"No swordsmen are the Christians!" Oisin cried:"O Patrick! thine is but a little race."Nay, ancient Oisin! they have greatly diedIn battle glory and with warrior grace.Signed with the Cross, they conquered and they fell;Sons of the Cross, they stand:The Prince of Peace loves righteous warfare well,And loves thine armies, O our Holy Land!The Lord of Hosts is with thee, and thine eyesShall see upon thee riseHis glory, and the blessing of His Hand.
"Have you heard Timothy Sullivan's 'Song from the Backwoods'?" he asked me finally, and when I said Inever had, he sang it for the assembled company, and a splendid song I found it. Here it is:
Deep in Canadian woods we've met,From one bright island flown;Great is the land we tread, but yetOur hearts are with our own.And ere we leave this shanty small,While fades the Autumn day,We'll toast Old Ireland!Dear Old Ireland!Ireland, boys, hurray!We've heard her faults a hundred times,The new ones and the old,In songs and sermons, rants and rhymes,Enlarged some fifty-fold.But take them all, the great and small,And this we've got to say:—Here's dear Old Ireland!Good Old Ireland!Ireland, boys, hurray!
As he went on with the song, the others in the shop warmed up to it and joined in the chorus so lustily that a crowd gathered outside; and the shopkeeper got a little nervous, fearing, perhaps, a visit from some passing constable, and he whispered in O'Connell's ear, when the song was done, and there were no more songs that evening.
But still we sat and talked and smoked and O'Connell told me something of himself: of the fifteen shillings a week he could earn when he had steady work; of the three-pence a week he paid out under the insurance act, and how, if he was sick, he would drawa benefit of ten shillings a week for six months. He said bitterly that, if he lived in England, he would get free medical attendance, too, but that had been refused to Ireland through the machinations of the doctors and their friends. He told of the blessing the old age pension had been to many people he knew, and he admitted that England had been trying, of late years, to atone for her old injustices toward Ireland, and was now, perhaps, spending more money on the country than she got out of it.
"But there is a saying, sir, as you know," he concluded, rising and knocking out his pipe, "that hell is paved with good intentions; and however good England's intentions may be, she can never govern us well, because she can never understand us. Besides, it's not charity we want, it's freedom. Better a crust of bread and freedom, than luxury and chains! We'll have some hard fights, but we'll win out. Come back in ten years, sir, and you'll see a new Ireland. Take my word for it. It's glad I am that I came in here this night," he added. "I was feeling downcast and disheartened; but that is all over now. This talk has been a great pleasure to me. Good-bye, sir; God save you!" and he disappeared into the night.
THE RUINS AT ADARE
Wethrew back the shutters, next morning, to a cold and dreary day of misting rain; and after a look at it, Betty elected to spend it before a cosy fire in our great, high-ceilinged room. I have wondered since if our hotel at Limerick was not one of those handsome eighteenth-century mansions, brought by the hard necessities of time to the use of passing travellers. It is difficult to explain the gorgeousness of some of its rooms on any other theory. Ours was a very large one, with elaborate ceiling-mouldings and panelled walls and a mantel of carved marble, which Betty inspected longingly. She could see it, I fancy, in her own drawing*-room, and perhaps its beauties had something to do with her decision to spend the day in front of it.
There were two or three pictures I wanted to take—one of the old castle and another of the crooked little lane I had wandered through the night before; so I set forth to get them, along busy George Street, with its bright shops, and then across the river to English Town, and so to the castle front. I found it very hard to get anything like a satisfactory picture of it, because the parapet of the new bridge is in the way, and because the angle of my lens was not wide enough to take in both the towers. I did the best I could, took a last look at the treaty stone, but forbore to add to its fame by photographing it; and then traversed again thequaint old streets, with their ramshackle houses, and so came to the little lane.
The town, as I came through it, had been full of market-carts drawn by ragged donkeys and driven by shawled women, and I loitered about for a time, hoping that one of them would come this way and so add a touch of human interest to my picture. A painter was busy giving one of the thatched houses a coat of white-wash; only it wasn't white-wash, properly speaking, because a colouring-matter had been added to it which made it a vivid pink. This pink wash is very popular in Ireland, and, varied sometimes by a yellow wash, adds a high note to nearly every landscape. I talked with the man awhile, and then, the rain coming down more heavily, I slipped into a cobbler's shop for shelter.
It would be difficult to imagine anything more comfortless and primitive than that interior. The shop occupied one of the two rooms of the family home—bare little rooms with dirt floors and tiny windows and no furniture except the most necessary. Somebody has said that there are two pieces of furniture always worthy of veneration—the table and the bed; but I doubt if even that philosopher could have found anything to venerate in the specimens which this house contained. The table was a rude affair of rough boards, with one corner supported by a box in lieu of a leg, and the bed was a mere pile of rags on a sort of low shelf in one corner. What sort of fare was set forth upon that table, and what sort of rest the bed afforded, was not difficult to imagine.
