THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE
THERE are two ways of getting from Cork to Killarney, one by the
so-called "Prince of Wales Route," because the late King Edward went
that way in 1858, and the other by way of Macroom. Both routes converge
at Glengarriff and are identical beyond that, and as the best scenery
along the route is between Glengarriff and Killarney, I don't think it
really matters much which route is chosen. The "Prince of Wales Route"
is by rail to Bantry, and then either by boat or coach to Glengarriff,
which is only a few miles away. The other route is to Macroom by rail,
and from there there is a very fine ride by coach of nearly forty miles
to Glengarriff. We chose the Macroom route because of the longer coach
ride and because it touches Gougane Barra, the famous retreat of St. Fin
Barre. I think, on the whole, it is the more picturesque of the two
routes; but either is vastly preferable to the all-rail route. Indeed,
the visitor to Killarney who misses the run from Glengarriff, misses
some of the most beautiful and impressive scenery in all Ireland.
* * * * *
It was shortly after nine o'clock that our train pulled out of the
station at Cork, and at first the line ran between small, well-tilled
fields, each with its cosy cottage. The whole country-side had an air of
content and passable well-being; every wall was gay with the yellow
gorse, and in the fields the green of potato and turnip was just
beginning to show above the dark earth of the ridges in which they were
planted. These ridged fields, which we were to see so often afterwards
in the west of Ireland, tell of a ground so soaked with moisture that it
must be carefully and thoroughly drained before anything will grow in
it. The ridges, which run with the slope of the land, are usually about
eighteen inches wide, and are separated by ditches a foot wide and a
foot deep to carry off the excess moisture. There is always a trickle of
water at the bottom of these ditches, and the task of keeping them open
and free from weeds is a never-ending one.
Presently on a high rock away to the left, appeared the tower which is
all that is left of the old stronghold of the Barretts, and farther on
are the green-clad ruins of Kilcrea Abbey, and near by is another great
keep marking an old castle of the McCarthys. And then the train skirts
the wild bog of Kilcrea, and then there are more ruins, and still more;
and at last the train stops at its terminus, Macroom.
The motor-coach was awaiting us, and we were relieved to find that, so
far from being crowded, there was only one other couple, Americans like
ourselves, to make the trip. The season had opened only the day before,
and, after we got started, the driver confided to us that this was the
first time he had ever been over the road. Even if he hadn't told us, we
should soon have had every reason to suspect it.
The road follows the valley of the Lee, which is not here the single
clear and shining stream which we saw above Cork, but is broken into a
score of channels between islands covered with low-growing brush--a sort
of morass, of a strange and weird appearance. Here and there an ivied
ruin towers above the trees, for this was the country of the O'Learys
and these are the strongholds they built to defend it against the
aggressions of their neighbours; and then we rattled down the street of
a little village, and the driver brought the coach to a stop before the
door of an inn, told us that this was Inchigeelagh and that there would
be ten minutes for refreshments, and then disappeared in the direction
of the bar.
I suppose he got his refreshments for nothing, as a reward for stopping
there. At least I can think of no other reason for stopping, since
Inchigeelagh is only half an hour from Macroom, unless it was to give
the nerves of the passengers a chance to quiet down a little. For we had
already begun to realise that our driver was a speed-maniac. He had
struck a hair-raising gait from the start, had sent the lumbering bus
down grades and around turns at a rate that was decidedly disconcerting,
and while there had been no especial danger except to the people we
met--for the road was bordered by high earthen walls--the rattle and jar
of the solid tires had been enough to make the teeth chatter.
So we were glad when the racket stopped, and we could get down and
stroll about a little; and we soon found that Inchigeelagh is a very
quaint village. We walked down to the bridge over the Lee, and looked at
Lough Allua stretching away to the west; and then we stopped at a
tumbledown cottage to talk to an old woman who was leaning over her
half-door; and she invited us in and asked us to sit down. It was my
first glimpse of the interior of an Irish cottage of the poorer class,
and it opened my eyes to the cruel lot of the people--and there are
many, many thousands of them--who are compelled to live in such
surroundings.
There was just one room, perhaps eight feet by fifteen, lighted by two
little windows about eighteen inches square, one on either side the
door. The doorway was just high enough to enter without stooping, and
ran from the ground right up to the eaves. The floor was of clay, and
the walls inside had been daubed with mud to fill up the cracks and then
whitewashed, but the damp had flaked the whitewash off in great
leprous-looking blotches. The ceiling was formed by some rough boards
laid on top of the joists overhead, so low that one feared to stand
upright, and I suppose the dark space under the thatch was used as a
sleeping-room, for there was a ladder leading to it, and I saw nothing
in the room below which looked like a bed. There may have been a bed
there, however, which, being new to rural Ireland, I did not recognise
as such.
