A car and guide, as per order, were waiting for us, when we had
breakfasted next morning, and we set forth for the _Gap of Dunloe_.
Entering upon the main road, we seemed to be in a drying-ground of
immense proportions, with its perpetual posts and endless clothes-lines,
extending along the wayside for miles. But it proved to be a
continuation of that faithless messenger, the Atlantic telegraph, on
its way between _Valencia_ and the rail. Passing the ruins of _Aghadoe_,
church, castle, and tower, and shortly afterwards those of _Killaloe_,
we cross the river _Latme_, over a charming old bridge, and get views of
the great _Tomies Mountain_, and also of _Macgillicuddy's Reeks_. Miles,
our guide, a most intelligent and civil one, here told us the story, or
rather one of the stories, concerning the latter mountains.
It seems that Mr. Macgillicuddy, a gentleman of extensive estates in
this neighbourhood, went to visit some friends in England, and took with
him an Irish servant, more prone to patriotism than truth. Whatever he
saw among the Saxons was just nothing at all, at all, to what might
be seen in Ireland. In short, he would have been a most appropriate
attendant upon that Hibernian, who, being asked why he wept at sight
of Greenwich Hospital, replied with sorrowful emotion, “Ah, sure, the
buildings there remind me of mee dear father's stables!”
Now it befel that the English gentleman, possessing a large extent
of rich meadow land, took especial delight in his hay-stacks, and
his valet, sympathising with his master's vanity (as all good valets
should), soon led the Irishman to look at the stack-yard, expecting to
see him mightily astonished; but Paddy, having gazed around with the
most sublime indifference, coolly said, “It's a nice bit o' grass you've
brought home here for present use; now let us have a peep at the ricks.”
“Ricks!” exclaimed the Englishman, “why these be they.”
“Well, then,” says Paddy, “I'll just tell ye: there's about enough hay
in this stack-yard to make the bands for thatching my master's ricks.
Happen” (this he added as though he wished to be liberal, and to pay
his companion a compliment), “there might be a couple of yards or so to
spare.”
You may imagine that when, in the following year, the English valet came
with his master to return the visit at Killarney, he was not long
before he requested his Irish friend to favour him with a view of the
haystacks. To be sure he would, with all the pleasure in life, and
sorry he was to be prevented by circumstances (over which, he might have
added, he had every control) from making the inspection before evening.
Accordingly, in the dusk and gloom of twilight, he took the Englishman
forth, and showed him, dim in the distance, this lofty mountain range.
“There are _our_ ricks,” said he.
In that belief the astonished stranger slept; and ever since that time
men call these hills _Macgillicuddy s Reeks!_
Mr. Miles, in the next place, made our fingers to itch, eyes to strain,
and mouths to water, as he told of red deer among the mountains, and of
woodcocks in their season, twenty couple to be bagged _per diem_.
Thus conversing, we drew near to _the Gap_, and to the cottage of Mrs.
Moriarty, _née_ Kearney, and grand-daughter of the beautiful Kate. But
it is by no means a case of
“O matre pulchrâ Filia pulchrior!”
and we did not hesitate to decline the proffered draught of goat's milk
and whiskey, although we implicitly believed Mrs. M.'s assertion, that,
if we drank it, we should want nothing more throughout the remainder of
the day.
Here, too, we overtook a car from _Tralee_, laden with pretty girls and
a few young men (how we hated the latter for being in such high spirits,
thought them vulgar snobs when they laughed, and coarsely familiar
whenever they spoke!)--not from any rapidity of pace on our part, but
because the Tralee horses judiciously jibbed at anything like a rise in
the road; and then off jumped the pretty girls, like doves from eave to
earth, but being, in their peculiar grace and pleasant coo, immeasurably
superior to pigeons.
