Books: The Letters of Norah on her Tour Through Ireland
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Margaret Dixon McDougall >> The Letters of Norah on her Tour Through Ireland
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We were allured to Lakeview Hotel by a printed card of terms and found
it delightfully situated. Did not intend to linger here any time, did
not seem to care much for the lakes now when I had got to see them. It
was a damp evening, the mountains, that loom up on every hand, were
wrapped in their gray cloaks, the lake whipped up by the squally winds
had risen in swells and everything looked dismal. I shall see some one
convenient sight and look round me and leave in the morning, I said.
The only available sight to be seen that night was Torc Cascade--well, I
will be content with that. I must take a car; bargained for that, and
drove through the walled-up country. Every place here is walled up,
enclosed, fenced in. I noticed some cottages that were pictures of
rustic beauty, others that were dirty hovels. The pretty cottages were
occupied by laborers on the estates that border on the lake. Passed a
handsome, little Episcopalian church in a sheltered place; near it were
two monumental crosses of the ancient Irish pattern, erected by the
tenants to the memory of Mr. Herbert, who was their landlord and who is
spoken of by the people as one who deserved that they should devote some
of their scant earnings to raise a cross to his memory.
In due time we arrived at a little door in the wall, where a man stood
in Mr. Herbert's interest, who gave a small ticket for sixpence,
unlocked the little arched door and admitted the stranger into this
temple of nature and art. A board hung on a tree was the first object,
warning visitors not to pluck ferns or flowers, the man at the gate
having notice to deprive marauding visitors of anything so gathered.
There is a winding gravel walk leading up the height almost alongside of
the brawling stream that leaps from rock to rock. I did not see any
flowers at all, but the common heather bell in two varieties and the
large coarse fern so common in our Canadian woods. There are many
cascades unnamed and unnoticed in our Canadian forests as handsome as
Torc Cascade. When you get up a good way you come to a black fence that
bars the way. You are above the tall firs, and the solemn Torc Mountain
rises far above you. I would have been lost in admiration had I never
seen the upper Ottawa or the River aux Lievres. Feeling no inclination
to commit petty larceny on the ferns, I descended slowly and returned.
The ruined abbey of Muckross is another of the sights of Killarney.
Every visitor pays a shilling to Mr. Herbert for permission to enter
here. I did not go to see it, but some of the party at the hotel did.
They described the cloisters as being in a good state of preservation--
cloisters are a kind of arched piazza running round a court yard, in
this case having in its centre a magnificent yew tree. These ruins are
taken great care of, therefore parts of the abbey are in a pretty good
state of preservation. They tell of a certain man named John Drake, who
took possession of the abbey kitchen about one hundred years ago, lived
there as a hermit for about eleven years in the odor of sanctity.
There was quite a party going through the gap of Dunloe, which reduced
the price of the trip to very little, comparatively speaking, and I was
persuaded to join it. Every available spot about here has a lordly
tower, a lady's bower, an old ruin or a new castle. The Workhouse is
fine enough and extensive enough for a castle, and the Lunatic Asylum
might be a palace for a crowned head. There are the ruins of Aghadon
Castle on one ridge and the shrunk remains of a round tower. A brother
of the great O'Connell lives here in a white house bearing the same name
as the hotel, Lakeview House. We look with some interest at Dunloe
Castle. once the residence of O'Sullivan Mor, and listen to the car-man
who tells us of the glories of the three great families that owned
Kerry, O'Sullivan Mor, O'Sullivan Bear and great O'Donoghoe.
Of course we hear legend after legend of the threadbare tales of the
Lakes. We heard much of the cave of Dunloe which has many records, in
the Ogham character, of Ireland in the days of the Druids. All this time
we were driving along a road with bare mountains, and tree-covered
mountains rising on every hand. It reminded me in some places of the
long glen in Leitrim, in others of Canadian scenes among the mountains.
We began to be beset by mounted men on scrubby ponies. They gathered
round us, riding along as our escort, behind and before and alongside
urging on us the necessity of a pony to cross the road through the gap.
Their pertinacity was something wonderful.