At one end of the room was an open fireplace in which a few blocks of
turf smoked and flared, with that pungent odour which we had already
come to like, but which, at such close quarters, was a little
over-powering. A black and battered pot hung on a crane above the fire,
and some sort of mess was bubbling in it--potatoes I suppose. There was
a rude table, and two or three chairs, and all sorts of rags and debris
hung against the walls and piled in the corners, and a few dishes in a
rough home-made dresser, and an old brush-broom, and some boxes and a
lot of other indescribable trash. Three or four bedraggled chickens
were wandering in and out, and I glanced around for the pig. But there
was no pig--this family was far too poor to own one.
It seemed impossible that a human being could live for any length of
time in a place so bare of comfort, and I looked at the old woman, who
had sat down across from us, and wondered how she managed to survive. I
suspect she was not half so old as her wrinkled face and sunken eyes and
shrivelled hands indicated. She lived there with her husband, she said,
and had for many years. He was a labourer, and, in good times, could
earn ten shillings a week; but most of the time it was impossible to
find any work at all. She had no relatives in America to turn to, and
neither she nor her husband was old enough to get a pension, so that it
was a hard struggle to keep out of the workhouse. But they _had_ kept
out thus far, glory be to God, though the struggle was growing harder
every year, for they were getting older and their rheumatism was getting
worse, and neither of them could work as they once could.
All this was said quite simply, in a manner not complaining, but
resigned, as if accepting the inevitable. Her philosophy of life seemed
to be that, since Fate had chosen to set herself and her husband in the
midst of circumstances so hard, there was nothing to do but struggle on
as long as possible, with the certainty of coming to the workhouse in
the end. No doubt they would be far more comfortable in the workhouse
than they had ever been outside of it, and yet they had that horror of
it which is common to all Irish men and women. The horror, I think, is
not so much at the abstract idea of receiving charity as at the public
stigma which the workhouse gives. The Irish have been eager enough to
draw their old age pensions, and many of them, who shrink from the
workhouse as from a foul disgrace, do not hesitate to beg a few pennies
from the passing stranger.
[Illustration: A COTTAGE AT INCHIGEELAGH]
[Illustration: THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE]
The old woman at Inchigeelagh, however, did not beg, nor intimate in any
way that she desired or expected money, but she did not refuse the coin
I slipped into her hand, after I had taken the picture of her and of her
cottage, which you will find opposite this page. Perhaps she would have
liked to do so, but the little coin represented a measure of potatoes or
of turnips, and so a little less hunger, a little more strength. How
many of us, I wonder, would be too proud to beg if we could find no work
to do, and our backs were bare and our stomachs empty?
The tooting of the horn warned us that our bus was ready to go on again,
and we were soon skirting the shore of Lough Allua, with picturesque
mountains closing in ahead. And then our driver crossed the bridge over
the Lee, and made a wrong turning, and didn't know it until somebody
shouted at him and set him right; and this small misadventure seemed
completely to wreck his self-control, so that, when he got back to the
main road, he rushed along in a manner more terrifying than ever. The
fearful racket heralded our approach, else there must have been more
than one bad accident; and I can yet see wild-eyed men leaping from
their seats and springing frantically to their horses' heads, while the
white-faced women seated in the carts peered out at us under their
shawls as we brushed past, and no doubt sent a malediction after us.
Geese, chickens and pigs scurried wildly in every direction, and that we
did not leave the road strewn with their dead bodies was little less
than a miracle. The road ran between high hedges, so that we could see
only a little way ahead, and we got to watching the curves with a sort
of fascination, for it seemed certain that we _must_ run into something
at the next one.
We had been mounting gradually all this time, often up gradients so
steep that they kept the driver busy with his gears, and the view had
gradually widened and grown in impressiveness. Then we turned off a
narrow road at the right, and I thought for a moment our driver had gone
wrong again.
"We're going to Gougane Barra," he explained, seeing my look, for I sat
on the seat beside him, and in a few minutes we were skirting a narrow
lough, hemmed in, on the north, by a range of precipitous mountains,
with gullied sides patched with grey granite and dark heather, as bare
and desolate as a mountain could be.
There is an inn by the lake shore, and the bus stopped in front of it.
