"The Maiden on her throne, boys, shall be a Maiden still!"
It was the first of many such processions we were to see during our remaining weeks in Ireland.
THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH
Derryhas a charm—the charm of the hive—for it is a busy town, and a cheerful one. It is only on mooted anniversaries, I fancy, or when some fire-brand politician comes to town, that the Protestants and Catholics amuse themselves by breaking each other's heads. At other times they must work amicably side by side. At least, I saw nobody idle; and Catholics and Protestants alike were plainly infected by the same spirit of hustle.
The cause of the difference between the north and south of Ireland has been hotly debated for a hundred years. Why is the north energetic and prosperous, while the south is lazy and poverty-stricken? Some say it is the difference in climate, others the difference in religion. I could perceive no great difference in the climate, and as for religion—strange as it may seem to those who think of Ulster only in the light of Orange manifestoes—there are almost as many Catholics as Protestants in the north of Ireland. My own opinion is that the Celt is easy-going in the south and industrious in the north because of the environment. "Canny" is undoubtedly the best of all adjectives to apply to the Scotch—they are congenitally thrifty and industrious. The Celt, on the other hand, is congenitally easy-going and unambitious. Left to himself, among his own people, weighted with centuries of repression, he falls into a lethargy from which it is impossible to awakenhim—from which, I sometimes think, he will never be awakened. But put him in another environment, and he soon catches its spirit. At least, his children catch it, and their children are confirmed in it—and there you are. Put them back in the old environment, and in another generation or two they will have slipped back into the old habits of carelessness and improvidence. This, it seems to me, is the Irishman's history not only in the north of Ireland, but here in America. He is adaptable, impressionable, and plastic.
It would be absurd for any one to go to Derry without making a circuit of the walls, and this we proceeded to do next morning. We mounted them at the New Gate, where they are at least twenty-five feet high. There is a promenade on top about fifteen feet wide, and along the outer edge the old cannon given by the London companies still frown down through the embrasures of the battlement. Outside the wall there was originally a moat, but this has disappeared, and so have many of the old bastions. A few of them still remain—the double bastion where the fruitful gallows stood, and from which the noisy old gun, affectionately christened "Roaring Meg," still points out over the town. And back of the cathedral, the old wall stands as it stood during the siege, with its high protecting parapet, crowned with little loop-holed turrets.
The cathedral itself is a quaint, squat structure, with pinnacled tower, standing in the midst of a crowded graveyard, the most prominent object in which is an obelisk erected over the bodies of those who fell in the siege. The inscription, as is fitting, is long andeloquent. The church itself is comparatively modern and uninteresting, but it is filled with trophies of the siege—a bomb-shell containing a summons to surrender which fell in the cathedral yard, the flags taken from the French during a sally, memorials of the Rev. Mr. Walker, and so on. It is still called after St. Columba, although the abbey built by the Saint stood outside the present walls.
A little distance past the cathedral is another bastion which has been turned into a foundation for the great monument to Walker—a fluted column ninety feet high, surmounted by a statue of the hero, his Bible in one hand. Time was when he held a sword in the other, but legend has it that the sword fell with a crash on the day that O'Connell won Catholic emancipation for Ireland.
A fierce controversy has raged about the part Walker really played in the siege; and it is probable that he at least shared the honours with Murray and Baker. However that may be, he must have been an inspiring figure, as he walked about the walls, with his white hair and impassioned face and commanding vigour—a vigour which his seventy-two years seem nowise to have impaired; and his end was inspiring, too, for he did not rest quietly at home, content with his laurels, as most men would have done. Instead, he joined William's army, was in the forefront at the Battle of the Boyne, and managed to get killed there while exhorting the troops to do their duty.
The town of Derry has long since outgrown the old walls, but there is little else worth seeing there, unlessone is interested in a busy port, or in humming factories, or rumbling mills, or clattering foundries. Of these there is full store. But a few miles to the west, on the summit of a hill looking down upon Lough Swilly, is the cashel which was once the stronghold of the Kings of Ulster, and for it I set out that afternoon.
Murray, with that vagueness delightful in the Irish but exasperating in a guide-book, remarks that "it can be reached from Bridge End Station on the Buncrana line," so I proceeded to the station of the Buncrana line on the outskirts of the town, and bought a ticket to Bridge End Station. The ticket seller had apparently never heard of the Grainan of Aileach, as the cashel is called, and seemed rather to doubt if such a thing existed at all; but I determined to trust to luck, and took my seat in the little train which presently backed in along the platform.
