prevent the ill effects of

the wetting; but that is neither here nor there.

The next day the Petty Sessions were to be held at Roundstone, a little

town which has lately sprung up near the noble bay of that name. I was

glad to see some specimens of Connemara litigation, as also to behold at

least one thousand beautiful views that lie on the five miles of road

between the town and Ballynahinch. Rivers and rocks, mountains and sea,

green plains and bright skies, how (for the hundred-and-fiftieth time)

can pen-and-ink set you down? But if Berghem could have seen those blue

mountains, and Karel du Jardin could have copied some of these green

airy plains, with their brilliant little coloured groups of peasants,

beggars, horsemen, many an Englishman would know Connemara upon canvas,

as he does Italy or Flanders now.

CHAPTER XVIII

ROUNDSTONE PETTY SESSIONS

‘The temple of august Themis,’ as a Frenchman would call the

Sessions-room at Roundstone, is an apartment of some twelve feet square,

with a deal table and a couple of chairs for the accommodation of the

magistrates, and a Testament with a paper cross pasted on it to be

kissed by the witnesses and complainants who frequent the court. The

law-papers, warrants, etc., are kept on the Session-clerk’s bed in an

adjoining apartment, which commands a fine view of the courtyard--where

there is a stack of turf, a pig, and a shed beneath which the

magistrates’ horses were sheltered during the sitting. The

Sessions-clerk is a gentleman ‘having,’ as the phrase is here, both the

English and Irish languages, and interpreting for the benefit of the

worshipful bench.

And if the cockney reader suppose that in this remote country spot, so

wild, so beautiful, so distant from the hum and vice of cities,

quarrelling is not, and Litigation never shows her snaky head, he is

very much mistaken. From what I saw, I would recommend any ingenious

young attorney whose merits are not appreciated in the Metropolis, to

make an attempt upon the village of Roundstone; where as yet, I believe,

there is no solicitor, and where an immense and increasing practice

might speedily be secured. Mr. O’Connell, who is always crying out

‘Justice for Ireland,’ finds strong supporters among the Roundstonians,

whose love of justice for themselves is inordinate. I took down the

plots of the five first little litigious dramas which were played before

Mr. Martin and the stipendiary magistrate.

Case 1.--A boy summoned a young man for beating him so severely that he

kept his bed for a week, thereby breaking an engagement with his master,

and losing a quarter’s wages.

The defendant stated, in reply, that the plaintiff was engaged--in a

field through which defendant passed with another person--setting two

little boys to fight; on which defendant took plaintiff by the collar

and turned him out of the field. A witness who was present swore that

defendant never struck plaintiff at all, nor kicked him, nor ill-used

him, further than by pushing him out of the field.

As to the loss of his quarter’s wages, the plaintiff ingeniously proved

that he had afterwards returned to his master, that he had worked out

his time, and that he had in fact received already the greater part of

his hire. Upon which the case was dismissed, the defendant quitting

court without a stain upon his honour.

Case 2 was a most piteous and lamentable case of killing a cow; the

plaintiff stepped forward with many tears and much gesticulation to

state the fact, and also to declare that she was in danger of her life

from the defendant’s family.

It appeared on the evidence that a portion of the defendant’s

respectable family are at present undergoing the rewards which the law

assigns to those who make mistakes in fields with regard to the

ownership of sheep which sometimes graze there. The defendant’s father,

O’Damon, for having appropriated one of the fleecy bleaters of

O’Melibœus, was at present past beyond sea to a country where wool,

and consequently mutton, is so plentiful, that he will have the less

temptation. Defendant’s brothers tread the Ixionic wheel for the same

offence. Plaintiff’s son had been the informer in the case, hence the

feud between the families, the threats on the part of the defendants,

the murder of the innocent cow.

[Illustration]

But upon investigation of the business, it was discovered, and on the

plaintiff’s own testimony, that the cow had not been killed, nor even

been injured, but that the defendant had flung two stones at it, which

_might_ have inflicted great injury had they hit the animal with

greater force in the eye or in any delicate place.

Defendants admitted flinging the stones, but alleged as a reason that

the cow was trespassing on their grounds, which plaintiff did not seem

inclined to deny. Case dismissed.--Defendant retires with unblemished

honour; on which his mother steps forward, and lifting up her hands with

tears and shrieks, calls upon God to witness that the defendant’s own

brother-in-law had sold to her husband the very sheep on account of

which he had been transported.

Not wishing probably to doubt the justice of the verdict of an Irish

jury, the magistrate abruptly put an end to the lamentation and oaths of

the injured woman by causing her to be sent out of court, and called the

third cause on.

This was a case of thrilling interest and a complicated nature,

involving two actions, which ought each perhaps to have been gone into

separately, but were taken together. In the first place Timothy Horgan

brought an action against Patrick Dolan for breach of contract in not

remaining with him for the whole of six months during which Dolan had

agreed to serve Horgan. Then Dolan brought an action against Horgan for

not paying him his wages for six months’ labour done--the wages being

two guineas.

Horgan at once, and with much candour, withdrew his charge against

Dolan, that the latter had not remained with him for six months; nor can

I understand to this day, why in the first place he swore to the charge,

and why afterwards he withdrew it. But immediately advancing another

charge against his late servant, he pleaded that he had given him a suit

of clothes, which should be considered as a set-off against part of the

money claimed.

Now such a suit of clothes as poor Dolan had was never seen, I will not

say merely on an English scarecrow, but on an Irish beggar. Strips of

rags fell over the honest fellow’s great brawny chest, and the covering

on his big brown legs hung on by a wonder. He held out his arms with a

grim smile, and told his Worship to look at the clothes--the argument

was irresistible, Horgan was ordered to pay forthwith: he ought to have

been made to pay another guinea for clothing a fellow-creature in rags

so abominable. And now came a case of trespass, in which there was

nothing interesting but the attitude of the poor woman who trespassed,

and who meekly acknowledged the fact. She stated, however, that she only

got over the wall as a short cut home: but the wall was eight feet high,

with a ditch too; and I fear there were cabbages or potatoes in the

enclosure. They fined her a sixpence, and she could not pay it, and went

to gaol for three days, where she and her baby, at any rate, will get a

meal.

Last on the list which I took down, came a man who will make the fortune

of the London attorney, that I hope is on his way hither. A rather old,

curly-headed man, with a sly smile perpetually lying on his face (the

reader may give whatever interpretation he please to the ‘lying’)--he

comes before the Court almost every fortnight, they say, with a

complaint of one kind or other. His present charge was against a man for

breaking into his courtyard, and wishing to take possession of the same.

It appeared, however, that he, the defendant, and another lived in a row

of houses--the plaintiff’s house was, however, first built, and as his

agreement specified that the plot of ground behind his house should be

his likewise, he chose to imagine that the plot of ground behind all the

three houses was his, and built his turf-stack against his neighbour’s

window. The magistrate of course pronounced against this ingenious

discoverer of wrongs, and he left the court still smiling and twisting

round his little wicked eyes, and declaring solemnly that he would put

in an _appale_. If one could have purchased a kicking at a moderate

price off that fellow’s back, it would have been a pleasant little piece

of self-indulgence, and I confess I longed to ask him the price of the

article.

[Illustration]

And so, after a few more such great cases, the court rose; and I had

leisure to make moral reflections, if so minded--and sighing to think

that cruelty and falsehood, selfishness and rapacity, dwell not in

crowds alone, but flourish all the world over: sweet flowers of human

nature, they bloom in all climates and seasons, and are just as much at

home in a hothouse in Thavies’ Inn, as on a lone mountain or a rocky

sea-coast in Ireland, where never a tree will grow!

We walked along this coast, after the judicial proceedings were over, to

see the country, and the new road that the Board of Works is

forming--such a wilderness of rocks I never saw! The district for miles

is covered with huge stones, shining white in patches of green, with the

Binabola on one side of the spectator, and the Atlantic running in and

out of a thousand little bays on the other. The country is very hilly,

or wavy rather, being a sort of ocean petrified; and the engineers have

hard work with these numerous abrupt little ascents and descents, which

they equalise as best they may, by blasting, cutting, filling cavities,

and levelling eminences. Some hundreds of men were employed at this

work, busy with their hand-barrows, their picking and boring. Their pay

is eightpence a day.

There is little to see in the town of Roundstone, except a Presbyterian

Chapel in process of erection, that seems big enough to accommodate the

Presbyterians of the county; and a sort of lay convent, being a

community of brothers of the third order of St. Francis. They are all

artisans and workmen, taking no vows, but living together in common, and

undergoing a certain religious regimen. Their work is said to be very

good, and all are employed upon some labour or other. On the front of

this unpretending little dwelling is an inscription with a great deal of

pretence, stating that the establishment was founded with the

approbation of ‘His Grace, the most Reverend the Lord Archbishop of

Tuam.’

The most Reverend Doctor MacHale is a clergyman of great learning,

talents, and honesty; but His Grace the Lord Archbishop of Tuam strikes

me as being no better than a mountebank; and some day I hope even his

own party will laugh this humbug down. It is bad enough to be awed by

big titles at all; but to respect sham ones! O stars and garters! We

shall have his Grace the Lord Chief-Rabbi next, or his Lordship the

Arch-Imaum!

CHAPTER XIX

CLIFDEN TO WESTPORT

On leaving Ballynahinch (with sincere regret, as any lonely tourist may

imagine, who is called upon to quit the hospitable friendliness of such

a place and society), my way lay back to Clifden again, and thence

through the Joyce country, by the Killery mountains, to Westport in

Mayo. The road, amounting in all to four-and-forty Irish miles, is

performed in cars, in different periods of time, according to your horse

and your luck. Sometimes, both being bad, the traveller is two days on

the road; sometimes a dozen hours will suffice for the journey--which

was the case with me, though I confess to having found the twelve hours

long enough. After leaving Clifden, the friendly look of the country

seemed to vanish; and, though picturesque enough, was a thought too wild

and dismal for eyes accustomed to admire a hop-garden in Kent, or a view

of rich folly meadows in Surrey, with a clump of trees and a comfortable

village spire. ‘Inglis,’ the Guide-book says, ‘compares the scenes to

the Norwegian Fiords.’ Well, the Norwegian Fiords must, in this case, be

very dismal sights; and I own that the wildness of Hampstead Heath (with

the imposing walls of Jack Straw’s Castle rising stern in the midst of

the green wilderness) are more to my taste than the general views of

yesterday.

We skirted by lake after lake, lying lonely in the midst of lonely

boglands, or bathing the sides of mountains robed in sombre rifle green.

Two or three men, and as many huts, you see in the course of each mile

perhaps, as toiling up the bleak hills, or jingling more rapidly down

them, you pass through this sad region. In the midst of the wilderness,

a chapel stands here and there, solitary, on the hillside; or a ruinous,

useless school-house, its pale walls contrasting with the general

surrounding hue of sombre purple and green. But though the country looks

more dismal than Connemara, it is clearly more fertile: we passed miles

of ground that evidently wanted but little cultivation to make them

profitable; and along the mountain-sides, in many places, and over a

great extent of Mr. Blake’s country especially, the hills were covered

with a thick, natural plantation, that may yield a little brushwood now,

but might in fifty years’ time bring thousands of pounds of revenue to

the descendants of the Blakes. This spectacle of a country going to

waste is enough to make the cheerfullest landscape look dismal; it gives

this wild district a woeful look indeed. The names of the lakes by which

we came I noted down in a pocket-book as we passed along; but the names

were Irish, the car was rattling, and the only names readable in the

catalogue is Letterfrack.

The little hamlet of Leenane is at twenty miles’ distance from Clifden;

and to arrive at it, you skirt the mountain along one side of a vast

pass, through which the ocean runs from Killery Bay, separating the

mountains of Mayo from the mountains of Galway. Nothing can be more

grand and gloomy than this pass; and as for the character of the

scenery, it must, as the Guide-book says, ‘be seen to be understood.’

Meanwhile, let the reader imagine huge, dark mountains in their

accustomed livery of purple and green, a dull grey sky above them, an

estuary silver-bright below: in the water lies a fisherman’s boat or

two; a pair of sea-gulls, undulating with the little waves of the water;

a pair of curlews wheeling overhead and piping on the wing; and on the

hillside a jingling car, with a cockney in it, oppressed by and yet

admiring all these things. Many a sketcher and tourist, as I found, has

visited this picturesque spot; for the hostess of the inn had stories of

English and American painters, and of illustrious book-writers, too,

travelling in the services of our Lords of Paternoster Row.

