Through Newry to Tanderagee Castle--Life in the Castle--Excursions
to Armagh--Its History--The English in Armagh.
Our route lies from Newry north-west through Pointz-pass, beyond which
as we approach Tanderagee, the castle, a stately stone structure, is
seen towering high on a forest-crowned hill with a flag denoting its
owner's presence floating from the main tower.
While the castle is a modern structure of some seventy-five years of
age,--originally built by the Count de Salis,--it stands on the site of
the very ancient stronghold of Redmond O'Hanlon, the most noted outlaw
of Ireland. As we roll through the quaint town clustering around the
hill, where every soul appears to have gone to sleep or gone dead long
since, the sound of the motor brings a few pale faces to the doors of
the houses, but it is very quiet withal.
Looking upward from this street the growth of trees is so dense that no
sign of the castle is visible. We pass through almost a tunnel cut
through the rocks and trees, and emerging in a spacious courtyard, draw
up at the main portal where the _maître d'hôtel_ meets and conducts us
within, our hosts being off somewhere in their motor but will return
shortly.
This gives us time for a quiet inspection. We find ourselves in a long,
wide, and lofty corridor having a row of windows on its right, while on
the left one has entrance first to the main hall and chapel, stately
apartments very richly decorated, and then in order follow several
drawing-rooms, a library, and a spacious dining-hall, and from the walls
of each and all, the painted faces of those who walked these chambers
long ago look down upon us with questioning gaze as though they still
retained some interest in this world of the living, and yonder dame
would, I know, like to hear the latest news from London; but take my
advice, my lady, and let it pass, it is productive of just the same
unrest and discontent now as when you trod the boards of that great
theatre of life,--Dead Sea fruit, the whole of it.
Wondering what part she played in life, my eyes wander to an open window
and straightway all thoughts of Madam vanish as I gaze downward
through the glades of one of those beautiful parks which abound in these
dominions. A stately terrace of stone shrouded in ivy runs below these
windows and from it the land drops away into a gentle valley filled with
great trees and blossoming banks of rhododendrons with here and there a
stretch of grassland and a gleam of water, a vista which must have been
a perpetual delight to the Duke who collected these books in this
library, for a lover of books is generally a lover of nature.
[Illustration: Photo by W. Leonard
Tanderagee Castle]
Passing onward you will enter the courtyard and at the end of the long
arcades on one side find the billiard and smoking rooms. On the upper
floors, aside from the state and family apartments, one finds long rows
of bachelor apartments, twenty or thirty of them I should say, and in
the middle of the row a cozy octagon chamber where much high revel has
held forth, and which looks very lonely just now. There are small
closets in the walls which certainly did not hold holy water.
But times are changed at Tanderagee, and while there is to-day high
revel within its walls, it comes from the fresh young voices of children
and would in no way appeal to the ghosts which haunt the octagon
chamber.
After luncheon we visit the little ones in their rooms high up in the
sunlight, and very happy, fine children they appear to be. Round-eyed
little Lady Mary did the honours and presented her brother, who at the
time was making vain attempts to stand on his head in a corner, while
the new baby dreamed his days away in a crib by the fire. I am told that
the present Duke dying without an heir the estate would pass to a
Catholic owner, much to the distaste of the tenants here, who are mostly
Protestants, and that when little Lord Mandeville was born the
rejoicings were immense,--every man as he heard it having a pull at the
church bell. Now there are two sons and hence little chance of the
dreaded misfortune,--though it often happened during the Boer war that
many estates in the empire fell to those so distant that no hope had
been entertained for an instant of their so passing. Let us trust it
will not occur here, for these are fine children.
Passing downward, we spend some hours in wandering over the park,
pausing at last by the grave of the late Duke in the little churchyard.
I did not notice the graves of any other members of the family. I
believe former dukes are interred at Kimbolton, the family seat in
England. The church holds some very beautiful windows erected by the
present Duchess to the memory of her mother, Helena Zimmerman. As we
return to the castle the voices of the children have roused all the
echoes of the courtyard into wild replies and now the sunlight streams
downward as though in thorough approval.
Tea-time, that most pleasant hour of the day, finds me in the chapel
listening to the soft tones of the organ. My hand quite haphazard picks
up a volume lying near me whose title at once chains my attention and in
view of the base manner in which the author afterward sold his talents
to her enemies and slandered his Queen it may be well to quote what he
says of that Queen in this preface:
"TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.
[An Epigram of George Buchanan.]
"MADAM:
"Who now happily holdest the sceptre of the Caledonian coast
conveyed from hand to hand through a long line of innumerable
ancestors, whose fortune is exceeded by thy merits, thy years by
thy virtues, thy sex by thy spirit, and thy noble birth by the
nobility of thy manners,
"Receive (but with candour and good nature) these poems upon which
I have bestowed a Latine Dress, etc. etc. I durst not cast away
this ill-born product of mine lest I should reject what thou hast
been pleased to approve. What my poems could not hope for from the
wit and genius of the composer perhaps they will obtain from thy
good-will and approbation."[1]
Deep in thoughts of that most interesting period of Scotch history I do
not even hear the dressing bell until its clangour becomes too insistent
to be disregarded, and I mount to my room to dress for that most
important function of the day--dinner. A bright fire makes the chamber
warm and cozy so that it is difficult to resist the temptation to
further reverie.
