Devonshire in 1579 as captain of a levy of troops, and Youghal is the
only home he ever had so far as we know. He sailed from there upon his
last and fatal voyage on Aug. 6, 1617.
There is still another association which will appeal with force to the
majority of the masculine readers of these lines. From Myrtle Lodge Sir
Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco into the United Kingdom, having
brought it home from the West Indies where the Spaniards found the
natives smoking it at the time of the discovery of America. Columbus and
his followers carried it back with them to Spain. Fifty years afterward
Sir Walter Raleigh introduced it at the court of Queen Elizabeth and
brought to Youghal the first tobacco ever seen in Ireland, which he
smoked under a group of four wonderful yew trees while he read the
manuscript of Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene," which had been submitted
for his criticism by the author. A considerable part of the fourth book
of the poem was written at Myrtle Lodge while Spenser was Sir Walter's
guest, and the remainder at Kilcolman Castle on the River Blackwater.
The poem was never finished, but its publication is due to Sir Walter,
for he took the manuscript to London, placed it with the printer, and
provided the means to pay the expense. He thought so highly of the poem
that, in a double sonnet, composed while Spenser was visiting him at
Youghal, he says:
"All suddenly I saw the Faerie Queene,
At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept."
It is therefore very natural that Spenser should reply in these lines:
"Thou only, fit this argument to write,
In whose high thoughts pleasure hath built her bower,
And dainty love learnt sweetly to indite."
Spenser was a man of delicate sensibilities and great refinement of
character, but lacked the masterful spirit, the ambition, the energy,
and the dominating will of Raleigh. The latter, however, had rare
literary taste. He is better known as soldier, adventurer, sailor, and
explorer. Spenser called him the "shepherd of the seas," but some of his
sonnets are immortal. They rank with those of Shakespeare in poetic
fancy, delicacy of expression, and sublimity of thought, and his prose
work, especially his history of the world, which was begun at Myrtle
Lodge and finished while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London,
ranked among the literary triumphs of his day and generation.
Sir John Pope Hennessy, to whom I have already referred as the former
owner of the home of Raleigh at Youghal, spent several years in an
investigation of state papers and other historical material relating to
the administration of Irish affairs during the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
and does not leave a fragment of Raleigh's reputation as a man of honor.
He has written a book entitled "Raleigh in Ireland," which is begun and
finished in an unfriendly spirit, and holds Raleigh responsible for all
the troubles that occurred in Ireland at his time and since.
If one-half that Hennessy tells of Raleigh's work in Ireland is true, he
was a man of treachery, untruth, unbridled passion, and monstrous
cruelty, but this is no place to discuss that question. Raleigh was a
prisoner in the Tower of London with James, Earl of Desmond, successor
of the man whose estates he confiscated and occupied. The death of the
earl prompted Raleigh in a letter from the Tower to say:
"Wee shal be judged as wee judge--and bee dealt withal as wee deal
with others in this life--if wee beleve God Hyme sealf."
[Illustration: MYRTLE LODGE; THE HOME OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH]
Myrtle Lodge remains very much as it was when Raleigh lived there. Few
historical houses have been altered so little or have been preserved
with greater care. Sir Walter's study is hung with an original painting
of the first governor of Virginia and a contemporary engraving of
"Elizabeth, Queen of Virginia." The long table at which he wrote, an oak
chest in which he kept his papers, a little Italian cabinet filled with
old deeds and parchments, some bearing his seal; two bookcases of
vellum-bound volumes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and all
of the furniture dates from his time. We are assured that there is
nothing in the room that was not in the house at the time he occupied
it. The dining-room is one of the choicest examples of fifteenth century
domestic architecture that can be found, having a deep projecting bay
window and porch, an orieled closet, a wide, arched fireplace, and
walls wainscoted with rich, ripe Irish oak. The drawing-room has a
carved oaken mantelpiece which rises to the ceiling. The cornice rests
upon three figures representing Faith, Hope, and Charity. In the
adjoining bedroom is another mantelpiece of oak, and the fireplace is
lined with old Dutch tiles. Behind the wainscoting of this room, while
repairs were being made fifty years ago, an ancient monkish library was
found, which, it was thought, was hidden there to escape the Covenanters
at the time of the Reformation.