The carman stopped at a miserable cabin said to have been the residence
of the Kate Kearney of Lady Morgan's song. That heroine's modern
representative expects everyone to take a dose of goat's milk in poteen
from her, and leave some gratuity in return. The whole population turned
out to beg under some pretext or another. One very handsome girl,
bareheaded and barefooted, and got up light and airy as to costume,
begged unblushingly without any excuse. She gathered up her light
drapery with one hand, and kept up with the horse, skelping along
through mud and mire as if she liked it. I noticed that she was set on
by her parents who were the occupiers of a little farm.
Suddenly our car stopped at a house where all sorts of lake curiosities
were exposed for sale. From this point it was four miles, Irish miles,
through the gap to the lake to the point where we took the boat. This
was one circumstance of which we were not aware when we started; it was
therefore a surprize. I am sorry to say that this gap was a
disappointment to me. It was a difficult path among bare mountains, but
nothing startling or uncommon.
What was uncommon was the relays of indefatigable women that lay in wait
for us at every turn. Goats' milk and poteen, photographs, knitted
socks, carved knick-nacks in bog oak; everything is offered for sale;
denial will not be taken. You pass one detachment to come upon another
lurking in ambush at a corner. There are men with small cannons who will
wake the echoes for a consideration; there are men with key bugles who
will wake the echoes more musically for a consideration; there is the
blind fiddler of the gap who fiddles away in hopes of intercepting some
stray pennies from the shower. One impudent woman followed us for quite
a way to sell us her photograph, as the photograph of Eily O'Connor,
murdered here by her lover many years ago--murdered not at the gap but
in the lake. There was a large party of us and these followers, horse,
foot and artillery, I may say were a persistent nuisance all the way.
The ponies, crowds of them, followed us to the entrance of the Gap,
where they disappeared, but the women and girls never faltered for the
five miles. The reiterated and re-reiterated offer of goat's milk and
poteen became exasperating; the bodyguard of these pertinacious women
that could not be shaken off was most annoying. The tourists are to the
inhabitants of Killarney what a wreck used to be to the coast people of
Cornwall, a God-send.
One does feel inclined to lose all patience as they run the gauntlet
here, and then one looks around at the miserable cabins built of loose
stones, at the thatch held on by ropes weighted with stones, the same as
are to be seen in Achil Island, among the Donegal hills, or the long
glens of Leitrim, notices the patches of pale, sickly, stunted oats, the
little corners of pinched potatoes--a girl passed us with a tin dish of
potatoes for the dinner, they were little bigger than marbles--the
little rickles of turf that the constant rain is spoiling, and one sees
that as there is really no industry in the place, of loom or factory,
that want and encouragement have combined to make them come down like
the wolf on the fold to the attack of tourists. It spoiled the view, it
destroyed any pleasure the scenery might have afforded, and yet under
the circumstances it was natural enough on their part. "We depend on the
tourists, this is our harvest," the carmen explained to us. From the
hotel keeper to the beggar all depend on the tourist season.
After all it was something to have passed through between the
Macgillicuddy's Reeks and the purple mountain; something to see water
like spun silver flinging itself from the mountain top in leaps to the
valley below, to struggle up and up to the highest point of the gap and
look back at the serpentine road winding in and out beside small still
lakes through the valley far below. Of course we look into the Black
Lough where St. Patrick imprisoned the last snake. Of course we had
pointed out to us the top of Mangerton, and were told of the devil's
punch bowl up there. Down through the Black Valley we came to the point
where the boats waited for us, leaving the black rocks, the bare
mountains, the poor little patches of tillage, the miserable huts and
the multitudinous vendors of goat's milk and poteen behind. To our
surprise the way to the boats was barred by a gate, and at the gate
stood a man of Mr. Herbert's to receive a shilling for each passenger
before they could pass to the boats. "He makes a good thing out of it,"
remarked the boatmen. I do not know how many more fees are to be paid
for a look about the lakes of Killarney, but this gate, Torc Cascade and
Muckross Abbey cost each tourist two shillings and sixpence to look at
them.
The upper lake is beautiful, fenced around by mountains of every size
and variety of appearance. Of course they are the same mountains you
have been seeing all day, but seen from a different standpoint. The
Eagle's Nest towers up like an attenuated pyramid, partly clothed with
trees, and is grand enough and high enough for the eagles to build on
its summit, which they do. Here were men stationed to wake the echoes
with the bugle. As our boat swept round, recognizing that we had not
employed them, they ceased the strain until we passed, but the echoes
followed us and insisted on being heard.
