people will have done that year before you, and hold straight on
between the Sugar-loaves, the road, curving gradually eastward and
seaward, brings you into the Glen of the Downs, another noble defile,
wooded to the very crest with scrubby timber, so close as to be almost
impassable--lovely as the loveliest in its way. Yet somehow the little
gazebo of an octagonal summerhouse set high up on the north side in
Bellevue grounds stamps the scene. It is nature, but nature decked and
laid out and caressed and petted by man. A little farther and the road
brings you into Delgany, at the foot of the sloping Bellevue grounds,
a village prettier even than Enniskerry. And in truth Bellevue was a
splendid type of what I have in mind: place and grounds created in
the eighteenth century by a cultivated Dublin merchant of Huguenot
stock; a house where Grattan was a frequent guest; which till the other
day showed in gathered perfection all the domestic art of that great
period, with its Sheraton and Chippendale sideboards, its marvellous
plaster cornices and ceilings, its inlaid marble mantelpieces, and,
for a final glory, its bedstead painted by Angelica Kaufmann. The
grounds were planned to match--in the same delicate graceful taste, a
little mannered, but always admirable. It had a lovely nature to work
upon, and that same taste has made the seaward fringe of these nearest
Wicklow Hills into the very garden of Ireland. That is the beauty
nearest to the capital. And if the feeling of trimness wearies you, all
you have to do is leave the road and strike out where you will across
the heather. To their great honour, the liberality of all landowners in
this playground of Dublin leaves the casual passer-by free to wander
almost as unrestrained as he might be in Achill or on Slieve League.
For the country which lies beyond Dublin's immediate playground there
is this to be said. Even the railway going to it is delightful. I know
of no prettier line than the Dublin, Wicklow, and Wexford, and if its
trains are something sluggish, why, you have the more time to admire
the view. Beyond Greystones you pass through a long marsh, full of wild
fowl, and then come to Wicklow, a pleasant little town sheltered by its
low head. There is an old Norman keep here, Black Castle, but much more
remarkable is the work of modern builders. Wicklow Head is adorned with
three lighthouses--one carrying a light. The first tower was built by a
wise and thoughtful Government, and the lamp duly fixed with ceremony.
But when it came to be lit, seamen reported that while from certain
quarters it was admirably visible, the Head itself blocked it from
half the horizon. Nothing daunted, Government ordered another tower to
be built on a spot indicated in their offices, and built it was. This
illumined the previously excluded section of sea, but was shut out from
the area lighted by the first tower. Finally, as a counsel of despair,
they sent down someone to look at the ground, and the third tower,
which now carries the light, was duly erected. The other two remain
as monuments of the persistence with which the English Government has
sought to do things right in Ireland.
From Wicklow you strike into a new type of country. Rathnew brings you
close to the Devil's Glen, another Dargle, but one with less urbanity
and more rusticity. At Rathdrum you strike the valley of the Avonmore,
which is the centre of all this beauty that makes southern Wicklow
famous. The line runs through a wooded ravine with the river below
it, plunging and swirling, and beyond the river you catch a glimpse
of Avondale House, now a school of forestry, but once known to every
Irishman as the home of Charles Stuart Parnell. The water comes down
here discoloured with mineral washings that remind one of the chemical
investigations which made up the pleasure of Parnell's strange life.
He dreamed of gold mines in Wicklow--it was only in politics that the
stern practical bent of his mind made itself apparent and effectual.
A little farther on the Avonbeg meets the Avonmore; farther yet, beyond
Woodenbridge and its hotel, this main stream is joined by the Aughrim
River, and controversy still rages as to which of the two confluences
was honoured in Moore's melody:
"There is not, in the wide world, a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the wild waters meet!"
[Illustration: THE MEETING OF THE WATERS, WOODENBRIDGE]
Moore himself very diplomatically said he was not sure; but at any
rate the valley through which the train runs till it reaches Arklow
at the river's outfall is Moore's "Sweet Vale of Avoca"; there is no
mistake about that, and no question of its gentle loveliness. Arklow
itself is an ancient town, whose name keeps, like Wicklow, a memory
of Danish beacon fires--"low" or "lue" is the word for flame (still
preserved in lowland Scotch). Its population keep the hardy seagoing
tradition--Ireland has no better fishermen; but they are incommoded by
an odd circumstance. At this point of the coast there is practically no
rise and fall of tide, and many a useful harbour is useful only because
it can be reached with the flood, which never comes to Arklow.
