THE WINING BANKS OF ERNE
THE weather god was certainly good to us in Ireland. The occasional
showers and two or three heavy downpours were merely short interludes,
and by no means unpleasant ones, in the long succession of sweetly
beautiful days which I remember when I run my mind back over those
delightful weeks. That day at Bundoran was one of them, soft and
fragrant and altogether perfect.
There is nothing Irish about Bundoran except its climate--not, at least,
if one stays at the hotel which has been built there by the Great
Northern Railroad, and which is one of the most satisfactory hotels I
was ever in. And perhaps it would be as well to say a word here about
Irish hotels.
The small, friendly inn, which is one of the delights of European
travel, does not exist in Ireland; or, if it does, it is so carelessly
managed that it is not endurable. Commercial hotels are also apt to be
inferior. The only hotels that are sure to be pleasant and satisfactory
are the large ones which cater to tourist traffic. In the more important
towns, of course, there is never any difficulty in finding a good hotel;
in the smaller towns, the only safe rule is to go to the best in the
place, and if there is one managed by the railway, that is usually the
one to choose.
Some years ago, the Irish railways realised that the surest way to
encourage tourist traffic in the west and south was to provide
attractive hotel accommodations, and they set about doing this with the
result that the traveller in Ireland is now well provided for. Such
hotels as those at Bundoran, Recess and Parknasilla--and there are many
others like them, handsome buildings, splendidly equipped, set in the
midst of beautiful surroundings--leave nothing to be desired. Nor are
their rates excessive, considering the excellent service they offer,
averaging a little over three dollars a day. In the smaller towns, the
tariff is considerably less than this, though the service is almost as
good. In places where the railroad does not itself own or manage a
hotel, it usually sees to it that at least one under private management
is kept up to a satisfactory standard. So no one wishing to explore
Ireland need hesitate on account of the hotels. They will be found, with
a few exceptions, surprisingly good.
[Illustration: THE COAST AT BUNDORAN]
[Illustration: THE HOME OF "COLLEEN BAWN"]
The hotel at Bundoran is set close to the edge of the scarred and
weather-beaten cliffs, which look right out over the Atlantic toward
America. It was along the top of these cliffs that we set out, that
Sunday morning, and below us lay the strand where three galleons of the
Spanish Armada went to pieces, as they were staggering homewards from
the battle in the Channel. From time to time, an effort is made to find
these "treasure ships," but, though cannon and anchors and such-like
gear have been recovered, no one as yet has found any treasure.
The great waves which roll right in from the Atlantic, and which proved
too much for the galleons, have worn the cliffs into the most fantastic
shapes; and a little way above the hotel there is a natural arch,
called the Fairy Bridge, some twenty-five feet wide, which the water has
cut in the rocks. When the tide comes in, it may be seen boiling and
bubbling below the bridge, as in a witch's cauldron. Most beautiful of
all is a wide yellow strand, a little farther on, with the rollers
breaking far out and sweeping in, in white-topped majesty. We sat for a
long time watching them, rolling in in long lines one behind the other;
and then we scrambled down to the beach through the bare and shifting
dunes. Seen thus from below, the black cliffs are most impressive.
We went on again, at last, over the upland toward a wide-flung camp,
where the Fourth Inniskillens were getting their summer practice; and
one of the men directed us how to find a cromlech and a cairn, which we
knew were there somewhere, but which we were unable to see amid the
innumerable ridges. From the cairn, which crowns a little eminence
overlooking the Erne estuary, there was supposed to be, so our
acquaintance said, an underground passage to the other side of the
river, where stands the old castle of the Ffolliotts; but as the estuary
is at least a mile wide, I doubt if this ever existed except in the
imagination of the country-side. The castle is there, however,--we could
see its towers looming above the trees; but there was no way to get to
it, that day, for the river lay between. I was determined to see it
closer before we left the neighbourhood, because it was from that castle
that the fair Colleen Bawn eloped with Willy Reilly.
Farther down the stream, a two-masted schooner lay wrecked beside a
sand-bank, and across from us some soldiers were fishing in tiny boats,
while a company was going through some manoeuvres on the shore, so far
away they looked like a company of ants deploying this way and that. For
a long time we watched them; then we bade our companion good-bye, and
went slowly back through the bracken, where Betty picked a great bouquet
of primroses and violets and blue-bells; and we stumbled upon another
ancient burial-place; and stopped at the ruins of an old church; and got
back finally to the hotel to find the golf-links full of industrious
players.