The landlord’s son of Clifden, a very intelligent young fellow, was here

exchanged for a new carman in the person of a raw Irisher of twenty

years of age, ‘having’ little English, and dressed in that very pair of

pantaloons which Humphrey Clinker was compelled to cast off some years

since, on account of the offence which they gave to Mrs. Tabitha

Bramble. This fellow, emerging from among the boats, went off to a field

to seek for the black horse, which the landlady assured me was quite

fresh and had not been out all day, and would carry me to Westport in

three hours. Meanwhile I was lodged in a neat little parlour, surveying

the Mayo side of the water, with some cultivated fields and a show of a

village at the spot where the estuary ends, and above them lodges and

fine dark plantations, climbing over the dark hills that lead to Lord

Sligo’s seat of Delphi. Presently, with a curtsey, came a young woman

who sold worsted socks at a shilling a pair, and whose portrait is here

given.

[Illustration]

It required no small pains to entice this rustic beauty to stand, while

a sketch should be made of her. Nor did any compliments or cajolements,

on my part or the landlady’s, bring about the matter; it was not until

money was offered that the lovely creature consented. I offered (such is

the ardour of the real artist) either to give her a sixpence, or to

purchase two pairs of her socks, if she would stand still for five

minutes. On which she said she would prefer selling the socks. Then she

stood still for a moment in the corner of the room; then she turned her

face towards the corner and the other part of her person towards the

artist, and exclaimed in that attitude, ‘I must have a shilling more.’

Then I told her to go to the deuce. Then she made a proposition,

involving the stockings and sixpence, which was similarly rejected; and

finally, the above splendid design was completed at the price first

stated.

However, as we went off, this timid little love barred the door for a

moment, and said that ‘I ought to give her another shilling; that a

gentleman would give her another shilling,’ and so on--she might have

trod the London streets for ten years, and not have been more impudent

and more greedy.

By this time the famous fresh horse was produced, and the driver, by

means of a wraprascal, had covered a great part of the rags of his lower

garment. He carried a whip and a stick, the former lying across his knee

ornamentally, the latter being for service, and as his feet were

directly under the horse’s tail, he had full command of the brute’s

back, and belaboured it for six hours without ceasing.

What little English the fellow knew, he uttered with a howl, roaring

into my ear answers, which, for the most part, were wrong, to various

questions put to him. The lad’s voice was so hideous, that I asked him

if he could sing; on which forthwith he began yelling the most horrible

Irish ditty, of which he told me the title, that I have forgotten. He

sang three stanzas, certainly keeping a kind of tune, and the latter

lines of each verse were in rhyme; but when I asked him the meaning of

the song, he only roared out its Irish title.

On questioning the driver further, it turned out that the horse,

warranted fresh, had already performed a journey of eighteen miles that

morning, and the consequence was, that I had full leisure to survey the

country through which we passed. There were more lakes, more mountains,

more bog, and an excellent road through this lonely district, though few

only of the human race enlivened it. At ten miles from Leenane, we

stopped at a roadside hut, where the driver pulled out a bag of oats,

and borrowing an iron pot from the good people, half filled it with

corn, which the poor, tired, galled, bewhipped black horse began eagerly

to devour. The young charioteer himself hinted very broadly his desire

for a glass of whisky, which was the only kind of refreshment that this

remote house of entertainment supplied.

In the various cabins I have entered, I have found talking a vain

matter; the people are suspicious of the stranger within their wretched

gates, and are shy, sly, and silent. I have, commonly, only been able to

get half-answers in reply to my questions, given in a manner that seemed

plainly to intimate that the visit was unwelcome. In this rude hostel,

however, the landlord was a little less reserved, offered a seat at the

turf-fire, where a painter might have had a good subject for his skill.

There was no chimney, but a hole in the roof, up which a small portion

of the smoke ascended (the rest preferring an egress by the door, or

else to remain in the apartment altogether); and this light from above

lighted up as rude a set of figures as ever were seen. There were two

brown women, with black eyes and locks, the one knitting stockings on

the floor, the other ‘racking’ (with that natural comb which five horny

fingers supply) the elf-locks of a dirty urchin between her knees. An

idle fellow was smoking his pipe by the fire; and by his side sate a

stranger, who had been made welcome to the shelter of the place--a

sickly well-looking man, whom I mistook for a deserter at first, for he

had evidently been a soldier.

But there was nothing so romantic as desertion in his history. He had

been in the dragoons, but his mother had purchased his discharge: he was

married, and had lived comfortably in Cork for some time, in the

glass-blowing business. Trade failing at Cork, he had gone to Belfast to

seek for work. There was no work at Belfast; and he was so far on his

road home again: sick, without a penny in the world, a hundred and fifty

miles to travel, and a starving wife and children to receive him at his

journey’s end. He had been thrown off a caravan that day, and had almost

broken his back in the fall. Here was a cheering story! I wonder where

he is now: how far has the poor starving lonely man advanced over that

weary desolate road, that in good health, and with a horse to carry me,

I thought it a penalty to cross? What would one do under such

circumstances, with solitude and hunger for present company, despair and

starvation at the end of the vista? There are a score of lonely lakes

along the road which he has to pass: would it be well to stop at one of

them, and fling into it the wretched load of cares which that poor

broken back has to carry? Would the world he would light on _then_ be

worse for him than that he is pining in now: Heaven help us: and on this

very day, throughout the three kingdoms, there are a million such

stories to be told! Who dare doubt of heaven after that? of a place

where there is at last a welcome to the heart-stricken prodigal and a

happy home to the wretched.

The crumbs of oats which fell from the mouth of the feasting Dives of a

horse were battled for outside the door by a dozen Lazaruses in the

shape of fowls, and a lanky young pig, who had been grunting in an old

chest in the cabin, or in a miserable recess of huddled rags and straw

which formed the couch of the family, presently came out and drove the

poultry away, picking up, with great accuracy, the solitary grains lying

about, and more than once trying to shove his snout into the corn-pot,

and share with the wretched old galled horse. Whether it was that he was

refreshed by his meal, or that the car-boy was invigorated by his glass

of whisky, or inflamed by the sight of eighteenpence--which munificent

sum was tendered to the soldier, I don’t know, but the remaining eight

miles of the journey were got over in much quicker time, although the

road was exceedingly bad and hilly for the greatest part of the way to

Westport. However, by running up the hills at the pony’s side, the

animal, fired with emulation, trotted up them too, descending them with

the proverbial surefootedness of his race, the car and he bouncing over

the rocks and stones at the rate of at least four Irish miles an hour.

At about five miles from Westport the cultivation became much more

frequent. There were plantations upon the hills, yellow corn and

potatoes in plenty in the fields, and houses thickly scattered. We had

the satisfaction, too, of knowing that future tourists will have an

excellent road to travel over in this district; for by the side of the

old road, which runs up and down a hundred little rocky steeps,

according to the ancient plan, you see a new one running for several

miles,--the latter way being conducted, not over the hills, but around

them, and, considering the circumstances of the country, extremely broad

and even. The car-boy presently yelled out ‘REEK, REEK!’ with a shriek

perfectly appalling. This howl was to signify that we were in sight of

that famous conical mountain so named, and from which St. Patrick, after

inveigling thither all the venomous reptiles in Ireland, precipitated

the whole noisome race into Clew Bay. The road also for several miles

was covered with people, who were flocking in hundreds from Westport

market, in cars and carts, on horseback single and double, and on foot.

And presently, from an eminence, I caught sight not only of a fine view,

but of the most beautiful view I ever saw in the world, I think; and to

enjoy the splendour of which I would travel a hundred miles in that car

with that very horse and driver. The sun was just about to set, and the

country round about and to the east was almost in twilight. The

mountains were tumbled about in a thousand fantastic ways, and swarming

with people. Trees, cornfields, cottages, made the scene indescribably

cheerful; noble woods stretched towards the sea, and, abutting on them,

between two highlands, lay the smoking town. Hard by was a large Gothic

building--it is but a poor-house; but it looked like a grand castle in

the grey evening--but the bay, and the Reek which sweeps down to the

sea, and a hundred islands in it, were dressed up in gold and purple and

crimson, with the whole cloudy west in a flame. Wonderful, wonderful!...

The valleys in the road to Leenane have lost all glimpses of the sun ere

this; and I suppose there is not a soul to be seen in the black

landscape, or by the shores of the ghastly lakes, where the poor

glass-blower from the whisky-shop is faintly travelling now.

CHAPTER XX

WESTPORT

Nature has done much for this pretty town of Westport; and after Nature,

the traveller ought to be thankful to Lord Sligo, who has done a great

deal too. In the first place, he has established one of the prettiest,

comfortablest inns in Ireland, in the best part of his little town,

stocking the cellars with good wines, filling the house with neat

furniture, and lending, it is said, the whole to a landlord gratis, on

condition that he should keep the house warm, and furnish the larder,

and entertain the traveller. Secondly, Lord Sligo has given up, for the

use of the townspeople, a beautiful little pleasure-ground about his

house. ‘You may depand upon it,’ said a Scotchman at the inn, ‘that

they’ve right of pathway through the groonds, and that the Marquess

couldn’t shut them oot.’ Which is a pretty fair specimen of charity in

this world: this kind world, that is always ready to encourage and

applaud good actions, and find good motives for the same. I wonder how

much would induce that Scotchman to allow poor people to walk in _his_

park, if he had one!

In the midst of this pleasure-ground, and surrounded by a thousand fine

trees, dressed up in all sorts of verdure, stands a pretty little

church; paths through the wood lead pleasantly down to the bay; and, as

we walked down to it on the day after our arrival, one of the green

fields was suddenly black with rooks, making a huge cawing and clanging

as they settled down to feed. The house, a handsome massive structure,

must command noble views of the bay, over which all the colours of

Titian were spread, as the sun set behind its purple islands.

Printer’s ink will not give these wonderful hues; and the reader will

make his picture at his leisure. That conical mountain to the left is

Croagh-Patrick; it is clothed in the most magnificent violet colour, and

a couple of round clouds were exploding, as it were, from the summit,

that part of them towards the sea lighted up with the most delicate gold

and rose colour. In the centre is the Clare Island, of which the edges

were bright cobalt, whilst the middle was lighted up with a brilliant

scarlet tinge, such as I would have laughed at in a picture, never

having seen in nature before, but looked at now with wonder and pleasure

until the hue disappeared as the sun went away. The islands in the bay

(which was of a gold colour) looked like so many dolphins and whales

basking there. The rich park-woods stretched down to the shore; and the

immediate foreground consisted of a yellow cornfield, whereon stood

innumerable shocks of corn, casting immense long purple shadows over the

stubble. The farmer, with some little ones about him, was superintending

his reapers; and I heard him say to a little girl, ‘Nory, I love you the

best of all my children!’ Presently, one of the reapers coming up, says,

‘It’s always the custom in these parts to ask strange gentlemen to give

something to drink the first day of reaping; and we’d like to drink your

honour’s health in a bowl of coffee.’ _O fortunatos nimium!_ The cockney

takes out sixpence, and thinks that he never passed such a pleasant

half-hour in all his life as in that cornfield, looking at that

wonderful bay.

A car which I had ordered presently joined me from the town, and going

down a green lane very like England, and across a causeway near a

building, where the carman proposed to show me ‘me Lard’s caffin that he

brought from Rome, and a mighty big caffin entirely,’ we came close upon

the water and the Port. There was a long, handsome pier (which, no

doubt, remains at this present minute), and one solitary cutter lying

alongside it; which may or may not be there now. There were about three

boats lying near the cutter, and six sailors, with long shadows, lolling

upon the pier. As for the warehouses, they are enormous; and might

accommodate, I should think, not only the trade of Westport, but of

Manchester too. There are huge streets of these houses, ten stories

high, with cranes, owners’ names, etc., marked Wine Stores, Flour

Stores, Bonded Tobacco Warehouses, and so forth. The six sailors that

were singing on the pier, no doubt are each admirals of as many fleets

of a hundred sail, that bring wines and tobacco from all quarters of the

world to fill these enormous warehouses. These dismal mausoleums, as

vast as pyramids, are the places where the dead trade of Westport lies

buried--a trade that, in its lifetime, probably was about as big as a

mouse. Nor is this the first nor the hundredth place to be seen in this

country, which sanguine builders have erected to accommodate an

imaginary commerce. Mill-owners over-mill themselves, merchants

over-warehouse themselves, squires over-castle themselves, little

tradesmen about Dublin and the cities over-villa and over-gig

themselves, and we hear sad tales about hereditary bondage and the

accursed tyranny of England.

