XXVGLENGARIFF, THE LOVELIEST SPOT IN IRELAND

“Wee shal be judged as wee judge—and bee dealt withal as wee deal with others in this life—if wee beleve God Hyme sealf.”

Myrtle Lodge; the Home of Sir Walter Raleigh

Myrtle Lodge remains very much as it was when Raleigh lived there. Few historical houses have been altered so little or have been preserved with greater care. Sir Walter’s study is hung with an original painting of the first governor of Virginia and a contemporary engraving of “Elizabeth, Queen of Virginia.” The long table at which he wrote, an oak chest in which he kept his papers, a little Italian cabinet filled with old deeds and parchments, some bearing his seal; two bookcases of vellum-bound volumes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and all of the furniture dates from his time. We are assured that there is nothing in the room that was not in the house at the time he occupied it. The dining-room is one of the choicest examples of fifteenth century domestic architecture that can be found, having a deep projecting bay windowand porch, an orieled closet, a wide, arched fireplace, and walls wainscoted with rich, ripe Irish oak. The drawing-room has a carved oaken mantelpiece which rises to the ceiling. The cornice rests upon three figures representing Faith, Hope, and Charity. In the adjoining bedroom is another mantelpiece of oak, and the fireplace is lined with old Dutch tiles. Behind the wainscoting of this room, while repairs were being made fifty years ago, an ancient monkish library was found, which, it was thought, was hidden there to escape the Covenanters at the time of the Reformation.

A gentleman on our train to Youghal made the interesting statement that Sir Walter Raleigh was the first patron of Protestant foreign missions. He contributed £100 to start the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Lands. I had never heard of this fact before, but my informant said that it came out at the three hundredth anniversary of the organization of that society which was celebrated in London in 1906.

Until the Congested Districts Board undertook the work, lacemaking was practically confined to the convents. There are two classes of true Irish lace—needle-point, which is made by the needle, and the bobbin lace—the threads of which are twisted around small bobbins of bone, wood, or ivory. Both of these laces are made entirely by hand, which is not true of the Limerick and Carrickmacross laces. Needle-point lace was first introduced into Ireland by the sisters of the Presentation Convent of Youghal, as a means of helping the famine-stricken inhabitants to earn money in the terrible years of 1847-50. It was imitated from Italian models, but has since been much developed and enriched both in design and execution so that it may be considered original. Irish point lace has its individuality as strong as Brussels point.

The Presentation Convent was founded in 1833 by Rev. Mother Mary Magdalene Gould, a wealthy Irish woman, who had lived many years in foreign countries. She was distinguished for her benevolence and love for the poor, and consecrated her life and her property to the education of the children of the poor. When the famine occurred in 1847 she admitted to the convent every child that could be accommodated, and also gave asylum to many widows who were left homeless and destitute. In order to furnish herprotégéssome occupation and and enable them to earn a little for their own support, she decided to teach them the art of lacemaking, which had been carried on for centuries in the convents of Italy. She took some of her own lace, examined the process by which it had been made, unraveled the threads one by one, and put them back again over and over again until she at last succeeded in mastering the intricacies of the construction of needle-point. She next selected the brightest and most deft-fingered children and women in the convent and taught each separately what she herself had learned. Most of the women and girls displayed an aptitude for the work, and after the necessities of the occasion were over and the emergency passed, she had about her many well-trained lacemakers. Some of them developed considerable ingenuity and taste, inventing new designs and easier methods of handling the needle. Other convents throughout Ireland imitated the nuns of Youghal, and the same lace is now made in every part of the island.

Limerick lace is of two kinds, known as the “tambour” and “run lace.” “Tambour” is made on net and the pattern is formed by working with a tambour needle in white or colored thread. “Run lace” is made with an ordinary needle and a more open stitch. Limerick lace is in disfavor at present, owing to the large amount of miserable specimens that have been hawked about the streets of Limerick and forced upon the London markets.

Carrickmacross lace has been made in the neighborhood of that town, in County Monaghan, since the year 1820, when it was brought from Florence by Mrs. Grey-Porter, wife of the rector of the parish church, and introduced among the peasant women as a means of earning a livelihood. It is made upon a foundation of net. There are two varieties. In appliqué the pattern is traced out on fine muslin and sewed down roundthe edges to the net. So far it is not strictly a lace, but rather a sort of embroidery or net. Open spaces, however, are generally provided for, which leaves the effect and which are filled with lace stitches like those of flat point. In Carrickmacross guipure, much the same procedure as in appliqué is adopted, only that instead of the foundation being allowed to remain it is ultimately cut away, the figures of the pattern, which, as in appliqué, are wrought on muslin, being joined to each other by lace stitches known as “brides.” A very interesting and striking development of Carrickmacross lace is found in a combination of appliqué and guipure, the main design being appliqué, while the panels of guipure are introduced into it.

A little to the northward of Cork is the famous Trappist Monastery of Mount Mellery. It was founded here about thirty years ago upon the site of an ancient monastery by Cistercian monks who were expelled from France. They have about seven hundred acres of rich woodland, fertile pastures, and vegetable gardens, with large and comfortable buildings which they erected with their own hands. They maintain two schools, one free for poor children, and another for boarding pupils whose parents pay moderate fees for the instruction. There is a guesthouse in connection with the monastery, where all travelers are welcome to shelter, saint and sinner, Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Gentile, and no questions asked and no bills presented. Any person can have a bed with clean, sweet linen and a hard but comfortable mattress, coffee and rolls for breakfast, cold meat and milk for luncheon, soup and a roast and a tart or pie for dinner, without charge, although there is a box at the door where the guest at his departure is expected to drop a coin, large or small according to his means and disposition. There are limited accommodations for women, which are sparsely but comfortably furnished, and, what is more important, as clean as a Danish dairy—an unusual condition for Ireland.

There are seventy monks who dress in white and maintain perpetual silence, living entirely upon a vegetable diet with water and skimmed milk as their only drink. About twentylay brothers, dressed in brown, do the heavy labor and the menial work about the place. The white monks rise at two o’clock in the morning and spend four hours in the chapel in silent devotion. Then they take a light meal and go to their work in the fields, the gardens, or the schoolroom, where the rule of silence is relaxed only enough to permit of imparting instruction. At six o’clock they have dinner, consisting of vegetable soup, boiled vegetables, bread, and skimmed milk, after which they spend two hours at prayer in the chapel, and retire at nine. This is the only Trappist community in Ireland, but there are two in the United States.

There has been very little trouble with the landlords in County Cork. Perhaps that is due to a considerable degree to the fact that the soil is rich and the harvests are good, and because the farmers are able to get a satisfactory return for their labor and their money. Nearly all the large estates are being broken up, however, and have been purchased by the tenants under the Act of 1903. Very soon County Cork and all the southern section of Ireland will be owned by the men who till the soil. Each farmer will have his own permanent home.