There are many, many spots on the Upper Ottawa as fair and as romantic
as the Lakes of Killarney, and they are very lovely. The trees on the
islands have a variety that do not grow in our Canada, principally the
glossy-leaved arbutus. From the upper lake we slid down a baby rapid
under an old bridge--built by the Danes of course, the arch formed as
the arches of the castles in the west--into the middle lake.
The day had been one of dim showers, but in the middle lake the sun
streamed out and touched the peak of the purple mountain and all the
mountain sides and woody islands with splendor, that streamed down in
golden shafts along the rain that was falling on some, and chased for a
moment the shadows that lay on others. We slid down a fainter rapid
under another bridge into the last and largest lake. On every lake there
are buildings of glory and beauty to be seen nestling on the banks among
the trees, or towering on the heights, owned by the wealthy and titled
people that own the land round the lakes. A cottage built for Her
Majesty was pointed out to us, and we heard of a royal deer hunt held
here. We heard rapturous accounts of stags hunted to the verge of death,
and saved alive to repeat the ennobling sport. And we censure without
measure the Spanish bull fight where the animals are killed once! How
many deaths do these timid deer suffer? I am afraid we are not as noble
and merciful a people as we think we are.
There are sights to be seen and tales to be heard about these lakes of
loveliness that would occupy weeks, but a glimpse and away must suffice
for some, and our party all left Killarney on the next morning. I must
say that the wealth and the poverty, the unblushing begging, the want of
any remunerative industry, the idle listless people about the corners,
made Killarney a sad place to me.
LIII.
CORK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD.
After returning from the lakes the rain came down in such torrents as
made us feel very thankful to be indoors again. We heard it raining all
through the night as if the days of Noah were returned once more. Every
one became anxious about the harvest in consequence of this steady rain.
The bishop has recommended prayer in all the Catholic churches for
seasonable weather to save the harvest. Murmurs of the appearance of
rot in the potatoes reach me frequently. I have noticed disease in the
potatoes appearing on the dinner table, a kind of dry rot, only to be
noticed after cutting the potato.
From Killarney to Cahirciveen is forty-five miles; beyond that is the
island of Valentia. There are many wild views to be seen on this island,
the property of the Knight of Kerry. The traveller here can notice how
the Atlantic is wearing away the Kerry coast.
The first part of this drive of forty-five miles is through a poor,
poverty-stricken country, with such cabins of mud and misery as are an
amusement to the tourist and a pain and a shame to the Irish lover of
his country. There is nothing about these habitations to hint that any
idea of comfort had ever penetrated here. For the reason of pelting rain
and driving winds I was forced to give up my intention of going across
by car to Kenmare, and from thence to Skibbereen, and took the train for
Cork. The land seems to grow better the nearer we come to Cork.
Arrived at Cork, the first object which attracted my attention was the
monument to Father Mathew. The temperance cause to which he dedicated
his life sadly needs another champion. Will another Father Mathew arise?
As soon after my arrival in Cork as I was comfortably settled, I sallied
out to discover the river Lee with an insane notion that I would hear
"the bells of Shandon that sound so grand on" its pleasant waters. I
discovered the river with tree-shaded, secluded dwellings on one bank
and a wide green pasture on another. There was a bridge at the place
where I first came in sight of the river, and a great crowd, so eager as
to be silent, gazing up the stream. Thinking it was a boat race that
drew their attention, I crossed the bridge to gain the green pasture at
the other side. The pasture was reached by a little arched door through
a boundary wall, where a policeman kept guard. There was a great crowd
around this little door. There had been an accident, a boat had upset
and all in it had been lost; they were searching for the bodies. I asked
for admittance and the policeman unlocked the door and allowed me to
pass. Followed the path along the water side, and came to the crowd
round the four bodies laid upon the wet meadow grass. A father, so
quiet, partially gray, trim and respectable looking, a young lad in blue
boating costume, a young girl in black, farther on another in whom they
thought there were signs of life, and about her two doctors were
working, applying a galvanic battery. The mother had been restored and
was conveyed into one of the houses.