Passing out of this dreary pseudo-commercial port, the road lay along

the beautiful shores of Clew Bay, adorned with many a rickety villa and

pleasure-house, from the cracked windows of which may be seen one of the

noblest views in the world. One of the villas the guide pointed out

with peculiar exultation; it is called by a grand name--Waterloo Park,

and has a lodge, and a gate, and a field of a couple of acres, and

belongs to a young gentleman who, being able to write Waterloo Park on

his card, succeeded in carrying off a young London heiress with a

hundred thousand pounds. The young couple had just arrived, and one of

them must have been rather astonished, no doubt, at the ‘Park.’ But what

will not love do? With love and a hundred thousand pounds, a cottage may

be made to look like a castle, and a park of two acres may be brought to

extend for a mile. The night began now to fall, wrapping up in a sober

grey livery the bay and mountains, which had just been so gorgeous in

sunset; and we turned our backs presently upon the bay, and the villas

with the cracked windows, and scaling a road of perpetual ups and downs,

went back to Westport. On the way was a pretty cemetery, lying on each

side of the road, with a ruined chapel for the ornament of one division,

a holy well for the other. In the holy well lives a sacred trout, whom

sick people come to consult, and who operates great cures in the

neighbourhood. If the patient sees the trout floating on his back, he

dies; if on his belly, he lives; or _vice versâ_. The little spot is

old, ivy-grown, and picturesque, and I can’t fancy a better place for a

pilgrim to kneel and say his beads at.

But considering the whole country goes to mass, and that the priests can

govern it as they will, teaching what shall be believed and what shall

be not credited, would it not be well for their reverences, in the year

eighteen hundred and forty-two, to discourage these absurd lies and

superstitions, and teach some simple truths to their flock? Leave such

figments to magazine-writers and ballad-makers; but, _corbleu!_ it makes

one indignant to think that people in the United Kingdom, where a press

is at work, and good sense is abroad, and clergymen are eager to educate

the people, should countenance such savage superstitions and silly,

grovelling heathenisms.

The chapel is before the inn where I resided, and on Sunday, from a very

early hour, the side of the street was thronged with worshippers, who

came to attend the various services. Nor are the Catholics the only

devout people of this remote district. There is a large Presbyterian

church very well attended, as was the Established Church service in the

pretty church in the park. There was no organ, but the clerk and a choir

of children sang hymns sweetly and truly; and a charity sermon being

preached for the benefit of the diocesan schools, I saw many pound-notes

in the plate, showing that the Protestants here were as ardent as their

Roman Catholic brethren. The sermon was extempore, as usual, according

to the prevailing taste here. The preacher by putting aside his

sermon-book, may gain in warmth, which we don’t want, but lose in

reason, which we do. If I were Defender of the Faith, I would issue an

order to all priests and deacons to take to the book again; weighing

well, before they uttered it, every word they proposed to say upon so

great a subject as that of religion; and mistrusting that dangerous

facility given by active jaws and a hot imagination. Reverend divines

have adopted this habit, and keep us for an hour listening to what might

well be told in ten minutes. They are wondrously fluent, considering all

things; and though I have heard many a sentence begun whereof the

speaker did not evidently know the conclusion, yet, somehow or other, he

has always managed to get through the paragraph without any hiatus,

except perhaps in the sense. And as far as I can remark, it is not calm,

plain, downright preachers who preserve the extemporaneous system for

the most part, but pompous orators, indulging in all the cheap graces of

rhetoric--exaggerating words and feelings to make effect, and dealing in

pious caricature. Church-goers become excited by this loud talk and

captivating manner, and can’t go back afterwards to a sober discourse

read out of a grave old sermon-book, appealing to the reason and the

gentle feelings, instead of to the passions and the imagination. Beware

of too much talk, O parsons! If a man is to give an account of every

idle word he utters, for what a number of such loud nothings, windy

emphatic tropes and metaphors, spoken, not for God’s glory but the

preacher’s, will many a cushion-thumper have to answer! And this rebuke

may properly find a place here, because the clergyman by whose discourse

it was elicited is not of the eloquent dramatic sort, but a gentleman,

it is said, remarkable for old-fashioned learning and quiet habits, that

do not seem to be to the taste of the many boisterous young clergy of

the present day.

The Catholic chapel was built before their graces the most reverend lord

archbishops came into fashion. It is large and gloomy, with one or two

attempts at ornament by way of pictures at the altars, and a good

inscription warning the incomer, in a few bold words, of the sacredness

of the place he stands in. Bare feet bore away thousands of people who

came to pray there; there were numbers of smart equipages for the richer

Protestant congregation. Strolling about the town in the balmy summer

evening, I heard the sweet notes of a hymn from the people in the

Presbyterian praying-house. Indeed, the country is full of piety, and a

warm, sincere, undoubting devotion.

On week-days the street before the chapel is scarcely less crowded than

on the Sabbath: but it is with women and children merely; for a stream

bordered with lime-trees runs pleasantly down the street, and hither

come innumerable girls to wash, while the children make dirt-pies and

look on. Wilkie was here some years since, and the place affords a great

deal of amusement to the painter of character. Sketching, _tant bien que

mal_, the bridge and the trees, and some of the nymphs engaged in the

stream, the writer became an object of no small attention; and at least

a score of dirty brats left their dirt-pies to look on, the bare-legged

washing-girls grinning from the water.

[Illustration]

One, a regular rustic beauty, whose face and figure would have made the

fortune of a frontispiece, seemed particularly amused and _agaçante;_

and I walked round to get a drawing of her fresh jolly face: but

directly I came near she pulled her gown over her head, and resolutely

turned round her back; and, as that part of her person did not seem to

differ in character from the backs of the rest of Europe, there is no

need of taking its likeness.

CHAPTER XXI

THE PATTERN AT CROAGH-PATRICK

On the pattern-day, however, the washerwomen and children had all

disappeared--nay, the stream, too, seemed to be gone out of town. There

was a report current, also, that on the occasion of the pattern, six

hundred teetotallers had sworn to revolt; and I fear that it was the

hope of witnessing this awful rebellion which induced me to stay a

couple of days at Westport. The pattern was commenced on the Sunday, but

the priests, going up to the mountain, took care that there should be no

sports nor dancing on that day; but that the people should only content

themselves with the performance of what are called religious duties.

Religious duties! Heaven help us! If these reverend gentlemen were

worshippers of Moloch or Baal, or any deity whose honour demanded

bloodshed, and savage rites, and degradation, and torture, one might

fancy them encouraging the people to the disgusting penances the poor

things here perform. But it’s too hard to think that in our days any

priests of any religion should be found superintending such a hideous

series of self-sacrifices as are, it appears, performed on this hill.

A friend who ascended the hill brought down the following account of it.

The ascent is a very steep and hard one, he says; but it was performed

in company of thousands of people who were making their way barefoot to

the several ‘stations’ upon the hill.

‘The first station consists of one heap of stones, round which they must

walk seven times, casting a stone on the heap each time, and before and

after every stone’s throw saying a prayer.

‘The second station is on the top of the mountain. Here there is a great

altar--a shapeless heap of stones. The poor wretches crawl _on their

knees_ into this place, say fifteen prayers, and after going round the

entire top of the mountain fifteen times, say fifteen prayers again.

‘The third station is near the bottom of the mountain at the further

side from Westport. It consists of three heaps. The penitents must go

seven times round these collectively, and seven times afterwards round

each individually, saying a prayer before and after each progress.’

My informant describes the people as coming away from this ‘frightful

exhibition, suffering severe pain, wounded and bleeding in the knees and

feet, and some of the women shrieking with the pain of their wounds.’

Fancy thousands of these bent upon their work, and priests standing by

to encourage them!--for shame, for shame! If all the popes, cardinals,

bishops, hermits, priests, and deacons that ever lived, were to come

forward and preach this as a truth--that to please God you must macerate

your body, that the sight of your agonies is welcome to Him, and that

your blood, groans, and degradation find favour in His eyes, I would not

believe them. Better have over a company of Fakeers at once, and set

the Suttee going.

Of these tortures, however, I had not the fortune to witness a sight;

for going towards the mountain for the first four miles, the only

conveyance I could find was half the pony of an honest sailor, who said,

when applied to, ‘I tell you what I do wid you: I give you a spell

about’; but as it turned out we were going different ways, this help was

but a small one. A car with a spare seat, however (there were hundreds

of others quite full, and scores of rattling country carts covered with

people, and thousands of bare legs trudging along the road)--a car with

a spare seat passed by at two miles from the Pattern, and that just time

to get comfortably wet through on arriving there. The whole mountain was

enveloped in mist; and we could nowhere see thirty yards before us. The

women walked forward, with their gowns over their heads; the men

sauntered on in the rain, with the utmost indifference to it. The car

presently came to a cottage, the court in front of which was black with

two hundred horses, and where as many drivers were jangling and bawling;

and here we were told to descend. You had to go over a wall and across a

brook, and behold the Pattern.

The pleasures of the poor people--for after the business on the mountain

came the dancing and love-making at its foot--was woefully spoiled by

the rain, which rendered dancing on the grass impossible; nor were the

tents big enough for that exercise. Indeed, the whole sight was as

dismal and half-savage a one as I have seen. There may have been fifty

of these tents squatted round a plain of the most brilliant green grass,

behind which the mist curtains seemed to rise immediately; for you could

not even see the mountain side beyond them. Here was a great crowd of

men and women, all ugly, as the fortune of the day would have it (for

the sagacious reader has, no doubt, remarked that there are ugly and

pretty days in life). Stalls were spread about, whereof the owners were

shrieking out the praises of their wares--great, coarse, damp-looking

bannocks of bread for the most part, or, mayhap, a dirty collection of

pigs’-feet, and such refreshments. Several of the booths professed to

belong to ‘confectioners’ from Westport or Castlebar, the confectionery

consisting of huge biscuits and doubtful-looking ginger-beer--ginger-ale

or gingeretta it is called in this country, by a fanciful people who

love the finest titles. Add to these, caldrons containing water for tay

at the doors of the booths, other pots full of masses of pale legs of

mutton (the owner ‘prodding,’ every now and then for a bit, and holding

it up and asking the passenger to buy). In the booths it was impossible

to stand upright, or to see much, on account of smoke. Men and women

were crowded in these rude tents, huddled together, and disappearing in

the darkness. Owners came bustling out to replenish the emptied

water-jugs, and landladies stood outside in the rain calling strenuously

upon all passers-by to enter. Here is a design taken from one of the

booths, presenting ingeniously an outside and an inside view of the same

place--an artifice seldom practised in pictures.

[Illustration]

Meanwhile, high up on the invisible mountain, the people were dragging

their bleeding knees from altar to altar, flinging stones, and muttering

some endless litanies, with the priests standing by. I think I was not

sorry that the rain, and the care of my precious health, prevented me

from mounting a severe hill to witness a sight that could only have

caused one to be shocked and ashamed that servants of God should

encourage it. The road home was very pleasant; everybody was wet

through, but everybody was happy, and by some miracle we were seven on

the car. There was the honest Englishman in the military cap, who sung

‘The sea, the hopen sea’s my ‘ome,’ although not any one of the company

called upon him for that air. Then the music was taken up by a

good-natured lass from Castlebar; then the Englishman again, ‘With

burnished brand and musketoon’; and there was no end of pushing

pinching, squeezing, and laughing. The Englishman, especially, had a

favourite yell, with which he saluted and astonished all cottages,

passengers, cars, that we met or overtook. Presently came prancing by

two dandies, who were especially frightened by the noise. ‘Thim’s two

tailors from Westport,’ said the carman, grinning with all his might.

‘Come, gat out of the way there, gat along!’ piped a small English voice

from above somewhere. I looked up, and saw a little creature perched on

the top of a tandem, which he was driving with the most knowing air--a

dreadful young hero, with a white hat, and a white face, and a blue

bird’s-eye neckcloth. He was five feet high, if an inch, an ensign, and

sixteen; and it was a great comfort to think, in case of danger or riot,

that one of his years and personal strength was at hand to give help.

