of Tara's greatness, yet within four miles of it are monuments of
surpassing interest that show the Ireland of a day before St. Patrick,
and others that show the Ireland which he made. On the north bank,
at New Grange and at Dowth, are the burying places of prehistoric
kings: gigantic structures of huge monoliths, stone slabs, each of
them man-high, so arranged that standing stones make a passage, roofed
with other huge blocks, and this passage leads to a vaulted chamber,
built in the same marvellous fashion. How on earth these stones were
handled no man can guess, yet there they are--Cyclopean architecture
with a vengeance. But these habitations of the dead are not exposed to
daylight, for over the whole structure was heaped a mound of lesser
stones, so huge that the whole thing covers an acre of ground, and now,
grass-grown and tree-covered, stands out like a natural hill--into
whose recesses you may burrow fearfully along this amazing corridor.
Strange spiral ornamentation on the stones at New Grange is the joy and
bewilderment of archæologists; and though we know the names of kings
who were buried there, we can only guess vaguely at the builders of
these structures, comparable to the tomb under which Agamemnon rests in
Mycenæ.
Nearer to Drogheda, not less interesting, and far more beautiful,
are two monuments of Christian Ireland. One is the ancient monastic
settlement of Monasterboice, where stand a round tower, two small
ancient churches, and for its supreme interest, two huge stone crosses
covered with the most elaborate sculpture, on Scriptural subjects,
presenting churches, monks, and warriors as they were in Ireland of
the ninth or tenth century. One of the two crosses is signed by its
deviser, Muiredach, probably the Muiredach whose death is recorded at
924 A.D., and purely Celtic art has no more important monument.
A few miles off is the other ruin, which shows what point monastic
civilization had reached in Ireland before yet the Normans had crossed
the sea. The Cistercian Abbey of Mellifont was the first of its order
in Ireland, and it was built by Irish craftsmen trained at Clairvaux,
in Normandy. Enough of the ruin is left to show how noble and how pure
was the work of these early builders, who brought into Ireland the
Norman civilization but not the Norman rule. Yet there is also the
monument of her who gets the blame of bringing in the hostile, not the
peaceful, invasion. Dervorgilla is buried there, O'Rourke's wife, whose
abduction by Dermot MacMurrough led to MacMurrough's banishment from
Ireland, and so to his calling in of foreign aid.
De Lacy's castle at Trim is not the only evidence that the Normans,
when they came, were quick to fasten upon this fertile valley. At
Randalstown, near Navan, Colonel Everard's tobacco plantations are an
object of interest to thousands to-day; but perhaps not many of them
realize that this enterprising country gentleman is living to-day where
his forefathers have lived since the first of them got a grant there
in the twelfth century, among the other knights and squires who rode
with De Lacy. Norman they were and Irish they soon became, yet here in
the pale they kept far more distinct than the Geraldines of Desmond or
the De Burgos of Connaught; and so they kept on the lucky side, the
side whose supremacy was finally established when William of Orange
fought his way across the fords at Oldbridge.
[Illustration: ON THE RIVER SLANEY AT BALLINTEMPLE]
Oldbridge is only about a mile upstream from Drogheda, and an obelisk
marks the site of the famous Battle of the Boyne. The battle was
decided before it was fairly begun, because a large force had been
thrown across the bridge at Slane, and thus turned the Irish position,
which lay along the south bank from opposite the Mattock River to
where the hill rises steep below Oldbridge. Schomberg fell in the ford
above the island, probably some two hundred yards below the present
bridge--fell rallying his Huguenots like a hero.
No record of brutality sullies that feat of arms; but at Drogheda, one
of the most picturesquely situated towns in Ireland, and made more
picturesque by the high viaduct which here spans the river, there are
terrible memories connected with those old defences of which one part
remains perfect--St. Laurence's Gate with its two-storied tower. Here
it was that Cromwell perpetrated the first of those massacres which
disgrace his name. Such of the captured as were not slain were sent for
slaves to the West Indies, where to-day in certain islands a debased
Irish can be heard from negroes, and Irish names are general among the
negro population.
Yet in that lovely valley it is hard to think of cruelties. Historic
records crowd so thick in it that one has scarcely time to speak of
beauty. And yet from the ridge of the hill above Monasterboice is a
view which pleases me beyond almost anything I know in Ireland. Midway
on that northern plain one has the Mourne Mountains beyond fertile
levels to the north, the Dublin Hills beyond fertile levels to the
south, and the blue sea close at hand abreast of all. Still, you may
match that elsewhere in Ireland; you cannot match the river itself.
