THE RUINS AT ADARE
WE threw back the shutters, next morning, to a cold and dreary day of
misting rain; and after a look at it, Betty elected to spend it before a
cosy fire in our great, high-ceilinged room. I have wondered since if
our hotel at Limerick was not one of those handsome eighteenth-century
mansions, brought by the hard necessities of time to the use of passing
travellers. It is difficult to explain the gorgeousness of some of its
rooms on any other theory. Ours was a very large one, with elaborate
ceiling-mouldings and panelled walls and a mantel of carved marble,
which Betty inspected longingly. She could see it, I fancy, in her own
drawing-room, and perhaps its beauties had something to do with her
decision to spend the day in front of it.
There were two or three pictures I wanted to take--one of the old castle
and another of the crooked little lane I had wandered through the night
before; so I set forth to get them, along busy George Street, with its
bright shops, and then across the river to English Town, and so to the
castle front. I found it very hard to get anything like a satisfactory
picture of it, because the parapet of the new bridge is in the way, and
because the angle of my lens was not wide enough to take in both the
towers. I did the best I could, took a last look at the treaty stone,
but forbore to add to its fame by photographing it; and then traversed
again the quaint old streets, with their ramshackle houses, and so came
to the little lane.
The town, as I came through it, had been full of market-carts drawn by
ragged donkeys and driven by shawled women, and I loitered about for a
time, hoping that one of them would come this way and so add a touch of
human interest to my picture. A painter was busy giving one of the
thatched houses a coat of white-wash; only it wasn't white-wash,
properly speaking, because a colouring-matter had been added to it which
made it a vivid pink. This pink wash is very popular in Ireland, and,
varied sometimes by a yellow wash, adds a high note to nearly every
landscape. I talked with the man awhile, and then, the rain coming down
more heavily, I slipped into a cobbler's shop for shelter.
It would be difficult to imagine anything more comfortless and primitive
than that interior. The shop occupied one of the two rooms of the family
home--bare little rooms with dirt floors and tiny windows and no
furniture except the most necessary. Somebody has said that there are
two pieces of furniture always worthy of veneration--the table and the
bed; but I doubt if even that philosopher could have found anything to
venerate in the specimens which this house contained. The table was a
rude affair of rough boards, with one corner supported by a box in lieu
of a leg, and the bed was a mere pile of rags on a sort of low shelf in
one corner. What sort of fare was set forth upon that table, and what
sort of rest the bed afforded, was not difficult to imagine.
The cobbler was tapping away at a pair of shoes, trying to mend them,
and sadly they needed it. Indeed, they were such shoes as no
self-respecting tramp would wear in America, and I could not but suspect
that the cobbler had fished them from a garbage heap somewhere, and was
trying, as a sort of speculation, to make them worth a few pennies. Two
or three blocks of turf smoked and flared in a narrow fire-place, and,
as always, a black pot hung over them, with some sort of mess bubbling
inside it. The cobbler's wife sat on a stool before the fire
contemplating the boiling pot gloomily, and a dirty child, of
undeterminable sex, played with the scraps of leather on the floor.
I apologised for my intrusion; but the atmosphere of the place was not
genial. I fancied they resented my presence,--as I should have done, had
our positions been reversed--and so, as soon as the downpour slackened a
bit, I pressed a penny into the baby's fist and took myself off. The
cobbler, suddenly softened, followed me outside to see me take the
picture, and perhaps to be in it; but that picture was a failure, all
spotted by the rain.
I intended going to Adare, a little town not far away, said to possess a
most remarkable collection of ruins, but it was yet an hour till train
time, and I spent it exploring the town back of the railway station. I
found it a most picturesque collection of crooked streets and quaint
houses, and my advent was frankly treated as a great event by the
gossips leaning over their half-doors. How eager they were to talk; I
should have liked to stop and talk to all of them; but when I got ready
to take a picture of the very crookedest street, their interest in my
proceedings was so urgent and humorously-expressed that I lost my head
and forgot to pull the slide--a fact I didn't realise until I had bade
them good-bye and was walking away; and then I was ashamed to go back
and take another.