It isn’t far across the southern counties of Ireland and from Cork to Glengariff, the loveliest place in the United Kingdom and one of the loveliest spots on earth, only seventy-five miles. There are two routes. You can go by rail to the little old-fashioned town of Bantry at the head of Bantry Bay, which is the rendezvous of the British fleet and the place of their regular annual maneuvers, and from there by coach around the shore of the bay or by a little steamer across its matchless blue waters; or you can take the more interesting and picturesque route by rail as far as Macroom, and then by coach or carriage over the mountains, through the most picturesque canyon in Ireland and up and down the mountain sides. Glengariff is ’way down in the southwesternmost corner of Ireland, and as a gentleman said the other day in describing its location: “If you go jist one step further, there’ll not be a dry spot to rist yer foot on till you enter the harbor of New York, bedad, or maybe Boston.”

The best route in every respect and one of the most interesting journeys that can be found anywhere is by way of Macroom, and it is such a favorite with tourists that during the summer season there is an almost continuous procession that way. The arrangements for taking care of travelers are perfect, and all you have to do is to buy your tickets and let the attendant look after the rest. The railroad carries you about thirty miles, an hour’s ride from Cork, and there is a good deal of interest to be seen from the car windows on the way. The conductor sticks his head in the window every now and then and warns the passengers what to look out for. There is a castle on one side or a ruined abbey on the other or somesign of the devastation committed by Cromwell and his Covenanters when they were trying to convert the Irish to Protestantism, two or three centuries ago.

I became very skeptical about the Cromwellian ruins. Every time we came across an abandoned limekiln or the roofless walls of some cabin from which a family has been evicted and burned out, they told us that the damage was done by Cromwell’s soldiers. Kate Douglas Wiggin satirizes that situation in “Penelope’s Irish Experiences” by having her party occupy rooms in Irish hotels where Cromwell, in the confusion of his departure, forgot to sweep under the bed.

You can’t convert people from one religion to another by the use of the sword, by burning houses and sacking monasteries, and murdering innocent women and children. That has been clearly demonstrated by the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, by Philip II. in Spain, and by Cromwell in Ireland. It partially restores one’s cheerfulness to be able to realize that such means of evangelization have been abandoned.

There are ruined castles and monasteries all the way from Cork to Glengariff, and nature has done her best to hide the shame and cruelty that are associated with them by the glorious mantles of ivy which cover their crumbling walls. Kilcrea Abbey, founded by Cormac MacCarthy, the king of this country in 1465, for the Franciscan friars, was the burial place of the MacCarthy family, the owners of Blarney Castle for two centuries or more. Several of the tombs are well preserved. A little farther along, at Crookstown, is another of the MacCarthy strongholds called Castlemore, and still farther are the ruins of Lissardagh and Clodagh, where they kept their forces and received the tribute of their dependents as they did at Blarney Castle, near Cork. Those ancient kings had strings of castles through their territories, each one of them in charge of a seneschal, who kept the place with a guard of retainers and received tribute from the peasant farmers of the surrounding country as payment for protection and blackmail. Within the thick walls the loot they brought from battle was stored; their prisoners were held for ransom, and there they entertainedtheir allies and their friends, reveling for days and nights together in the spacious halls. The MacCarthys were energetic citizens and ruled the south shore of Ireland with a despotism that had no parallel in Ireland at the time. But they were as generous to their friends as they were vindictive to their foes.

This country used to abound in fairies, gnomes, koboles, pixies, and all kinds of queer little people, but they are all gone now. Our jarvey, as the driver of a jaunting car is called, insists that they have emigrated to America, but when I asked him where we could find them over there, he confessed that he didn’t know. He had no acquaintance with the place.

There are all kinds of fairies, or rather there used to be in Ireland, friendly and unfriendly, good and bad, and they formerly appeared in a great diversity of form and for a variety of purposes, but they are seldom seen nowadays, even among the ivy-draped ruins of the castles and among the moss-covered rocks where they used to make their homes.

Sidheog is a friendly fairy and Sidhean and Sheeaun are places where fairies live. Certain hills and forests which were thickly peopled with fairies in the early days can be identified by such names as Shean, Sheaun, and similar variations of the terms that are applied to haunted hills. There are “good people” and “bad people” who invade the privacy of those who dwell in mountain cottages and bring them blessings or treat them badly, as the case may be. At one time they were numerous up in these woods. The best known fairy, however, the busiest of them all, and an odd mixture of merriment, mischief, and malignity, is “Pooka,” who is known in England, in Germany, and other places under the name of “Puck.” Shakespeare describes him as “a merry wanderer of the night,” who boasts that he can “put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.” This capricious goblin is known to every child in the mountains, and stories are told of him in every cabin. Carrig-Peeka, the Pooka’s home in a great rock, can be seen two miles west of Macroom. It overhangs the SullaneRiver near the ruins of one of the MacCarthy castles. This rock is well known as the place where Daniel O’Rourke started on his celebrated voyage to the moon on the back of an eagle, and for generations Pooka made it his headquarters and used to play all kinds of pranks upon the peasants in that neighborhood.

There is a hideous kind of hobgoblin called a dullaghan who can take off and put on his head at will; in fact, people generally see him with that useful member under his arm or absent altogether, and on such an occasion it is well to pass on as quietly as possible without disturbing him. Sometimes giddy and frivolous bands of dullaghans have been seen in graveyards at midnight amusing themselves by flinging their heads at one another and kicking them about like footballs. Down in this neighborhood there is a little lake called Lough Gillagancan, which means “the Lake of the Headless Man,” because they are in the habit of haunting it during the long winter nights and playing their ridiculous games there.

Cleena is the queen of the fairies, and once exercised a powerful spell over the peasants around Glengariff, but she is losing her influence. The national school board is opposed to her. The teachers have disputed her power and authority with such persistence that she cannot exercise them among the present generation as she did among those of the past. It is only among the schoolless communities, far back in the rocky glens along the seashore, where the people cannot read or write and do not have candles to illuminate their lonely cabins during the long winter nights, that she is remembered at all. In more thickly settled parts of the country where the national schools stand at three-mile intervals, the children even scoff at her and ridicule her and say that she may play all the pranks she likes with them and welcome. Cleena has been a favorite of the Irish poets for ages, and appears in many old-fashioned love stories.

“God grant ’t is not Cleena, the queen that pursues me;While I dream of dark groves and O’Donavan’s daughter.”

“God grant ’t is not Cleena, the queen that pursues me;

While I dream of dark groves and O’Donavan’s daughter.”

Cleena often did a kindly act, and when Dooling O’Hartigan, the bosom friend of Murrough, the eldest son and heir apparent of Brian Boru, was on his way to the battle of Clontarf, she met him and tried to persuade him to stay out of the fight. But nothing could induce him to abandon his friends in such an emergency, particularly as the aged king had given Murrough the command of the army that day. Having failed to persuade him, Cleena placed a magic cloak around O’Hartigan and warned him solemnly that he would certainly be slain if he threw it off. He fought fiercely all day by the side of his friend and made fearful havoc among the Danes. The field was strewn with the bodies of the men he slew, and Murrough, observing the slaughter, but being unable to recognize the cause of it, cried out:

“I hear the blows of O’Hartigan, but I cannot see him!”

In order to console and encourage his friend, O’Hartigan threw off the cloak that made him invisible. The moment he stood unprotected an arrow from the bow of a Dane smote him in the temple, and he died for neglecting Cleena’s words of warning.