From Navan a little leisurely steamer will take you to Drogheda,
dodging from canal into river, from river back to canal, through
scenery as fertile and as cultivated as the banks of the Thames, yet
rendered far more beautiful by the charm of the river itself--a typical
salmon stream, with its pools, its plunging flood, its long swirling
reaches. I have written of it elsewhere and may perhaps be allowed to
quote my own writing:
"... Above Navan the Boyne is sedgy and weed-choked; but if you
follow the towpath down from Navan, between canal and river,
you will find yourself heaping scorn on the Thames. Here are
wide spaces of smooth water, with steep wooded banks beyond
them--banks ambered, when I saw them last, with all the tones
of autumn. But (since Boyne is a famous salmon stream, and way
must be made for the running fish) here are no high lock-gates
damming back the water in long sluggish flats. Everywhere the run
is brisk, and constantly broken by low weirs, under which long
races swirl and bubble in a way to tantalize every angler, and
delight even those who do not know the true charm of a salmon
pool. When I came in sight of Dunmor Castle, a ruined Norman keep
of the sixteenth century, perched high on a bare grassy cliff
above one of these lashers, it seemed that here was surely the
finest point of all; but after I had passed Stackallen bridge,
and was travelling now down the left bank, I learnt my error.
Under the woods of Stackallen House, canal and river merge into
one broad stream, closely pent by precipitous banks, variously
wooded. Below the lock, where the canal joins the main water, a
pool begins, stretching some two hundred yards straight down,
until it is closed by a cliff of ochre-tinted rock, bold and bare
among the foliage. So swift is the rush from the lasher, so far
does it swirl down into this reach, that the water has no look of
dullness; it is a pool, not a stretch. I walked on quickly, eager
to see what lay around the sharp bend, and suddenly towards me
there swung round the cliff a barge, brightly painted. The line
of its sides, the fan-shaped curve of the wave spreading outwards
and backwards, as the craft drew towards me, had a beauty in that
setting that only sight could realize. If any spot of the world
is enchanted, it must be that water; and as you round the cliff
it is more beautiful still. For there, under Beaupark House, is
a cliff answering that on the Stackallen bank, and a precipitous
lawn beside it; and the river, bending south here at right angles,
then breaking out again, stately and splendid, on its old line
due east, has movement and stillness all in one; it is a sliding,
swirling mirror for banks which well deserve such a glass to echo
their perfection."
That valley is to my mind the most beautiful and the most typically
beautiful thing in Leinster. For Leinster is the province of cultivated
fertility; it is also the province of great and beautiful rivers. The
Shannon, except from Killaloe and Limerick, is somewhat lacking in
beauty; it has majesty, but not charm. In Leinster the rivers are more
manageable in size--the Nore, the Barrow, the Boyne, the Liffey, and
the Slaney. Each of them has its own character; and the lower tidal
reaches of the Slaney, reed-fringed and swan-haunted, are not less
lovely than the salmon pool in the upper waters near Carlow which Mr.
Williams has drawn so lovingly. And those who imagine Ireland as a
country of mere beggary might find something to learn as well as to
see either amid the fertility of Meath or again in South Leinster,
where a poorer soil has been tilled into high perfection. The valley
of the Nore in particular is affluent in loveliness from its banks
at Kilkenny, where Moore courted the pretty actress who made him the
best of wives, down to the head of the tideway at Inistiogue, where
under the shelter of Mr. Tighe's great woods you can stay at a neat
little hotel in a charming village, and fish to heart's content in
splendid pools and shallows, where trout and salmon are plenty, and
if you cannot catch them, it must be either your fault or theirs. And
if they are hard to capture--as I found them in weather which all but
fishermen adored--that is just because it is a free water, because here
as everywhere there is something of that easy live and let live spirit
which endears Ireland to those that know her, and which everywhere
makes the visitor welcome--perhaps with most natural kindliness in
those parts which are least accustomed to look upon the stranger as a
source of revenue. The most beautiful places in Leinster are far less
known to Englishmen than the barren cliffs of Achill. Yet if you go to
Inistiogue, or any similar place in Leinster, you will begin to realize
why it is that in Leinster only of the provinces does the population
increase in these days.
There, under the new conditions of tenure, the farmer begins to invest
freely, his money and his labour, upon soil that can repay exertion,
and under a climate that has none of Ulster's harshness. In Wexford,
where most of the Irish tobacco was grown till the growing of it was
prohibited by an amazing Act of Parliament some seventy years ago, the
plant took so kindly to the soil that it perpetuated itself without
cultivation: and when (after infinite solicitation and manoeuvring)
leave was given us to revive this industry, the distinctive variety was
recovered from these casual plants, and has been cultivated among other
species in Colonel Edwards's farm at Navan. Now a soil and a climate
in which tobacco will reproduce itself in the wild state is a rare
combination so far north, and Wexford men are trying to utilize its
advantages.
In Carlow and Kilkenny one sees prosperity too on every side, while
Louth disputes the palm with Wexford. Only on the richest land of
all, through Meath into Kildare, is there the lamentable spectacle of
depopulation--a rich wilderness. Yet even there it is to be hoped that
the spread of co-operation and the gradual work of land settlement may
undo some of the mischief wrought by reckless clearances.
Those who in visiting Ireland have too often found images and memories
of beauty marred by the association of ragged poverty, overshadowed by
a very cloud of despair, may find in Leinster at least a beauty where
all the omens are hopeful and where, even beside the ruins only too
evident, a strong new fabric of industry is being built up.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
_At the Villapress, Glasgow, Scotland_