THE COUNTRY OF ST. KEVIN
DUBLIN is fortunate in its environs. A few miles to the south or west,
and one is in the midst of lovely scenery. The Liffey, just above the
town, changes from an unsightly stream into a beautiful river; just to
the south lie the Wicklow hills--one can reach their foot by tram-line
and some of their wildest beauties are within an hour's walk; a short
run by rail takes one to Bray, from where the Dargle, a glen beloved of
Dubliners, is within easy reach. But the wise traveller will keep on to
Rathdrum, and from there drive over to Glendalough. Or the trip may be
made all the way from Dublin by motor-omnibus, and by this route one
gets the full beauty of the Wicklow passes; but I think the car trip
preferable, at least in fine weather.
The forty-mile run from Dublin to Rathdrum is by the very edge of the
sea. The roadway has been cut high in the face of the cliffs that fringe
the coast--sometimes piercing a projecting headland, sometimes spanning
a deep gully, sometimes skirting a sheer precipice--and the view at
every turn is very romantic and beautiful. The train pauses at Bray, and
then, still hugging the coast, reaches Wicklow, where it turns inland
and mounts toward the hills along a pleasant valley to Rathdrum, perched
in the most picturesque way on the steep banks of the Avonmore, for all
the world like an Alpine village.
Betty and I were the only ones who descended at Rathdrum, that day, and
we were glad, for it is peculiarly true of a side-car that two are
company and any larger number a crowd. The car was waiting, and in a few
minutes we were off on the twelve-mile drive.
The road mounted steeply for a time, passed through a dingy village
clinging to a hillside, and then suddenly emerged high above the lovely
Vale of Clara. Far down, so far it seemed the merest ribbon, the
Avonmore sparkled over its rocky bed; beside it, here and there, a
thatched cottage nestled among the trees; and the greenest of green
fields ran back to the hills on either side. Here the gorse began,
mounting the hillsides in a riot of golden bloom, only to be met and
vanquished on the highest slopes by the low, closely-growing heather,
brown with last year's withered flowers, but soon to veil the hilltops
in a cloud of purple. But the gorse was in its glory--every hedge, every
fence, every wall, every neglected corner was ablaze with it; it
outlined every field; the road we travelled was a royal way, bordered on
either side with gold. "Unprofitably gay?" Betty hotly disputed it. For
how could such beauty be unprofitable?
It was a perfect day, with the air magically soft and the sun just warm
enough for comfort, and we sat there, mightily content, drinking in mile
after mile of loveliness. Away across the valley, we caught a glimpse of
Avondale House, a school of forestry now, but sacred to every Irishman
as the home of Parnell. A little farther on, Castle Howard glooms down
upon the valley where the Avonmore meets the Avonbeg--that "Meeting of
the Waters" celebrated by Tom Moore. But it would take a far greater
poet to do justice to that exquisitely beautiful Vale of Avoca,
stretching away into the shimmering distance.
The road turned away, at last, from the edge of the valley and plunged
into a beautiful wood, and we could see that the bracken was alive with
rabbits. It was a game preserve, our driver said, and he told us to whom
it belonged, but I have forgotten. I suggested that, when he had nothing
better to do, it would be easy enough to come out and knock over a
rabbit.
"They would be putting a lad away for six months for the likes of that,"
he protested.
"Surely no one would grudge you a rabbit now and then!"
"Ah, wouldn't they?" and he laughed grimly. "There's nothing the keepers
like so much as to get their hands on one of us. Why, sir, 'tis a crime
for a man to be caught on the far side of that wall. Not but what I
haven't got me a rabbit before this," he added, "and will again."
We passed a gang of men repairing the road, and two or three others
sitting along the roadside, breaking stone by hand, and wearing goggles
to protect their eyes from the flying splinters; and our driver told us
how the contract for keeping each section of road in shape was let each
year by the county council to the lowest bidder, and the roads inspected
at regular intervals to see that the work was properly done. Two
shillings a day--fifty cents--was about the average wage. I suppose it
is because stone is so plentiful and labour so cheap that the roads all
over Ireland are so good; but one would be inclined to welcome a rut
now and then, if it meant a decent wage for the labourers!