[Illustration: 180]
At the entrance to _the Gap_, the scene was a most lively and attractive
one. Here the cars are sent back, as the journey through the Pass must
be made on ponies or afoot, and there was quite a merry little congress
of visitors, guides, cars, and steeds. At length, the procession
started, and a very picturesque one,--_voici!_
_The Gap of Dunloe_ is a wild ravine, a defile through the mountains (on
the right are _the Reeks_, and on the left the _Tomies, Glena, and
the Purple Mountain_), which, rising on either side, dark, stern, and
sterile, with no great interval between, impart a solemn grandeur to the
Pass. The river _Loe_ flows beneath the huge blocks of stone which have
fallen from the rocks above--heard, but not seen, except in the small
lakes which occur at intervals, and which, still and gloomy, add much
to this impressive scene. One of these is called _the Serpent's Lake_,
because St. Patrick, having caught the last snake in Ireland, put it
into a big box (for reasons best known to himself), and flung it into
this pool.
The most striking thing we saw as we went through _the Gap_ were some
snow-white goats on the lofty summit of _the Purple Mountain_; for the
latter really is of a distinct purple tint (not from heather, but from
the colour of the stone); and the contrast in the sunlight was very
beautiful.
Frank insisted upon seeing an eagle, and continually pointed to the
precipices above, believing that he descried the king of birds. Miles
did condescend to say that one of the objects to which Frank drew our
attention was not so very unlike at a distance, but that the resemblance
was lost as you approached the reality--a piece of rock not less than
twenty feet high. At last we actually beheld a very large bird soaring
towards us with considerable dignity. Frank was delighted; and when
Miles uttered the dissyllable “raven,” I certainly thought he would have
hit him. There are eagles in this neighbourhood beyond a doubt (though
Frank surveyed it with an incredulous and sarcastic air); but they are
not very likely to be much at home when bugles are playing and cannons
roaring from morn to dewy eve.
Emerging from _the Gap_, we were “to save a mile, and see the best of
the scenery,” and to effect this, we were taken over a country, which
is, I dare say, a pleasant one for Mrs. Moriarty's goats, but to bipeds
in boots (and one must be neat, you know, with so many pretty girls
about), is by no means of an agreeable character. To derive consolation
from the calamities of others is humiliating, but natural; “_il y a
toujours quelque chose_,” says the French cynic, “_qui nous ne déplait
point dans les malheurs d'autrui_;” and I found, I am ashamed to say,
considerable refreshment in surveying the distress of a portly old
gentleman, who, impinging a good deal on the craggiest parts, “larded
the lean earth as he walked along,”
“and panted hard,
As one who feels a nightmare in his bed,
When all the house is mute.”
I saw from the knolls and undulations, which diversified the surface of
his enormous shoes, that his _Pilgrims Progress_ had a good deal to do
with _Bunyan's_, although his adjurations were not of that pious kind,
which would have issued from the lips of the “preaching tinker,” and
the deities, to whom he referred in his affliction, were, principally,
_Zounds and Jingo_.
But we soon found a truer solace in the view of _Coom Dhuv_, the Black
Valley, and in listening to the roar of its mountain streams, which,
rising and falling upon the breeze, sounded as though some monster train
bore giants over the hills, at express speed, with Gog and Magog for
Guard and Stoker!
Lo! the dark valley darkens, and its foaming waterfalls seem to whiten
beneath the low black clouds; and we stay not to visit _the Logan
Stone_, which a child may move, but nothing under an earthquake could
dislodge; but hasten, by _Lord Brandons Cottage_, to _the Upper Lake_,
where, a boat awaiting us, we embark for _Roknaines Island._
[Illustration: 185]
Here, before a glowing fire, a fresh-caught salmon, cut into steaks,
was broiling on arbutus skivers; and the founder of the feast, an
Irish gentleman, whom we brought from the shore in our boat, hospitably
invited us to postpone our luncheon until his guests arrived. Hungry,
and anxious to proceed, we declined his courteous offer; but we should
not have done so, had we been aware that he was awaiting the delightful
party from _Tralee_. Alas, just as we had commenced our repast, and the
boat so preciously freighted was descried in the distance, our pluvial
fears were realised,
“And, in the scowl of heaven, each face
Grew dark as we were speaking.”