Here first one meets a landmark of the great "ninety-eight" rising. The
Wexford insurgents received at Arklow the decisive check which curbed
their very wonderful successes. The rebellion spread no farther north,
though, after the rout of Vinegar Hill, stray parties of fugitives
maintained themselves for long enough in the mountains where the
meeting waters have their rise.
To reach this wider and more open region--far less beautiful, yet
having for some eyes an even greater charm--you should follow up the
valley of the Aughrim River. A train will take you to Aughrim town,
then comes a road, passing at first between slopes of cultivated and
well-planted land. But as you go on, the valley widens and spreads, the
woods recede, and before you are the great brown flanks of Lugnaquilla,
highest of all the Wicklow Mountains--higher indeed than many a hill
in Donegal or Kerry whose bolder shape gives a far more imposing
appearance.
Here at last, far up on the moors, you strike the military road near
its southernmost point; and planted on it, facing down the glen, is
a queer, gaunt, half-ruined building, evidently a barrack. A barrack
it was; but in more recent times it fell to Parnell, who rented these
moors, and he used it as a shooting-lodge--furnished in the roughest
way, with a few bedsteads and chairs. There is a kind of legend about
the haughty, unbending chief, who treated all his followers with the
scantest courtesy. Very different is the impression I have got from
those who were privileged to walk the hills after birds with him and to
camp in that bare but friendly shelter. To-day, indeed, its grimness is
somewhat mitigated; but, as you may readily discover, the old barrack
has not lost its associations with the nationalism of to-day.
From Aughavanagh the military road will carry you north across the
hill, till beyond it you reach the valley of the Avonbeg and Drumgoff
Bridge. Here is the foot of Glen Malure--boldest and wildest of all
these glens--which divides Lugnaquilla from Lugduff. This valley,
commanding the pass westward into the plains at Dunlavin, was always
the central stronghold of the O'Byrnes, the great Irish clan who held
out stubbornly among the hills. Lord Grey de Wilton, Elizabeth's
deputy, tried to drive them out in 1580, but his force was cut to
pieces by the mountaineers, and a few years later they had a sure
asylum to offer to Red Hugh O'Donnell, when he escaped from Dublin
Castle and the captivity into which he had been foully kidnapped.
But the spot in all this region which offers most attraction to
travellers is Glendalough, site of the Seven Churches, a place of most
venerable memories. Kevin, to whom it owes its fame, was born A.D. 498,
sixty-six years after Patrick first preached in Ireland. His name,
_Caomh-ghen_, means the _Gentle-born_, and he was son of the King
of Leinster. The whole of this princely family became passionately
religious, for two brothers and two sisters of Kevin were canonized,
and their names are in the Calendar.
Kevin was sent for nurture to a Cornish holy man, St. Petroc, who had
come to spread the light in Wicklow, but the young Prince finished his
studies under the guidance of his own uncle, Eoghan or Eugenius, who
had a monastic school somewhere in the beautiful parish of Glenealy on
the sunny south-eastern slope of these hills.
He was a handsome lad, and his looks so distracted a beautiful girl
that she tried to seduce him from his vocation. Modern tradition tells
that she followed him into his cave in the cliff above the upper lake,
and that he flung her out into the water. The Life of him relates
a different version, according to which he threw her into a bed of
nettles and whipped her with them over her face and arms till, as the
pious author says, the fire without subdued the fire within, and his
discipline determined her to follow his example and enter the monastic
life.
However that be, Kevin fled from the society of men--and women--to take
up his abode in the lovely but peaceful spot for ever associated with
his name: "a valley closed in by lofty and precipitous mountains beside
a lake". "On the northern shore", says the Life, "his dwelling was in
a hollow tree: but on the southern shore of the lake, he dwelt in a
very narrow cave, to which there was no access except by a boat, for a
perpendicular rock of immense height overhangs it from above."
This is an overstatement: any active man can get into the Bed from
above; but even from below (where Mr. Williams shows the boat lying in
his picture) it needs some climbing. Within is only room for a man to
sit or lie--not to stand. But Kevin's dwelling on the north shore was
leafy and bird-haunted, and the wild creatures, it is said, used to
come and light on his shoulder, and sing their sweetest songs to God's
solitary.
