JOYCE'S COUNTRY
TWENTY-FIVE miles away to the eastward from Leenane, across a wild
stretch of hill and bog known as Joyce's Country, are the ruins of the
old abbey of Cong, and thither we set out, next morning, behind a little
black mare who would need all her staying powers for the trip that day,
and on a car driven, as was fitting, by a man named Joyce--as perhaps
half the men are who live in this neighbourhood. "Jyce" is the local
pronunciation; and the Joyces are one of the handsomest and fiercest
breeds of mountaineers to be met with anywhere--fit companions for those
of Kentucky and Tennessee.
The original Joyces were Welshmen, so it is said, who came to Ireland
about 1300, and, with the permission of the all-powerful O'Flaherties,
settled in this country between Lough Mask and the sea. Why they should
have chosen so inhospitable a region I don't know--perhaps because no
one else wanted it. Certainly the O'Flaherties didn't; for they
preferred to live along the sea, where fish was plentiful. But the
Joyces were an agricultural people; they turned as much of the hillside
as they could into arable land, cultivated with the spade to this day
and reaped with the hook. On the rest of it, they grazed their flocks,
and they still graze them there.
It was a beautiful, warm day, with fleecy clouds in the sky and a blue
haze about the hills, and everybody was out enjoying the sunshine as we
drove through the village and turned up along the shoulder of the
Devil's Mother Mountain. The fine weather had brought the men and women
out to work in the potato fields--such of the men, that is, as hadn't
yet left for England or Scotland to spend the summer in the fields
there. Usually there were five or six women to one man, each of them
armed with a spade or a fork, and it was pitiful to see the poor little
patches in which they were working. Almost always they were on a steep
hillside--there isn't much else but hillside hereabouts which can be
cultivated, for even where there happens to be a little level land in
the valley, it is almost always wet bog in which nothing can be grown.
The patches were very, very small, and each of them was surrounded by a
high wall built of the stones which had been dug from the ground; and at
the bottom of every slope was a pile of surplus stones which had been
rolled there out of the way.
The potatoes were planted in drills about two feet wide, and then
between the drills a deep trench was dug to carry off the water, for
even on the hillsides the ground is very wet; and these trenches must be
kept clear of weeds so that the water will run off freely, and of course
the drills must be kept clear of weeds too; and the ground is so poor
that manure must be freely used, and the only way to get it where it is
needed is to place it there by hand. And almost every time the spade is
driven into the ground, it brings up more stones which must be carried
away, until it sometimes becomes quite a problem what to do with them.
As many as possible are built into the fences; and the dominant feature
of every Connemara landscape is the zig-zag tapestry of stone walls
which covers it. They run in every direction--up the sides of hills so
steep that it seems a miracle they don't slide off, around fields so
small that the ground can't be seen above the fence, along the tops of
high ridges where they form grotesque patterns against the sky which
shines through every chink, in places where there seems to be no need
whatever for a wall and yet to which the stones have been carried with
prodigious labour.
But do not suppose that, even with all this toil, the fields are cleared
of stones. Everywhere there are outcroppings of solid rock which the
tiller of the field has been unable to dislodge, and around which he
must sow and reap. In consequence, there are practically no fields in
which it would be possible to drive a plow, and few indeed in which it
is possible to swing a scythe. The fields themselves are so small that
one wonders anybody should trouble to cultivate them at all. I have seen
scores and scores not more than fifty feet square, each surrounded with
its high wall; I have seen many less than that, with just space enough
for a two-roomed hovel, where the family must take the stock into the
house with them, because there is no place for an out-building, and
where the manure must be heaped against the wall, because to throw it a
foot away would be to put it on land belonging to some one else. The
land which the family itself cultivated might lie in twenty different
places, miles away.
This complication, which is unparalleled elsewhere in the world, arose
in this way: Half a century ago a man would lease some acres of ground
and by terrific labour convert it into tillable land. As his sons grew
up and his daughters married, he would sub-let to each of his sons and
sons-in-law small portions of his holding, and their other relatives
would do the same, so that, while each of them might be the tenant of
four or five acres, they would be scattered in a dozen different places.
