THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH
DERRY has a charm--the charm of the hive--for it is a busy town, and a
cheerful one. It is only on mooted anniversaries, I fancy, or when some
fire-brand politician comes to town, that the Protestants and Catholics
amuse themselves by breaking each other's heads. At other times they
must work amicably side by side. At least, I saw nobody idle; and
Catholics and Protestants alike were plainly infected by the same spirit
of hustle.
The cause of the difference between the north and south of Ireland has
been hotly debated for a hundred years. Why is the north energetic and
prosperous, while the south is lazy and poverty-stricken? Some say
it is the difference in climate, others the difference in religion.
I could perceive no great difference in the climate, and as for
religion--strange as it may seem to those who think of Ulster only in
the light of Orange manifestoes--there are almost as many Catholics as
Protestants in the north of Ireland. My own opinion is that the Celt is
easy-going in the south and industrious in the north because of the
environment. "Canny" is undoubtedly the best of all adjectives to apply
to the Scotch--they are congenitally thrifty and industrious. The Celt,
on the other hand, is congenitally easy-going and unambitious. Left to
himself, among his own people, weighted with centuries of repression, he
falls into a lethargy from which it is impossible to awaken him--from
which, I sometimes think, he will never be awakened. But put him in
another environment, and he soon catches its spirit. At least, his
children catch it, and their children are confirmed in it--and there you
are. Put them back in the old environment, and in another generation or
two they will have slipped back into the old habits of carelessness and
improvidence. This, it seems to me, is the Irishman's history not only
in the north of Ireland, but here in America. He is adaptable,
impressionable, and plastic.
* * * * *
It would be absurd for any one to go to Derry without making a circuit
of the walls, and this we proceeded to do next morning. We mounted them
at the New Gate, where they are at least twenty-five feet high. There is
a promenade on top about fifteen feet wide, and along the outer edge the
old cannon given by the London companies still frown down through the
embrasures of the battlement. Outside the wall there was originally a
moat, but this has disappeared, and so have many of the old bastions. A
few of them still remain--the double bastion where the fruitful gallows
stood, and from which the noisy old gun, affectionately christened
"Roaring Meg," still points out over the town. And back of the
cathedral, the old wall stands as it stood during the siege, with its
high protecting parapet, crowned with little loop-holed turrets.
The cathedral itself is a quaint, squat structure, with pinnacled tower,
standing in the midst of a crowded graveyard, the most prominent object
in which is an obelisk erected over the bodies of those who fell in the
siege. The inscription, as is fitting, is long and eloquent. The church
itself is comparatively modern and uninteresting, but it is filled with
trophies of the siege--a bomb-shell containing a summons to surrender
which fell in the cathedral yard, the flags taken from the French during
a sally, memorials of the Rev. Mr. Walker, and so on. It is still called
after St. Columba, although the abbey built by the Saint stood outside
the present walls.
A little distance past the cathedral is another bastion which has been
turned into a foundation for the great monument to Walker--a fluted
column ninety feet high, surmounted by a statue of the hero, his Bible
in one hand. Time was when he held a sword in the other, but legend has
it that the sword fell with a crash on the day that O'Connell won
Catholic emancipation for Ireland.
A fierce controversy has raged about the part Walker really played in
the siege; and it is probable that he at least shared the honours with
Murray and Baker. However that may be, he must have been an inspiring
figure, as he walked about the walls, with his white hair and
impassioned face and commanding vigour--a vigour which his seventy-two
years seem nowise to have impaired; and his end was inspiring, too, for
he did not rest quietly at home, content with his laurels, as most men
would have done. Instead, he joined William's army, was in the forefront
at the Battle of the Boyne, and managed to get killed there while
exhorting the troops to do their duty.
* * * * *
The town of Derry has long since outgrown the old walls, but there is
little else worth seeing there, unless one is interested in a busy
port, or in humming factories, or rumbling mills, or clattering
foundries. Of these there is full store. But a few miles to the west, on
the summit of a hill looking down upon Lough Swilly, is the cashel which
was once the stronghold of the Kings of Ulster, and for it I set out
that afternoon.
Murray, with that vagueness delightful in the Irish but exasperating in
a guide-book, remarks that "it can be reached from Bridge End Station on
the Buncrana line," so I proceeded to the station of the Buncrana line
on the outskirts of the town, and bought a ticket to Bridge End Station.
The ticket seller had apparently never heard of the Grainan of Aileach,
as the cashel is called, and seemed rather to doubt if such a thing
existed at all; but I determined to trust to luck, and took my seat in
the little train which presently backed in along the platform.