We emerged from the wood presently, and then, away to the left, our
jarvey pointed out the high peaks which guard the entrance to
Glendalough--and let me say here that the word "lough," which occurs so
frequently in Irish geography, means lake, and is pronounced almost
exactly like the Scotch "loch." Glendalough is one of the most beautiful
and romantic spots in Ireland, and its story runneth thus:
In the year 498, the King of Leinster had a son whom he named
Caomh-ghen, or Gentle-born, and whom to-day we call Kevin. The King had
been converted by St. Patrick himself, and he brought his boy up a
Christian; and Kevin had never the slightest doubt as to his vocation,
but knew from the very first that he must be a priest. So he was sent
first to St. Petroc's school in Wicklow, and then to his uncle, St.
Eugenius, who had a school near Glenealy.
Kevin grew in grace and wisdom, and likewise in beauty, until a
handsomer lad was to be found nowhere in Erin, and many a girl looked
sideways at him as he passed, but he paid no heed. One of them, seeing
him so fair and saintly, lost her heart to him entirely, and her head as
well, for she grew so shameless that she followed him in his walks,
pleading with him, touching his hand, kissing his robe--all of which
must have been most embarrassing to that modest and retiring man. At
last, one day, she waylaid him in a wood, and, hungry with passion,
flung herself upon him.
There are two versions of what followed. One is that St. Kevin escaped
by jumping into a bush of nettles, and cooled the damsel's ardour by
beating her with a branch of them, whereupon she asked his pardon and
made a vow of perpetual virginity. The other, and much more plausible
one, is that, after the manner of women, she loved Kevin more
desperately after he had beaten her than she had before, and that
finally the Saint, worn out by a struggle in which he saw that he would
some day be defeated, resolved to hide himself where no man could
discover him, and betook himself to the wild and inaccessible spot where
the mountains meet above Glendalough. There high in the side of the
cliff above the lake, he found a crevice where he made his bed, and lay
down with a sigh of relief for the first peaceful sleep he had had for a
long time. Here is Tom Moore's rendering of the rest of the story:
On the bold cliff's bosom cast,
Tranquil now he sleeps at last;
Dreams of heaven, nor thinks that e'er
Woman's smile can haunt him there.
But nor earth nor heaven is free
From her power if fond she be;
Even now while calm he sleeps,
Kathleen o'er him leans and weeps.
Fearless she had tracked his feet
To this rocky, wild retreat,
And when morning met his view,
Her wild glances met it too.
Ah! your saints have cruel hearts!
Sternly from his bed he starts,
And, with rude, repulsive shock,
Hurls her from the beetling rock.
Glendalough, thy gloomy wave
Soon was gentle Kathleen's grave!
Soon the saint (but, ah! too late)
Felt her love and mourned her fate.
When he said, "Heaven rest her soul!"
Round the lake light music stole,
And her ghost was seen to glide
Smiling o'er the fatal tide.
Most biographers of the Saint hotly deny that he killed the fair
Kathleen, and point out that he was far too holy a man to do such a
thing, even in a moment of anger; but, on the other hand, Kathleen's
ghost may be seen almost any night sitting on a rock by the lakeside,
combing its yellow hair and lamenting its sad fate. What, then, are we
to believe? My own theory is that when the Saint opened his eyes, that
fatal morning, and found his tempter bending over him, he sprang hastily
away, well knowing to what lengths her passion led her, and
inadvertently brushed her off the narrow ledge of rock. The horrified
Saint scrambled down the cliff as quickly as he could, but the
too-impulsive girl was dead. A good many people will add that it served
the hussy right.
This seems to me a reasonable theory; whether it be true or not, Saint
Kevin dwelt seven years in his cave, after Kathleen's death, without
being further disturbed. Then one day, a shepherd climbing down over the
cliff searching for a lost sheep, came upon the holy man, sitting
meditating in his cell, and hastened away to spread the news of the
discovery of a new saint. Great throngs crowded the lake to get a
glimpse of him, much to his annoyance, and besought him to come down so
that they could see him better. This he sternly refused to do, and told
them to go away; but finally he permitted them to build him a little
chapel on a shelf of rock near his cell. That was in June, 536; but the
number of his disciples increased so rapidly that the chapel soon proved
too small, and at last an angel appeared to him and ordered him to found
a monastery at the lower end of the lake. This he did, and it soon
became one of the most famous in Ireland.