‘Thim’s the afficers,’ said the carman, as the tandem wheeled by, a

small groom quivering on behind--and the carman spoke with the greatest

respect this time. Two days before, on arriving at Westport, I had seen

the same equipage at the door of the inn--where for a moment there

happened to be no waiter to receive me. So, shouldering a carpet-bag, I

walked into the inn-hall, and asked a gentleman standing there, where

was the coffee-room? It was the military tandem-driving youth, who with

much grace looked up in my face, and said calmly, _‘I dawnt knaw_.’ I

believe the little creature had just been dining in the very room--and

so present my best compliments to him.

The Guide-book will inform the traveller of many a beautiful spot which

lies in the neighbourhood of Westport, and which I had not the time to

visit; but I must not take leave of the excellent little inn without

speaking once more of its extreme comfort; nor of the place itself,

without another parting word regarding its beauty. It forms an event in

one’s life to have seen that place, so beautiful is it, and so unlike

all other beauties that I know of. Were such a bay lying upon English

shores it would be a world’s wonder: perhaps, if it were on the

Mediterranean, or the Baltic, English travellers would flock to it by

hundreds; why not come and see it in Ireland? Remote as the spot is,

Westport is only two days’ journey from London now, and lies in a

country far more strange to most travellers than France or Germany can

be.

CHAPTER XXII

FROM WESTPORT TO BALLINASLOE

The mail-coach took us next day by Castlebar and Tuam to Ballinasloe, a

journey of near eighty miles. The country is interspersed with

innumerable seats belonging to the Blakes, the Browns, and the

Frenches; and we passed many large domains belonging to bankrupt lords

and fugitive squires, with fine lodges, adorned with moss and battered

windows, and parks where, if the grass was growing on the roads, on the

other hand the trees had been weeded out of the grass. About these seats

and their owners the guard, an honest shrewd fellow, had all the gossip

to tell. This jolly guard himself was a ruin, it turned out; he told me

his grandfather was a man of large property; his father, he said, kept a

pack of hounds, and had spent everything by the time he, the guard, was

sixteen: so the lad made interest to get a mail-car to drive, whence he

had been promoted to the guard’s seat, and now for forty years had

occupied it, travelling eighty miles, and earning seven-and-twopence

every day of his life. He had been once ill, he said, for three days;

and if a man may be judged by ten hours’ talk with him, there are few

more shrewd, resolute, simple-minded men to be found on the outside of

any coaches or the inside of any houses in Ireland.

During the first five-and-twenty miles of the journey,--for the day was

very sunny and bright,--Croaghpatrick kept us company; and, seated with

your back to the horses, you could see, ‘on the left, that vast

aggregation of mountains which stretches southwards to the Bay of

Galway; on the right, that gigantic assemblage which sweeps in circular

outline northward to Killule.’ Somewhere amongst those hills the great

John Tuam was born, whose mansion and cathedral are to be seen in Tuam

town, but whose fame is spread everywhere. To arrive at Castlebar, we go

over the undulating valley which lies between the mountains of Joyce

country and Erris; and the first object which you see on entering the

town is a stately Gothic castle that stands at a short distance from it.

On the gate of the stately Gothic castle was written an inscription not

very hospitable: WITHOUT BEWARE, WITHIN AMEND;--just beneath which is an

iron crane of neat construction. The castle is the county gaol, and the

iron crane is the gallows of the district. The town seems neat and

lively; there is a fine church, a grand barracks (celebrated as the

residence of the young fellow with the bird’s-eye neckcloth), a club,

and a Whig and Tory newspaper. The road hence to Tuam is very pretty and

lively, from the number of country seats along the way, giving

comfortable shelter to more Blakes, Brownes, and Lynches.

In the cottages, the inhabitants looked healthy and rosy in their rags,

and the cots themselves in the sunshine almost comfortable. After a

couple of months in the country, the stranger’s eye grows somewhat

accustomed to the rags: they do not frighten him as at first: the

people who wear them look for the most part healthy enough; especially

the small children--those who can scarcely totter, and are sitting

shading their eyes at the door, and leaving the unfinished dirt-pie to

shout as the coach passes by--are as healthy a looking race as one will

often see. Nor can any one pass through the land without being touched

by the extreme love of children among the people: they swarm everywhere,

and the whole county rings with cries of affection towards the children,

with the songs of young ragged nurses dandling babies on their knees,

and warnings of mothers to Patsey to come out of the mud, or Norey to

get off the pig’s back.

At Tuam the coach stopped exactly for fourteen minutes and a half,

during which time those who wished might dine: but instead, I had the

pleasure of inspecting a very mouldy dirty town, and made my way to the

Catholic Cathedral--a very handsome edifice indeed; handsome without and

within, and of the Gothic sort. Over the door is a huge coat of arms

surmounted by a Cardinal’s hat--the arms of the See, no doubt, quartered

with John Tuam’s own patrimonial coat; and that was a frieze coat, from

all accounts, passably ragged at the elbows. Well, he must be a poor wag

who could sneer at an old coat because it was old and poor. But if a man

changes it for a tawdry gimcrack suit, bedizened with twopenny tinsel,

and struts about calling himself his Grace and my Lord, when may we

laugh if not then? There is something simple in the way in which these

good people belord their clergymen, and respect titles real or sham.

Take any Dublin paper,--a couple of columns of it are sure to be filled

with movements of the small great men of the world. Accounts from

Darrynane state that the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor is in good

health--his Lordship went out with his beagles yesterday; or His Grace

the Most Reverend the Lord Archbishop of Ballywhack, assisted by the

Right Reverend the Lord Bishops of Trincomalee and Hippopotamus,

assisted, etc.; or Colonel Tims, of Castle Tims, and lady, have quitted

the Shelburne Hotel, with a party for Kilballybathershins, where the

_august_[27] party propose to enjoy a few days’ shrimp-fishing,--and so

on. Our people are not witty and keen of perceiving the ridiculous, like

the Irish; but the bluntness and honesty of the English have well-nigh

kicked the fashionable humbug down; and except perhaps among footmen and

about Baker Street, this curiosity about the aristocracy is wearing fast

away. Have the Irish so much reason to respect their lords that they

should so chronicle all their movements; and not only admire real

lords, but make sham ones of their own to admire _them_?

There is no object of special mark upon the road from Tuam to

Ballinasloe, the country being flat for the most part, and the noble

Galway and Mayo mountains having disappeared at length, until you come

to a glimpse of Old England in the pretty village of Ahascragh. An old

oak-tree grows in the neat street, the houses are as trim and white as

eye can desire, and about the church and the town are handsome

plantations, forming on the whole such a picture of comfort and plenty

as is rarely to be seen in the part of Ireland I have traversed. All

these wonders have been wrought by the activity of an excellent resident

agent. There was a countryman on the coach deploring that, through

family circumstances, this gentleman should have been dispossessed of

his agency, and declaring that the village had already begun to

deteriorate in consequence. The marks of such decay were not, however,

visible, at least to a newcomer; and, being reminded of it, I indulged

in many patriotic longings for England: as every Englishman does when he

is travelling out of the country which he is always so willing to quit.

That a place should instantly begin to deteriorate because a certain

individual was removed from it--that cottagers should become thriftless,

and houses dirty, and house-windows cracked,--all these are points which

public economists may ruminate over, and can’t fail to give the

carelessest traveller much matter for painful reflection. How is it that

the presence of one man more or less should affect a set of people come

to years of manhood, and knowing that they have their duty to do? Why

should a man at Ahascragh let his home go to ruin, and stuff his windows

with ragged breeches instead of glass, because Mr. Smith is agent in

place of Mr. Jones? Is he a child, that won’t work unless the

schoolmaster be at hand? or are we to suppose, with the Repealers, that

the cause of all this degradation and misery is the intolerable tyranny

of the sister country, and the pain which poor Ireland has been made to

endure? This is very well at the Corn Exchange, and among patriots after

dinner; but, after all, granting the grievance of the franchise (though

it may not be unfair to presume that a man who has not strength of mind

enough to mend his own breeches or his own windows will always be the

tool of one party or another), there is no Inquisition set up in the

country; the law tries to defend the people as much as they will allow;

the odious tithe has even been whisked off from their shoulders to the

landlord’s; they may live pretty much as they like. Is it not too

monstrous to howl about English tyranny and suffering Ireland, and call

for a Stephen’s Green Parliament to make the country quiet and the

people industrious? The people are not politically worse treated than

their neighbours in England. The priests and the landlords, if they

chose to co-operate, might do more for the country now than any kings or

laws could. What you want here is not a Catholic or Protestant party,

but an Irish party.

In the midst of these reflections, and by what the reader will doubtless

think a blessed interruption, we came in sight of the town of

Ballinasloe and its ‘gash-lamps,’ which a fellow-passenger did not fail

to point out with admiration. The road-menders, however, did not appear

to think that light was by any means necessary: for, having been

occupied, in the morning, in digging a fine hole upon the highway,

previous to some alterations to be effected there, they had left their

work at sundown, without any lamp to warn coming travellers of the

hole--which we only escaped by a wonder. The papers have much such

another story. In the Galway and Ballinasloe coach a horse on the road

suddenly fell down and died; the coachman drove his coach

unicorn-fashion into town; and, as for the dead horse, of course he left

it on the road at the place where it fell, and where another coach

coming up was upset over it, bones broken, passengers maimed, coach

smashed. By Heavens! the tyranny of England is unendurable; and I have

no doubt it had a hand in upsetting that coach.

CHAPTER XXIII

BALLINASLOE TO DUBLIN

During the cattle-fair the celebrated town of Ballinasloe is thronged

with farmers from all parts of the kingdom--the cattle being

picturesquely exhibited in the park of the noble proprietor of the town,

Lord Clancarty. As it was not fair-time the town did not seem

particularly busy, nor was there much to remark in it, except a church,

and a magnificent lunatic asylum, that lies outside the town on the

Dublin road, and is as handsome and stately as a palace. I think the

beggars were more plenteous and more loathsome here than almost

anywhere; to one hideous wretch I was obliged to give money to go away,

which he did for a moment, only to obtrude his horrible face directly

afterwards, half eaten away with disease. ‘A penny for the sake of poor

little Mery,’ said another woman, who had a baby sleeping on her

withered breast; and how can any one who has a little Mery at home

resist such an appeal? ‘Pity the poor blind man!’ roared a respectably

dressed grenadier of a fellow. I told him to go to the gentleman with a

red neckcloth and fur cap (a young buck from Trinity College)--to whom

the blind man with much simplicity immediately stepped over, and as for

the rest of the beggars, what pen or pencil could describe their hideous

leering flattery, their cringing swindling humour!

The inn, like the town, being made to accommodate the periodical crowds

of visitors who attended the fair, presented in their absence rather a

faded and desolate look; and, in spite of the live-stock for which the

place is famous, the only portion of their produce which I could get to

my share, after twelve hours’ fasting and an hour’s bell-ringing and

scolding, was one very lean mutton-chop and one very small damp kidney,

brought in by an old tottering waiter to a table spread in a huge black

coffee-room, dimly lighted by one little jet of gas.

As this only served very faintly to light up the above banquet, the

waiter, upon remonstrance, proceeded to light the other _bec_; but the

lamp was sulky, and upon this attempt to force it, as it were, refused

to act altogether, and went out. The big room was then accommodated with

a couple of yellow mutton-candles. There was a neat, handsome, correct

young English officer warming his slippers at the fire, and opposite him

sate a worthy gentleman, with a glass of mingled ‘materials,’

discoursing to him in a very friendly and confidential way.

As I don’t know the gentleman’s name, and as it is not at all

improbable, from the situation in which he was, that he has quite

forgotten the night’s conversation, I hope there will be no breach of

confidence in recalling some part of it. The speaker was dressed in deep

black, worn, however, with that _dégagé_ air peculiar to the votaries of

Bacchus, or that nameless god, offspring of Bacchus and Ceres, who may

have invented the noble liquor called whisky. It was fine to see the

easy folds in which his neckcloth confined a shirt-collar moist with the

generous drops that trickled from the chin above,--its little percentage

upon the punch. There was a fine dashing black satin waistcoat that

called for its share, and generously disdained to be buttoned. I think

this is the only specimen I have seen yet of the personage still so

frequently described in the Irish novels--the careless drinking

‘squire--the Irish Will Whimble.

