costermonger who left his donkey by the roadside for a few moments. "Go
back to your brother!" said the chauffeur of our automobile to a woman
who was driving a donkey cart and came across to inspect our machine.
"Go back to your brother!" said a policeman to a young boy who was
driving a donkey cart and had jumped off his ordinary seat upon the
whiffletree to resent the attack of some street urchin. And when I asked
the policeman about the use of that phrase, which one hears continually,
he explained that it was common all over Ireland for a donkey driver to
call his beast "brother," and it deserves that name for its fidelity if
for nothing more.
XXIII
CORK AND BLARNEY CASTLE
Cork is a neat but an ugly town, which had a hundred thousand population
twenty years ago and now has only eighty thousand. The missing ones,
they tell me, have gone to the United States. It is one of the most
prosperous and one of the cleanest cities in Ireland, and, although in
former years strangers complained of pestiferous beggars, we have not
seen a single one. The common people are much better dressed and the
children are much neater in their appearance than those of the similar
class in Dublin. They don't buy their clothing at a slopshop. They are
more cheerful and happy, and the women show more pride and better taste
in their apparel.
The River Lee, which rises over on the west coast, in Lake
Gougane-Barra, near Killarney, divides into two streams just as it
reaches the city of Cork, and embraces the business section of the town
between the two channels. They are walled up with masonry, and wide
quays on either side furnish plenty of room for handling the commerce,
which seems to be considerable. Large sums of money have been spent to
deepen the channel and furnish conveniences for handling the trade, and
vessels drawing twenty feet of water can come up to the very center of
the city at low tide, where they discharge Welsh coal and English
merchandise and receive agricultural produce, bacon, woolen goods,
hides, and leather, and various other products of Ireland. The walls of
the quay are hung with unconscious artistic taste every morning with
fishing nets. The fishermen bring their catch up the river to the very
door of the market and spread their nets over the gray stones to dry.
The entire distance from these quays to the Atlantic Ocean at
Queenstown, about twelve miles, is a panorama of beauty. For the river
on both sides is inclosed between high bluffs that are clad with the
richest of foliage and flowering plants, among which you can catch
glimpses of artistic villas. Tom Moore called it "the noble sea avenue
of God."
All tourists like Cork. It is a cheerful city. The atmosphere is
brighter and the streets are more attractive than in Dublin. The shops
are large and the show windows are well dressed, and on St. Patrick's
Street, which, of course, is the principal thoroughfare, there are
several windows full of most appetizing buns and cakes and other things
to eat. But the tradesmen are remarkably late about getting around in
the morning. When I go out for my walk after breakfast, between eight
and nine o'clock, most of the shops are still closed, the doors are
locked, and the shutters are up. None of the retail merchants expect
customers until after nine, and then they open very slowly. The markets
do not commence business until nine o'clock and wholesale dealers and
their clerks do not get down until ten. A gentleman of whom I inquired
about this indolent custom declared that it was as ancient as the ruins
of Fin-Barre Abbey. He declared, however, that although they lie abed
late in the morning the business men of Cork made things hum when they
once got started.
Cork is a city of churches and some of them are modern, which is a
novelty. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is an imposing structure and the
interior is magnificent.
One of the "Godless colleges" is in Cork--Queen's College--which
occupies a beautiful situation upon a bluff on the outskirts of the
city, entirely hidden among venerable trees and flowering plants, with a
swift flowing brook at its feet. It was the site of a monastery
established here by Fin-Barre, the patron saint of Cork, who came here
about the year 700, built a chapel, and started a monastic school that
became famous and attracted many students from the continent of Europe.
The city grew up around that monastery and was first composed of
students who lived in huts and cabins of their own construction while
they carried on their studies. Then business men and farmers began to
come in and Cork became a place of sufficient importance to attract the
attention of the Danish sea-rovers who, after plundering it again and
again, took a fancy to the place and settled down here themselves. St.
Fin-Barre was buried in his own church and his dust was afterward taken
out of the tomb and enshrined in a silver reliquary which was carried
away by one of the O'Briens when he drove the McCarthys, who happened to
be a power in 1089, out of his stronghold and looted the place.