It is only occasionally that the fairies interfere with people nowadays. Then it is to make trouble for innocent men who are out later than they should be and get bewildered in their brains or suffer other lapses that they are not responsible for. A friend of mine told an amusing story of his coachman, who frequently suffered from the mischievousness of a fairy not long ago, and explained in the morning:

“If yer honor will belave me, it’s the most mystarious thing that ever happened to a mortal man. I was coming p’aceably home along the roadside when I saw the strangest sight that mortal eyes ever looked upon, an’ the ground seemed to go away from me and funny little cr’atures were dancing from one side of the road to the other. Thin all at once I fell down, and I didn’t know another thing until I picked myself up from out of the ditch in the morning.

“Dhrinking, was it, ye say; divil a bit did I taste a dropat all, at all, that day, barring a few glasses I had wid me frinds on the way home.”

Macroom is a pretty village with a castle, of which Admiral Penn, father of the founder of Pennsylvania, was once in command, and where William Penn is said to have been born. The venerable old pile was built originally in the time of King John, more than seven hundred years ago, has been burned down no less than four times, and was besieged and plundered in the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries again and again. It now belongs to Lord Ardilaun, one of the sons of Benjamin Guinness, the greatest brewer in the world, who has erected a beautiful modern residence near by and occasionally occupies it. Lord Ardilaun owns so many castles that he would find it difficult to live in all of them the same year. He would be kept moving about like a commercial traveler. He has a beautiful estate on one side of Glengariff and a shooting lodge on the other, and his favorite residence is a stately château near Muckross Abbey on the shores of the Lakes of Killarney. He has a shooting lodge at Ashford, and another at Ross Hill in Central Ireland, a fishing lodge at Kylemon Pass in Connemara, and city residences on Stephens Green, Dublin, and at No. 11 Carleton House Terrace, London.

The traveler bound for Glengariff changes from the railway train to an open coach at the railway station of Macroom. The coach is built for mountain travel, strong and heavy, and the seats, which extend from side to side, accommodate four people of ordinary dimensions. The handbags are stowed away under the seats and in a cavern which opens from the rear. A couple of steamer trunks can be taken along also. There is a roof to the stage, which is very much needed to keep off the rain, and it can be rolled up into a ridge in the middle of the supporting hoops in the sunshine.

Lake Gougane-Barra, County Cork

The driver of a stage in Ireland doesn’t flourish and crack his whip like the gentlemen who pursue that line of business in Montana and Colorado. He is usually a talkative chap, and tells interesting stories with a deep, rich brogue and quaint wit that is charming, but he drives quietly through the villagesand pulls up at his destination as modestly as if he were on a cart instead of a coach full of tourists. In the Rocky Mountains the stage driver always “shows off” at the end of his journey, but he never tries to do anything of that sort in Ireland.

The road follows along the banks of the Sullane River until it reaches a string of lakes called Inchageela, which are dotted with lovely little islands, and are said to be full of fish. There is not a tree to be seen, but the ground is covered with a rich, thick, velvet turf, and myriads of wild flowers of all colors and all varieties—a crazy quilt of bloom. No one ever imagined that there could be so many wild flowers or such beautiful ones.

The little town of Inchageela is the lunch station, where we were served with a wholesome meal of roast mutton, potatoes, lettuce, and gooseberry tart that tasted as good as anything I ever had at the Waldorf, and the buxom, red-faced landlady gave us a hearty, cordial blessing as we climbed back into our seats to continue the journey. We passed several ruined castles, some of them near the roadside and the others picturesquely situated on the mountain slopes among the rocks. They all once belonged to the MacCarthys, who were kings in this country until they lost their power by foolish fighting, and to-day I have been assured that not one foot of sod in the County of Cork or in the County of Kerry is owned by a man of that name or clan.

After a while we turned from the main road at a little village called Carrinacurrah, which is hardly as big as its name, and slowly climbed a picturesque hill to the mystic lake of Gougane-Barra, and stopped to rest the horses and ourselves at a neatly kept inn. As it was a holiday, all the people in the neighborhood were gathered at Cronin’s Inn when the two coachloads of passengers drove in from Macroom, and several of them accompanied us across to Gougane Island and told us the history of that sacred place. There was an old man with bog-oak walking sticks to sell, and boys with post cards, for there isn’t a spot in Ireland that hasn’t been photographed and transferred to a post card in hideous colors. Mr. Benjamin Shorten, a man of importance in the community, had hailed the coach when it passed his house, and was therefore not only an entertainer but a fellow-passenger of the strangers within his gate. And it was a strange story that he told us of the restoration of the ruins and the erection, by Mr. John R. Walsh of Chicago, in memory of his parents, of the little shrine on the site of St. Fin-Barre’s oratory which had been blessed by St. Patrick fourteen hundred years ago.

Mr. Walsh could not have chosen a more beautiful or a more appropriate place for a memorial to his parents, and the work has been well done. It is a sacred as well as a most romantic spot. Gougane-Barra is what they call a “tarn,” a jagged glen in the mountains nearly a mile long and about a quarter of a mile wide, almost entirely filled with water like a Norwegian fiord and entirely inclosed with walls of rock rising to a height of nearly eighteen hundred feet. The principal peaks are called Conicar (1,886 feet), Bealick (1,762 feet), and Foilasteokeen (1,698 feet). The cliffs cast a deep shadow over the water and add to the solemnity and mystery with which the place has been invested from its association with the patron saint of the city of Cork and one of the earliest apostles in Ireland. After heavy rains each mountain side becomes a foaming cataract, and the natives say that the sound of the water pouring down the rocks may be heard for miles. The lake is very deep and is the source of the River Lee, which runs sixty-five miles from here to the Bay of Cork.

The island is approached by a narrow, artificial causeway, at the head of which is an arched tomb built into the side of the mountain, in which Father Mahoney, a recluse, was buried in 1728. He was the last of the monks to live in the little abbey. He is regarded by the peasants as next to St. Fin-Barre in holiness, and Fin-Barre is ranked next to St. Patrick, only a little below him in their veneration. When the old women passed Father Mahoney’s tomb they knelt and kissed it and said their prayers.

Chapel Erected by Mr. John R. Walsh of Chicago on the Island of Gougane-Barra

The ruins of St. Fin-Barre’s hermitage, which has beencarefully restored, consist of a quadrangle of stone about thirty-six feet square, and there are eight cells with arched entrances in which the monks used to live. Over the entrance to each cell are modern plaster casts of the stations of the cross, and in the center, upon a pyramid of five steps, a plain wooden cross has been erected.

The little chapel erected by Mr. Walsh upon the foundation of St. Fin-Barre’s Oratory is thirty-six feet long by fourteen feet broad with a simple little altar and an altar rail. The remainder of the space is filled with wooden seats. There is no organ or other musical instrument, and the services that are held there every third Sunday in the month by an itinerant priest are of the simplest order. But the celebration of the anniversary of the saint on the 24th of September brings the peasants from all the country around and is attended with great solemnity. The people carry their rations with them, and camp upon the shore of the lake and along the roadway that leads down from the tarn. When we were there in June the entire island was a mass of rhododendrons in the fullness of their purple glory. If you searched the world over you could not find a more beautiful abode for a saint in peace and retirement. It has been the theme of many poems, and a native bard has painted with graphic lines the scene that is hallowed by so many pious associations and surrounded with so much natural beauty.