I never saw any attempts to recover a drowned person before. I wondered
that they left the body lying on the damp earth in wet clothing. They
told me that it might be fatal to move her before they succeeded in
bringing her back to life. They tried a long time in vain, then they
laid the four bodies all in a row for the coroner. The damp grass, the
trampling and sympathetic crowd, the four bodies in their wet garments
laid on the bank, will always rise in my memory along with my first
sight of the river Lee.
Cork seems a rich city, full of business, bustle on all the wharves,
buying and selling on all the streets. The buildings are very grand.
Alongside the river is a long ridge rising up to a tree-crowned summit.
On that hillside is tier upon tier of grand houses, grand churches, fine
convents and public buildings of one kind and another. You come upon
fine churches through the town in corners where you do not expect them.
The church of churches in Cork is the Protestant Cathedral, of St. Finn
Barre--whoever he was. This church sits high up on a rocky foundation,
its pointed spires of exquisite stone-work pierce the sky. It is not
finished, scaffoldings are there, and skilled chisels and cunning
hammers have been knapping and polishing there for many a day, and are
likely to continue hammering and chiselling for many a day more. Inside,
it is marble of Cork, marble of Connemara, marble of Italy, polished to
the brightest. The gates which admit from one ecclesiastical division to
another are wrought in flowers that blaze in gold. Before the altar,
parables of our Lord are wrought in mosaic on the floor. On the wall the
different noble families who belong here, or have money invested here,
have their shields containing their coats of arms on the wall. Into this
grand church have been wrought the religious ideas of the church people
for years, at the cost of L100,000, and there is an immense golden angel
on the point of a gable calling with two trumpets for L25,000 more to
finish it.
None but a rich city could afford the splendid buildings that are in
Cork. The evening on which I arrived in Cork was signalized not only by
the boat accident, but by a grand wedding, the wedding of a Sir George
Colthurst in the splendid cathedral church just mentioned, and there was
any amount of fashion, and high birth and young beauty gathered there.
The bride was beautiful, the bride was "tall," and not yet, they say,
out of her teens. She was dressed in white satin and silver cloth, Irish
lace and orange blossoms, and wore no jewels. None but invited eyes were
allowed to look at the grand ceremony which made the fair bride and the
lord of Blarney castle one. Some tenants of the bridegroom got up a
bonfire, had some barrels of beer given them to rejoice withal, and were
dancing to the music produced by six fiddlers, when they were surrounded
by a small army of disguised people, fired into, beaten and dispersed.
The first accounts put the number of wounded at twenty, to-day they are
reduced to five--perhaps that is the proportion of exaggeration in
newspaper accounts of outrage generally. The newly-made bride and
bridegroom went to see the wounded, leaving cordials and money at every
house.
One thing is observable in Cork, the determination to make an effort to
restore native industry from its present languishing condition. Passing
along the streets I notice clerks in the windows affixing labels on
goods with the words, "Irish Manufactures," "Cork made goods," "Blarney
tweeds," "Irish blankets," "Cork made furniture." There have been
meetings held on the subject since I came here. No city in the world
could appear to be more quiet and law-abiding than Cork to all
appearance.
As one instance of the exaggeration of reports concerning outrages, I
see the disturbance in Cork that took place at the rejoicings about Sir
George Colthurst's marriage advertised with the heading 20 men shot. The
local report says five injured, one shot, but not fatally.
Went down the river Lee to Queenstown. It did not rain except a few
drops during the whole time. The sun shone, the clouds, some of them
were billowy and white, and massed themselves on a deep, blue sky. The
little steamer was crowded fore and aft with holiday passengers, and a
large quantity of small babies. The river Lee, from Cork to Queenstown,
wears a green color, as if it were akin to the ocean. Flocks of sea
gulls flying about, or perching on the ooze where the tide is out, make
one think of the sea, but the green banks of the river are there to
testify against it.
We expected to find that the scenery from Cork to Queenstown was
beautiful, and so it is. There is no use in trying to praise it, for all
praise seems flat compared with the reality. There are glorious, steep
slopes leading up to fair, round hills, waving with golden grain, or
green with aftermath, checked off into fields by gay, green hedges or
files of stately trees. On the slope, half way up the slope, snuggling
down at the foot of the slope, are residences of every degree of beauty.
Houses, square and solid, with wide porticos; houses rising into many
gabled peaks; houses that have swollen into all sorts of bay windows
running up to the roof, or stopping with the first story. Houses that
fling themselves up into the sky in towers and turrets, and assert
themselves to be, indeed, castles.