It must have been a picturesque place; for there was a special
stone-roofed cell for the Saint, and no less than seven churches to hold
the people, and a great huddle of domestic buildings to protect the
students from the rain and cold, and finally a tall round tower, from
which to watch for the Norse invader. St. Kevin himself died in the
odour of sanctity on the third day of June, 618. What I like about this
story of St. Kevin are the dates--they give it such an unimpeachable
vraisemblance!
After his death, the monastery had a varied history. It was destroyed by
fire in 770, and sacked by the Danes in 830 and many times thereafter;
but the final blow was struck by the English invaders in 1308, when the
place was burnt to the ground. Since then it has been in ruins, much as
it is to-day.
As we drove into the valley, that lovely day in May, no prospect could
have been more beautiful. To right and left, in the distance, towered
the bare brown hills, very steep and rugged, with the blue lake nestling
between. In the foreground lay the ruins of the seven churches, with the
round tower rising high above them; and, from among the trees, peeped
here and there the thatched roof of a cottage with a plume of purple
smoke rising from its chimney. It was like a vision--like some ideal,
painted scene, too lovely to be real--and we gazed at it in speechless
enchantment while our jarvey drove us around the lower lake, under the
shadow of the hills, and so to the little inn where we were to have
lunch.
[Illustration: (C) Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
GLENDALOUGH AND THE RUINS OF ST. KEVIN'S CHURCHES]
We were looking in delight at the inn, with its thatched roof and
whitewashed walls, when a formidable figure appeared in the door--a
towering young woman, with eyes terrifically keen and a thick shock of
the reddest hair I ever saw. She was a singularly pure specimen, as I
afterwards learned, of the red Irish--a sort of throw-back, I suppose,
to the old Vikings of the Danish conquest. I admit that I quailed a
little, for she was looking at us with an expression which seemed to me
anything but friendly.
"Can we get lunch?" I inquired.
"You can," she answered, short and sharp like the snap of a whip, and
she stood in the doorway staring at us, without making any sign that we
should enter.
"Is it ready?" I ventured further, for the long drive had made us very
hungry.
"It is not."
Let me say here that very rarely does any one of Irish blood say "yes"
or "no" in answer to a question. When you ask the man at the station,
"Is this the train for So-and-so?" he will invariably answer, "It is,"
or "It is not," as the case may be. When you ask your jarvey if he
thinks it will rain to-day, his invariable answer is "It will not." I
never heard an Irishman admit unreservedly that it was going to rain.
But before I had time to ask the red-headed girl any further questions,
she was hustled aside by a typical little brown Irishwoman, who asked us
in and made us welcome. Lunch would be ready in fifteen minutes, she
said; meanwhile, if we wished, we could walk to the waterfall.
Of course we _did_ wish, and set eagerly forth past the end of the upper
lake, across a bridge, past a great empty hotel which was falling to
decay, and up a little stream to the fall. It is really a series of
rapids rather than a fall, and only mildly pretty; but growing
abundantly in the damp ground along the margin of the stream was what
Betty declared to be the true shamrock--a very beautiful trefoil,
evidently a variety of oxalis, and certainly much nearer our ideal of
the shamrock than the skimpy plant shown us by the gardener at
Clondalkin. We gathered some of it, and then hastened back--for we
didn't want to be late for lunch. As we were passing the lake, we
noticed an extremely dirty and unkempt individual, who looked like a
vagabond, sitting on a stone, and as soon as he saw us, he jumped up and
fell in beside us.
"Your honour will be goin' to St. Kevin's bed," he began.
"Where is the bed?" I asked.
"In the cliff beyant there, sir," and he pointed across the lake.
"How do we get to it?"
"Sure I'll carry your honour and your lady in me boat."
I looked at the fellow, and at the wide lake, and at the little
flat-bottomed skiff moored to a rock near by, and I had my doubts as to
the wisdom of entrusting ourselves to the combination. He read the doubt
in my face, and broke in with voluble protests.
"Arrah, you must go to the bed, your honour," he cried; "and your
honour's lady, too. 'Tis the place where the blessed Saint lived for
siven years, and if you sit down in his seat you will niver have the
backache, and if you lie down in his bed you will niver have any ache at
all, at all, and if you make three wishes they will surely come true."
