ADVENTURES AT BLARNEY
IT was getting on toward evening when we caught our train on the main
line at Goold's Cross. The storm had swept southward, and the hills
there were masked with rain, but the Golden Vale had emerged from its
baptism more lush, more green, more dazzling than ever. We left it
behind, at last, plunged into a wood of lofty and magnificent trees, and
paused at Limerick Junction, with its great echoing train-shed and wide
network of tracks and switches. Beyond the Junction, one gets from the
train a splendid view of the picturesque Galtees, the highest mountains
in the south of Ireland, fissured and gullied and folded into deep
ravines in the most romantic way.
The train had been comparatively empty thus far, and we had rejoiced in
a compartment to ourselves; but as we drew into the station at
Charleville, we were astonished to see a perfect mob of people crowding
the platform, with more coming up every minute. The instant the train
stopped, the mob snatched open the doors and swept into it like a tidal
wave. When the riot subsided a bit, we found that four men and two girls
were crowded in with us, and the corridor outside was jammed with people
standing up. We asked the cause of the excitement, and were told that
there had been a race-meeting at Charleville, which had attracted a
great crowd from all over the south-eastern part of Ireland, especially
from Cork, thirty-five miles away.
Our companions soon got to chaffing each other, and it developed that
all of them, even the two girls, had been betting on the races, and I
inferred that they had all lost every cent they had. It was assumed, as
a matter of course, that nobody would go to a race-meeting without
putting something on the horses; it was also assumed that every normal
man and woman would make almost any sacrifice to get to a meeting; and
there was a lively discussion as to possible ways and means of attending
another meeting which was to be held somewhere in the neighbourhood the
following week. And finally, it was apparent that everybody present had
contemplated the world through the bottom of a glass more than once that
day. As I looked at them and listened to them, I began to understand the
cause of at least a portion of Irish poverty.
It was a good-humoured crowd, in spite of its reverses, and when a girl
with a tambourine piped up a song, she was loudly encouraged to go on
and even managed to collect a few pennies, found unexpectedly in odd
pockets. Then one of the men in our compartment told a story; I have
forgotten what it was about, but it was received uproariously; and then
everybody talked at once as loud as possible, and the clatter was
deafening.
We were glad when we got to Cork.
* * * * *
Cork is superficially a sort of smaller Dublin. It has one handsome
thoroughfare, approached by a handsome bridge, and the rest of the town
is composed for the most part of dirty lanes between ugly houses. In
Dublin, the principal street and bridge are dedicated to O'Connell; in
Cork both bridge and street are named after St. Patrick--that is about
the only difference, except that Cork lacks that atmosphere of charm and
culture which makes Dublin so attractive.
We took a stroll about the streets, that Saturday night after dinner,
and found them thronged with people, as at Dublin; but here there was a
large admixture of English soldiers and sailors, come up from Queenstown
to celebrate. Many of them had girls on their arms, and those who had
not were evidently hoping to have, and the impression one got was that
Cork suffers a good deal from the evils of a garrison town. There is a
tradition that the girls of Cork are unusually lovely; but I fear it is
only a tradition. Or perhaps the lovely ones stay at home on Saturday
night.
Sunday dawned clear and bright, and as soon as we had breakfasted, we
set out for the most famous spot in the vicinity of Cork, and perhaps in
all Ireland, Blarney Castle. Undoubtedly the one Irish tradition which
is known everywhere is that of the blarney stone; "blarney" itself has
passed into the language as a noun, an adjective, and a verb; and the
old tower of which the stone is a part has been pictured so often that
its appearance is probably better known than that of any other ruin in
Europe. Blarney is about five miles from Cork, and the easiest way of
getting there is by the light railway, which runs close beside a pretty
stream, in which, this bright morning, many fishermen were trying their
luck. And at last, high above the trees, we saw the rugged keep which
is all that is left of the old castle. Almost at once the train stopped
at the station, which is just outside the entrance to the castle
grounds.
[Illustration: BLARNEY CASTLE]
"The Groves of Blarney" are still charming, though they have changed
greatly since the day when Richard Milliken wrote his famous song in
praise of them. There were grottoes and beds of flowers, and terraces
and rustic bowers there then, and statues of heathen gods and nymphs so
fair all standing naked in the open air; but misfortune overtook the
castle's owner and
The muses shed a tear when the cruel auctioneer,
With his hammer in his hand, to sweet Blarney came.
So the statues vanished, together with the grottoes and the terraces;
but the sweet silent brook still ripples through the grounds, and its
banks are covered with daisies and buttercups, and guarded by giant
beeches. Very lovely it is, so that one loiters to watch the dancing
water, even with Blarney Castle close at hand.