It was piteous to see those girls come ashore, with the gentlemen's
overcoats enveloping their fairy forms, and protecting their best
bonnets; and I never experienced so strong a desire in my life to be
transformed into a gig-umbrella.
Suddenly the weather brightened, but not so the prospects of the pretty
pic-nic. There was a brief colloquy between master and men, sounds
of surprise and disappointment, not loud but deep, and then a general
laughter, but dismally artificial; for the knives, and the plates, and
the wine, and the bread, everything, in fact, except the salmon, just
ready in its hot perfection, had been sent to _the wrong Island!_
[Illustration: 187]
Thither, to our grim despair, went forth the Belles from Tralee; and,
by the bones of St. Lumbago of Sciatica, I could have plunged into the
flood, and followed in their lee, had I not been cognisant of a certain
“alacrity in sinking,” which prevents the simultaneous removal of both
my legs from the bottom. What would I not have given, to have changed
places with the coxswain! I should have felt proud and happy as he who
steered the immortal Seven at Henley, or as Edgar the Peaceable, when,
keeping his court at Chester, and having a mind to go by water to the
monastery of St. John Baptist, he was rowed down the Dee in a barge by
eight Kings, himself sitting at the helm. 1
We mourned awhile, but the spirit of youth endures not to sorrow long.
It bends low, but it will not break. It rises again in all its freshness
after a glass of bitter beer, or just a mouthful of whiskey; and we soon
looked our affliction in the face like men, and played the nightingale
upon our empty bottles. I have studied somewhat sedulously to imitate,
with a moistened cork upon glass, “de nightingirl, de lark, de trush”
(as the ever-to-be-retained Von Joel hath it), and the performance was
so successful, that two finches perched, attentively, within a yard of
our heads, while the boatmen listened as admiringly as the Australian
Diggers to the English lark; 2 and a newly-mar-ried couple, deliciously
embowered above us, conversed as they sat on the green, and said,
that “they had never quite believed the assertion that Ireland had no
nightingales.” But Frank, unhappily, dispelled all these allusions, by
trying his unpractised hand, and by educing such irregular and feeble
chirpings, as would have disgraced a superannuated sparrow, or a
tom-tit, hopelessly wrestling with an aggravated form of diphtheria.
1 Rapin, vol. i. p. 106.
2 See the exquisite description in _It is Never too Lute to
Mend,_ p. 359.
The trees, beneath whose melancholy boughs we had our meal and music,
had been disgracefully hacked! and more foul copies of “_the Initials_”
were to be found here (with woodcuts, calf, lettered) than in all Mr.
Mudie's Library. If I had my will, I would teach those trenchant snobs,
who, wherever they go, dishonour England, to sing their “_Through the
Wood, Laddie_,” to a much more doleful tune, made fast for a few hours
in the stocks; or I would endeavour so far to revive in their breasts
(if they have any breasts), that Druidical veneration for Baal,
which once prevailed in Ireland, and which would induce them to cut
_themselves_ with their knives, and to worship the trees instead
of whittling them. Or, in illustration of another Druidical tenet,
metempsychosis, it would be gratifying to see their transmigration into
woodpeckers, condemned for ever, like the bird in the fable, to seek
their food between bark and bole.
We would fain have lingered among these pleasant isles, green with
their abundant foliage, and contrasting admirably with the stern hills,
towering over them, and so encircling this _Upper Lake_, that you see no
place of egress, until you are close upon it. As for comparing it with
the other lakes, or with Derwent-Water, as the fashion is,1 it ever
appears to me the most ungrateful folly, to depreciate or to extol one
scene of beauty by commending or condemning another; and when a man
begins with, “Ah, but you should see so-and-so,” or “I assure you, my
dear fellow, this is dreadfully inferior to what-d'ye-call-it,” I always
most heartily wish him at the locality which he affects to admire. What
nasty, niggardly, uncomfortable minds there are in this bilious
world! How many men, who, forgetting that excellent round-hand copy,
“Comparisons are odious,” are never happy but in detecting infelicities,
and only strong when carping at weaknesses. Show them a pretty
girl,--“she wants animation,” or “she wants repose,”--“she is
overdressed,” or “her clothes, poor thing, must have been made in the
village, and put on with a fork.”
