We arrived at _Carrs Hotel_, in _Clifden_, between 5 and 6 p.m., and
strolled down the main street before dinner. The whitewashed houses are
much less miserable than the cottages we had seen in the country, but
we can give no more than negative praise, the general aspect of the
town being dreary enough. There are happy associations, nevertheless,
connected with it, for the whole place arose from a benevolent attempt
of Mr. D'Arcy, once the owner of _Clifden Castle_, to improve the
condition and evoke the energies of his neighbours; and though the
estate has passed into other hands, a D'Arcy still maintains, as pastor
of the people, an honoured name for charity and zeal. After dinner we
had a most delightful ramble on the cliffs, which overlook the bay; for
_Clifden_ is built at the centre of one of those numerous indentations
in the land,
“Where weary waves retire to gleam at rest,”
and which give the name _Connamara_, i.e., “_the bays of the sea_.” It
was one of those evenings, sunlit and serene, which whisper gratitude
and peace. There seemed to be a glad smile on land and sea, as the
golden light fell in soft splendour on the purple hills, and the
pleasant breeze awoke upon the waters [Greek passage] 1
1 Thus prettily transferred by the Irish poet, Moore:--
“Like any fair lake that the breeze is upon,
While it breaks into dimples, and laughs in the sun.”
(Yes, good critic, I know it is only a school-boy's quotation, but it is
too beautiful to be ever quite used-up, and is at all events, excusable
in an undergraduate, “taking up,” among other books for his Degree, the
sublime tragedy of _Prometheus Bound._) There was no sound except the
curlew's note, when suddenly we heard, far down from the sea below
us, the loud splash of water, and voices singing, amid merry laughter,
strange songs in an unknown tongue.
[Illustration: 101]
Gracious Heavens, what were we to see! We were on Irish ground; the
stillness and the solitude, so wildly broken, encouraged all our
superstitious fancies; and everything we had read or heard of Bogies,
Banshees, Kelpies, and Co., came back to our astonised souls. Were we,
really, to witness something supernatural at last, something, which,
when we got home, should make the teeth of our neighbours chatter, and
cause the hair to stand up on our relations' heads?
Perhaps, we were to contemplate the merman bold, playing--
“With the mermaids, in and out of the rocks,
Dressing their hair with the white sea-flower,
And holding them back by their flowing locks.”
With beating hearts and bated breath, we crawled to the edge of the
precipice, and there saw, to our intense delight, four of the jolliest
constables in the world, swimming, diving, floating, spluttering,
shouting, and singing, until one longed to run back a few yards,
plunge in, like Cassius, without undressing, and join in their jolly
gymnastics. Really, they are glorious fellows! Were I to undertake any
distant or dangerous expedition (and indeed, Frank and I have been
so much gratified by our sailor-like deportment, between Holyhead and
Kingstown, that we think seriously of going round the world in a yacht),
I should vastly like to take half a dozen of them with me; and I should
not be the first who had so thought and acted.
Walking on, we came in sight of _Clifden Castle_, a good-looking modern
residence, lying low in the valley, and well screened by timber from the
rough sea-wind. Here the view is beautiful exceedingly, and we sat among
the heather, and gazed upon it,
“till the sun
Grew broader toward his death, and fell; and all
The rosy heights came out above the lawns.”
Then we returned to the hotel, and there found our friend the cutler
considerably advanced in liquor, making a most disconnected oration to
a select audience, in which, among many other statements unhappily
forgotten, he informed us:--“That he was hopen to show pigeons, either
Turbits, Pouters, or Short-faced Mottles, against any man in Hengland,
bar two; that Ireland was nothing but a big bog, and he should rather
expect as ow no party, as wasn't a snipe, would ever come there twice;
that he would play hany gent, as was agreeable so to do, either at
quoits or skittles, for the valley of a new 'at;” (being rather a dab
with the discus, I was about to accept his challenge, when the
darkness of the night and absence of the implements struck me as being
“staggerers” not to be surmounted, and therefore I held my peace);
“that, has no party seem'd hup to nothing, he should beg to propose
'ealth and prosperity to the firm of Messrs. Strop and Blades (I'm
Blades); and should conclude by hexpressing his ope, that the cock-eyed
gent in the corner would henliven the meeting with a comic song.” The
proprietor of the insurbordinate eye having very briefly expressed
himself to the effect, that he would see the company consigned to
perdition, rather than indulge it with mirthful music, Mr. Blades
commenced a concert on his own account; and we ventured to go to bed,
in spite of the singer's solemn warning that any person retiring, in a
state of sobriety, to his couch, would “fall as the leaves do, fall as
the leaves do, fall as the leaves do, that die in October.”