A gentleman on our train to Youghal made the interesting statement that
Sir Walter Raleigh was the first patron of Protestant foreign missions.
He contributed £100 to start the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Lands. I had never heard of this fact before, but my
informant said that it came out at the three hundredth anniversary of
the organization of that society which was celebrated in London in 1906.
Until the Congested Districts Board undertook the work, lacemaking was
practically confined to the convents. There are two classes of true
Irish lace--needle-point, which is made by the needle, and the bobbin
lace--the threads of which are twisted around small bobbins of bone,
wood, or ivory. Both of these laces are made entirely by hand, which is
not true of the Limerick and Carrickmacross laces. Needle-point lace was
first introduced into Ireland by the sisters of the Presentation Convent
of Youghal, as a means of helping the famine-stricken inhabitants to
earn money in the terrible years of 1847-50. It was imitated from
Italian models, but has since been much developed and enriched both in
design and execution so that it may be considered original. Irish point
lace has its individuality as strong as Brussels point.
The Presentation Convent was founded in 1833 by Rev. Mother Mary
Magdalene Gould, a wealthy Irish woman, who had lived many years in
foreign countries. She was distinguished for her benevolence and love
for the poor, and consecrated her life and her property to the
education of the children of the poor. When the famine occurred in 1847
she admitted to the convent every child that could be accommodated, and
also gave asylum to many widows who were left homeless and destitute. In
order to furnish her _protégés_ some occupation and and enable them to
earn a little for their own support, she decided to teach them the art
of lacemaking, which had been carried on for centuries in the convents
of Italy. She took some of her own lace, examined the process by which
it had been made, unraveled the threads one by one, and put them back
again over and over again until she at last succeeded in mastering the
intricacies of the construction of needle-point. She next selected the
brightest and most deft-fingered children and women in the convent and
taught each separately what she herself had learned. Most of the women
and girls displayed an aptitude for the work, and after the necessities
of the occasion were over and the emergency passed, she had about her
many well-trained lacemakers. Some of them developed considerable
ingenuity and taste, inventing new designs and easier methods of
handling the needle. Other convents throughout Ireland imitated the nuns
of Youghal, and the same lace is now made in every part of the island.
Limerick lace is of two kinds, known as the "tambour" and "run lace."
"Tambour" is made on net and the pattern is formed by working with a
tambour needle in white or colored thread. "Run lace" is made with an
ordinary needle and a more open stitch. Limerick lace is in disfavor at
present, owing to the large amount of miserable specimens that have been
hawked about the streets of Limerick and forced upon the London markets.
Carrickmacross lace has been made in the neighborhood of that town, in
County Monaghan, since the year 1820, when it was brought from Florence
by Mrs. Grey-Porter, wife of the rector of the parish church, and
introduced among the peasant women as a means of earning a livelihood.
It is made upon a foundation of net. There are two varieties. In
appliqué the pattern is traced out on fine muslin and sewed down round
the edges to the net. So far it is not strictly a lace, but rather a
sort of embroidery or net. Open spaces, however, are generally provided
for, which leaves the effect and which are filled with lace stitches
like those of flat point. In Carrickmacross guipure, much the same
procedure as in appliqué is adopted, only that instead of the foundation
being allowed to remain it is ultimately cut away, the figures of the
pattern, which, as in appliqué, are wrought on muslin, being joined to
each other by lace stitches known as "brides." A very interesting and
striking development of Carrickmacross lace is found in a combination of
appliqué and guipure, the main design being appliqué, while the panels
of guipure are introduced into it.