1 Any one who takes delight in such comparisons may consult
_Forbes's Ireland,_ vol. i., p. 229, or Mr. Curwen, whose
conclusion is, “Killarney for a landscape, Windermere for a
home.”
“You should see the youngest Miss Thingembob.” Tell them of a good day's
covert-shooting you have had in my Lord's preserves,--out comes a note
from their friend the Duke, who has beaten you by sixteen woodcocks.
Trot out your new hunter, and “Oh, yes, he's a nice little horse, but
will never carry _you_ with those forelegs. You must come over and look
at an animal I've just got down from Tattersall's, by Snarler out of a
Humbug mare, and well up to twenty stone, sir.”
It would perplex even these censorious gentlemen to find any fault with
_the Long Range_ (which has nothing to do with Sir William Armstrong's
Guns,--except that _the Cannon Rock_ at the entrance and _the Gun Rock_
by Brickeen Island have some resemblance to artillery)--that beautiful
river, which leads from the Upper to the Middle and Lower Lakes. To
float between its banks of dark grey stone, from which the green trees
droop their glossy foliage, though, like the Alpine tannen,
“Rooted in barrenness, where nought below
Of soil supports them;”
and the purple heath and the Royal Osmund, “half fountain and half
tree,” lean over the brimming waters, to greet the lily and the pale
lobelia, was a dream of happiness such as the Laureate dreamed, when--
“Anight his shallop, rustling thro'
The low and bloomed foliage, drove
The fragrant glistening deeps, and clove
The citron-shadows in the blue.”
You enter _the Long Range_ at _Colmans Eye_, and shortly afterwards come
to _Colmans Leap_. This Colman, once upon a time, was the lord of _the
Upper Lake_, and, instead of following the example of his namesake, who,
as a saint and peacemaker, assisted St. Patrick in converting Ireland to
Christianity, spent most of his time in quarrelling with the O'Donoghue,
and in provoking him to single combat. Being in a minority at one of
these divisions, it appeared to him a prudential course to “hook it,”
and, closely pursued by his adversary, he took this celebrated jump over
the river, which goes by the name of _Colmans Leap_. The guides show
you his footprints on the rock, and they narrate, moreover, that the
O'Donoghue, being a little out of condition (dropsical, perhaps, from
his long residence under water), came up to the stream a good deal
blown, and would not have it at any price.
Now we pass by the mountain of the _Eagles Nest_, a glorious throne
for the royal bird, and listen, at the _Station of Audience_, to the
marvellous, manifold echoes of the bugler's music, as he wakes the
soul and the scene with his “tender strokes of Art,”--now wild and
spirit-stirring, as though kings hunted in some distant forest, and
now dying, so sweetly, so softly, that we know not when they cease, but
listen
“pensively,
As one that from a casement leans his head,
When midnight bells cease ringing suddenly,
And the old year is dead.”
Then our boat, swiftly as an arrow, shoots the rapids of the Old Weir
Bridge, and, having lingered awhile, in the pool beyond, to admire and
sketch, we leave the Middle Lake (reserved for our morrow's excursion)
on the right, and pass by the Islands of _Dinish_ and _Brie keen_ to the
entrance of the Lower Lake.
I have said nothing, and can say nothing worthily, of the trees, which
grow by the waters of _Killarney_,--oak, yew, birch, hazel holly, the
wild apple, and the mountain-ash, with its berries of vivid red, growing
confusedly one into the other, but _en masse_ of faultless unity. And
among them, brightest and greenest of them all, the arbutus! Wherever
you see it, it gleams amid the duller tints, refreshing as a child's
laugh on a rainy day, or (as Frank suggested) a view-halloo in the
coverts of a vulpicide, or the ace of trumps in a bad hand at whist.