Over the arched entrance to the Queen's College are the significant
words:
"Where Fin-Barre Taught, Let Munster Learn."
It is a modern college founded by Queen Victoria in 1849, together with
two others of the same sort at Belfast and Galway, and the three are
affiliated under the title of "The Royal University of Ireland." That
gives the degrees bestowed upon their graduates a higher character and a
greater value according to the notions of the people here. The buildings
are pretentious and of the Tudor order of architecture. They look very
much like those of the Washington University at St. Louis, and are
arranged in a similar manner, only the damp atmosphere here gives the
stone a maturity of color that no college in the United States is old
enough to acquire. There are no dormitories. The students room and board
where they like. There are only lecture-rooms, examination halls, a
library, and a museum. There is no chapel, no religious services, and no
bishops or other clergymen are upon the board of trustees. That is why
the institution is under the ban of the Catholic church, and is not
patronized by the people of the Church of Ireland. There are departments
of art, science, engineering, law, and medicine, but no theology. There
is a school, at which the applied sciences and the trades are taught,
occupying the old building of the Royal Cork Institute and attended by
many ambitious young men and women. It is a sort of Cooper Institute,
founded by a brewer named Crawford, who made his money here. There is
also an agricultural and dairy school, with an experimental farm of
one hundred and eighty acres on the hills about half a mile from the
city, where instruction is given in butter and cheese making and in
general agricultural science. Cork is the center of the dairy trade of
Ireland and exports a great deal of butter to London.
[Illustration: QUEEN'S COLLEGE, CORK]
There are several Catholic seminaries and convents and Protestant
boarding-schools for boys and girls and preparatory institutions of
various grades attended by children from all parts of southern Ireland,
which make Cork an educational center. There is a handsome library
presented by Mr. Carnegie, adjoining the City Hall, with twelve thousand
volumes and about three thousand ticket-holders, who, according to the
report of the librarian, borrowed 85,406 books last year, of which
63,902 were works of fiction. There is another library belonging to a
chartered association that is available only to its members. There is an
opera-house and several theatres, and all the advantages and attractions
that one would expect in a city of this size, with a race course of two
hundred and forty acres on the banks of the river, just outside the city
limits.
There is an attractive promenade, a mile long, called the Mardyke,
sheltered by splendid old trees which form a natural arch overhead,
which was fashionable for gossip and flirtation as long ago as 1720, but
is now given up chiefly to servant girls and their lovers and nurses and
children.
The birds sing more sweetly in Cork than any place we have been, or
perhaps we have noticed them more readily than we have done elsewhere.
Irish birds are as cheerful and happy as Irish people. When we were
wandering through the campus of Queen's College, just after a shower,
the trees were alive with larks and thrushes. They had come out of their
hiding places and were bursting with song.
I met an old woman, bent and gaunt and gray, with bright blue eyes and a
canny expression, and asked her the way to the house I was seeking. She
answered with politeness, and I gave her a penny.
"God welcome you to Ireland," she said. "An' may yer honor's visit be
prosperous. Yer honor is from America. I kin tell that by yer fine looks
and yer fine manners, and I've a son over there meself. I'm nothin' but
a poor widdy on the edge of the grave, or I'd be follering him there at
all, at all."
And it is astonishing how many people we meet here, who have sons and
brothers and sisters in the United States. Most of them seem to be in
Chicago, Boston, and Brooklyn. Even a rosy-cheeked little newsboy from
whom I bought a paper on the street recognized my nationality and
remarked, "An' I've a brother in Brooklyn, meself, sor." At least
one-fourth of the population of Cork have emigrated to the United States
since the census was taken in 1891, and more are going by every steamer.
The Protestant Cathedral is a fine, modern building with a lofty central
tower and four smaller towers of the same design surrounding it. It was
finished only a few years ago and cost half a million dollars, most of
the money being derived from legacies. It stands on the site of an
ancient church built by St. Fin-Barre. The grounds are large and
beautifully shaded, with here and there a tomb of some distinguished
man. The service and the singing are quite impressive, and we heard the
best choir we have found in Ireland.