The cobbler was tapping away at a pair of shoes,trying to mend them, and sadly they needed it. Indeed, they were such shoes as no self-respecting tramp would wear in America, and I could not but suspect that the cobbler had fished them from a garbage heap somewhere, and was trying, as a sort of speculation, to make them worth a few pennies. Two or three blocks of turf smoked and flared in a narrow fire-place, and, as always, a black pot hung over them, with some sort of mess bubbling inside it. The cobbler's wife sat on a stool before the fire contemplating the boiling pot gloomily, and a dirty child, of undeterminable sex, played with the scraps of leather on the floor.
I apologised for my intrusion; but the atmosphere of the place was not genial. I fancied they resented my presence,—as I should have done, had our positions been reversed—and so, as soon as the downpour slackened a bit, I pressed a penny into the baby's fist and took myself off. The cobbler, suddenly softened, followed me outside to see me take the picture, and perhaps to be in it; but that picture was a failure, all spotted by the rain.
I intended going to Adare, a little town not far away, said to possess a most remarkable collection of ruins, but it was yet an hour till train time, and I spent it exploring the town back of the railway station. I found it a most picturesque collection of crooked streets and quaint houses, and my advent was frankly treated as a great event by the gossips leaning over their half-doors. How eager they were to talk; I should have liked to stop and talk to all of them; but when I got ready to take a picture of the very crookedest street, their interest in my proceedings was so urgentand humorously-expressed that I lost my head and forgot to pull the slide—a fact I didn't realise until I had bade them good-bye and was walking away; and then I was ashamed to go back and take another.
The train for Adare was waiting beside the platform when I got to the station, and I carefully selected a vacant compartment and clambered aboard. And then a guard came along and laughingly told me I would have to get out, because that car was reserved for a "Mothers' Union," which was going to Adare to hold a meeting. So I got out and waited on the platform till the Union arrived—some twenty or thirty comfortable-looking matrons, in high spirits, which the miserable weather did not dampen in the least. Irish meetings are held, I suppose, just the same rain or shine. It was Simeon Ford who remarked that if the Scotch knew enough to go in when it rained, they would never get any outdoor exercise. This is equally true of the Irish—only in Ireland, one doesn't need to go in, for sure 'tis a soft rain that does nobody any harm!
Adare is about ten miles from Limerick and the road thither runs along the valley of the Shannon, with its lush meadows and lovely woods, veiled that day in a pearly mist of rain. As usual, the station is nearly a mile from the town, and as I started to walk it, I saw a tall old man coming along behind me, and I waited for him.
"'Tis a bad day," I said.
"It is so," he agreed; "and it's a long walk I have before me, for my house would be two miles beyont the village."
"They tell me there are some fine ruins in the village."
"There are so;" and then he looked at me more attentively. "You're not a native of these parts?" he asked, at last.
"No," I said; "I'm from America."
"From America!" he echoed, incredulously.
"Yes; from the state called Ohio."
"Think of that, now!" he cried. "And I can understand every word you say! Why, glory be to God, you speak fairer than the old woman up here along who has never crossed the road!"
I should have liked to hear more about this remarkable old woman, but he gave me no chance with his many questions about America. He had a son in New Jersey, he said, and the boy was doing well, and sent a bit of money home at Christmas and such like. It was a wonderful place, America. Ah, if he were not so old—
So, talking in this manner, we came to the town, and he pointed out the inn to me, opposite a picturesque string of thatched cottages nestling among the trees, and bade me Godspeed and went on his way; and I suppose that night before the fire he told of his meeting with the wanderer from far-off America, and how well he could understand his language!
I went on to the inn, which was a surprisingly pretty one, new and clean and well-kept; and I took off my wet coat and sat down in the cosy bar before a lunch which tasted as good as any I have ever eaten; and then I lit my pipe and drew up before the fire and asked the pretty maid who served me how to get to the ruins.They were all, it seemed, inside the demesne of the Earl of Dunraven, the entrance to which was just across the road, and it was necessary that I should have an entrance ticket, which the maid hastened to get for me from the proprietor of the inn. When she gave it to me, I asked the price, and was told there was no charge, as the Earl of Dunraven was always glad for people to come to see the ruins.
All honour to him for that!
So it was with a very pleasant feeling about the heart that I presently crossed the road and surrendered a portion of my ticket to a black-eyed girl at the gate-house, and she told me how to go to get to the ruins, and hoped I wouldn't be soaked through. But I didn't mind the rain; it only added to the beauty of the park. Besides, I was thinking of "Silken Thomas."
