CUSHLA MA CHREE
IT was very evident, as we went back to Cork, that the people who live
there do not regard it as an earthly paradise, for it seemed as though
the whole population of the place was out in the fields. We had seen the
same thing at Dublin the Sunday before--every open space near the city
crowded with men and women and children; from which I infer that the
Irish have sense enough--or perhaps it is an instinct--to get out of
their slums and into the fresh, clean air whenever they have a chance.
And the way they lie about in the moist grass on the damp ground is
another proof of the amenity of the Irish climate.
When we got back to the town, we decided we could spend an hour very
pleasantly driving about and seeing the place; and, since the day was
fine, we voted for an outside car. Be it known, there are two varieties
of car in Cork: one the common or garden variety, the outside car, and
the other a sort of anti-type called an inside car. The difference is
that, in an outside car you sit on the inside, that is in the middle
with your feet hanging over the wheel, while in an inside car you sit on
the outside, that is over the wheel with your feet hanging down in the
middle. Also the inside car has a top over it and side-curtains which
can be let down in wet weather. I hope this is clear, for I do not know
how to make it clearer without a diagram. Both inside and outside cars
are rather more ramshackle in Cork than anywhere else in Ireland.
The legal rate for a car in Cork is one shilling sixpence per hour, and
I decided in advance that, come what might, come what may, I would not
pay more than twice the legal rate for the use of one. So when we got
off the train at the Cork terminus, I passed under review the cars
standing in the street in front of it, while each individual jarvey,
seeing I was interested, stood up in his seat and bellowed at the top of
his voice. Finally I picked out the least disreputable one and looked
the jarvey in the eye.
"We want to drive around for an hour or two," I said. "How much will you
charge an hour?"
"Jump right up, sir," he cried, and wheeled his car in front of me with
a flourish.
"You'll have to answer my question first."
"'Twill be only five shillings an hour, sir."
I passed on to the next driver, who had been listening to this colloquy
with absorbed interest. His price was four shillings. So I passed on to
the third. His price was three shillings. I suppose if I had passed once
again, the price would have been two shillings; but three shillings was
within my limit, so we mounted into our places and were off.
I fear, however, that that phrase, "we were off," gives a wrong idea of
our exit. We did not whirl up the street, with our horse curvetting
proudly and the jarvey clinging to the reins. No, nothing like that. The
horse trotted--I convinced myself of this, from time to time, by looking
at him--but he was one of those up-and-down trotters, that come down in
almost exactly the same place from which they go up. The jarvey
encouraged him from time to time by touching him gently with the whip,
but the horse never varied his gait, except that, whenever he came to a
grade, he walked. Sometimes we would catch up with a pedestrian
sauntering in the same direction, and then it was quite exciting to see
how we worked our way past him, inch by inch. This mode of progression
had one advantage: it was not necessary to stop anywhere to examine
architectural details or absorb local atmosphere. We had plenty of time
to do that as we passed. In fact, in some of the slum streets, we
absorbed rather more of the atmosphere than we cared for.
Cork is an ancient place, built for the most part on an island in the
River Lee. St. Fin Barre started it in the seventh century by founding a
monastery on the island; the Danes sailed up the river, some centuries
later, and captured it; and then the Anglo-Normans took it from the
Danes and managed to keep it by ceaseless vigilance. The Irish peril was
so imminent, that the English had to bar the gates not only at night,
but whenever they went to church or to their meals, and no stranger was
suffered inside the walls until he had checked his sword and dagger and
other lethal weapons with the gate-keeper.
But the Irish have always had a way with them; and what they couldn't
accomplish by force of arms, they did by blarney;--or maybe it was the
girls who did it! At any rate, at the end of a few generations Cork was
about the Irishest town in Ireland, and levied its own taxes and made
its own laws and even set up its own mint, and when the English
Parliament attempted to interfere, invited it to mind its own business.
The climax came when that picturesque impostor, Perkin Warbeck, landed
in the town, was hailed as a son of the Duke of Clarence and the
rightful King of England by the mayor, and provided with new clothes and
a purse of gold by the citizens, together with a force for the invasion
of England. The result of which was that the mayor lost his head and the
city its charter.
Cork is a tragic word in Irish ears not because of this ancient history,
but because of the dreadful scenes enacted here in the wake of the great
famine of 1847. It was here that thousands and thousands of famished,
hopeless, half-crazed men and women said good-bye to Ireland forever and
embarked for the New World. Hundreds more, unable to win farther, lay
down in the streets and died, and every road leading into the town was
hedged with unburied bodies. That ghastly torrent of emigration has kept
up ever since, though it reached its flood some twenty years ago, and is
by no means so ghastly as it was. Yet every train that comes into the
town bears its quota of rough-clad people, mere boys and girls most of
them, with wet eyes and set faces, and behind it, all through the west
and south, it leaves a wake of sobs and wails and bitter weeping.