The train for Adare was waiting beside the platform when I got to the
station, and I carefully selected a vacant compartment and clambered
aboard. And then a guard came along and laughingly told me I would have
to get out, because that car was reserved for a "Mothers' Union," which
was going to Adare to hold a meeting. So I got out and waited on the
platform till the Union arrived--some twenty or thirty comfortable-looking
matrons, in high spirits, which the miserable weather did not dampen in
the least. Irish meetings are held, I suppose, just the same rain or
shine. It was Simeon Ford who remarked that if the Scotch knew enough to
go in when it rained, they would never get any outdoor exercise. This is
equally true of the Irish--only in Ireland, one doesn't need to go in,
for sure 'tis a soft rain that does nobody any harm!
Adare is about ten miles from Limerick and the road thither runs along
the valley of the Shannon, with its lush meadows and lovely woods,
veiled that day in a pearly mist of rain. As usual, the station is
nearly a mile from the town, and as I started to walk it, I saw a tall
old man coming along behind me, and I waited for him.
"'Tis a bad day," I said.
"It is so," he agreed; "and it's a long walk I have before me, for my
house would be two miles beyont the village."
"They tell me there are some fine ruins in the village."
"There are so;" and then he looked at me more attentively. "You're not a
native of these parts?" he asked, at last.
"No," I said; "I'm from America."
"From America!" he echoed, incredulously.
"Yes; from the state called Ohio."
"Think of that, now!" he cried. "And I can understand every word you
say! Why, glory be to God, you speak fairer than the old woman up here
along who has never crossed the road!"
I should have liked to hear more about this remarkable old woman, but he
gave me no chance with his many questions about America. He had a son in
New Jersey, he said, and the boy was doing well, and sent a bit of money
home at Christmas and such like. It was a wonderful place, America. Ah,
if he were not so old--
So, talking in this manner, we came to the town, and he pointed out the
inn to me, opposite a picturesque string of thatched cottages nestling
among the trees, and bade me Godspeed and went on his way; and I suppose
that night before the fire he told of his meeting with the wanderer from
far-off America, and how well he could understand his language!
I went on to the inn, which was a surprisingly pretty one, new and clean
and well-kept; and I took off my wet coat and sat down in the cosy bar
before a lunch which tasted as good as any I have ever eaten; and then I
lit my pipe and drew up before the fire and asked the pretty maid who
served me how to get to the ruins. They were all, it seemed, inside the
demesne of the Earl of Dunraven, the entrance to which was just across
the road, and it was necessary that I should have an entrance ticket,
which the maid hastened to get for me from the proprietor of the inn.
When she gave it to me, I asked the price, and was told there was no
charge, as the Earl of Dunraven was always glad for people to come to
see the ruins.
All honour to him for that!
So it was with a very pleasant feeling about the heart that I presently
crossed the road and surrendered a portion of my ticket to a black-eyed
girl at the gate-house, and she told me how to go to get to the ruins,
and hoped I wouldn't be soaked through. But I didn't mind the rain; it
only added to the beauty of the park. Besides, I was thinking of "Silken
Thomas."
Have you ever heard of "Silken Thomas," tenth Earl of Kildare? Probably
not; yet he was a great man in his day--not so great as his grandfather,
that greatest of the Geraldines, whose trial for treason before Henry
VII is a thing Irishmen love to remember.
"This man burned the cathedral at Cashel," said the prosecutor, "and we
will prove it."
"Spare your evidence," said the Earl. "I admit that I set fire to the
church, but 'twas only because I thought the archbishop was inside."
"All Ireland cannot rule this man!" cried one of his opponents.
"Then, by God, this man shall rule all Ireland!" said the King, and
Kildare was made lord lieutenant, and went back to Dublin in triumph.
