WE arrived atCarrs Hotel, inClifden, 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 ofClifden 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; forClifdenis 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 nameConnamara, 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 ofPrometheus 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.
101m
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 ofClifden 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 sunGrew broader toward his death, and fell; and allThe 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 himSeemed 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 MaghRath. 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 faceA 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 toKylemore.
109m
THE scenery on leavingClifdenis for a time bleak and monotonous, but soon becomes varied and beautiful. You pass, byStreamstownandBallinakill, through the pleasant village with its pretty cottages, fuchsia-hedges, and general look of neatness and comfort, which it owes to Mr. Ellis, an English resident, and who, (so it was told to me, as our friend Herodotus hath it) is much respected, although a Quaker, by the Roman Catholics around. Between this place andKylemore, you enter upon one of the grandest scenes, to my taste, to be found in allConnamara, a kind of mountain pass, with the rocks rising to a great height, in huge blocks and broken masses, piled one above another, and sometimes jutting over the road in fearful contiguity, densely timbered from base to summit, the gray stone contrasting beautifully with the bright green foliage of the trees. Here the eagles build, and had become so numerous, (so our driver said), that the owner had had recourse topoison. It sounded awfully in our ears, like trapping a fox or shooting an albatross; and, surely, if the king of birds must be slain (and I cannot deny that his majesty's conduct, in perpetually flying off with lambs, is open to some criticism) he might fall more nobly to the rifle of the sportsman.
We reached the solitary inn byKylemore Lakefor luncheon; and I purposely make these memoranda about meals, and take my time from the kitchen clock, because the delightful air ofConnamaravery speedily induces that vacuum, which nature and the tourist yearn to fill. So Frank and I danced in triumph around our undisputed lobster, Blades languishing atClifden, and a fellow passenger, who had stopped atKylemore, and whom, being almost hairless, we distinguished as “Balder the Beautiful,” having previously lunched, as we came along, upon the largest biscuit I ever met with, and which, when he first produced it, we both of us mistook for a Fox-and-Goose board. Contemplating the shell and other débris, in a state of placid plethora, and reflecting, in a spirit of tooth-pick philosophy, what a glorious economy it would be for us undergraduates, and what a grim despair for the tailors, if we, like the lobster, could annually cast our clothing, and reappear, as he does, in customary suit of solemn black, without any pecuniary investment,—I was startled by the wild conduct of Francis, who, suddenly springing from his chair, and favouring me with a slap upon the back, which immediately induced a determination of bitter beer to the head, exclaimed, at the very apex of his voice, “And now, old cock, for a salmon!” Forthwith he entered into solemn consultation with our worthy host, Mr. Duncan, and produced for his inspection a small library of Fly-books. Alas, the inspector looked grave and shook his head, as an examiner surveying infirm Latin. “One or twomightraise a fish;” but this was said in a tone, which quite convinced me, that, unless Frank should come across a salmon, which happened to be helplessly drunk, his entomological specimens would be treated with most profound contempt. What was to be done? Mr. D.'s own flies had been stolen, during a recent illness, by his visitors; and, indeed, as they were kept, with true Irish liberality, in the hall of the inn, one can scarcely wonder at the felonious fact. But he was determined, the weather being most propitious, and the lake full of “fish,” (not to mention the white trout, of which there is abundance) that Frank should not be disappointed, and forthwith commenced the operation, most interesting to me who had never seen it, of “tying a fly.” He began with a bare hook, a piece of fishing gut, and a few bits of silk and feathers; and lo, in about three minutes, there issued from his consummate manipulation a gorgeous fly, so beautiful, and, withal, so plump and appetising, that for a salmon to see it was to look and die. Then armed with a gaff, which would have landed a sturgeon, or made a glorious pastoral staff for His Grace the Archbishop of Brobdingnag, and which was borne before him, as the crozier of Saint Grellen was carried before the tribes of Hy-Many, when, ages ago, they conquered here in Connaught, away went Frank to his boat; and I, rodless, to wander, wondering, among the great mountains and to cull a bouquet of ferns and flowers. This I had just arranged satisfactorily, and was thinking how admirably that little wayside rush (epiphorum), with its snow-white silky flag, would serve for some Lilliputian clerk of the course to drop before a ruck of fairy jocks, and start them for a Queen Mab's Plate, when a ringing shout in the distance, which might have been emitted by a triumphant fox-hunter, or by an Indian scalping his foe, drew my attention to the lake, and I could see dear old Frank standing in the boat, and holding up a glorious salmon, with its silver scales glittering in the sun.