The driver showed us with a gesture the little island containing the
shrine of St. Fin Barre, and then hastened away into the inn. We four
started for the island, and presently we heard heavy steps behind us,
and an animated scarecrow armed with a big stick came running up and
shouted something in an incomprehensible tongue, and waved the stick
above his head, and proceeded to lead the way. He was evidently the
guide, so we followed him along the border of the lake, and across the
narrow strip of land which now connects the island with the shore, and
all the time our guide was talking in the most earnest way, but not a
word could any of us understand. It sounded remotely like English, and
he evidently understood English, for when we asked him to repeat some
particularly emphatic bit, he would do so with added emphasis, but quite
in vain. I shall never forget how earnestly he would look in our faces,
raising his voice as though we were deaf, and pointing with his stick,
and gesturing with his other hand, in the effort to make us understand.
We persuaded him to go and sit down, after awhile, and then we had a
chance really to look about us. There is something indescribably savage
and threatening about that dark sheet of water, shadowed by gloomy
cliffs, bare of vegetation, and torn into deep gullies by the cataracts
which leap down them. Through the hills to the east, the water from the
lake has carved itself a narrow outlet, and the stream which rushes away
through this gorge is the beginning of the River Lee. No place so grand
and desolate would be without its legend, and this is Gougane Barra's:
When the blessed Saint Patrick gathered together all the snakes in
Ireland and drove them over the mountains and into the western sea,
there was one hideous monster which he overlooked, so well had it
concealed itself in this mountain-circled tarn. It was a winged dragon,
and it kept very quiet until the Saint was dead, for fear of what might
happen; but, once Patrick was gathered to his fathers, the dragon
fancied it might do as it pleased. So it issued forth, all the more
savage for its years of retirement, and started to lay waste the
country. The frightened people appealed to their saints to help them,
and among those who put up prayers was a holy man named Fineen Barre,
who had a hermitage on an island in the lake, and so knew the dragon
well. And the saints in heaven looked down and saw the distress of the
poor people and pitied them, and they told Fineen Barre that they would
give him power to slay the dragon on one condition, and that condition
was that he should build a church on the spot where the waters of the
lake met the tide of the sea.
Fineen accepted the condition gladly, and went out and met the monster
and slew it and threw its body into the lake, and its black blood
darkens the water to this day. And when that was done, he set off down
the river, and at the spot where its waters met the tide, he built his
church, and the city of Cork grew up about it. And then in place of the
church, he built a great cathedral, and when he died his body was placed
in a silver coffin and buried before its high altar. Then the city was
plundered by the Danes, who dug up the coffin and carried it away, and
what became of the Saint's bones no one knows.
But the little island where he first lived has been a holy place from
that day to this, and on the anniversary of his death, which comes in
September, crowds of pilgrims journey here to say their prayers before
the thirteen stations set apart by tradition, and to bless themselves
with water from the Saint's well.
The well is just at the entrance to the island, and its water is
supposed to possess miraculous power. Our voluble but ununderstandable
guide invited us by urgent gestures to test its efficacy, but the water
looked scummy and dirty, and we declined. A few steps farther on is a
small, stone-roofed chapel, built in the likeness of Cormac's chapel on
the Rock of Cashel, and in it services are held during the days of
pilgrimage to the shrine. There are also some remains of an old chapel,
supposed to have been Saint Fin Barre's own; but by far the most
interesting thing on the island is the stone enclosure within which the
pilgrims say their prayers.
The enclosure, which is surrounded by a heavy wall of stones laid
loosely on each other, after the ancient Irish fashion, is about thirty
feet square, and its level is some feet below that of the ground
outside, so that one goes down into it by a short flight of steps. In
the centre of the enclosure a plain wooden cross stands on a platform of
five steps. On the flagstone at its foot is an inscription telling in
detail how the "rounds" are to be performed on the vigil and forenoon of
St. Fin Barre's feast-day. In the enclosing wall, which is fourteen feet
thick in places, under heavy arches, are eight cells, which may be used
as places of retreat by those undergoing penance. The Stations of the
Cross are set in the upper portion of the wall, but are ugly modern
plaster-casts. I took a picture of the place, which will be found
opposite page 144, and which gives a fairly good idea of it.
In the middle of a scrubby grove, a little way from the enclosure, is a
wishing-stone, which had evidently been much used, I hope to good
purpose, for the stone itself was covered with trinkets and the bushes
round about were hung thickly with rags and hairpins and rosaries and
other tokens. I picked up somewhere, perhaps from the jargon of the
guide, that this wishing-stone is the altar of Fin Barre's old chapel,
but I haven't been able to verify this, and it may not be so; but the
game is to put up a prayer to the Saint, and make your wish, and leave
some token to show you are in earnest, and the wish will surely come
true. Of course we made a wish and added some half-pennies to the
collection on the altar. In turning over the trinkets already deposited
there, we were amused to find two bright Lincoln cents.