Betty got into talk with the owner of a shaggy English sheep-dog--shaggy
clear to its feet, and looking for all the world like Nana, the
accomplished nurse of the Darling children; and I went on down to the
beach to watch the tide come in. It was swirling threateningly about the
black rocks; and out at the farthest point of them I found a man
sitting. He invited me to sit down beside him, and we fell into talk. He
was a handsome old fellow, a barrister from Dublin, who had come clear
across Ireland (which isn't as far as it sounds) to get a breath of sea
air. There was no air like the Bundoran air, he said, and two or three
days of it did him a world of good. And then we began to talk about
Ireland; and I was guilty of the somewhat banal remark that, before
Ireland could make any real progress, life there would have to be made
attractive enough to keep her young people at home, for she could never
hope to get ahead as long as her best blood was drained away from her.
He pooh-poohed the idea.
"The best advice you can give any Irish man or Irish girl," he said,
"is to leave the country the first chance they get; and that will always
be good advice, because there will never be anything here for them to
do. All this talk about the revival of industry is foolish. You can't
revive what's dead; and industry here has been dead for three hundred
years. Besides this is an agricultural country, and it will never be
anything else; and over wide stretches of it, grazing pays better than
tillage will ever do, so grazing there will be. Home Rule will make no
difference--how can it? I suppose we're going to get it, and I'll be
glad to see it come, if only to stop this ceaseless agitation; but as
for its reviving any industries, or increasing wages, or making Ireland
a place for ambitious young people to live in--I don't believe it."
"You don't foresee a roseate future, then?"
"Not for Ireland. All these schemes for land purchase and new cottages
and pensions and so on may make life here a little more comfortable than
it has been; but this country has been in a lethargy for centuries, and
it will never be shaken off. The Irish have no ambition; they just live
along from day to day without any thought for the future; and they will
always be like that. It's their nature."
He would doubtless have said more to the same effect, for he was very
much in earnest, but the rising tide drove us in, and I did not see him
again.
* * * * *
The picturesque old town of Ballyshannon is only a few miles from
Bundoran, and we took train for it next morning, after a last stroll
along the cliffs and a look at the "rock-pool," a treasure-house of
fossils and marine growths of every kind. First of all, we wanted to
see the Colleen Bawn castle, so we got a car at the station, and set
out.
Ballyshannon, after the fashion of Irish towns, is built on the side of
a hill, and no horse unaccustomed to mountaineering could have got up
the street which leads from the river; but our horse had been reared in
the town, so he managed to scramble up; and then we turned to the left
and followed along the river to the falls--a dashing mass of spray,
where the whole body of water which rushes down from Lough Erne sweeps
roaring over a cliff some thirty feet high. Two or three miles along
country roads brought us to a gate; and here our driver, looking a
little anxious, had a short conference with a woman who lived in a neat
labourer's cottage near by; and finally he opened the gate and drove
through.
Half a mile along this lane brought us to another gate; and there our
driver stopped, and showed us the castle just ahead, and said that was
all the farther he could go, and that we would have to walk the rest of
the way. There was a certain constraint in his manner which I did not
understand till afterwards.
We went on through the gate, and across what had once been the demesne,
but had been swept bare of trees, and was now divided between a meadow
and a stable-yard, and in a few minutes we stood before the castle which
was the scene of a romance very dear to Irish hearts. It is not really a
castle, but merely a tall and ugly house, with three bays and a low
terrace in front, and it is not very old, since it dates only from 1739,
when it was built as the home of the Ffolliotts, a powerful English
family into whose hands this whole neighbourhood had fallen. The
Ffolliotts, of course, were Protestants, and Willy Reilly was a
Catholic; but Helen Ffolliott was so ill-advised as to fall in love with
him, and one night packed up her jewels and eloped. A hue and cry was
raised after them, and they were soon captured, and Reilly was thrown
into Sligo jail, and it looked for a while as though he might be
"stretched," for all this happened about 1745, when the penal laws
against Catholics were most severe. But the fair Helen came to the
rescue, and swore at the trial that she had been the leader in the
affair, not Reilly, and so he escaped with a sentence of banishment.
What happened thereafter history does not state; but Will Carleton, who
wove a poor romance about the affair, manages to reunite the lovers in
the end.