114m
Hurrying back, I was just in time to meet the conquering hero as he came ashore; and I am quite sure that neither Julius Cæsar, nor any other human being, ever landed with greater dignity. Had he been coming to weigh after winning “the Liverpool,” or into the Pavilion at Lords' after an innings of five hundred, he could not have looked more happy and glorious, and I felt it a privilege to strew the path he trod upon with three bits of heather and my pocket-handkerchief.
There was an amusing little dialogue, as he left his bark:—
“Boatman!” quoth the illustrious fisherman, “how much is the boat?”
“Sure, your onour, the boat'll be in the bill. Your onour'll give the boatman what you please.”
“But what is generally given!”
“Well, your 'onour, some'll give two shillings, and some eighteen pince.A tailor'd be for giving eighteen pince.”
How much Frank gave, I know not; but from the expression of satisfaction, which brightened the faces of his aquatic friends, I infer that he exceeded in munificence a whole street of tailors. And, indeed, he was bound so to do, since, in our eyes, “was never salmon yet that shone so fair,” as we bore it in triumph to our inn; and I sang, in the joy of my heart, to the
They may rail at this land, they may slander and slang it,But we've found it a land to admire and enjoy;And until they convince usau contraire, why, hang it,We will speak as we find, won't we, Frank, my dear boy?Air “They may rail at this Life.”So long as Kylemore has such lakes and such fishing,As from Duncan's Hotel at this moment we see,And of salmon for dinner we bring such a dish in,—Connamara'sthe planet for you, Frank, and me!
So we carried it to the kitchen, where it cost my friend no little effort to transfer his captive to the cook; and I am quite convinced, that could he have escaped ridicule, he would have preferred to take that fish to bed with him. I am glad he did not; for a firmer, flakier, curdier salmon never gladdened atable d'hôte, and there were “lashings and lavings” for our party of eight, when we met at dinner that evening.
After the banquet, Frank caused us to be rowed in triumph over the scene of his victory, sitting in the stern with an enormous regalia, and surveying the waters with a grand complacency, which made me feel myself quite contemptible. Very different would my sensations have been, had I been then acquainted with the fact, which my friend subsequently revealed to me, that he had hooked andlosttwo much finer fish than that on which we dined.
The boatmen—one of whom, from his sapient and solemn manner, had the sobriquet of Lord Bacon; and the other, a fine, cheery young fellow, wearing his rightful appellation of Johnny Joyce—joined us in our tobacco and talk, “turning to mirth all things of earth, as only” Irishmen can. When two of the visitors came out of the inn, lingered a few seconds in conversation at the gate, and then started for their evening walk, in opposite directions, as Englishmen are wont,—“Bedad,” said my Lord Bacon, “the gentlemen have quarrelled, more's the pity. Sure, one of 'em has been ating the biggest dinner, and made the other jealous.That'sthe jealous one,” he continued, pointing to our friend Balder the Beautiful, “there's something inthe set of his back, which says that he is disappointed.” And there really was a misanthropic expression, to be observed upon the shoulders in question, which we might not otherwise have noticed, but which was immediately patent to an Irishman, who detects more quickly, and ridicules more cleverly, though he cannot despise more heartily than we do, any exposition of a sulky temperament. I remember going to a horse-fair with Paddy O'Hara, of Merton, and that we overtook on the road an agriculturist of a staid and sullen deportment. He was riding by a rustic groom who led a handsome, but somewhat heavy-looking horse, too good for harness, but scarcely good enough for hunting, though the farmer evidently regarded him as quite the animal for High Leicestershire. Well, we pulled up the tandem, that we might examine the tit (thinking ourselves amazingly knowing in horse-flesh, as undergraduates do), and O'Hara led off with a “Good morning!”
“Good morning,” replied Agricola, but very sternly.
“It's lonely your horse is looking this morning, sir,” continued Pat, as serious as a mute.
“Don't know what you mean,” said the farmer.
“Oh, sure,” replied O'Hara, with an expression of intense grief, as though his heart bled for the poor quadruped, “it's desolate, and melancholy, and beraved he's looking, and very, very lonely—without the plough!”
And he blew such a blast upon our long horn, as made the welkin ring; and the big horse, he pranced and reared, and the farmer and his man they blasphemed in unison, as we sped merrily onwards.