Queenstown comes at last, a town hung up on a steep hillside, and on the
very brow of the hill is an immense cathedral, unfinished like St. Finn
Barre's, of Cork. In these cathedrals two forms of religious belief are
slowly and expensively trying to express themselves in stone, chiselled
and cut into a thousand forms of beauty, in marbles, polished and
carved, in painted windows, in gildings and draperies of the costliest.
Looking at these costly fanes erected to be a local spot where Jehovah's
presence shall dwell, one can scarcely believe that He will dwell in the
heart of the poor who are willing to receive Him in the day of His
power. Is the soul of the beggar more dear to God as a dwelling place
than these lofty temples? Forever the world is saying "Lord, behold what
manner of stones and what buildings are here?" And the Lord cares more
for the toiling fisherman, the poor disheartened widow, and the laboring
and heavy laden peasant than the grandest buildings. The cost of these
churches would buy out Achil island and the appurtenances thereof, I
think. It would maybe purchase the wildest tract of the Donegal
mountains. I wonder if a hardy mountain people, who could live on their
own soil, and begin to feel the stirrings of enterprise and energy,
would be as acceptable to Him who came anointed to preach the gospel to
the poor as these poems in stone. Who knows?
We sat on a bench under the trees and looked at the harbor--its waters
cut by many a flying keel, at Spike Island lying in the sun, all its
fortifications as silent and lonely looking as if no convict nor any
other living creature was there. Steamboats for "a' the airts the winds
can blaw," were passing out and away, leaving a train of smoke behind
them, and big sail vessels, three-masted and with sails packed up, are
waiting to go, and revenue cutters and small passenger boats are flying
about each on their way.
A lady sits by me and is drawn to talk to the stranger of the greenness
of the grass here winter and summer, of the beauty spread out all
around. She tells of one who died away in another land brought home to
lie under the daisies here, just twenty years ago to-day. Other people,
she says, are proud of their country, are fond of their country, but
none have the same love for their country as the Irish have for green
Erin. Every inch of ground; every blade of grass in Ireland is holy,
says this lady with tears in her eyes. She is thinking of the dust that
Irish grass covers from her sight. It is on an anniversary we meet; she
cannot help speaking on this day of sacred things. The steamboat is
wading up to the wharf. We do not know one another's names, but we have
drawn near to each other--we clasp hands and part with a mutual God
bless you. The little boat swallows up all that are willing to come on
board, and like a black swan she sails up over the calm river, under the
bright sky, past the handsome houses and the lovely grounds, among the
clustering masts back to the rich city of Cork.
All the people injured in the attack on the rejoicing at Sir George
Colthurst's marriage are pronounced recovered to-day, except the one who
was wounded by a shot; he is still in the infirmary. A dignitary of the
Catholic Church who preached at Millstreet, where the disturbance took
place, introduced into his sermon remarks on the state of society there,
when his hearers became affected with coughing to such a degree that the
rev. gentleman had to stop for a time and speak directly to his hearers.
After the sermon most of the congregation left the church before mass--
few remaining.
The sun has come out and the harvest will be greatly benefited by this
tardy warmth, I am sure.
There has been some marching of soldiers--dragoons--fine looking men on
fine horses--through the streets to-day, to the blare of a military
band, accompanied and escorted by all the loose population of Cork. I
was much interested to see among the running crowd the good pace made by
a man with a wooden leg, who really could hop along with the best of
them. This is all the apology for a crowd which I have seen in Cork. I
have not heard the roar of one belated drunkard; such sounds have broken
slumber in other towns. Whatever excitement may be in the county, the
city of Cork seems as quiet, as orderly and as thriving as any city in
the kingdom.
I have discovered that, though the lower part of the river Lee is
crowded with masts and alive with traffic, the upper part, flowing along
under the shadow of green trees and bordered by wide meadows, is as
quiet as if it were flowing through the country miles from any city. I
have discovered the magnificent promenade called the Mardyke, a wide,
gravelled road overarched with trees, running along by the river. When
the evening lamps are lit, the susceptibility of Cork wander here in
pairs and "in couples agree." There are plenty of comfortable seats in
which to rest, for the promenade is a very long one, and the shimmer of
the many lamps among the green foliage has a pretty effect.
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