century and his obituaries said that he was the most popular man in
Ireland. He was the third husband of that beautiful American woman,
Lillian Warren-Hammersley-Churchill-Beresford, originally of Troy, N.Y.,
and afterward of Washington, widow of the late Duke of Marlborough and
still one of the most charming women in London society. There was
another brother, who recently died in Mexico, where he lived for many
years as a ranchman, and left a large family of half-breed children.
The present Marquis of Waterford, Henri de la Poer Beresford, was born
in 1875 and married Lady Beatrice, daughter of the Marquis of Lansdowne,
in 1897. He is a lieutenant in the Horse Guards at London, is said to be
a fine young fellow, and is developing the hereditary traits of the
family. He has a son--the Earl of Tyrone, born in 1901--and three
daughters who are younger.
Carrick Castle, which stands on the banks of the Suir not far from
Waterford, is another beautiful place, built in 1309 by the great Earl
of Ormonde. The Carricks were originally Butlers, and trace their
descent as far back as Rollo, Duke of Normandy, grandfather of William
the Conqueror. Edmund Butler was created Earl of Carrick in 1315, and
his descendants have owned this estate ever since his time. The
beautiful but unfortunate Anne Boleyn, wife of Henry VIII. and mother of
Queen Elizabeth, was born in Carrick Castle and lived there until she
was fifteen years old, when she went to England with Sir Thomas Boleyn,
her father, and Lord Rochford, her brother, who was executed upon the
same scaffold with herself.
The Province of Munster might be called properly "the Land of Ruined
Castles," for they are more numerous here than on the banks of the
Rhine. You are scarcely ever out of sight of a crumbling tower or a
useless gigantic wall wearing a mantle of ivy. Nearly all of these ruins
are attributed to Cromwell and his army, who have no defenders, and the
religious historians and local guides tell us that they were destroyed
by that man of mighty prejudices and purposes in order to plant
Protestantism upon the ruins of the papal power in Ireland. Cromwell was
undoubtedly guilty of atrocious cruelty and devastation at the cost of
thousands of innocent lives and hundreds of millions of property, but he
could not have destroyed all these castles and monasteries if he had
remained in Ireland ten times as long as he did, because many of them
were in ruins when he arrived and many were not built until after his
departure.
Torna, the Druid, prophesied that a wind from the southeast would fell
the tree that covered Ireland. And that was always a vulnerable shore.
Agricola planned to cross with his legions from the Cornish coast and
add Eire, as this country was then known, to the Roman Empire. The
southeastern corner, the counties of Wexford and Waterford, with their
harbors open and undefended, were the gates through which many foreign
invaders came and brought death and devastation with them. The harbor of
Waterford was called the Haven of the Sun until the Danes came, but was
afterward known as the Valley of Lamentation, because of the mourning
that followed the battles that were fought there. And even the invaders
did not do so much damage as domestic strife. The kings and the clans,
the Desmonds and the Geraldines, the O'Briens and the O'Donoghues, the
MacCarthys, the O'Connors, the O'Sullivans, and other local chiefs who
occupied the southern third of Ireland, were always attacking each
other, besieging the castles of their rivals and often leaving them as
we see them now--green wrecks and grassy mounds. And they spared not the
monasteries that were built near all the homes of the great. This was a
form of munificence as well as piety which prevailed also in Italy and
France in the Middle Ages, where every robber baron kept a small army of
friars and monks to do his praying, just as he kept squadrons of knights
to do his fighting. Hence you will invariably find in southern Ireland
the ruins of an abbey or a monastery beside the ruins of a castle, and
most of them are the result of duels and feuds between the native
chieftains and their clans, although many were left in flames and gore
by the forces of William of Orange, Henry VIII., and Queen Elizabeth, as
well as Cromwell.
[Illustration: THE RIVER FRONT AT WATERFORD]
Ireland has never been at peace until now. No soil has been fought over
so often. The mysterious round towers that we see on the hilltops and in
the glens in their lonely majesty are evidence that it was necessary for
the overlords to build places of refuge for their servants, and provide
means for lighting signal fires to warn them against the enemies that
surrounded them.