The Buncrana line is, I judge, a small affair; at any rate, the train was very primitive, and the two men who shared the compartment with me complained bitterly of the poor service the railroads give the people of Ireland. They said it was a shame and a disgrace, and that no free people would put up with the insults and ignominy which the railroads heap upon the Irish, and much more to the same effect. I had heard this complaint before and have read it in more than one book; but I never had any real cause of complaint myself. Beyond a tendency to let the passengers look out for themselves, the guards are as courteous as guards anywhere; and only once, on the occasion of the race-meeting at Charleville, did we suffer from crowding. This was not because we travelled first,because we didn't—we travelled second; and when I was alone, I always travelled third, as I would advise any one to do who wishes really to meet the people.
Bridge End Station is only a few minutes' run from Derry, and when I got off there, I asked the man who took my ticket if he could direct me to the cashel.
"I can," he said; "but it is a long way from here, and a stiff climb. Do you see that hill yonder?" and he pointed to a lofty peak some miles away. "It is there you will find the fort, right on the very top."
"Have you ever been there?" I asked.
"I have not, though I'm thinking I will go some day, for them that have seen it tell me it is a wonderful sight. But 'tis a long walk."
"Well, I'm going to try for it," I said, and hitched my camera under my arm. "How do I start?"
"By that road yonder; and turn to your right at the village. Good luck to you, sir."
I could see he didn't really believe I would get to the cashel; but I set off happily along the road, between high hedges; and presently I passed a village, and turned to the right, as he had told me; and then two barefooted children caught up with me, on their way home from school. They knew the way to the cashel very well, though they had never been there either; and presently they left me and struck off across the fields; and then I came to a place where the road forked, and stopped to ask a man who was wheeling manure from a big stable which way to go. He too was astonished that any one should start off so carelessly on such an expedition; but he directed me up a narrow by-way, which soon began to climb steeply;and then the valley beneath me opened more and more, and finally I saw to my right the summit I was aiming for, and struck boldly toward it along a boggy path.
The path led me to the rear of a thatched cottage, where two men were stacking hay. They assured me that I was on the right road, and I pushed on again for the summit, past another little house, from which a man suddenly emerged and hailed me.
"Where be you going?" he demanded.
"To the fort," I said. "It's up this way, isn't it?"
"It might be."
"Am I trespassing?" I asked, for there seemed to be an unfriendly air about him.
"You are so," he answered.
"I'm sorry," I stammered; "if there's another way—"
"There is no other way."
"Well, then, I'll have to go this way," I said. "I'll not do any harm."
"That's as may be. You must pay three-pence if you wish to pass."
I paid the three-pence rather than waste time in argument, which, of course, wouldn't have done any good; and his countenance became distinctly more pleasant when the pennies were in his hand, and he directed me how to go; and I started up again, over springy heather now, along a high wall of stones gathered from the field; and then the ground grew wet and boggy, just as it is on the mountains of Connemara, and I had to make a detour—the man who directed me, probably thought nothing of a little bog! A ploughman in a neighbouring field stopped work to watch mewith interest until I passed from sight, and two red calves also came close to investigate the stranger; and then I crested the last ridge and saw towering before me the stronghold where Owen, son of Nial the Great, established himself to rule over his province, Tyrone.
For a moment I was fairly startled at the huge apparition, grey and solitary and impressive, for I had expected no such monster edifice—a cyclopean circle of stone, looking like the handiwork of some race of giants, three hundred feet around and eighteen feet high, with a wall fourteen feet in thickness!
The outer face of the wall is inclined slightly inwards, and is very smooth and regular. It is made of flat, hammer-dressed stones of various sizes, carefully fitted together, but uncemented, as with all these old forts. The stones are for the most part quite small, very different from the great blocks used in the other cashels I had seen. There is a single entrance, a doorway some five feet high by two wide, slightly inclined inward toward the top, and looking very tiny indeed in that great stretch of wall; and then my heart stood still with dismay, for there was an iron gate across the entrance, and I thought for a moment that it was locked. With a sigh of relief I found that the padlock which held it was not snapped shut, and I opened it and entered.