On the shore just opposite the island is a little cemetery held in great
repute because of the holy men who are buried there. For the island has
been the home of a succession of hermits from the time St. Fin Barre
left it to build his church at Cork, and there are many legends of their
saintly lives and wonderful deeds. When they died, they were buried in
the cemetery, where there is also a cross to the memory of Jeremiah
Callanan, a poet native to the neighbourhood, who celebrated the shrine
in some pretty verses beginning:
There is a green island in lone Gougane Barra,
Where Allua of songs rushes forth as an arrow;
In deep-valleyed Desmond--a thousand wild fountains
Come down to that lake, from their home in the mountains.
But the wild honking of the horn told us it was time to go; our guide
realised this, too, and was back at our heels more voluble and
inarticulate than ever; not too inarticulate, however, to sell a knobby
shillelagh to our companions and to accept with thanks the pennies I
dropped into his hand. He tried to stay, hat in hand, until we
departed, but the strain was too much for him, and after a moment he
made off for the bar of the inn.
Our chauffeur was evidently vexed that we had lingered so long at the
shrine of the Saint, for he hurtled us down the rough by-road at a great
rate, whirled into the smoother highway on two wheels, and then opened
his throttle wide and pushed up his spark and let her rip. The road
mounted steadily, with the view to the south opening more and more, and
a rugged range of hills ahead coming closer and closer, until they lay
flung right across the road, and then we swept around a sharp turn and
entered the Pass of Keimaneigh.
The guide-books assert that no pass in Europe exceeds it in grandeur,
but this is a gross exaggeration--it is not nearly so fine, for
instance, as the Pass of Llanberis; and yet it is wild and savage and
very beautiful--a deep gorge cut right through the mountains by a
glacier, which has left the marks of its passage on the rocks on either
side. There is just room between the craggy precipices for a narrow road
and the rugged channel of the rushing stream which drains the mountains.
The pass is most picturesque near its eastern end, for there the cliffs
are steepest, and the overhanging crags assume their most fantastic
shapes. In every nook and cranny of the rocks ferns and heather and
wild-flowers have found a foothold, the feathery plumes of London-pride
being especially noticeable. Here in Ireland it is called St. Patrick's
Cabbage, and no doubt there is a legend connecting the Saint with it,
but I have never happened to run across it.
As we plunged deeper into the pass, the walls on either side closed in
more and more, great boulders dislodged from the heights above crowded
the road so closely that more than once it was forced to turn aside to
avoid them; the greenery of fern and colour of flower gave place to the
sober hue of the heather and the dark green of the bog-myrtle; and then
we were suddenly conscious that the stream by the roadside, which had
been flowing back toward Cork, was flowing forward toward Bantry Bay,
and we knew that we had reached the summit of the watershed dividing
east from west. And then the hills fell back, and there, far below us,
stretched a great rugged valley, with a tiny river wandering through,
and white threads of roads curving here and there, and Lilliputian
houses scattered among the fields.
The car paused for an instant on the edge of this abyss and then plunged
into it. At least, that was the sensation it gave its passengers. I do
not know that I have ever travelled a steeper road, or one which wound
more threateningly near the unguarded edges of precipices--certainly not
in a heavy motor-bus hurtling along at thirty miles an hour. Perhaps the
brakes were not holding, or perhaps the driver had had a drink too much;
at any rate, we bounced from rock to rock and spun around sharp turns,
only a foot or two from the edge of the road, which there was absolutely
nothing to guard and which dropped sheer for hundreds of feet. But at
last the more hair-raising of these turns were left behind, the road
straightened out along the side of the hill, and then, far ahead, we saw
opening out below us the blue waters and craggy shores of Bantry Bay.
Down and down we dropped, with new vistas opening every minute, until we
were running close beside the border of the bay, and for ten miles we
followed its convolutions. Then we swung away between high hedges, and
Betty nearly fell out of the bus--for the hedges were of fuchsias, ten
feet high and heavy with scarlet flowers!
That was the crowning delight of that wonderful drive. We ran between
high rows of fuchsias for perhaps half a mile; then we turned through a
gate into beautiful grounds; and a moment later we were climbing out in
front of the hotel at Glengarriff--half an hour ahead of schedule time!