Approached thus, the massive donjon tower, set on a cliff and looming a
hundred and twenty feet into the air, is most impressive. To the left is
a lower and more ornamental fragment of the old castle, which, in its
day, was the strongest in all Munster. Cormac McCarthy built it in the
fifteenth century as a defence against the English, and it was held by
the Irish until Cromwell's army besieged and captured it. Around the top
of the tower is a series of machicolations, or openings between
supporting corbels, through which the besieged, in the old days, could
drop stones and pour molten lead and red-hot ashes and such-like
things down upon the assailants, and it is in the sill of one of these
openings that the famous Blarney stone is fixed.
Legend has it that, once upon a time, in the spring of the year when the
waters were running high, Cormac McCarthy was returning home through the
blackness of the night, and when he put his horse at the last ford, he
thought for a moment he would be swept away, so swift and deep was the
current. But his horse managed to keep its feet, and just as it was
scrambling out upon the farther bank, McCarthy heard a scream from the
darkness behind him, and then a woman's voice crying for help. So he
dashed back into the stream, and after a fearful struggle, dragged the
woman to safety.
In the dim light, McCarthy could see only that she was old and withered;
but her eyes gleamed like a cat's when she looked at him; and she called
down blessings upon him for his courage, and bade him, when he got home,
go out upon the battlement and kiss a certain stone, whose location she
described to him. Thereupon she vanished, and so McCarthy knew it was a
witch he had rescued. Next morning, he went out upon the battlement and
found the stone and kissed it, and thereafter was endowed with an
eloquence so sweet and persuasive that no man or woman could resist it.
Such is the legend, and it may have had its origin in the soft,
delutherin speeches with which Dermot McCarthy put off the English, when
they called upon him to surrender his castle. Certain it is that it was
fixed finally and firmly in the popular mind by the stanza which Father
Prout added to Milliken's song:
There is a stone there, that whoever kisses
Oh! he never misses to grow eloquent.
'Tis he may clamber to a lady's chamber,
Or become a member of Parliament.
A clever spouter he'll sure turn out, or
An out and outer, to be let alone;
Don't hope to hinder him, or to bewilder him,
Sure he's a pilgrim from the Blarney Stone.
And ever since then, troops of pilgrims have thronged to Blarney to kiss
the stone.
The top of the tower is reached by a narrow staircase which goes round
and round in the thickness of the wall, with narrow loopholes of windows
here and there looking out upon the beautiful country, and a door at
every level giving access to the great, square interior. The floors have
all fallen in and there is only the blue sky for roof, but the graceful
old fireplaces still remain and some traces of ornamentation, and the
ancient walls, eighteen feet thick in places, and with mortar as hard as
the rock, are wonderful to see; and finally you come out upon the
battlemented parapet, with miles and miles of Ireland at your feet.
But it wasn't to gaze at the view we had come to Blarney Castle, it was
to kiss the stone, and we went at once to look for it. It was easy
enough to find, for, on top of the battlement above it, a row of tall
iron spikes has been set, and the stone itself is tied into the wall by
iron braces, for one of Cromwell's cannon-balls almost dislodged it, and
it is worn and polished by the application of thousands of lips. But to
kiss it--well, that is another story!
For the sill of which the stone forms a part is some two feet lower than
the level of the walk around the parapet, and, to get to it, there is a
horrid open space some three feet wide to span, and below that open
space is a sheer drop of a hundred and twenty feet to the ground below.
When one looks down through it, all that one can see are the waving
tree-tops far, far beneath. There is just one way to accomplish the
feat, and that is to lie down on your back, while somebody grasps your
ankles, and then permit yourself to be shoved backward and downward
across the abyss until your mouth is underneath the sill.
Betty and I looked at the stone and at the yawning chasm and then at
each other; and then we went away and sat down in a corner of the
battlement to think it over.
We had supposed that there would be some experienced guides on hand,
anxious to earn sixpence by assisting at the rite, as there had been at
St. Kevin's bed; but the tower was deserted, save for ourselves.
"Well," said Betty, at last, "there's one thing certain--I'm not going
away from here until I've kissed that stone. I'd be ashamed to go home
without kissing it."
"So would I," I agreed; "but I'd prefer that to hanging head downward
over that abyss. Anyway, I won't take the responsibility of holding you
by the heels while you do it. Perhaps some one will come up, after
awhile, to help."