It is one of the holiest places in Ireland, and the consecrated waters of a spring called St. Fin-Barre’s Well, which has been carefully walled in, have the power to heal all kinds of diseases except those that have been caused by dissipation. At the annual festival of St. Fin-Barre the peasants bring their sick children and even their ailing animals to be cured. And the neighboring bushes that surround the well and the wooden crosses that have been erected there in recognition of relief are hung with votive offerings. A penitent who comes to be cleansed of his sins may find full instructions engraven upon a large slab of brown stone. It is said to be more than two hundred years old, but records the good deeds of Rev. DennisMahoney, who died in 1728. It is necessary to say five “aves” and five “paters” at the first station of the cross within the ruins, and add five more at each as they are passed, making forty “aves” and forty “paters” at the last cell.

Of course, there is a legend connected with the well—there always is—and in this case St. Patrick, after banishing the reptiles from the country, overlooked one hideous snake. It crawled into the Well of Gougane to escape him, and it created serious depredation in the surrounding country, coming out at night to attack the flocks of sheep and the herds of goats and cattle, until St. Patrick came here and drove it out by sprinkling the well with holy water. “The ould enemy” vanished and has never since ventured to leave his loathsome slime upon the green banks of the island. In order to prevent his return St. Patrick sent St. Fin-Barre here to watch the well and exterminate the monster if it came again. But it has not reappeared, and as a token of gratitude St. Fin-Barre erected the Cathedral of Cork and founded a great monastery beside it, leaving several devoted priests here in his hermitage to keep watch of things.

The driver gave us an hour to see this lovely and sacred place, and then we returned to the main road, resumed our journey, and soon entered the Pass of Keimaneigh, which divides these savage mountains in twain and permits people to pass from the former kingdom of the MacCarthy clan to that of the outlawed O’Sullivans. The mountains were split by some terrible cataclysm ages ago, but Nature has done what she could to heal the wound. The almost perpendicular walls were clothed with wild ivy, arbutus, hawthorn, laburnum, rhododendron, and other trees and shrubs, which were glorious in color and light up the gloom of the gorge with wonderful beauty. We have many grander canyons in the Rocky Mountains, and several of the fiords on the Norwegian coast are grander and inclosed by loftier peaks and more precipitous walls, but none of them that I have seen are anywhere near as beautiful.

The Pass of Keimaneigh Through the Mountains Between Cork and Glengariff

Nor do I remember a panorama where the fiercer and thegentler moods of nature are expressed in such striking contrast. The eagles and hawks that soar in the narrow skyline, directly above our heads, and encircle the rugged and irregular peaks that rise on either side, look down upon an exhibition of wild flowers that was never surpassed, and the colors seem to be more brilliant than elsewhere.

People always ask, How did they come there?—these blotches of scarlet and purple and pink and blue and gold against the dark gray surface of the rock. The wind was the landscape gardener here, and a wonderful artist he is. The dust that gradually accumulated in the crevices and scars of this mountain wall was carried, storm by storm, from some dry spot, upon the wings of the wind. And the same messenger carried the seeds, perhaps for many miles, and dropped them in the nest that he had already provided, where the sun and the rain could reach them and they could germinate and their souls could awaken. The germs of life that lay hidden in their tiny cells then reached out for air and began to grow and bloom and illuminate this stern and gloomy canyon with their smiles. As the journey continues the gorge grows wilder, the walls higher, and the vegetation less, except in the turf beside the roadway, where the violet, the forget-me-not, the belated shamrock, and that other modest little flower called “London Pride,” sing a silent song of praise to Heaven.

They call Glengariff “the Madeira of Great Britain,” because its climate varies only a few degrees, winter and summer, and is about the same as that of the Madeira Islands, without a trace of frost or snow except up among the rugged mountains that protect it from the cold winds and make it an ideal resort for those who seek health, rest, or solitude. The name signifies “a rough glen,” and that describes it exactly—a deep cleft in the mountains, a gash which some irresistible glacier made ages ago in the rugged rocks, about three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide, which terminates upon an exquisite little sheet of water, a branch of the Bay of Bantry, on the far southwestern coast of Ireland. The glen is filled with wonderful trees and wonderful flowers,which seem to bloom perennially. The surrounding mountains are of the wildest description, being naked moorlands covered with heather and gorse and huge gray bowlders and peaks which project into the air. Among them, it is said, there are no less than 365 little lakes, that number having suggested to the pious peasants, who attribute everything to apostolic interposition, that some holy saint prayed effectually for a separate one to supply water for each day of the year. The rocks reach far away to the westward and down into the cold blue of an uneasy ocean, which beats impetuously upon the outer walls, but the water is seldom disturbed by more than a ripple within the bay. For a combination of ocean, mountains, lakes, rocks, waterfalls, forests, and flowers I have never seen the like, and any one can easily understand why Glengariff is called the most beautiful spot in Ireland.

The town of Glengariff is composed of fourteen houses, six saloons, a post office, a vine-covered headquarters for the constabulary, which looks altogether too picturesque and beautiful for such a practical purpose, a Catholic church, brand new and built with money from America, an old church where the Catholics formerly worshiped, now used as a school for teaching lace making, a pretty little Church of Ireland chapel, an ivy-clad rectory adjoining, and several comfortable hotels. There are four hundred inhabitants in the parish, mostly farmers, scattered within the glen and upon the surrounding rocks. They are mostly Harringtons, Sullivans, Caseys, and O’Sheas, and are nearly all related. All the population are Roman Catholics, except twelve families who belong to the Church of Ireland and are ministered to by the Rev. Mr. Harvey, who is paid a salary of £200 a year and is given a picturesque old manse in the midst of one of the loveliest gardens and groves you can imagine.

Eccles Hotel has been famous for more than a century. You will find a flattering account of it in Mrs. Hall’s book on Ireland, published in the ’50s. And, by the way, that work contains a charming description of the country, although so much in detail that it fills three ponderous volumes that weighfour or five pounds each. There have been many changes since the book was written, but they concern only the people and their customs. Its historical references, its legends, and descriptions of scenery hold good to-day.

The hotel, not the book, is a rambling, irregular structure with many gables and many chimneys, and is almost completely covered with a lustrous robe of English ivy. It sits at the foot of the glen where the rocks and the ocean meet and the prospect from the front windows is unsurpassed. The bay is enclosed like a wall with mighty mountains. Titanic rocks have rolled down into the water in some great cataclysm and now lie in picturesque shapes, here and there, as a tasteful artist would have arranged them, clad in vivid green. The outlines of the bay are irregular. Little arms of water reach up among the rocks that inclose it, and, when the tide goes out, it discloses deep beds of wondrous seaweed, curious vegetable and animal forms that Nature in her fantastic moods has designed in her studio under the waters of the sea. In the foreground at the right is a landing place for the little steamer that comes over from Bantry twice a day, and beyond it, rising from a rocky eminence, are the ruins of an ancient castle with a tower intact that was once a stronghold of the O’Sullivans, when they were kings in these parts. Now it belongs to the estate of the late Earl of Bantry.