It was in the thirteenth century that Adare came into possession of
this mighty family, and the second Earl built a great castle here, on
the site of an older one which had belonged to the dispossessed
O'Donovans. The first Earl had already built near by a monastery for the
Augustinians; and another Earl and his pious wife built a yet handsomer
one for the Franciscans; so that here was citadel and sanctuary for
them, when they grew weary of fighting, or when the tide of battle went
against them. It was a Kildare who led the northern half of Ireland
against the southern, at the great battle of Knocktow, where Irishmen
slew each other by thousands, while the English looked on and chuckled
in their sleeves; and after that, the Kildares waxed so powerful that
Wolsey, the great minister of the eighth Henry, took alarm at their
over-vaulting ambition, and caused the head of the house, the ninth
Earl, to be summoned to London. He went unwillingly, though he had been
given every assurance of safety; and his misgivings proved well-founded,
for he was at once imprisoned in the Tower.
He left behind him in Ireland his son, "Silken" Thomas, so-called from
the richness of his attire and retinue, a youth of twenty-one; and when
the news came that the old Earl had been put to death, Silken Thomas,
deeming it credible enough, renounced his allegiance to England, marched
into Dublin, and threw down his sword of state before the Chancellor and
Archbishop in St. Mary's Abbey, and then rode boldly forth again, none
daring to stop him. But it came to naught, for a great English force
wore him out in a long campaign, seduced his allies from him, and
finally persuaded him to yield on condition that his life should be
spared. He sailed for England, assured of a pardon, was arrested as soon
as he landed, and was beheaded, and drawn and quartered on Tower Hill,
together with five of his kinsmen.
So ended the haughty Geraldines. The estate was confiscated, and the
castle, after being besieged by Desmonds and O'Connells, by Irish and by
English, was finally taken by Cromwell's men and destroyed, and they
also, perhaps, put the finishing touches to the monasteries.
That was the wild old story I was thinking of as I made my way along the
winding road, over a beautiful little stream in which I could see the
trout lurking, and then across a golf ground to the ivy-draped ruins of
the old abbey of the Franciscans, built by the Geraldines in the heyday
of their power. It is a beautiful cluster of buildings, with a graceful
square tower rising high above them; and they are in excellent
preservation, lacking only the roofs and a portion of gable here and
there. Even the window tracery is, for the most part, intact.
The interior of the church is of unusual richness and beauty, abounding
in delicate detail--recessed altar-tombs, richly-carved sedilia, arched
vaults, graceful mouldings, and the window traceries are very pure and
lovely. Here, as at Muckross, the cloisters are especially beautiful,
and are perfectly preserved. They are lighted on two sides by pointed
arches arranged in groups of three, while on the side next the church
the arches are grouped in pairs, and the fourth side is closed in by a
lovely arcade, with double octagonal columns. Here, also as at Muckross,
the friars planted a yew tree in the centre of the court, and it is now
a venerable giant. Whether it is as deadly as the Muckross yew I do not
know.
[Illustration: THE CHOIR OF THE ABBEY AT ADARE]
[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF THE GERALDINES, ADARE]
Beyond the cloisters are the refectory and domestic offices and
dormitories, all well-preserved, and repaying the most careful scrutiny.
I don't know when I have been more ecstatically happy than when, after
examining all this beauty, I sat myself down under an arch in the very
midst of it, and smoked a pipe and gazed and gazed.
I tore myself away at last, and made my way across the meadow to the
ruins of the castle, which I could see looming above the trees by the
river. Right on the bank of the river it stands, and at one time there
was a moat all around it which the river fed. One can see traces of the
moat, even yet, with a fosse beyond, and there is enough left of the
castle to show how great and strong this citadel of the Geraldines was.
There is a high outer wall, all battlemented, pierced by a single gate;
and then an inner ward, also with a single gate, flanked by heavy
defending towers. Within this looms the ultimate place of refuge, the
mighty donjon, forty feet square, with walls of tremendous strength, and
flanking towers, and every device for defence, so that one wonders how
it was ever taken.
