1622 and received a grant, from which I have quoted, of all the lakes
and all the lands and mountains round about them to the very bottom
thereof. In 1689 these estates were forfeited by his son because of his
fidelity to the unfortunate James II., but were restored to the family
in 1720, and in 1724 Valentine, the fifth viscount, was made an earl.
The late earl was one of the most devoted councilors and confidential
advisers of the late Queen Victoria. She was very much attached to him,
and he had charge of her household as vice chamberlain and lord
chamberlain from 1872 to 1886, and was one of her lords in waiting until
her death. His mother was Gertrude Thynne, a niece of the Earl of Bath,
and is still living. The father died in 1905 at the age of eighty, after
a useful and honorable career.
The present earl was educated at Eton and Oxford, served for a time in
the army, went to Australia as an aid-de-camp to the Governor of
Victoria, was state steward to the Earl of Aberdeen during the first
term of the latter as lord lieutenant of Ireland, and married Elizabeth
Baring, daughter of Lord Revelstoke of the famous firm of Baring
Brothers, bankers, London. He has a brother-in-law in New York. The Earl
of Kenmare is the most prominent and influential Roman Catholic in the
Irish peerage. He is devoted to the interests of the church, is devout
in his habits, maintains a private chapel in his London residence and at
his mansion here, and a family chaplain in the old-fashioned way. He
never leaves his house in the morning without prayers at which all the
household and guests are present and the servants are called in from
their tasks. There is a cathedral of pretentious architecture upon his
grounds in the village to which his father contributed a quarter of a
million dollars. It has been built within the last few years by Bishop
Mangan of this diocese, and is already being enlarged, although to a
stranger it seems to be big enough as it is.
[Illustration: KENMARE HOUSE, KILLARNEY]
Kenmare House has one hundred and nine rooms. The grand reception salon
is 135 feet in length and 42 feet in width, with a deep recessed
fireplace and a massive oak mantel; the library is 48 by 42 feet, the
state dining-room 52 by 30 feet, the drawing-room 36 by 24 feet, the
smoking-room 25 by 17 feet, the family dining-room 21 by 16 feet, the
earl's study 24 by 16 feet, her ladyship's boudoir 18 by 30 feet, the
state bedroom 33 by 24 feet, and nine other state apartments of similar
dimensions. There are sixteen family bedrooms, each with a bath
attached, on the second floor, and twenty-six double and single bedrooms
on the third floor, with a bachelor's wing of fifteen rooms entirely
separate from the rest of the house and reached by a long corridor.
There is a nursery and schoolroom 36 by 18 feet, a servants' hall 30 by
20 feet, and fifteen bedrooms for servants. Altogether there are eighty
living-rooms, amply furnished, besides the kitchens, bakery, storerooms,
pantries, and servants' quarters. There is a garage, and stabling for
seventeen horses, a dairy, a fish hatchery which stocks the brooks with
trout and the lakes with salmon; seven thousand acres of forest preserve
with deer and other game, and, altogether, more than one hundred
thousand acres of shooting upon the hills and mountains, the bogs and
forests surrounding the Lakes of Killarney. In 1907 the game bag
included 2,500 rabbits, 470 pheasants, 400 woodcock, 200 grouse, 150
hares, 100 snipe, and 40 teal ducks, 14 stags, 6 hinds, and 4 does. No
account was taken of the trout and the salmon which abound in the lake
and in the several rivers and brooks which feed it. It is undoubtedly
one of the most beautiful and attractive estates in all the United
Kingdom.
The fishing is very good in the spring. An Englishman at our hotel
brought in several beautiful ten and twelve pound salmon, which he
caught with a fly, although it was warm weather and the poorest time of
year for the fishing. His lordship charges a fee of five dollars for the
privilege of fishing in his lake. That pays for a license of one year,
but is not transferable. A transient guest at a hotel, however, can go
out with licensed fishermen as often as he likes. In the spring, when
the salmon are running, nets are used, and his lordship gets the
proceeds of the catch. The fish are shipped to Dublin and London, and
the returns are $3,000 and $4,000 a year. His lordship allows none but
rowboats upon the lakes. He will not permit a steamer or motor launch or
even a naphtha launch, and every one who has a boat has to take out a
license, for which he collects ten shillings. But the boatmen make it up
during the tourist season.
The Earl of Kenmare will share his blessings, so far as his park is
concerned, with you or any one else for a sixpence, and they are well
worth it. I do not know any place where a lover of nature or one who is
fond of strolling through the woods can get as much for his money. The
demesne or park contains about nineteen hundred acres of forest and
garden with many miles of walks and drives. The lodgekeepers at every
one of the six gates are always alert to collect the sixpence and give
you a ticket, numbered and stamped and good for that day only. But you
can pass the gates with it as often as you like until they are closed at
night, and a wise man will spend as much time as he can spare within the
demesne every day. When we were there in June the trees were glorious;
hundreds of acres of rhododendrons were in flower and made great banks
of purple blossoms; the hawthorns, arbutus, laburnums, and other
flowering trees and the woodbine were in their greatest glory. And when
they fade we can admire the oaks and beeches that have been growing
there for hundreds of years. Many of the trees were planted after
designs. There are long avenues that are completely roofed by boughs,
and at one place a magnificent cathedral of beeches has been devised of
foliage, three wide aisles made by five rows of venerable beech trees
more than three hundred years old, which were trimmed almost to the top
when young and the branches trained to overlap so that they are almost a
rain-proof roof. The trunks are smooth and almost straight, like the
columns of a basilica, and the ground is covered with half decayed
shells of beech nuts that have fallen during the centuries.
But the most glorious part of the demesne is the garden, which surpasses
any that I have seen for years. It occupies a terrace surrounding
Kenmare House upon the highest eminence in the demesne and overlooks the
lakes. It is laid out in the Italian style, and the gardener told us
that it was designed by the Dowager Lady Kenmare when she was a bride.
If that is true her ladyship must have been a very clever landscape
gardener. The most striking feature is a tennis court inclosed within a
hedge of cypress ten feet high and six feet thick, with the top trimmed
to represent the wall of a castle, with arches for entrances and bays
and recesses where benches have been placed to accommodate spectators.
This unique wall of cypress is so dense that a tennis ball will rebound
from it. Adjoining the tennis court is a croquet ground, and just behind
them an exquisite little cottage where her ladyship serves tea every
summer afternoon to her guests.
I was told that no other garden in Ireland compares with this, and the
only ones that approach it are those of the Duke of Devonshire at
Lismore and the Duke of Ormonde at Kilkenny. Although those at
Versailles and Fontainebleau are much more extensive, they are not so
artistic.
The Lakes of Killarney are three in number and, strangely enough, have
no romantic names. They really are only one lake, the Lower, Upper, and
Middle lakes being connected by narrow channels only a few yards long.
The three are thirty miles in circumference and the extreme end of Upper
Lake is eleven miles from the extreme end of Lower Lake. The Lower Lake
is the largest, being about five and a half miles long and two and a
half miles wide at the widest place; Middle Lake and Upper Lake are each
about two miles long at the greatest length and about three-quarters of
a mile wide at the widest point. They all contain numerous islands of
different sizes. Somebody has counted them, and I think has found
sixty-five, large and small. One of them, Innisfallen Island, was
occupied by a monastery back in St. Patrick's time, and the famous
"Annals of Innisfallen," one of the earliest and most authentic of the
ancient Irish histories, was written there by the monks, who began the
manuscript at least twelve hundred years ago. The original is now in the
Bodleian Library at Oxford, and is one of the most valuable manuscripts
in the world, with fifty-seven leaves, closely covered with beautiful
penmanship. The earlier portion consists of extracts from the Old
Testament and a history of the world down to the arrival of St. Patrick
in 432. From that time it treats exclusively of Irish affairs,
terminating with the year 1319. It is evidently a record of certain
facts which came to the knowledge of the monks of Innisfallen Abbey
during a period of nearly seven hundred years until, in 1320, the abbey
was plundered and the monks massacred by Maolduin O'Donaghue and the
MacCarthys. It has since remained in ruins, a few broken walls covered
with ivy, which are visited regularly by Augustinian brothers who come
here on pilgrimages.
The lakes are surrounded almost entirely by a range of mountains, except
on the north, where they break into low hills. There are six peaks
rising over two thousand feet, including Carran-Tuel (3,314 feet), the
highest mountain in Ireland; Mangerton (2,756 feet), Purple Mountain
(2,739), Devil's Punch Bowl (2,665), Toomies (2,500), and Torc (2,100).
There are several other mountains which approach these in height,
forming a mighty barrier between County Cork and County Kerry, and
protecting Killarney from the cold southwest winds of the ocean. The
Devil's Punch Bowl is an extinct volcano, and gets its name from an
enormous crater near its summit which is filled with water and fed from
subterranean springs. There is no bottom so far as people have been able
to discover. The crater reaches down into the bowels of the earth
somewhere and furnishes an inexhaustible reservoir of pure, cold water,
which is now piped down to the village of Killarney.
[Illustration: UPPER LAKE, KILLARNEY.]
By a curious freak of nature these mountains are all detached and
separated by narrow valleys and gorges, although at a distance they seem
to be in a cluster. The passes are watered with streams that fall
over precipitous rocks and form numerous cascades. We came through one
of them on our way from Glengariff, and nearly all the others have hard,
smooth roads which are utilized for excursions on coaches, and in
jaunting cars. Some of them are impassable except on horseback. They
furnish delightful diversions for tourists and people who are spending
the summer at the hotels, and give a good opportunity to see the scenery
and Irish life. The excursion system is well organized. It is only
necessary to buy a ticket and to "follow the man from Cook's." There are
many short drives also and visits can be made to the islands by
rowboats. There are several romantic old castles and the Earl of Kenmare
has built tea houses at different points which are greatly appreciated.
There is no more delightful place in the world for rest and mild forms
of enjoyment, but sporty people will find Killarney "beastly dull." It
is not in the least bit exciting; there is no dressing and there is no
dancing, and some of the hotels are without barrooms. The most thrilling
excitement is found in tennis, golf, fishing, walking, driving, and
listening to a phonograph in the evening. There is an active rivalry
between the worshipers of the Scotch and the English lakes and the
admirers of the Lakes of Killarney. They all have a certain resemblance,
and the latter are like Alpine lakes in miniature--not so much mountain,
not so much water, but a similar canopy of blue sky and green settings.
The mountains were grouped by a competent Artist and are embroidered and
fringed with foliage, but are bare as a bone on their slopes and peaks.
They are good for nothing but scenery. The grass is so scarce that it
doesn't pay to pasture cattle over them, and a goat would have nervous
prostration from loneliness. There are said to be plenty of deer, but
that is doubtful.
But as features of a picture the mountains around Killarney, with their
shifting lights and shadows as the sun rises and declines, are exquisite
pictures. They appear at their best when the sun goes down and the mist
rises and softens their outlines. The lingering twilight leaves deep
shadows of purple and blue, and every evening we sit on a bench in the
hotel garden and watch them fade away like a scene in a theater when
curtains of gauze are dropped one after another.
The vivid Irish imagination has furnished a volume of legends and
superstitions about the lakes. Some of them have been handed down from
the earliest generations. These attractions drew to them the lovers of
the beautiful ages ago and they were originally known as "The Lakes of
Learning," because at one time there were three monasteries there,
attended by multitudes of students from all over the world. They have
been a favorite theme of all the Irish poets, and the scene of
innumerable romances. The legends, which account for the origin of the
lakes, are not consistent. Some one neglected to close the entrance to
an enchanted fountain in the mountains, which caused a flood and covered
fair and fertile fields and splendid palaces with water. One of the
ancestors of the O'Donaghues, who originally owned all the water and all
the mountains, as the Earl of Kenmare does at present, full of
skepticism and wine, defied the gods, who threatened destruction if a
stone from a certain sacred well should be disturbed. With the bravado
that was characteristic of his descendants, he carried the stone to his
castle. When the people heard of this impiety they fled to a neighboring
mountain, and in the morning when the sun rose they looked down and saw
that the valley in which their homes had been was covered with water.
The O'Donaghue is the hero of most of the legends. He is identified with
almost every island and with almost every glen. The legends all agree
that the men and women who inhabited the lovely valley did not perish
with him, but The O'Donaghue lives at the bottom of the lake in a
gorgeous palace, surrounded by congenial friends and enjoys feasting and
folly as much as he did before the flood. Every seven years in the
summer he comes to the surface, and makes a journey from one end of the
lakes to the other, riding a splendid white stallion, in an armor of
gold and a helmet that glitters with diamonds. He gallops through the
town and around the mountains just as he did when he was the lord of
the land, and will continue to do so until the silver shoes on the hoofs
of his stallion are worn out. Blessings are showered upon every one who
is fortunate enough to see him. If a girl can catch a glimpse of this
brilliant knight as he makes his midnight journey she is sure to be
married before the end of the year.
O'Donaghue's horse, his prison, his stable, his library, his cellar, his
pulpit, his table, his broom, and various other things that belonged to
him are pointed out among the rocks upon the islands of the shore. Every
freak of nature has some association with him.
Scores of peasants may be found who have actually seen him, and half the
population believe in his seven-year visits. Many curious stories of
which O'Donaghue is the hero have been invented in the generations that
have passed by imaginative mothers to entertain their children. When I
asked a thoughtful jaunting car driver if he believed in the periodical
appearance of the ancient lord of the lake, he answered:
"Wall, I dunno', I dunno'; me mither tould me the tale wid her own
blessed lips; me wife has tould it jist the same to our own children,
and I am shure The O'Donaghue isn't in Killarney the rist of the toime,
and why shouldn't he have the pleasure of comin' for one noight?"
St. Patrick never came to Killarney, but the legend is that he climbed
up to the top of the tallest mountain, stretched out his hands over the
lakes and said: "I bless all beyint the reeks" (mountains).
Fin MacCool kept his tubs of gold in the lake near Muckross Abbey and
his dog Bran watched them. "One day a brute of an Englishman, an' a
great diver intirely, came over to git the goold, and when he wint down
into the wather the dog Bran sazed him by the trousers and shook the
life out of him until he died, and his ghost has been wanderin' around
there ivir sence."
The shore of the lake under the windows of Ross Castle is strewn with
curious-looking flat stones. They are the books of his library which
The O'Donaghue threw out of the window when he was mad one day, and they
turned to rocks.
When The O'Donaghue was a slip of a boy and was sitting in front of the
castle an old woman came running along shrieking that the O'Sullivans
had come through the pass from County Cork and were stealing the cattle.
"The O'Donaghue, thin only thirteen years old, bedad, seizes an oulde
sword and kills every mother's son of the thaving blaggards, an' sticks
their bodies up agin the wall as a warning to all the ruffians of the
clans beyant the mountains.
"When The O'Donaghue was a young man and went into his first battle he
slew six hundred of his enemies in a single day. He fought so long and
became so tired that his legs and arms would have fallen off his body if
they hadn't been held together by his armor.
"One day when Ossian, the poet, came to Killarney he met an old priest
trying to carry a sack of corn on his back. Ossian relieved him of the
burden. The priest called on the Holy Virgin to bless him, whereupon
Ossian said, 'I help you because you are an old man and not for the sake
of virgins or married women or widdies,' for Ossian was a hathen and he
didn't know any better, an' how could he know what the holy father meant
when he sphoke of the Blessed Virgin? But, nevertheless, the curse was
on him, and in a minute he was an ould shrivelled, crippled crater, a
dale oulder than the priest whose sack of corn he was carrying. And all
this for takin' the name of Blessed Virgin in vain, and not knowing any
better. But the priest, with a few words of prayer, relaved the
enchantment and converted Ossian to Christianity on the sphot."
[Illustration: ROSS CASTLE, KILLARNEY]
Ross Castle was the stronghold of the O'Donaghues. It was built
somewhere about the twelfth century by the celebrated Hugh O'Donaghue,
who lives in the lake and rides about the country every seven years. It
is an historic fact that he lived there once, although the legends that
are told of him go back for centuries before its foundation. There is a
massive tower or keep, about one hundred feet high and one hundred
feet square, "and ivy clasps the fissured stones with its entwining
arms." The walls of the tower are almost perfect. There is a long
extension, however, entirely in ruins, but it gives an idea of the
enormous dimensions of the castle. It was surrounded by outworks of
great strength, and you can see traces of the round watch towers at the
angles. A stone staircase leads to the top of the tower, where a
beautiful view of the country can be obtained. Few ruins in Ireland are
so extensive and so well kept.