As we had some thoughts of spending a day at a place in this neighbourhood calledCoolna Carton, we asked Johnny Joyce if there was much to see there. And the answer which we got was “Divil a taste!”
“But surely,” we remonstrated, “there is wild mountain and lake scenery?”
“Oh, faith,” said Johnny, “there's mountains and sthrames,if it's the likes o' themthat ye're wanting;” and he looked at us, as though he would have added, “but you, surely, cannot be such fools!”
Ah, Johnny Joyce! there's a homily for us all in that “divil a taste!” The beautiful, so close to us, over head, under foot, we prize not; the great hills are voiceless to the mountaineer; and the lowlander sees no loveliness in valleys thick with corn. Ashore, we sigh for the wild magnificence of ocean; and, at sea, our unquiet spirit yearns for the landscape's rest and peace. Let us ask for eyes to read, and loving hearts to understand, the declarations of wisdom and of goodness God-written everywhere!
We spent a pleasant evening in the common-room of our inn. There was, among others, a landscape-painter, who, manfully confessing that he “could do nothing withConnamara,” showed us, nevertheless, some very interesting sketches; and there was a clever, merry, young graduate, of our sister university at Dublin, as full of good sense as good humour. He told us, as we sipped our punch, how that whiskey derived its name from the Irishuiske, the water; “the only water,” quoth he, “that's good for a gentleman to drink;” how thatusquebaughmeant “water of life,” asaqua vitaein Latin, andeau de viein French; and how this reminded him that thePhoenix Parkin Dublin, derived its name fromFinniske, orFionuisge, fair-water,and was so called from a spring in the neighbourhood, once much resorted to as a chalybeate spa.
As we became confidential, I asked him what he thought of Ireland's prospects?
“Well,” he said, after a long, reflective pull at his little, black,dudeen, “I am not so sanguine as some with regard to the prosperity of Ireland. That which Pope said of man in general, seems to me to be especially true with regard to an Irishman in particular, he 'never is, but always to be, blessed.' Every history, or book of travels, written no matter when or by whom, always has the same moral,—Ireland is emerging from a state of misery and degradation—followed by some fine, old-crusted quotations with regard to our capabilities, and the wonderful results which might be achieved, 'if only the hand of man did join with the hand of nature.'” 1
1 Lord Bacon, the original, not the boatman.
“Pity,” I thought, “that the hand of man should be unhappily preoccupied—with a blunderbuss!”
“No,” he continued, “physicians, Danish, Saxon, and Norman, have prescribed for us (generally a course of bleeding and depletion) with so little success; the grand panacea, Protestantism, has been administered to us,—as gently as a ball to some restive horse, with a twitch upon our national nose, and a thrust down our national throat,—with so few favourable results, that I begin to fear our malady is chronic, and that affliction must be regarded as our normal.
“I have heard before,” I remarked, “that Ireland has not been considered by her medical advisers to be a very goodsubject.”
“I see,” he answered, “but we are more loyal, perhaps, than you are inclined to suppose, and quite as much so as you have a right to expect. Some people seem surprised that we Irish do not set up statues of Turgesius, the Norwegian gentleman, who favoured us with a tax calledNosestate. Money, by which he merely meant, that, if we declined to pay, he should remove the facial adjunct alluded to; that we do not paint memorial pictures of Prince John and his Normans ridiculing our Irish Chiefs, when they came to welcome them at Waterford, and chaffing them about their long hair and their short yellow shirts, which, I grant, must have been rather funny; that we exhibit no restlessness for the canonisation of Cromwell, and make no pious pilgrimages to the tomb of Dutch William. Now, I by no means say, with Junius, that 'Ireland has been uniformly plundered and oppressed,' but I do say that the bride which Pope Adrian, himself an Englishman, gave, with a gay marriage-ring of emeralds, to your second Henry, has not been very lovingly dealt with.”
“The wedding,” I said, “has not been, as yet, productive of much happiness; but you must remember, that if the husband has been harsh at times, and disagreeable, the conduct of the lady has been very aggravating and suspicious. Hath she not flirted withMonsieurandJonathan?Hath she not decked herself with ribbons of obnoxious hue, and gone after strange priests, whom John Bull honoureth not? Could he have foreseen the troublous consequences of the union, he might have wished to imitate the example of Jupiter, who, having considered the subject in all its bearings, devoured Metis, his wife, lest she should produce an offspring wiser than himself.”