The Buncrana line is, I judge, a small affair; at any rate, the train
was very primitive, and the two men who shared the compartment with me
complained bitterly of the poor service the railroads give the people of
Ireland. They said it was a shame and a disgrace, and that no free
people would put up with the insults and ignominy which the railroads
heap upon the Irish, and much more to the same effect. I had heard this
complaint before and have read it in more than one book; but I never had
any real cause of complaint myself. Beyond a tendency to let the
passengers look out for themselves, the guards are as courteous as
guards anywhere; and only once, on the occasion of the race-meeting at
Charleville, did we suffer from crowding. This was not because we
travelled first, because we didn't--we travelled second; and when I was
alone, I always travelled third, as I would advise any one to do who
wishes really to meet the people.
Bridge End Station is only a few minutes' run from Derry, and when I got
off there, I asked the man who took my ticket if he could direct me to
the cashel.
"I can," he said; "but it is a long way from here, and a stiff climb. Do
you see that hill yonder?" and he pointed to a lofty peak some miles
away. "It is there you will find the fort, right on the very top."
"Have you ever been there?" I asked.
"I have not, though I'm thinking I will go some day, for them that have
seen it tell me it is a wonderful sight. But 'tis a long walk."
"Well, I'm going to try for it," I said, and hitched my camera under my
arm. "How do I start?"
"By that road yonder; and turn to your right at the village. Good luck
to you, sir."
I could see he didn't really believe I would get to the cashel; but I
set off happily along the road, between high hedges; and presently I
passed a village, and turned to the right, as he had told me; and then
two barefooted children caught up with me, on their way home from
school. They knew the way to the cashel very well, though they had never
been there either; and presently they left me and struck off across the
fields; and then I came to a place where the road forked, and stopped to
ask a man who was wheeling manure from a big stable which way to go. He
too was astonished that any one should start off so carelessly on such
an expedition; but he directed me up a narrow by-way, which soon began
to climb steeply; and then the valley beneath me opened more and more,
and finally I saw to my right the summit I was aiming for, and struck
boldly toward it along a boggy path.
The path led me to the rear of a thatched cottage, where two men were
stacking hay. They assured me that I was on the right road, and I pushed
on again for the summit, past another little house, from which a man
suddenly emerged and hailed me.
"Where be you going?" he demanded.
"To the fort," I said. "It's up this way, isn't it?"
"It might be."
"Am I trespassing?" I asked, for there seemed to be an unfriendly air
about him.
"You are so," he answered.
"I'm sorry," I stammered; "if there's another way--"
"There is no other way."
"Well, then, I'll have to go this way," I said. "I'll not do any harm."
"That's as may be. You must pay three-pence if you wish to pass."
I paid the three-pence rather than waste time in argument, which, of
course, wouldn't have done any good; and his countenance became
distinctly more pleasant when the pennies were in his hand, and he
directed me how to go; and I started up again, over springy heather now,
along a high wall of stones gathered from the field; and then the ground
grew wet and boggy, just as it is on the mountains of Connemara, and I
had to make a detour--the man who directed me, probably thought nothing
of a little bog! A ploughman in a neighbouring field stopped work to
watch me with interest until I passed from sight, and two red calves
also came close to investigate the stranger; and then I crested the last
ridge and saw towering before me the stronghold where Owen, son of Nial
the Great, established himself to rule over his province, Tyrone.
For a moment I was fairly startled at the huge apparition, grey and
solitary and impressive, for I had expected no such monster edifice--a
cyclopean circle of stone, looking like the handiwork of some race of
giants, three hundred feet around and eighteen feet high, with a wall
fourteen feet in thickness!
The outer face of the wall is inclined slightly inwards, and is very
smooth and regular. It is made of flat, hammer-dressed stones of various
sizes, carefully fitted together, but uncemented, as with all these old
forts. The stones are for the most part quite small, very different from
the great blocks used in the other cashels I had seen. There is a single
entrance, a doorway some five feet high by two wide, slightly inclined
inward toward the top, and looking very tiny indeed in that great
stretch of wall; and then my heart stood still with dismay, for there
was an iron gate across the entrance, and I thought for a moment that it
was locked. With a sigh of relief I found that the padlock which held it
was not snapped shut, and I opened it and entered.
It was as though I had stepped into some old Roman amphitheatre, for the
terraces which run around it from top to bottom have the appearance of
tiers of seats. They mount one above the other to the narrow platform at
the top, which is guarded by a low parapet. Two flights of steps run up
the slope, but an active man would have no need of them. On either side
of the entrance door a gallery runs away in the thickness of the wall,
opening some distance away on the interior, and designed, I suppose, to
enable an extra force to defend the entrance.
