The next morning at breakfast, a Scotch gentleman, with an amazing
accent, would read the newspaper in such loud tones to his friend, that,
not being monks, nor accustomed to be read to, _more monastico_, at our
meals, we really could not enjoy our food, and were compelled to toss up
which of us should recite to the other the list of Bankrupts from _The
Times_. I lost, but had not progressed far in my distinct enunciation
of the unhappy insolvents, when the Caledonian took the hint, and we ate
our mackerel in peace.
Leaving Dublin by the “Midland Great Western Railway,” at 10.30, we
reached Galway at 3.45. The intermediate country is, for the most part,
dreary and uninteresting, at times resembling the bleaker parts
of Derbyshire, and at times Chat Moss. “I am no botanist,” as the
Undergraduate remarked to the Farmer, who expostulated with him for
riding over his wheat; but the agriculture appeared to be feeble, and to
show want of _management_ in its twofold signification. The green crops
looked well everywhere, but the corn was thin, and the pastures by
no means of that emerald hue which we had expected to find. With the
exceptions of peasants, cutting and stacking peat for their winter fuel,
children at the doors of cottages, the railway passengers and officials,
there seemed to us, coming from densely populated England, to be really
“nobody about;” and the contrast between our present route and that
which we had travelled, two days before, through the “Potteries,” was as
marked as contrast well could be. This comparative quietude and silence
prevailed wherever we went, as though we were wandering through the
grounds of some country place, “the family” being abroad, and most of
the servants gone out to tea. Ah, when will the family come back to live
at home, to take delight in this beautiful but neglected garden,
weed the walks, turn out the pig, and look after these indolent and
quarrelsome servants?--indolent and quarrelsome, only because there are
none to encourage industry and to maintain peace.
We passed the station of _Maynooth_, but did not see the “Royal
College of St. Patrick,” and are therefore unable to vituperate that
establishment, as otherwise it would be our duty to do.
[Illustration: 060]
Missing this fashionable Christian exercise, I amused myself by attiring
a portly, closeshaven priest--who sat opposite to me, and who had a
face which would have represented anybody with the aid of a clever
_costumier_--in all sorts of imaginary head-dresses, dowagers' turbans,
Grenadiers' caps, Gampian bonnets, beadles' hats, &c., and endeavoured
to fancy the feelings of his flock, if they were to see him in reality,
as I in thought.
Passing through county Meath, we were again reminded of Swift, who
held the rectory of Agher, with the vicarages of Laracor and Rathbeggan
therein, and of the beautiful Hester, sacrificed to his vanity, and
crying aloud, in piteous tone, “It is too late! It is too late!”
Nigh to _Athlone_ (of which more hereafter) is the village of _Auburn_,
formerly called _Lissoy_, the residence of Parson Goldsmith, and the
early home of the poet. The scenes of his childhood and his youth were
doubtless remembered by him, when he wrote “The Deserted Village,” and
many features of resemblance may still be traced.
At _Ballinasloe_ (everybody has heard of its great horse-fair, and how
the hunters jump over the walls of the “Pound,” in height about
eight feet, Irish) we entered the county of _Galway_, and tremblingly
anticipated, after all we had heard of its wild, reckless sons, that
some delirious driver would spring upon the engine, with a screech
louder than its own, put on all steam, run us off the line for fun, and
cause us to be challenged by our fellow-passengers, should we escape
with our lives, for not appreciating the sport. But we travelled
onwards, demurely and at peace; and, indeed, throughout our little tour,
so far from being provoked or annoyed, we met with nothing but kindness
and courtesy, and a good-humoured willingness to be pleased and to
please.