A second generation further complicated things. An acre field would be
split up between ten different tenants, each with his stone wall around
his portion; and one of the biggest jobs the Congested Districts Board
has had to tackle is that of so redistributing the land that each tenant
shall have a compact portion.
Imagine the small farmers of any neighbourhood called together for the
purpose of redistribution, each of them suspicious and jealous of all
the others, each of them believing that his scattered bits of land are
quite exceptionally valuable, each of them remembering the bitter labour
by which he reclaimed each rood; and then imagine the patience and tact
which are needed to convince them that they are not being cheated, and
to persuade them to agree to the proposed re-allotment. Talk about the
labours of Hercules! Why they were child's play compared with this!
* * * * *
We drove on, that morning, down a wide valley, past these tiny walled
fields and thatched houses, now and then passing one of the neat little
slated cottages which the County Council builds where it can, but which
are distressingly few and far between; and then we came out into the
grazing country, with stone walls running right up the thousand-foot
hillsides to the very top, and the white sheep dotted over the green
turf; and then we turned off along a side-road, which speedily mounted
through a narrow pass, across a wide bog, and so to the head of a deep
gorge where, far below us, stretched the blue waters of Lough Nafooey,
lying in a deep cup of granite mountains.
I have never seen a steeper road than that which zig-zags down into this
valley, and I was very glad indeed to get off and walk, not only because
of the steepness, but also because on foot I could stop whenever I chose
and look at the beautiful scene below--the long, narrow lake, crowded in
on the south by steep, bare mountains, and with a white ribbon of road
running along its northern edge, past a cluster of houses built close
beside it, and with the furrowed fields behind them mounting steeply
upwards. The whole village was out at work in the fields, and the red
petticoats of the women gave the scene just that added touch of colour
it needed.
The mountains on the southern shore grew less rugged presently, and as
soon as the ground grew level enough for tillage, it presented such a
complicated pattern of stone walls as must be unique, even here in this
bewalled district. For more than a mile we drove along opposite them;
and then we reached the end of the lake, and struck off along another
valley toward Lough Mask. We were soon on another desolate moor, dotted
with the black stumps of bog oak; and then the road sank into a pass, as
the hills closed in on either side, and skirted a dancing brook, and
then before us opened the lower part of Lough Mask.
[Illustration: IN "JOYCE'S COUNTRY"]
[Illustration: ON THE SHORE OF LOUGH MASK]
I have said that these Irish mountaineers are fierce, and I must explain
now what I meant by that, for a kindlier people, one more eager to bid
you welcome or help you on your way, you will find nowhere. The same is
true of the Kentucky mountaineers; and yet they do not hesitate to put a
bullet through any man they regard as an enemy. So with the Joyces and
the O'Malleys. It was here among these hills that the "Invincibles" and
the "Moonlighters" ranged in the days of the Land League; their notions
of right and wrong were, and still are, the old primitive ones. They
believe in the Mosaic law of an eye for an eye; murder after murder has
been done here, and no one disapproved; and yet a man with a purse
filled with gold, or a woman with no protection save her chastity, might
walk these roads unharmed and unafraid on the darkest night.
Just before one reaches the bridge over the narrow stream through which
the upper lake flows into the lower, the road passes close to a cluster
of houses, and it was in one of them that two bailiffs of Lord Ardilaun
were beaten to death, and their bodies placed in sacks weighted with
stones; and then they were carried down to the lake, and every one along
the road was made to lend a hand to carrying them. That was but one
tragedy of many such--outbreaks of the feud which started six centuries
ago, and which only within the past decade has shown any sign of being
outlived and forgotten.
I do not know when I have been more impressed and astonished than when I
stood on the bridge over the river below Lough Mask, and gazed out upon
that noble sheet of water, stretching away to the north like an
inland sea. It was dotted with beautiful islands, but no farther shore
was visible, not even when we mounted a bold crag overhanging the water
in order to get a wider view. We went on again, with the lake at our
left, and then the road turned away between high stone walls--only these
walls were solidly built of dressed stones laid in mortar, and were
surmounted with broken glass set in cement. There was a gate here and
there, through which we could catch glimpses of wild and unkempt woods,
a-riot with a luxuriant vegetation bearing witness to the richness of
the soil.