‘Sir,’ says he, ‘as I was telling you before this gentleman came in

(from Westport, I preshume, sir, by the mail; and ‘my service to you!’),

the butchers in Chume (Tuam)--where I live, and shall be happy to see

you and give you a shakedown, a cut of mutton, and the use of as good a

brace of pointers as ever you shot over--the butchers say to me,

whenever I look in at their shops and ask for a joint of meat--they say:

“Take down that quarther o’ mutton, boy; IT’S NO USE WEIGHING IT for Mr.

Bodkin. He can tell with an eye what’s the weight of it to an ounce!”

And so, sir, I can; and I’d make a bet to go into any market in Dublin,

Tchume, Ballinasloe, where you please, and just by looking at the meat

decide its weight.’

At the pause, during which the gentleman here designated Bodkin drank

off his materials, the young officer said gravely, that this was a very

rare and valuable accomplishment, and thanked him for the invitation to

Tchume.

The honest gentleman proceeded with his personal memoirs; and (with a

charming modesty that authenticated his tale, while it interested his

hearers for the teller) he called for a fresh tumbler, and began

discoursing about horses. ‘Them, I don’t know,’ says he, confessing the

fact at once; ‘or, if I do, I’ve been always so unlucky with them that

it’s as good as if I didn’t.

‘To give you an idea of my ill fortune: Me brother-‘n-law Burke once

sent me three colts of his to sell at this very fair of Ballinasloe,

and, for all I could do I could only get a bid for one of ‘em, and sold

her for sixteen pound. And d’ye know what that mare was, sir?’ says Mr.

Bodkin, giving a thump that made the spoon jump out of the punch-glass

for fright. ‘D’ye know who she was? she was Water-Wagtail,

sir,--WATER-WAGTAIL! She won fourteen cups and plates in Ireland before

she went to Liverpool; and you know what she did _there_?’ (We said,

‘Oh! of course.’) ‘Well, sir, the man who bought her from me sold her

for four hunder’ guineas; and in England she fetched eight hunder’

pounds.

‘Another of them very horses, gentlemen (Tim, some hot

wather--screeching hot, you divil--and a sthroke of the limin)--another

of them horses that I was refused fifteen pound for, me brother-in-law

sould to Sir Rufford Bufford for a hunder’-and-fifty guineas. Wasn’t

_that_ luck?

‘Well, sir, Sir Rufford gives Burke his bill at six months, and don’t

pay it when it come jue. A pretty pickle Tom Burke was in, as I leave ye

to fancy, for he’d paid away the bill, which he thought as good as

goold; and sure it ought to be, for Sir Rufford had come of age since

the bill was drawn, and before it was due, and, as I needn’t tell you,

had slipped into a very handsome property.

‘On the protest of the bill, Burke goes in a fury to Gresham’s in

Sackville Street, where the baronet was living, and (would ye believe

it?) the latter says he doesn’t intend to meet the bill, on the score

that he was a minor when he gave it. On which Burke was in such a rage

that he took a horsewhip and vowed he’d beat the baronet to a jelly, and

post him in every club in Dublin, and publish every circumstance of the

transaction,’

‘It _does_ seem rather a queer one,’ says one of Mr. Bodkin’s hearers.

‘Queer indeed: but that’s not it, you see; for Sir Rufford is as

honourable a man as ever lived; and after the quarrel he paid Burke his

money, and they’ve been warm friends ever since. But what I want to show

ye is our infernal luck. _Three months before, Sir Rufford had sold that

very horse for three hunder guineas_.’

The worthy gentleman had just ordered in a fresh tumbler of his

favourite liquor, when we wished him good-night, and slept by no means

the worse, because the bedroom candle was carried by one of the

prettiest young chambermaids possible.

Next morning, surrounded by a crowd of beggars more filthy, hideous, and

importunate than any I think in the most favoured towns of the south, we

set off, a coach-load, for Dublin. A clergyman, a guard, a Scotch

farmer, a butcher, a bookseller’s hack, a lad bound for Maynooth and

another for Trinity, made a varied pleasant party enough, where each,

according to his lights, had something to say.

I have seldom seen a more dismal and uninteresting road than that which

we now took, and which brought us through the ‘old, inconvenient,

ill-built, and ugly town of Athlone.’ The painter would find here,

however, some good subjects for his sketch-book, in spite of the

commination of the Guide-book. Here, too, great improvements are taking

place for the Shannon navigation, which will render the town not so

inconvenient as at present it is stated to be; and hard by lies a little

village that is known and loved by all the world where English is

spoken. It is called Lishoy, but its real name is Auburn, and it gave

birth to one Noll Goldsmith, whom Mr. Boswell was in the habit of

despising very heartily. At the Quaker town of Moate, the butcher and

the farmer dropped off, the clergyman went inside, and their places were

filled by four Maynoothians, whose vacation was just at an end. One of

them, a freshman, was inside the coach with the clergyman, and told him,

with rather a long face, of the dismal discipline of his college. They

are not allowed to quit the gates (except on general walks); they are

expelled if they read a newspaper; and they begin term with ‘a retreat’

of a week, which time they are made to devote to silence, and, as it is

supposed, to devotion and meditation.

I must say the young fellows drank plenty of whisky on the road to

prepare them for their year’s abstinence; and, when at length arrived in

the miserable village of Maynooth, determined not to go into college

that night, but to devote the evening to ‘a lark.’ They were simple,

kind-hearted young men, sons of farmers or tradesmen seemingly; and, as

is always the case here, except among some of the gentry, very

gentlemanlike, and pleasing in manners. Their talk was of this companion

and that; how one was in rhetoric, and another in logic, and a third had

got his curacy. Wait for a while; and with the happy system pursued

within the walls of their college, those smiling good-humoured faces

will come out with a scowl, and downcast eyes that seem afraid to look

the world in the face. When the time comes for them to take leave of

yonder dismal-looking barracks, they will be men no longer, but bound

over to the Church, body and soul; their free thoughts chained down and

kept in darkness, their honest affections mutilated: well, I hope they

will be happy to-night at any rate, and talk and laugh to their hearts’

content. The poor freshman, whose big chest is carried off by the porter

yonder to the inn, has but twelve hours more of hearty, natural human

life. To-morrow, they will begin their work upon him; cramping his mind,

and bitting his tongue, and firing and cutting at his heart,--breaking

him to pull the Church chariot. Ah! why didn’t he stop at home, and dig

potatoes and get children?

Part of the drive from Maynooth to Dublin is exceedingly pretty: you are

carried through Leixlip, Lucan, Chapelizod, and by scores of parks and

villas, until the gas-lamps come in sight. Was there ever a cockney that

was not glad to see them; and did not prefer the sight of them, in his

heart, to the best lake or mountain ever invented? Pat the waiter comes

jumping down to the car and says, ‘Welcome back, sir!’ and bustles the

trunk into the queer little bedroom, with all the cordial hospitality

imaginable.

CHAPTER XXIV

TWO DAYS IN WICKLOW

The little tour we have just been taking has been performed, not only by

myriads of the ‘car-drivingest, tay-drinking, say-bathingest people in

the world,’ the inhabitants of the city of Dublin, but also by all the

tourists who have come to discover this country for the benefit of the

English nation. ‘Look here!’ says the ragged bearded genius of a guide

at the Seven Churches. ‘This is the spot which Mr. Henry Inglis

particularly admired, and said it was exactly like Norway. Many’s the

song I’ve heard Mr. Sam Lover sing here--a pleasant gentleman entirely.

Have you seen my picture that’s taken off in Mrs. Hall’s book? All the

strangers know me by it, though it makes me much cleverer than I am.’

Similar tales has he of Mr. Barrow, and the trans-atlantic Willis, and

of Crofton Croker, who has been everywhere.

The guide’s remarks concerning the works of these gentlemen inspired me,

I must confess, with considerable disgust and jealousy. A plague take

them! What remains for me to discover after the gallant adventurers in

the service of Paternoster Row have examined every rock, lake, and ruin

of the district, exhausted it of all its legends, and ‘invented new’

most likely, as their daring genius prompted? Hence it follows that the

description of the two days’ jaunt must of necessity be short; lest

persons who have read former accounts should be led to refer to the

same, and make comparisons which might possibly be unfavourable to the

present humble pages.

Is there anything new to be said regarding the journey? In the first

place, there’s the railroad: it’s no longer than the railroad to

Greenwich, to be sure, and almost as well known: but has it been _done_?

that’s the question; or has anybody discovered the dandies on the

railroad?

After wondering at the beggars and carmen of Dublin, the stranger can’t

help admiring another vast and numerous class of inhabitants of the

city--namely, the dandies. Such a number of smartly-dressed young

fellows, I don’t think any town possesses: no, not Paris, where the

young shopmen, with spurs and stays, may be remarked strutting abroad on

fête-days; nor London, where on Sundays, in the Park, you see thousands

of this cheap kind of aristocracy parading--nor Liverpool, famous for

the breed of commercial dandies, desk and counter Dorsays and cotton and

sugar-barrel Brummels, and whom one remarks pushing on to business with

a brisk determined air--all the above races are only to be encountered

on holidays, except by those persons whose affairs take them to shops,

docks, or counting-houses, where these fascinating young fellows labour

during the week.

But the Dublin breed of dandies is quite distinct from those of the

various cities above-named, and altogether superior; for they appear

every day, and all day long, not once a week merely, and have an

original and splendid character and appearance of their own, very hard

to describe, though no doubt every traveller, as well as myself, has

admired and observed it. They assume a sort of military and ferocious

look, not observable in other cheap dandies, except in Paris perhaps now

and then; and are to be remarked not so much for the splendour of their

ornaments as for the profusion of them. Thus, for instance, a hat which

is worn straight over the two eyes costs very likely more than one which

hangs upon one ear; a great oily bush of hair to balance the hat

(otherwise the head no doubt would fall hopelessly on one side) is even

more economical than a crop which requires the barber’s scissors

ofttimes; also a tuft on the chin may be had at a small expense of

bear’s-grease by persons of a proper age; and although big pins are the

fashion, I am bound to say I have never seen so many or so big as here.

Large agate marbles or ‘taws,’ globes terrestrial and celestial,

pawnbrokers’ balls,--I cannot find comparisons large enough for these

wonderful ornaments of the person. Canes also should be mentioned, which

are sold very splendid, with gold or silver heads, for a shilling on the

quays; and the dandy not uncommonly finishes off with a horn

quizzing-glass, which being stuck in one eye, contracts the brows and

gives a fierce determined look to the whole countenance.

In idleness at least these young men can compete with the greatest

lords; and the wonder is, how the city can support so many of them, or

they themselves; how they manage to spend their time; who gives them

money to ride hacks in the ‘Phaynix’ on fields and race days; to have

boats at Kingstown during the summer; and to be crowding the

railway-coaches all the day long. Cars go whirling about all day,

bearing squads of them. You see them sauntering at all the

railway-stations in vast numbers, and jumping out of the carriages as

the trains come up, and greeting other dandies with that rich large

brogue which some actor ought to make known to the English public: it

being the biggest, richest, and coarsest of all the brogues of Ireland.

I think these dandies are the chief objects which arrest the stranger’s

attention as he travels on the Kingstown railroad, and I have always

been so much occupied in watching and wondering at them as scarcely to

have leisure to look at anything else during the pretty little ride of

twenty minutes, so beloved by every Dublin cockney. The waters of the

bay wash in many places the piers on which the railway is built, and you

see the calm stretch of water beyond, and the big purple hill of Howth,

and the lighthouses, and the jetties, and the shipping. Yesterday was a

boat-race (I don’t know how many scores of such take place during the

season), and you may be sure there were tens of thousands of the

dandies to look on. There had been boat-races the two days previous:

before that, had been a field day--before that, three days of garrison

races--to-day, to-morrow, and the day after, there are races at Howth.

There seems some sameness in the sports, but everybody goes; everybody

is never tired; and then I suppose comes the punch-party, and the song

in the evening--the same old pleasures, and the same old songs the next

day, and so on to the end. As for the boat-race, I saw two little boats

in the distance tugging away for the dear life--the beach and piers

swarming with spectators, the bay full of small yachts, and innumerable

row-boats, and in the midst of the assemblage a convict-ship lying ready

for sail, with a black mass of poor wretches on her deck, who too were

eager for pleasure.

