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Market-day was fixed upon of course, and the town, as we drove into it, was thronged with frieze-coats, the market-place bright with a great number of apple-stalls, and the street filled with carts and vans of numerous small tradesmen, vending cheeses, or cheap crockeries, or ready-made clothes and such goods. A clothier, with a great crowd round him, had arrayed himself in a staring new waistcoat of his stock, and was turning slowly round to exhibit the garment, spouting all the while to his audience, and informing them that he could fit out any person, in one minute, ‘in a complete new shuit from head to fut.’ There seemed to be a crowd of gossips at every shop-door, and, of course, a number of gentlemen waiting at the inn-steps, criticising the cars and carriages as they drove up. Only those who live in small towns know what an object of interest the street becomes, and the carriages and horses which pass therein. Most of the gentlemen had sent stock to compete for the prizes. The shepherds were tending the stock. The judges were making their award, and until their sentence was given, no competitors could enter the show-yard. The entrance to that, meanwhile, was thronged by a great posse of people, and as the gate abutted upon an old grey tower, a number of people had scaled that, and were looking at the beasts in the court below. Likewise, there was a tall haystack, which possessed similar advantages of situation, and was equally thronged with men and boys. The rain had fallen heavily all night, the heavens were still black with it, and the coats of themen, and the red feet of many ragged female spectators, were liberally spattered with mud.
The first object of interest we were called upon to see was a famous stallion; and passing through the little by-streets (dirty and small, but not so small and dirty as other by-streets to be seen in Irish towns) we came to a porte-cochère, leading into a yard filled with wet fresh hay, sinking juicily under the feet; and here in a shed was the famous stallion. His sire must have been a French diligence-horse; he was of a roan colour, with a broad chest, and short clean legs. His forehead was ornamented with a blue ribbon, on which his name and prizes were painted, and on his chest hung a couple of medals by a chain—a silver one awarded to him at Cork, a gold one carried off by superior merit from other stallions assembled to contend at Dublin. When the points of the animal were sufficiently discussed, a mare, his sister, was produced, and admired still more than himself. Any man who has witnessed the performance of the French horses in the Havre diligence, must admire the vast strength and the extraordinary swiftness of the breed; and it was agreed on all hands, that such horses would prove valuable in this country, where it is hard now to get a stout horse for the road, so much has the fashion for blood, and nothing but blood, prevailed of late.
By the time the stallion was seen, the judges had done their arbitration; and we went to the yard, where broad-backed sheep were resting peaceably in their pens; bulls were led about by the nose; enormous turnips, both Swedes and Aberdeens, reposed in the mud; little cribs of geese, hens, and peafowl were come to try for the prize; and pigs might be seen—some encumbered with enormous families, others with fat merely. They poked up one brute to walk for us: he made, after many futile attempts, a desperate rush forward, his legs almost lost in fat, his immense sides quivering and shaking with the exercise; he was then allowed to return to his straw, into which he sunk panting. Let us hope that he went home with a pink ribbon round his tail that night, and got a prize for his obesity.
I think the pink ribbon was, at least to a Cockney, the pleasantest sight of all; for on the evening after the show we saw many carts going away so adorned, having carried off prizes on the occasion. First came a great bull stepping along, he and his driver having each a bit of pink in their hats; then a cart full of sheep; then a car of good-natured-looking people, having a churn in the midst of them that sported a pink favour. When all the prizes were distributed, a select company sate down to dinner at Macavoy’s Hotel; and no doubt a reporter who was present hasgiven in the county paper an account of all the good things eaten and said. At our end of the table we had saddle of mutton, and I remarked a boiled leg of the same delicacy, with turnips, at the opposite extremity. Before the vice I observed a large piece of roast beef, which I could not observe at the end of dinner, because it was all swallowed. After the mutton we had cheese, and were just beginning to think that we had dined very sufficiently, when a squadron of apple-pies came smoking in, and convinced us that, in such a glorious cause, Britons are never at fault. We ate up the apple-pies, and then the punch was called for by those who preferred that beverage to wine, and the speeches began.
The chairman gave ‘The Queen,’ nine times nine and one cheer more; ‘Prince Albert and the rest of the Royal Family,’ great cheering; ‘The Lord-Lieutenant’—his Excellency’s health was received rather coolly, I thought. And then began the real business of the night: Health of the Naas Society, health of the Agricultural Society, and healths all round; not forgetting the Sallymount Beagles and the Kildare Foxhounds—which toasts were received with loud cheers and halloos by most of the gentlemen present, and elicited brief speeches from the masters of the respective hounds, promising good sport next season. After the Kildare Foxhounds, an old farmer in a grey coat got gravely up, and without being requested to do so in the least, sung a song, stating that—
‘At seven in the morning by most of the clocksWe rode to Kilruddery in search of a fox’;
‘At seven in the morning by most of the clocksWe rode to Kilruddery in search of a fox’;
and at the conclusion of his song challenged a friend to give another song. Another old farmer, on this, rose and sung one of Morris’s songs with a great deal of queer humour; and, no doubt many more songs were sung during the evening, for plenty of hot-water jugs were blocking the door as we went out.
The jolly frieze-coated songster who celebrated the Kilruddery fox, sung, it must be confessed, most woefully out of tune; but still it was pleasant to hear him, and I think the meeting was the most agreeable one I have seen in Ireland: there was more good-humour, more cordial union of classes, more frankness and manliness, than one is accustomed to find in Irish meetings. All the speeches were kind-hearted, straightforward speeches, without a word of politics or an attempt at oratory: it was impossible to say whether the gentlemen present were Protestant or Catholic,—each one had a hearty word of encouragement for his tenant, and a kind welcome for his neighbour. There were forty stout, well-to-do farmers in the room, renters of fifty, seventy, a hundred acres of land. Therewere no clergymen present, though it would have been pleasant to have seen one of each persuasion, to say grace for the meeting and the meat.
At a similar meeting at Ballytore the next day, I had an opportunity of seeing a still finer collection of stock than had been brought to Naas, and at the same time one of the most beautiful, flourishing villages in Ireland. The road to it from H—— town, if not remarkable for its rural beauty, is pleasant to travel, for evidences of neat and prosperous husbandry are around you everywhere—rich crops in the fields, and neat cottages by the roadside, accompanying us as far as Ballytore—a white, straggling village, surrounding green fields, of some five furlongs square, with a river running in the midst of them, and numerous fine cattle in the green. Here is a large windmill, fitted up like a castle, with battlements and towers; the castellan thereof is a good-natured old Quaker gentleman, and numbers more of his following inhabit the town.
The consequence was, that the shops of the village were the neatest possible, though by no means grand or portentous. Why should Quaker shops be neater than other shops? They suffer to the full as much oppression as the rest of the hereditary bondsmen; and yet, in spite of their tyrants, they prosper.
I must not attempt to pass an opinion upon the stock exhibited at Ballytore; but, in the opinion of some large agricultural proprietors present, it might have figured with advantage in any show in England, and certainly was finer than the exhibition at Naas; which, however, is a very young society. The best part of the show, however, to everybody’s thinking (and it is pleasant to observe the manly fair-play spirit which characterises the society), was, that the prizes of the Irish Agricultural Society were awarded to two men—one a labourer, the other a very small holder, both having reared the best stock exhibited on the occasion. At the dinner, which took place in a barn of the inn, smartly decorated with laurels for the purpose, there was as good and stout a body of yeomen as at Naas the day previous, but only two landlords; and here, too, as at Naas, neither priest nor parson. Cattle-feeding, of course, formed the principal theme of the after-dinner discourse—not, however, altogether to the exclusion of tillage; and there was a good and useful prize for those who could not afford to rear fat oxen—for the best-kept cottage and garden namely, which was won by a poor man with a large family and scanty precarious earnings, but who yet found means to make the most of his small means, and to keep his little cottage neat and cleanly. The tariff and the plentiful harvest together had helped to bring down pricesseverely; and we heard from the farmers much desponding talk. I saw hay sold for £2 the ton, and oats for 8s. 3d. the barrel.