“Pergite Pierides!Go it, Lemprière!” here broke in that boisterous Frank, who, I regret to say, has an ubiquitous ear, and a consequent power of joining the conversation from any distance, and when you least expect him. “What are you two mythological bloaters driving at?”
“Francis,” I replied, reprovingly, “your mind, a feeble one at best, is unhinged by success and whiskey. Calm yourself, and go to bed.”
But he only crowed like a cock.
“The fact is,” resumed my Irish friend, “we are too near a great country ever to be great ourselves, and are too proud, unhappily, to perform on violin No. 2.”
“You won't be angry with me,” I said, “if I doubt your ability, under the most favourable circumstances, ever to play a first fiddle in the Monster Concert of Nations. You may let me say so, for I love the Irish. I should be disloyal to friendships, which I value dearly, forgetful of a thousand merry-makings enhanced by Irish humour, and of many a sorrow relieved by Irish sympathy, if I did not speak well of Irishmen, to say nothing of the interesting fact, that, on several delightful occasions, I have been in love with your sweet Irish girls. But if I have read your history aright, you have never, nationally, shown any ambition or aptitude to hold a prominent place.”
“Confound your impudence,” he answered, “did you never read in that self-same history, that Ireland was once 'the school of Europe,' 'Insula Sanctorum,' and I don't know what, before those Danish ruffians destroyed the monasteries,—from the purest and most pious motives, doubtless, like your own dear Henry VIII.!”
“I have read,” I rejoined, “that a Scotch gentleman (for 'Saint Patrick was a gentleman,' if ever there was one) preached Druidism out of this country, and gave you, in its place, the blessings of a heaven-sent faith; and I know, furthermore, that Irishmen, such as Sedulius, your poet, and your Saints, Columbkill, and Aidan, and Finian, and Cuthbert, names known and beloved through Christendom, have been ever esteemed and honoured among the champions of our holy religion; but I am speaking of Ireland politically, and maintain, that, even in the brighter epoch, of which you treat, say from the fifth to the ninth century, Ireland, socially and generally, was in a state of trouble and disquietude. Indeed it would seem from your history that until a recent period, which (I say it with all reverent earnestness) may God prolong, you have either been repelling invaders, or fighting among yourselves, or both, ever since Partholan, the sixth in descent from Magog, Noah's second son, took Ireland, with his thousand men. Why, even in what you would consider a period of profound peace, you have been about as orderly as a lot of schoolboys, when the master is absent, or a pack of young hounds, who have got away from their huntsman; and suggest in every phase of your existence, the stern remark of your greatest Irishman,1 'Ireland is to be governed only by an army.'L'Empire, c'est l'Epée!” 2
1 Wellington.2 Punch's version of Louis Napoleon's words, “L'Empire,c'est la Paix”
“You seem to think,” he said, “with another illustrious countryman of mine, Mr. John Cade, that 'then are we in order, when most out of order,' and that Ireland, like the lady in the farce, 1 only 'glories in her topsy-turvy-tude;' but when you speak of the schoolmaster being abroad, do you not in great measure account for eccentricities, repeating that grand enigma, 'What makes treason reason, and Ireland wretched?' and answering, 'absent T.' Collisions and explosions may be looked for on the Rail, when they, who should be its Directors, never come near the line; and in my opinion the best thing that could happen to Ireland would be the revival of the Act against non-residence which was made in 1379.” 2
1The King's Gardener.2 Moore'sHistory of Ireland, vol. iii., p. 113.
“Would it not,” I asked, “be a wiser and more agreeable inducement, if you could assure the returning landlord that his plans of improvement would not be disturbed by an injection of lead into his brain? At all events, I think, we shall see shortly what resident men can do. The estates, which absenteeism, as much as anything, has encumbered and finally estranged, will be occupied, to a great extent, by their new owners:—will these ever make Paddyindustrious?”