It was as though I had stepped into some old Roman amphitheatre, for the terraces which run around it from top to bottom have the appearance of tiers of seats. They mount one above the other to the narrow platform at the top, which is guarded by a low parapet. Two flights of steps run up the slope, but an activeman would have no need of them. On either side of the entrance door a gallery runs away in the thickness of the wall, opening some distance away on the interior, and designed, I suppose, to enable an extra force to defend the entrance.
Of the castle which once stood within that stone circle not a trace remains, and the circle itself, as it stands to-day, is largely a restoration, for Murtagh O'Brien captured it in 1101 and did his best to destroy it, and the storms of the centuries that followed beat it down stone by stone. But these fragments have all been gathered up and put back into place, so that the great fort stands to-day much as it did in the days of its glory, except that the outworks of earth and stone which formed the first lines of defence, have disappeared. The cashel was to this great fortification what the donjon tower was to the later Norman castle—the ultimate place of refuge for the garrison.
"Grainan" means a royal seat, and "Aileach," so say the Four Masters of Donegal, was a Scotch princess, "modest and blooming," who lost her heart to Owen of the Hy-Nial, and followed him back to Erin. After the division of the north of Ireland with his brother Connell, he set up his palace here—Connell's you will remember was at Donegal—and so this became the royal seat of the rulers of Tyrone. Hither came St. Patrick to baptise Owen and his family; hither came St. Columba before his exile to Iona; hither captive Danes were dragged in triumph. But at last Murtagh O'Brien, King of Munster, led a great raid to the north, and defeated the army of Tyrone and captured the mighty fortress, and made each of his soldierscarry away a stone of it in token of his triumph.
THE WALLS OF DERRYTHE WALLS OF DERRYTHE GRAINAN OF AILEACH
That ended its earthly glory, but it remains glorious in legend; for it is beneath its old grey walls that the Knights of the Gael stand deathless and untiring, each beside his steed with his hand upon the saddlebow, waiting the trumpet-call that shall break the charm that binds them, and release them to win back their heritage in Erin. In the caves within the hill the knights stand waiting—great vaulted chambers whose entrance no man knows. Nor does any man know when their release will come, whether to-morrow or not till centuries hence, for 'tis Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan herself who must choose the day and hour.
Sore disgrace it is to see the Arbitress of thronesVassal to a Saxoneen of cold and sapless bones!Bitter anguish wrings our souls; with heavy sighs and groansWe wait the Young Deliverer of Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan.
Glorious is the view from the top of those old walls. To the right is Lough Foyle, to the left Lough Swilly, with the hills of Donegal, draped in silver mist, beyond—wild, grey crags, rising one behind the other; and away to the north, beyond the wide valley, are the hills of Inishowen—Owen's Island, if you know your Irish. I have never gazed upon a more superb picture of alternating lake and hill and meadow, of flashing mountain-top and dark green valley.
But if I was to get back to Derry that night, I had need to hasten; so I clambered down, after one long last look. I had still my picture to take, and made two exposures, but they give only a faint idea of the majesty of this great fort, standing here on this wild,deserted hilltop; and then I started downwards, with long steps, past the cottages, with the beautiful valley before me, back to the highway, down and down among the trees, past the village and so to the station. The guard was waiting there.
"Well," he said, as I sat down mopping my face, for I had covered three miles in half an hour, "did you see the fort?"
"I did so," I answered, for I had long since fallen naturally into the Irish idiom; and I told him what it was like; but I think he was unconvinced.
"Was there a man stopped you?" he asked.
"There was—a man at the end of the lane right under the fort, who made me pay three-pence before he would let me pass."
"Ah, that would be O'Donnell," said the guard, convinced at last. "He has been given the key to keep. Did he give you the key?"
"He did not. But the iron gate was unlocked."
"That was by accident, I'm thinking," said the guard. "He is not caring whether one can enter or not, so long as he has his three-pence."
So I would advise all wayfarers to the Grainan of Aileach to make sure that the gate of it is unlocked, or to demand the key, before surrendering their three-pence to O'Donnell.
When I got into the train again, I found as a fellow-passenger one of the men who had come out from Derry with me, and after I had described the cashel to him—for he had never seen it—we got to talking about Home Rule. In spite of its militant Protestantism, Derry has a very large Catholic population, and mycompanion said that opinion in the town was about equally divided for and against Home Rule.