In the little village I remarked scarcely a single beggar, and very few bare feet indeed among the crowds who came to see the show. Here the Quaker village had the advantage of the town of Naas, in spite of its poorhouse, which was only half full when we went to see it; but the people prefer beggary and starvation abroad, to comfort and neatness in the union-house.
A neater establishment cannot be seen than this; and liberty must be very sweet indeed, when people prefer it and starvation to the certainty of comfort in the union-house. We went to see it after the show at Naas.
The first persons we saw at the gate of the place were four buxom lasses, in blue jackets and petticoats, who were giggling and laughing as gaily as so many young heiresses of a thousand a year, and who had a colour in their cheeks that any lady of Almack’s might envy. They were cleaning pails and carrying in water from a green court or playground in front of the house, which some of the able-bodied men of the place were busy in enclosing. Passing through the large entrance of the house, a nondescript Gothic building, we came to a court divided by a road and two low walls: the right enclosure is devoted to the boys of the establishment, of whom there were about fifty at play—boys more healthy or happy it is impossible to see. Separated from them is the nursery; and here were seventy or eighty young children, a shrill clack of happy voices leading the way to the door where they were to be found. Boys and children had a comfortable little uniform, and shoes were furnished for all; though the authorities did not seem particularly severe in enforcing the wearing of the shoes, which most of the young persons left behind them.
In spite of all theTimes’sin the world, the place was a happy one. It is kept with a neatness and comfort to which, until his entrance into the union-house, the Irish peasant must perforce have been a stranger. All the rooms and passages are white, well scoured, and airy; all the windows are glazed; all the beds have a good store of blankets and sheets. In the women’s dormitories there lay several infirm persons, not ill enough for the infirmary, and glad of the society of the common room. In one of the men’s sleeping-rooms we found a score of old grey-coated men sitting round another who was reading prayers to them; and outside the place we found a woman starving in rags, as she had been ragged and starving for years; her husband was wounded, and lay in his house upon straw; her children were ill with a fever; she had neither meat, nor physic, nor clothing, nor fresh air, nor warmthfor them;—and she preferred to starve on rather than enter the house.
The last of our agricultural excursions was to the fair of Castledermot, celebrated for the show of cattle to be seen there, and attended by the farmers and gentry of the neighbouring counties. Long before reaching the place we met troops of cattle coming from it—stock of a beautiful kind, for the most part large, sleek, white, long-backed, most of the larger animals being bound for England. There was very near as fine a show in the pastures along the road, which lies across a light green country with plenty of trees to ornament the landscape, and some neat cottages along the roadside.
At the turnpike of Castledermot the droves of cattle met us by scores no longer, but by hundreds, and the long street of the place was thronged with oxen, sheep, and horses, and with those who wished to see, to sell, or to buy. The squires were altogether in a cluster at the police-houses; the owners of the horses rode up and down, showing the best paces of their brutes; among whom you might see Paddy, in his ragged frieze-coat, seated on his donkey’s bare rump, and proposing him for sale. I think I saw a score of this humble though useful breed that were brought for sale to the fair. ‘I can sell him,’ says one fellow, with a pompous air, ‘wid his tackle or widout.’ He was looking as grave over the negotiation as if it had been for a thousand pounds. Besides the donkeys, of course there was plenty of poultry, and there were pigs without number, shrieking, and struggling, and pushing hither and thither among the crowd, rebellious to the straw-rope. It was a fine thing to see one huge grunter, and the manner in which he was landed into a cart. The cart was let down on an easy inclined plane to tempt him; two men ascending, urged him by the forelegs, other two entreated him by the tail. At length, when more than half of his body had been coaxed upon the cart, it was suddenly whisked up, causing the animal thereby to fall forward; a parting shove sent him altogether into the cart, the two gentlemen inside jump out, and the monster is left to ride home.
The farmers, as usual, were talking of the tariff, predicting ruin to themselves, as farmers will, on account of the decreasing price of stock, and the consequent fall of grain. Perhaps the person most to be pitied is the poor pig-proprietor yonder: it is his rent which he is carrying through the market, squeaking at the end of the straw-rope, and Sir Robert’s bill adds insolvency to that poor fellow’s misery.
This was the last of the sights which the kind owner of H—— town had invited me into his country to see; and I think they were among the most pleasing I witnessed in Ireland. Rich and poor were working friendlily together; priest and parson were alike interested in these honest, homely, agricultural festivals; not a word was said about hereditary bondage and English tyranny; and one did not much regret the absence of those patriotic topics of conversation. If but for the sake of the change, it was pleasant to pass a few days with people among whom there was no quarrelling; no furious denunciations against Popery on the part of the Protestants, and no tirades against the parsons from their bitter and scornful opponents of the other creed.
Next Sunday, in the county Meath, in a quiet old church lying amongst meadows and fine old stately avenues of trees, and for the benefit of a congregation of some thirty persons, I heard for the space of an hour and twenty minutes some thorough Protestant doctrine, and the Popish superstitions properly belaboured. Does it strengthen a man in his own creed to hear his neighbour’s belief abused? One would imagine so; for though abuse converts nobody, yet many of our pastors think they are not doing their duty by their own fold unless they fling stones at the flock in the next field, and have, for the honour of the service, a match at cudgelling with the shepherd. Our shepherd to-day was of this pugnacious sort.
The Meath landscape, if not varied and picturesque, is extremely rich and pleasant; and we took some drives along the banks of the Boyne, to the noble park of Slane (still sacred to the memory of George IV., who actually condescended to pass some days there), and to Trim, of which the name occurs so often in Swift’s Journals, and where stands an enormous old castle that was inhabited by Prince John. It was taken from him by an Irish chief, our guide said; and from the Irish chief it was taken by Oliver Cromwell. O’Thuselah was the Irish chief’s name no doubt.
Here, too, stands, in the midst of one of the most wretched towns in Ireland, a pillar erected in honour of the Duke of Wellington by the gentry of his native county. His birthplace, Dangan, lies not far off. And as we saw the hero’s statue, a flight of birds had hovered about it: there was one on each epaulette and two on his marshal’s staff; and, besides these wonders, we saw a certain number of beggars; and a madman, who was walking round a mound and preaching a sermon on grace; and a little child’s funeral came passing through the dismal town, the only stirring thing in it (the coffin was laid on a one-horse country car—a little deal box, in which the poor child lay—and a great troop of people followed the humble procession); and the innkeeper,who had caught a few stray gentlefolk in a town where travellers must be rare, and in his inn, which is more gaunt and miserable than the town itself, and which is by no means rendered more cheerful because sundry theological works are left for the rare frequenters in the coffee-room. The innkeeper brought in a bill which would have been worthy of Long’s, and which was paid with much grumbling on both sides.
It would not be a bad rule for the traveller in Ireland to avoid those inns where theological works are left in the coffee-room. He is pretty sure to be made to pay very dearly for these religious privileges.