A little to the northward of Cork is the famous Trappist Monastery of
Mount Mellery. It was founded here about thirty years ago upon the site
of an ancient monastery by Cistercian monks who were expelled from
France. They have about seven hundred acres of rich woodland, fertile
pastures, and vegetable gardens, with large and comfortable buildings
which they erected with their own hands. They maintain two schools, one
free for poor children, and another for boarding pupils whose parents
pay moderate fees for the instruction. There is a guesthouse in
connection with the monastery, where all travelers are welcome to
shelter, saint and sinner, Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Gentile, and
no questions asked and no bills presented. Any person can have a bed
with clean, sweet linen and a hard but comfortable mattress, coffee and
rolls for breakfast, cold meat and milk for luncheon, soup and a roast
and a tart or pie for dinner, without charge, although there is a box at
the door where the guest at his departure is expected to drop a coin,
large or small according to his means and disposition. There are limited
accommodations for women, which are sparsely but comfortably furnished,
and, what is more important, as clean as a Danish dairy--an unusual
condition for Ireland.
There are seventy monks who dress in white and maintain perpetual
silence, living entirely upon a vegetable diet with water and skimmed
milk as their only drink. About twenty lay brothers, dressed in brown,
do the heavy labor and the menial work about the place. The white monks
rise at two o'clock in the morning and spend four hours in the chapel in
silent devotion. Then they take a light meal and go to their work in the
fields, the gardens, or the schoolroom, where the rule of silence is
relaxed only enough to permit of imparting instruction. At six o'clock
they have dinner, consisting of vegetable soup, boiled vegetables,
bread, and skimmed milk, after which they spend two hours at prayer in
the chapel, and retire at nine. This is the only Trappist community in
Ireland, but there are two in the United States.
There has been very little trouble with the landlords in County Cork.
Perhaps that is due to a considerable degree to the fact that the soil
is rich and the harvests are good, and because the farmers are able to
get a satisfactory return for their labor and their money. Nearly all
the large estates are being broken up, however, and have been purchased
by the tenants under the Act of 1903. Very soon County Cork and all the
southern section of Ireland will be owned by the men who till the soil.
Each farmer will have his own permanent home.
XXV
GLENGARIFF, THE LOVELIEST SPOT IN IRELAND
It isn't far across the southern counties of Ireland and from Cork to
Glengariff, the loveliest place in the United Kingdom and one of the
loveliest spots on earth, only seventy-five miles. There are two routes.
You can go by rail to the little old-fashioned town of Bantry at the
head of Bantry Bay, which is the rendezvous of the British fleet and the
place of their regular annual maneuvers, and from there by coach around
the shore of the bay or by a little steamer across its matchless blue
waters; or you can take the more interesting and picturesque route by
rail as far as Macroom, and then by coach or carriage over the
mountains, through the most picturesque canyon in Ireland and up and
down the mountain sides. Glengariff is 'way down in the southwesternmost
corner of Ireland, and as a gentleman said the other day in describing
its location: "If you go jist one step further, there'll not be a dry
spot to rist yer foot on till you enter the harbor of New York, bedad,
or maybe Boston."
The best route in every respect and one of the most interesting journeys
that can be found anywhere is by way of Macroom, and it is such a
favorite with tourists that during the summer season there is an almost
continuous procession that way. The arrangements for taking care of
travelers are perfect, and all you have to do is to buy your tickets and
let the attendant look after the rest. The railroad carries you about
thirty miles, an hour's ride from Cork, and there is a good deal of
interest to be seen from the car windows on the way. The conductor
sticks his head in the window every now and then and warns the
passengers what to look out for. There is a castle on one side or a
ruined abbey on the other or some sign of the devastation committed by
Cromwell and his Covenanters when they were trying to convert the Irish
to Protestantism, two or three centuries ago.
I became very skeptical about the Cromwellian ruins. Every time we came
across an abandoned limekiln or the roofless walls of some cabin from
which a family has been evicted and burned out, they told us that the
damage was done by Cromwell's soldiers. Kate Douglas Wiggin satirizes
that situation in "Penelope's Irish Experiences" by having her party
occupy rooms in Irish hotels where Cromwell, in the confusion of his
departure, forgot to sweep under the bed.