It is not to be wondered at that Reilly became a popular hero. Here was
a young and handsome Catholic, who, in the most daring way, had captured
the heart of a great Protestant heiress, the daughter of a persecutor of
Catholics, and, in addition, a girl so lovely that she was the toast of
the whole country-side. The ballad which celebrated the affair had an
immense vogue. It is a real ballad, rough and halting, but rudely
eloquent. You remember how it starts:
"Oh! rise up, Willy Reilly, and come alongst with me,
I mean for to go with you and leave this countrie,
To leave my father's dwelling, his houses and fine lands;"
And away goes Willy Reilly and his dear Colleen Bawn.
In the ballad, the family is called Folliard, which is the way the name
is still pronounced in the neighbourhood; but the old mansion is now
occupied by a tenant. And pretty soon we understood our jarvey's
uneasiness, for first a man came to the front door and looked at us, and
then went quickly in again; and then an old woman opened the side door,
and glared at us, and when we asked if we might have a glimpse of the
interior, slammed the door in our faces. I must give her credit,
however, for restraining a particularly savage-looking dog eager to be
at us. But it was evident we weren't wanted there, for even the turkey
gobbler resented our visit, and strutted fiercely about us, trying to
scare us out. So we went back to the car, and our jarvey breathed a sigh
of relief when he saw us.
"Sure, I didn't know whether you'd come back alive or not," he said.
"The master is away from home the day, and the woman that does work for
him wouldn't be above settin' the dog on you. But it's all right, glory
be to God," and he climbed up to his box and drove us back to
Ballyshannon.
We left our luggage at the station of the Donegal narrow-gauge railway,
and then walked down into the town. We found it a quaint place, with the
friendliest of people; and we were fortunate in discovering a clean inn
on the main street, where we had the nicest of lunches, after which we
set off to see the abbey.
The road to the abbey lies through a deep, romantic dell, at the bottom
of which we found a grain mill working, its great wheel turned by the
brook which rushes through the glen; and a little farther on were four
or five other mills, all fallen to decay, their wheels mere skeletons,
and their machinery red with rust. Just beyond, a little higher up the
hill, stands all that is left of the abbey, a few shattered fragments of
the old walls. Yet the abbey was, in its day, a great foundation,
patronised by the mighty Prince of Tyrconnell, and taking its name of
Assaroe from the falls in the river--Eas Aedha Ruaidh, the Waterfall of
Red Hugh, who was High King of Erin about three centuries before Christ,
and who was swept over the falls and drowned while trying to cross the
ford above them. A boy who played about the ruins described them, when
he grew to manhood, in a musical stanza:
Grey, grey is Abbey Assaroe, by Ballyshanny town,
It has neither door nor window, the walls are broken down;
The carven stones lie scattered in briars and nettle-bed;
The only feet are those that come at burial of the dead.
A little rocky rivulet runs murmuring to the tide,
Singing a song of ancient days, in sorrow, not in pride;
The bore-tree and the lightsome ash across the portal grow,
And heaven itself is now the roof of Abbey Assaroe.
We had heard certain legends of underground passages, which could still
be explored, and we asked an old man who was cutting grass in the
graveyard if he knew anything about them, and he said that he did not.
We remarked that it was a hard task cutting the grass around the
gravestones; and he said it was so, and would not be worth doing but
that the grass was given to him for the cutting; but the guardians were
unreasonable men who wanted it cut long before it was ready--it ought
really to stand a week longer, now, but them ones would not wait!
We went back past the mill, and met a man in flour-besprinkled clothes,
who bade us good-day and stopped to talk; and it proved to be the
miller. He invited us in to see the mill, which was grinding Russian
corn, very red and hard, into yellow meal which was used for feeding
cattle. We tried to tell him something of the delights of corn-bread and
griddle-cakes, but he was plainly sceptical.
He was an Ulster man, and had been running the mill for three years, but
he said it was a hard struggle to make both ends meet. If it was not
that his power cost him nothing, he would have had to give it up long
ago. Power apart, I could imagine no poorer place for a mill, for it was
at least two miles from the railway, and the road into the hollow was so
steep that it must be a terrific struggle to get a loaded wagon into or
out of it. There had been a number of mills in the neighbourhood at one
time, but they had all given up the struggle long ago, except one flour
mill, which had somehow managed to survive.
We told him that we had seen the ruins of some of them as we went to the
abbey.
"Have you been to the abbey?" he asked. "Did you see the underground
passages?"