Who is not, in this country? Walking away from the pier and King

George’s column, you arrive upon rows after rows of pleasure-houses,

whither all Dublin flocks during the summer time; for every one must

have his sea-bathing, and they say that the country houses to the west

of the town are to be empty, or had for very small prices; while for

those on the coast, especially towards Kingstown, there is the readiest

sale at large prices. I have paid frequent visits to one, of which the

rent is as great as that of a tolerable London house; and there seems to

be others suited to all purses--for instance, there are long lines of

two-roomed houses, stretching far back and away from the sea,

accommodating, doubtless, small commercial men, or small families, or

some of those travelling dandies we have just been talking about, and

whose costume is so cheap and so splendid.

A two-horse car, which will accommodate twelve, or will condescend to

receive twenty passengers, starts from the railway-station for Bray,

running along the coast for the chief part of the journey, though you

have but few views of the sea, on account of intervening woods and

hills. The whole of this country is covered with handsome villas and

their gardens and pleasure-grounds. There are round many of the houses

parks of some extent, and always of considerable beauty, among the trees

of which the road winds. New churches are likewise to be seen in various

places; built like the poorhouses, that are likewise everywhere

springing up, pretty much upon one plan--a sort of bastard or Vauxhall

Gothic--resembling no architecture of any age previous to that when

Horace Walpole invented the Castle of Otranto and the other monstrosity

upon Strawberry Hill, though it must be confessed that those on the Bray

line are by no means so imaginative. Well, what matters, say you, that

the churches be ugly, if the truth is preached within? Is it not fair,

however, to say that Beauty is the truth too, of its kind? and why

should it not be cultivated as well as other truth? Why build these

hideous barbaric temples, when at the expense of a little study and

taste, beautiful structures might be raised?

After leaving Bray, with its pleasant bay, and pleasant river, and

pleasant inn, the little Wicklow tour may be said to commence properly;

and, as that romantic and beautiful country has been described many

times in familiar terms, our only chance is to speak thereof in romantic

and beautiful language, such as no other writer can possibly have

employed.

We rang at the gate of the steward’s lodge, and said, ‘Grant us a pass,

we pray, to see the parks of Powerscourt, and to behold the brown deer

upon the grass, and the cool shadows under the whispering trees.’

But the steward’s son answered, ‘You may not see the parks of

Powerscourt, for the lord of the castle comes home, and we expect him

daily.’ So, wondering at this reply, but not understanding the same, we

took leave of the son of the steward, and said, ‘No doubt Powerscourt is

not fit to see. Have we not seen parks in England, my brother, and shall

we break our hearts that this Irish one hath its gates closed to us?’

Then the car-boy said, ‘My lords, the park is shut, but the waterfall

runs for every man; will it please you see the waterfall?’ ‘Boy,’ we

replied, ‘we have seen many waterfalls; nevertheless, lead on!’ and the

boy took his pipe out of his mouth, and belaboured the ribs of his

beast.

And the horse made believe, as it were, to trot, and jolted the ardent

travellers; and we passed the green trees of Tinnehinch, which the

grateful Irish nation bought and consecrated to the race of GRATTAN; and

we said, ‘What nation will spend fifty thousand pounds for our benefit?’

and we wished we might get it; and we passed on. The birds were,

meanwhile, chanting concerts in the woods; and the sun was

double-gilding the golden corn.

And we came to a hill, which was steep and long of descent; and the

car-boy said, ‘My lords, I may never descend this hill with safety to

your honours’ bones: for my horse is not sure of foot, and loves to

kneel in the highway; descend therefore, and I will await your return

here on the top of the hill.’

So we descended, and one grumbled greatly; but the other said, ‘Sir, be

of good heart! the way is pleasant, and the footman will not weary as he

travels it’; and we went through the swinging gates of a park, where the

harvestmen sate at their potatoes--a mealy meal.

The way was not short, as the companion said, but still it was a

pleasant way to walk. Green stretches of grass were there, and a forest

nigh at hand. It was but September; yet the autumn had already begun to

turn the green ones into red; and the ferns that were waving underneath

the trees were reddened and fading too. And as Dr. Jones’s boys of a

Saturday disport in the meadows after school-hours, so did the little

clouds run races over the waving grass. And as grave ushers who look on

smiling at the sports of these little ones, so stood the old trees

around the green, whispering and nodding to one another.

Purple mountains rose before us in front, and we began presently to hear

a noise and roaring afar off--not a fierce roaring, but one deep and

calm, like to the respiration of the great sea, as he lies basking on

the sands in the sunshine.

And we came soon to a little hillock of green, which was standing before

a huge mountain of purple black, and there were white clouds over the

mountains, and some trees waving on the hillock, and between the trunks

of them we saw the waters of the waterfall descending; and there was a

snob on a rock, who stood and examined the same.

[Illustration]

Then we approached the water, passing the clump of oak-trees. The waters

were white, and the cliffs which they varnished were purple. But those

round about were grey, tall, and gay with blue shadows, and ferns,

heath, and rusty-coloured funguses sprouting here and there in the same.

But in the ravine where the waters fell, roaring, as it were, with the

fall, the rocks were dark, and the foam of the cataract was of a yellow

colour. And we stood, and were silent, and wondered. And still the trees

continued to wave, and the waters to roar and tumble, and the sun to

shine, and the fresh wind to blow.

And we stood and looked: and said in our hearts it was beautiful, and

bethought us how shall all this be set down in types and ink? (for our

trade is to write books and sell the same--a chapter for a guinea, a

line for a penny); and the waterfall roared in answer: ‘For shame, O

vain man, think not of thy books and of thy pence now; but look on, and

wonder, and be silent! Can types or ink describe my beauty, though aided

by thy small wit? I am made for thee to praise and wonder at: be

content, and cherish thy wonder. It is enough that thou hast seen a

great thing: is it needful that thou shouldst prate of all thou hast

seen?’

So we came away silently, and walked through the park without looking

back. And there was a man at the gate, who opened it and seemed to say,

‘Give me a little sixpence.’ But we gave nothing, and walked up the

hill, which was sore to climb; and on the summit found the car-boy, who

was lolling on his cushions and smoking, as happy as a lord.

Quitting the waterfall of Powerscourt (the grand style in which it has

been described was adopted in order that the reader, who has probably

read other descriptions of the spot, might have at least _something_ new

in this account of it), we speedily left behind us the rich and wooded

tract of country about Powerscourt, and came to a bleak tract, which,

perhaps by way of contrast to so much natural wealth, is not unpleasing,

and began ascending what is very properly called the Long Hill. Here you

see, in the midst of the loneliness, a grim-looking barrack, that was

erected when, after the Rebellion, it was necessary for some time to

occupy this most rebellious country; and a church, looking equally

dismal, a lean-looking, sham-Gothic building, in the midst of this green

desert. The road to Luggala, whither we were bound, turns off the Long

Hill, up another hill, which seems still longer and steeper, inasmuch as

it was ascended perforce on foot, and over lonely, boggy moorlands,

enlivened by a huge grey boulder plumped here and there, and come, one

wonders how, to the spot. Close to this hill of Slieve-Buck is marked in

the maps a district called ‘the uninhabited country,’ and these stones

probably fell at a period of time when not only this district, but all

the world, was uninhabited,--and in some convulsion of the neighbouring

mountains, this and other enormous rocks were cast abroad.

From behind one of them, or out of the ground somehow, as we went up the

hill, sprang little ragged guides, who are always lurking about in

search of stray pence from tourists; and we had three or four of such at

our back by the time we were at the top of the hill. Almost the first

sight we saw was a smart coach-and-four, with a loving wedding party

within, and a genteel valet and lady’s-maid without. I wondered, had

they been burying their modest loves in the uninhabited district? But

presently, from the top of the hill, I saw the place on which their

honeymoon had been passed; nor could any pair of lovers, nor a pious

hermit, bent on retirement from the world, have selected a more

sequestered spot.

Standing by a big shining granite stone on the hilltop, we looked

immediately down upon Lough Tay--a little round lake of half a mile in

length, which lay beneath us as black as a pool of ink--a high,

crumbling, white-sided mountain, falling abruptly into it on the side

opposite to us, with a huge ruin of shattered rocks at its base.

Northwards, we could see between mountains a portion of the neighbouring

lake of Lough Dan, which, too, was dark, though the Annamoe river, which

connects the two lakes, lay coursing through the greenest possible

flats, and shining as bright as silver. Brilliant green shores, too,

come gently down to the southern side of Lough Tay; through these runs

another river, with a small rapid or fall, which makes a music for the

lake; and here, amidst beautiful woods, lies a villa, where the four

horses, the groom and valet, the postillions, and the young couple had,

no doubt, been hiding themselves.

Hereabouts, the owner of the villa, Mr. Latouche, has a great grazing

establishment; and some herd-boys, no doubt seeing strangers on the

hill, thought proper that the cattle should stray that way, that they

might drive them back again, and parenthetically ask the travellers for

money,--everybody asks travellers for money, as it seems. Next day,

admiring in a labourer’s arms a little child--his master’s son, who

could not speak--the labourer, his he-nurse, spoke for him, and demanded

a little sixpence to buy the child apples. One grows not a little

callous to this sort of beggary; and the only one of our numerous young

guides who got a reward was the raggedest of them. He and his companions

had just come from school, he said,--not a Government school, but a

private one, where they paid. I asked how much,--‘Was it a penny a

week?’ ‘No; not a penny a week, but so much at the end of the year.’

‘Was it a barrel of meal, or a few stone of potatoes, or something of

that sort?’ ‘Yes; something of that sort.’

The something must, however, have been a very small something on the

poor lad’s part. He was one of four young ones, who lived with their

mother, a widow. He had no work; he could get no work; nobody had work.

His mother had a cabin with no land--not a perch of land, no

potatoes--nothing but the cabin. How did they live?--the mother knitted

stockings. I asked, had she any stockings at home?--the boy said, ‘No.’

How did he live?--he lived how he could; and we gave him threepence,

with which, in delight, he went bounding off to the poor mother.

Gracious heavens! what a history to hear, told by a child looking quite

cheerful as he told it, and as if the story was quite a common one. And

a common one, too, it is; and God forgive us!

Here is another, and of a similar low kind, but rather pleasanter. We

asked the car-boy how much he earned. He said, ‘Seven shillings a week,

and his chances’--which in the summer season, from the number of

tourists who are jolted in his car, must be tolerably good--eight or

nine shillings a week more, probably. But he said, in winter his master

did not hire him for the car; and he was obliged to look for work

elsewhere: as for saving, he never had saved a shilling in his life.

We asked him, was he married? and he said, No, but he was _as good as

married;_ for he had an old mother and four little brothers to keep, and

six mouths to feed, and to dress himself decent to drive the gentlemen.

Was not the ‘as good as married’ a pretty expression? and might not some

of what are called their betters learn a little good from these simple

poor creatures? There’s many a young fellow who sets up in the world

would think it rather hard to have four brothers to support; and I have

heard more than one genteel Christian pining over five hundred a year. A

few such may read this, perhaps: let them think of the Irish widow with

the four children and _nothing_, and at least be more contented with

their port and sherry and their leg of mutton.

This brings us at once to the subject of dinner and the little village,

Roundwood, which was reached by this time, lying a few miles off from

the lakes, and reached by a road not particularly remarkable for any

picturesqueness in beauty, though you pass through a simple pleasing

landscape, always agreeable as a repose, I think, after viewing a sight

so beautiful as those mountain lakes we have just quitted. All the hills

up which we had panted had imparted a fierce sensation of hunger; and it

was nobly decreed that we should stop in the middle of the street of

Roundwood, impartially between the two hotels, and solemnly decide upon

a resting-place after having inspected the larders and bedrooms of each.

And here, as an impartial writer, I must say, that the hotel of Mr.

Wheatley possesses attractions which few men can resist, in the shape of

two very handsome young ladies, his daughters; whose faces, were they

but painted on his signboard, instead of the mysterious piece which

ornaments it, would infallibly draw tourists into the house, thereby

giving the opposition inn of Murphy not the least chance of custom.