You can't convert people from one religion to another by the use of the
sword, by burning houses and sacking monasteries, and murdering innocent
women and children. That has been clearly demonstrated by the Duke of
Alva in the Netherlands, by Philip II. in Spain, and by Cromwell in
Ireland. It partially restores one's cheerfulness to be able to realize
that such means of evangelization have been abandoned.
There are ruined castles and monasteries all the way from Cork to
Glengariff, and nature has done her best to hide the shame and cruelty
that are associated with them by the glorious mantles of ivy which cover
their crumbling walls. Kilcrea Abbey, founded by Cormac MacCarthy, the
king of this country in 1465, for the Franciscan friars, was the burial
place of the MacCarthy family, the owners of Blarney Castle for two
centuries or more. Several of the tombs are well preserved. A little
farther along, at Crookstown, is another of the MacCarthy strongholds
called Castlemore, and still farther are the ruins of Lissardagh and
Clodagh, where they kept their forces and received the tribute of their
dependents as they did at Blarney Castle, near Cork. Those ancient kings
had strings of castles through their territories, each one of them in
charge of a seneschal, who kept the place with a guard of retainers and
received tribute from the peasant farmers of the surrounding country as
payment for protection and blackmail. Within the thick walls the loot
they brought from battle was stored; their prisoners were held for
ransom, and there they entertained their allies and their friends,
reveling for days and nights together in the spacious halls. The
MacCarthys were energetic citizens and ruled the south shore of Ireland
with a despotism that had no parallel in Ireland at the time. But they
were as generous to their friends as they were vindictive to their foes.
This country used to abound in fairies, gnomes, koboles, pixies, and all
kinds of queer little people, but they are all gone now. Our jarvey, as
the driver of a jaunting car is called, insists that they have emigrated
to America, but when I asked him where we could find them over there, he
confessed that he didn't know. He had no acquaintance with the place.
There are all kinds of fairies, or rather there used to be in Ireland,
friendly and unfriendly, good and bad, and they formerly appeared in a
great diversity of form and for a variety of purposes, but they are
seldom seen nowadays, even among the ivy-draped ruins of the castles and
among the moss-covered rocks where they used to make their homes.
Sidheog is a friendly fairy and Sidhean and Sheeaun are places where
fairies live. Certain hills and forests which were thickly peopled with
fairies in the early days can be identified by such names as Shean,
Sheaun, and similar variations of the terms that are applied to haunted
hills. There are "good people" and "bad people" who invade the privacy
of those who dwell in mountain cottages and bring them blessings or
treat them badly, as the case may be. At one time they were numerous up
in these woods. The best known fairy, however, the busiest of them all,
and an odd mixture of merriment, mischief, and malignity, is "Pooka,"
who is known in England, in Germany, and other places under the name of
"Puck." Shakespeare describes him as "a merry wanderer of the night,"
who boasts that he can "put a girdle round about the earth in forty
minutes." This capricious goblin is known to every child in the
mountains, and stories are told of him in every cabin. Carrig-Peeka, the
Pooka's home in a great rock, can be seen two miles west of Macroom. It
overhangs the Sullane River near the ruins of one of the MacCarthy
castles. This rock is well known as the place where Daniel O'Rourke
started on his celebrated voyage to the moon on the back of an eagle,
and for generations Pooka made it his headquarters and used to play all
kinds of pranks upon the peasants in that neighborhood.
There is a hideous kind of hobgoblin called a dullaghan who can take off
and put on his head at will; in fact, people generally see him with that
useful member under his arm or absent altogether, and on such an
occasion it is well to pass on as quietly as possible without disturbing
him. Sometimes giddy and frivolous bands of dullaghans have been seen in
graveyards at midnight amusing themselves by flinging their heads at one
another and kicking them about like footballs. Down in this neighborhood
there is a little lake called Lough Gillagancan, which means "the Lake
of the Headless Man," because they are in the habit of haunting it
during the long winter nights and playing their ridiculous games there.
Cleena is the queen of the fairies, and once exercised a powerful spell
over the peasants around Glengariff, but she is losing her influence.