"Are there really some?"
"Come along, and I'll show you."
We protested that we didn't want him to leave his work, but he said the
mill could take care of itself for awhile; and we started off together
up the hill, through a gate to the right, and then knee-deep through the
grass to the brook which ran at the bottom of the ravine, under the
walls of the monastery. And there, sure enough, was the mouth of a
passage cut in the solid rock of the bank. It was about six feet high
by three wide, and ran in about a hundred feet, for all the world like
the entrance to a mine. How much farther it extended I don't know, for
an iron gate had been put across it to keep out explorers; but there can
be no doubt that, at one time, it connected with the abbey itself, and
formed a secret means of ingress and egress, which was no doubt often
very convenient.
And then our guide showed us something else, which was far more
interesting. In the penal days, Catholic priests were forbidden to
celebrate Mass under the severest penalties; but nevertheless they
managed to hold a service now and then in some out of the way place,
carefully concealed, with sentries posted all about to guard against
surprise. A short distance down stream from the entrance to the secret
passage was a shallow cave in the cliff, so overhung with ivy that it
could scarcely be seen, and here, many times, the Catholics of the
neighbourhood had gathered at word that a priest would celebrate Mass.
On the heights all about lookouts would be placed, and then the men and
women would kneel before the mouth of the little cave and take part in
the sacrament.
At the back of the cave, the shelf of rock which served as the altar
still remains, and at one side of it is a rude piscina--a basin hollowed
in the rock, with a small hole in the bottom to drain it; and it was
here the vessels used in the celebration of the Mass were washed, after
the service was over. I wanted mightily to get a picture of this cave,
but it had started to shower, and though I got under the umbrella and
made an exposure, the picture was a failure.
We bade our guide good-bye, with many thanks for his kindness, and went
slowly back along the highroad toward Ballyshannon; and presently from a
tiny cottage beside the road two old women issued and greeted us with
great cordiality. They were clean and neatly dressed, and the younger
one, who did most of the talking, seemed to be quite unusually
interested in our private history and solicitous for our welfare, and
the blarney with which her tongue plastered us was the most finished I
have ever listened to. We thanked her for her good wishes, and were
about to go on, much pleased at this new demonstration of Irish
cordiality, when we had a rude awakening.
"Ah, your honour," she said, "would you not be giving me something for
my poor sister here? You see she is all twisted with rheumatism, and can
scarcely walk, and the medicine do be costing so much that she often
must go without it. Just a small coin, God bless ye."
I didn't want to give her anything, for I suspected that she made a
practice of waylaying passers-by and begging from them; and then I
looked at the older woman, who was standing by with her hands crossed
before her, and I saw how the fingers were twisted and withered and how
the face was drawn with pain--so I compromised by dropping sixpence into
the outstretched hand.
"If your honour would only be makin' it eightpence now," the woman said
quickly; "we can get three bottles of castor-oil for eightpence--"
But the other woman stopped her.
"No, no," she protested; "take shame to yourself for askin' the kind
gentleman for more. We thank your honour, and God bless ye, and may He
bring ye safe home."
And the other woman joined in the blessings too, and they continued to
bless us, considerably to our embarrassment, until we were out of
ear-shot.
Betty had had enough of Ballyshannon; besides, the showers were coming
with increasing force and frequency; so she elected to go back to the
railway station and rest, while I wandered about for a last look at the
town. And now, I suppose, I shall have to say a word about its history.
All this country to the north of Lough Erne is Tyrone--Tir Owen, the
Province of Owen--and was once a great principality, which stretched
eastward clear to the shore of the Channel about Belfast. Northwest of
it, answering roughly to the present county of Donegal, was
Tyrconnell--Tir Connell, the Province of Connell; and Connell and Owen
were brothers, sons of Nial of the Nine Hostages, who was King of
Ireland from 379 to 405, and whose eight sons cut Ireland up between
them into the principalities which were, in time, by their own
internecine warfare, to make Ireland incapable of defending herself
against the invader. Saint Patrick, about 450, found Connell in his
castle on Lough Erne and baptised him; and then he journeyed north to
Owen's great fortress, which we shall see before long on a hill
overlooking Lough Swilly, and baptised him.