“Sure,” he answered, “we'll be the grandest nation upon earth, the moment we get a taste of encouragement. Meanwhile I'll concede, that we're a trifle awkward to manage, and, when we're not famished by dearth of food, nor depressed by a drought of whiskey, that we're mighty fond of a scrimmage. And you'll allow, I take it, that no men fight in a gentaler form than we do: your Irish regiments have done you good service on the battle-field, to say nothing of our having supplied you with the grandest warrior of your history. And long may we fight, side by side, and keep out of all hot water, butthis,” and he touched my glass with his own, and sang with a voice so pliable and mellow, that even the knight of the surly shoulders,—whom we also named Thersites, described by Homer as “the ugliest chap of all who came to Troy,”—smiled and nodded in accompaniment,—
“O quam bonum est!O quam jucundum est!Poculis fraternis gaudere!”
And so we became, as Dennis O'Shaughnessy 1 bids, the “sextons to animosity and care;” and having buried them decently, were going to bed, when dulcet notes from a musical instrument, which the performer thereupon alluded to as his “feelute,” and which was joyously warbling an Irish jig, attracted us to the kitchen. And what mortal man “that hadn't wooden legs,” could see blushing Biddy Joyce footing it merrily, and not feel himself as irresistibly disposed to dance, as a nigger when he hears a fiddle? In thirty seconds Frank and I were involved in a series of such swift, untiring saltations, as the world hath not seen, since Mevelava, the Dervish, danced for four days to the flute of Hamsa!
When we awoke the next morning (Sunday), “the richest cloudland in Europe,” as Kohl terms Ireland, was investing such abundance of its surplus capital in the lakes and mountains ofConnamara, that it was impossible to leave our inn; and as difference of creed unhappily prevented a common service, every man became his own priest, and every bed-room an oratory. My friend, the Irish graduate, played some most solemn and impressive music, including the “Cujus Animam,” from theStabat Mater, upon a Concertina, which now breathed forth notes sweet and clear, like a flute, and anon was grand and organ-like. At a later period, a perfume, which, at first, I supposed to be incense, issued from his dormitory; but it ultimately resolved itself into Latakia.
At last, the clouds began to break, and the grand old mountains to emerge from the mist, like the scenery in a dissolving view; the sunlight seemed to reach one's heart; and we sallied forth for a walk, the Irishman, Frank, and I, as happy as bees on the first warm day of spring, or as the gallantKane, when, after a long Arctic winter, he saw the sun shine once more, and felt “as though he were bathing in perfumed waters.” The conversation, as we strolled towards Letter-Frack, was theological and brisk. Paddy said that “ourChurch resembled a branch broken from the Vine, withering and moribund from inanition;” and we affirmed that “hisChurch was like a tree unpruned, all leaves, and no fruit.” Then he pretended to have heard that Mr. Spurgeon had refused the See of Canterbury, and that Lord Shaftesbury was bringing in a Bill to abolish the Apostles' Creed. “You miscellaneous Christians,” he said, “will shortly have nothing to believe in common, unless it be—Dr. Cumming!”
“And you, magnificent Christians,” I rejoined, “who, by the way, have had your rival Popes, and still have divisions among you, you have already gotmoreto believe than Scripture, tradition, or common sense acknowledge. As to our being 'miscellaneous,' we churchmen have no communion with the sects, though you delight to identify us with them, and though some disloyal teachers among us may 'apply the call of dissent to their own lost sheep, and tinkle back their old women by sounding the brass of the Methodists,' 1 our Church, unswerving, still maintains the old, catholic faith, and earnestly entreats deliverance from all false doctrine, heresy, and schism.”
1 Horace Walpole.
And so we went on, strophe, and antistrophe, with an occasional epode from Frank (who kindly applauded both parties, encouraging us, more liberally than respectfully, with “Bravo Babylon!” “Now heretic!” and the like), and only arrived at unanimity, when it was proposed that we should return and dine.
Our host, Mr. Duncan, told us this evening, with other very interesting details, concerning the Famine of 1847, how that, at a public meeting in the neighbourhood, he had said, somewhat incautiously, that rather than the people should starve, they might take his sheep from the hills; and how that, when want and hunger increased, they kept in remembrance his generous words, and, taking advantage, like Macbeth, of “the unguarded Duncan,” turned ninety of his sheep into mutton.
133m
WE leftKyle-morenext morning about 8.30,—the Irishman calling to us from his window, “to give his love to the Bishop of London, and to ask him what he fancied for the Chester Cup,”—travelling on an outside car,—the most pleasant mode of conveyance for two persons, as you are thus perfectly independent, can stop when and where you please, have plenty of room, and can converse agreeably. Frank looked wistfully back at the lake, like the pointer sent home at luncheon, or the hunter you have ridden as your hack to the “meet,” or (a resemblance much more to his taste), abelle, reluctantly leaving the ball-room, on the arm of her drowsy but determined Pa.