The wall must have been ten feet high, and after we had gone on for half
an hour with no sign of it coming to an end, we asked the driver what it
was, and he told us that it was the wall surrounding part of the estate
of Lord Ardilaun, which stretches clear on to Cong, a distance of six or
eight miles--the very choicest land of the whole district. Some of it is
let to tenants, so our driver said, at rents which are almost
prohibitive; but the most part is walled in, with many notices against
trespassing posted about it--a preserve for woodcock.
We dropped through the little town of Rosshill, once the seat of the
Earl of Leitrim (but now owned by Lord Ardilaun), and then into Clonbur
(also owned by Lord Ardilaun), where the wall stopped for a while to
make room for the houses, but began again as soon as the village ended;
and then we passed a curious collection of cairns on a plateau at the
side of the road, some of them surmounted by weather-blackened wooden
crosses; and then on a hill to the right we saw another great cairn;
and then we suddenly realised that we were on the battlefield of
Moytura, which raged for five days over this peninsula between Lough
Corrib and Lough Mask, so long ago that nobody knows exactly when it
was, though it has been roughly dated at two thousand years before
Christ.
The contestants in that battle were the Firbolgs, the men of the
leathern wallets, who had come from the south to Ireland five days
before the flood, and the De Dananns, a tall, fair, blue-eyed race of
magicians from the north, who had "settled on the Connemara mountains in
the likeness of a blue mist." The De Dananns were the victors, and the
cairns we saw that day were the monuments they raised over the burial
places of their dead warriors.
There was another famous battle on this same peninsula, not so many
years ago, for over there on the shore of Lough Mask lived Captain
Boycott, whose name has passed into the language as that of the silent
and effective weapon which the peasantry forged against him, in Land
League days.
Half a mile farther, and a sharp turn of the road brought us into the
village of Cong, a single street of drab houses, whose principal
attraction is the ruins of the abbey where the Cross of Cong was
fashioned; but the long drive had made us hungry, and so first of all we
stopped at a clean little inn and had tea, and it was set forth in a
service of old silver lustre which Betty marvelled over so warmly that
she almost forgot to eat. And then we started for the abbey, which, of
course, like everything else hereabouts, belongs to Lord Ardilaun.
From the road, all that one can see of it is a portion of the wall of
the church, so overgrown with ivy that even the windows are covered; but
we managed to rout out a boy, who took us around to the cloister side,
which is very beautiful indeed, with its lovely broken arcades, its
rounded arches, its clustered pillars, and round-headed windows--some
glimpse of which will be found in the photograph opposite page 346.
There is not much of interest left in the church, but in one corner is a
small, dark, stone-roofed charnel house, still heaped high with the
whitened skulls of the monks who were entombed there.
The abbey stands close to the bank of that wonderful white river which,
coming underground from Lough Mask, bursts from the earth in a deep
chasm a mile above Cong, and sweeps, deep and rapid, down into Lough
Corrib. And the monks at Cong were more ingenious than most, for there,
on a little island in the middle of the river, stand the ruins of their
fishing-house, constructed over a narrow channel into which the nets
were dropped, and they were so arranged that when a fish was captured,
its struggles rang a bell back at the abbey, and some one would hasten
to secure it. We made our way through an orchard of beautiful old apple
trees bearded with lichen, waist-deep in grass, to the very edge of the
stream, that I might get the picture of this labour-saving edifice,
which you will find opposite the preceding page.
Then the boy asked us if we would care to see Ashford House, the seat of
Lord Ardilaun; and for the benefit of those of my readers who are
wondering from what ancient family Lord Ardilaun is descended, I may as
well state here that he is none other than Guinness, of Guinness's
Stout, and takes his title of Baron Ardilaun from a little island out in
Lough Corrib. We said, of course, that we should like to see Ashford
House, and we walked for half a mile through the beautiful woods of the
demesne, up to the great mansion of limestone and granite, set at the
edge of a terrace sloping down to the lake. The entrance to it is under
a square tower with drawbridge and portcullised gateway, and the house
itself is a mammoth affair, with turrets and battlements and towers and
machicolations and other mediaevalities, quite useless and meaningless on
a modern residence, and there are acres and acres of elaborately-planted
grounds, with sunken gardens and fountains and long shady avenues
stretching away into dim distance.