The Railway Hotel at _Galway_ is the largest that we saw in Ireland,
and contains, as we had been informed, “a power o' beds.” These
want sleepers sadly, and at present the tourist, as he wanders from
coffee-room to dormitory, feels very much
“Like one that treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose guests are fled,” &c.,
and cheers his loneliness with the thought, that should Galway become
(as all who care for Ireland must hope) _the_ port for America, this
solemn stillness shall depress no more. The inn forms one side of the
principal Square, and, the neighbour buildings being comparatively small
and dingy, resembles some grand lady, in all her crinoline, teaching
the third class at a Sunday school. The grass-plat and garden are nicely
kept, but their chief ornaments struck us as being rather incongruous,
to wit, _hydrangeas_ and _cannon!_ The guns were pointed at our bedroom
windows, and it really required some little resolution next morning to
shave ourselves with placidity “at the cannons' mouth.” Having secured
places for the morrow on the Car to Clifden, specially stipulating for
“the Lake side” of the conveyance, we selected a shrewd-looking lad
from a crowd of candidates (the Roman candidati wore white togas in the
market-place, but these young gentlemen did not), and went to see the
sights. We saw a great deal that was very interesting, and a great
deal that was very dirty; we saw the traces of Spanish architecture,
in quaint gateways and quadrangular courts, but were not “reminded of
Seville,” our only association with that city being a passionate love
of marmalade; we saw Lynch's castle, and its grotesque carving is
very curious; we saw the house in Deadman's Lane, where lived
that Fitz-Stephen, Warden of Galway, who, according to the worst
authenticated tradition, assisted at the hanging of his own son; we saw
warehouses sans ware; granaries, some without grain, and others with
“the meal-sacks on the whitened floor;” we saw and greatly admired
Queen's College; we saw chapels and nunneries, whence the Angelus bell
sounded as we passed; above all, we saw the _Claddagh_. Going thither,
our little showman told us of the big trade in wines between this place
and Spain which flourished in the good times of old, and I foolishly
thought to perplex him by the inquiry, “whether much business was done
in the Spanish juice line?”
“And sure,” said he, “your onner must know, _that_ was the thrade
intirely. Divil a taste of anything else did they bring us, but the
juist of their Spanish vines.”
The Englishman who desires a new sensation should pay a visit to the
_Claddagh_. When we arrived, the men were at sea; but the women, in
their bright red petticoats, descending half-way down the uncovered
leg, their cloaks worn like the Spanish mantilla, and of divers colours,
their headkerchiefs and hoods, were grouped among the old grey ruins
where the fish market is held, and formed a tableau not to be forgotten.
Though their garments are torn, and patched, and discoloured, there is
a graceful simple dignity about them which might teach a lesson to
Parisian milliners; and to my fancy the most becoming dress in all the
world is that of a peasant girl of Connamara. Compare it, reader, with
our present mode, and judge. Look at the two, sculptor, and say which
will you carve? Say, when “Santa Philomena” is graved in marble, shall
it be with flounces and hoops?
[Illustration: 065]
No, whatever may be the wrongs of Ireland no lover of the picturesque
and beautiful would wish to see her _re-dressed_ (so far as the ladies
are concerned--the gentlemen might be improved); no one would desire to
see her peasant girls in the tawdry bonnets and brass-eyed boots, which
stultify the faces and cripple the feet of the daughters of our English
labourers.
As to the origin of these Claddagh people, I am not sufficiently “up”
in ethnology, to state with analytical exactness the details of their
descent; but I should imagine them to be one-third Irish, one-third
Arabian, and the other Zingaro, or Spanish gypsy. 1 I thought that I
recognised in one old lady an Ojibbeway chief, who frightened me a good
deal in my childhood, but she had lost the expression of ferocity, and I
was, perhaps, mistaken.
The men are all fishermen (very clumsy ones, according to Miss
Martineau, who talks about harpoons as if they were crochet needles, in
her interesting “Letters from Ireland”); but they give up their cargoes
to the women on landing, only stipulating that from the proceeds they
may be supplied with a good store of drink and tobacco, and so get due
compensation on the shore for their unvarying sobriety at sea.