Have you ever heard of "Silken Thomas," tenth Earl of Kildare? Probably not; yet he was a great man in his day—not so great as his grandfather, that greatest of the Geraldines, whose trial for treason before Henry VII is a thing Irishmen love to remember.
"This man burned the cathedral at Cashel," said the prosecutor, "and we will prove it."
"Spare your evidence," said the Earl. "I admit that I set fire to the church, but 'twas only because I thought the archbishop was inside."
"All Ireland cannot rule this man!" cried one of his opponents.
"Then, by God, this man shall rule all Ireland!" said the King, and Kildare was made lord lieutenant, and went back to Dublin in triumph.
It was in the thirteenth century that Adare came intopossession of this mighty family, and the second Earl built a great castle here, on the site of an older one which had belonged to the dispossessed O'Donovans. The first Earl had already built near by a monastery for the Augustinians; and another Earl and his pious wife built a yet handsomer one for the Franciscans; so that here was citadel and sanctuary for them, when they grew weary of fighting, or when the tide of battle went against them. It was a Kildare who led the northern half of Ireland against the southern, at the great battle of Knocktow, where Irishmen slew each other by thousands, while the English looked on and chuckled in their sleeves; and after that, the Kildares waxed so powerful that Wolsey, the great minister of the eighth Henry, took alarm at their over-vaulting ambition, and caused the head of the house, the ninth Earl, to be summoned to London. He went unwillingly, though he had been given every assurance of safety; and his misgivings proved well-founded, for he was at once imprisoned in the Tower.
He left behind him in Ireland his son, "Silken" Thomas, so-called from the richness of his attire and retinue, a youth of twenty-one; and when the news came that the old Earl had been put to death, Silken Thomas, deeming it credible enough, renounced his allegiance to England, marched into Dublin, and threw down his sword of state before the Chancellor and Archbishop in St. Mary's Abbey, and then rode boldly forth again, none daring to stop him. But it came to naught, for a great English force wore him out in a long campaign, seduced his allies from him, and finally persuaded him to yield on condition that his life shouldbe spared. He sailed for England, assured of a pardon, was arrested as soon as he landed, and was beheaded, and drawn and quartered on Tower Hill, together with five of his kinsmen.
So ended the haughty Geraldines. The estate was confiscated, and the castle, after being besieged by Desmonds and O'Connells, by Irish and by English, was finally taken by Cromwell's men and destroyed, and they also, perhaps, put the finishing touches to the monasteries.
That was the wild old story I was thinking of as I made my way along the winding road, over a beautiful little stream in which I could see the trout lurking, and then across a golf ground to the ivy-draped ruins of the old abbey of the Franciscans, built by the Geraldines in the heyday of their power. It is a beautiful cluster of buildings, with a graceful square tower rising high above them; and they are in excellent preservation, lacking only the roofs and a portion of gable here and there. Even the window tracery is, for the most part, intact.
The interior of the church is of unusual richness and beauty, abounding in delicate detail—recessed altar-tombs, richly-carved sedilia, arched vaults, graceful mouldings, and the window traceries are very pure and lovely. Here, as at Muckross, the cloisters are especially beautiful, and are perfectly preserved. They are lighted on two sides by pointed arches arranged in groups of three, while on the side next the church the arches are grouped in pairs, and the fourth side is closed in by a lovely arcade, with double octagonal columns. Here, also as at Muckross, the friars planteda yew tree in the centre of the court, and it is now a venerable giant. Whether it is as deadly as the Muckross yew I do not know.
THE CHOIR OF THE ABBEY AT ADARETHE CHOIR OF THE ABBEY AT ADARETHE CASTLE OF THE GERALDINES, ADARE
Beyond the cloisters are the refectory and domestic offices and dormitories, all well-preserved, and repaying the most careful scrutiny. I don't know when I have been more ecstatically happy than when, after examining all this beauty, I sat myself down under an arch in the very midst of it, and smoked a pipe and gazed and gazed.
I tore myself away at last, and made my way across the meadow to the ruins of the castle, which I could see looming above the trees by the river. Right on the bank of the river it stands, and at one time there was a moat all around it which the river fed. One can see traces of the moat, even yet, with a fosse beyond, and there is enough left of the castle to show how great and strong this citadel of the Geraldines was. There is a high outer wall, all battlemented, pierced by a single gate; and then an inner ward, also with a single gate, flanked by heavy defending towers. Within this looms the ultimate place of refuge, the mighty donjon, forty feet square, with walls of tremendous strength, and flanking towers, and every device for defence, so that one wonders how it was ever taken.