*****
Nemesis was the daughter of Nox; and poor Blades looked miserably ill,
when he came down next morning to breakfast--no, not to break fast, but
only to wish he could. At daybreak, we had heard sounds of soda-water,
but Schweppe had striven in vain. The fact is, that whiskey, like
love, can “brook no rival near its throne,” and Kinahan, and Bass, and
Guinness were at war all over Blades. We scarcely knew him again, as
he sat in rueful contemplation of an egg, which he had accepted, hoping
against hope, but had now no strength to crack:--
“For his heart was hot and restless,
And his life was full of care;
And the burden laid upon him
Seemed greater than he could bear.”
Had he been Tyndarus, and the egg before him one of Leda's, he could
not have looked at it with a more fixed and mystified expression; or he
might have been reflecting sorrowfully upon that fatal goose egg, which,
long before the Norman Conquest, had wrought such woes on Ireland. I
will venture, at all events, to repeat the legend. Domhnall, the king,
having invited Congal, his foster-son, together with the principal
swells of his court, to a grand banquet (though he had been warned by
Maelcobba, a celebrated monk and fortune-teller, to do nothing of the
kind), sent out his purveyors to procure a supply of delicacies in
general, and of goose eggs in particular. Now there lived, in the county
of Meath, a Bishop Ere of Slaine, who spent his days in the river Boyne,
immersed up to his arm-pits, and reading his psalter, which lay upon
the bank. Whether he entertained hopes of being translated to the see
of Bath and Wells, and was under a course of preparatory training, or
whether he had a prescient belief in the water-cure, or whatever his
motives may have been, thus he passed his mornings (to the immense
edification of his diocese, and with nothing on but his mitre), and then
went home to dine. One evening he had hurried to his hermitage, a little
ruffled in temper, having been very disrespectfully accosted during the
day by some boatmen, who had hit him in the eye with a decayed pear, but
consoling himself with the prospect of his favourite dinner, namely,
“a goose egg and a half, and three sprigs of watercresses,” when he
was dismayed to find his establishment (which consisted of an elderly
charwoman) in tears, and to hear that the king's purveyors had been,
and poached his eggs for him. Then (the chroniclers proceed to tell)
the Bishop he “cussed, and eke swore hee, verrye bewtifulle.” He
excommunicated the auxiliary gander and put the goose under a perpetual
pip, “bekase,” said he, “if they'd niver layed them, and she (the
charwoman) had only popped them under the bedclothes, he'd bet six
to four they'd niver been found.” But he was grandest of all, when he
cursed the eggs, shell, white, and yolk, solemnly imploring complete and
speedy suffocation upon any party who should stick a spoon in them. And
his anathemas, we read, were so far fruitful, that on the night of the
King's banquet, Congal's goose egg changed, as he was gloating over it,
into a common hen egg, whereupon he was so greatly exasperated, that
he felt himself under the necessity of slashing at his neighbours
indiscriminately with a drawn sword; a general battle ensued; and
“Ireland was not for one night thenceforward in the enjoyment of peace
or tranquillity.” 1
1 From The Banquet of Dun na-gedh, and the Battle of Magh
Rath. Translated from the original Irish by John O'Donovan.
Printed for the Irish Archaeological Society.
Blades, I say, might have been meditating mournfully on this accursed
egg, but, whether or no, there he sat; and Melancholy marked him for
her own. _Quantum mutatus!_ The remains of a fire balloon, soaked and
rusting in some long damp grass, not less resemble the gaudy globe,
which went up yesternight; and never can I obliviate the agony of his
expression, as the waiter presented a large dish of bacon in close
proximity to his nose.
“A moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts was traced,
And then,” with a groan, which won all our sympathy, “_abiit,
excessif, evasit, erupi_, Anglicé, poor Blades, he bolted!
We also, having contributed to Mr. Carr's Album autographs, which will,
no doubt, be ultimately sold at sixty guineas a-piece, (say pounds, if
you take the pair) proceeded by the car to _Kylemore_.
[Illustration: 109]