1 Wales is also represented by members of the Jones family.
The original John may have come over with Thomas Joyce, who
was good enough to appropriate “the Joyce Country” to
himself and family, in the reign of Edward the First.
They live (some 1500 souls in all) in a village of miserable cabins,
the walls of mud and stone, and for the most part windowless, the floors
damp and dirty, and the roofs a mass of rotten straw and weeds. The
poultry mania--(and if it is not mania to give ten guineas for a bantam,
in what does insanity consist? l)--must be here at its height, for the
cocks and hens roost in the parlour. But “the swells” of the Claddagh
are its pigs. They really have not only a “landed expression,” as though
the place belonged to them, but a supercilious gait and mien; and with
an autocratic air, as though repeating to themselves the spirited
verses of Mr. A. Selkirk, they go in and out, whenever and wherever they
please. I saw one of them, bold as the beast who upset Giotto, 2 knock
over a little child with his snout; and I have a sad impression that
the juvenine was whipped for interfering with the royal progress. Frank
solemnly declared that he saw one, as portrayed with his back against
the lintail of his home, and smoking his evening pipe.
1 This form of delirium is by no means of modern origin.
Opvi-ôofiavta, a passionate love of rare birds, was known
among the ladies of Athens.
2 We read in _Lanzi's History of Painting_, that as _Giotto_
was walking with his friends, one Sunday, in the _Via del
Cocomero_ at Florence, he was overthrown by a pig running
between his legs. Whereupon the painter, albeit he was in
his best clothes, philosophically recognised a just
retribution, “for,” said he, “although I have earned many
thousand crowns with the bristles of these animals, I never
gave to one of them a spoonful of swill in my life!”
[Illustration; 068]
I receive this statement _cum grano salis_ (always appropriate to
bacon), as I do Phil Purcel's, that “there was in Ireland an old breed
of swine, which is now nearly extinct, except in some remote parts of
the country, where they are still _useful in the hunting season_, if
dogs happen to be scarce;” 1 and (with all deference to the lady).
1 Carleton's “Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry.”
Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall's, “an acquaintance of ours taught one _to
point_, and the animal found game _as correctly as a pointer_. He _gave
tongue_, too, after his own fashion, by grunting in a sonorous tone,
and understood when he was to take the field as well as any dog.” 1 But,
however this may be, everything in the Claddagh is done to “please the
pigs:”
“Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
You see them, lords of all around, pass by;”
and Og reigneth once more in Basan. He is precious and he has his
privileges. “I think” (said Phil from the hob) “that nobody has a better
right to the run of the house, whedher up stairs or down stairs, than
him that pays the rint” Such is the great destiny of the Irish pig. He
is not associated in the prospective contemplations of his owner with
low views of pork and sausages; for Paddy says, with Launcelot, “if we
grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the
coals for money,” and
“As for eating a rasher of what they take pride in,
They'd as soon think of eating the pan it is fryed in. 1
but he represents the generous friend and benefactor, who is about to
render an important service at considerable personal discomfort.
1 In their pleasant volume, “The West and Connamara.”
Goldsmith's “Letter to Lord Clare.”
It was washing-day at one of the cabins, and a great variety of wearing
apparel was hung out to dry. We could not discover a single article
which at all resembled anything known to us, or which a schoolboy would
have accepted for any part of his Faux.
Nevertheless, one likes the people of the Claddagh; they seem to be
honest, industrious, and good-tempered, and they have, at least, one
great virtue--like Lady Godiva, they are “clothed on with chastity.”
Sir Francis Head, who had the best means of getting information from the
police, and used them with his exhaustive energy, could not hear that
there had ever been an illegitimate child born in the Claddagh. They
never intermarry with strangers, and “_their marriages are generally
preceded by an elopement_” (vide the article on “_Galway_,” in the
_Encyclopodia Britannica_, which one is surprised to find discoursing
on such festive pleasantries), “_and followed by a boisterous
merry-making_.”