"In the Island o' Ruins remembrance o' grief
Hallows the hills as, when summer is slowly
Fadin' in darkness, the fall o' the leaf
Makes the woods holy.
"Green are the woods though the mountains are gray;
Spring is too young to remember old doin's.
Ah! but I wish I was roamin' to-day
In the Island o' Ruins!"
The little station of Doneraile is the getting-off place for visitors
who would see one of the most attractive ruins in Ireland, both for its
picturesque beauty and for its historical associations. A solitary
tower, standing by a small river in a lonely and deserted glen, is all
that remains of Kilcolman Castle, one of the greatest strongholds of the
Geraldines, afterward and at the time of its destruction the home of
Ireland's greatest poet, Edmund Spenser. He came here in 1580 as private
secretary to Earl Grey, then lord lieutenant, and after one of the many
rebellions he was given a little more than three thousand acres which
surrounded this castle, confiscated from the Earl of Desmond, as one of
the "undertakers," as certain speculators and adventurers were called
who agreed to colonize the country with English settlers. It was here
and in the neighboring town of Youghal, the home of Sir Walter Raleigh,
in 1589 and 1590, that Spenser wrote the "Faerie Queene," which was
published at the expense of Raleigh and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth.
For this honor the queen proposed to give him quite a liberal pension.
Lord Treasurer Burleigh remonstrated, saying:
"What? So much for a rhyme?"
"Well, then, give him what is reason," said her majesty.
Nothing further was heard of the matter, however, until Spenser sent the
Virgin Queen the following epigram:
"I was promised on a time
To have reason for my rhyme.
From that time, until this season,
I've had neither rhyme nor reason."
Elizabeth was so pleased that she instantly ordered Spenser's name to be
put upon the pension rolls at fifty pounds a year.
Spenser married an obscure relative of the famous Earl of Cork, a Miss
Boyle, and lived in the old castle until 1598, when it was sacked and
burned by the rebels in the Tyrone uprising. His youngest son perished
in the flames and, heart-broken and beggared, he took the rest of his
family to London and died within a few months from starvation and grief.
He was buried in Westminster Abbey at the expense of the Earl of Essex.
It is said that the sins of the fathers are sometimes visited upon their
children and children's children, and this prophecy applies with
singular aptness to the Spenser family, for the poet's grandson was
driven from his home at Kilcolman by Cromwell's men, just as the
Desmonds had been driven from the same place by Earl Grey.
It was a cheerful change to find a castle without a scar or a crumbling
stone and all the modern improvements at Riding House, the Irish estate
of the late Earl of Devonshire. He was one of the wealthiest, the
ablest, and the most influential of the British nobility, and a
conservative leader in the House of Lords, and died, universally
lamented, a year or so ago. He was one of the largest landowners in
Ireland, having more than a hundred thousand acres rented to tenants,
and managed to get along with them without much friction, which is the
highest proof that he was a just, honorable, tactful, and conscientious
man. There are good landlords in Ireland; there are many of them, and it
is not true in every instance that the tenants show little or no
appreciation of their generosity, although, unfortunately, there have
been some conspicuous cases of that kind. Several large property owners,
who have endeavored to treat their tenants with kindness, have lowered
their rents and made generous concessions to them, have been accused of
cowardice by the very people they tried to please, and have been treated
very badly. But the Duke of Devonshire was not one of those. He had
honest, brave, fair-minded agents on the ground and looked closely
after the management of his Irish property himself.