Five centuries later, when Brian Boru had brought all Ireland to
acknowledge his kingship, he decreed that every family should take a
surname from some distinguished ancestor, and so began the era of the
O's and the Macs. The two great clans of Tyrone and Tyrconnell chose the
names of O'Neill and O'Donnell, and the river Erne was the frontier of
the O'Donnell domain. There was a ford here at Ballyshannon, and so, of
course, a castle to guard it, and many were the herds of lifted cattle
which the O'Donnells, sallying south into Sligo, drove back before them
into Donegal. Cattle was the principal form of property in those old
days--about the only kind, at least, that could be stolen--and so it was
always cattle that the raiders went after.
The English brought a great force against the place in 1597, and for
three days besieged the castle and tried unavailingly to carry it by
assault; and then the O'Donnell clans poured down from the hills, and
the English, seeing themselves trapped, tried to cross the river at the
ford just above the falls; and the strongest managed to get across, but
the women and the wounded and the weak were swept away.
There is no trace remaining of the castle, but just below the graceful
bridge of stone which crosses the river is the ford over which the
English poured that day, and an ugly ford it is, for the water runs deep
and strong, quickening at its lower edge into the rapids above the
falls. From the centre of this bridge, some twenty-five years ago, the
ashes of one of Ireland's truest poets were scattered on the swift,
smooth-running water and carried down to the sea, and a tablet marks the
spot:
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
A Native of This Town
Born 1824; died 1889.
Here once he roved, a happy boy,
Along the winding banks of Erne,
And now, please God, with finer joy,
A fairer world his eyes discern.
It is certainly a halting quatrain, quite unworthy the immortality of
marble. A couplet from Allingham's own poem in praise of his birthplace
would have been far more fitting; but I suppose that the lines on the
tablet were composed by some local dignitary, and that nobody dared tell
him how bad they were. I know of no more graceful tribute to any town
than Allingham paid to Ballyshannon in his "Winding Banks of Erne." The
first stanza gives a savour of its quality:
Adieu to Ballyshanny, where I was bred and born;
Go where I may, I'll think of you, as sure as night and morn:
The kindly spot, the friendly town, where everyone is known,
And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own;
There's not a house or window, there's not a field or hill,
But east or west, in foreign lands, I'll recollect them still;
I leave my warm heart with you, though my back I'm forced to turn--
Adieu to Ballyshanny, and the winding banks of Erne.
You will note that the savour is the same as that of the lines I have
already quoted describing Abbey Assaroe, and of course the same hand
wrote them. I wish I could quote the whole poem to Ballyshannon, for it
is worth quoting, but one more stanza must suffice, the last one:
If ever I'm a moneyed man, I mean, please God, to cast
My golden anchor in the place where youthful years were passed;
Though heads that now are black or brown must meanwhile gather grey,
New faces rise by every hearth, and old ones drop away--
Yet dearer still that Irish hill than all the world beside;
It's home, sweet home, where'er I roam, through lands and waters wide.
And if the Lord allows me, I surely will return
To my native Ballyshanny, and the winding banks of Erne.
His birthplace is not far away--one of a row of plain old stone houses
standing in the Mall, with a tablet:
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
Poet
Born in This House
19th March, 1824
I walked on past it, down to the river below the falls, where, close to
the water's edge, a seat has been placed under a rustic canopy, and I
sat there for a long time and watched the foaming water rushing over the
cliff, with a crash and roar which, as Allingham says, is the voice of
the town, "solemn, persistent, humming through the air day and night,
summer and winter. Whenever I think of that town, I seem to hear the
voice. The river which makes it, runs over rocky ledges into the tide.
Before, spreads a great ocean in sunshine or storm; behind stretches a
many-islanded lake. On the south runs a wavy line of blue mountains; and
on the north, over green, rocky hills, rise peaks of a more distant
range."
[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF WILLIAM ALLINGHAM]
[Illustration: CASTLE DONEGAL]
It is up from the ocean the salmon come in the spring, seeking a place
to spawn, and before they can get into the "many-islanded lake," they
have to pass the falls. It is a ten-foot leap, even at flood-tide; but
they take it, and a beautiful sight it must be to see them do it. But I
saw none that day. Just below the falls is a little island, Inis-Saimer,
said to be the spot where the Firbolgs, the earliest inhabitants of
Ireland, first touched foot to Irish soil. It is given over now to some
small buildings connected with the fishery, which is very valuable.
There were a number of boats out, that day, with fishermen in them
patiently whipping the water, but I did not see any fish caught.