[Illustration: ST. KEVIN'S BED AND THE CHURCH OF THE ROCK, UPPER LAKE
GLENDALOUGH]
At last his fame went aboard, and folk flocked to his sanctuary and
begged him to found a monastery. He submitted unwillingly, and let them
build him (still on the slope of the same mountain, Lugduff) a beehive
cell of stones, or "skellig": and near it they built an oratory,
_Tempul-na-Skellig_, on a rock projecting into the lake--now wrecked,
for, as Archbishop Healy writes in his _Ancient Schools and Scholars_,
"fifty years of tourists in the mountain valley have caused more ruin
to these venerable monuments than centuries of civil war".
But there was no room on this cliffy shore, and Kevin was admonished
in a vision to build in the open space by the outfall of the lower
lake. "If it were God's will," said Kevin, "I would rather remain until
my death here where I have laboured." "But," said the angel, "if you
dwell where I bid you, many blessed souls will have their resurrection
there and go with you to the heavenly kingdom." So Kevin consented to
move; and he built the monastery on which all those churches and towers
sprang up that can be seen or traced to-day. Yet in this city he did
not depart from his austerities, but slept on the bare ground and lived
on herbs and water.
The foundation of the monastery may date from about 540. Kevin lived
on, they say, till 620, and died surrounded by his disciples, a man of
God and a peacemaker, among the best beloved of Ireland's saints.
All that great congeries of ruins dating from pre-Norman times speaks
of a very large community. They are typical. There is the round
tower, _cloigtheach_, a belfry, place of retreat into which the
pious monks used to retire, drawing up the ladder after them; there
is the big church with high-pitched roof of stone, and its galaxy
of lesser chapels, just as in Ciaran's city at Clonmacnoise. About
these doubtless were numberless huts of wattle and clay, dwellings
of the clergy and the students. For here was the real metropolitan
see of Irish Leinster. Dublin was a Danish foundation, and for
centuries the primacy was disputed between them, till the dispute was
ended by calling the provincial see the Archbishopric of Dublin and
Glendalough--joint dioceses with separate organization to this day.
For archæological and historic interest no place in Wicklow can
approach this "glen of the two lakes", _Gleann Dá Loch_. But for
romance, I at least should put Glen Malure far before it; and, for
beauty, would infinitely prefer the lovely cup of Lough Tay or
Luggilaw, where it nestles under the western slopes of Douse. This,
and Lough Dan as well, you can see by a slight detour on your way
to Dublin; and if you have come by Bray, it is best to take the
military road back to Dublin, which brings you through Sallygap by the
headwaters of the Liffey, and past the other beautiful little lake
of Lough Bray at the sources of the Glencree River. So, keeping high
among the hills till you have passed Killakee and begin the descent
into Rathfarnham, you will complete almost the whole of your journey
amid the haunts of shepherd folk such as those among whom Synge lived,
and from whom first he got his vivid vision of Irish peasant life--a
vision coloured no doubt by long residence in far-off Aran, and told
in words that keep an echo of the Gaelic tongue, yet always, as most
of our visions must be, in its essence the vision of that particular
countryside where he was born and bred.
V
The very antithesis of Wicklow, with its mountains, its small plunging
rivers, and its breed of little light-footed sheep, is the plain
country of Meath, watered by the deep stream of the Boyne, and grazed
over by the finest and biggest cattle. No other place in Ireland is so
rich in monuments of all the ages; nor is there anything in Ireland
better worth seeing than the valley of the Boyne itself, from Navan to
the sea.
If I had time and a motor car, I should begin by driving to Trim, and
stopping just short of it at Laracor, to see where Swift lived in
the early days of his growing fame. At Trim you will find an amazing
cluster of beautiful ruins, but notably "King John's Castle", as fine a
specimen of the Norman keep as can be seen. It was founded in 1173 by
Hugh de Lacy, so no Norman building can be much older in Ireland. Its
history is full of romance--Richard II held Henry of Lancaster prisoner
there for a while--and many deeds of note were done in the old place.
But there is not space to deal with Trim, nor with the beautiful ruins
of Bective Abbey, which you can arrange to see on the way to what no
traveller should leave unseen--the Hill of Tara.
Tara of to-day is only a field or two of rich grass, covered with the
trace of ancient earthworks--most curious of them the Banqueting Hall
of King Cormac, a long narrow parallelogram--250 yards in length by 15
wide--with the fourteen openings of its doors still traceable, as they
are shown in two plans preserved in very ancient Irish manuscripts.