[Illustration: THE CLOISTER AT CONG ABBEY]
[Illustration: THE MONKS' FISHING-HOUSE, CONG ABBEY]
But nobody lives here except a few caretakers, for Lord Ardilaun, an old
man of seventy-three, prefers the south of France, so that Ashford House
is deserted from year's end to year's end, except for a few days now and
then when a shooting-party of more than usual importance comes to kill
the woodcock. For the ordinary party, another mansion, farther down the
lake on Doon Hill, suffices; but when the king comes, as he did in 1905,
of course the great house has to be opened.
One reads in Murray, which is a very British guide-book, how, on that
occasion, the king and his party killed ninety brace of woodcock in a
single day; and how, five years later, 587 brace were bagged in five
days; but it will be quite impossible for you to understand, unless you
are also British, the peculiar veneration with which such coverts as
these are regarded by British sportsmen, and the peculiar cast of
mind which deems it right and proper that thousands of fertile acres
should be maintained as game preserves in a land where most of the
people are forced to wring their livelihood from the rocky hillsides.
It is only for such great parties that Lord Ardilaun returns to do the
honours; and he hastens away again, as soon as the parties are over. He
knows nothing of his tenants; he leaves the collection of his rents to a
factor, and the preservation of his coverts to a force of gamekeepers,
and any one caught inside the wall may expect to be prosecuted to the
limit of the law.
Now I have no quarrel with Lord Ardilaun. The stout he sells is honest
stout, and he got possession of this estate by honest purchase, which is
more than can be said for most great estates in Ireland. But he presents
an example of that absentee landlordism which has been the chief and
peculiar curse of this unfortunate country. With landlords who lived on
their estates and looked after their properties and got acquainted with
their tenants and took some human interest in their welfare, the tenants
themselves seldom had any quarrel. It was the landlords who lived in
England or on the continent, who entrusted the collection of rents to
agents, and whose only interest in their Irish estates was to get the
largest possible returns from them--it was these men who kept the
country in an uproar of eviction and persecution.
Indeed, I believe that if all Irish landlords were resident landlords,
the Irish labourer would be better off without the land purchase act;
for there are no more grasping and exacting masters in the world than
the small farmers to whom the great estates are passing. The old owners
might be despotic, but they were not mean; and where they lived among
their people and came to know them, their despotism was usually a
benevolent despotism, tempered with mercy. The rule of the small farmer
will be a despotism, too, but there will be no mercy about it. Joyce,
our driver, voiced all this in a sentence, as we were driving back.
"Land purchase, is it?" he said, puffing his short pipe, and staring out
across the hills. "Yes, I have heard much of it; but I'm thinking it
will be a cruel time for the poor."
* * * * *
The neighbourhood of Cong is remarkable for its natural curiosities, for
the ground to the north toward Lough Mask is honeycombed with caves,
made by the water working its way through to Lough Corrib. Geologists
explain it learnedly, and doubtless to their own satisfaction, by saying
that the peninsula is composed of carboniferous limestone which has been
perforated and undermined by the solvent action of the free carbonic
acid in the river water; but I prefer to believe, with the residents of
the neighbourhood, that it was the work of the Little People.
The lofty tunnel through which the sunken river flows is accessible in
several places, and one of these, called the Pigeon Hole, is not far
from the village and is worth visiting. It is in the centre of a field,
and is a perpendicular hole some sixty feet deep, clothed with ferns and
moss and very damp indeed, and the steps by which one goes down are very
slippery, so that some caution is necessary; but there at the bottom is
a vaulted cavern through which the river sweeps. The girl who has come
along, carrying a wisp of straw, lights it and walks away into the
depths of the cavern, but the effect is not especially dazzling and the
smoke from the straw is most offensive. They order these things better
in France--at the Grotto of Han, for instance!