Betty and I glanced at each other. We were tempted. Then I looked at our
would-be guide.
"Why don't you make three wishes yourself?" I asked.
"I have, your honour."
"Did they come true?"
"They did, your honour," he answered instantly. "I asked for a light
heart, a quick wit and a ready tongue. Your honour can see that I have
all of them."
My heart began to warm to him, for he was the first person we had met in
Ireland who talked like this.
"Now just be lookin' at this, your honour," he went on, and led us to
the side of the road where stood a cross of stone--the terminal cross,
as I afterwards learned, which marked the boundary of the old monastery.
"Do you see them marks? This large one is the mark of a horse's hoof,
and this small one of a colt's; and 'twas by a miracle they came there.
In the old time, there was a man who stole a mare and her foal, but who
denied it, and who was brought before St. Kevin. The Saint placed the
man in front of this cross and told him if he was guilty to be sayin'
it, and if he was not guilty to be sayin' it; and the man said he was
not guilty. And as he spoke the words, the shape of the hoofs appeared
on the cross, and when the man saw them, he knew it was no use tryin' to
deceive the Saint, so he confessed everything. And there the hoof-prints
are to this day."
They certainly bore some resemblance to hoof-prints, and I could not but
admire the ingenuity of the tale which had been invented to explain
them.
"What happened to the thief?" I asked. "Did the Saint let him go?"
"He did not, your honour, for it was the law that he must be hanged. But
before he died, he asked the Saint to grant him one favour, and the
Saint told him to name it; and the man asked that he be buried in the
same graveyard with the Saint himself, and that on his grave a stone be
placed with a hole in the middle, so that, if a horse stepped over his
grave, he might put out his hand and pull it in. The Saint kept his
promise, and in the graveyard yonder you may see the stone."
As, indeed, we did; at least, there is a grave there covered by a stone
with a large round hole in the middle.
"And now, your honour," went on our guide, as we came to the door of the
inn, "you will be wantin' me to row you over to the Saint's bed, I'm
thinkin'."
"What is the fare?" I asked.
"As much over sixpence as you care to give, your honour."
"All right," I said. "We'll be ready presently." And we went in to
lunch.
We certainly enjoyed that meal, though I have forgotten its ingredients;
but I have not forgotten the clean, pleasant dining-room in which it was
served. And then we sallied forth for the visit to St. Kevin's bed.
Our guide was awaiting us, and helped us into his boat and pushed off;
and at once began to recount the legends of the lake; how the fairies
danced punctually at nine every evening, whenever there was a moon,
while at eleven the ghost of the fair Kathleen sat on a stone and sang
and combed her hair, and at twelve the wraith of a wicked sorceress
struck blind by St. Kevin glided about the lake. I forget what else
happened, but it was evident that any one spending a night there would
not lack for entertainment. And he told us why no skylark ever sings in
the vale of Glendalough.
It seems that when St. Kevin was building his monastery, he had a great
number of workmen employed, and the rule was that they should begin the
day's labour with the singing of the lark and end it when the lambs lay
down to rest. It was summer time, and the larks began to sing about
three in the morning, while the lambs refused to retire until nine at
night. The workmen thought these hours excessive, and so complained to
St. Kevin, and he listened to them, and looked at them, and when he saw
their poor jaded faces and tired eyes wanting sleep, his kind heart
pitied them, and he promised to see what he could do. So he raised his
eyes to heaven and put up a prayer that the lark might never sing in the
valley, and that the lamb might lie down before the sun was set; and
the prayer was granted, and from that day to this Glendalough has been
famous as
"the lake whose gloomy shore
Skylark never warbles o'er."
At what hour the lambs now go to rest our boatman did not state, and I
did not have time to make any observations for myself; but I commend the
question to the attention of antiquarians.
By the time all these tales had been told, we were across the lake and
drawing in toward a high cliff on the other side; and suddenly somebody
shouted at us, and, as the hills shuttlecocked the echo back and forth
across the water, we looked up and saw two men clinging to the cliff
about forty feet up. As our boat ran in to the shore, they came
scrambling down and helped us out upon a narrow strand.