But the church where everybody goes, which every tourist must visit, is
St. Anne's, on the other side of the river, on Shandon Street, which was
built in 1722, and is remarkable for an extraordinary-looking tower one
hundred and twenty feet high, faced on two sides with red stone and on
the other sides with white stone. It is exceedingly ugly, but the people
of Cork are very much attached to it, and particularly to the chime of
eight bells which hang in the tower and have been immortalized in a
simple little poem by "Father Prout," who was the Rev. Francis Mahoney,
and is buried in the churchyard in the tomb of his ancestors.
"Father Prout" was the _nom de plume_ of this witty and sentimental
clergyman, who was most prolific with his productions. He wrote odes to
almost everything in Ireland--plain, simple, homely lines, but full of
sentiment and the true poetic spirit. The common people admire them
above all other literary works except the ballads of Tom Moore, and
indeed Father Prout's verses rank with Moore's melodies in popularity.
He also published a great deal of prose, stories and satires and
anecdotes illustrating the thoughts and the habits of his fellow
countrymen, and occasionally a political satire which involved him in a
controversy with his bishop or some political leader. Father Prout in
his famous lyric described the peculiar appearance of the spire of his
church:
"Parti-colored like the people,
Red and white, stands Shandon's steeple."
"With deep affection
And recollection
I often think of
Those Shandon bells,
Whose sounds so wild would
In the days of childhood
Fling round my cradle
Their magic spells.
Their magic spells.
"On this I ponder
Where'er I wander,
And thus grow fonder,
Sweet Cork, of thee,
With thy bells of Shandon
That sound so grand on
The pleasant waters of
The River Lee."
Most of the streets of Cork are wide and well paved, although they are
entirely devoid of architectural features and, with the exception of the
cathedral, Queen's College, and the courthouse with a stately Grecian
portico, there are no buildings in the city worthy of special mention.
On the Parade, as one of the principal streets is called, is a
conspicuous pile of carved granite that is intensely admired by
everybody. It is designed like a shrine, and under a granite canopy is a
rude statue of "Erin," leaning upon a harp. Outside, at each corner of
the pedestal, are still ruder figures intended to represent Wolf Tone,
Davis, O'Neill, Crowley, and Dwyer, heroes of the continuous struggle
against British domination. The faces of the pedestal are closely
inscribed with names, with these lines in English and Gaelic:
"Erected through the efforts of the Cork Young Ireland Society to
perpetuate the memory of the gallant men of 1798, 1803, 1848 and
1867, who fought and died in defense of Ireland, and to recover her
sovereign independence. To inspire the youth of our country to
follow in their patriotic footsteps and to imitate their heroic
example.
"And righteous men will make our land
A nation once again."
The breakfast-room at the Imperial Hotel one morning was filled with a
lively and noisy crowd of gentlemen of all ages wearing red coats,
waistcoats of startling pattern, jockey caps, leather leggings, and
heavy brogans. I was told that they represented the nobility of County
Cork, and had gathered to hunt otter along the River Lee and the creeks
that feed it west of the city. There was one woman in the party, who
wore a short skirt of gray tweed, a red jacket, a jockey cap, and high
boots. In the stableyard was a pack of hounds in leash which had been
brought in from the country. The Marquis of Conyngham was master of the
hunt. Otter hunting in the summer along the swampy, muddy banks of the
creeks of Ireland takes the place of fox hunting in the winter. The
elusive otter is tracked to his hole by the hounds and is then stirred
out by gallant gentlemen with pikes--long poles shod with iron
tips--after they have chased him through the mud. They keep the skins
for robes, stuff the heads for ornaments, and mount the tails for
brushes. These hunts take place at least twice a week during the summer
season and are sometimes attended by forty or fifty noblemen and gentry.
Cork is a very orderly city. The laws are strictly enforced. I noticed
by the newspaper reports of the police courts that people are fined for
profane swearing and for boisterous behavior. We didn't see a drunken
man or woman in Cork, and in Dublin they were common. This is largely
due to the work of Bishop O'Callahan and the priests of his diocese and
the influence of Father Mathew, the great apostle of temperance, who led
a movement that reached every corner of the world about fifty years ago.