We waited for the coach at the beautiful lodge and gate of Annsbrook; and one of the sons of the house coming up, invited us to look at the domain, which is as pretty and neatly ordered as—as any in England. It is hard to use this comparison so often, and must make Irish hearers angry. Can’t one see a neat house and grounds without instantly thinking that they are worthy of the sister country; and implying, in our cool way, its superiority everywhere else? Walking in this gentleman’s grounds, I told him, in the simplicity of my heart, that the neighbouring country was like Warwickshire, and the grounds as good as any English park. Is it the fact that English groundsaresuperior, or only that Englishmen are disposed to consider them so?
A pretty little twining river, called the Nanny’s Water, runs through the Park: there is a legend about that, as about other places. Once upon a time (ten thousand years ago), St. Patrick being thirsty as he passed by this country, came to the house of an old woman, of whom he asked a drink of milk. The old woman brought it to his reverence with the best of welcomes, and——here it is a great mercy that the Belfast mail comes up, whereby the reader is spared the rest of the history.
The Belfast mail had only to carry us five miles to Drogheda, but, in revenge, it made us pay three shillings for the five miles; and again, by way of compensation, it carried us over five miles of a country that was worth, at least, five shillings to see—not romantic or especially beautiful, but having the best of all beauty—a quiet, smiling, prosperous, unassuming,work-daylook, that in views and landscapes most good judges admire. Hard by Nanny’s Water, we came to Duleek Bridge, where, I was told, stands an old residence of the De Bath family, who were, moreover, builders of the picturesque old Bridge.
It leads over a wide green common, which puts one in mind of Eng—— (a plague on it, there is the comparison again!), and at the end of the common lies the village among trees: a beautifuland peaceful sight. In the background there was a tall, ivy-covered old tower, looking noble and imposing, but a ruin and useless—then there was a church, and next to it a chapel—the very same sun was shining upon both. The chapel and church were connected by a farmyard, and a score of golden ricks were in the background, the churches in unison, and the people (typified by the corn-ricks) flourishing at the feet of both—may one ever hope to see the day in Ireland when this little landscape allegory shall find a general application?
For some way, after leaving Duleek, the road and the country round continue to wear the agreeable cheerful look just now lauded. You pass by a house where James II. is said to have slept the night before the Battle of the Boyne (he took care to sleep far enough off on the night after), and also by an old red-brick hall, standing at the end of an old chace or terrace-avenue, that runs for about a mile down to the house, and finishes at a moat towards the road. But as the coach arrives near Drogheda, and in the boulevards of that town, all resemblance to England is lost. Up hill and down, we pass low rows of filthy cabins in dirty undulations. Parents are at the cabin-doors dressing the hair of ragged children; shockheads of girls peer out from the black circumference of smoke, and children inconceivably filthy, yell wildly and vociferously as the coach passes by. One little ragged savage rushed furiously up the hill, speculating upon permission to put on the drag-chain at descending, and hoping for a halfpenny reward. He put on the chain, but the guard did not give a halfpenny. I flung him one, and the boy rushed wildly after the carriage, holding it up with joy. ‘The man inside has given me one,’ says he, holding it up exultingly to the guard. I flung out another (by-the-bye, and without any prejudice, the halfpence in Irelandaresmaller than those of England), but when the child got this halfpenny, small as it was, it seemed to overpower him—the little man’s look of gratitude was worth a great deal more than the biggest penny ever struck.
The town itself, which I had three-quarters of an hour to ramble through, is smoky, dirty, and lively. There was a great bustle in the black main street, and several good shops, though some of the houses were in a half state of ruin, and battered shutters closed many of the windows, where formerly had been ‘Emporiums,’ ‘Repositories,’ and other grandly-titled abodes of small commerce. Exhortations to repeal were liberally plastered on the blackened walls, proclaiming some past or promised visit of the great agitator. From the bridge is a good bustling spectacle of the river and the craft; the quays were grimy withthe discharge of the coal-vessels that lay alongside them; the warehouses were not less black; the seamen and porters loitering on the quay were as swarthy as those of Puddledock; numerous factories and chimneys were vomiting huge clouds of black smoke: the commerce of the town is stated by the Guide-book to be considerable, and increasing of late years. Of one part of its manufactures every traveller must speak with gratitude—of the ale namely, which is as good as the best brewed in the sister kingdom. Drogheda ale is to be drunk all over Ireland in the bottled state: candour calls for the acknowledgment that it is equally praiseworthy in draught. And while satisfying himself of this fact, the philosophic observer cannot but ask why ale should not be as good elsewhere as at Drogheda; is the water of the Boyne the only water in Ireland whereof ale can be made?
Above the river and craft, and the smoky quays of the town, the hills rise abruptly, up which innumerable cabins clamber. On one of them, by a church, is a round tower or fort, with a flag; the church is the successor of one battered down by Cromwell in 1649, in his frightful siege of the place. The place of one of his batteries is still marked outside the town, and known as ‘Cromwell’s Mount’; here he ‘made the breach assaultable, and, by the help of God, stormed it.’ He chose the strongest point of the defence for his attack.
After being twice beaten back, by the divine assistance he was enabled to succeed in a third assault: he ‘knocked on the head’ all the officers of the garrison; he gave orders that none of the men should be spared. ‘I think,’ says he, ‘that night we put to the sword two thousand men, and one hundred of them having taken possession of St. Peter’s steeple and a round tower next the gate, called St. Sunday’s, I ordered the steeple of St. Peter’s to be fired, when one in the flames was heard to say, “God confound me, I burn, I burn!”’ The Lord General’s history of ‘this great mercy vouchsafed to us’ concludes with appropriate religious reflections: and prays Mr. Speaker of the House of Commons to remember that ‘it is good that God alone have all the glory.’ Is not the recollection of this butchery almost enough to make an Irishman turn rebel?
When troops march over the bridge, a young friend of mine (whom I shrewdly suspect to be an Orangeman in his heart) told me that their bands play the ‘Boyne Water.’ Here is another legend of defeat for the Irishman to muse upon; and here it was, too, that King Richard II. received the homage of four Irish kings, who flung their skenes or daggers at his feet and knelt to him, and were wonder-stricken by the riches of his tents and the garments ofhis knights and ladies. I think it is in Lingard that the story is told; and the antiquarian has no doubt seen that beautiful old manuscript at the British Museum where these yellow-mantled warriors are seen riding down to the king, splendid in his forked beard, and peaked shoes, and long, dangling, scalloped sleeves, and embroidered gown.
The Boyne winds picturesquely round two sides of the town, and, following it, we came to the Linen Hall,—in the days of the linen manufacture a place of note, now the place where Mr. O’Connell harangues the people,—but all the windows of the house were barricaded when we passed it, and of linen or any other sort of merchandise there seemed to be none. Three boys were running past it with a mouse tied to a string, and a dog galloping after: two little children were paddling down the street, one saying to the other, ‘Once I had a halfpenny, and bought apples with it.’ The barges were lying lazily on the river, on the opposite side of which was a wood of a gentleman’s domain, over which the rooks were cawing, and by the shore were some ruins, where ‘Mr. Ball once had his kennel of hounds’—touching reminiscence of former prosperity!
There is a very large and ugly Roman Catholic chapel in the town, and a smaller one of better construction; it was so crowded, however, although on a week-day, that we could not pass beyond the chapel-yard; where were great crowds of people, some praying, some talking, some buying and selling. There were two or three stalls in the yard, such as one sees near Continental churches, presided over by old women, with a store of little brass crucifixes, beads, books, and bénitiers for the faithful to purchase. The church is large and commodious within, and looks (not like all other churches in Ireland) as if it were frequented. There is a hideous stone monument in the churchyard representing two corpses half rotted away;—time or neglect had battered away the inscription, nor could we see the dates of some older tombstones in the ground, which were mouldering away in the midst of nettles and rank grass on the wall.