Ballyshannon is not, I judge, so prosperous as it once was, for across
the river from where I sat were a number of tall mills and warehouses,
empty and evidently dropping to decay. But it is more bustling than many
other towns in Ireland, and has perhaps not sunk quite so deeply into
the Slough of Despond. And then again, as the towering mass of the
Belfast Bank in the main street warned me as I walked back through the
village, we were getting nearer to the hustling north!
The little train we were to take for Donegal backed up to the platform
soon after I reached the station. It is a narrow-gauge road, and the
coaches are miniature affairs, scarcely high enough to stand up in, as
we found when we entered. And just then the heavens opened, and the rain
poured down in sheets. We closed door and windows, and congratulated
ourselves that we were snug and dry--and then the other passengers began
to arrive, soaked through and dripping wet; and as the train consisted
of only two coaches, our compartment was soon invaded by two women and
two girls, whose gowns were fairly plastered to them. They dried
themselves as well as they could, but little streams of water continued
to trickle off of them for half an hour.
The road runs through a bare, bleak valley for the first part of the
way, clinging perilously to the hillside, and then climbs steeply over
the watershed into the valley of the Ballintra, which is green and
smiling and apparently prosperous; and at last winds down along the
shore of Donegal Bay, through a district of orchards and lush meadows
and beautiful hedges and comfortable houses, and so into the picturesque
town--Dunna-Gall, the Fort of the Strangers--the ancient seat of the
O'Donnells; but to me Donegal, town and county, has one connotation
which overshadows all others, and that is with Father O'Flynn. Just
where he lived I don't know, but the tribute which Alfred Perceval
Graves paid him is the most eloquent ever paid in rhyme to any
priest--and, as a comment upon the efforts of selfish politicians to fan
the flame of religious bigotry in Ireland, it is worth remembering that
it was written by a Protestant! Do you know the poem? Well, if you do,
you will be glad to read it again, and if you do not, you will have
every reason to thank me for introducing you to it; so, just to give
myself the pleasure of writing it, I am going to quote it entire, for it
would be a crime to leave out a line of it.
FATHER O'FLYNN
Of priests we can offer a charmin' variety,
Far renowned for larnin' and piety;
Still, I'd advance ye widout impropriety,
Father O'Flynn as the flower of them all.
Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn,
_Slainte_ and _slainte_ and _slainte_ agin;
Powerfulest preacher, and
Tinderest teacher, and
Kindliest creature in ould Donegal.
Don't talk of your Provost and Fellows of Trinity,
Famous forever at Greek and Latinity,
Faix! and the divels and all at Divinity--
Father O'Flynn'd make hares of them all!
Come, I vinture to give ye my word,
Niver the likes of his logic was heard,
Down from mythology
Into thayology,
Troth! and conchology if he'd the call.
Och! Father O'Flynn, you've the wonderful way wid you,
All ould sinners are wishful to pray wid you,
All the young childer are wild for to play wid you,
You've such a way wid you, Father avick!
Still, for all you've so gentle a soul,
Gad, you've your flock in the grandest control,
Checking the crazy ones,
Coaxin' onaisy ones,
Liftin' the lazy ones on wid the stick.
And, though quite avoidin' all foolish frivolity,
Still, at all seasons of innocent jollity,
Where was the play-boy could claim an equality
At comicality, Father, wid you?
Once the Bishop looked grave at your jest,
Till this remark set him off wid the rest:
"Is it lave gaiety
All to the laity?
Cannot the clargy be Irishmen too?"
There is a quaint old inn in Donegal, with dining and sitting rooms
crowded with "curiosities" gathered from the four quarters of the globe
by the proprietor, who was once a soldier; and his daughter looks after
the comfort of the guests; and we had there that night a most satisfying
dinner. And then, as it was still quite light, I filled my pipe and
started out to stroll about the town; but I hadn't gone far when I heard
a bell being rung with great violence, and when I looked again, I saw
the small boy who was ringing it; and when he passed me, I asked him
what the matter was, and he handed me a poster, printed most gorgeously
in red and black, and these were the first lines of it:
TOWN HALL, DONEGAL
Monday Evg., June 23rd, 1913
MONSTER ATTRACTION
Powerful Performance!
For the Benefit of Mr. Joe Cullen,
The Donegal Old Favourite
On which occasion the ladies and
gentlemen of the Donegal Amateur
Dramatic and Variety Club will
Appear.