Now we pass through the severe and solemn scenery ofthe Killeries, compared by Inglis, Barrow, and Miss Martineau, to a Norwegian Fiord, with its lakes so still, and cold, and black, and its mountains so bleak and stern, that even the sea-fowl seemed to have deserted it with the exception of a single cormorant, who looked as though he had committed himself in some disreputable way, and had been banished here for solitary confinement.
135m
But the dreariness of the scene was soon delightfully relieved by numbers of the peasantry, on their way to the Fair, orPatternas it is called, being held on the festival of somePatronSaint, atLeenane; and the striking colours of their picturesque costume, red, white, and blue, came out most effectively against the sombre darkness of the back-ground. Boats, too, were crossing the water; and a soldier in uniform, coming over in one of them, glowed on the gloomy lake, like a bed of scarlet geraniums in the middle of a fallow field. Some were on foot; but more on horseback, almost every steed carrying double—husbands and wives, mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, and for aught I know, “one lovely arm was stretched for,”—nothing in particular, “and one was round her lover.” The bare feet hung gracefully down, and the eyelids, as we passed, hung gracefully down also, and hid those bright Irish eyes. Well, “there is a shame, which is glory and grace,” the most beautiful ornament that woman wears, and nowhere worn with a more becoming, but unaffected, dignity, than here by the maidens of Connamara.
Saddles did not seem to be known, and the bridles, chiefly, were of rope or twisted hay. As to the Fair itself, I imagine that the meeting partook more of a social than of a commercial character, a few sheep being the principal live-stock which we saw exposed for sale. Several stalls exhibited, for the refreshment of visitors, large cakes or bannocks, with currants at an incredible distance from each other (the white bread,per se, being, doubtless, a sufficient novelty and treat to many), and any amount of apples. Indeed Paddy seems almost as fond ofpommes d'arbreas he is ofpommes de terre; and in Stations, Steamers, and Streets, they have all but a monopoly of the market.
The landlord of the neat-looking inn atLeenane, a fine, tall, manly fellow, reminding us that we had now entered into the country of “big Joyce,” came forth and welcomed us cheerily, as we stopped to change our horse, and almost induced us to stay and see the fun of the fair, together with “the hundred and fifty couple, which would stand up in the afternoon for a jig.” But we had no time to lose, having to meet theClifden Car, atthe Cross Roads, en route toGalway; and as we saw, shortly afterwards, two waggons loaded with constables, who were going to preserve order, we did not regret our departure, nor fail to congratulate each other on the unbroken soundness of our Saxon skulls.
We took with us a new driver fromLeenane, who seemed somewhat depressed at leaving the Fair, and was the least sociable Irishman I ever met. But one does not desire conversation amid this impressive scenery; and as the only information which he volunteered was this, that “Hens Castle,” nearthe Mauwt Hotel, was built in one night by a cock and hen grouse,—a statement which he appeared to believe implicitly,—I don't suppose that we lost much from his taciturnity. The misfortune was, that, though his tongue was tied, his hat was not,—an eccentric, light-hearted “wide-awake,” which would keep skimming past us, and hurrying back to Leenane, always starting off with a fresh impetus, as the owner stooped to secure it. As time was precious, Frank offered to fasten the article to his head, with a large, gold breast-pin, by way of nail, and a heavy stone, which he picked up by the wayside (during a little walk of some two miles up hill), as hammer; but he was repulsed with considerable asperity. At last, to our great delectation, the offensive head-gear was drawn out of a boggy pool, in such a limp and unpleasant condition, that the proprietor, after a brief survey, indignantly sat upon it during the remainder of our journey, vesting his cranium in a pocket-handkerchief, which was, indeed, a sight to see. With a large bunch of heather, which, I regret to confess, we could not refrain from inserting in the collar of his coat, and
“dulce est tomfoolere in loco?
he presented an appearance “well worthy of hob-servation,” (as they say at the wax-work), and which would have raised an immediate mob in any street of London.
We arrived atthe cross roads, in spite of the Fabian policy pursued by the volatile hat, in good time for theGalwaycar, and soon found ourselves leaning over the pretty bridge atOughterarde, and bidding farewell toConnamara. It has been, indeed, a privilege and refreshment to wander amid these glorious scenes, where
“Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise,”
and where nature, with a calm, majestic dignity, which must impress, and ought to improve, claims at once our reverence and love, awes us with her grandeur, but charms us more with her smile.