By a large public school of some reputation, where a hundred boys are educated (my young guide the Orangeman was one of them; he related with much glee how, on one of the Liberator’s visits, a schoolfellow had waved a blue and orange flag from the window and cried, ‘King William for ever, and to hell with the Pope!’), there is a fine old gate leading to the river, and in excellent preservation, in spite of time and Oliver Cromwell. It is a good specimen of Irish architecture. By this time that exceedingly slow coach, the Newry Lark, had arrived at that exceedinglyfilthy inn where the mail had dropped us an hour before. An enormous Englishman was holding a vain combat of wit with a brawny grinning beggar-woman at the door. ‘There’s aclevergentleman,’ says the beggar-woman; ‘sure he’ll give me something.’ ‘How much should you like?’ says the Englishman, with playful jocularity. ‘Musha,’ says she, ‘many alittlerman nor you has given me a shilling.’ The coach drives away; the lady had clearly the best of the joking-match: but I did not see, for all that, that the Englishman gave her a single farthing.
From Castle Bellingham—as famous for ale as Drogheda, and remarkable likewise for a still better thing than ale, an excellent resident proprietress, whose fine park lies by the road, and by whose care and taste the village has been rendered one of the most neat and elegant I have yet seen in Ireland—the road to Dundalk is exceedingly picturesque, and the traveller has the pleasure of feasting his eye with the noble line of Mourn Mountains, which rise before him while he journeys over a level country for several miles. The Newry Lark, to be sure, disdained to take advantage of the easy roads to accelerate its movements in any way; but the aspect of the country is so pleasant that one can afford to loiter over it. The fields were yellow with the stubble of the corn, which in this, one of the chief corn counties of Ireland, had just been cut down; and a long straggling line of neat farmhouses and cottages runs almost the whole way from Castle Bellingham to Dundalk. For nearly a couple of miles of the distance the road runs along the picturesque flat called Lurgan Green; and gentlemen’s residences and parks are numerous along the road, and one seems to have come amongst a new race of people, so trim are the cottages, so neat the gates and hedges, in this peaceful smiling district. The people, too, show signs of the general prosperity. A National school had just dismissed its female scholars as we passed through Dunlar; and though the children had most of them bare feet, their clothes were good and clean, their faces rosy and bright, and their long hair as shiny and as nicely combed as young ladies’ need to be. Numerous old castles and towers stand on the road here and there; and long before we entered Dundalk we had a sight of a huge factory-chimney in the town, and of the dazzling white walls of the Roman Catholic church lately erected there. The cabin-suburb is not great, and the entrance to the town is much adorned by the Hospital—a handsome Elizabethan building—and a row of houses of a similar architectural style, which lie on the left of the traveller.
THEstranger can’t fail to be struck with the look of Dundalk, as he has been with the villages and country leading to it, when contrasted with places in the south and west of Ireland. The coach stopped at a cheerful-lookingPlace, of which almost the only dilapidated mansion was the old inn at which it discharged us, and which did not hold out much prospect of comfort. But in justice to the King’s Arms, it must be said that good beds and dinners are to be obtained there by voyagers; and if they choose to arrive on days when his Grace the Most Reverend the Lord Archbishop of Armagh and R.C. Primate of Ireland is dining with his clergy, the house of course is crowded, and the waiters, and the boy who carries in the potatoes, a little hurried and flustered. When their reverences were gone, the laity were served; and I have no doubt, from the leg of a duck which I got, that the breast and wings must have been very tender.
Meanwhile, the walk was pleasant through the bustling little town. A grave old church, with a tall copper spire, defends one end of the main street; and a little way from the inn is the superb new chapel, which the architect, Mr. Duff, has copied from King’s College Chapel in Cambridge. The ornamental part of the interior is not yet completed; but the area of the chapel is spacious and noble, and three handsome altars of scagliola (or some composition resembling marble) have been erected of handsome and suitable form. When, by the aid of further subscriptions, the church shall be completed, it will be one of the handsomest places of worship the Roman Catholics possess in this country. Opposite the chapel stands a neat low black building—the gaol; in the middle of the building, and over the doorway, is an ominous balcony and window, with an iron beam overhead. Each end of the beam is ornamented with a grinning iron skull! Is this the hanging-place? and do these grinning cast-iron skulls facetiously explain the business for which the beam is there? For shame! for shame! Such disgusting emblems ought no longer to disgrace a Christian land. If kill we must, let us do so with as much despatch and decency as possible,—not brazen out our misdeeds and perpetuate them in this frightful satiric way.
A far better cast-iron emblem stands over a handsome shop in the place hard by—a plough namely, which figures over thefactory of Mr. Shekelton, whose industry and skill seem to have brought the greatest benefit to his fellow-townsmen, of whom he employs numbers in his foundries and workshops. This gentleman was kind enough to show me through his manufactories, where all sorts of iron-works are made, from a steam-engine to a door-key; and I saw everything to admire, and a vast deal more than I could understand, in the busy, cheerful, orderly, bustling, clanging place. Steam-boilers were hammered here; and pins made by a hundred busy hands in a manufactory above. There was the engine-room, where the monster was whirring his ceaseless wheels and directing the whole operations of the factory, fanning the forges, turning the drills, blasting into the pipes of the smelting-houses: he had a house to himself, from which his orders issued to the different establishments round about. One machine was quite awful to me, a gentle cockney, not used to such things—it was an iron-devourer, a wretch with huge jaws and a narrow mouth, ever opening and shutting, opening and shutting. You put a half-inch iron plate between his jaws, and they shut not a whit slower or quicker than before, and bit through the iron as if it were a sheet of paper. Below the monster’s mouth was a punch that performed its duties with similar dreadful calmness, going on its rising and falling.
I was so lucky as to have an introduction to the Vicar of Dundalk, which that gentleman’s kind and generous nature interpreted into a claim for unlimited hospitality; and he was good enough to consider himself bound not only to receive me, but to give up previous engagements abroad in order to do so. I need not say that it afforded me sincere pleasure to witness, for a couple of days, his labours among his people; and indeed it was a delightful occupation to watch both flock and pastor. The world is a wicked, selfish, abominable place, as the parson tells us; but his reverence comes out of his pulpit and gives the flattest contradiction to his doctrine, busying himself with kind actions from morning till night, denying to himself, generous to others, preaching the truth to young and old, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, consoling the wretched, and giving hope to the sick;—and I do not mean to say that this sort of life is led by the Vicar of Dundalk merely, but do firmly believe that it is the life of the great majority of the Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy of the country. There will be no breach of confidence, I hope, in publishing here the journal of a couple of days spent with one of these reverend gentlemen, and telling some readers, as idle and profitless as the writer, what the clergyman’s peaceful labours are.
In the first place, we set out to visit the church—the comfortable copper-spired old edifice that was noticed two pages back. It stands in a green churchyard of its own, very neat and trimly kept, with an old row of trees that were dropping their red leaves upon a flock of vaults and tombstones below. The building being much injured by flame and time, some hundred years back, was repaired, enlarged, and ornamented—as churches in those days were ornamented—and has consequently lost a good deal of its Gothic character. There is a great mixture, therefore, of old style and new style and no style; but, with all this, the church is one of the most commodious and best appointed I have seen in Ireland. The vicar held a council with a builder regarding some ornaments for the roof of the church, which is, as it should be, a great object for his care and architectural taste, and on which he has spent a very large sum of money. To these expenses he is, in a manner bound, for the living is a considerable one, its income being no less than two hundred and fifty pounds a year; out of which he has merely to maintain a couple of curates and a clerk and sexton, to contribute largely towards schools and hospitals, and relieve a few scores of pensioners of his own who are fitting objects of private bounty.