There are monuments to Father Mathew in many of the cities of Ireland.
There is one in Dublin on the principal street, between that of Daniel
O'Connell and that now being erected to Parnell, while in Cork the
statue of Father Mathew on St. Patrick's Street is the center and focus
of all activity. It faces the entrance to the principal bridge over the
River Lee and all the street-car lines terminate there. A memorial
church has been erected to his memory here, and the Church of the Holy
Trinity, of which he was the pastor, has been restored and enlarged.
Father Mathew is buried in St. Joseph's Cemetery, on the outskirts of
the city, which was formerly the Botanic Gardens, and was obtained by
him for a burial place for his congregation in 1830. His precious dust
is inclosed in a fine sarcophagus surmounted by the figure of an angel
in white marble.
Theobold Mathew was a Capuchin friar, born in Cork, and was attached to
the Church of the Holy Trinity in that city. In 1838 he joined a
temperance society that had been started by some Protestant gentlemen,
chiefly Quakers, for the purpose of offering an example to young
mechanics in his parish. He soon became the leading spirit of the
organization, was made its president, and finally started upon a mission
throughout Ireland to organize similar societies and to promote total
abstinence among the people. From that time he devoted his life to the
work, and being an orator of remarkable power and possessed of
extraordinary energy, zeal, and devotion, he excited the interest of
every class of people and of every community on the island. The
influence of his agitation was felt in England, Scotland, Australia,
America, and in every other part of the world until his name became a
universal synonym for temperance. Father Mathew's Total Abstinence
societies are still found in almost every city and town in which the
English language is spoken. He addressed immense audiences and spoke
twice on Tara Hill, which was the throne of the kings of Ireland before
Julius Cæsar ruled at Rome. He administered total abstinence pledges to
half the people in the country, and intemperance in drink, with its
attendant evils and misery, almost disappeared from Ireland. The famine
that followed his crusade destroyed much of the good effect, because it
demoralized the people and many tried to drown their sorrows in drink.
It has been said that Father Mathew died of a broken heart, because so
many of his converts violated their pledges, but, since the days of
Peter the Hermit, no individual has exercised such a moral influence.
"Now, Terence, me b'y, tell the loidies and gintlemen all ye know, an'
kape the rist to yoursilf," was the parting injunction of the porter of
the Imperial Hotel to the jarvey of the jaunting car, as he tucked the
rugs around our legs and started us off for Blarney Castle, which is
five miles from town. It is a delightful drive, for the suburbs of Cork
are surrounded by fertile farms and the pastures are illuminated with
buttercups in summer, and inclosed in hedges of hawthorn that are bright
with blossoms. All nature seems to be in a cheerful mood these days, and
the frequent rains, which interfere considerably with motoring, give an
appearance of freshness to all the vegetation and a vitality to the
trees and plants and flowers and everything growing. That is peculiar to
Ireland. It is true that showers come down and cease with surprising
suddenness and frequency, and the rain falls as if it was very heavy and
had dropped a long distance, but if you carry an umbrella, and that is
the universal custom, you are none the worse for it.
A narrow-gauge baby railway starts from outside the campus of Queen's
College in Cork and runs to Blarney, a town of about eight hundred
inhabitants, mostly farmers, who cultivate the surrounding soil and
breed cattle, while their wives and daughters work in a woolen factory
belonging to the Mahoney brothers, which is said to produce the best
tweed in the kingdom. And you can buy suitings at the shops in Cork.
Nothing is sold at the factory.
Blarney Castle, as everybody knows, is one of the best preserved and
most beautiful of the many ruins of Ireland, and is probably better
known throughout the world than any other because of the marvelous
qualities of a famous stone which forms a part of its walls. As Father
Prout in one of his verses expresses it:
"There is a stone there
That whoever kisses,
Oh, he never misses
To grow eloquent.
'Tis he that may clamber
To my lady's chamber,
Or become a member
Of parliament."