But for the detail of these monuments you must consult the plan in Mr.
Cooke's admirable "Murray"; for some general account of the history of
Tara I may refer to my own _Fair Hills of Ireland_. Here I single out
only one thread in that vast fabric of associations.
[Illustration: ON THE RIVER BOYNE AT TRIM]
Looking north-east from Tara you will see easily (any child can point
it out) another somewhat higher rise of ground, seven or eight miles
distant--the Hill of Slane. That is where, on Easter Eve in the year
433, Patrick lighted the Paschal fire which gave menace and warning
to the High King and his druids, keeping their state on Tara. It was
a bold challenge, for a great druidic festival was in preparation,
and no man in Meath was permitted to light a flame till Tara itself
should give the beacon signal; and the night of that challenge is a
marking-point in the history of Ireland--even in the history of the
world.
For in that period of the fifth century, all Europe, as we know it
to-day, was included within Rome's Empire, save for two exceptions--the
outlying retreats of Scandinavia and of Ireland. Christianity was the
religion of the Empire, the religion of civilization, and there is
little doubt but that before Patrick's coming Christianity had got some
footing in the south-eastern parts of Ireland, which were in closest
commerce with Great Britain.
Patrick, by birth a Briton (almost certainly of Wales), was a Roman
born in the same sense as St. Paul; his father was an official of the
Empire; and from his father's house he was carried into captivity
by these outer barbarians of Ireland. In his captivity he found his
mission, escaped, with the fixed design to prepare himself for it,
and spent thirty years on that preparation before, in 432, he came
back to make captivity captive. He touched at a port in south-eastern
Ireland--probably Wicklow--but stood on with his vessel, coasting past
Dublin Bay till he landed again for water and provisions at the little
island of Skerries, which since then is called Inishpatrick. Still
north he sailed, up to Strangford Lough, where, landing, he made his
first convert, the chief Dichu, and founded his first church--Down
Patrick--where many years later he returned to die. Here for a time he
sojourned. Before he turned south there was an errand he had to do, to
bring his message to the valley of the Braid, in Antrim, where he had
been a captive, herding swine on the slopes of Slemish. But at last, in
the spring of 433, he set his face to the very core and centre of his
purpose--the evangelization of Ireland at the fountain head of pagan
civilization and pagan power. For the success of Patrick's mission lay
in this. He addressed himself to the chiefs, he bearded the pagan in
his strong places: he won those who carried others with them. That was
the method he had learnt in more than a generation of labour, spent
seeking knowledge throughout Europe "in the college of the Lateran
at Rome, at Cecina on the Tuscan Sea, at Auxerre in Gaul", jealously
profiting by his right as a citizen of the Empire, before the Empire
should crumble, and knowledge and religion perish with it, under the
redoubled assaults of barbarism. No man will despise the Hill of Slane
who realizes what lay behind the kindling of Patrick's watchfire. I
quote a passage from a great Irish writer, who had the gift of seeing
things in their relations--the late Sir William Butler. It is from his
last volume _The Light of the West_:
"The Easter Eve, 433, is falling dark and cold upon the realm
of Ireland--dark and cold because to-morrow is sacred to the
idols--and it has long been ruled in Druids' law that on the
night preceding the great fast of Tamhair no fire is to burn on
hearth or hill--no light is to gleam from palace or hovel until
the flame of the sacred pile, kindled by the king on the green
'rath' at Tara, shall be seen burning over the plains of Meath.
So the twilight comes down, the light lessens in the west, and
the wide landscape is wrapt in deep and solemn gloom, as though
it had been a land in which man's presence was unknown. While yet
the sun was high in heaven, the missionary had quitted his boat
in the estuary of the River Boyne, and had passed on foot along
the river valley towards the interior of Meath. Evening found the
little band encamped upon a grassy ridge on the north side of the
Boyne, and overlooking the winding channel of that river. To the
south, some miles away, the hill of Tara was in sight. The March
evening fell chilly upon the pilgrims; but the hillside yielded
store of furze-faggot and oak-branch, and soon a camp fire blazed
upon the ridge, casting around a wide circle of light into the
momentarily deepening sea of darkness. What memories of far-off
nights on the Antrim hills come to the pilgrim over the mists of
thirty years, as here he stands in the firelight, on Irish soil
again! How much has passed since last the furze-faggot warmed his
lonely shepherd's bivouac! How much has yet to be in all yon grim
surrounding gloom ere his task shall be accomplished! Never in
all the ages of the world has the might of savage man been more
manifest on earth. Already the Vandal king is in Carthage; the
Visigoths are seated at Toulouse; Attila has reached the Rhine,
having ridden his charger over the ashes of the Eastern Empire.