"The result is," he went on, "that whenever we have a meeting, no matter which side it's on, there's sure to be a shindy, and the police has their hands full. Most of the fellys who do the fighting don't care a rap about Home Rule, but they just take pleasure in layin' a stick against somebody's head. It's all done in a friendly spirit, and next day they will be workin' side by side the same as ever. The only ones who are really fighting Home Rule are the big landlords and manufacturers, who imagine they'll get the worst of it in the matter of taxation at the hands of a Catholic parliament, and they do everything they can to keep their people stirred up. That has always been their policy; and the big Catholic employers in the south—what few of them there are—aren't a whit better. They're all afraid that if the Catholic workingmen and the Protestant workingmen once get together they'll fix up some kind of a union, and demand better wages. As long as they can be kept fighting each other, there's no danger of that; and the poor idiots haven't sense enough to see how they're being made fools of. But they'll see it some day, and then look out!"
"How about this army of Ulster the papers are so full of?"
My companion laughed.
"There isn't any army around here, unless you can call a few hundred devil-may-care boys an army. I did hear something about some drill going on, but as far as fighting goes that's all nonsense. The boys are ready enough to crack a head with a stick, but they'rethe first to run when the police arrive, and they'll think a long time before they try to stand up against the British army. I'll not say that they're not more in earnest over Belfast way; but even there, a few politicians have stirred up most of the talk—Sir Edward Carson and the likes of him. It's all a political game, that's how I look at it."
I walked around Derry for a time that afternoon, and so far as public buildings go, Catholicism and Protestantism seem about equally represented—and with the strangest contrasts. Across the road from St. Columb's College are the Nazareth Homes; around the corner from St. Augustine's Church is the Apprentice Boys' Hall; a few steps farther on is a Presbyterian church, and the Freemasons' Hall, and then St. Columb's Temperance Hall, and then a convent; and if you walk back again to the Diamond and make some inquiries, you will find that one of the radiating streets is the home of militant Catholics, and the next the home of militant Orangemen, and you will be accommodated with a fight at any time if you go into the latter and shout "To hell with King Billy," or into the former and shout "To hell with the Pope!" And if you buy one of the two papers which the town supports, you will read denunciations of Home Rule and contemptuous references to "croppies," while, if you buy the other, you will read denunciations just as fierce of Orange plots against Ireland.
I have wondered since how much of this agitation is subsidised and how much is real. I have heard both Catholics and Protestants complain that it is kept alive in great part by professional agitators, working in verydiverse interests but to a common selfish end—and that end, as my friend of the morning pointed out, the continuance and, if possible, the deepening of the rift between the two religions. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that Protestants and Catholics alike take a fierce joy in an occasional fight, as lending a real interest to life. But I am convinced that religion has really little to do with this—that it is just the peg upon which the quarrels are hung. If it wasn't that, it would probably be something else, for Irishmen have been fighting each other ever since history began. The fights at Donnybrook were as fierce as any, though there wasn't a Protestant in the crowd!
The Orange Societies, of course, with their parades and taunting songs and flaunting banners and praise of Cromwell and "King Billy," do not make for peace. Usually, on such occasions, blows are exchanged; and so the name of Orangeman has come to be associated with riots. But, as another writer has pointed out, in considering these things, "you should not forget the common pugnacity. Only an Irishman can appreciate the fierce joy of shouting 'To hell with the Pope!' Many a man who had no claim to belong to the Orange Society has known the delight of breaking Catholic heads or of going down in a lost battle, outnumbered but damaging his foes to the last. And many who are slow to attend Mass, are quick to seize their cudgels when they hear the Orange bands play the tune of Boyne Water. Like the Crusaders, the Protestant and Catholic champions alike feel that by their battles they make amends for the errors and shortcomings of peace."
So it is a mistake to take these rows too seriously.To an Irishman they are never serious; they are rather the innocent and natural diversions of a holiday, small events which add to the savour of existence; and, indeed, they are far less numerous and far less deadly than they once were. In time, if the people are let alone and old sores are allowed quietly to heal, they will probably cease altogether.