On the other side of the bay a long point of land protrudes across the horizon, and there it was that the French troops intended to land under Wolfe Tone and General Hoche on Dec. 26, 1796. There were 17 ships of the line, 13 frigates, 5 corvettes, 2 gunboats, and 6 transports, with about 14,000 men and 45,000 stands of arms, and it was expected that the news of their landing would be the signal for an uprising of the Irish people. Simon White, who lived near the point where the landing was to be made, was a man of quick movements and energy, and as soon as the fleet was sighted he saddled his horse and rode direct to Cork—sixty-five miles—in half a dozen hours to notify the military commander and other authorities of the invasion. For that the king made him theEarl of Bantry and gave him a strip of land around the bay twenty-two miles on one side and twenty-two miles on the other, stretching back into the mountains an average of six miles. The title has lasted through three generations, but has expired because the third Earl of Bantry left no son to wear it when he died a few years ago.

Providence intervened, however, on the side of the English, and averted what might have been a disastrous struggle with France, with Ireland as the battlefield, as well as a civil war for the overthrow of British authority. A storm came up and dispersed the fleet. When the wind subsided, a dense fog overspread Bantry Bay and the ocean. When the air cleared the ships were so scattered that each sailed away on its own account during the next fortnight, and one by one they returned to the harbors of France. General Hoche, in theFraternitie, finally reached Rochelle, after several narrow escapes, with his ship in a sinking condition. Several of the largest ships went upon the rocks, and about eighteen hundred sailors and soldiers perished. No Frenchman trod upon Irish soil with the exception of a lieutenant and seven seamen, who were sent out in a small boat from one of the ships during the fog to reconnoiter, and, running aground, were captured by James O’Sullivan.

Bantry Bay is a magnificent inlet twenty-one miles long, and with an average breadth of four miles and an average depth of sixty fathoms, without a shoal or sandbank or any other peril to navigation. It is completely sheltered from the weather and is considered the finest harbor in Ireland. It is the rendezvous of the British North Atlantic fleet and the fleet of the channel, which come here regularly to practice maneuvers, to correct their compasses and regulate their range finders and do light repairs. The only town on the bay is a village of the same name, which has been described as a seaport without trade, a harbor without shipping, and a fishery without a market. There is a convent, a monastery, and a factory for the manufacture of Irish tweeds.

Glengariff Bridge

Adjoining the village is Bantry House, a stately mansionsurrounded by a beautiful lawn and grove, which was the residence of the late Earl of Bantry, and was inherited by his nephew, Leigh White. Another nephew, Simon White, occupies the ancient Glengariff Castle, which is nearer the head of the bay—a large and gloomy-looking structure almost entirely hidden by the surrounding trees. Thirty-one thousand acres of land around the bay was inherited by these two young men, but it is very poor land. Three-fourths of it is bare rock, and the entire population upon their holdings is only about four hundred men, women, and children. A daughter of the late Earl of Bantry married Lord Ardilaun, who was Arthur Edward Guinness, a son of the great brewer of Dublin and probably the richest man in Ireland. The hotel is inclosed in a beautiful hedge of fuchsias, which flourish in this climate, and are commonly used for hedges. The grounds of the hotel extend over two hundred and fifty acres, mostly dense forest, with a beautiful garden of twelve acres or more. All the vegetables, poultry, eggs, and other produce are raised on the place, and the milk and cream and butter come from a private herd of cows, which is a great luxury.

There is splendid fishing, both in the bay and in two small lakes, one hour’s walk from the hotel, also boating, swimming, and any number of beautiful walks and drives through the woods and along the mountain roads. The only antiquity in the immediate neighborhood is a picturesque ruin called Cromwell’s bridge. While the grim old Covenanter was passing up the glen with an escort to visit the O’Sullivans, citizens of Glengariff who had heard of the devastation he had created elsewhere tore down a bridge over a mountain gorge, hoping that it would turn him back. But after much trouble he and his men succeeded in crossing the canyon into the village, and there he summoned the inhabitants and told them that if they did not restore the bridge by the time he returned from his visit he would hang a man for every hour’s delay. The bridge was ready for him, “fur they knew the auld villain would kape his word.”

The surrounding country is sparsely settled by a hardy, stubborn race, who fish in the winter and farm in the summer, like the people who live on the bleak New England coast. The children herd cattle, sheep, and goats upon the mountain sides; the pigs and the poultry share the ancient stone hovels occupied by their owners; the women cultivate a little spot of soil wherever they can find it in the crevices among the rocks, raising a few potatoes and cabbages, and look after the chickens and the babies. Scattered over the mountain side and reached by steep but perfect roads, are the roofless walls of what once were the homes of neighbors who have emigrated to America. The fate of those who remained seemed hopeless until recently, but the benevolent purposes of the government are brightening the lives and improving the condition of many of them. At Glengariff I got my first chance to observe the work of the Congested Districts Board through which the government is trying to relieve the distress of the poor and make life worth living for those wretched but courageous souls who dwell always in the mists of the mountains and among the moorlands and the peat bogs on the west coast of Ireland. They are the poorest, the least nourished, and the most helpless portion of the population. They are scattered widely. The arable soil is so scarce that they cannot live in communities and survive. Here and there among the rocks, where the kindly winds have dropped grains of earth during the ages, they are cultivating little patches of potatoes and cabbage. They follow a few cows and goats that nibble at the blades of grass that grow in the cracks of the rock and keep a few chickens, which share with them the roof shelter of a leaky, straw-thatched cabin built of rough stone and with a mud floor.

The cabins are as comfortless as one can imagine, but they are no worse than thousands that may be found in our southern States, in the mountains of Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia. Thousands of “crackers” in Georgia have no better homes and no more consolations in life, but their cabins are more neatly kept and are not situated among suchfilthy and loathsome surroundings as those of the poor “bog-trotters” of Ireland.

The interior of the cabins is quite as repulsive as the exterior. The chickens run in and out with the children, and they “kape the pig in the parlor” because that is the only room in the house and there is no other pen. The inevitable baby—you never enter a cabin without finding one—is always in its mother’s arms and another is generally clinging to her skirts, while two or three more are playing in the filth around the door. There is only one room, where they all sleep, the elder ones upon rough benches, covered with pallets of straw, and the younger ones on the floor—grandparents, parents, children, pigs, and chickens—young and old, both sexes, lying side by side, with whatever covering their scanty earnings enable them to provide. There are no sheets or mattresses; no pillows, only comfortables that have been used for generations, and tattered blankets that are never washed. There is no furniture but a table and two or three stools. There are shelves, and a few nails and hooks driven into the walls. There is no stove, but a peat fire under the chimney where the mother cooks in pans and kettles when the weather is stormy and uses a rock outside for a kitchen when it doesn’t rain or blow. There are few dishes, mostly broken china, and the covers of tin cans. The walls are windowless; there is no light but that which comes through the door, and during the long winter nights, when, in this latitude, it becomes dark at four o’clock, the family hibernate in the darkness because candles are beyond their means and burning peat gives no light. You can understand why so many of these poor wretches lose their wits. The insane asylums of Ireland are filled with unfortunates from this coast, most of them are hereditary and chronic cases caused by melancholia, nervousness, and starvation. I have been trying in vain to find out how they spend their time during the long winter evenings, but have been unable to get any satisfactory information on that point.

Notwithstanding these conditions a stranger always receives a polite and a cordial welcome and usually an invitation to comein and rest and drink a cup of milk. There is no apology for poverty, or the appearance of things; there is no obsequiousness and no insolence, but a dignified, hearty handclasp at the coming and at the going and a cheerful invitation to call again. The Children of the Mist are invariably well behaved and polite. Although their clothes are ragged and their bodies are filthy with dirt, they have the same manners you would expect among the nobility. They are always obedient, deferential, and unselfish. They are kind and attentive to their younger brothers and sisters, and show perfect respect to their parents and elders. We have seen them in the cabins, in the fields, and in the schools. I have asked everybody where they get their manners, and who teaches them deportment in this barren wilderness of filth and bad smells. I asked Miss Walshe, the medical officer of the district, who goes from cabin to cabin as an angel of healing; I asked Miss O’Donnell, who has charge of the lace school; I asked the head constable at the police station; I asked the school-teachers and others, and they all say that the politeness of the Irish peasants, like their pride, is inborn and final proof that they are the descendants of kings. This pride is a strange thing, and it is most surprising. Every woman you find in a soiled and ragged dress in a wretched cabin receives you as her equal and talks with dignity and without restraint, and Mr. Duke, manager of the Eccles Hotel, told me this morning of a mountain peasant whose raggedness aroused his sympathy, but who would not accept a suit of clothes.

Miss O’Donnell, the lace teacher, and Miss Walshe, the nurse, told us that the pretty young women we saw in the lace school and the boys and girls we saw in the national school, all come from such cabins as I have described. Some of the blue-eyed, bare-footed urchins have complexions that society belles would give their souls for, and long, beautiful coal-black hair, yet they sleep on a mud floor with pigs and chickens, and many of them walk three and four miles and back for the privilege of attending school. With a little training these children make excellent servants, faithful, obedient, and tactful, andalmost without exception they go to mass and confession regularly, and they have a high standard of morals and a conscientious devotion to duty. Although it costs as much to get married as it does to buy a ticket to America, there are no unmarried people living together here; illegitimate births are extremely rare and chastity is the commonest of virtues.

There is no compulsory education law, but the priests drive the children to school until they are fourteen and will not confirm them until they have passed a certain grade. A gentle, soft-voiced woman in a rude cabin in the mountain side told us the other day that her greatest trouble was that her daughter had been kept from school by sickness and she was afraid that the priest would not confirm her because she was so far behind the other girls in her lessons.

The same rule applies to the lace school which has been established by the government through the Congested Districts Board in the old building used by the Catholic church before the new one was erected. The government pays a teacher and advances the material. The girls get the price their lacework brings when sold in the shops of London or Dublin or at the Eccles Hotel here at Glengariff. Miss O’Donnell tells me that Mrs. Duke, the wife of the manager of the hotel, is their best sales agent, and a stock of samples is always kept where the guests can see them. Fifty-one girls are now attending the school, and some of them walk seven miles and back every day. Father Harrington will not allow them to attend the lace school until after they are confirmed, and it is a great inducement to join the church because they are able to earn forty, fifty, and some of them sixty pounds a year, which secures them better clothes, better food, and some comforts for their families. Last year this little school sold nearly three thousand dollars’ worth of lace, and the money was divided among fifty-one girls who made it.

Every young person who can get money enough goes to America. And if it were not for the money they send back here many of their parents and younger brothers and sisters would starve. A gentleman who handles the postal orders in one ofthe most forlorn and wretched villages of Ireland told me that the Christmas gifts of money that came from America kept many a family in food during the winter. It is the ambition of every young man and woman to go to the United States, and only the lack of steamship fare keeps them in Ireland. A sturdy lad of eighteen who guided us across the moor to the roadway this morning told me confidentially that he was going to Arizona as soon as his uncle, who was doing very well out there, was able to send him the price. He asked many questions about that part of the country. His uncle is working in a gold mine near Tombstone and is “earning more than a pound a day, steady, six days in the week, and they pay him double wages if he works on Sunday.” To a lad whose life is so barren and whose horizon is so narrow and who sees his father and his neighbors trying to wrest a scanty sustenance partly from the sea and partly from the land, and who scarcely catch enough fish or raise enough potatoes to feed the mouths of their own families, a pound a day looks like the income of an earl.

The Catholic church at Glengariff is a brand new building of stone, and looks large enough for ten times the population of this parish, which has only about four hundred souls, men, women, and children. It was built with American money raised by Father Brown, the late priest, who went to Brooklyn, Boston, and several other cities of the United States, hunted up the relatives of the people who live here and those who went from these parts, and obtained £3,000. He was a good man and took a great interest in the temporal as well as the spiritual welfare of his people. Since his death Father Harrington has succeeded him and serves four churches in a radius of seventeen miles.

We attended mass on Sunday. The church was crowded. All the aisles were filled with kneeling worshipers, up to the very feet of the altar and in the vestibule, or the steps, and around outside were forty or fifty men and women kneeling reverently upon the sod, although they couldn’t hear the voice of the priest. One of the men told me that he believed everyperson in the parish was present and that they always came unless they were too ill to move, that no storm could stop them. As a rule they came from mountain cabins five and six miles away, in carts and on foot, and some of them carried children in their arms the entire distance. Notwithstanding their poverty they were better dressed than the working people of Dublin. Their clothes were neat and well brushed and mended. However ragged the garments they wear on week days may be, they always have a decent suit to wear to the house of God. The solemnity of the service was very impressive. To these people the church is the gate of heaven. Its decorations and ceremonies appeal to their imagination, to their senses of color and sound, and the mystic rites sink into their souls.

Although there are six saloons for a parish of four hundred people the chief constable tells me there is very little drinking or disorder, and practically no crime. He hasn’t had a case of robbery for a year, and except upon convivial occasions like weddings and wakes the people are very orderly. Most of the saloons, he tells me, sell very little liquor, and some of their licenses run back for years, being renewed annually to the same family for generations. A liquor license in Ireland cannot be taken away except for serious reasons, as long as the annual fee is paid. They can be sold or transferred, but if they lapse they are cancelled.

In a neat stone cottage, surrounded by a well kept garden, among the rocky mountain sides that overlook Bantry Bay, lives Lacia Walshe, strong in body, strong in mind, and strong of purpose. She goes among the wretched hovels in this locality attending maternity cases which occur with amazing frequency, for the poorer the family the more children is the rule. Miss Walshe does not give her entire attention to midwifery, however, but treats every case of illness that comes within her ken, from sore fingers to delirium tremens. That is not a figure of speech, but an actual fact, for many a time at midnight has she been called from her cottage to some miserable stone hovel in the mountains to quiet with opiates a drunken ruffian who is haunted with reptiles and raving in his dreams.Miss Walshe belongs to the poor, and is kept here by a society with a name of fifteen words—“Lady Dudley’s Scheme for the Establishment of District Nurses in the Poorest Parts of Ireland.” She wears a badge the shape of a heart supporting a crown and in the center is a shamrock leaf encircled with the words of Another One who went about doing good as she does: “By love serve one another.”