[Illustration: LISMORE CASTLE, WATERFORD COUNTY; IRISH SEAT OF THE DUKE
OF DEVONSHIRE]
Riding House is near the town of Lismore, and, on the principle that to
him who hath shall be given, it was inherited by the Duke of Devonshire
in 1753 through his wife, Charlotte, daughter of Richard Boyle, fourth
Earl of Cork, who was a munificent patron of literature and the arts and
the friend of Pope, the poet. The Cork family is one of the most famous
in the history of Ireland, although not one of the oldest. The first
earl lived on Cork Hill, where the Castle at Dublin stands. He was a
native of Hereford County, England, and was born in 1566. He studied law
at the Middle Temple, London, and was called to the Bar, but, having no
clients, he embarked for Ireland as an adventurer. After a while he
obtained the favor and protection of Queen Elizabeth, which enabled him
to amass considerable wealth and won him his title. His brother Michael,
who went to Ireland with him, became Bishop of Waterford. Richard, a
nephew, became Archbishop of Tuam, and his son, Michael, became
Archbishop of Armagh.
The second Earl of Cork was a distinguished figure in camp, court, and
in the literary world. He was lord lieutenant of Ireland under Cromwell.
He was known as "the great Earl of Cork," and lies in the old Church of
St. Mary at Youghal with his figure at full length in marble in the
center of an enormous monument that covers a quarter of an acre of wall.
There is a duplicate quite as large in St. Patrick's Cathedral in
Dublin.
The present Earl of Cork was the largest landholder in this section
except the Duke of Devonshire, but has sold most of his estate under the
provisions of the Wyndham Land Act of 1903. The Devonshire estate is
still intact, and, as the late duke had no sons, was inherited by Victor
Cavendish, his nephew. The late Earl, Richard Edmund St. Lawrence Boyle,
was an aid-de-camp to Queen Victoria, with whom he had a warm
friendship. He was devoted to her all his life and was her master of
horse and master of buckhounds for many years. He married in 1853 a
sister of the present Earl of Clanricarde, who is fighting the Wyndham
Land Act so bitterly. His eldest son and heir, late the Viscount
Dungarvin, was born in 1861, served in the army for several years, and
commanded the Twenty-second Battalion of Yeomanry against the Boers in
South Africa. The second son of the late earl, Robert John Lascelle,
born in 1864, married Josephine Hale, daughter of J.P. Hale of San
Francisco, and the son of this American girl is the heir presumptive of
the great Cork estate. One sister of the present earl married Francis
Henry Baring of the famous London banking house, and another married
Walter Long, one of the leaders of the unionist party in parliament. He
represents a district of the city of Dublin, although he is an
Englishman and never lived there.
"Tipperary is the deadest town in all Ireland," said a bookseller of
that place, of whom we were buying some postcards. "I don't believe
there was ever a deader town than Tip-rar-ry [for that is the way they
pronounce it] and everybody is going to America who can get away." And
that seemed to be the prevailing sentiment among the people I talked
with. It is the most pessimistic community I found in the country,
without even a single good word for their own town. "There's no business
outside of cattle and dairying," said another merchant. "Trade is so
dull that the shopkeepers are loafing half the day." But the people seem
to keep up their interest in politics, and that they have some money
left is evident, because at a meeting here, the day before my arrival,
£95 was collected in a few minutes for the expense fund of the
parliamentary Irish party. Outside, in the streets, there was a good
deal of activity. It was market day and the farmers from all the
surrounding country were in town to sell their produce and buy a stock
of supplies for the ensuing week, but there was no vehicle, not even a
jaunting car, at the railway station to take us to the hotel, and
evidently nobody was expected. So we had to do the best we could and
succeeded in persuading a farmer who was there with an "inside car" to
carry us and our luggage, which he managed to do by sitting on the
shafts himself. And afterward when we wanted to see the town we
couldn't find a vehicle in the street, although Tipperary is a town of
six thousand population, and the hotel proprietor sent out to a livery
stable for one.
Tipperary lies in the midst of a lovely country, more level than that we
had been traveling through for the past three weeks, but there are only
a few patches of timber and a few gentle slopes and no peat bogs so far
as we could see from the railway train. The landscape reminded me of the
Western Reserve of Ohio, with the exception that the Silievenarmick
Hills rise in the background to the height of nine hundred and one
thousand feet. The Aherlow River waters the plain and runs through the
town. There doesn't seem to be much cultivated ground in the
neighborhood, but there are long stretches of meadow in which the
farmers were cutting the hay, and we can perceive the perfume as we pass
through them if we stand at the open window of the car. Alternating with
the meadows are fine pastures, where large herds of sleek and fat cattle
and many yearling colts and foal mares are feeding. There are several
large stock farms in the neighborhood, and, as it was the season for
county fairs when we were there, the Tipperary farmers are raking in
prizes for all kinds of stock. In the town is a creamery which, we were
told, is the largest in Ireland. It employs one hundred and twenty hands
and its butter is shipped almost entirely to London.