So we looked at the scenery and talked of various things; but all
either of us thought about was kissing the stone, and we touched on it
incidentally now and then, and then shied away from it, and pretended to
think of something else. Presently we heard voices on the stair, and a
man and two women emerged on the parapet. We waited, but they didn't
approach the stone, they just looked around at the landscape; and
finally Betty inquired casually if they were going to kiss the Blarney
stone.
"Kiss the Blarney stone?" echoed the man, who was an Englishman. "I
should think not! It's altogether too risky!"
"But it seems a shame to go away without kissing it," Betty protested.
"Yes, it does," the other agreed; "but I was here once before, and I
fought that all out then. It's really just a silly old legend, you
know--nobody believes it!"
Now to my mind silly old legends are far more worthy of belief than most
things, but it would be folly to say so to an Englishman. So the
conversation dropped, and presently he and his companions went away, and
Betty and I sat down again and renewed our conversation.
And then again we heard voices, and this time it was two American women,
well along in years. They asked us if we knew which was the Blarney
stone, and we hastened to point it out to them, and explained the
process of kissing it. There were postcards illustrating the process on
sale at the entrance, and we had studied them attentively before we came
in, so that we knew the theory of it quite well.
"We were just sitting here trying to screw up courage to do it," Betty
added.
The newcomers looked at the stone, and then at the abyss.
"Well, _I'll_ never do it!" they exclaimed simultaneously, and they
contented themselves with throwing a kiss at it; and then _they_ went
away, and Betty and I, both rather pale around the gills, continued to
talk of ships and shoes and sealing-wax. But I saw in her eyes that
somehow or other she was going to kiss the stone.
And then a tall, thin man came up the stair, and _he_ asked us where the
stone was, and we showed him, and he looked at it, and then he glanced
down into the intervening gulf, and drew back with a shudder.
"Not for me," he said. "Not--for--me!"
"We've come all the way from America," said Betty, "and we simply
_can't_ go away until we've kissed it."
"Well, _I've_ come all the way from New Zealand, madam," said the man,
"but I wouldn't think for a minute of risking my life like that."
"It used to be a good deal more dangerous than it is now," I pointed
out, as much for my own benefit as for his. "They used to take people by
the ankles and hold them upside down outside the battlement. I suppose
they dropped somebody over, for those spikes were put there along the
top to stop it. If the people who hold your legs are steady, there
really isn't any danger now."
The New Zealander took another peep over into space.
"No sirree!" he said. "No sir--ree!"
But he didn't go away. Instead, he sat down and began to talk; and I
fancied I could see in his eyes some such uneasy purpose as I saw in
Betty's.
And then a boy of twelve or fourteen came up. He was evidently native to
the neighbourhood, and I asked him if he had ever kissed the stone.
"I have, sir, many a time," he said.
"Would you mind doing it again, so that we can see just how it is done?"
He readily consented, and lay down on his back with his head and
shoulders over the gulf, and the New Zealander took one leg and I took
the other. Then the boy reached his hands above his head and grasped the
iron bars which ran down inside the battlement to hold the stone in
place.
"Now, push me down," he said.
My heart was in my mouth as we pushed him down, for it seemed an awful
distance, though I knew we couldn't drop him because he wasn't very
heavy; and then we heard a resounding smack.
"All right," he called. "Pull me up."
We pulled him up, and in an instant he was on his feet.
"That's all there is to it," he said, and sauntered off.
"Hm-m-m!" grunted the New Zealander, and sat down again.
I gazed at the landscape for a minute or two, my hands deep in my
pockets.
When I turned around, Betty had her hat and coat off, and was spreading
her raincoat on the parapet opposite the stone.
"What are you going to do?" I demanded sternly.
She sat down on the raincoat with her back to the abyss.
"Come on, you two, and hold me," she commanded.
I suppose I might have refused, but I didn't. The truth is, I wanted her
to kiss the stone as badly as she wanted to; so I knelt on one side of
her and the New Zealander knelt on the other, and we each grasped an
ankle. She groped for the iron bars, found them after an instant, and
drew herself toward them.
"Now, push me down," she said.
We did; and as soon as we heard the smack, we hauled her up again, her
face aglow with triumph. It took her some minutes to get her hair fixed,
for most of the hair-pins had fallen out. When she looked up, she saw
that I had taken off my coat.
"What are you going to do?" she demanded, in much the same tone that I
had used.
"I'm going to kiss that stone," I said. "Do you suppose I'd go away now,
without kissing it? Why, I'd never hear the last of it! Get hold of my
legs," and I sat down, keeping my eyes carefully averted from the
hundred-and-twenty-foot drop.