The tourist readily foregoes and forgets the temporary loss of little comforts to which he has been accustomed. There is but one really great deprivation to which he is subject,—the want of ladies' society. English ladies can go, do go, and will go everywhere; but, generally speaking, they are unwilling, wisely unwilling, to encounter a wet day on an Irish car, or the carpetless, comfortless rooms of theConnaviarainns.
Indeed, the fine gentleman, who chiefly loves the tips of his moustaches, the sleeve-links of his shirt, and the toes of his gleaming boots,—the dandy, [Greek word], who can't live without his still champagne, by Jove, his soups and sauces, and golden plovers, his Nesselrode pudding, andpetit verre en suite,—will find sad discomfiture inConnamara. Neither Apicius Coelius nor Lady Clutterbuck have prepared the way for his daintyship, and when the bacon, which accompanies the breastless fowls, shall display its prismatic hues, his forlorn spirit shall sigh in vain for the pleasant hams of Piccadilly, while, in vain, he imprecates on the unskilful cook the fate of Mr. Richard Rouse. 1
1 A cook, who, in the year 1530, attempted to poison Fisher,Bishop of Rochester, and was boiled to death—out ofcompliment to his profession. See Froude's History ofEngland, vol. i., p. 288. A writer in the Athenaum (Jan. 13,1844,) remarks, in a very amusing article on the IrishCensus, “There is no cookery in Ireland, because there isnothing to cook. We occasionally, to be sure, throw them abone of contention, and they make a broil of it. Theircookery goes no further.”
At morn, moreover, lazily turning in his bed to ring for valet or waiter, how shall his superb dignity be perturbed to find, that there exists nobelle alliancebetween the upper and lower house, and that his highness must go to the stair top, and hallo, for whatever his emergencies require. No marble bath awaits him now, with its tepidly congenial joys; but there stands at his door a little tub, which he contemplates as ruefully as the stork of the fable the shallow dish of the fox, and which just contains a sufficiency of water to perplex a rat of irresolute mind, whether he should walk or swim. The accommodation is, in fact, so limited, that Frank, in attempting some daring flight of ablution, broke his tiny bath to pieces, and away streamed the water to announce the fact down stairs.
141m
Up came the astonished waiter, and surveying the wreck with a sorrowful countenance, exclaimed, “By the powers, your onner, its Meary's looking-glass you've been and ruinated intirely!—and how will she kape herself nate and daysint?” subsequently explaining to us, that this vessel, filled with clear spring water, had served, prior to its dissolution, as the mirror of the pretty housemaid. I had my doubts as to the tale of a tub; but Frank, at all events, thought it his duty to have an interview with the bereaved Meary, and returned therefrom with one of his ears considerably enriched in colouring.
I strongly recommend the tourist to make himself a C.B., by procuring a portable bath of waterproof material, such as is now made for travellers. He will then have no difficulty to contend with beyond a slight indisposition on the part of the waiters to supply him liberally with the element required. “Bedad,” said one of them to me, “if the rain's to be presarved, and carried up stairs, and trated in this fashion, I'm thinking it'ill get so mighty fond of our attintions, that it'll never lave us at all, at all!”
Again, the fine gentleman may be disconcerted to find that windows very generally decline to be opened, or, being open, prefer to keep so, except in case of his looking out of them, when they are down upon his neck, like a guillotine. His looking-glass, too, just as it is brought to a convenient focus, may perhaps, dash madly round, as though urged by an anxiety, which it could not repress, to assure him, in white chalk, that it really cost three and sixpence!
But what are these trivial inconveniences, which amuse, more than they annoy, to “a man as calls himself a man,” and when he has such active, cheerful, untiring servants, ever ready to do all in their power to please him? The cuisine is certainly a little queer, but he who, with aConnamaraappetite, cannot enjoyConnamarafare, salmon, fresh from its lakes, eggs newly laid, excellent bread and butter, the maliest of potatoes (“laughing at you, and with their coats unbuttoned from the heat,” but perhaps a trifle underboiled for our taste, until we learn to like them “with a bone in them”), together with the best of whiskey, and our Burton beer; he who cannot sleep in a cleanConnamarabed, after a day among its mountains and lakes, nor say with Bellarius,