One can still go up by the narrow stone stair, and from the top look down upon these walls within walls, and fancy oneself back in the Middle Ages, with their pageantries and heroisms and picturesque mummeries; and one can see, too, how hard and comfortless life was then, save for the few who held wealth and powerin their mailed fists. "The good old times!" Not much! The sad, cruel, gruesome, selfish, treacherous old times, whose like, thank heaven, will never be seen again upon this earth!
The rain was pouring down in sheets as I left the castle, but I could not forbear going back again to the friary for a last look at it; and then I tramped happily back along the road to the gate; and the black-eyed girl was there to welcome me, and to say how sorry she was that the day was so bad. But I did not think it bad; I thought it beautiful, and said so; only I was afraid my photographs wouldn't be worth reproducing.
And then the girl asked me if I wouldn't come in and sit by the fire a bit, and we had a little gossip, of course about America. She had a married sister in New York, she said, and she hoped some day to join her. And then she told me that the cottage next door was where the famous Adare cigarettes were made—an industry started by the Earl, who grew the tobacco on his place.
I stopped in to see the factory, and found four girls rolling the cigarettes and a man blending the tobaccos. He told me that the Earl had planted twenty-five acres with tobacco, and that it did very well; but it was not used alone, as it was too dark, but blended with the lighter Maryland, brought from America. I bought a packet of the cigarettes in the interests of this narrative, but they did not seem to me in any way extraordinary.
I went on again and stopped in at the parish church, which was at one time a Trinitarian Friary, or WhiteAbbey, founded seven hundred years ago. It was falling into ruins, when the Earl, who seems omnipotent in these parts, restored it and fitted it up as a church and turned it over to the Catholics. There is a big school attached to it now, and as I entered the grounds, a white-coifed nun who was sitting at a window looking over some papers, fled hastily. The church itself is chiefly remarkable for a very beautiful five-lighted window over the altar. Just outside is a handsome Celtic cross, surmounting the fountain where the villagers get their water.
There was a store farther down the street, and I stopped in to get some postcards. It was the most crowded store I ever saw, the ceiling hung with tinware, the shelves heaped with merchandise of every kind, and the floor so crowded with boxes and barrels that there was scarcely room to squeeze between them. I remarked to the proprietor that he seemed to carry a large stock, and he explained that he tried to have everything anybody would want, for it was foolish to let any money get away. While we were talking, a girl came in to sell some eggs. She had them in a basket, and the man took them out, but instead of counting them, he weighed them.
I went on back to the station, after that, through the driving rain, and I was very wet by the time I got there—wet on the outside, that is, but warm and dry and happy underneath. And at the station, I found three men, who were engaged in a heated argument as to whether a man weighed any more after he had eaten dinner than he did before. One of the men contended very earnestly that one could eat the heartiest ofmeals without gaining an ounce of weight if one only took the precaution of drinking a mug or two of beer or porter with the meal, since the drink lightened the brain and so neutralised the weight of the food in the stomach. He asserted that he had seen this proved more than once, and that he was willing to bet on it. He was also willing to bet that he could put twelve pennies into a brimming glass of stout without causing it to spill. As the village was a mile away, there was no place to get a glass of stout and try this interesting experiment.
And then one of the men, looking at my wet coat and dripping cap, asked me if I had been fishing.
"No," I said. "I was tramping around through the demesne looking at the ruins and trying to get some pictures of them," and I tapped my camera.
He looked at the camera and then he looked at me.
"Where would you be from?" he asked.
"From America."
"From America?" he echoed in surprise. "Ah, well," he added, after a moment's thought, "that do seem a long way to come just to get a few photos!"
I couldn't help laughing as I agreed that it did; but I had never before thought of it in just that way.
And then he told me that he had five brothers in America, but he himself had been in the army, and was minded to enlist again. In the army, one got enough to eat and warm clothes to wear and a tight roof to sleep under, which was more than most men were able to do in Ireland!
The Mothers' Union presently arrived, very wet but very happy. I was curious to know what they haddiscussed at their meeting, and what conclusions they had reached, but the train pulled in a moment later, and I had no time to make any inquiries. If Betty had been along, I think I should have persuaded her to attend that meeting; but I found her very warm and comfortable before her fire back at Limerick, and I confess that I was glad to get out of my wet things and sit down in front of it.
At 9:25 o'clock that night, when we supposed that most of Limerick was in bed, we heard the sound of music and the tramp of many feet in the street below, and looked out to see a band going past, followed by a great crowd of men tramping silently along in the wet. Ordinarily, I would have rushed out to see what was up; but I was tired, and the fire felt very good, and so I sat down again in front of it. I have been sorry since, for I suspect it was a Home Rule meeting, and Limerick has a great reputation for shindies. Perhaps O'Connell, journeyman tailor, made a speech. If he did, I am sorrier still, for I am sure it was a good one!