"The seat and the bed are up yonder," said our guide. "Them ones will
help your honour up."
I looked at the perpendicular cliff, quite smooth except for a little
indentation here and there where one might possibly put one's toe, and
my desire to sit in St. Kevin's seat suffered a severe diminution, for I
have no head for heights. I said as much and listened sceptically to the
fervent assurances of the guides that there was no danger at all, at
all, that they had piloted thousands of people up and down the cliff
without a single mishap, glory be to God. I knew they were talking for a
tip, and not from any abstract love of truth. But in matters of this
sort, Betty is much more impulsive than I--as will appear more than once
in the course of this narrative--and she promptly declared that she was
going up, for the chance to be granted three wishes was too good to be
missed. So up she went, one man pulling in front and the other guiding
her toes into those little crevices in the rock; and presently she
passed from sight, and then her voice floated down to me saying that she
was all right.
Of course I had to follow, if I was to escape a lifetime of derision,
and after a desperate scramble, I found her sitting on a narrow ledge at
the back of a shallow cave in the cliff, with her eyes closed, making
her three wishes. Then I sat down and made mine; and then the guides
offered to conduct us to St. Kevin's bed, but when I found that the bed
was a hole in the cliff into which one had to be poked feet first, and
that to get to it one had to walk along a ledge about three inches wide,
I interposed a veto so vigorous that it prevailed.
Having got up, it was necessary to get down, and when I looked at the
cliff, I understood why St. Kevin had stayed there seven years. The
method of descent is simply to sit on the edge and slide over and trust
to the man below. Fortunately he was on the job, so we live to tell the
tale. As to the efficacy of the seat, I can only say that two of my
three wishes came true, which is a good average. I don't know about
Betty's, for it breaks the charm to tell!
I asked our boatman afterwards why he didn't pilot his passengers up the
cliff himself, and so earn the extra sixpence which is the fee for that
service; and he told me that he couldn't because that was an hereditary
right, controlled by one family, in which it had been handed down for
generations. The father trains his sons in the precise method of
handling the climbers, so that they become very expert at it, and there
is really no great danger. One member of the family is always on the
lookout above the cliff, and when any visitor approaches, two members
climb down to offer their services. Our boatman added that he wished he
belonged to the family, because in good seasons they made a lot of
money.
We pushed out into the lake again, and rowed up a little farther to
another narrow beach, whence a rude flight of steps led to a shelf of
rock many feet above the lake, on which are the ruins of St. Kevin's
first little church. There is not much left of it, which is natural
enough since it was built nearly a thousand years before America was
discovered; but I took the picture of it which is reproduced opposite
the next page, and which gives a faint idea of the beauty of the lake.
All during the afternoon, I had been conscious, at intervals, of a dull
rumbling among the hills, and as we pushed out from the shore, I heard
it again, and asked the boatman if it was thunder, for the clouds had
begun to bank up along the horizon, and I remembered that we had twelve
miles to ride on a side-car before we reached the station. But he said
that it wasn't thunder; there was an artillery camp many miles away
among the hills and the rumbling was the echo of the guns. He also
assured me, after a look around, that it wouldn't rain before morning.
The basis of an Irish weather prediction, as I have said before, is not
at all a desire to foretell what is coming, but merely the wish to
comfort the inquirer; but in this case the prediction happened to come
true.
When we got back to the inn, we found a new arrival, a very pleasant
woman who had come over in the coach from Dublin. Her husband, I
learned, was an inspector employed by the National Education Board, who
had come to Glendalough to inspect the schools in the neighbourhood. He
had started out to inspect one at once, but when he returned I had a
most interesting talk with him concerning education in Ireland, and the
problems which it has to face.
[Illustration: THE ROAD TO ST. KEVIN'S SEAT]
[Illustration: THE FIRST OF ST. KEVIN'S CHURCHES]
The Irish schools, like everything else Irish, are controlled by a
central board which sits at Dublin Castle. There are sixty-six other
boards and bureaus and departments sitting there, each dealing with some
special branch of Irish affairs, and all of them are costly and
complicated. These sixty-seven varieties must cause a pang of envy in
the breast of our own Heinz, for that is ten more than he produces! The
particular board which controls the schools is called the National
Education Board, and, like all the others, it is in no way responsible
to the Irish people. In fact, it isn't responsible to anybody. Its
members are appointed for life, and it is virtually a self-perpetuating
body, for vacancies are usually filled in accordance with the
recommendation of a majority of its members. It is absolutely supreme in
Irish educational affairs.