The castle stands on the banks of a dashing stream called the Comane,
full of trout and well protected, and is surrounded by a wonderful
forest of cedar, birch, and beech trees that are centuries old. Their
trunks are entwined with ivy, and the rocks and ledges upon which the
castle stands are cushioned with the same material. I don't know that I
have ever seen such luxurious ivy or such sumptuous vegetation out of
the tropics, or such fragrant shade. There are natural caves and
grottoes in the cliffs, all of which have served a useful purpose in
ancient times, and are associated with various fascinating legends.
There is a difficult ascent to a natural terrace that is called "The
Witch's Stairs." A thoughtful owner of this glorious forest has placed
benches at easy intervals, where visitors may sit and read the history,
traditions, and legends of the place and imagine that he can see the
fairies that dance by moonlight on the carpet of ivy that conceals the
earth. Every step is haunted by a goblin or a ghost, and every dark and
gloomy corner has been the scene of a tragedy.
The castle is well kept, and Sir George Colthurst, the owner, makes it
as pleasant as he can for the thousands of tourists who come here every
year from all parts of the world, and of course a large majority of
them are Americans. No tourist thinks of visiting Ireland without seeing
Blarney Castle, and aside from the legends and the satisfaction of
having been here it is well worth the trouble. The tower or "keep,"
which was the fortified part of the building, is almost intact except
the floors, but the residential portions have crumbled and fallen away.
The castle was built by Cormack MacCarthy, Prince of Desmond, who ruled
all of Ireland south of Cork, in 1173. The Desmond clan fought the
Geraldines (the followers of the Earl of Kildare, whose territory
adjoined them on the north) until 1537, when a league was formed between
the two clans, with other princes, against the English, who were kept
pretty busy within the Pale, as the territory immediately around Dublin
was called.
Lady Eleanor MacCarthy saved the life of Gerald Fitzgerald, the son of
Silken Thomas, Earl of Kildare, who rebelled against English authority.
She succeeded in escaping from the country with him and taking him to
Rome, where the babe, the only survivor of the vengeance of Henry VIII.,
was concealed and cared for by a cardinal who happened to be a distant
relative. And it was thus, through the devotion of a brave woman, from
its hereditary enemies, that the house of Kildare escaped extinction.
In the time of Queen Elizabeth, however, upon the suppression of what is
known in history as the Geraldine rebellion, the vast estates of the
Earl of Desmond and those of the MacCarthys and one hundred and forty
other chiefs and landowners in Munster were confiscated by a parliament
that met in Dublin, and were given to English adventurers for two pence
and three pence an acre and sometimes for no price at all, upon
agreements that they would colonize the lands with Englishmen. The head
of the house at that date was imprisoned in the Tower of London with Sir
Walter Raleigh, accused of treason, and it was he who outwitted Queen
Elizabeth with his "deludering" until she coined the word "blarney" to
describe his fluent conversation.
[Illustration: BLARNEY CASTLE, COUNTY CORK]
The famous Blarney stone is as well known as the King of England, and
the superstition is that whoever kisses it becomes instantly endowed
with wonderful persuasion of speech. But very few people and only the
most daring athletes have ever tried the experiment. The miraculous
stone is the sill of a window, which projects from the main wall near
the top of the tower. As it is eight or ten inches below the level of
the floor and across an open space of about twenty or twenty-four
inches, it is not only difficult, but dangerous to attempt to reach it.
A slip would send you head first to the ground, one hundred and twenty
feet below. The only way in which it can be done is for the person who
tries to support himself over the edge of the wall by straps from the
top, and, with his face upward, draw himself across until his lips can
reach the stone. Almost everybody that visits Blarney Castle comes home
with a tale of the time he had in kissing the Blarney stone, but no one
has seen him doing so for years, and it can only be done by carrying
tackle to the castle. Mrs. Hanna Ford, a gentle and considerate old
lady, who has been custodian of the place for more than thirty-six
years, told me that she had never known but half a dozen people to kiss
the stone in all that time.
Sir George Colthurst, the owner, charges a sixpence of every visitor and
collects scarcely enough to pay the expenses of keeping the place in
order. The visitors average about one hundred a day during the summer
months, but nobody ever goes out there during the winter.