Everybody has to pay a sixpence to see Ross Castle, and the money goes
into the empty pocket of the Earl of Kenmare. You have to pay to see
everything in this country, however, and sometimes the petty hotel
charges are exasperating. They are insignificant, but everything goes in
the bill; every time you draw a breath or ask a question it costs
twopence. If the hotel managers would make a straight rate per day to
cover all these trifles they would make a great deal more money and save
a great deal of temper. The only free ruins are those of the ancient
Abbey of Agahadoe, which occupy a conspicuous site on the ridge back of
the town where they were built in the eighth century by Finian, the
leper saint.
Ross Castle has withstood many a siege in its time, but was finally
captured, dismantled, and left in its present condition during the civil
war in 1652. It was attacked by General Ludlow with an army of four
thousand footmen and two hundred horse, and defended by The O'Donaghue
of that time. Finding it impregnable by land, Ludlow left a portion of
his force to hold it in a state of siege, while he retired to
Castlemaine and built a fleet of boats with which he made an attack by
water. There was an ancient proverb that "Ross Castle will never fall
until ships float in the Lake of Killarney," hence, the garrison
remembered that saying when they saw Ludlow's flotilla approaching, and
were so demoralized by the superstition that they abandoned it and laid
down their arms. It was the last of the O'Donaghues. Their power and
glory have never been regained.
The village of Killarney is unattractive and untidy, but it is a busy
place. One doesn't understand why in a country where there is so much
room to spare, the villages should not be made up of detached cottages
with gardens and lawns, hedges and shade trees, instead of sections of
solid blocks that look as if they had been cut out of the tenement house
districts of crowded cities. Killarney is a solid mass of brick and
mortar, with stuccoed fronts, painted a dingy yellow, without the
slightest thing to relieve the monotony until you suddenly pass the last
house and the green fields begin.
It is a great tourist center, and there are a dozen hotels and
boarding-houses of different pretensions and prices. There are "licensed
houses" and "unlicensed houses" and some of them are licensed for seven
days in a week, which means that the proprietor has permission to sell
whisky and beer from two to five o'clock on the Sabbath day. Cook's
excursion parties come in like swarms of bees, buzzing around the hotels
and shops where laces and other curiosities are for sale and carry off
loads of queer things as souvenirs. They breakfast at seven o'clock in
the morning and are piled into great four-horse coaches by nine and
start off on excursions with their luncheons in baskets under the seats.
They return at sunset completely tired out, but the next morning are off
for Dublin or Glengariff. It is about as hard work to travel with an
excursion party as anything I know of, for every moment must be
economized and everybody feels under obligations to see everything.
Killarney is quite an educational center also. There are several popular
schools there and several monasteries. The Franciscans conduct a
theological seminary and the Christian Brothers have a college in
connection with the cathedral. There are two or three convents where
young ladies are educated, and a large institution in which two hundred
and ten girls are being taught by the nuns to make lace, which is one of
the most profitable occupations an Irish woman can engage in. And they
have a School of Housewifery, conducted by the British government under
the supervision of the minister of agriculture at Dublin. Paternalism is
carried farther in Ireland than in Switzerland, Germany, or any other
place I know of, as you will admit when you hear that twenty-three
rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed mavourneens are being educated at the expense of
the taxpayers as domestic servants. They are rescued from the filthy
cabins in the mountains, washed, and clothed in neat liveries, natty
little muslin caps are pinned to their raven tresses, frilled muslin
aprons are fastened to their frocks, and they are taught how to wash
dishes and cook and make beds and do plain sewing, and dust the
bric-a-brac in the drawing-room and say, "Yes, me lady," and "Yes, me
lord," and courtesy when they are spoken to. They learn to mend and
embroider, to do up hair, to fasten dresses and other duties pertaining
to the jurisdiction of a lady's maid, and, after a year or so of this
training, they are found positions in the households of the nobility,
where they will spend their lives as servants and marry a footman or a
gamekeeper, as will their children and grandchildren generations to come
after them, because domestic service is a profession in Great Britain,
and is followed by families who are trained for their work.
This school is a great thing for the Irish girls in the mountain cabins,
whose lives might otherwise be hopelessly sunk in squalor and filth that
seem to be inseparable from the peasant population. I have never been
able to find anybody to explain why an Irish farmer piles his manure in
front of the only door to his cabin. It is an habitual subject of
witticism, just as it is in Switzerland, where similar customs prevail,
but with thousands of acres of bare ground all around the cabin, it
would seem that some other place might be found.