Of the castle which once stood within that stone circle not a trace
remains, and the circle itself, as it stands to-day, is largely a
restoration, for Murtagh O'Brien captured it in 1101 and did his best to
destroy it, and the storms of the centuries that followed beat it down
stone by stone. But these fragments have all been gathered up and put
back into place, so that the great fort stands to-day much as it did in
the days of its glory, except that the outworks of earth and stone which
formed the first lines of defence, have disappeared. The cashel was to
this great fortification what the donjon tower was to the later Norman
castle--the ultimate place of refuge for the garrison.
"Grainan" means a royal seat, and "Aileach," so say the Four Masters of
Donegal, was a Scotch princess, "modest and blooming," who lost her
heart to Owen of the Hy-Nial, and followed him back to Erin. After the
division of the north of Ireland with his brother Connell, he set up his
palace here--Connell's you will remember was at Donegal--and so this
became the royal seat of the rulers of Tyrone. Hither came St. Patrick
to baptise Owen and his family; hither came St. Columba before his exile
to Iona; hither captive Danes were dragged in triumph. But at last
Murtagh O'Brien, King of Munster, led a great raid to the north, and
defeated the army of Tyrone and captured the mighty fortress, and made
each of his soldiers carry away a stone of it in token of his triumph.
[Illustration: THE WALLS OF DERRY]
[Illustration: THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH]
That ended its earthly glory, but it remains glorious in legend; for it
is beneath its old grey walls that the Knights of the Gael stand
deathless and untiring, each beside his steed with his hand upon the
saddlebow, waiting the trumpet-call that shall break the charm that
binds them, and release them to win back their heritage in Erin. In the
caves within the hill the knights stand waiting--great vaulted chambers
whose entrance no man knows. Nor does any man know when their release
will come, whether to-morrow or not till centuries hence, for 'tis
Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan herself who must choose the day and hour.
Sore disgrace it is to see the Arbitress of thrones
Vassal to a Saxoneen of cold and sapless bones!
Bitter anguish wrings our souls; with heavy sighs and groans
We wait the Young Deliverer of Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan.
Glorious is the view from the top of those old walls. To the right is
Lough Foyle, to the left Lough Swilly, with the hills of Donegal, draped
in silver mist, beyond--wild, grey crags, rising one behind the other;
and away to the north, beyond the wide valley, are the hills of
Inishowen--Owen's Island, if you know your Irish. I have never gazed
upon a more superb picture of alternating lake and hill and meadow, of
flashing mountain-top and dark green valley.
But if I was to get back to Derry that night, I had need to hasten; so I
clambered down, after one long last look. I had still my picture to
take, and made two exposures, but they give only a faint idea of the
majesty of this great fort, standing here on this wild, deserted
hilltop; and then I started downwards, with long steps, past the
cottages, with the beautiful valley before me, back to the highway, down
and down among the trees, past the village and so to the station. The
guard was waiting there.
"Well," he said, as I sat down mopping my face, for I had covered three
miles in half an hour, "did you see the fort?"
"I did so," I answered, for I had long since fallen naturally into the
Irish idiom; and I told him what it was like; but I think he was
unconvinced.
"Was there a man stopped you?" he asked.
"There was--a man at the end of the lane right under the fort, who made
me pay three-pence before he would let me pass."
"Ah, that would be O'Donnell," said the guard, convinced at last. "He
has been given the key to keep. Did he give you the key?"
"He did not. But the iron gate was unlocked."
"That was by accident, I'm thinking," said the guard. "He is not caring
whether one can enter or not, so long as he has his three-pence."
So I would advise all wayfarers to the Grainan of Aileach to make sure
that the gate of it is unlocked, or to demand the key, before
surrendering their three-pence to O'Donnell.
When I got into the train again, I found as a fellow-passenger one of
the men who had come out from Derry with me, and after I had described
the cashel to him--for he had never seen it--we got to talking about
Home Rule. In spite of its militant Protestantism, Derry has a very
large Catholic population, and my companion said that opinion in the
town was about equally divided for and against Home Rule.