One can still go up by the narrow stone stair, and from the top look
down upon these walls within walls, and fancy oneself back in the Middle
Ages, with their pageantries and heroisms and picturesque mummeries; and
one can see, too, how hard and comfortless life was then, save for the
few who held wealth and power in their mailed fists. "The good old
times!" Not much! The sad, cruel, gruesome, selfish, treacherous old
times, whose like, thank heaven, will never be seen again upon this
earth!
The rain was pouring down in sheets as I left the castle, but I could
not forbear going back again to the friary for a last look at it; and
then I tramped happily back along the road to the gate; and the
black-eyed girl was there to welcome me, and to say how sorry she was
that the day was so bad. But I did not think it bad; I thought it
beautiful, and said so; only I was afraid my photographs wouldn't be
worth reproducing.
And then the girl asked me if I wouldn't come in and sit by the fire a
bit, and we had a little gossip, of course about America. She had a
married sister in New York, she said, and she hoped some day to join
her. And then she told me that the cottage next door was where the
famous Adare cigarettes were made--an industry started by the Earl, who
grew the tobacco on his place.
I stopped in to see the factory, and found four girls rolling the
cigarettes and a man blending the tobaccos. He told me that the Earl had
planted twenty-five acres with tobacco, and that it did very well; but
it was not used alone, as it was too dark, but blended with the lighter
Maryland, brought from America. I bought a packet of the cigarettes in
the interests of this narrative, but they did not seem to me in any way
extraordinary.
I went on again and stopped in at the parish church, which was at one
time a Trinitarian Friary, or White Abbey, founded seven hundred years
ago. It was falling into ruins, when the Earl, who seems omnipotent in
these parts, restored it and fitted it up as a church and turned it over
to the Catholics. There is a big school attached to it now, and as I
entered the grounds, a white-coifed nun who was sitting at a window
looking over some papers, fled hastily. The church itself is chiefly
remarkable for a very beautiful five-lighted window over the altar. Just
outside is a handsome Celtic cross, surmounting the fountain where the
villagers get their water.
There was a store farther down the street, and I stopped in to get some
postcards. It was the most crowded store I ever saw, the ceiling hung
with tinware, the shelves heaped with merchandise of every kind, and the
floor so crowded with boxes and barrels that there was scarcely room to
squeeze between them. I remarked to the proprietor that he seemed to
carry a large stock, and he explained that he tried to have everything
anybody would want, for it was foolish to let any money get away. While
we were talking, a girl came in to sell some eggs. She had them in a
basket, and the man took them out, but instead of counting them, he
weighed them.
I went on back to the station, after that, through the driving rain, and
I was very wet by the time I got there--wet on the outside, that is, but
warm and dry and happy underneath. And at the station, I found three
men, who were engaged in a heated argument as to whether a man weighed
any more after he had eaten dinner than he did before. One of the men
contended very earnestly that one could eat the heartiest of meals
without gaining an ounce of weight if one only took the precaution of
drinking a mug or two of beer or porter with the meal, since the drink
lightened the brain and so neutralised the weight of the food in the
stomach. He asserted that he had seen this proved more than once, and
that he was willing to bet on it. He was also willing to bet that he
could put twelve pennies into a brimming glass of stout without causing
it to spill. As the village was a mile away, there was no place to get a
glass of stout and try this interesting experiment.
And then one of the men, looking at my wet coat and dripping cap, asked
me if I had been fishing.
"No," I said. "I was tramping around through the demesne looking at the
ruins and trying to get some pictures of them," and I tapped my camera.
He looked at the camera and then he looked at me.
"Where would you be from?" he asked.
"From America."
"From America?" he echoed in surprise. "Ah, well," he added, after a
moment's thought, "that do seem a long way to come just to get a few
photos!"
I couldn't help laughing as I agreed that it did; but I had never before
thought of it in just that way.
