AROUND THE COAST TO LIMERICK
It is at Fastnet that the great incoming Atlantic liners, bound for
Queenstown, or through St. George's Channel to Liverpool, first make
land and run up their four-deep strings of signals; where, as Mr.
Kipling says:
"Every day brings a ship,
Every ship brings a word;
Well for him who has no fear,
Looking seaward, well assured
That the word the vessel brings
Is the word that he should hear."
Beyond Bantry Bay, Black Bull Head passes on the starboard, and, soon
after, Dursly Head and Dursly Island. The island is said to contain a
population of over five hundred, with no priest, no public house, and no
constabulary. A veritable Arcadia!
[Illustration: THE GAP OF DUNLOE.]
Bolus Head, Skelligs Rocks, and Bray Head passed, one comes to Valentia
Island and the entrance to Dingle Bay. One of the most fondly recalled
of all Irish legends is that of the landing of the Milesians, as they
came up through the Biscayan Bay upon what they then knew as "Innis
Ealga"--the Noble Isle. Then it was ruled by three brothers, princes of
Tuatha de Danaan, after whose wives (who were also three sisters) the
island was alternately called, Eire, Banva, and Fiola. By these names
Ireland is still frequently known to the poets. Whatever difficulties or
obstacles beset the Milesians in landing, they at once attributed to the
"necromancy" of the Tuatha de Danaans. When the Milesians could not
discover land where they thought to sight it, they simply agreed that
the Tuatha de Danaans had, by their black arts, rendered it invisible.
At length they descried the island, its tall blue hills touched by the
last beams of the setting sun; and from the galleys there arose a shout
of joy. Innisfail, the Isle of Destiny, was found!
The legend has furnished Moore the excuse for launching into melody
again. He relates it as follows:
"They came from a land beyond the sea,
And now o'er the western main
Set sail, in their good ships, gallantly,
From the sunny land of Spain.
'Oh, where is the isle we've seen in dreams,
Our destin'd home or grave?'
Thus sung they, as by the morning's beams,
They swept the Atlantic wave.
"And lo, where afar o'er ocean shines
A sparkle of radiant green,
As though in that deep lay emerald mines,
Whose light through the wave was seen,
''Tis Innisfail--'tis Innisfail!'
Rings o'er the echoing sea,
While bending to heav'n the warriors hail
That home of the brave and free."
Valentia--the most westerly railway-station in Europe, says Bradshaw--is
the true spot where West meets East; where the New World first receives
its introduction to the Old.
More than half a century ago, the shores of this spacious sheet of
landlocked water were selected by the great Duke of Wellington and
others as the terminus of a railway which was to be the first link in
the chain which was
[Illustration: THE BLACK VALLEY.]
to bind the Old World and the New, and to join the ocean liners that
were run from America to Valentia, as they now do to Queenstown. The
project fell through, but the island was afterward selected as the
old-world end of the Atlantic cable of 1865, and also that laid by the
leviathan steamship, the _Great Eastern_, in 1866. The principal village
on the island is called Knightstown. If favoured with a fresh westerly
breeze, one beholds from the hillside a scene of grandeur unsurpassed.
The ocean engages in conflict with the rugged headlands rising hundreds
of feet out of the sea, and hurls its foaming breakers with ceaseless
rhythm against the base of the rocks, only to be rolled back in spray
and foam. All outside is a scene of wild magnificence, while, such is
the perfect shelter, the harbour itself, under all stress of weather, is
as placid as a summer lake. Lord John Manners, in his notes of a tour
through Ireland, describes the Atlantic here as follows:
"The great waves came in with a roar like a peal of artillery, and leapt
up against and over the rocks just below us, sending forth a rainbow in
one direction, and an immense jet of foam in another. I do not believe
I exaggerate in saying that some of the jets of foam sprung a hundred
feet into the air, and then the tints! Sometimes a clear green wave
would roll its huge volume on the rocks before it broke; at others, dash
greenly up to it and dissolve in wreaths of purest white spray, causing,
as it broke, a delicate iris to glow on the opposite rocks; while toward
the west a veil of foam overhung the coast, lighted up by the golden
rays of the setting sun. No words can describe the fascination of the
scene."
To observe the contrast between nature and the works of man, one has
only to visit the isolated premises of the Anglo-American Telegraph
Company. The manner in which electricity outstrips the sun in his daily
round is here strikingly exemplified. Happening to be in the
instrument-room at about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, one sees the
operators at work, receiving from, say, Berlin, the reports of the day's
markets, and transmitting the information to New York, to be served up
fresh on Uncle Sam's breakfast-table, which, even at that early hour is
already old news in the Eastern
[Illustration: VALENTIA.]
world. Lying just inside Valentia Island is Cahirciveen, the birthplace
of Daniel O'Connell, and from this point to Dingle, across the bay, is
to be seen--though from the seaward side only--the finest rock scenery
on the southwest coast. Here Nature seems to have done her best to
produce the picturesque with ocean and rock, twisted and split, pierced
and tunnelled; every rock seems to have been torn in some gigantic
struggle against total destruction, and left to still wage war against
storm and tempest. The harbour of Dingle, landlocked and peaceful, is in
quiet contrast to all this turmoil, though Dingle's weekly cattle fair
will give the stranger the impression that he is witnessing something
very akin to the fabled Donnybrook Fair, so far as riotous good humour
is concerned.