A landlord’s daughters in England, inhabiting a little country inn,

would be apt to lay the cloth for the traveller, and their respected

father would bring in the first dish of the dinner; but this arrangement

is never known in Ireland; we scarcely ever see the cheering countenance

of my landlord. And as for the young ladies of Roundwood, I am bound to

say that no young persons in Baker Street could be more genteel; and

that our bill, when it was brought the next morning, was written in as

pretty and fashionable a lady’s hand as ever was formed in the most

elegant finishing school at Pimlico.

Of the dozen houses of the little village, the half seem to be houses of

entertainment. A green common stretches before these, with its rural

accompaniments of geese, pigs, and idlers; a park and plantation at the

end of the village, and plenty of trees round about it, give it a happy,

comfortable, English look; which is, to my notion, the best compliment

that can be paid to a hamlet; for where, after all, are villages so

pretty?

Here, rather to one’s wonder, for the district was not thickly enough

populated to encourage dramatic exhibitions, a sort of theatre was

erected on the common; a ragged cloth covering the spectators and the

actors, the former (if there were any) obtaining admittance through two

doors on the stage, in front, marked PIT & GALERY. Why should the word

not be spelt with one L as with two?

The entrance to the pit was stated to be threepence, and to the galery

twopence. We heard the drums and pipes of the orchestra as we sate at

dinner; it seemed to be a good opportunity to examine Irish humour of a

peculiar sort, and we promised ourselves a pleasant evening in the pit.

But, although the drums began to beat at half-past six, and a crowd of

young people formed round the ladder at that hour, to whom the manager

of the troop addressed the most vehement invitations to enter, nobody

seemed to be inclined to mount the steps; for the fact, most likely was

that not one of the poor fellows possessed the requisite twopence which

would induce the fat old lady who sate by it to fling open the

gallery-door. At one time I thought of offering a half-crown for a

purchase of tickets for twenty and so at once benefiting the management

and the crowd of ragged urchins who stood wistfully without his

pavilion; but it seemed ostentatious, and we had not the courage to face

the tall man in the greatcoat gesticulating and shouting in front of the

stage and make the proposition.

Why not? It would have given the company potatoes at least for supper,

and made a score of children happy. They would have seen ‘the learned

pig who spells your name, the feats of manly activity, the wonderful

Italian vaulting’; and they would have heard the comic songs by ‘your

humble servant.’

‘Your humble servant’ was the head of the troop: a long man, with a

broad accent, a yellow topcoat, and a piteous lean face. What a

speculation was this poor fellow’s! he must have a company of at least a

dozen to keep. There were three girls in trousers, who danced in front

of the stage, in Polish caps, tossing their arms about to the tunes of

three musicianers; there was a page, two young tragedy actors, and a

clown; there was the fat old woman at the gallery-door waiting for the

twopences; there was the Jack-pudding; and it was evident that there

must have been some one within, or else who would take care of the

learned pig?

The poor manager stood in front, and shouted to the little Irishry

beneath; but no one seemed to move. Then he brought forward Jack

Pudding, and had a dialogue with him; the jocularity of which, by

heavens! made the heart ache to hear. We had determined, at least, to go

to the play before that, but the dialogue was too much: we were obliged

to walk away, unable to face that dreadful Jack Pudding, and heard the

poor manager shouting still for many hours through the night, and the

drums thumping vain invitations to the people. Oh unhappy children of

the Hibernian Thespis! it is my belief that they must have eaten the

learned pig that night for supper.

It was Sunday morning when we left the little inn at Roundwood; the

people were flocking in numbers to church, on cars and pillions, neat,

comfortable, and well-dressed. We saw in this country more health, more

beauty, and more shoes than I have remarked in any quarter. That famous

resort of sightseers, the Devil’s Glen, lies at a few miles’ distance

from the little village; and, having gone on the car as near to the spot

as the road permitted, we made across the fields--boggy, stony,

ill-tilled fields they were--for about a mile, at the end of which walk,

we found ourselves on the brow of the ravine that has received so ugly a

name.

Is there a legend about the place? No doubt for this, as for almost

every other natural curiosity in Ireland, there is some tale of monk,

saint, fairy, or devil; but our guide in the present day was a barrister

from Dublin, who did not deal in fictions by any means so romantic, and

the history, whatever it was, remained untold. Perhaps the little

breechesless cicerone who offered himself, would have given us the

story, but we dismissed the urchin with scorn, and had to find our own

way through bush and bramble down to the entrance of the gully.

Here we came on a cataract, which looks very big in Messrs. Curry’s

pretty little Guide-book (that every traveller to Wicklow will be sure

to have in his pocket); but the waterfall, on this shining Sabbath

morning, was disposed to labour as little as possible, and, indeed, is a

spirit of a very humble ordinary sort.

But there is a ravine of a mile and a half, through which a river runs

roaring (a lady who keeps the gate will not object to receive a

gratuity)--there is a ravine, or Devil’s Glen, which forms a delightful

wild walk, and where a Methusaleh of a landscape-painter might find

studies for all his life long. All sorts of foliage and colour, all

sorts of delightful caprices of light and shadow--the river tumbling and

frothing amidst the boulders--_raucum per lævia murmur saxa ciens_, and

a chorus of 150,000 birds (there might be more), hopping, twittering,

singing under the clear cloudless Sabbath scene, make this walk one of

the most delightful that can be taken; and, indeed, I hope there is no

harm in saying that you may get as much out of an hour’s walk there, as

out of the best hour’s extempore preaching. But this was as a salvo to

our conscience for not being at church.

Here, however, was a long aisle, arched gothically overhead, in a much

better taste than is seen in some of those dismal new churches; and, by

way of painted glass, the sun lighting up multitudes of various-coloured

leaves, and the birds for choristers, and the river by way of organ, and

in it stones enough to make a whole library of sermons. No man can walk

in such a place without feeling grateful, and grave, and humble; and

without thanking Heaven for it as he comes away. And, walking and musing

in this free happy place, one could not help thinking of a million and a

half of brother Cockneys, shut up in their huge prison (the treadmill

for the day being idle), and told by some legislators that relaxation is

sinful, that works of art are abominations, except on week-days, and

that their proper place of resort is a dingy tabernacle, where a

loud-voiced man is howling about hell-fire in bad grammar. Is not this

beautiful world, too, a part of our religion? Yes, truly, in whatever

way my Lord John Russell may vote; and it is to be learned without

having recourse to any professor at any Bethesda, Ebenezer, or

Jerusalem; there can be no mistake about it; no terror, no bigoted

dealing of damnation to one’s neighbour--it is taught without false

emphasis or vain spouting on the preacher’s part--how should there be

such with such a preacher?

This wild onslaught upon sermons and preachers needs perhaps an

explanation; for which purpose we must whisk back out of the Devil’s

Glen (improperly so named) to Dublin, and to this day week, when, at

this very time, I heard one of the first preachers of the city deliver a

sermon that lasted for an hour and twenty minutes--time enough to walk

up the Glen and back, and remark a thousand delightful things by the

way.

Mr. G----‘s church (though there would be no harm in mentioning the

gentleman’s name, for a more conscientious and excellent man, as it is

said, cannot be) is close by the Custom House in Dublin, and crowded

morning and evening with his admirers. The service was beautifully read

by him, and the audience joined in the responses, and in the psalms and

hymns,[28] with a fervour which is very unusual in England. Then came

the sermon; and what more can be said of it than that it was extempore,

and lasted for an hour and twenty minutes? The orator never failed once

for a word, so amazing is his practice; though, as a stranger to this

kind of exercise, I could not help trembling for the performer, as one

has for Madame Saqui on the slack-rope, in the midst of a blaze of

rockets and squibs, expecting every minute she must go over. But the

artist was too skilled for that; and after some tremendous bound of a

metaphor in the midst of which you expect he must tumble neck and heels,

and be engulfed in the dark abyss of nonsense, down he was sure to come,

in a most graceful attitude too, in the midst of a fluttering ‘ah!’ from

a thousand wondering people.

But I declare solemnly that when I came to try and recollect of what the

exhibition consisted, and give an account of the sermon at dinner that

evening, it was quite impossible to remember a word of it; although, to

do the orator justice, he repeated many of his opinions a great number

of times over. Thus, if he had to discourse of death to us, it was--At

the approach of the Dark Angel of the Grave--at the coming of the grim

King of Terrors--at the warning of that awful Power to whom all of us

must bow down--at the summons of that Pallid Spectre whose equal foot

knocks at the monarch’s tower or the poor man’s cabin--and so forth.

There is an examiner of plays, and indeed there ought to be an examiner

of sermons, by which audiences are to be fully as much injured or

misguided as by the other named exhibitions. What call have reverend

gentlemen to repeat their dicta half a dozen times over, like Sir Robert

Peel when he says anything that he fancies to be witty? Why are men to

be kept for an hour and twenty minutes listening to that which may be

more effectually said in twenty?

And it need not be said here that a church is not a sermon-house--that

it is devoted to a purpose much more lofty and sacred, for which has

been set apart the noblest service, every single word of which latter

has been previously weighed with the most scrupulous and thoughtful

reverence. And after this sublime work of genius, learning, and piety is

concluded, is it not a shame that a man should mount a desk, who has not

taken the trouble to arrange his words beforehand, and speak thence his

crude opinions in his doubtful grammar? It will be answered that the

extempore preacher does not deliver crude opinions, but that he arranges

his discourse beforehand; to all which it may be answered that Mr.----

contradicted himself more than once in the course of the above oration,

and repeated himself a half-dozen of times. A man in that place has no

right to say a word too much or too little.

And it comes to this,--it is the preacher the people follow, not the

prayers; or why is this church more frequented than any other? It is

that warm emphasis, and word-mouthing, and vulgar imagery, and glib

rotundity of phrase, which brings them together and keeps them happy and

breathless. Some of this class call the Cathedral Service _Paddy’s

Opera_; they say it is Popish--downright scarlet--they won’t go to it.

They will have none but their own hymns--and pretty they are--no

ornaments but those of their own minister, his rank incense and tawdry

rhetoric. Coming out of the church, on the Custom House steps hard by,

there was a fellow with a bald large forehead, a new black coat, a

little Bible, spouting--spouting _in omne volubilis œvum_--the very

counterpart of the reverend gentleman hard by. It was just the same

thing, just as well done, the eloquence quite as easy and round, the

amplifications as ready, the big words rolling round the tongue, just as

within doors. But we are out of the Devil’s Glen by this time; and

perhaps, instead of delivering a sermon there, we had better have been

at church hearing one.

The country people, however, are far more pious; and the road along

which we went to Glendalough was thronged with happy figures of people

plodding to or from mass. A chapel-yard was covered with grey cloaks;

and at a little inn hard by, stood numerous carts, cars, shandry-dans,

and pillioned horses, awaiting the end of the prayers. The aspect of the

country is wild, and beautiful of course; but why try to describe it? I

think the Irish scenery just like the Irish melodies--sweet, wild, and

sad even in the sunshine. You can neither represent one nor other by

words; but I am sure if one could translate ‘The Meeting of the Waters’

into form and colours, it would fall into the exact shape of a tender

Irish landscape. So, take and play that tune upon your fiddle, and shut

your eyes, and muse a little, and you have the whole scene before you.

I don’t know if there is any tune about Glendalough; but if there be, it

must be the most delicate, fantastic, fairy melody that ever was played.

Only fancy can describe the charms of that delightful place. Directly

you see it, it smiles at you as innocent and friendly as a little child;

and once seen, it becomes your friend for ever, and you are always happy

when you think of it. Here is a little lake, and little fords across it,

surrounded by little mountains, and which lead you now to little islands

where there are all sorts of fantastic little old chapels and

graveyards; or, again, into little brakes and shrubberies where small

rivers are crossing over little rocks, plashing and jumping, and singing

as loud as ever they can. Thomas Moore has written rather an awful

description of it; and it may indeed appear big to _him_, and to the

fairies who must have inhabited the place in old days--that’s clear. For

who could be accommodated in it except the little people?

There are seven churches, whereof the clergy must have been the smallest

persons, and have had the smallest benefices and the littlest

congregations ever known. As for the cathedral, what a bishoplet it must

have been that presided there!--the place would hardly hold the Bishop

of London, or Mr. Sidney Smith--two full-sized clergymen of these

days--who would be sure to quarrel there for want of room, or for any

other reason. There must have been a dean no bigger than Mr. Moore

before mentioned, and a chapter no bigger than that chapter in _Tristram

Shandy_ which does not contain a single word, and mere popguns of

canons, and a beadle about as tall as Crofton Croker, to whip the little

boys who were playing at taw (with peas) in the yard.