The elementary schools in Ireland are known as "National Schools," and
each of them is controlled by a local manager, who is always either the
priest or the rector of the parish--the priest if the parish is largely
Roman Catholic, the rector if it is largely Protestant. If there are
enough children, both Catholic and Protestant, to fill two schools,
there will be two, and the two creeds will be separated. This is always
done, of course, in the cities, and in the north of Ireland there are
separate schools for the Presbyterians; but in the country districts
this cannot be done, so that, whatever the religious complexion of the
school, there will always be a few pupils of the other denomination in
it. In the villages where there is a church, as at Clondalkin, the
school is usually connected with the church and in that case, if it is
Roman Catholic, the teachers will be nuns.
The local manager of the school has absolute authority over it. He
employs and dismisses the teachers; he prescribes the course of study;
no book which he prohibits may be used in the school; any book, within
very wide limits, which he wishes to use, he may use; he determines the
character of the religious instruction. If he is a Catholic, this is, of
course, Catholicism; if he is a Protestant, it is Protestantism--which
means in Ireland either Presbyterianism in the north or Church of
Irelandism in the south and west. But, as a very noted preacher remarked
to me one evening, if he should happen to be a Mohammedan, he would be
perfectly free to teach Mohammedanism.
The secular instruction given in the schools is supposed not to be
coloured by religion, but it is inevitable that it should be; and this
is especially true of Ireland, in whose history religious differences
have played and still play so large a part. The result is that the
memory of old wrongs, far better forgotten, is kept alive and flaming;
and not only that, but the wrongs themselves are magnified and
distorted out of all resemblance to the truth. Some one has remarked
that half the ill-feeling in Ireland is caused by the memory of things
that never happened; and furthermore such atrocities as did occur in
some far distant day are spoken of as though they happened yesterday. To
every Catholic, Limerick is still "The City of the Violated Treaty,"
although the treaty referred to was made (and broken) in 1691, and
Catholics have long since been given every right it granted them. In
Derry, the "siege" is referred to constantly as though it were just
over, though as a matter of fact it occurred in 1689. To shout "To hell
with King Billy!" is the deadliest insult that Catholic can offer
Protestant, though King Billy, otherwise William III of Orange, has been
dead for more than two centuries. And when one asks the caretaker of any
old ruin how the place came to be ruined, the invariable answer is
"'Twas Crummell did it!" although it may have been in ruins a century
before Cromwell was born.
A certain period of every day, in every National School, is set apart
for religious instruction. When that period arrives, a placard on the
wall bearing the words "Secular Instruction," is reversed, displaying
the words "Religious Instruction" printed on the other side. Then
everybody in the schoolhouse who does not belong to the denomination in
which religious instruction is to be given is chased outside. Thus, as
you drive about Ireland, you will see little groups of boys and girls
standing idly in front of the schoolhouses, and you will wonder what
they are doing there.
They are waiting for the religious instruction period to be ended.
No Protestant child is permitted to be present while Catholic
instruction is going on, and no Catholic child while Protestant
instruction is being given. The law used to require the teacher forcibly
to eject such a child; but this raised an awful rumpus because, of
course, both Catholics and Protestants are anxious to make converts, and
the teachers used to say that they had conscientious scruples against
driving out any child who might wish to be converted. So the law now
requires the teacher to notify the child's parents; and the result is, I
fancy, very painful to the child.
All of which, I will say frankly, seems to me absurd. I do not believe
that religious and secular instruction can be combined in this way,
especially with a mixed population, without impairing the efficiency of
both. The first real struggle the Home Rule Parliament will have to
face, in the opinion of my friend the inspector, is the struggle to
secularise education. And this, he added, will not be a struggle of
Protestant against Catholic, but of clerical against anti-clerical, for,
while religious instruction is a far more vital principle with the
Catholic church than with the Protestant church, Protestant preachers in
Ireland are just as jealous of their power over the schools and just as
determined to retain it, as the Catholic priests. The influence of the
clergy in Ireland is very great, and I am inclined to think they will
win the first battle; but I also think that they are certain to lose in
the end.