"The result is," he went on, "that whenever we have a meeting, no matter
which side it's on, there's sure to be a shindy, and the police has
their hands full. Most of the fellys who do the fighting don't care a
rap about Home Rule, but they just take pleasure in layin' a stick
against somebody's head. It's all done in a friendly spirit, and next
day they will be workin' side by side the same as ever. The only ones
who are really fighting Home Rule are the big landlords and
manufacturers, who imagine they'll get the worst of it in the matter of
taxation at the hands of a Catholic parliament, and they do everything
they can to keep their people stirred up. That has always been their
policy; and the big Catholic employers in the south--what few of them
there are--aren't a whit better. They're all afraid that if the Catholic
workingmen and the Protestant workingmen once get together they'll fix
up some kind of a union, and demand better wages. As long as they can be
kept fighting each other, there's no danger of that; and the poor idiots
haven't sense enough to see how they're being made fools of. But they'll
see it some day, and then look out!"
"How about this army of Ulster the papers are so full of?"
My companion laughed.
"There isn't any army around here, unless you can call a few hundred
devil-may-care boys an army. I did hear something about some drill going
on, but as far as fighting goes that's all nonsense. The boys are ready
enough to crack a head with a stick, but they're the first to run when
the police arrive, and they'll think a long time before they try to
stand up against the British army. I'll not say that they're not more in
earnest over Belfast way; but even there, a few politicians have stirred
up most of the talk--Sir Edward Carson and the likes of him. It's all a
political game, that's how I look at it."
I walked around Derry for a time that afternoon, and so far as public
buildings go, Catholicism and Protestantism seem about equally
represented--and with the strangest contrasts. Across the road from St.
Columb's College are the Nazareth Homes; around the corner from St.
Augustine's Church is the Apprentice Boys' Hall; a few steps farther on
is a Presbyterian church, and the Freemasons' Hall, and then St.
Columb's Temperance Hall, and then a convent; and if you walk back again
to the Diamond and make some inquiries, you will find that one of the
radiating streets is the home of militant Catholics, and the next the
home of militant Orangemen, and you will be accommodated with a fight at
any time if you go into the latter and shout "To hell with King Billy,"
or into the former and shout "To hell with the Pope!" And if you buy one
of the two papers which the town supports, you will read denunciations
of Home Rule and contemptuous references to "croppies," while, if you
buy the other, you will read denunciations just as fierce of Orange
plots against Ireland.
I have wondered since how much of this agitation is subsidised and how
much is real. I have heard both Catholics and Protestants complain that
it is kept alive in great part by professional agitators, working in
very diverse interests but to a common selfish end--and that end, as my
friend of the morning pointed out, the continuance and, if possible, the
deepening of the rift between the two religions. On the other hand,
there can be no doubt that Protestants and Catholics alike take a fierce
joy in an occasional fight, as lending a real interest to life. But I am
convinced that religion has really little to do with this--that it is
just the peg upon which the quarrels are hung. If it wasn't that, it
would probably be something else, for Irishmen have been fighting each
other ever since history began. The fights at Donnybrook were as fierce
as any, though there wasn't a Protestant in the crowd!
The Orange Societies, of course, with their parades and taunting songs
and flaunting banners and praise of Cromwell and "King Billy," do not
make for peace. Usually, on such occasions, blows are exchanged; and so
the name of Orangeman has come to be associated with riots. But, as
another writer has pointed out, in considering these things, "you should
not forget the common pugnacity. Only an Irishman can appreciate the
fierce joy of shouting 'To hell with the Pope!' Many a man who had no
claim to belong to the Orange Society has known the delight of breaking
Catholic heads or of going down in a lost battle, outnumbered but
damaging his foes to the last. And many who are slow to attend Mass, are
quick to seize their cudgels when they hear the Orange bands play the
tune of Boyne Water. Like the Crusaders, the Protestant and Catholic
champions alike feel that by their battles they make amends for the
errors and shortcomings of peace."
So it is a mistake to take these rows too seriously. To an Irishman
they are never serious; they are rather the innocent and natural
diversions of a holiday, small events which add to the savour of
existence; and, indeed, they are far less numerous and far less deadly
than they once were. In time, if the people are let alone and old sores
are allowed quietly to heal, they will probably cease altogether.
It is a mistake, too, I think to take the Orangemen too seriously. They
have such a habit of hyperbole that most Irishmen smile at their
hysterics and threats of civil war as at sheer fudge. In fact, the
Ulster controversy is so full of comic opera elements that it is
difficult to keep from smiling at it. For instance, Sir Edward Carson's
elder son is a member of the United Irish League because he believes in
a united Ireland, while John Redmond's nephew and adopted son is
enrolled among the Ulster Volunteers because he is opposed to coercion!
Gilbert and Sullivan never invented anything more fantastic.