There was one thing more at Limerick we wished to see—the great butter factory of the Messrs. Cleeve, on the other side of the Shannon. We had already seen, rumbling through the streets of Limerick, the heavy steam trams carrying enormous iron tanks, which collect the milk from the country for miles around—from ten thousand cows some one told us—and we had seen so few industries in Ireland that it seemed worth while to inspect this one. So, next morning, we walked down to the water-front, past the towering, empty warehouses, to the swing bridge which Cleeve wants toclose so that his trams can get across the Shannon without going away around by the castle.
The bridge, a very fine one, was named originally after Wellesley, but has been re-christened after Patrick Sarsfield, in whose honour the street which leads up from it is also named. The swivel which allows boats to pass and which isn't strong enough to carry the weight of Cleeve's trams, is on the Limerick side, and just beyond it is a statue which one naturally thinks is Sarsfield's, until one reads the inscription at its base and finds it is a presentment of a certain Lord Fitzgibbon, who was killed in the charge of the Light Brigade. Beyond that, the bridge stretches away across the wide and rapid stream, by far the biggest river in Ireland.
The butter factory is not far off, and we entered the office and told the clerk who came forward that we should like to see the place. He asked for my card, had me write my American address on it, and then disappeared with it into an inner room. There was a delay of some minutes, and finally one of the Messrs. Cleeve came out, my card in his hand.
After greeting us quite cordially, he looked at the camera which I had under my arm, and asked if I expected to take any pictures of the place.
"Why, no," I said; "I hadn't thought of doing so. I certainly won't if you don't want me to."
"Are you interested in the butter business?"
"Only as a private consumer."
"Or in the condensed milk business??"
"No," I said promptly, "neither of us is interested in that, even as consumers." And then, seeing that hestill hesitated, I explained that we were just travelling Americans who had heard about the factory and thought we should like to see it; but that if it was against the rules, he had only to say so, and it would be all right.
"It isn't against the rules," he explained. "In fact, we welcome visitors; only we have to be careful. We have some secret processes, especially with our condensed milk, which we wouldn't care to have our competitors know about. But I'm sure you're all right," he added, and called a clerk and told him to show us everything.
Most interesting we found it, for twenty-three million gallons of milk are used there every year, and are converted not only into butter and condensed milk, but into buttons and cigarette holders and all sorts of things for which celluloid is commonly used. It was in this use of one of the by-products of the business, casein, so our guide explained, that much of the profit was made, since both the butter and the condensed milk had to be sold on a very close margin.
The factory is a very complete one, making everything it uses—its own cans and boxes, its own labels, its own cartons, its containers of every kind and shape, as well as their contents. And the machinery with which this is done is very intricate and ingenious.
Our guide said that one of the principal hazards of the business was the likelihood that some new machine would be invented at any time to displace the old ones, and would have to be purchased in order to keep abreast of competition.
We saw the long troughs into which the milk ispoured and strained and heated to Pasteurize it, and then run through the separators. In the next room were the great churns, from which the yellow butter was being taken; and beyond were the mechanical kneaders, which worked out the superfluous water and worked in the salt; and then the butter was put through a machine which divided it into blocks weighing a pound or two pounds, and then each of these blocks was carefully weighed, to be sure that it was full weight, and if it wasn't a little dab of butter was added before it was wrapped up and placed in the carton. And during all these processes it was never touched by any human finger.
On the floor above were the great copper retorts in which the milk was being condensed by boiling. We looked in through a little isinglassed opening, and could see it seething like a volcano. And still higher up were the machines which turned the hardened casein, which would otherwise be wasted, into buttons and novelties of various kinds. The place seemed very prosperous and well-managed, and, so our guide assured us, was doing well. We were glad to find one such place in southern Ireland.
Of course there are many others; and perhaps the impression I have given of Limerick does the town injustice, for it is a busy place. It is famous for its bacon, to the making of which ten thousand pigs are sacrificed weekly. It used also to be famous for its lace, worked by hand on fine net; but Limerick lace is made almost everywhere nowadays except at Limerick, although there is a successful school there, I believe, in one of the convents.
The name of the town has also passed into the language as that of a distinctive five-line stanza, which Edward Lear made famous, and of which such distinguished poets as Rudyard Kipling, Cosmo Monkhouse, George du Maurier, Gelett Burgess and Carolyn Wells have written famous examples. The limerick is said to have been originally an extempore composition, a lot of people getting together and composing limericks, in turn, as a sort of game designed to while away an evening. Whether this was first done at Limerick I don't know, but the name came from the chorus which was sung after every stanza in order to give the next person time to get his limerick into shape:
Oh, won't you come up, come up, come up,Oh, won't you come up to Limerick?Oh, won't you come up, come all the way up,Come all the way up to Limerick?