The General Education Board keeps in touch with the local schools by
employing inspectors, who visit them three times a year and report on
their condition. These visits are supposed to be unexpected, but, as a
matter of fact, they seldom are.
"Word always gets about," my informant explained, with a smile, "that we
are in the neighbourhood, and of course things are furbished up a bit."
"I should like to visit some of the schools," I said.
"You are at perfect liberty to do so. Any orderly person has the right
to enter any school at any time."
"It is the poor little schools I wish to see," I added.
"You will find plenty of them in the west of Ireland--in fact, that is
about the only kind they have there. And you will probably scare the
teacher out of a year's growth when you step in. He will think you are
an inspector, or a government official of some kind, who has heard
something to his discredit and has come to investigate."
"Something to his discredit?" I repeated.
"Perhaps that he doesn't try to make the children in his district come
to school. That is one great fault with our system. We have a compulsory
education law, and every child in Ireland is supposed to go to school
until he is fourteen. But no effort is made to enforce it, and not over
half the children attend school with any sort of regularity. Often, of
course, their parents need them; but more frequently it is because the
parents are so ignorant themselves that they don't appreciate the value
of an education. That isn't their fault entirely, for until thirty or
forty years ago, it was practically impossible for a Catholic child to
get any education, since the schools were managed by Protestants in a
proselytising spirit and the priests would not allow Catholic children
to attend them.
"I have some of the old readers that were used in those days," went on
the inspector, with a smile, "and I wish I had them here. They would
amuse you. In one of them, the Board cut out Scott's lines,
"'Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself has said
This is my own, my native land,'
and so on, fearing that they might have a bad effect upon Irish children
by teaching them to love the land they were born in, and substituted
some verses written by one of their own members. One stanza ran
something like this:
"'I thank the goodness and the grace
Which on my birth have smiled,
And made me in these Christian days
A happy English child.'
The Board claimed there was nothing sectarian about that stanza, but I
wonder what the O'Malleys over in Joyce's Country thought when their
children recited it? I'll bet there was a riot! And the histories had
every sort of history in them except Irish history. Ireland was treated
as a kind of tail to England's kite, and the English conquest was spoken
of as a thing for which Ireland should be deeply grateful, and the
English government was held up to admiration as the best and wisest that
man could hope to devise.
"Ah, well, those days are over now, and they don't try to make a happy
English child out of an Irish Catholic any longer. The principal
trouble now is that there isn't enough money to carry on the schools
properly. Many of the buildings are unfit for schoolhouses, and the
teachers are miserably paid. The school-books are usually poor little
penny affairs, for the children can't afford more expensive ones. We
visit the schools three times a year and look them over, but there isn't
anything we can do. Here is the blank we are supposed to fill out."
The blank was a portentous four-page document, with many printed
questions. The first section dealt with the condition of the schoolhouse
and premises, the second with the school equipment, the third with the
organisation, and so on. As might be expected, many of the questions
have to do with the subject of religious instruction. Here are some of
them:
Note objections (if any) to arrangements for
Religious Instruction.
Have you examined the Religious Instruction
Certificate Book?
Are the Rules as to this book observed?
Is the school _bona fide_ open to pupils of all
denominations?
In case of Convent or Monastery schools, paid by
capitation, state is the staff sufficient.
The "Religious Instruction Certificate Book"--note the reverent
capitals--is the book in which the religion of each child is certified
to by its parents, so that there can be no controversy on the subject,
and in which the child's attendance is carefully entered. There is also
a Punishment Book, in which the teacher, when a child is punished, must
enter the details of the affair for the inspector's information; and an
Observation Book, in which the inspector is supposed to note
suggestions for the teacher's guidance; as well as records of attendance
and proficiency, and all the usual red tape of the Circumlocution
Office. I have never seen any of these books, but I fancy that, with the
exception of the first-named, few teachers spend much time over them.