We went from the church to a school, which has been long a favourite resort of the good vicar’s: indeed, to judge from the schoolmaster’s books, his attendance there is almost daily—and the number of the scholars some two hundred. The number was considerably greater until the schools of the Educational Board were established, when the Roman Catholic clergymen withdrew many of their young people from Mr. Thackeray’s establishment.
We found a large room with sixty or seventy boys at work; in an upper chamber were a considerable number of girls, with their teachers, two modest and pretty young women; but the favourite resort of the vicar was evidently the Infant School,—and no wonder: it is impossible to witness a more beautiful or touching sight.
Eighty of these little people, healthy, clean, and rosy—some in smart gowns and shoes and stockings, some with patched pinafores and little bare pink feet—sate upon a half-dozen low benches, and were singing, at the top of their fourscore fresh voices, a song when we entered. All the voices were hushed as the vicar came in, and a great bobbing and curtseying took place; whilst a hundred and sixty innocent eyes turned awfully towards the clergyman, who tried to look as unconcerned as possible, and began to make his little ones a speech. ‘I have brought,’ says he, ‘a gentleman from England, who has heard of my littlechildren and their school, and hopes he will carry away a good account of it. Now, you know, we must all do our best to be kind and civil to strangers: what can we do here for this gentleman that he would like?—do you think he would like a song?’
All the Children.—‘We’ll sing to him!’
Then the schoolmistress, coming forward, sang the first words of a hymn, which at once eighty little voices took up, or near eighty—for some of the little things were too young to sing yet, and all they could do was to beat the measure with little red hands as the others sang. It was a hymn about heaven, with a chorus of ‘Will not that be joyful, joyful?’ and one of the verses beginning ‘Little children, too, are there.’ Some of my fair readers (if I have the honour to find such) who have been present at similar tender charming concerts, know the hymn, no doubt. It was the first time I had ever heard it; and I do not care to own that it brought tears to my eyes, though it is ill to parade such kind of sentiment in print. But I think I will never, while I live, forget that little chorus, nor would any man who has ever loved a child or lost one. God bless you, O little happy singers! What a noble and useful life is his, who, in place of seeking wealth or honour, devotes his life to such a service as this! And all through our country, thank God! in quiet humble corners that busy citizens and men of the world never hear of, there are thousands of such men employed in such holy pursuits, with no reward beyond that which the fulfilment of duty brings them. Most of these children were Roman Catholics. At this tender age the priests do not care to separate them from their little Protestant brethren: and no wonder. He must be a child-murdering Herod who would find the heart to do so.
After the hymn, the children went through a little scripture catechism, answering very correctly, and all in a breath, as the mistress put the questions. Some of them were, of course, too young to understand the words they uttered; but the answers are so simple that they cannot fail to understand them before long; and they learn in spite of themselves.
The catechism being ended, another song was sung; and now the vicar (who had been humming the chorus along with his young singers, and, in spite of an awful and grave countenance, could not help showing his extreme happiness) made another oration, in which he stated that the gentleman from England was perfectly satisfied; that he would have a good report of the Dundalk children to carry home with him; that the day was very fine, and the schoolmistress would probably like to take a walk; and, finally, would the youngpeople give her a holiday? ‘As many,’ concluded he, ‘as will give the schoolmistress a holiday, hold up their hands!’ This question was carried unanimously.
But I am bound to say, when the little people were told that as many aswouldn’t likea holiday were to hold uptheirhands, all the little hands went up again exactly as before: by which it may be concluded either that the infants did not understand his reverence’s speech, or that they were just as happy to stay at school as to go and play; and the reader may adopt whichever of the reasons he inclines to. It is probable that both are correct.
The little things are so fond of the school, the vicar told me as we walked away from it, that on returning home they like nothing better than to get a number of their companions who don’t go to school, and to play at infant-school.
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They may be heard singing their hymns in the narrow alleys and humble houses in which they dwell; and I was told of one dying who sang his song of ‘Will not that be joyful, joyful?’ to his poor mother weeping at his bedside, and promising her that they should meet where no parting should be.
‘There was a child in the school,’ said the vicar, ‘whose father, a Roman Catholic, was a carpenter by trade, a good workman, and earning a considerable weekly sum, but neglecting his wife and children and spending his earnings in drink. We have a song against drunkenness that the infants sing; and one evening, going home, the child found her father excited with liquor and ill-treating his wife. The little thing forthwith interposed between them, told her father what she had heard at school regarding the criminality of drunkenness and quarrelling, and finished her little sermon with the hymn. The father was first amused, then touched;and the end of it was that he kissed his wife, and asked her to forgive him, hugged his child, and from that day would always have her in his bed, made her sing to him morning and night, and forsook his old haunts for the sake of his little companion.’
He was quite sober and prosperous for eight months; but the vicar at the end of that time began to remark that the child looked ragged at school, and passing by her mother’s house, saw the poor woman with a black eye. ‘If it was any one but your husband, Mrs. C——, who gave you that black eye,’ says the vicar, ‘tell me; but if he did it, don’t say a word.’ The woman was silent, and soon after, meeting her husband, the vicar took him to task. ‘You were sober for eight months. Now tell me fairly, C——,’ says he, ‘were you happier when you lived at home with your wife and child, or are you more happy now?’ The man owned that he was much happier formerly, and the end of the conversation was, that he promised to go home once more and try the sober life again, and he went home and succeeded.
The vicar continued to hear good accounts of him; but passing one day by his house he saw the wife there looking very sad. Had her husband relapsed?—No, he was dead, she said—dead of the cholera; but he had been sober ever since his last conversation with the clergyman, and had done his duty to his family up to the time of his death. ‘I said to the woman,’ said the good old clergyman, in a grave low voice, ‘your husband is gone now to the place where, according to his conduct here, his eternal reward will be assigned him; and let us be thankful to think what a different position he occupies now, to that which he must have held had not his little girl been the means, under God, of converting him.’
Our next walk was to the County Hospital, the handsome edifice which ornaments the Drogheda entrance of the town, and which I had remarked on my arrival. Concerning this hospital, the governors were, when I passed through Dundalk, in a state of no small agitation; for a gentleman by the name of——, who, from being an apothecary’s assistant in the place, had gone forth as a sort of amateur inspector of hospitals throughout Ireland, had thought fit to censure their extravagance in erecting the new building, stating that the old one was fully sufficient to hold fifty patients, and that the public money might consequently have been spared. Mr.——‘s plan for the better maintenance of them in general is, that commissioners should be appointed to direct them, and not county gentlemen as heretofore; the discussion of which question does not need to be carried on in this humble work.
My guide, who is one of the governors of the new hospital, conducted me, in the first place, to the old one—a small dirty house in a damp and low situation, with but three rooms to accommodate patients, and these evidently not fit to hold fifty, or even fifteen patients. The new hospital is one of the handsomest buildings of the size and kind in Ireland; an ornament to the town, as the angry commissioner stated, but not after all a building of undue cost, for the expense of its erection was but £3000, and the sick of the county are far better accommodated in it than in the damp and unwholesome tenement regretted by the eccentric commissioner.