Like Xerxes, we fell in love with the arbutus (Herodotus and Ælian say
that it was “a plane tree of remarkable beauty,” but this assertion is
self-contradictory, and, if it were not so, I am not, I hope, so bereft
of the spirit of the nineteenth century, as to care for historical
facts); and though we could not pour wine in honour of our idol, as the
Romans were wont to do, we drank our pale ale admiringly beneath its
branches, and made a libation (principally of froth) to its roots.
And now by the lovely bay of _Glena_, we enter the Lower Lake. In front
of Lord Kenmare's Cottage, to which visitors have access, 1 numerous
boats are moored; and the bright green sward about this pretty rustic
retreat, contrasts remarkably with the under-robes of brilliant scarlet,
which are sweeping slowly over it, while, from the walks above, gay
little bonnets flash among the trees, and the cock-pheasants and other
ornithological specimens, now worn in the hats of Englishwomen, seem to
rejoice, reanimate, in their leafy homes.
1 The public are greatly indebted to Lord Kenmare and Mr.
Herbert for their indulgent liberality.
Here again, opposite the sublime mountains of Glena, so fairly dight
from crown to foot in their summer garb of green, we awake and listen to
the echoes, until “the big rain comes dancing to the” lake, and we
row hastily homeward, changing places half way with the boatmen, and
astonishing them considerably with an Oxford “spirt.”
It was pleasant, when we reached the Victoria, and had “cleaned
ourselves” (as housemaids term a restoration of the toilette), to find
letters from England, to hear that the good wheat was shorn and stacked,
and the mowers “in among the bearded barley.” There was still a short
interval, when these letters were answered, to elapse before dinner, and
this I occupied in perusing the account of “_the Prince of Wales's visit
to Killarney_” in April, 1858.
Now Heaven preserve our dear young Prince from that excessive
loyalty, which loves to “chronicle small beer.” The historian told how
“_alighting from his vehicle, the Prince, who seems passionately fond
of walking, proceeded on foot for a mile or two, with gun in hand,
firing from time to time at bird, leaf, or fissure in the rock, in the
exuberance of those animal spirits, which belong to his time of life_,”
but which must be somewhat perilous to those of his Royal Mother's liege
subjects, who may be wandering in the immediate vicinity. Then we are
informed, how that, “_His Royal Highness and party drove on to the
Victoria Hotel, with rather keen appetites_;” how he visited “_the tomb
of O' Sullivan, and inspected it with much gravity of demeanour_,” as
though to ordinary minds there was something in sepulchres irresistibly
comic; how “_having drunk in all the glories of this wondrous scene_,”
(the view from Mangerton) “_the Prince amused himself for some time in
rolling large stones into the Devil's Punch Bowl_” for the satisfaction,
doubtless, of hearing them “go flop;” how when he went to Church on
Sunday, “_the Venerable Archdeacon read prayers, and seemed, as it were,
reinvigorated by his presence_,” which suggests the idea of a subsequent
jig with the clerk in the vestry, or of an Irish chassez down the
centre aisle; and how, to make a final extract, Mr. Carroll, the
tailor, presented His Royal Highness with “_a whole suit of Irish tweed,
admirably calculated for mountain excursions, and with the texture
of which, as well as the fit,--which Mr. Carrolls eye hit off to
a nicety_”--does this mean that Mr. C. “took a shot” at the royal
dimensions?--“_the Prince was much pleased_.”
I remember nothing of the _table d'hôte_ that evening, except that a
Cambridge man, who sat next to me, remarked of some miserable carving
hard by, that “the gentleman seemed well up in _Comic_ Sections;” and
that a boy of seventeen, with a violent shooting-coat, and a few red
bristles in the vicinity of his mouth, officiating as “Vice,” and
looking it, mumbled three hurried words as grace after meat, in the
presence of four English clergymen, and two Roman Catholic priests.