The most interesting feature of Tipperary is the new town lying on the
outskirts of the old, which represents an exciting incident in Irish
history. During the land war of 1887 the leaders of the Irish party
selected several landlords as examples for boycotting for the purpose of
attracting attention to the conditions in the country and creating
public opinion. This was called "The Plan of Campaign." Among the places
selected as storm centers were the Ponsonby estate near Cork, the
Vandaleur estate in County Clare, the Defrayne estate in Roscommon, the
Massaure estate in County Louth, and the Smith Barry estate in
Tipperary. These estates were selected as battle grounds because the
landlords were treating the tenants badly, were very exacting and
oppressive, and furnished excellent examples to illustrate the evils of
the Irish land and tenantry system. Some of the tenants were behind in
their rents and, being unable to pay, were threatened with eviction
unless they settled on or before a certain date.
Arthur Hugh Smith Barry, the landlord who was selected as an awful
example at Tipperary, is descended from the Earl of Barrymore, whose
title expired when the direct male line became extinct forty or fifty
years ago. He came into possession by inheritance of a large tract of
land near Cork and another tract covering between eight and nine
thousand acres in this vicinity, which paid him an annual revenue of
£7,368. His first wife was a sister of the present Lord Dunraven. His
second and present wife was Elizabeth Wadsworth Post, a sister of former
Congressman James Wadsworth of Geneseo, N.Y., and was the widow of a Mr.
Post at the time of her marriage with Mr. Barry in 1889. They have a
beautiful home at Fota on Fota Island, in Cork Harbor, near Queenstown,
and a town residence in Berkeley Square, London. Mr. Barry has been a
member of parliament and has served the government in different
capacities with great credit to himself and usefulness to his country.
For that reason the old title of his family was revived in 1902 and he
was elevated to the peerage as Lord Barrymore.
The courage and determination he exhibited during the fight that was
made upon him by the Land League was one of the reasons for giving him
the honor. The boycott was managed on behalf of the Land League by
William O'Brien, then, as now, member of parliament for that district.
Under the latter's direction between five and six hundred tenants of Mr.
Barry stopped paying rent. Some were actually too poor to do so; others
were perfectly able, but they all went in together and made a common
cause and boycotted their landlord, who promptly took steps to evict
them. Mr. O'Brien and other leaders of the Land League appealed to
patriotic Irishmen all over the world and raised between £40,000 and
£50,000--nearly $250,000--in America, Australia, Ireland, and
elsewhere, with which they started to build a new town upon land
belonging to Stafford O'Brien, who, by the way, is no relation of the
member of parliament of the same name. Several blocks of tenement-houses
were built of substantial materials and attractive appearance, and are
models in their way. But when Mr. Barry got the machinery of the law in
motion and wholesale evictions commenced, the managers put up cheap
barracks of wood as rapidly as possible to accommodate those who were
turned out of their homes.
There was a general and generous response to the appeal to the
patriotism of Ireland, and people in this country who had no money gave
material and labor to help the cause. Carpenters and stone masons,
bricklayers, and other mechanics came to Tipperary from all parts of
Ireland to work on the buildings, without wages, and within a short time
all of the evicted tenants of the Barry estate were comfortably housed,
free of rent, while his revenues ceased entirely and the boycott was
complete. It was a significant illustration of the unity of purpose of
the common people of Ireland; but, unfortunately, the leaders of the
party quarreled before the demonstration was complete. The death of
Charles S. Parnell in 1891, about eighteen months after the boycott was
undertaken on the Barry estate, caused a split in the Irish party which
continued until a few years ago. The effect of this division was to
demoralize their followers at Tipperary, and the tenants of the Barry
estate began gradually to slip back to their old homes and resume paying
their rents. The houses at New Tipperary which were built at that time
now belong very largely to Stafford O'Brien, who furnished the land upon
which they were built. Others are still the property of the Land League,
and the rent, which is collected by a committee, goes into the
parliamentary fund.