It is a mistake, too, I think to take the Orangemen too seriously. They have such a habit of hyperbole that most Irishmen smile at their hysterics and threats of civil war as at sheer fudge. In fact, the Ulster controversy is so full of comic opera elements that it is difficult to keep from smiling at it. For instance, Sir Edward Carson's elder son is a member of the United Irish League because he believes in a united Ireland, while John Redmond's nephew and adopted son is enrolled among the Ulster Volunteers because he is opposed to coercion! Gilbert and Sullivan never invented anything more fantastic.
THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS
Thereis no busier place in Derry than the stretch of quays along the river, and one may see ships there not only from England and Belgium and France, but from Australia and Argentina and India and Brazil. The river is wide and deep, with the channel carefully marked by a line of buoys extending clear out into Lough Foyle; but there are no better facilities here for shipping than at any one of half a dozen ports along the western coast, all of which are silent and deserted. For a port is of no use unless there is something to ship out of it in exchange for the things which are shipped in, or money to pay for them—and there is neither in the west of Ireland.
And, just as there is no more dismal sight than a line of deserted quays, so there is no more interesting sight than a line of busy ones, and we loitered for a long time, next morning, along those of Derry, on our way to the Midland station, on the other side of the river. There is a big iron bridge across the river just above the quays, but that seemed a long way around, so when we came to a sign-board announcing a ferry we stopped. My first thought was that the ferry-boat was on the other side; then I perceived a small motor-propelled skiff moored beside the quay, and one of the two men in it asked me if we were looking for the ferry, and I said yes, and he said that that was it.
So we clambered down into the boat and started off; and I scarcely think that that trip paid, for we were the only passengers, and the river is wide, and gasolene is expensive, and somebody had to pay the men their wages—and the fare is only a penny.
The part of the town which lies east of the river is industrial and unattractive. There are some big distilleries there, and a lot of mills and a fish-market, and row upon row of dingy dwellings; but the biggest building of all is the workhouse—one point, at least, in which the towns of the north resemble those of the south. There is another point, too—the jail, without which no Irish town is complete. Derry has one of which it is very proud—the latest word in jails, in fact—a great, circular affair, with the cells arranged in so-called "panoptic" galleries, that is in such a fashion that the guards stationed in the centre of the jailyard can see into all of them.
But we had crossed the river not to see the town which lay beyond it, but to take train for Portrush, and we were soon rolling northward close beside the bank of the river, with a splendid view of "The Maiden on her hill, boys," on the opposite shore, dominated by the cathedral tower and Walker's white monument. Just before the river begins to widen into the lough, the train passes the ruins of an old castle of the O'Dohertys, standing on a point which juts out into the water—a castle which saw rather more than its share of siege and sally; for this is Culmore, which was always the first point of attack when any expedition advanced against Derry.
Beyond it the water widens, and on the farther shore,which is Inishowen, there are pretty villas, standing in luxuriant woods—the homes of some of Derry's wealthy citizens. Then the train turned inland across a stretch of country so flat and carefully cultivated that it might have been Holland; and then the hills began to crowd closer and closer to the shore, until the train was running along its very edge, under precipitous crags, past grotesque pinnacles of white chalk or black basalt, and fantastic caverns worn in the cliffs by the century-long action of the waves. For that stretch of blue water stretching away to the north, so calm and beautiful, was the Atlantic, and it thunders in upon this coast, sometimes, with a fury even the rocks cannot withstand.
We turned away from it, at last, up the wide estuary of the River Bann, and so we came to Coleraine, chiefly connected in my mind with that beautiful Kitty, who, while tripping home from the fair one morning with a pitcher of buttermilk, looked at Barney MacCleary instead of at the path, and stumbled and let the pitcher drop; but, instead of crying over the spilt milk, accepted philosophically the kiss which Barney gave her; with the result that
"very soon after poor Kitty's disasterThe divil a pitcher was whole in Coleraine."
Among the innumerable other laws for which Lloyd-George is responsible, there is one requiring all the shop-keepers of the United Kingdoms to close their places of business one afternoon every week in order to give their employés a short vacation; and in every town the shop-keepers get together and decide whichafternoon it shall be; and if you arrive in the town on that afternoon, you will find every shop closed tight, often to your great inconvenience. It was Thursday afternoon when we reached Coleraine, and Thursday is closing day there; and we found that not only were the shops closed, but the train schedule was so altered that we had a long wait ahead of us.