Another curiosity of the peninsula is not a natural but an artificial
one--a canal dug during famine times with government money to connect
Lough Corrib with Lough Mask. This was expected to be a great blessing
to the west of Ireland, extending navigation from Galway clear up across
Lough Mask and Lough Conn to Ballina; but, alas, when it was finished,
it was found that the canal wouldn't hold water, for the rock through
which it was cut was so porous that the water ran through it like a
sieve, and left the canal as dry as a bone. So there it remains to this
day, and one may walk from end to end of it dryshod and ponder on the
marvels of English rule in Ireland!
One thing more at Cong is worth inspecting, and that is the old cross
which stands at the intersection of the street with the road to the
abbey. It was erected centuries ago to the memory of two abbots, Nicol
and Gilbert O'Duffy, whose names may yet be read on its base; and it is
a cross that can work miracles. Here is one of them:
There was a boy here at Cong, once, who was stupid and could learn
nothing, but spent all his time wandering along the river or climbing
the hills or lying in the fields staring up at the sky. Everybody said
he would come to a bad end; but one day he sat down on the base of this
cross, and fell asleep with his head against it; and that night, when he
went home, he took up the newspaper which his father was reading and
read aloud every word that was on it; and they took him to the priest,
thinking a spell was on him, and there was not a book the priest had, in
Latin or Irish or any language whatever, but the boy he could read it at
a glance; and they sent him down to Cork to the college there, but there
was nothing his masters could teach him that he did not know already;
and the fame of him became so great that when Queen Victoria was looking
about her for a man to put at the head of the new college at Galway, she
hit upon him, and so he was given charge of Queen's College, and his
name was O'Brien Crowe, and he made that college a great college, and he
taught things there that no other man in Ireland had ever so much as
dreamed of!
I am sorry I had not heard this tale when I was at Galway; I should have
liked to ask Bishop O'Dee how much of it is true.
* * * * *
We returned to Leenane by a different road, which lay for some miles
close beside the shore of Lough Corrib, white-capped now under a stiff
wind which had arisen, and studded with lovely green islands. It is
undoubtedly one of the most beautiful of the Irish lakes, but even here
the shadow of Land League days still lingers, for close by the shore is
Ebor Hall, which was the residence of Lord Mountmorris, who was beaten
to death near by; and as we drove on, our jarvey pointed out the scenes
of similar if less famous tragedies, whose details I have forgotten. But
all that was thirty years ago; the problem which the Land League tried
to solve has been solved in another fashion; the peasantry of Ireland
have won the fight for fair rent, fixed hold, and free sale, and can
afford to forget the past.
Just beyond the Doon peninsula, the road opens up the long expanse of
the narrow arm of the lake which runs back many miles into the
mountains, and on an island a little distance from the shore, towers the
keep of a ruined castle--Caislean-na-Circe, or Hen Castle in the prosaic
vernacular. Islands, as you will have remarked before this, were a
favourite place in Ireland for castles and monasteries, and the deeper
the water about them the better, for it was a welcome defence in the
days when midnight raids were the favourite pastime of every chief, and
no sport was so popular with the English as that of hunting the Irish
"wolves."
There are many legends to explain the name of this castle in Lough
Corrib. One is that the castle was built in a single night by an old
witch and her hen, and she gave it and the hen to The O'Flaherty,
telling him that, if the castle was ever besieged, he need not worry
about provisions, since the hen would lay eggs enough to keep the
garrison from want. It was not long before a force of O'Malleys ferried
over from the mainland and camped down about the walls, and O'Flaherty,
forgetting the witch's words, killed the hen and was soon starved out.
Another legend is that the castle was held during a long siege by the
formidable Grainne, wife of Donell O'Flaherty, and that her husband was
so proud of her that he named the place Hen Castle in her honour. Still
another is that the Joyces were holding it against the O'Flaherties,
but were about to surrender, when the famous Grace O'Malley marched a
party of her clansmen over the mountains from the sea and drove the
O'Flaherties off, and so it was named after her. These are examples of
what the Irish imagination can do when it turns itself loose; for the
fact is that the castle, at least as it stands now, was built by Richard
de Burgo, that first old doughty Norman ruler of Connaught, to hold the
pass from the isthmus of Cong into the wilds of Connemara. The keep is
plainly Anglo-Norman, flanked by great square towers of cut limestone.