Cork possesses nothing of antiquarian interest. The old churches have
all been swept away. The oldest one still standing dates only from 1722,
and is worth a visit not because of itself, but because of some verses
written about its bells by a poet who lies buried in its churchyard. St.
Anne Shandon, with its tall, parti-coloured tower surmounted by its
fish-weathervane, stands on a hill to the north of the Lee. The tower
contains a peal of eight bells, and it was their music which furnished
inspiration for Father Prout's pleasant lines:
With deep affection and recollection
I often think of the Shandon bells,
Whose sounds so wild would, in the days of childhood,
Fling round my cradle their magic spells.
On this I ponder where'er I wander,
And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee,--
With thy bells of Shandon, that sound so grand on
The pleasant waters of the River Lee.
Of course we wanted to see St. Anne Shandon and to hear the bells, so,
with some difficulty, we persuaded our driver to put his horse at the
ascent. The streets rising up that hill are all slums, with little lanes
more slummy still ambling away in various directions; and all of them
were full of people, that afternoon, who hailed our advent as an
unexpected addition to the pleasures and excitements of the day, and
followed along, inspecting us curiously, and commenting frankly upon the
details of our attire. The impression we made was, I think, on the
whole, favourable, but there is a certain novelty in hearing yourself
discussed as impersonally as if you were a statue, and after the first
embarrassment, we rather enjoyed it. At last we reached the church, and
stopped there in the shadow of the tower until the chimes rang. They are
very sweet and melodious, and fully deserve Father Prout's rhapsody.
The wife of the inspector we met at Glendalough had told Betty of a
convent at Cork where girls were taught lace-making, and had given her
the names of two nuns, either of whom, she was sure, would be glad to
show us the school. It is in the convents that most of the lace-making
in Ireland is taught nowadays, and of course we wanted to see one of the
schools, so Monday morning we sallied forth in search of this one. We
found it without difficulty--a great barrack of a building opening upon
a court. Both nuns were there, and I do not remember ever having
received anywhere a warmer welcome. Certainly we might see the
lace-makers, and Sister Catherine took us in charge at once, explaining
on the way that there were not as many girls at work as usual that
morning, because one of their number had been married the day before,
and the whole crowd had stayed up very late celebrating the great event.
And then she led us into a room where about twenty girls were bending
over their work.
They all arose as we entered, and then I sat down and watched them,
while Sister Catherine took Betty about from one girl to the next, and
explained the kind of lace each was making. Some of it was
Carrickmacross, of which, it seems, there are two varieties, applique
and guipure; and some of it was needle-point, that aristocrat of laces
of which one sees so much in Belgium; and some of it was Limerick, and
there were other kinds whose names I have forgotten, but all of it was
beautifully done. The designing is the work of Sister Catherine, and,
while I am very far from being a connoisseur, some of the pieces she
afterwards showed us were very lovely indeed. Then we were asked if we
wouldn't like to hear the girls sing, and of course we said we would, so
one of them, at a nod from the Sister, got to her feet and very gravely
and earnestly sang John Philpot Curran's tender verses, "Cushla ma
Chree," which is Irish for "Darling of My Heart":
Dear Erin, how sweetly thy green bosom rises!
An emerald set in the ring of the sea!
Each blade of thy meadows my faithful heart prizes,
Thou queen of the west! the world's cushla ma chree!
Thy gates open wide to the poor and the stranger--
There smiles hospitality hearty and free;
Thy friendship is seen in the moment of danger,
And the wanderer is welcomed with cushla ma chree.
Thy sons they are brave; but, the battle once over,
In brotherly peace with their foes they agree;
And the roseate cheeks of thy daughters discover
The soul-speaking blush that says cushla ma chree.
Then flourish forever, my dear native Erin,
While sadly I wander an exile from thee;
And, firm as thy mountains, no injury fearing,
May heaven defend its own cushla ma chree!
It is a very characteristic Irish poem of the sentimental sort, and it
has been set to a soft and plaintive air also characteristically Irish,
and it took on a beauty which the lines by themselves do not possess as
we heard it sung that morning, with the girls, bending to their work,
joining in the chorus. Then we were shown over the convent, and finally
taken to the parlour, where Sister Bonaventura joined us, and where we
had a very pleasant talk.
The convent's chief treasure is the great parchment volume in which its
history is noted from day to day. How far back it goes I have forgotten,
but I think to the very founding of the institution, and it is
illuminated throughout very beautifully, while the lettering is superb.
The great events in the life of every nun are recorded here, and those
events are three: when she became a novice, when she took the final
vows, and when she died. Those are the only events that concern the
community, except that sometimes when death followed a painful and
lingering illness, it was noted how cheerfully the pain was borne.