"And here, in the light of the solitary fire, stands an unarmed,
defenceless man, who, even now, keeps this Easter Eve as a vigil
of battle against the powers of Pagan darkness, throned over
yonder in all the might of armed multitudes.
"The darkness deepens over the scene; the March winds smite the
faggot flame, and around the lonely bivouac the breezes come
filled with the vast sadness of the night. Feeble to outward sense
must seem the chances of the coming struggle. But the inner sense
of the Great Missionary may this night be looking upon a different
vision. Beyond the bleak ridge and circle of firelight--out beyond
void of darkness, perchance those deep-sunk eyes are beholding
glimpses of future glory to the Light he has come to spread; and
it may be that his ear, catching in the echoes of the night wind
the accents of ages yet to be, is hearing wondrous melodies of
sound rolling through the starlight.
"... Yes, there was light far away in the West--out in the great
ocean--far down below the sunset's farthest verge--from westmost
hilltop, the New World lay waiting for the light. It came--borne
by the hands of Ireland's starving children. The old man tottered
with the precious burthen from the fever-stricken ship; the young
child carried the light in feeble hands to the shore; the strong
man bore it to the Western prairies, and into the cañons of snowy
sierras; the maiden brought it into the homestead to be a future
dower to her husband and a legacy to her children; and lo! ere
famine's night had passed from Ireland, the Church of Patrick
arose o'er all that vast new world of America, from where the
great St. Lawrence pours its crystal tide into the daybreak of the
Atlantic, to where California flings wide her 'golden gate' to the
sunsets of the Pacific. Nearly 1400 years have gone since, on the
17th of March, 493, Patrick passed from earth to Heaven. Empires
have flourished and gone down, whole peoples have passed away,
new faiths have arisen, new languages have sprung up, new worlds
have been born to man; but those fourteen centuries have only fed
the fire of that faith which he taught the men of Erin, and have
spread into a wider horizon the light he kindled. And if there be
in the great life beyond the grave a morning trumpet-note to
sound the réveillé of the army of the dead, glorious indeed must
be the muster answering from the tombs of fourteen centuries to
the summons of the Apostle of the Gaels.
"Nor scarce less glorious can be his triumph when the edge of
sunrise, rolling around this living earth, reveals on all the
ocean isles and distant continents, the myriad scattered children
of the Apostle, whose voices answering that sunrise rollcall
re-echo in endless accents along the vaults of heaven."
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF SLANE, RIVER BOYNE]
That is no untrue vision. Rome went down in blood and dust, and in
the centuries that followed, if the lamp of learning was not wholly
quenched, it was because Patrick had kindled, in this remote island
beyond the bounds of Empire, "the Light of the West"; if Christianity
did not perish in the weltering chaos, it was very largely due to the
fruit of the seed which Patrick sowed.
Miracles are mingled with the story of that Easter evangelization.
Laoghaire, the king (pronounce him "Laery", which has been softened
into "Leary"), set out to meet him, but stopped short of the Boyne, and
the Christian came into the camp chanting a verse of Scripture: "Some
in chariots, some in horses, but we in the name of the Lord our God".
At his coming, Erc, the king's chief judge, rose up and did him homage;
but a druid blasphemed, and Patrick wrought a miracle of destruction.
And next day he was bidden to Tara, and ambushes were set for him on
the road; but he changed his people into deer, and so they escaped
and reached the king's dun, and other miracles were wrought in it. At
all events, by whatever means, Patrick made converts among the king's
own kindred, and Laoghaire, though he himself would not change, left
him free to preach, and probably welcomed his help in writing down the
laws and customs of Ireland. For wherever Patrick went he spread the
arts of peace, and Ireland was not slow to profit by them. Take one
instance only. On the hill of Slane a great monastery grew up, centre
of learning as well as of arts, so famous that in the middle of the
seventh century, Dagobert II, heir to the throne of France, came here
to be educated, away from the weltering turmoil of Continental Europe.