An English architect, Mr. Smith, of Hertford, designed and completed the edifice; strange to say, only exceeding his estimates by the sum of three-and-sixpence, as the worthy governor of the hospital with great triumph told me. The building is certainly a wonder of cheapness, and, what is more, so complete for the purpose for which it was intended, and so handsome in appearance, that the architect’s name deserves to be published by all who hear it; and if any country newspaper editors should notice this volume, they are requested to make the fact known. The house is provided with every convenience for men and women, with all the appurtenances of baths, water, gas, airy wards, and a garden for convalescents; and below, a dispensary, a handsome board-room, kitchen, and matron’s apartments, etc.—indeed, a noble requiring a house for a large establishment need not desire a handsomer one than this, at its moderate price of £3000. The beauty of this building has, as is almost always the case, created emulation, and a terrace in the same taste has been raised in the neighbourhood of the hospital.
From the Hospital we bent our steps to the Institution; of which place I give below the rules, and a copy of the course of study, and the dietary: leaving English parents to consider the fact, that their children can be educated at this place forthirteen pounds a year. Nor is there anything in the establishment savouring of the Dotheboys Hall.[30]I never saw, in any public school in England, sixty cleaner, smarter, more gentlemanlike boysthan were here at work. The upper class had been at work on Euclid as we came in, and were set, by way of amusing thestranger, to perform a sum of compound interest of diabolical complication, which, with its algebraic and arithmetic solution, was handed up to me by three or four of the pupils; and I strove to look as wise as I possibly could. Then they went through questions of mental arithmetic with astonishing correctness and facility; and finding from the master that classics were not taught in the school, I took occasion to lament this circumstance, saying, with a knowing air, that I would like to have examined the lads in a Greek play.
Classics, then, these young fellows do not get. Meat they get but twice a week. Let English parents bear this fact in mind; but that the lads are healthy and happy, anybody who sees them can have no question; furthermore, they are well instructed in a sound practical education—history, geography, mathematics, religion. What a place to know of would this be for many a poor half-pay officer, where he may put his children in all confidence that they will be well cared for and soundly educated! Why have we not State Schools in England, where, for the prime cost—for a sum which never need exceed for a young boy’s maintenance £25 a year—our children might be brought up? We are establishing National Schools for the labourer; why not give education to the sons of the poor gentry—the clergyman whose pittance is small, and would still give his son the benefit of a public education—the artist—the officer—the merchant’s office-clerk, the literary man? What a benefit might be conferred upon all of us if honest Charter Schools could be established for our children, and where it would be impossible for Squeers to make a profit![31]
Our next day’s journey led us, by half-past ten o’clock, to the ancient town of Louth, a little poor village now, but a great seat of learning and piety, it is said, formerly, where there stood a university and abbeys, and where St. Patrick worked wonders. Here my kind friend, the rector, was called upon to marry a smartsergeant of police to a pretty lass, one of the few Protestants who attend his church; and, the ceremony over, we were invited to the house of the bride’s father hard by, where the clergyman was bound to cut the cake, and drink a glass of wine to the health of the new-married couple. There was evidently to be a dance and some merriment in the course of the evening; for the good mother of the bride (Oh, blessed is he who has a good mother-in-law!) was busy at a huge fire in the little kitchen, and along the road we met various parties of neatly-dressed people, and several of the sergeant’s comrades, who were hastening to the wedding. The mistress of the rector’s darling Infant School was one of the bridesmaids: consequently the little ones had a holiday.
But he was not to be disappointed of his Infant School in this manner; so, mounting the car again, with a fresh horse, we went a very pretty drive of three miles to the snug lone schoolhouse of Glyde-farm—near a handsome park, I believe of the same name, where the proprietor is building a mansion of the Tudor order.
The pretty scene of Dundalk was here played over again; the children sang their little hymns, the good old clergyman joined delighted in the chorus, the holiday was given, and the little hands held up, and I looked at more clean bright faces and little rosy feet—the scene need not be repeated in print, but I can understand what pleasure a man must take in the daily witnessing of it, and in the growth of these little plants, which are set and tended by his care. As we returned to Louth, a woman met us with a curtsey and expressed her sorrow that she had been obliged to withdraw her daughter from one of the rector’s schools, which the child was vexed at leaving too. But the orders of the priest were peremptory; and who can say they were unjust? The priest, on his side, was only enforcing the rule which the parson maintains as his:—the latter will not permit his young flock to be educated except upon certain principles and by certain teachers; the former has his own scruples unfortunately also—and so that noble and brotherly scheme of National Education falls to the ground. In Louth, the National School was standing by the side of the priest’s chapel—it is so almost everywhere throughout Ireland; the Protestants have rejected, on very good motives doubtless, the chance of union which the Education Board gave them—be it so: if the children of either sect be educated apart, so that theybeeducated, the education scheme will have produced its good, and the union will come afterwards.
The church at Louth stands boldly upon a hill looking down on the village, and has nothing remarkable in it but neatness, except the monument of a former rector, Dr. Little, which attracts thespectator’s attention from the extreme inappropriateness of the motto on the coat of arms of the reverend defunct. It looks rather unorthodox to read in a Christian temple, where a man’s bones have the honour to lie, and where, if anywhere, humility is requisite—that there ismultum in parvo, ‘a great deal in Little.’ O Little, in life you were not much, and lo! you are less now; why should filial piety engrave that pert pun upon your monument, to cause people to laugh in a place where they ought to be grave? The defunct doctor built a very handsome rectory-house, with a set of stables that would be useful to a nobleman, but are rather too commodious for a peaceful rector who does not ride to hounds; and it was in Little’s time, I believe, that the church was removed from the old abbey, where it formerly stood, to its present proud position on the hill.
The abbey is a fine ruin, the windows of a good style, the tracings of carvings on many of them; but a great number of stones and ornaments were removed formerly to build farm-buildings withal, and the place is now as rank and ruinous as the generality of Irish burying-places seem to be. Skulls lie in clusters amongst nettle-beds by the abbey-walls; graves are only partially covered with rude stones; a fresh coffin was lying broken in pieces within the abbey; and the surgeon of the dispensary hard by might procure subjects here, almost without grave-breaking. Hard by the abbey is a building of which I beg leave to offer the following interesting sketch:—
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The legend in the country goes that the place was built for the accommodation of Saint ‘Murtogh,’ who lying down to sleep here in the open fields, not having any place to house under, found to his surprise, on waking in the morning, the above edifice, which the angels had built. The angelic architecture, it will be seen, is of rather a rude kind; and the village antiquary, who takes a pride in showing the place, says that the building was erectedtwo thousand years ago. In the handsome grounds of the rectory is another spot visited by popular tradition—a fairy’s ring: a regular mound of some thirty feet in height, flat and even on the top, andprovided with a winding path for the foot-passenger to ascend. Some trees grew on the mound, one of which was removed in order to make the walk. But the country-people cried out loudly at this desecration, and vowed that the ‘little people’ had quitted the country side for ever in consequence.
While walking in the town, a woman meets the rector with a number of curtseys and compliments, and vows that ‘tis your reverence is the friend of the poor, and may the Lord preserve you to us, and lady; and having poured out blessings innumerable, concludes by producing a paper for her son that’s in trouble in England. The paper ran to the effect, that ‘We, the undersigned, inhabitants of the parish of Louth, have known Daniel Horgan ever since his youth, and can speak confidently as to his integrity, piety, and good conduct.’ In fact, the paper stated that Daniel Horgan was an honour to his country, and consequently quite incapable of the crime of sack-stealing, I think, with which at present he was charged and lay in prison in Durham Castle. The paper had, I should think, come down to the poor mother from Durham, with a direction ready written to despatch it back again when signed, and was evidently the work of one of those benevolent individuals in assize-towns, who, following the profession of the law, delight to extricate unhappy young men of whose innocence (from various six-and-eightpenny motives) they feel convinced. There stood the poor mother, as the rector examined the document, with a huge wafer in her hand, ready to forward it so soon as it was signed; for the truth is, that ‘We, the undersigned,’ were as yet merely imaginary.