Many people at Tipperary now declare that the "kick-up," as they call
the quarrel between the leaders of the Land League, ruined the town,
because it broke the boycott and compelled the tenants to surrender to
the landlords, who have had them under their heels ever since. Several
people told me that the "kick-up" ruined the butter business, but I
could not get anyone to explain why. At any rate, Tipperary lost a great
deal of its prosperity as well as its commercial importance immediately
after that trouble, especially because it was followed by a large exodus
to the United States. As many of the Barry tenants as could raise the
money emigrated when the support of the Land League was withdrawn from
them. They refused to stay and surrender to the landlords. All the young
people in the county caught the emigration fever and left for the United
States as fast as they could get money enough to buy steamship tickets.
I was told that several of them had come back, bringing a good deal of
money with them, and had bought farms in the neighborhood, but they soon
became discontented. The experience of a few years in the United States
unfits people for the primitive methods and the monotony of life in
Ireland; and the eagerness of everybody to get to the United States is
very significant. The jaunting car drivers, the hotel porters, the
dining-room waiters, the chambermaids at the hotels, and everybody of
the working class that a traveler comes in contact with, always ask
questions about the expense of the journey, the probabilities of
securing employment in the United States, and express their
determination to emigrate as soon as they can.
Tipperary also claims the authorship of that ancient and beautiful old
air, "The Wearing of the Green." It is one of the oldest of Irish
melodies, but only modern words are sung to it now, and there are
several versions. That which Henry Grattan Curran, who is an excellent
authority, claims to be the original, was written at Tipperary and runs
as follows:
"I met with Napper Tandy,
And he took me by the hand,
Saying how is old Ireland?
And how does she stand?
She's the most distressful country
That ever yet was seen,
And they're hanging men and women
For the wearing of the green.
"I care not for the thistle,
I care not for the rose,
When bleak winds round us whistle
Neither down nor crimson shows;
But, like hope to him that's friendless,
When no joy around is seen,
O'er our graves with love that's endless
Blooms our own immortal green."
The late Dion Boucicault used to sing another version in one of his
plays, which he said was made over from a street ballad that he once
heard in Dublin. He was not able to get all of the words and filled in
what was lacking himself, as follows:
"Oh, Paddy, dear, an' did ye hear the news that's goin' round?
The Shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground:
No more St. Pathrick's Day we'll keep, his color can't be seen,
For there's a bloody law agin' the wearing of the green.
I met with Napper Tandy and he tuk me by the hand
And he said, 'How's poor ould Ireland and how does she stand?
She's the most disthressful counthry ever yet was seen,
For they're hangin' men and women there for wearing of the green.'
"Oh, if the color we must wear is England's cruel red,
Let it remind us of the blood that Ireland has shed.
Then pull the shamrock from your hat and throw it on the sod,
Ah, never fear, 'twill take root there, though under foot 'tis trod.
When the laws can stop the blades of grass from growin' as they grow.
And when the leaves in summer time their color dare not show,
Then I will change the color, too, that I wear in my caubeen;
But till that day, plaze God, I'll stick to wearing of the green."
The Earl of Lismore is the Lord of Tipperary, and the head of the
O'Callaghan family, who were formerly kings of Munster and are descended
from a famous Milesian prince. The various generations have taken an
active part in the affairs of Ireland since history began. They have
been bishops, statesmen, lawyers, soldiers, sailors, and priests; they
have married the daughters of the most prominent houses in the kingdom
and their sisters have been the wives and mothers of dukes. They live at
Clogheen, in the famous Sharbally Castle, and occupy land which has been
in the family for many centuries.
XXII
THE IRISH HORSE AND HIS OWNER