The Countess of Dudley organized this work in 1903, beginning with two nurses in Geesala and Bealadangan, County Galway. And they did so much good that the number has now been increased to fifteen and they are located at as many places in the poorest districts of Ireland, where there are no physicians and where the people are too poor and the population too scattered to support a doctor if one could be induced to go there.

The most distressing cases are those of confinement in cabins of only one room, into which sometimes six, eight, and ten men, women, and children are crowded, sleeping upon the floor. We went into a hut of only one room, not more than twelve by fourteen feet in size, which is occupied at night by nine persons,—father and mother, and grandmother and six children, the oldest being eighteen years of age. We visited another hut where there were eight children living, and were told of one where there were seventeen, the births of most of them not more than a year apart. To relieve conditions that may be easily imagined, Lady Dudley’s society with the long name was formed, and is now doing an immense amount of good. Fifteen courageous and conscientious women are comfortably placed in localities where their services are most needed, at a cost of not more than a thousand dollars per year each, which includes a bicycle, the most convenient means of locomotion they can find, and an allowance for the hire of horses and jaunting cars when they can be obtained. Because it is impossible to find lodging and boarding places, it has been necessary to build cottages for the nurses, and in some cases the demands upon them are so great that they are allowed to employ assistance. They are equipped with surgical implements and medical stores. Each of the nurses has taken acourse in surgery for emergency cases for they are frequently called upon to set bones and dress wounds and even to perform operations. They are also furnished with baby clothes, old linen, warm garments, stores of condensed milk and beef extract, and other delicacies, and although Florence Nightingale relieved thousands, her work did not compare in peril or privation or fatigue with the almost daily experience of some of these noble women.

The big stages that cross the mountains from Glengariff to Killarney are chiefly loaded with Americans. It is singular how few other nationalities are represented in the passenger traffic. The morning we crossed there were four great vehicles carrying twenty-four persons each, and every passenger, except one German bridal couple and a funny acting Englishman, was from the United States. In our coach were representatives from Cincinnati, Washington, St. Louis, Omaha, Texas, and Minnesota, and I suppose other sections were equally represented upon the three other coaches. Everybody who comes to Ireland takes this ride because it offers the grandest scenery and one of the most delightful experiences that tourists can enjoy. The coach begins to climb slowly through the beautiful glen as soon as it leaves the Eccles Hotel and continues climbing, up and up, for six miles through a dense forest of glowing green, until it emerges into a wilderness of rock and moorland, wild, picturesque, and almost entirely uninhabited. There is very little vegetation, only a few streaks and bunches of grass that grow along the cracks in the rocky surface, or in wind-carried soil that has been caught in crevices. It is one of the wildest places you can imagine, and as we go upward it becomes more so. The stage winds around the brow of a mountain that seems a solid mass of stone, and as far as one can see there is nothing else in the universe except a ribbon of silver that winds at the foot of the slope where we left a river when we began the journey. One has the sensation of awe that solitude often produces, but it is disturbed by the chatter of the passengers. It is as dreary and desolate and lonesome a place as the world contains.

This is a comparatively new road. It was not built until 1838, but, like all the roads of Ireland, it is solid and perfect and made to last forever. The old road, and the principal line of communication between the counties of Cork and Kerry for centuries, ran along the slope of Hungry Mountain, so called because it is so devoid of vegetation that a goat would have to take his luncheon if he went up there. And from there it crossed to the mountain of the “Priest’s Leap,” which was named from a legend that grows out of persecution of the Catholics in Cromwell’s time. The driver told it in this way:

“Ye see, yer honor, in Cromwell’s time there was a bounty of five pun’ fer the head of a wolf and five pun’ for the head of a priest; an’ a dale of money was made o’ both o’ ’em. Well, bedad, one foine day a priest was ridin’ over the hill, whin the Tories caught sight o’ him (we called thim Tories in those days, the blaggards that did be huntin’ o’ the priests), and them that purshued him were jist to lay their bloody hands upon his blessed robe, whin he prayed to St. Fiachna. The blessed saint heard him, and the donkey he was ridin’ gave a lape siven miles from one mountain to the ither, and yees can see the marks of the baste’s hoofs in the solid rock to this day.”

It takes but little encouragement and a minimum of material to supply legends in this desolate and weird region, where every sound seems unnatural and the trembling of a leaf causes the nerves to tingle. The road resembles Brünig Pass in Switzerland more than any other that I have seen, with the Lakes of Killarney corresponding to Lake Lucerne, but it is less civilized and there are very few human habitations.

The coach keeps climbing until we come to the grand divide, 1,233 feet above the sea, where the passage from the “Kingdom of Cork” to the “Kingdom of Kerry,” as once they were called, is made through a tunnel about six hundred feet long and two smaller ones that are cut through the peak of the Esk Mountain. Until these tunnels were built travelers were carried over the rocks to the other end of the road on the backs of men. The country improves a little after the divide iscrossed, and there is a gradual descent into a rather good grazing country which belongs to the Marquis of Lansdowne, but even here it is a good deal of a job for a cow to make a living, and there is a proverb that “A Kerry cow never looks up at a passing stranger for fear it will lose the bite.”

The Earl of Lansdowne, who has been governor-general of Canada, governor-general of India, lord of the treasury, secretary of war, minister of foreign affairs, and has held other important offices in the British cabinet, is one of the largest landowners in Ireland, although he spends very little of his time there. He has a long list of Irish titles inherited from his ancestors. In addition to being Earl Wycombe, Earl of Kerry, and Earl of Shelburne, he is Viscount Clanmaurice, Viscount Fitzmorris, Baron of Lixnaw, Baron of Dunkerron, and Viscount of Calstone, and his eldest son is the Earl of Kerry. He traces his lineage to Maurice Fitzgerald, who came over with Strongbow, who also was the ancestor of the earls of Kildare and the Duke of Leinster. The Lansdowne family have intermarried with the Leinsters, the MacCarthys, the Desmonds, the Ormondes, and other of the great families of Ireland, and, near or far, the marquis can claim relationship with nearly all the Irish nobility.

Occasionally we saw a stone cabin in the far distance, from which a pale stream of smoke was arising, but until noonday, when we dropped into the valley and approached the little village of Kenmare, there was scarcely a human habitation. At Kenmare is an attractive hotel, at which a bountiful lunch is served for two shillings, and a little time is given the passengers to rest. Those who wish to do so can take a railway train here and run over to Killarney in three-quarters of an hour, but they will lose the most attractive part of the ride and some of the sublimest scenery in Ireland. The stage commences to climb again shortly after we leave Kenmare, and crawls along the mountain sides between the rocks and the heather all the afternoon. This country was fought over again and again ages ago. The mountain range was a sort of barrier between the warlike clans of MacCarthy and O’Sullivan, whomet upon its rocky slopes and slew each other for any pretext, less for reason than for the love of fighting.