‘You don’t come to church,’ says the rector. ‘I know nothing of you or your son: why don’t you go to the priest?’
‘Oh, your reverence, my son’s to be tried next Tuesday,’ whimpered the woman; and then said the priest was not in the way, but as we had seen him a few minutes before, recalled the assertion, and she confessed that shehadbeen to the priest, and that he would not sign; and fell to prayers, tears, and unbounded supplications to induce the rector to give his signature. But that hard-hearted divine, stating that he hadnotknown Daniel Horgan from his youth upwards, that he could not certify as to his honesty or dishonesty, enjoined the woman to make an attempt upon the R.C. curate, to whose handwriting he would certify if need were.
The upshot of the matter was that the woman returned with a certificate from the R.C. curate as to her son’s good behaviour while in the village, and the rector certified that the handwriting was that of the R.C. clergyman in question, and the womanpopped her big red wafer into the letter and went her way. Tuesday is passed long ere this: Mr. Horgan’s guilt or innocence is long since clearly proved, and he celebrates the latter in freedom, or expiates the former at the mill. Indeed, I don’t know that there was any call to introduce his adventures to the public, except, perhaps, it may be good to see how in this little distant Irish village the blood of life is running. Here goes a happy party to a marriage, and the parson prays a ‘God bless you!’ upon them, and the world begins for them. Yonder lies a stall-fed rector in his tomb, flaunting over his nothingness his pompous heraldic motto; and yonder lie the fresh fragments of a nameless deal coffin, which any foot may kick over. Presently you hear the clear voices of little children praising God; and here comes a mother wringing her hands and asking for succour for her lad, who was a child but the other day. Suchmotus animorum atque hoec certamina tantaare going on in an hour of an October day in a little pinch of clay in the county Louth.
Perhaps—being in the moralising strain—the honest surgeon at the dispensary might come in as an illustration. He inhabits a neat humble house, a story higher than his neighbours’, but with a thatched roof. He relieves a thousand patients yearly at the dispensary, he visits seven hundred in the parish, he supplies the medicines gratis; and receiving for these services the sum of about one hundred pounds yearly, some county economists and calculators are loud against the extravagance of his salary, and threaten his removal. All these individuals and their histories we presently turn our backs upon, for, after all, dinner is at five o’clock, and we have to see the new road to Dundalk, which the county has lately been making.
Of this undertaking, which shows some skilful engineering—some gallant cutting of rocks and hills, and filling of valleys, with a tall and handsome stone bridge thrown across the river, and connecting the high embankments on which the new road at that place is formed—I can say little, except that it is a vast convenience to the county, and a great credit to the surveyor and contractor too; for the latter, though a poor man, and losing heavily by his bargain, has yet refused to mulct his labourers of their wages; and, as cheerfully as he can, still pays them their shilling a day.
MYkind host gave orders to the small ragged boy that drove the car to take ‘particular care of the little gentleman’; and the car-boy, grinning in appreciation of the joke, drove off at his best pace, and landed his cargo at Newry, after a pleasant two hours’ drive. The country for the most part is wild, but not gloomy—the mountains round about are adorned with woods and gentlemen’s seats; and the car-boy pointed out one hill—that of Slievegullion, which kept us company all the way—as the highest hill in Ireland. Ignorant or deceiving car-boy! I have seen a dozen hills, each the highest in Ireland, in my way through the country, of which the inexorable Guide-book gives the measurement and destroys the claim. Well, it was the tallest hill, in the estimation of the car-boy; and in this respect the world is full of car-boys. Has not every mother of a family a Slievegullion of a son, who, according to her measurement, towers above all other sons? Is not the patriot, who believes himself equal to three Frenchmen, a car-boy in heart? There was a kind young creature, with a child in her lap, that evidently held this notion. She paid the child a series of compliments, which would have led one to fancy he was an angel from heaven at the least; and her husband sate gravely by, very silent, with his arms round a barometer.
Beyond these there were no incidents or characters of note, except an old hostler that they said was ninety years old, and watered the horse at a lone inn on the road. ‘Stop!’ cries this wonder of years and rags, as the car, after considerable parley, got under weigh. The car-boy pulled up, thinking a fresh passenger was coming out of the inn.
‘Stop, till one of the gentlemen gives me something,’ says the old man, coming slowly up with us; which speech created a laugh, and got him a penny: he received it without the least thankfulness, and went away grumbling to his pail.
Newry is remarkable as being the only town I have seen which has no cabin suburb: strange to say, the houses begin all at once, handsomely coated and hatted with stone and slate; and if Dundalk was prosperous, Newry is better still. Such a sight of neatness and comfort is exceedingly welcome to an English traveller, who, moreover, finds himself, after driving through a plain bustling clean street, landed at a large plain comfortable inn, where business seemsto be done, where there are smart waiters to receive him, and a comfortable warm coffee-room that bears no traces of dilapidation.
What the merits of thecuisinemay be I can’t say for the information of travellers; a gentleman to whom I had brought a letter from Dundalk taking care to provide me at his own table, accompanying me previously to visit the lions of the town. A river divides it, and the counties of Armagh and Down: the river runs into the sea at Carlingford Bay, and is connected by a canal with Lough Neagh, and thus with the north of Ireland. Steamers to Liverpool and Glasgow sail continually. There are mills, foundries, and manufactories, of which the Guide-book will give particulars; and the town of 13,000 inhabitants is the busiest and most thriving that I have yet seen in Ireland.
Our first walk was to the church; a large and handsome building, although built in the unlucky period when the Gothic style was coming into vogue. Hence one must question the propriety of many of the ornaments, though the whole is massive, well-finished, and stately. Near the church stands the Roman Catholic chapel, a very fine building, the work of the same architect, Mr. Duff, who erected the chapel at Dundalk; but, like almost all other edifices of the kind in Ireland that I have seen, the interior is quite unfinished, and already so dirty and ruinous, that one would think a sort of genius for dilapidation must have been exercised in order to bring it to its present condition. There are tattered green-baize doors to enter at, a dirty clay floor, and cracked plaster walls, with an injunction to the public not to spit on the floor. Maynooth itself is scarcely more dreary. The architect’s work, however, does him the highest credit: the interior of the church is noble and simple in style; and one can’t but grieve to see a fine work of art, that might have done good to the country, so defaced and ruined as this is.
The Newry poorhouse is as neatly ordered and comfortable as any house, public or private, in Ireland: the same look of health which was so pleasant to see among the Naas children of the union-house, was to be remarked here: the same care and comfort for the old people. Of able-bodied there were but few in the house; it is in winter that there are most applicants for this kind of relief; the sunshine attracts the women out of the place, and the harvest relieves it of the men. Cleanliness, the matron said, is more intolerable to most of the inmates that any other regulation of the house; and instantly on quitting the house they relapse into their darling dirt, and of course at their periodical return are subject to the unavoidable initiatory lustration.