The national school board is opposed to her. The teachers have disputed
her power and authority with such persistence that she cannot exercise
them among the present generation as she did among those of the past. It
is only among the schoolless communities, far back in the rocky glens
along the seashore, where the people cannot read or write and do not
have candles to illuminate their lonely cabins during the long winter
nights, that she is remembered at all. In more thickly settled parts of
the country where the national schools stand at three-mile intervals,
the children even scoff at her and ridicule her and say that she may
play all the pranks she likes with them and welcome. Cleena has been a
favorite of the Irish poets for ages, and appears in many old-fashioned
love stories.
"God grant 't is not Cleena, the queen that pursues me;
While I dream of dark groves and O'Donavan's daughter."
Cleena often did a kindly act, and when Dooling O'Hartigan, the bosom
friend of Murrough, the eldest son and heir apparent of Brian Boru, was
on his way to the battle of Clontarf, she met him and tried to persuade
him to stay out of the fight. But nothing could induce him to abandon
his friends in such an emergency, particularly as the aged king had
given Murrough the command of the army that day. Having failed to
persuade him, Cleena placed a magic cloak around O'Hartigan and warned
him solemnly that he would certainly be slain if he threw it off. He
fought fiercely all day by the side of his friend and made fearful havoc
among the Danes. The field was strewn with the bodies of the men he
slew, and Murrough, observing the slaughter, but being unable to
recognize the cause of it, cried out:
"I hear the blows of O'Hartigan, but I cannot see him!"
In order to console and encourage his friend, O'Hartigan threw off the
cloak that made him invisible. The moment he stood unprotected an arrow
from the bow of a Dane smote him in the temple, and he died for
neglecting Cleena's words of warning.
It is only occasionally that the fairies interfere with people nowadays.
Then it is to make trouble for innocent men who are out later than they
should be and get bewildered in their brains or suffer other lapses that
they are not responsible for. A friend of mine told an amusing story of
his coachman, who frequently suffered from the mischievousness of a
fairy not long ago, and explained in the morning:
"If yer honor will belave me, it's the most mystarious thing that ever
happened to a mortal man. I was coming p'aceably home along the roadside
when I saw the strangest sight that mortal eyes ever looked upon, an'
the ground seemed to go away from me and funny little cr'atures were
dancing from one side of the road to the other. Thin all at once I fell
down, and I didn't know another thing until I picked myself up from out
of the ditch in the morning.
"Dhrinking, was it, ye say; divil a bit did I taste a drop at all, at
all, that day, barring a few glasses I had wid me frinds on the way
home."
Macroom is a pretty village with a castle, of which Admiral Penn, father
of the founder of Pennsylvania, was once in command, and where William
Penn is said to have been born. The venerable old pile was built
originally in the time of King John, more than seven hundred years ago,
has been burned down no less than four times, and was besieged and
plundered in the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries again
and again. It now belongs to Lord Ardilaun, one of the sons of Benjamin
Guinness, the greatest brewer in the world, who has erected a beautiful
modern residence near by and occasionally occupies it. Lord Ardilaun
owns so many castles that he would find it difficult to live in all of
them the same year. He would be kept moving about like a commercial
traveler. He has a beautiful estate on one side of Glengariff and a
shooting lodge on the other, and his favorite residence is a stately
château near Muckross Abbey on the shores of the Lakes of Killarney. He
has a shooting lodge at Ashford, and another at Ross Hill in Central
Ireland, a fishing lodge at Kylemon Pass in Connemara, and city
residences on Stephens Green, Dublin, and at No. 11 Carleton House
Terrace, London.
The traveler bound for Glengariff changes from the railway train to an
open coach at the railway station of Macroom. The coach is built for
mountain travel, strong and heavy, and the seats, which extend from side
to side, accommodate four people of ordinary dimensions. The handbags
are stowed away under the seats and in a cavern which opens from the
rear. A couple of steamer trunks can be taken along also. There is a
roof to the stage, which is very much needed to keep off the rain, and
it can be rolled up into a ridge in the middle of the supporting hoops
in the sunshine.
[Illustration: LAKE GOUGANE-BARRA, COUNTY CORK]