But we were richly compensated for the delay, for, as we started out to explore the town, we saw written in chalk on a wall just outside the station,
To hell with the pope!
and under it in another hand,
To hell with King Billy!
and then a third hand had added,
God save King Will! No more pope!
I had heard, of course, that the accepted retort for Catholics to make, when the Pope was insulted, was to consign William of Orange to the infernal regions; but such a retort seemed so weak and ineffective that I could hardly believe in its reality. Yet here it was, and some Orangeman had paused long enough to add what is probably the usual third article of the controversy. What the fourth article is I can't guess; perhaps it is at this point that the cudgels rise and the rocks begin to fly. And it seems to me characteristic of Ireland that the Catholic in this case, instead of erasing the offending sentence, should have let it stand and answered it in kind.
Cheered and heartened by this encounter, we walked on to look at Coleraine, but found it an uninterestingmanufacturing town, with nothing in it of historical importance, for it is one of the plantations made by the London Companies, some time after 1613. It was closed as tightly, that afternoon, as on a Sunday, and we soon wearied of looking at ugly houses and silent factories, and made our way back to the station, meditating upon that black day for the Irish when this whole county, having been duly confiscated, was made over by royal edict to the hundred London adventurers, whose heirs or assigns still own it. Yet the conquest had one advantage: the O'Dohertys and the O'Cahans knew only the arts of war; the newcomers brought with them the arts of peace. One of them was distilling, and the Irish had never drunk such whiskey as the "Coleraine" which was produced here in the succeeding years. There is no more popular story in this region than that of the priest who was preaching a temperance sermon, and, after pointing out the evils of over-indulgence, continued with great earnestness, "And, me boys, 'tis the bad stuff you be takin' that does the worst of the mischief. I niver touch a drop meself—but the best Coleraine!"
We got away from Coleraine, at last, and ran northward toward the sea again, across uneven sand-drifts, past Port Stewart, where Charles Lever was once a dispensary doctor and occupied his leisure hours, which were many, in setting down the adventures of Harry Lorrequer; and then the road ran on close beside the sea to Portrush, with its pleasant beach and rock-bound bathing-pool, which was full of people on this holiday. But Portrush is a place of summer hotels, so we did not linger there, but transferred quickly to the electricline which runs on to the Giant's Causeway, fourteen miles away.
This line was established in 1883, and so is the oldest electric road in the world; and I judge that it is still using the cars it started out with. At least, the two which composed the train that day were exceedingly primitive; one was open and the other was closed, and you took your choice. We chose the open one, of course, on the side overlooking the sea; and presently we started through the town, a man ringing a bell with one hand and waving a flag with the other, preceding us to make certain the track was clear. The bell, I suppose, is for blind people and the flag for deaf people, and the fact that the man is armed with both proves how thorough the Irish can be when they really put their minds to it.
Although the line has been in operation for thirty years, it is still evidently regarded with fear and wonder by the people who live along it. Time was when the power was conveyed by means of the "third rail," so common in the United States. With us, however, the rail is only used along a guarded right-of-way. Here it was exposed close up by the fence at the roadside, and though it was well out of the way, it was nevertheless stumbled over by many men and beasts, with the usual result. There were many protests, and in the course of fifteen or twenty years, the Board of Trade was moved to investigate.
The evidence at the hearing was most conflicting. The people of the neighbourhood asserted that their lives were in constant danger. The company, on the other hand, claimed that no sober man would ever stepon the rail, since to get to it he had to cross the tracks. The people of the neighbourhood protested indignantly against this reflection upon their habits, and asked triumphantly if the horses and cows and other poor beasts that were killed were also drunk. The company retorted that, so far as the horses and cows were concerned, it was the practice of the natives, for miles around, whenever they had an animal about to die, to lead or, if it was unable to walk, to haul it to the railway, and prop it against the fence with a foot on the rail, and then to demand compensation for its death. There was, perhaps, a grain of truth in this; but the board, nevertheless, ordered the company to take up the rail and substitute an overhead wire for it, and this has been done.
The only way the natives can get damages now is to inveigle a car to run into them, and this is well-nigh impossible, for the cars are run very slowly and carefully, and at every curve there is a signal cabin, where a watchful guard, armed with a red flag and a white one, keeps careful eyes upon the track.