At least, that is the way I heard the chorus sung once, many years ago, without understanding in the least what it meant. The invitation, of course, is for the passing ship to enter the wide estuary of the Shannon and sail up to Limerick's waiting quays. If the first limerick was composed at Limerick, it must have been a long time ago, and I doubt if any are produced there nowadays.
We took a last stroll about the town, after we had seen the butter-making, and looked at the great artillery barracks, and the big market, and the mammoth jail and the still more mammoth lunatic asylum, where the inmates are decked out in bright red bonnets, which I should think would make them madder still. Andthen we walked through an open space called the People's Park, whose principal ornament is a tall column surmounted by the statue of a man named Spring Rice. Betty remarked that she had heard of spring wheat, but never of Spring Rice, and asked who he was; but I didn't know; and then we came to the Carnegie Library, and went inside to see what it was like.
I have seldom seen a drearier place. In the reading-room a few shabby men were looking over some newspapers, but the rest of the building was deserted, except for one old man, who may have been the librarian. There were few books, and the names of those the library had were arranged in a remarkable mechanism which resembled a lot of miniature post-office boxes; and when the book was in, the name was turned out toward you, and when it was out, the card was turned blank-side out. It was the most complicated thing I ever saw in a public library. I suppose after a while, when the library gets more books, this bulletin will be used only for the newer ones; but I don't imagine there is a great demand for books in Limerick. At least mighty few seemed to be in circulation. Where life's realities are so bitter, where want is always at one's heels, there is little time for intellectual recreation.
How bitter those realities are we realised, as we had never done before, on our way back to the station; for, on the doorstep of a low, little house, sat a ragged girl of six or eight, cuddling her doll against her breast and crooning to it softly. And the doll was just a block of turf, with a scrap of dirty rag for a dress.
"WHERE THE RIVER SHANNON FLOWS"
I havealready spoken of the wonders of the River Shannon, which rises in a bubbling cauldron away above Lough Allen, and flows down through ten counties to the sea; widening into lakes twenty miles long, or draining vast stretches of impassable bog; navigable for more than two hundred miles; and, finally, the great barrier between eastern Ireland, which the Danes and English over-ran and conquered, and western Ireland, which has never ceased to be Irish, and where the old Gaelic is still the language of the people.
The most beautiful portion of the river lies between Lough Derg, at whose lower end stands the ancient town of Killaloe, and Limerick, which marks the limit of the tideway. In this twenty-mile stretch, the river, for the first and last time in its course, is crowded in between high hills, and runs swift and deep and strong. It was this stretch we started out from Limerick, that day, to explore, and our first stopping-place was Castleconnell, about halfway to Killaloe. We found it a perfect gem of a town, situated most romantically on the left bank of the river, and with one of the nicest, cleanest, most satisfactory little inns I have ever seen. It reminded us of our inn at Killarney, for it was a rambling, two-storied structure, and the resort of fishermen. Castleconnell, as the guide-book puts it, is the Utopia of Irish anglers. I can well believe it, forthe salmon we saw caught at Killarney were mere babies beside the ones which are captured here.
We made straight for the river as soon as we had divested ourselves of our luggage, down along the winding village street, past the ruins of the castle which was once the seat of the O'Briens, kings of Thomond, and which Ginkle blew up during the siege of Limerick, thinking it too dangerous a neighbour; and then we turned upstream, close beside the water's edge, for two or three miles. The exquisite beauty of every vista lured us on and on—the wide, rushing river, with its wooded banks, broken here and there by green lawns and white villas, lovely, restful-looking homes, whose owners must find life a succession of pleasant days. For this portion of the valley of the Shannon seems to me one of the real garden spots of the world.
The river was in flood, and so not at its best for fishing, but nevertheless we passed many anglers patiently whipping the water in the hope that, by some accident, a passing fish might see the fly and take it. And at last we came to the end of the river road—a place called "World's End," where we had expected to get tea. But the refreshment booth was closed and there was no sign of any one in the neighbourhood.
We were very hungry therefore, when we got back to our inn, and our high tea tasted very good indeed, served in the pleasantest of dining rooms, on a table with snowy linen and polished dishes and shining silver, and by a waiter who knew his business so well that I judged him to be French. What a pleasure that meal was, after the slovenly service of the house at Limerick, most of whose customers were commercialtravellers! Irish commercial travellers, I judge, are the least fastidious of men!
Just across the street from the inn at Castleconnell is the place where the famous Enright rods are made, and after tea we went over to take a look at them. I know nothing about rods, but any one could appreciate the beauties of the masterpieces which the man in charge showed us. And then he asked us if we wouldn't like to try one of them, and insisted on lending us his own—hurrying home after it, and stringing on the line and tying on the flies, and pressing it into my hand in a very fever of good-nature. I confess I shrank from taking it. I had a vision of some mighty fish gobbling down the fly and dashing off with a jerk that would crumple up the rod in my hands, and I tried to decline it. But he wouldn't hear of it—besides, there was Betty, her eyes shining at the prospect of fishing in the Shannon.