As I have said before, the local manager has absolute control of the
school, and the poverty of the school funds is sometimes due to his
desire to keep this power wholly in his own hands. The government grant
is intended only as a partial support, and is supposed to be
supplemented by a local contribution. But frequently no local
contribution is asked for or desired, because, if one was made, the
persons who made it would rightfully claim some voice in the management
of the school. I have heard queer tales of managers' eccentricities. One
of them read somewhere of the high educational value of teaching
children to fold paper in various shapes, and so had the children in his
school devote an hour every day to this exercise. It was popular with
the children, but the indignation of their parents may be imagined. They
were, however, quite powerless to do anything except raise a row.
Another, who believed that the highest function of education was to
develop the aesthetic consciousness, had the children in his school
arrange rags of various colours in symphonies, and the people in his
parish nearly went mad with rage.
But these, of course, were exceptions. As a rule, the course of study is
utilitarian and humdrum enough, and the only colour the manager injects
into it is that of religion. I note that the subjects of study
mentioned in the inspector's blank are oral and written English,
history, arithmetic, geography, object lessons and elementary science,
cookery and laundry work, singing, drawing, needlework, and training of
infants. This sounds ambitious enough, but I fancy it is mostly blarney,
so far as the small schools are concerned, at any rate. About all most
of them do is to teach the children to read and write and cipher--and
these most haltingly. Twenty per cent of the people in western Ireland
are still unable to do even that.
"You are a Nationalist, I suppose?" I said, after I had finished looking
through the blank.
"I am," he assented emphatically.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because it is bad for Ireland to be treated like a spoiled child. That
is the way England treats us now--we can get anything we want if we yell
loud enough. And it's bad for England, too. She has problems enough of
her own, heaven knows, but all she can think about is Ireland. Every
sensible Englishman will be glad to get rid of us, so his government can
have a little time to attend to its own affairs. What Ireland needs is
to be chucked overboard and told to sink or swim. We'll swim, of course,
but the shore's a long way off, and it will be a hard pull; but the
harder it is, the closer we Irishmen will be drawn together. Home Rule
won't bring any shower of blessings--it's more apt to bring hardships
for a while; but it will give us a chance to stop thinking about our
wrongs, and go to work to make Ireland a country worth living in."
The time had come for us to take our leave, and the inspector and his
wife walked with us, for half a mile or so, along a beautiful path
through the woods on the other side of the lower lake, and finally, with
many expressions of good-will, bade us good-bye. We went on again, to
the ruins of St. Kevin's seven churches, with the round tower looming
high above them, while all about are the mounds and slabs of the old
graveyard. All the churches are little ones--mere midgets, some of
them--and they are in all states of preservation, from a few fragments
of wall to the almost perfect "St. Kevin's Kitchen"--a tiny structure
with high stone roof, which was set apart for the Saint's use, and which
was so solidly built that it passed unharmed through the many burnings
and sackings of the monastery, and still stands intact, defying the
centuries. There is a queer little tower at one end of it, and a chamber
above between the vault and the high roof; but most of these pre-Norman
churches are small and bare of ornament, and remarkable only for their
great age.
We spent some time in the graveyard, looking at the crosses and
ornamented tombstones, and sculptured fragments lying about, and then we
inspected the round tower; but my picture of it looks like a silhouette
against the sunset sky; and finally we went on to the road, where our
car was waiting. As we swung along through the fresh, cool air of the
evening, we drew our jarvey into talk. He was very pessimistic about the
state of the country, and apparently did not believe that Home Rule
would help it much. There was no chance, he said, for a man to get
ahead. It was a hard struggle for most of them to get enough to eat and
a place to sleep and a few clothes to wear. A little sickness or bad
luck, and there was nothing left but the workhouse--the workmen's
insurance act did not include men like him. His own wages were ten
shillings ($2.40) a week, and there were many who could not earn even
that. On ten shillings--eked out by such tips as he picked up from his
passengers--he managed to clothe and feed himself, but that was all.
Marriage was not to be thought of; there was no hope of saving money
enough to go to America; in fact, there was no hope of any kind. But
though he spoke bitterly enough, he didn't seem unreasonably cast down,
and I dare say spent little time thinking about his hard fate except
when some passing Americans like ourselves reminded him of it.
And at last, just as dusk was falling, we wound down into the valley at
Rathdrum; and presently our train came along; and an hour later we were
again walking along O'Connell Street. It was long past nine o'clock, but
not yet dark.