A LITTLE TOUR IN IRELAND
By S. Reynolds Hole
An Oxonian
(Dean Of Rochester)
With Illustrations By JOHN LEECH
“By suffering worn and weary, But beautiful as some fair angel yet.”
NEW EDITION
1892
TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN LEECH
A TRUE ARTIST A TRUE FRIEND AND A TRUE GENTLEMAN THIS BOOK WHICH HE MADE
A SUCCESS
IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR
S. REYNOLDS HOLE
PREFACE.
I have been so often and persuasively asked to republish _A Little
Tour in Ireland_, which I wrote as “an Oxonian,” many years ago, at the
request of my beloved friend and companion, John Leech, and of which
only one edition has been issued, and that long since exhausted; I
have been so severely upbraided for “keeping his splendid illustrations
locked up in a box, and raising the price of the few copies which come
into the market, to thrice the original cost;” I have been so fully
certified, not only by hearsay but by my own eyes, that there is little
or no perceptible change in the scenes, which he drew and I described;
and my apprehension, that the style in which the book is written might
be denounced as unbecoming, has been so completely expelled by the
amused remonstrance of my friends, who insist that gaiety becomes an
undergraduate as much as gaiters a Dean;--that I can make no further
resistance, and only ask that the failings of the author may be condoned
by the talent of the artist.
S. Reynolds Hole.
The Deanery,
Rochester: 1892.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PACE
I. PREFATORY....................................I
II. TO DUBLIN....................................9
III. DUBLIN........................................l6
IV. FROM DUBLIN TO GALWAY......................35
V. THE FAMINE....................................48
VI. FROM GALWAY TO OUGHTERARDE................55
VII. CONNAMARA....................................65
VIII. CLIFDEN........................................7<>
IX. KYLEMORE......................................86
X. FROM KYLEMORE TO GALWAY..........I08
XI. FROM GALWAY TO LIMERICK..........119
XII. LIMERICK...................134
XIII. KILLARNEY..................141
XIV. KILLARNEY..................151
XV. KILLARNEY..................171
XVI. FROM KILLARNEY TO GLENGARRIFF.......187
XVII. GLENGARRIFF.................197
XVIII. FROM GLENGARRIFF TO CORK..........204
XIX. CORK.....................2l6
XX. BLARNEY...................224
XXI. FROM DUBLIN HOMEWARD...........236
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FACE
the claddagh...............Frontispiece
THE “CURSED ARISTOCRATn............................7
IRISH MELODY..........................................9
LOVE AT CREWE STATION..............................II
THE UNIVERSITY PORTER................................17
THE QUEEN OF BEAUTY.............Tofa.ce 30
CAR VERSUS CAB................ “ 32
A PRIEST..............................................37
WHICH SHALL IT BE?..................................42
AN IRISH PIG..........................................45
ANOTHER IRISH PIG....................................55
A USEFUL GATE........................................56
PADDY AT HOME........................................57
WAITING FOR HORSES..................................6l
A REVERIE............................................69
EVENING IN CONNAMARA................................77
THE ROYAL MAIL......................................86
1*AGE
SOMETHING LIKE A DAY AT KYLEMORK......To face ÇO
ON THE LIGHT FANTASTIC...............109
GOING TO THE FAIR..................IIO
MARY'S LOOKING-GLASS.................Il6
A BEACON ON THE SHANNON..............127
THE BELLE OF THE SHANNON.............130
HOOKS AND EYES...................135
KILLARNEY......................I40
THE GAP OF DUNLOE..............To face 154
BROILED SALMON al fresco...............158
ON THE WRONG ISLAND................l6o
A ROCK AT KILLARNEY.................171
CHOOSING A SHILLELAGH................185
RESULT OF A SALMON DIET..............JÇ1
VILLAGE BEAUTIES...................193
THE TUNNEl...................To face 196
THE WAITER AT GLENGARRIFF.............200
AN APPARITION....................202
THE SLEEPING PIG...................209
IRISH CONSTABULARY.................210
THE BLARNEY STONE..............To face 228
A LITTLE TOUR IN IRELAND.
CHAPTER I. PREFATORY.
There are two species of Undergraduates, the Fast and the Slow. I am now
of the former persuasion. Originally, having promised my relations that
I would take a Double First-Class and most of the principal prizes, I
was associated with the latter brotherhood, but was soon compelled to
secede, and to sue for a separation, _a mensâ et thoro_, their tea-table
and early rising, on the plea of incompatibility of temper. One young
gentleman, who described himself as being very elect indeed, candidly
told me that, unless my sentiments with reference to bitter beer and
tobacco underwent a material change, he could give me no hope of final
happiness; and another impeccable party, with a black satin stock
and the handiest legs in Oxford, felt himself solemnly constrained to
mention, that he could not regard horse-exercise as at all consistent
with a saving faith. I spoke of St. George (though I dared not say
that I had met him at Astley's), of St. Denis, and St. Louis, of the
Crusaders, and the Red Cross Knight; but he only replied that I was far
gone in idolatry, and he lent me the biography of the Reverend T.
P. Snorker, which, after describing that gentleman's conversion at
a cock-fight, with the sweet experiences of his immaculate life, and
instituting a comparison between his preaching and that of St. Paul (a
trifle in favour of Snorker), finally declared him to be an angel,
and bade all mankind adore, and reverence, and buy his sermons at
seven-and-six. When I returned the publication, and told him that,
though I had been highly entertained, I liked the Life of George Herbert
better, he called me a hagiologist (a term which struck me as being all
the more offensive, inasmuch as I had no idea of its meaning), 1 and
murmured something about “the mark of the beast,” whereupon, I regret
to confess, that I so far lost my temper as to address him with the
unclassical epithet of “a young Skunk,” suggesting the expediency of
his immediate presence at Jericho, and warning him, that, if he were
not civil, “the beast” might leave a “mark” upon _him_. That very day, I
wrote to the butler at home, to send up my pink and tops, and “went over
to roam” in happier pastures.