We were just gathering speed outside the town, when we saw in a near-by field an aggregation whose bills had attracted our attention, more than once, in our journeyings about Ireland. It was "Buff Bill's Circus," and the picturesqueness of its lithographs had made us most anxious to see it. Here it was, at last, and it consisted of three tiny tents and one van and three or four horses, and five or six people, who at this moment were eating their midday meal, seated on the ground about a sheet-iron stove, while the youngsters of the neighbourhood looked on. I am sorry wedid not get to see the show, for I am sure we should have enjoyed it.
Then the road mounted to a terrace high above the sea, and the views over coast and water were superb. The effects of erosion are especially fantastic, and the line passes fretted spires, and yawning caverns, and deep gullies and mighty arches, all worn in the chalk and basalt cliffs by the ceaseless action of the waves; and at one place there is a grotesque formation which does indeed, as may be seen from the picture opposite the next page, resemble a "Giant's Head."
And there is one most picturesque ruin, for, ten miles out from Portrush, all that is left of Dunluce castle overhangs the sea from the summit of a precipitous rock, separated from the mainland by a deep chasm. The chasm is twenty feet wide, and in days of old there was a drawbridge over it; but the bridge has disappeared, and now there is just an arch of masonry about two feet wide and without protection of any sort. It takes a steady head to cross it, but the Irish are fond of just such breakneck bridges. The castle itself, with its roofless gables and jagged walls, seems a part of the rock on which it is built. It is said to possess a banshee, and one can well believe it!
Dunluce is interesting because it was once a stronghold of the Scotch invaders who succeeded in conquering all this northeast coast of Ireland from here around to Carlingford Lough, away below Belfast. Scotland is only a few miles away across the North Channel—one can see its coast on a clear day from the cliffs above Benmore; and it was natural enough that there should be sailing back and forth. Owen, first lord of Tyrone,brought a wife from Scotland—that Aileach, after whom he named his fortress; and they had many children, one of whom went back to Scotland and became the head of that princedom whose chief afterwards called himself "Lord of the Isles." In Ireland, the family was O'Donnell; but in Scotland the members of Clandonnell were not Os but Macs. Angus MacDonnell married a daughter of the great house of O'Cahan, and by this means and by that, the Scotch gradually won a foothold on the Irish coast and built castles up and down it; and finally, in a pitched battle, defeated the Irish who held the land about Dunluce and had built this castle here.
THE "GIANT'S HEAD," NEAR PORTRUSHTHE "GIANT'S HEAD," NEAR PORTRUSHTHE RUINS OF DUNLUCE CASTLE
It was besieged and captured after that, once by the Irish under Shane O'Neill, and once by the English under Sir John Perrot; and during the troubled times of the Commonwealth and Restoration fell into ruins and was never restored—partly, no doubt, because it was no longer safe; for one night in 1639, there was a great party in the castle, and a storm arose, and the waves dashed against the rock below it, and suddenly part of the rock gave way and carried the kitchen and eight servants down into the abyss.
Just beyond the castle, the road rounds a point and runs down into the valley of the Bush River, where stands the little town of Bushmills, known all over the world because of the whiskey which is made there; and then it passes a great house on a cliff overlooking the sea, Runkerry Castle; and then high up on the slope ahead loom two big hotels, and the tram stops, for this is the Causeway.
Both the hotels at the Causeway are owned by thesame man, but each maintains its runner, and each runner makes a lively bid for your custom; and then, when you have made your choice and started toward it, you will suddenly be conscious of a rough voice speaking over your shoulder, and you will turn to find a man striding at your heels, a man unshaven and clad in nondescript clothes; and if you listen very attentively you will presently understand that he is offering to guide you about the Causeway.
Everybody in the vicinity of the Causeway makes his living off the people who visit it, and the favourite profession is that of guide. Now a guide is wholly unnecessary, for a broad road leads directly to the Causeway, and once there it is simply a question of using one's eyes. But from the persistence of the guides, one would think there was great danger of getting lost, or of falling overboard, or of experiencing some other horrible misfortune, if one ventured there unattended. Every guide carries also in his waistcoat pocket one or more fossils, which he found himself and prizes very highly, but is willing to sell for a small sum, as a personal favour. When his supply is exhausted, he goes and buys some more from the syndicate which ships them in in quantity.
For it should be remembered that the Causeway is as strictly organised for profit and as carefully exploited as is Killarney.