They say there was a university, too, in the place, with I don’t know

how many thousand scholars; but for accounts of this, there is an

excellent guide on the spot, who, for a shilling or two, will tell all

he knows, and a great deal more too.

There are numerous legends, too, concerning St. Kevin, and Fin Mac Coul

and the devil, and the deuce knows what. But these stories are, I am

bound to say, abominably stupid and stale; and some guide[29] ought to

be seized upon and choked, and flung into the lake, by way of warning to

the others to stop their interminable prate. This is the curse

attending curiosity, for visitors to almost all the show-places in the

country: you have not only the guide--who himself talks too much, but a

string of ragged amateurs, starting from bush and briar, ready to carry

his honour’s umbrella or my lady’s cloak, or to help either up a bank or

across a stream. And all the while they look wistfully in your face,

saying, ‘Give me sixpence!’ as clear as looks can speak. The

unconscionable rogues! how dare they, for the sake of a little

starvation or so, interrupt gentlefolks in their pleasure?

A long tract of wild country, with a park or two here and there, a

police barrack perched on a hill, a half-starved-looking church

stretching its long scraggy steeple over a wide plain, mountains whose

base is richly cultivated while their tops are purple and lonely, warm

cottages and farms nestling at the foot of the hills, and humble cabins

here and there on the wayside, accompany the car, that jingles back over

fifteen miles of ground through Inniskerry to Bray. You pass by wild

gaps and greater and lesser Sugar Loaves; and about eight o’clock, when

the sky is quite red with sunset, and the long shadows are of such a

purple as (they may say what they like) Claude could no more paint than

I can, you catch a glimpse of the sea, beyond Bray, and crying out,

‘θἁλαττα, θἁλαττα! affect to be wondrously delighted by the

sight of that element.

The fact is, however, that at Bray is one of the best inns in Ireland;

and there you may be perfectly sure is a good dinner ready, five minutes

after the honest car-boy, with innumerable hurroos and smacks of his

whip, has brought up his passengers to the door with a gallop.

* * * * *

As for the Vale of Avoca, I have not described that; because (as has

been before occasionally remarked) it is vain to attempt to describe

natural beauties; and because, secondly (though this is a minor

consideration), we did not go thither. But we went on another day to the

Dargle, and to Shanganah, and the city of Cabinteely, and to the

Scalp--that wild pass; and I have no more to say about them, than about

the Vale of Avoca. The Dublin cockney, who has these places at his door,

knows them quite well; and, as for the Londoner, who is meditating a

trip to the Rhine for the summer, or to Britanny or Normandy, let us

beseech him to see his _own country first_ (if Lord Lyndhurst will allow

us to call this a part of it); and if, after twenty-four hours of an

easy journey from London, the cockney be not placed in the midst of a

country as beautiful, as strange to him, as romantic as the most

imaginative man on ‘Change can desire,--may this work be praised by the

critics all around and never reach a second edition!

CHAPTER XXV

COUNTRY MEETINGS IN KILDARE--MEATH--DROGHEDA

An agricultural show was to be held at the town of Naas, and I was glad,

after having seen the grand exhibition at Cork, to be present at a more

homely, unpretending country festival, where the eyes of Europe, as the

orators say, did not happen to be looking on. Perhaps men are apt, under

the idea of this sort of inspection, to assume an air somewhat more

pompous and magnificent than that which they wear every day. The Naas

meeting was conducted without the slightest attempt at splendour or

display--a hearty, modest, matter-of-fact country meeting.

[Illustration]

Market-day was fixed upon of course, and the town, as we drove into it,

was thronged with frieze-coats, the market-place bright with a great

number of apple-stalls, and the street filled with carts and vans of

numerous small tradesmen, vending cheeses, or cheap crockeries, or

ready-made clothes and such goods. A clothier, with a great crowd round

him, had arrayed himself in a staring new waistcoat of his stock, and

was turning slowly round to exhibit the garment, spouting all the while

to his audience, and informing them that he could fit out any person, in

one minute, ‘in a complete new shuit from head to fut.’ There seemed to

be a crowd of gossips at every shop-door, and, of course, a number of

gentlemen waiting at the inn-steps, criticising the cars and carriages

as they drove up. Only those who live in small towns know what an object

of interest the street becomes, and the carriages and horses which pass

therein. Most of the gentlemen had sent stock to compete for the prizes.

The shepherds were tending the stock. The judges were making their

award, and until their sentence was given, no competitors could enter

the show-yard. The entrance to that, meanwhile, was thronged by a great

posse of people, and as the gate abutted upon an old grey tower, a

number of people had scaled that, and were looking at the beasts in the

court below. Likewise, there was a tall haystack, which possessed

similar advantages of situation, and was equally thronged with men and

boys. The rain had fallen heavily all night, the heavens were still

black with it, and the coats of the men, and the red feet of many

ragged female spectators, were liberally spattered with mud.

The first object of interest we were called upon to see was a famous

stallion; and passing through the little by-streets (dirty and small,

but not so small and dirty as other by-streets to be seen in Irish

towns) we came to a porte-cochère, leading into a yard filled with wet

fresh hay, sinking juicily under the feet; and here in a shed was the

famous stallion. His sire must have been a French diligence-horse; he

was of a roan colour, with a broad chest, and short clean legs. His

forehead was ornamented with a blue ribbon, on which his name and prizes

were painted, and on his chest hung a couple of medals by a chain--a

silver one awarded to him at Cork, a gold one carried off by superior

merit from other stallions assembled to contend at Dublin. When the

points of the animal were sufficiently discussed, a mare, his sister,

was produced, and admired still more than himself. Any man who has

witnessed the performance of the French horses in the Havre diligence,

must admire the vast strength and the extraordinary swiftness of the

breed; and it was agreed on all hands, that such horses would prove

valuable in this country, where it is hard now to get a stout horse for

the road, so much has the fashion for blood, and nothing but blood,

prevailed of late.

By the time the stallion was seen, the judges had done their

arbitration; and we went to the yard, where broad-backed sheep were

resting peaceably in their pens; bulls were led about by the nose;

enormous turnips, both Swedes and Aberdeens, reposed in the mud; little

cribs of geese, hens, and peafowl were come to try for the prize; and

pigs might be seen--some encumbered with enormous families, others with

fat merely. They poked up one brute to walk for us: he made, after many

futile attempts, a desperate rush forward, his legs almost lost in fat,

his immense sides quivering and shaking with the exercise; he was then

allowed to return to his straw, into which he sunk panting. Let us hope

that he went home with a pink ribbon round his tail that night, and got

a prize for his obesity.

I think the pink ribbon was, at least to a Cockney, the pleasantest

sight of all; for on the evening after the show we saw many carts going

away so adorned, having carried off prizes on the occasion. First came a

great bull stepping along, he and his driver having each a bit of pink

in their hats; then a cart full of sheep; then a car of

good-natured-looking people, having a churn in the midst of them that

sported a pink favour. When all the prizes were distributed, a select

company sate down to dinner at Macavoy’s Hotel; and no doubt a reporter

who was present has given in the county paper an account of all the

good things eaten and said. At our end of the table we had saddle of

mutton, and I remarked a boiled leg of the same delicacy, with turnips,

at the opposite extremity. Before the vice I observed a large piece of

roast beef, which I could not observe at the end of dinner, because it

was all swallowed. After the mutton we had cheese, and were just

beginning to think that we had dined very sufficiently, when a squadron

of apple-pies came smoking in, and convinced us that, in such a glorious

cause, Britons are never at fault. We ate up the apple-pies, and then

the punch was called for by those who preferred that beverage to wine,

and the speeches began.

The chairman gave ‘The Queen,’ nine times nine and one cheer more;

‘Prince Albert and the rest of the Royal Family,’ great cheering; ‘The

Lord-Lieutenant’--his Excellency’s health was received rather coolly, I

thought. And then began the real business of the night: Health of the

Naas Society, health of the Agricultural Society, and healths all round;

not forgetting the Sallymount Beagles and the Kildare Foxhounds--which

toasts were received with loud cheers and halloos by most of the

gentlemen present, and elicited brief speeches from the masters of the

respective hounds, promising good sport next season. After the Kildare

Foxhounds, an old farmer in a grey coat got gravely up, and without

being requested to do so in the least, sung a song, stating that--

‘At seven in the morning by most of the clocks

We rode to Kilruddery in search of a fox’;

and at the conclusion of his song challenged a friend to give another

song. Another old farmer, on this, rose and sung one of Morris’s songs

with a great deal of queer humour; and, no doubt many more songs were

sung during the evening, for plenty of hot-water jugs were blocking the

door as we went out.

The jolly frieze-coated songster who celebrated the Kilruddery fox,

sung, it must be confessed, most woefully out of tune; but still it was

pleasant to hear him, and I think the meeting was the most agreeable one

I have seen in Ireland: there was more good-humour, more cordial union

of classes, more frankness and manliness, than one is accustomed to find

in Irish meetings. All the speeches were kind-hearted, straightforward

speeches, without a word of politics or an attempt at oratory: it was

impossible to say whether the gentlemen present were Protestant or

Catholic,--each one had a hearty word of encouragement for his tenant,

and a kind welcome for his neighbour. There were forty stout, well-to-do

farmers in the room, renters of fifty, seventy, a hundred acres of land.

There were no clergymen present, though it would have been pleasant to

have seen one of each persuasion, to say grace for the meeting and the

meat.

At a similar meeting at Ballytore the next day, I had an opportunity of

seeing a still finer collection of stock than had been brought to Naas,

and at the same time one of the most beautiful, flourishing villages in

Ireland. The road to it from H---- town, if not remarkable for its rural

beauty, is pleasant to travel, for evidences of neat and prosperous

husbandry are around you everywhere--rich crops in the fields, and neat

cottages by the roadside, accompanying us as far as Ballytore--a white,

straggling village, surrounding green fields, of some five furlongs

square, with a river running in the midst of them, and numerous fine

cattle in the green. Here is a large windmill, fitted up like a castle,

with battlements and towers; the castellan thereof is a good-natured old

Quaker gentleman, and numbers more of his following inhabit the town.

The consequence was, that the shops of the village were the neatest

possible, though by no means grand or portentous. Why should Quaker

shops be neater than other shops? They suffer to the full as much

oppression as the rest of the hereditary bondsmen; and yet, in spite of

their tyrants, they prosper.

I must not attempt to pass an opinion upon the stock exhibited at

Ballytore; but, in the opinion of some large agricultural proprietors

present, it might have figured with advantage in any show in England,

and certainly was finer than the exhibition at Naas; which, however, is

a very young society. The best part of the show, however, to everybody’s

thinking (and it is pleasant to observe the manly fair-play spirit which

characterises the society), was, that the prizes of the Irish

Agricultural Society were awarded to two men--one a labourer, the other

a very small holder, both having reared the best stock exhibited on the

occasion. At the dinner, which took place in a barn of the inn, smartly

decorated with laurels for the purpose, there was as good and stout a

body of yeomen as at Naas the day previous, but only two landlords; and

here, too, as at Naas, neither priest nor parson. Cattle-feeding, of

course, formed the principal theme of the after-dinner discourse--not,

however, altogether to the exclusion of tillage; and there was a good

and useful prize for those who could not afford to rear fat oxen--for

the best-kept cottage and garden namely, which was won by a poor man

with a large family and scanty precarious earnings, but who yet found

means to make the most of his small means, and to keep his little

cottage neat and cleanly. The tariff and the plentiful harvest together

had helped to bring down prices severely; and we heard from the farmers

much desponding talk. I saw hay sold for £2 the ton, and oats for 8s.

3d. the barrel.

In the little village I remarked scarcely a single beggar, and very few

bare feet indeed among the crowds who came to see the show. Here the

Quaker village had the advantage of the town of Naas, in spite of its

poorhouse, which was only half full when we went to see it; but the

people prefer beggary and starvation abroad, to comfort and neatness in

the union-house.

A neater establishment cannot be seen than this; and liberty must be

very sweet indeed, when people prefer it and starvation to the certainty

of comfort in the union-house. We went to see it after the show at Naas.