A few miles farther on is the village of Maam, set in the midst of
magnificent scenery at the intersection of two valleys, one running to
the west and one to the south, closed in by the wildest, bleakest,
ruggedest of mountains. Our driver drew up here to water and wind the
horse, and I wandered about the village for a while, and stopped at last
at the open door of a little cottage where an old woman and some
children were sitting before a flaring fire of turf, and a hen was
hovering some chickens in a basket in one corner. Three or four others
were wandering about the dirt floor, looking for crumbs as a matter of
habit, though they must have known perfectly well that there were no
crumbs there.
I was welcomed heartily and invited to sit down before the fire, with
that instinctive courtesy and open-heartedness which is characteristic
of the Irish peasantry. Let the traveller take shelter anywhere, pause
before any door, and he will be greeted warmly. There is an old Irish
riddle which runs something like this:
From house to house it goes,
A wanderer frail and slight,
And whether it rains or snows,
It bides outside in the night.
It is the footpath the Irish mean; and if they could bring it in out of
the rain and the snow, I am sure they would, just as they bring their
chickens and cats and dogs and pigs and donkeys in, to share the warmth
of the fire.
So in this little cottage a stool was at once vacated for me and set in
a good place, and a ring of smiling faces closed around me, and the rain
of eager questions began as to whence I came and whither I was going. I
wish I could give you some idea of the tangle of trash that littered the
single room of that hovel--old clothes, old boards, broken baskets, a
pile of turf in one corner but scattered all about where the chickens
had been scratching at it, a low shelf piled with rags and straw for a
bed, a rude dresser displaying some chipped dishes--but I despair of
picturing it. And the dirty, ragged children, with their bright eyes and
red cheeks; and the old woman, wrinkled and toil-worn, but obviously
thinking life not so bad, after all. . . .
A whistle from Joyce told me that he was ready to start, and we were
soon climbing out of the valley, emerging at last upon a vast moor, with
great mountain masses away to the south, their summits veiled in mist.
We could see groups of people working in the bog here and there, and at
last we came upon two men and two boys cutting turf close to the road. I
asked them if I might take their picture, and they laughed and agreed,
and it is opposite this page, but the sun was setting and the light was
not good enough to give me a sharp negative. Still one can see the man
at the bottom of the ditch cutting the peat with a sharp-edged
instrument like a narrow spade and throwing the water-soaked bricks out
on the edge, where the boys picked them up and laid them out at a little
distance to dry.
[Illustration: THE TURF-CUTTERS]
[Illustration: A GIRL OF "JOYCE'S COUNTRY"]
"There's one would make a picture," said Joyce, about ten minutes later,
and I turned to see him pointing with his whip at a little girl
unloading turf from the panniers of a donkey by the side of the road.
Needless to say, I was out of my seat in an instant, and Betty, scarcely
less excited, was asking the girl if I might not take her picture; and
then Joyce said something to her in the Irish, and then from across the
bog came her mother's voice telling her, also in Irish, to hold still
and do as the gentleman wished.
She was a child of eight or ten, with dark hair and eyes, and slighter
and frailer than the average Irish child; and she wore the
characteristic garment fashioned from red flannel which all the poor
children in Connemara wear; and she was bare-headed and barefooted; and
her task was to drive the ragged little donkey out into the bog and fill
the panniers with the bricks, and drive it back again to the side of the
road, and pile the turf there, ready for the cart which would take it
away. From the place where the turf was being cut to the roadside was at
least a quarter of a mile, and how often that child had travelled that
road that day I did not like to think. From the pile of turf that lay
at the side of the road, it was evident she had not idled!
She was not without her vanity, for she had her skirt kilted up, and let
it quickly down as soon as she realised what I wanted; and then she let
me pose her as I wished. You should have seen her astonishment when I
pressed a small coin into her hand, as some slight recompense for the
trouble I had given her; you should have seen her shining eyes and
trembling lips. . . .
Up we went and up, with the mists of evening deepening about us; and at
last we reached the summit of the pass, and dropped rapidly down toward
Leenane. Half an hour later, we trotted briskly up to the hotel, the
little mare apparently as fresh as ever, in spite of the fifty miles, up
hill and down, she had covered that day.