"Oh, but look here," she protested, "I don't know whether I'm strong
enough to hold you."
"Yes, you are," I said, making sure that there was nothing in my
trousers' pockets to fall out. "Now, then!"
Just then four or five Irish girls came out upon the tower, and Betty,
stricken with the fear of losing me, asked them if they wouldn't help,
and they said they would; so, with one man and four women holding on to
my legs, I let myself over backwards. One doesn't realise how much two
feet is, till one tries to take it backwards; it seemed to me that I was
hanging in midair by my heels, so I kissed a stone hastily and started
to come up.
"That wasn't it," protested one of the girls who had been watching me;
"you've got to go farther down."
So they pushed me farther down, and I saw the smooth, worn stone right
before my eyes.
"Is this it?" I asked.
"Yes," she said; so I kissed it, and in a moment was right side up
again; and I don't know when I have felt prouder.
And then the New Zealander, his face grim and set, began to take things
out of his trousers' pockets.
"If you people will hold me," he said, "I'll do it too."
So we held him, and _he_ did it.
Then he and I offered to hold the Irish girls, but they refused,
giggling, and as there was nothing more to do on top of that tower, we
went down again, treading as if on air, more elated than I can say.
That sense of elation endures to this day, and I would earnestly advise
every one who visits Blarney Castle to kiss the stone. I am not aware
that I am any more eloquent than I ever was, and Betty never had any
real need to kiss it, but to go to Blarney without doing so is--well, is
like going to Paris without seeing the Louvre, or to the Louvre without
seeing the Winged Victory and the Venus of Milo. Really, there isn't any
danger, if you have two people of average strength holding you; and
there isn't even any very great sense of danger, since your back is to
the abyss and you can't see it. My advice is to do it at once, as soon
as you get to the top of the tower, without stopping to think about it
too long. After that, with a serene mind, you can look at the view,
which is very, very lovely, and explore the ruin, which is one of the
most interesting and noteworthy in Ireland.
* * * * *
We sat down on a bench just outside the castle entrance to rest after
our exertions. There was a young man and woman on the bench, and in
about a minute we were talking together. It turned out that they were
members of Alexander Marsh's company, then touring Ireland in classical
repertoire, and would open in Cork in "The Three Musketeers" the
following evening. I had never heard of Alexander Marsh, but they both
pronounced his name with such awe and reverence that I fancied he must
be a second Irving, and I said at once that we should have to see the
play. We went on to talk about that high-hearted story, which I love;
and I noticed a growing embarrassment in our companions.
"See here," said the man at last, "you know the book so well and think
so much of it, that I'm afraid the play will disappoint you. For one
thing, we can't put on Richelieu. The play makes rather a fool of him,
and the Catholics over here would get angry in a minute if we made a
fool of a Cardinal, even on the stage. So we have to call him Roquefort,
and leave out the Cardinal altogether, which, of course, spoils the
whole point of the plot. It's a pity, too, because his robes are
gorgeous. Of course it doesn't make so much difference to people who
haven't read the book--and mighty few over here have; but I'm afraid you
wouldn't like it."
I was afraid so, too; so we promised we wouldn't come.
And then they went on to tell us about themselves. They were married, it
seemed, and were full of enthusiasms and ideals, and they spoke with
that beautiful accent so common on the English stage; and he had been to
New York once, and for some reason had fared pretty badly there; but he
hoped to get to America again. He didn't say why, but I inferred it was
because in America he could earn a decent salary, which was probably
impossible in the Irish provinces.
We left them after a while, and wandered through what is left of the
groves of Blarney, and visited the caves in the cliffs under the castle,
at one time used for dungeons, into which the McCarthys thrust such of
their enemies as they could capture. And then we explored the charming
little river which runs along under the cliff, and walked on to Blarney
Lake, a pretty bit of water, with more than its share of traditions:
for, at a certain season of the year, a herd of white cows rises from
its bosom and feeds along its banks, and it is the home of a red trout
which will not rise to the fly, and it was into this lake that the last
of the McCarthys cast his great chest of plate, when his castle was
declared forfeited to the English, and his spirit keeps guard every
night along the shore, and the secret of its whereabouts will never be
revealed until a McCarthy is again Lord of Blarney.
We walked back to the entrance, at last, and had a most delicious tea on
the veranda of a clean tea-shop there, with gay little stone-chatters
hopping about our feet, picking up the crumbs; and then we loitered
about the quaint little village, and visited the church, set in the
midst of a pretty park, and wandered along a road under lofty trees, and
were wholly, completely, riotously happy.
We had kissed the Blarney Stone!