And then he told me that he had five brothers in America, but he himself
had been in the army, and was minded to enlist again. In the army, one
got enough to eat and warm clothes to wear and a tight roof to sleep
under, which was more than most men were able to do in Ireland!
The Mothers' Union presently arrived, very wet but very happy. I was
curious to know what they had discussed at their meeting, and what
conclusions they had reached, but the train pulled in a moment later,
and I had no time to make any inquiries. If Betty had been along, I
think I should have persuaded her to attend that meeting; but I found
her very warm and comfortable before her fire back at Limerick, and I
confess that I was glad to get out of my wet things and sit down in
front of it.
At 9:25 o'clock that night, when we supposed that most of Limerick was
in bed, we heard the sound of music and the tramp of many feet in the
street below, and looked out to see a band going past, followed by a
great crowd of men tramping silently along in the wet. Ordinarily, I
would have rushed out to see what was up; but I was tired, and the fire
felt very good, and so I sat down again in front of it. I have been
sorry since, for I suspect it was a Home Rule meeting, and Limerick has
a great reputation for shindies. Perhaps O'Connell, journeyman tailor,
made a speech. If he did, I am sorrier still, for I am sure it was a
good one!
* * * * *
There was one thing more at Limerick we wished to see--the great butter
factory of the Messrs. Cleeve, on the other side of the Shannon. We had
already seen, rumbling through the streets of Limerick, the heavy steam
trams carrying enormous iron tanks, which collect the milk from the
country for miles around--from ten thousand cows some one told us--and
we had seen so few industries in Ireland that it seemed worth while to
inspect this one. So, next morning, we walked down to the water-front,
past the towering, empty warehouses, to the swing bridge which Cleeve
wants to close so that his trams can get across the Shannon without
going away around by the castle.
The bridge, a very fine one, was named originally after Wellesley, but
has been re-christened after Patrick Sarsfield, in whose honour the
street which leads up from it is also named. The swivel which allows
boats to pass and which isn't strong enough to carry the weight of
Cleeve's trams, is on the Limerick side, and just beyond it is a statue
which one naturally thinks is Sarsfield's, until one reads the
inscription at its base and finds it is a presentment of a certain Lord
Fitzgibbon, who was killed in the charge of the Light Brigade. Beyond
that, the bridge stretches away across the wide and rapid stream, by far
the biggest river in Ireland.
The butter factory is not far off, and we entered the office and told
the clerk who came forward that we should like to see the place. He
asked for my card, had me write my American address on it, and then
disappeared with it into an inner room. There was a delay of some
minutes, and finally one of the Messrs. Cleeve came out, my card in his
hand.
After greeting us quite cordially, he looked at the camera which I had
under my arm, and asked if I expected to take any pictures of the place.
"Why, no," I said; "I hadn't thought of doing so. I certainly won't if
you don't want me to."
"Are you interested in the butter business?"
"Only as a private consumer."
"Or in the condensed milk business??"
"No," I said promptly, "neither of us is interested in that, even as
consumers." And then, seeing that he still hesitated, I explained that
we were just travelling Americans who had heard about the factory and
thought we should like to see it; but that if it was against the rules,
he had only to say so, and it would be all right.
"It isn't against the rules," he explained. "In fact, we welcome
visitors; only we have to be careful. We have some secret processes,
especially with our condensed milk, which we wouldn't care to have our
competitors know about. But I'm sure you're all right," he added, and
called a clerk and told him to show us everything.
Most interesting we found it, for twenty-three million gallons of milk
are used there every year, and are converted not only into butter and
condensed milk, but into buttons and cigarette holders and all sorts of
things for which celluloid is commonly used. It was in this use of one
of the by-products of the business, casein, so our guide explained, that
much of the profit was made, since both the butter and the condensed
milk had to be sold on a very close margin.
The factory is a very complete one, making everything it uses--its own
cans and boxes, its own labels, its own cartons, its containers of every
kind and shape, as well as their contents. And the machinery with which
this is done is very intricate and ingenious.
Our guide said that one of the principal hazards of the business was the
likelihood that some new machine would be invented at any time to
displace the old ones, and would have to be purchased in order to keep
abreast of competition.
We saw the long troughs into which the milk is poured and strained and
heated to Pasteurize it, and then run through the separators. In the
next room were the great churns, from which the yellow butter was being
taken; and beyond were the mechanical kneaders, which worked out the
superfluous water and worked in the salt; and then the butter was put
through a machine which divided it into blocks weighing a pound or two
pounds, and then each of these blocks was carefully weighed, to be sure
that it was full weight, and if it wasn't a little dab of butter was
added before it was wrapped up and placed in the carton. And during all
these processes it was never touched by any human finger.
On the floor above were the great copper retorts in which the milk was
being condensed by boiling. We looked in through a little isinglassed
opening, and could see it seething like a volcano. And still higher up
were the machines which turned the hardened casein, which would
otherwise be wasted, into buttons and novelties of various kinds. The
place seemed very prosperous and well-managed, and, so our guide assured
us, was doing well. We were glad to find one such place in southern
Ireland.
Of course there are many others; and perhaps the impression I have given
of Limerick does the town injustice, for it is a busy place. It is
famous for its bacon, to the making of which ten thousand pigs are
sacrificed weekly. It used also to be famous for its lace, worked by
hand on fine net; but Limerick lace is made almost everywhere nowadays
except at Limerick, although there is a successful school there, I
believe, in one of the convents.
The name of the town has also passed into the language as that of a
distinctive five-line stanza, which Edward Lear made famous, and of
which such distinguished poets as Rudyard Kipling, Cosmo Monkhouse,
George du Maurier, Gelett Burgess and Carolyn Wells have written famous
examples. The limerick is said to have been originally an extempore
composition, a lot of people getting together and composing limericks,
in turn, as a sort of game designed to while away an evening. Whether
this was first done at Limerick I don't know, but the name came from the
chorus which was sung after every stanza in order to give the next
person time to get his limerick into shape:
Oh, won't you come up, come up, come up,
Oh, won't you come up to Limerick?
Oh, won't you come up, come all the way up,
Come all the way up to Limerick?
At least, that is the way I heard the chorus sung once, many years ago,
without understanding in the least what it meant. The invitation, of
course, is for the passing ship to enter the wide estuary of the Shannon
and sail up to Limerick's waiting quays. If the first limerick was
composed at Limerick, it must have been a long time ago, and I doubt if
any are produced there nowadays.
We took a last stroll about the town, after we had seen the
butter-making, and looked at the great artillery barracks, and the big
market, and the mammoth jail and the still more mammoth lunatic asylum,
where the inmates are decked out in bright red bonnets, which I should
think would make them madder still. And then we walked through an open
space called the People's Park, whose principal ornament is a tall
column surmounted by the statue of a man named Spring Rice. Betty
remarked that she had heard of spring wheat, but never of Spring Rice,
and asked who he was; but I didn't know; and then we came to the
Carnegie Library, and went inside to see what it was like.
I have seldom seen a drearier place. In the reading-room a few shabby
men were looking over some newspapers, but the rest of the building was
deserted, except for one old man, who may have been the librarian. There
were few books, and the names of those the library had were arranged in
a remarkable mechanism which resembled a lot of miniature post-office
boxes; and when the book was in, the name was turned out toward you, and
when it was out, the card was turned blank-side out. It was the most
complicated thing I ever saw in a public library. I suppose after a
while, when the library gets more books, this bulletin will be used only
for the newer ones; but I don't imagine there is a great demand for
books in Limerick. At least mighty few seemed to be in circulation.
Where life's realities are so bitter, where want is always at one's
heels, there is little time for intellectual recreation.
How bitter those realities are we realised, as we had never done before,
on our way back to the station; for, on the doorstep of a low, little
house, sat a ragged girl of six or eight, cuddling her doll against her
breast and crooning to it softly. And the doll was just a block of turf,
with a scrap of dirty rag for a dress.