So I took the rod at last, and we went down to the river again, and worked our way slowly down stream, along a path ablaze with primroses, and cast from place to place for an hour or more. There were many others doing the same thing, and they all seemed to think that the fish would be sure to rise as the twilight deepened. But they didn't, and I saw no fish caught that day. This didn't in the least interfere with any one's pleasure, for your true angler delights quite as much in the mere act of fishing as in actually catching fish. But it was with a sigh of relief I finally returned the rod intact to its owner. He said that I was welcome to it any time I wanted it, but I did not ask for it again.
There were five or six fishermen staying at the hotel,and they came in one by one, empty-handed. They had had no luck that day—the water was too high; but it was already falling, and they were looking forward to great sport on the morrow.
That morrow was a memorable one for us, also. It was a perfect day, and we set out, as soon as we had breakfasted, for the falls of Doonas and St. Senan's well, one of the most famous of the holy wells of Ireland. To get to it, it was necessary to cross the river, and the only way to get across is by a ferry, which consists of a flat-bottomed skiff, propelled by a man armed only with a small paddle. As I looked from the paddle to the mighty sweep of the river, rushing headlong past, I had some misgivings, but we clambered aboard, and the boatman pushed off.
He headed almost directly upstream, and then, when the current caught us, managed by vigorous and skilful paddling to hold his boat diagonally against it, so that it swept us swiftly over toward the other bank, and we touched it exactly opposite our point of departure. It was an exhibition of skill which I shall not soon forget.
We stepped ashore upon a beautiful meadow rolling up to a stately, wide-flung mansion, and turned our faces down the river. Already the fishermen were abroad, some of them casting from the bank, but the most out in midstream, in flat-bottomed boats like the one we had crossed in, which two men with paddles held steady in some miraculous way against the stream. One was at the bow and the other at the stern, and they did not seem to be paddling very hard, but the boat swung slowly and steadily back and forth aboveany spot which looked promising, no matter how swift the current.
It grew swifter with every moment, for we were approaching the rapids, and at last we came out on a bluff overhanging them. Above the rapids, the river flows in a broad stream forty feet deep, but here it is broken into great flurries and whirlpools by the rocky bed, which rises in dark irregular masses above its surface, and the roar and the dash and the white foam and flying spray are very picturesque. For nearly a mile the tumult continues, and then the stream quiets down again and sweeps on toward Limerick and the sea.
We followed close beside it to a little inn called the "Angler's Rest," set back at the edge of a pretty garden, entered through a gate with three steps, on which were graven the words of the old Irish greeting, "Cead Mile Failte," a hundred thousand welcomes. We sat down for a time at the margin of the river and watched the changing water, and then set off to find St. Senan's well.
There are really two wells. The first is in a graveyard, a few rods away, where a fragment of an old church is still standing. It is a tangled and neglected place, with the headstones tumbled every way, and bushes and weeds running riot, but the path that leads to the well shows evidence of frequent use. The well itself is merely a small hollow in an outcropping of rock—a shallow basin, about a foot in diameter, but always miraculously full of water. I don't know how the water gets into it, or whether it is true that the basin is always full, but it certainly was that day; andthe legend is that whoever bathes his forehead in that water will never again be troubled with headache, provided that he does it reverently, with full belief, and with the proper prayers. The well is shadowed by a tall hawthorn bush, and this bush is hung thick with cheap rosaries and rags and hairpins and bits of string and other tokens placed there by the true believers who had tested the wonderful properties of the water. We tested them, too, of course, and added our tokens to the rest.
The principal well is a little farther up the road, set back in a circle of trees and approached by a short avenue of lindens. It is a far more important well than the other—is one of the most famous in Ireland, indeed—and is covered with a little shrine, which you will find pictured opposite the next page. The shrine is hung with rosaries and crowded with figurines and pictures of the Virgin and of various saints, among which, I suppose, the learned in such matters might have picked out Saint Senan, who blessed this well and gave it its miraculous power. The trees which encircle the glade in which the well stands are also hung with offerings—sacred pictures, rosaries, small vessels of gilt, and the crutches of those who came lame and halting and went away cured. On either side of the entrance is a bench where one may sit while saying one's prayers, and in front of the shrine is a shallow basin, some two feet wide and a yard long, into which the water from the well trickles, and where one may sit and wash all infirmities away. The water is held to be especially efficacious in curing rheumatism and hip disease and diseases of the joints; and I onlyhope the cripples who left their crutches behind them never had need of them again.