From Slea Head a magnificent view of Dingle Bay is obtained,--its
indented shores flanked by the Dingle mountains stretching away for
thirty miles of wonderful panorama of islands and rocks out to and
around the Blasquetts. The Blasquetts are a group of eight rocky
islands, two of them three miles from the coast. In the sound between
these two and the mainland one of the ships of the Spanish Armada sank
with all on board.
Perhaps the wildest scene on the southern coast is presented by the
Skelligs Rocks, off Dingle Bay, rising as pinnacles of slate, wind-swept
and bare. The cliffs seem painted in bands of cream colour, produced by
countless crowds of gannets--most powerful of gulls--sitting on their
nests on the ledges of cliff. At the sound of an approaching steamer,
the air is filled with a swarm of puffins, or sea-parrots, which fly
heavily around the crags; while, from the caves on the lower cliffs,
like crowds of the smaller gulls fill the air with their shrill,
screaming cry.
Limerick is a city which, by very reason of her great past and her
matter-of-fact and decidedly ordinary present, presents great and
disappointing contrasts. One may read the statistics in the guide-books
and learn that 350,000 pigs are killed every year in the town, and of a
great many other mundane things which happen here and have no interest
whatsoever for him.
There is no doubt about the pigs, sausages, and various pork products,
for fat swine,
[Illustration: THE SKELLIGS ROCKS.]
"razorbacks," big pigs, and little pigs swarm everywhere.
There is no escaping the Limerick pig. In single file, in battalions, as
solitary scout, alive or dead, baconed and sausaged, he dominates the
town. Limerick was in existence as long ago as the days of Ptolemy; was
scrambled for by the Danes and the Irish kings in Alfred's time; took
the fancy of that good judge of "eligible sites," King John, and was
decorated with one of his innumerable castles, a fine old relic which
still remains. The town was in the very thick of the row raised by
Cromwell; and, in the wars of "the silent" William of Orange, it
manufactured history as fast as its factories turn out sausages now. The
name of Sarsfield, the Jacobite general, is for ever identified with
Limerick. The city was taken and retaken more often than we should care
to state; it was--and is--fortified up to the very limit; and, whenever
anything exciting of a political nature went on, in times past, Limerick
was ever to the fore front, ready to emphasize her opinions with the
high-shouldered fat little cannon that have somehow got left out on the
ramparts, quite forgotten except by "tourist touts," though, truth to
tell, not many tourists ever come to Limerick.
To-day Limerick--in spite of its activities with respect to sausages--is
no more a maker of history, but sits dozing complacently on the estuary
of "the finest river in the kingdoms," and cares not apparently for the
comings and goings of the outside world.
As some poetic soul--possessed by an Irishman of course--has said: "No
one cares for Limerick now. Of all the fierce possessors who fought for
her when she was young, the local government officially alone remains,
like the gray elderly husband of some housewifely woman who was a beauty
and a 'toast,' and made men's swords leap from their scabbards for love
of her--once."
At the mouth of the Shannon, near where its tidal waters meet the sea,
Limerick has its "fashionable watering-place" of the conventional
pattern. The chief "amusement" of this delectable place appears to be
the gathering of "Irish moss," as it is commonly known. Here they call
it "Carrageen moss," but it is the same thing, and ultimately turns
[Illustration: LIMERICK CASTLE.]
up as a dainty and nourishing jelly. The peasantry gather it for profit,
the visitors for pastime. It is found in many shallow rock pools at low
tide, and grows in short, bushy tufts, coralline in shape. The "moss"
must be bleached in the sun, and then boiled down into jelly. "Dulse,"
another variety of edible seaweed, which requires no preparation, is
also found here; and the central ribs of young oarweed are peeled and
eaten like celery, which they very much resemble in looks, but--most
emphatically--not in taste.
Dear also, to Americans, will be the memory of County Limerick as the
birthplace of Fitz-James O'Brien. The son of an attorney, he was born in
1828, receiving his education at Dublin University. In his youth he saw
service as a British soldier, but early drifted toward journalism and
America.
Among his earliest compositions were two remarkable poems, "Loch Ine"
and "Irish Castles," which present in a picturesque vocabulary many of
the salient charms and beauties of his native isle.