As soon as we had arranged for our room, we set off for the Causeway, running the gauntlet of guides posted on both sides of the road. Then a man with a pony-cart wanted to drive us to our destination, and one would have thought, from the way he spoke,that it was a long and trying journey; then we refused three or four offers of fossils and postcards; and finally we found ourselves alone on a road which swept round the edge of a great amphitheatre of cliff; and the face of that cliff is worth examining, for it is formed of the lava flow from some long-extinct crater, and the successive flows, separated by the so-called ochre beds, or strata of dark-red volcanic ash, can be plainly distinguished. The road gradually drops, until it is quite near the sea; and then it passes a number of shanties, from which old women issue to waylay the passer-by with offers of fossils and post-cards and various curios; and then the visitor is confronted by a high wire fence, beyond which, if he looks closely, he will see a little neck of land running out into the water—and that is the celebrated Giant's Causeway.
THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAYTHE GIANT'S CAUSEWAYTHE CLIFFS BEYOND THE CAUSEWAY
It is so small and so seemingly insignificant that Betty and I stared at it through the fence with a distinct shock of disappointment; then we went on to the gate, paid the sixpence which is extorted from every visitor, registered ourselves on the turnstile, and entered.
The misfortune of the Causeway is that its fame is too great. The visitor, expecting to see something magnificent and grandiose, is rather dashed at first to find how small it is; but after a few minutes' wandering over the queer columns of basalt, this feeling passes, and one begins to realise that it is really one of the wonders of the world. I am not going to describe it—every one has seen photographs of it, or if any one hasn't, he will find some opposite this page; and the photographs picture it much better than I can.
There are some forty thousand of the pillars, the guide-book says; five-sided or six-sided for the most part, averaging, I should say, about fifteen inches in diameter, and so close together that a lead pencil is too thick to be thrust between them. The pillars are divided into regular, worm-like segments, some six or eight inches thick, and there are quite a lot of segments lying about, broken off from the columns. The whole bed is said by geologists to be nothing but a lava-flow, which broke up into these columnar shapes when it cooled and contracted.
The native Irish have a far better explanation than that. In the old days, the mighty Finn MacCool, annoyed at the boasting of a Caledonian rival on the hills across the channel, invited him to step over and see which was the better man. And the giant said he would be glad to come over and show Finn a thing or two, if it wasn't for wetting his feet. So Finn, in a rage, built a causeway right over to Scotland, and the Scotch giant came across on it; and of course Finn beat him well (for this is an Irish legend); but with that generosity which has always been characteristic of Irishmen after they have whipped their opponents, he permitted his humbled rival to choose a wife from the many fair girls of the neighbourhood, and to build him a house and settle down; which the Scotch giant was very glad to do; for every one knows that the Scotch women are rough and hard-bitten, also that Scotland is a land of mist and snow, not fair like Ireland, which has always been the loveliest country in the world. And presently, since the causeway wasn't needed any more and impeded navigation, Finn gaveit a kick with the foot of him and sunk it in the sea, all but this little end against the Irish coast. And there it stands unto this day to witness if I lie.
Whatever you think of the Causeway, you will certainly be impressed when you pass out between the clustered columns of the Giant's Gateway, and start on the walk under the beetling cliffs beyond. The narrow path mounts up and up, under overhanging masses of columnar stone, which all too evidently crashes down from time to time, for there are great piles of debris below, and the path is either swept away in places or recently repaired; so most visitors hurry past with one eye upward, and the other contemplating the beauty of the scene below.
At least we did; and then we came out at Chimney Point, crowned with its chimney-like columns—a mass of basalt on top of a red ochre bed. And here there was a seat where we sat down to contemplate one of the most impressive views in Ireland—a combination of blue sea and white surf and black crag and columned cliff not soon to be forgotten.
We went on, at last, around the point of the cliff, where the path overhangs the depths below and is guarded by an iron railing; on and on, past clusters of columns named looms or organ pipes, or whatever Irish fancy may have suggested; and at last we turned slowly back, and spent another half hour at the Causeway, hunting out the wishing-chair, and the giant's cannon, and Lord Antrim's parlour—all of which may easily be found; and then we took a drink from the giant's well, a spring of pure, cold water, bubbling up from among the rocks; and so back to the hotel and to dinner.