Evidently Tanderagee has been greatly improved of late years. In the
building have been placed several modern bathrooms, a Turkish plunge,
and an electric light plant and steam heat, so that the damp,
penetrating cold and musty, mouldy smell usually so ever-present in
these houses, where fortunes are so constantly spent in decorations and
so little done for actual comfort, are absent. From my window I can see
on the lake of the park an ancient swan named Billy, alone in all his
glory and from choice and bad temper, not necessity. He has killed off
all his kind and all other kinds, is in fact a degenerate bird, and when
evening comes on he betakes himself with the rest of the "boys" to the
village street, and loafs around all night, no dog in the place daring
to molest him. I saw him outside of a public house there with a desire
for strong drink expressed in his eyes. He is a rake of the worst
character but you dare not tell him so. He leaves the park every night
before the gates are closed and returns next morning.
There are fine drives in all directions hereabouts, and the roads being
good we have many a rush in the motor-cars,--one to an old ruin where
the devil is supposed to leave the impress of his foot upon a plank in
the floor each night. I doubt if to-day even the devil could reach the
plank through the accumulation of dirt thereon.
[Illustration: Photo by Wm. Lawrence
Chapel, Tanderagee Castle]
As we wait in the quadrangle one morning for our motors, to my
astonishment I am accosted in salutation by a name used only at home,
and by those I have known for years. "How de do, Mr. Mike?" Around me
rise the walls of the castle, but aside from the expressionless faces of
the house servants standing near I can see no one until in a dark corner
of the court a yet blacker spot suddenly shows a white gleam of teeth,
and out into the light comes the speaker. "How de do, sir?--I'se de cook
on de boss's car, and I knowed you all your life. Don't you remember
nigger John and Miss Nancy Ballentine?" Convulsed with laughter, I can
scarcely answer. This explains the hot bread and waffles on the
breakfast table, which surprised me for the moment, but which I had
entirely forgotten. Bowing and scraping came black "Tom" into the
sunshine and it seemed to do his heart good to talk of the old times, of
Black John our own cook, and Miss Nancy Ballentine, who "tended de
ladies' waitin' room in the C. H. & D. station" when she was not
assisting at the marrying or burying of most of us, at the latter
wearing a dress composed of the crêpe from many a doorbell. That it did
not match in degrees of blackness mattered not at all to the good dame.
She arranged it in stripes and she could tell you which particular
funeral each of those stripes came from. She has been dead many years,
and to have her recalled here was strange indeed, but--the cars come
with a rush, and we are off with a rush, speeding through the beautiful
park whose trees certainly equal any I have seen except of course those
of California.
I find that my fifteen horse-power Clements keeps up very fairly with
the Duke's motor of sixty horse-power. Of course on the wide straight
roads of France this could not be, but on these narrow and crooked lanes
of Ireland we are never very far apart, and have had many good runs
together.
Our motoring carries us often to the town of Armagh where one comes
across traces of the hatred of that Catholic Queen, Mary I., for the
Irish. She burned this see and three other churches. The cruelties of
that Queen to the people of Kings and Queens counties equals anything
told in Irish history, but is rarely mentioned by the historians of the
day. In fact, all the territory forming now those counties was stolen
from its ancient owners and the name changed as above, resulting in a
warfare which lasted into the reign of Elizabeth until the people
finally disappeared into the mountains. No torture or cruelty was
spared.
In _Forgotten facts in Irish History_ we read that "it seems very
apparent to the student of Irish history that these people received
their persecutions not because they were _Catholics_, but because they
were _Irish_. The most terrible persecutions took place under the
Catholic sovereigns of England and not until those monarchs became
so-called heretics was the Church of Rome turned against them, so that
at the present time it is the effort of all to show that the persecution
if it exists is because of the religion."
The history of the archbishopric of Dublin is an object-lesson on the
exclusion of the Irish from the Church ever since the Conquest. From
1171 down to the Reformation, in 1549, there were twenty-three
archbishops of Dublin. Of these not one was Irish. For the archbishopric
of Dublin "No Irish need apply!"
The Statute of Kilkenny enacted that no religious house shall receive an
Irishman, under penalty of being attainted and having its temporalities
seized.
One historian of our times asks:
"But would any Irishman have the hardihood to say that if King
Edward VII. were to become a Roman Catholic (which heaven forbid),
and to go hand in hand with the Papacy in the prosecution of their
Imperial and world-wide projects, that the Pope would oppose the
King in any tyrannies he might be disposed to inflict upon Ireland
which did not run counter to the interests of the Roman Catholic
Church? Would the Pope risk the friendship of the ruler of a great
Empire for the sake of what Italians regard as 'a mere eruption on
the chin of the world'?[2]
"The centuries of oppressive treatment which Ireland received while
the whole kingdom was under the 'shelter of the wings of Rome'
amply explains the animosity which rankles in the Irish heart
towards England and everything English. The whole story of that
almost forgotten period is a series of murders, cursings,
tyrannies, betrayals, rapacity, hypocrisy, and poverty, which
scarcely finds a parallel in the range of history."
Armagh has suffered terribly throughout the years since St. Patrick
founded the cathedral, but though abounding in memories, there is little
existing of the past in the town to-day. The site of its cathedral is
very fine, but the building has suffered a complete restoration.
Our days at Tanderagee have passed pleasantly but they are over at last
and bidding our hosts adieu we roll off towards Newry.
[Illustration: Photo by Wm. Lawrence
Drawing-room, Tanderagee Castle]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Preface of George Buchanan's Poetical Paraphrase upon
the five books of Psalms.
Translated literally into English by Pat Stobin, A. M. Copied by me from
the MS. copy of Stobin at Tanderagee, owned by the Duke of Manchester.
The whole book is in MS.
M. M. SHOEMAKER.
[2] The late Professor Stokes ventured to say that an English
Peer is a more welcome visitor at the Vatican than an Irish Roman
Catholic Bishop.