1 “Egan, in addressing a jury, having exhausted every
ordinary epithet of abuse, stopt for a word, and then added,
'this _naufrageous_ ruffian.' When afterwards asked the
meaning of the word, he confessed he did not know, but
said; 'he thought it sounded well.'”--Sketches of the Irish
Bar, vol. i. p. 83.
I find them more healthful also. I find that so far from my perception
of right and wrong being destroyed, as the disciples of Snorker
prophesied, by a gallop after the Heythrop hounds, and my appreciation
of Thucydides being expelled by my morning pipe, I have, mentally and
bodily, a better tone; and though my former condiscipuli groan when
they meet me coming in from the chase, as though I were the scarlet lady
herself, I still venture to appear at chapel, and will back myself to
construe the funeral oration of Pericles against the ugliest of the lot.
Oh, that fox-hunting were the worst enemy to me, a student, for I
might be a class man still! But I have contracted a habit desperately
antagonistic to literature,--_I am allways falling in love_.
The moment I see a pretty face, I feel that sort of emotion which Sydney
Smith used to say the late Bishop of London rejoiced to contemplate in
his clergy, “a kind of drop-down-deadness.” I cannot walk out, or drive
out, or ride, or row out, but I am sure to have an attack. I have had
as many, indeed, as two in one day. With the daughters of Deans and
Presidents, with visitors, with ladies come in from the country to shop,
I am perpetually and passionately in love. I don't like it, because
there is not the most remote probability of my ever exchanging six
syllables with these objects of my devoted affection, not to mention
that they are equally beloved by some three or four hundred rivals; but
I am powerless to oppose; I can't help it. My life is an everlasting
“dream of fair women:” I know it is a dream, but I cannot waken.
Others have roused me, though, and most uncomfortably. I heard a
Devonshire girl, whom I met at a wedding breakfast, and with whom I
thought I was progressing favourably, whispering to her neighbour, “This
tipsy child is becoming a nuisance, and I really must ring for nurse,”
when I was as sober as Father Mathew, and had whiskers of considerable
beauty, if viewed in an advantageous light. Still more sadly and
recently, another “daughter of the gods, divinely fair,” dissipated
Love's young dream, and sent me forth to a foreign land to forget my
sorrows, as, indeed, I immediately did.
The catastrophe, which caused our happy days in Ireland, befel as
follows.
“'Twas in the prime of summer time, an evening calm and cool,” that I
found myself wandering among the shrubberies of -------- Castle with a
most lovely girl. A large picnic party had been enlivened by archery and
aquatics, and I fancy that the glare of some new targets, and the sheen
of the “shining river,” had not only dazzled my eyes, but likewise had
bewildered my brain. In spite of the cooling beverages, the cobblers and
the cups, I was actuated by an extraordinary liveliness. I sang songs
for the company, not quite reaching the high notes, but with intense
feeling, doing all in my power to indicate to the lovely girl that she
was _my_ Annie Laurie, and that for her I should consider it a pleasant
gymnastic exercise to expire in a recumbent position. I made felicitous
alterations in the words, such as, “hazel is her e'e” for “dark-blue;”
and in the song of “_Constance_,” instead of “I lay it as the _rose_ is
laid on some immortal shrine,” I contrived, with immense difficulty,
and by means of a terrific _apoggiatura_, to substitute the word
_stephanotis_ of which I had that morning given her a bouquet. But
“_brevis esse laboro_;” we were alone, and I resolved to propose. I
seized her elbow with both hands, a ridiculous position, but I was very
nervous, and was about to ask the momentous question, when she said with
such a tone of gentle pity as took away half the pain, “Philip, I am
engaged to Lord Evelyn. Shall we go back for coffee?” I seconded the
motion, but oh, what an amazing period of time we seemed to occupy in
carrying our proposition out! The first idea which presented itself
to my mind was suicide, but it met with an unfavourable reception;
the second, to enlist immediately, and to secure the earliest
_coup-de-soleil_ possible; the third, to insult Lord Evelyn (the beast
was at Christ Church, and I knew him), and subsequently to shoot him in
Port-Meadow. “What right had he,” I asked myself, “to anticipate me,
and win her heart? I hate these accursed aristocrats, who suck the
life-blood of the people.”
This is the accursed aristocrat who sucks the life-blood of the people!
[Illustration: 026]
At last, we rejoined the party, and found them talking the silliest
rubbish conceivable, and apparently enjoying the nastiest coffee I ever
remember to have drunk.
That night, and at the witching hour, when men and women tell each other
everything, (in the strictest confidence), they in their dormitories,
and we in our smoke-rooms, I revealed my misery to my friend Frank
C--------, who happened happily to be staying with me. Frank has Irish
blood in his veins, and his first impulse was to have “a crack at the
Viscount,” but he ultimately took a less truculent view of the case,
and suggested brandy and water. From this source, and “from the cool
cisterns of the midnight air,” for we were smoking our cigars out of
doors, “our spirits drank repose,” and we finally resolved “to banish
my regret,” and to replenish our sketch-books, by a fortnight's tour in
Ireland.