Then followed the programme. There were to be four scenes from "The Ever
Popular Play Entitled Robert Emmet," also "The Laughable Sketch Entitled
The Cottage by the Sea," also "The Irish Farce, Miss Muldowedy from
Ireland," the whole to be interspersed with variety turns by members of
the club, as well as Mr. Cullen. "Don't Miss This Treat," the poster
concluded. "Motto, 'Fun without Vulgarity.'"
Blessing the chance which had brought us to Donegal upon this day, I
hastened back to the hotel, showed the poster to Betty, and three
minutes later, we were sallying forth in quest of the town-hall, whose
entrance proved to be up a little court just across the street. The
prices of admission, so the bill announced, were "2s., 1s. and 6d.," and
I consulted with the abashed young man at the door as to which seats we
should take. He advised the shilling ones, and we thereupon paid and
entered. I wondered afterwards where the two shilling seats were, for
the shilling ones were the best in the house.
Although it was nearly time for the performance to begin, we were almost
the first arrivals; but we soon heard heavy feet mounting the stair, and
quite a crowd of men and boys began to file into the sixpenny seats at
the rear. A few girls and women came forward into the shilling seats;
but from the look of them, I suspected that they were deadheads, and I
fear that Mr. Cullen did not reap a great fortune from that benefit!
There was a tiny stage at one end of the hall, and the stage-manager,
after the habit of all such, was having his troubles, for he could not
get the footlights--a strip of gas-pipe with holes in it--to work. We
thought for a while that he was going to blow himself up, and the whole
house along with him; but he gave up the struggle, at last; the pianist
played an overture, and the curtain rose.
I have never seen the whole of "Robert Emmet," but from what I saw of it
that night, I judge that it must have been written for a star, for
nobody does much talking except Emmet himself. He, however, does a lot;
and it was fortunate that, in this instance, he was impersonated by Mr.
Cullen, for I am sure none of the other actors could have learned the
part. Mr. Cullen proved to be a hatchet-faced old gentleman without any
teeth; but he had a pleasing voice, and Emmet's grandiloquent speech
from the dock was greeted with applause.
Of the two farces I will say nothing, except that they were really not
so bad as one would expect, once the actors had recovered from their
embarrassment when they perceived two strangers present; but the feature
of the evening was the songs, which were many and various and
well-rendered. I remember only one of them, which we then heard for the
first time, but which we were to hear many times thereafter, a lilting,
catchy air, in which the audience assisted with the chorus, which ran
something like this:
It's a long way to Tipperary,
It's a long way to go;
It's a long way to Tipperary,
The sweetest land I know.
Good-bye, Piccadilly,
Farewell, Leicester Square;
It's a long, long way to Tipperary,
But my heart is there.
It is the old, old theme of the Irish exile longing for home; the theme
of I know not how many poems, from the time of St. Columba, banished
overseas and "thinking long" of
Derry mine, my own oak grove,
Little cell, my home, my love;
down through Father Dollard's lilting "Song of the Little Villages":
The pleasant little villages that grace the Irish glynns
Down among the wheat-fields--up amid the whins;
The little white-walled villages, crowding close together,
Clinging to the Old Sod in spite of wind and weather:
Ballytarsney, Ballymore, Ballyboden, Boyle,
Ballingarry, Ballymagorry by the Banks of Foyle,
Ballylaneen, Ballyporeen, Bansha, Ballysadare,
Ballybrack, Ballinalack, Barna, Ballyclare,
to the tender verses by Stephen Gwynne with which I will close this
already, perhaps, too-poetical chapter:
Ireland, oh, Ireland! centre of my longings,
Country of my fathers, home of my heart,
Overseas you call me, "Why an exile from me?
Wherefore sea-severed, long leagues apart?"
As the shining salmon, homeless in the sea-depths,
Hears the river call him, scents out the land,
Leaps and rejoices in the meeting of the waters,
Breasts weir and torrent, nests him in the sand;
Lives there and loves; yet with the year's returning,
Rusting in his river, pines for the sea;
Sweeps down again to the ripple of the tideway,
Roamer of the ocean, vagabond and free.
Wanderer am I, like the salmon of thy rivers;
London is my ocean, murmurous and deep,
Tossing and vast; yet through the roar of London
Reaches me thy summons, calls me in sleep.
Pearly are the skies in the country of my fathers,
Purple are thy mountains, home of my heart:
Mother of my yearning, love of all my longings,
Keep me in remembrance, long leagues apart.