Newry has many comfortable and handsome public buildings;the streets have a business-like look, the shops and people are not too poor, and the southern grandiloquence is not shown here in the shape of fine words for small wares. Even the beggars are not so numerous, I fancy, or so coaxing and wheedling in their talk. Perhaps, too, among the gentry, the same moral change may be remarked, and they seem more downright and plain in their manner; but one must not pretend to speak of national characteristics from such a small experience as a couple of evenings’ intercourse may give.
Although not equal in natural beauty to a hundred other routes which the traveller takes in the south, the ride from Newry to Armagh is an extremely pleasant one, on account of the undeniable increase of prosperity which is visible through the country. Well-tilled fields, neat farmhouses, well-dressed people, meet one everywhere, and people and landscape alike have a plain, hearty, flourishing look.
The greater part of Armagh has the aspect of a good stout old English town, although round about the steep on which the cathedral stands (the Roman Catholics have taken possession of another hill, and are building an opposition cathedral on this eminence) there are some decidedly Irish streets, and that dismal combination of house and pig-sty which is so common in Munster and Connaught.
But the main streets, though not fine, are bustling, substantial, and prosperous; and a fine green has some old trees and some good houses, and even handsome stately public buildings, round about it, that remind one of a comfortable cathedral city across the water.
The cathedral service is more completely performed here than in any English town, I think. The church is small, but extremely neat, fresh, and handsome—almost too handsome; covered with spick-and-span gilding and carved-work in the style of the thirteenth century; every pew as smart and well-cushioned as my lord’s own seat in the country church; and for the clergy and their chief, stalls and thrones quite curious for their ornament and splendour. The Primate with his blue riband and badge (to whom the two clergymen bow reverently as, passing between them, he enters at the gate of the altar rail) looks like a noble Prince of the Church; and I had heard enough of his magnificent charity and kindness to look with reverence at his lofty handsome features.
Will it be believed that the sermon lasted only for twenty minutes? Can this be Ireland? I think this wonderful circumstance impressed me more than any other with the difference between north and south, and, having the Primate’s own countenance forthe opinion, may confess a great admiration for orthodoxy in this particular.
A beautiful monument to Archbishop Stuart, by Chantrey; a magnificent stained window, containing the arms of the clergy of the diocese (in the very midst of which I was glad to recognise the sober old family coat of the kind and venerable Rector of Louth), and numberless carvings and decorations, will please the lover of church architecture here. I must confess, however, that in my idea the cathedral is quite too complete. It is of the twelfth century, but not the least venerable. It is as neat and trim as a lady’s drawing-room. It wants a hundred years at least to cool the raw colour of the stones, and to dull the brightness of the gilding; all which benefits, no doubt, time will bring to pass, and future cockneys setting off from London Bridge after breakfast in an aërial machine may come to hear the morning service here, and not remark the faults which have struck a too susceptible tourist of the nineteenth century.
Strolling round the town after service, I saw more decided signs that Protestantism was there in the ascendant. I saw no less than three different ladies on the prowl, dropping religious tracts at various doors; and felt not a little ashamed to be seen by one of them getting into a car with bag and baggage, being bound for Belfast.
The ride of ten miles from Armagh to Portadown was not the prettiest, but one of the pleasantest drives I have had in Ireland; for the country is well cultivated along the whole of the road, the trees in plenty, and villages and neat houses always in sight. The little farms, with their orchards and comfortable buildings, were as clean and trim as could be wished; they are mostly of one story, with long thatched roofs and shining windows, such as those that may be seen in Normandy and Picardy. As it was Sunday evening, all the people seemed to be abroad, some sauntering quietly down the roads—a pair of girls here and there pacing leisurely in a field, a little group seated under the trees of an orchard, which pretty adjunct to the farm is very common in this district; and the crop of apples seemed this year to be extremely plenty. The physiognomy of the people too has quite changed: the girls have their hair neatly braided up, not loose over their faces as in the south; and not only are bare feet very rare, and stockings extremely neat and white, but I am sure I saw at least a dozen good silk gowns upon the women along the road, and scarcely one which was not clean and in good order. The men for the most part figured in jackets, caps, and trousers, eschewing theold well of a hat which covers the popular head at the other end of the island, the breeches, and the long, ill-made tail-coat. The people’s faces are sharp and neat, not broad, lazy, knowing-looking, like that of many a shambling Diogenes who may be seen lounging before his cabin in Cork or Kerry. As for the cabins, they have disappeared; and the houses of the people may rank decidedly as cottages. The accent, too, is quite different; but this is hard to describe in print. The people speak with a Scotch twang, and, as I fancied, much more simply and to the point. A man gives you a downright answer, without any grin, or joke, or attempt at flattery. To be sure, these are rather early days to begin to judge of national characteristics; and very likely the above distinctions have been drawn after profoundly studying a Northern and a Southern waiter at the inn at Armagh.
At any rate, it is clear that the towns are vastly improved, the cottages and villages no less so; the people look active and well-dressed; a sort of weight seems all at once to be taken from the Englishman’s mind on entering the province, when he finds himself once more looking upon comfort, and activity, and resolution. What is the cause of this improvement?Protestantismis, more than one Church-of-England man said to me; but for Protestantism, would it not be as well to read Scotchism?—meaning thrift, prudence, perseverance, boldness, and common sense, with which qualities any body of men, of any Christian denomination, would no doubt prosper.
The little brisk town of Portadown, with its comfortable unpretending houses, its squares and market-place, its pretty quay with craft along the river,—a steamer building on the dock, close to mills and warehouses that look in a full state of prosperity,—was a pleasant conclusion to this ten miles’ drive, that ended at the newly opened railway-station. The distance hence to Belfast is twenty-five miles; Lough Neagh may be seen at one point of the line, and the Guide-book says that the station towns of Lurgan and Lisburn are extremely picturesque; but it was night when I passed by them, and after a journey of an hour and a quarter reached Belfast.
That city has been discovered by another eminent cockney traveller (for though born in America, the dear old Bow-bell blood must run in the veins of Mr. N. P. Willis), and I have met, in the periodical works of the country, with repeated angry allusions to his description of Belfast, the pink heels of the chambermaid who conducted him to bed (what business had he to be looking at the young woman’s legs at all?), and his wrath at the beggary of the town and the laziness of the inhabitants, as marked by a lineof dirt running along the walls, and showing where they were in the habit of lolling.
These observations struck me as rather hard when applied to Belfast, though possibly pink heels and beggary might be remarked in other cities of the kingdom; but the town of Belfast seemed to me really to be as neat, prosperous, and handsome a city as need be seen; and, with respect to the inn, that in which I stayed, (Kearn’s) was as comfortable and well-ordered an establishment as the most fastidious cockney can desire, and with an advantage which some people perhaps do not care for, that the dinners which cost seven shillings at London taverns are here served for half a crown; but I must repeat here, in justice to the public, what I stated to Mr. William the waiter, viz., that half a pint of port winedoescontain more than two glasses—at least it does in happy, happy England.... Only, to be sure, here the wine is good, whereas the port wine in England is not port, but, for the most part, an abominable drink of which it would be a mercy only to give us two glasses; which, however, is clearly wandering from the subject in hand.
They call Belfast the Irish Liverpool: if people are for calling names, it would be better to call it the Irish London at once—the chief city of the kingdom, at any rate. It looks hearty, thriving, and prosperous, as if it had money in its pockets and roast beef for dinner: it has no pretensions to fashion, but looks mayhap better in its honest broadcloth thansome peoplein their shabby brocade. The houses are as handsome as at Dublin, with this advantage, that people seem to live in them. They have no attempt at ornament for the most part, but are grave, stout, red-brick edifices, laid out at four angles in orderly streets and squares.