The war cries of all the clans of southern Ireland, however, have been heard upon these rocks. “Shannied-Aboo” was the cry of the earls of Desmond; “Crom-Aboo” was the cry of the Geraldines, and the Duke of Leinster has it for the motto upon his coat of arms. The word “aboo” is the Gaelic equivalent to our “hurrah.” The cry of the O’Neills was “Lamh-Dearg-Aboo” (Hurrah for the Red Hand, which was the crest of the O’Neills). The O’Brien cry was “Lamh-Laider-Aboo” (Hurrah for the Strong Hand). The Burkes cried “Galraigh-Aboo” (Hurrah for the Red Englishman). The Fitzpatricks, “Gear-Laider-Aboo” (Hurrah for the Strong and the Sharp).

In the tenth year of the reign of Henry VII. an act passed by parliament prohibited the use of these war cries in the following quaint terms:

“Item; Prayen the commons in this present parliament assembled; that for as much as there has been great variances, malices, debates and comparisons between divers lords and gentlemen of this land, which hath daily increased by seditious means of divers idle, ill-disposed persons, utterly taking upon them to be servants to such lords and gentlemen; for that they would be borne in their said idleness, and their other unlawful demeaning, and nothing for any favor or entirely good love or will that they bear under such lords and gentlemen. Therefore be it enacted and established by the same authority; That no person nor persons, of whatsoever estate, condition or degree he or they be of, take part with any lord or gentleman or uphold any such variances or comparisons in words or deeds as in using these words, Com-Aboo, Butler-Aboo, or other words like, or otherwise contrary to the King’s laws, his crown, his dignity and his peace; but to call on St. George in the name of his sovereign lord, King of England for the time being. And if any person or persons of whatsoever estate, condition or degree he or they be of, do contrary so offending in the premisses, or any of them be taken and committed toward, there to remain without bayle or maiprixe till he or they have made fine after the discretion of the King’s Deputy of Ireland, and the King’s Counsail of the same for the time being.”

The above is a sample of British legislation at the period that act was passed, and that conglomerate of words means simply that enthusiastic Irishmen were forbidden to excite their own emotions and the emotions of others by the cries of their clan and were admonished to use only the war cry of the King of England, who in battle is supposed to appeal to St. George.

The first glimpse of the Lakes of Killarney is obtained as the coach comes around the point of a mountain, and a great green amphitheater with a body of glimmering water at the bottom is suddenly spread out before the passengers. The outlines are fringed with forests and the lakes are studded with tiny islands of different sizes and shapes, but all glow with a vivid color that is not found anywhere else. And this picture is before the vision until the stage plunges into a tunnel of foliage at the foot of the slope, near the ancient ruins of Muckross Abbey, and follows along through a tunnel made of high stone walls and overhanging boughs until the village of Killarney is reached.

Long, long ago there were two giants, the giant of Glengariff and the giant of Killarney, and they were very jealous of each other. They kept up a continual controversy, each boasting of his own strength and valor and daring the other to cross the mountains. Finally, after everybody got tired of these threats and challenges, just as people do nowadays about the talking matches of pugilists, the giant of Killarney decided to go over to Glengariff and see what sort of a person his foe might be. Disguising himself as a monk, he crossed the divide, came down into the village, and was shown the way to his enemy’s cabin. The giant of Glengariff, having heard of the approach of his rival, became very much frightened and hastily made a cradle big enough to hold his enormous carcass, and, lying down in it, ordered his wife to tuck him up with ablanket. And there he lay, pretending to be asleep, when the giant of Killarney approached the door and politely offered the compliments of the season to the lady he saw sitting on a three-legged stool with her knitting in her lap. Her hand was on the edge of a cradle twelve feet long, and she rocked it gently, crooning an old lullaby.

“Hush, you spalpeen, lest ye wake the baby!” and she continued to sing the slumber song in a soft, sweet voice.

“Let’s see your baby,” whispered the giant of Killarney, and she lifted the blanket gently from her husband’s face.

His enemy looked at him in amazement for an instant, and then, begging the good lady’s pardon for the intrusion, started back over the mountain trail as fast as his big legs could take him.

“If the baby’s as big as that, how big must the ould man be!”

Valentine Charles Browne, Earl of Kenmare, owns all of the Lakes of Killarney, all the land that surrounds them, and, according to the grant of James I., Feb. 16, 1622, “all the islands of, or in the same, and the fisheries of said lakes, and the soil and bottom thereof.” He owns all the mountains round about, and one of his stewards told me that they comprised 999,000 acres. He owns the village and everything within it, even the ground on which the railway station stands. All of the hotels occupy his soil under lease, and the insane asylum, with its six hundred patients, and the poorhouse for County Kerry, with four hundred friendless and destitute creatures within its walls.

Sir Valentine Browne, Knight of Totteridge, Lincolnshire, England, was constable, warden, victualler, and treasurer of Berwick in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who sent him with Sir Henry Wallop in 1583 to survey escheated lands in Ireland. He remained on the island, was subsequently sworn of the privy council, represented the County of Sligo in parliament in 1588, and in June of the same year purchased from MacCarthy More, Earl of Glencare, certain lands, manors,etc., in counties Kerry and Cork, and obtained by patents from Queen Elizabeth all the remainder of the Glencare estates. He was afterward quite useful to her majesty, as his posterity have been to her successors.

Sir Valentine Browne, his grandson, was created Baronet of Kenmare in 1622 and received a grant, from which I have quoted, of all the lakes and all the lands and mountains round about them to the very bottom thereof. In 1689 these estates were forfeited by his son because of his fidelity to the unfortunate James II., but were restored to the family in 1720, and in 1724 Valentine, the fifth viscount, was made an earl. The late earl was one of the most devoted councilors and confidential advisers of the late Queen Victoria. She was very much attached to him, and he had charge of her household as vice chamberlain and lord chamberlain from 1872 to 1886, and was one of her lords in waiting until her death. His mother was Gertrude Thynne, a niece of the Earl of Bath, and is still living. The father died in 1905 at the age of eighty, after a useful and honorable career.

The present earl was educated at Eton and Oxford, served for a time in the army, went to Australia as an aid-de-camp to the Governor of Victoria, was state steward to the Earl of Aberdeen during the first term of the latter as lord lieutenant of Ireland, and married Elizabeth Baring, daughter of Lord Revelstoke of the famous firm of Baring Brothers, bankers, London. He has a brother-in-law in New York. The Earl of Kenmare is the most prominent and influential Roman Catholic in the Irish peerage. He is devoted to the interests of the church, is devout in his habits, maintains a private chapel in his London residence and at his mansion here, and a family chaplain in the old-fashioned way. He never leaves his house in the morning without prayers at which all the household and guests are present and the servants are called in from their tasks. There is a cathedral of pretentious architecture upon his grounds in the village to which his father contributed a quarter of a million dollars. It has been built within the last few years by Bishop Mangan of this diocese,and is already being enlarged, although to a stranger it seems to be big enough as it is.

Back to Index Next