Occasionally some delicate woman found the hard life more than she could
endure, and then she was permitted to put aside her robes and go back
into the world.
I spent half an hour looking through the book, and Sister Bonaventura
showed me the record of her own entry into the convent. It was in the
year in which I was born, and I shivered a little at the thought that,
during all the long time I had been growing to boyhood and manhood and
middle age, she had been immured here in this convent at Cork; during
all the years that I had been reading and writing and talking with men
and women and knocking about the world, she had been doing over and over
again her little round of daily duties; but when I looked at her bright
brave face and quiet eyes, and listened to her calm sweet voice, I
wondered if, after all, she hadn't got farther than I!
It would be a mistake, however, to think of these nuns--or of any I ever
met--as pious, strait-laced, lachrymose creatures. They were quite the
reverse of that; they were fairly bubbling over with good humour and
with big-hearted blarney. Some one had given them a victrola, and it was
evidently the supreme delight of their lives.
"We can't go to the opera," they said; "but the opera comes to us. We
have a concert nearly every evening, and it's sorry we are when the bell
rings and we have to go to bed."
They showed us their austere little chapel, after that, and introduced
us to the Mother Superior, a very delicate, placid, transparent woman of
more than eighty, who reminded me of the sister of Bishop Myriel; and I
am sure they were sorry when we had to say good-bye.
* * * * *
We went down to Monkstown by rail, that afternoon, to see Queenstown
harbour. The line runs close to the river, passing Passage, whose charms
have been celebrated by Father Prout, and finally reaching Monkstown, on
the heights above which stands the famous, four-square castle which cost
its owner only fourpence. The story goes that, in 1636, John Archdeckan
marched away to the war in Flanders, and his wife determined to surprise
him, on his return, by presenting him with a stately castle. So she
gathered a great number of builders together and gave them the job on
the condition that they would buy all their food and drink and clothing
from her. When the castle was done, she balanced her accounts and found
that she had expended fourpence more than she had received.
At Monkstown, we took a boat and ferried across the harbour, past many
grey men-of-war which lay at anchor there. Very beautiful it is, with
the high, green-clad hills pressing about it on all sides, and shrouding
the entrance so completely that one might fancy oneself in a landlocked
lake. Queenstown is built on the side of one of these hills, and is
dominated by the great, white cathedral, which has been building for
fifty years, and is not yet finished.
It is a curious coincidence that the two ports of Ireland by which most
visitors enter and leave it should be named after two people whom the
Irish have little reason to love. In 1821, when George IV embarked at
the port of Dunleary, just below Dublin, he "graciously gave permission"
that its name might be changed to Kingstown in honour of the event. In
1849, Queen Victoria paid one of her very few visits to Ireland, and
sailed into the Cove of Cork. As she herself wrote, "To give the people
the satisfaction of calling the place Queenstown, in honour of its being
the first spot on which I set foot on Irish ground, I stepped on shore
amidst the roar of cannon and the enthusiastic shouts of the people."
Forty years later, when the Irish had come to realise that the Queen had
no interest in them, they had the dignity and good sense to put aside
the servility to which they have sometimes been too prone, and to refuse
to take part in the celebration of her Jubilee. But Queenstown is still
Queenstown.
The town consists of a single long street of public houses and emigrant
hotels and steamship offices facing the water, and some steep lanes
running back up over the hill, and the day we were there, it was crowded
with emigrants, Swedes and Norwegians mostly, who had been brought
ashore from the stranded _Haverford_, and who spent their time wandering
aimlessly up and down, trying to find out what was going to happen to
them. There were many sailors and marines knocking about the grog-shops,
as well as the crowd of navvies and longshoremen always to be found
lounging about a water-front. This water-front is one great
landing-stage, and it is here that perhaps a million Irish men and women
have stepped forever off of Irish soil.
We climbed up the hill presently to the cathedral, which owes not a
little of its impressiveness to its superb site. Its exterior is
handsome and imposing--good Gothic, though perhaps a trifle too florid
for the purest taste; but the effect of the interior is ruined by the
absurd columns of the nave, made of dark marble, and so slender that the
heavy structure of white stone above them seems to be hanging in the
air.
* * * * *
We had hoped to go by rail to Youghal and take steamer up the Blackwater
to Cappoquin, and from there drive over to the Trappist monastery at Mt.
Melleray; but we found that the steamer did not start until the
fifteenth of June, so most regretfully that excursion had to be
abandoned. Those who have made it tell me it is a very beautiful one.
Cloyne is also perhaps worth visiting; but we were tired of Cork and
hungering for Killarney, and so decided to turn our faces westward next
day.