THE SHANNON, NEAR WORLD'S ENDTHE SHANNON, NEAR WORLD'S ENDST. SENAN'S WELL
This whole valley of the Shannon, from Killaloe to the sea, is dominated by the patron of this well, St. Senan, a holy man who died in 544, and whose life resembled that of St. Kevin, whom we have already encountered at Glendalough. Like Kevin, Senan was persecuted by the ladies, who, in all ages, have taken a peculiar delight in pursuing holy men, and he was finally driven to take refuge on a little island at the mouth of the Shannon, Scattery Island, where he hoped to be left in peace. But he was destined to disappointment, for a lady named Cannera, since sainted, followed him and asked permission to remain. This scene, of course, appealed to Tom Moore, and he enshrined it in a poem, of which this is the final stanza:
The Lady's prayer Senanus spurned;The winds blew fresh, the bark returned;But legends hint that had the maidTill morning's light delayed,And given the Saint one rosy smile,She ne'er had left his lonely isle.
I do not know upon what evidence Moore bases this slander of a holy man; but, at any rate, he stayed on his island, and built a monastery and collection of little churches there for the use of the disciples who soon gathered about him, and their ruins, which much resemble those at Glendalough, even to a tall round tower, may be seen to this day. Some antiquarians hold that St. Senan is merely a personification of the Shannon; but I don't see how a personification couldbuild a collection of churches. It is more satisfactory, anyway, to think of him as a person who once existed, and lived a picturesque life, and built churches and blessed holy wells, and died at a ripe age in the odour of sanctity.
We sat for a long time before his shrine, looking at the tokens and the crutches, and wishing we had been there the day they were abandoned. To be made whole by faith is a wonderful thing, whatever form the faith may take, and I should like to have seen the faces of the cripples as they felt the miracle working within them, here in this obscure place. Unlettered they no doubt were, unable to read or write perhaps, believing this flat and stable earth the centre about which the universe revolves; but they touched heights that day which such sophisticated and cynically sceptical persons as you and I can never reach.
We left the shrine, at last, and made our way back to the river, and up along it, past the rapids, to the ferry. The ferryman was watching for us, and had us back on the Castleconnell side in short order. He evidently considered the sixpence I gave him a munificent reward for the double trip.
When we got back up into the village, we found it in the throes of a great excitement over the arrival of three itinerant musicians, two of whom played cornets, while the third banged with little sticks upon a stringed instrument suspended in front of him. The cornetists paused from time to time, to make short excursions, cap in hand, in search of pennies, but the third man never stopped, but kept playing away all up the street and out of sight. We came across themagain when we walked over to the station to take the train for Killaloe; but I judge their harvest was a slender one, for the people who hung out of gates and over doors to listen to the music, disappeared promptly whenever the collectors started on their rounds.
We had a little while to wait at the station, and I got into talk with the signalman, who told me he had a brother, a Jesuit priest, in Maryland, and who wanted to hear about America, whither he hoped to be able to come some day. That it would be at best a far-off day I judged from the wistful way in which he said it.
And then he saw that I was interested in the signal-system by which the trains on his little branch were managed, and he explained it to me. For each section of the road there is a hollow iron tube, some two feet long, with brass rings around it, called a staff. The engine-driver brings one of these staffs in with him, and this must be deposited in an automatic device in the signal-house and another received from the signalman before the train can proceed. When the staff is deposited in the machine, it automatically signals the next station and releases the staff in the machine there, ready to be given to the engineer of the approaching train. No staff, once placed in the machine, can be got out again until it is released in this way, and as no train can leave a station until its engineer has received a staff, it is practically impossible for two trains to be on the same section of road at the same time. The system is rather slow, but it is sure; and being automatic, it leaves nothing to chance, or to the vagaries of either engineer or signalman.
The bell rang, signalling the approach of our train,the signalman carefully closed the gates across the highway which ran past the station, and a crowd of men and boys collected, to whom the arrival of the train was the most important and interesting event of the day; and then it puffed slowly in, and we climbed aboard. Killaloe is only ten miles or so from Castleconnell, but we had to change at a station called Bird Hill; and then the line ran close beside the Shannon, with lofty hills crowding down upon it, and at last we saw the beautiful bridge which spans the river, and beyond it the spires and roofs of the little town.
Not unless one knows one's Irish history will one realise what a wonderful place Killaloe is; for Killaloe is none other than Kincora, a word to stir Irish hearts, the stronghold of the greatest of Irish kings, Brian Boru. When that great chieftain fell at Clontarf, MacLiag, his minstrel, wrote a lament for him in the old Gaelic, and James Clarence Mangan has rendered it into an English version, of which this is the first stanza: