‘Put me out!’ says one of the young men, placing himself before the fat old blasphemer, his relative. ‘Put me out, my fine fellow!’ But it was evident the Irishman did not like his customer. ‘Put me out!’ roars the old gentleman, from behind his young protector; ’——n my eyes, who are you, sir? who are you, sir? I insist on knowing who you are?’
‘And who are you?’ asks the Irishman.
‘Sir, I’m a gentleman, and pay my way!—and as soon as I get into Bantry, I swear I’ll write a letter to Lord Bandon Bantry, and complain of the treatment I have received here.’
Now, as the unhappy landlord had not said one single word, and as, on the contrary, to the annoyance of the whole house, the stout old gentleman from Cambridge had been shouting, raging, and cursing for two hours, I could not help, like a great ass as I was, coming forward and (thinking the landlord might be a tenant of Lord Bantry’s) saying, ‘Well, sir, if you write and say the landlord has behaved ill, I will write to say that he has acted with extraordinary forbearance and civility.’
O fool! to interfere in disputes where one set of the disputants have drunk half a dozen glasses of whisky in the middle of the day! No sooner had I said this than the other young man came and fell upon me, and in the course of a few minutes found leisure to tell me ‘that I was no gentleman; that I was ashamed to give my name, or say where I lived; that I was a liar, and didn’t live in London, and couldn’t mention the name of a single respectable person there; that he was a merchant and tradesman, and hid his quality from nobody;’ and finally, ‘that though bigger than himself, there was nothing he would like better than that I should come out on the green and stand to him like a man.’
This invitation, although repeated several times, I refused with as much dignity as I could assume; partly because I was sober and cool, while the other was furious and drunk; also because I felt a strong suspicion that in about ten minutes the man would manage to give me a tremendous beating, which I did not merit in the least; thirdly, because a victory over him would not have been productive of the least pleasure to me; and lastly, because there was something really honest and gallant in the fellow coming out to defend his old relative. Both of the younger men would have fought like tigers for this disreputable old gentleman, and desired no better sport. The last I heard of the three was that they and the driver made their appearance before a magistrate in Bantry; and a pretty story will the old man have to tell to his club at the Hoop, or the Red Lion, of those swindling Irish, and the ill-treatment he met with in their country.
As for the landlord, the incident will be a blessed theme of conversation to him for a long time to come. I heard him discoursing of it in the passage during the rest of the day; and next morning when I opened my window and saw with much delight the bay clear and bright as silver—except where the green hills were reflected in it, the blue sky above, and the purple mountains round about with only a few clouds veiling their peaks—the first thing I heard was the voice of Mr. Eccles repeating the story to a new customer.
‘I thought thim couldn’t be gintlemin,’ was the appropriate remark of Mr. Tom the waiter, ‘from the way in which they took their whishky,—raw with cold wather, widout mixing or inything.’ Could an Irish waiter give a more excellent definition of the ungenteel?
At nine o’clock in the morning of the next day, the unlucky car which had carried the Englishmen to Bantry came back to Glengariff; and as the morning was very fine, I was glad to take advantage of it, and travel some five-and-thirty English miles to Killarney.
CHAPTER X
FROM GLENGARIFF TO KILLARNEY
THE Irish car seems accommodated for any number of persons: it appeared to be full when we left Glengariff, for a traveller from Bearhaven, and the five gentlemen from the yacht, took seats upon it with myself, and we fancied it was impossible more than seven should travel by such a conveyance; but the driver showed the capabilities of his vehicle presently. The journey from Glengariff to Kenmare is one of astonishing beauty; and I have seen Killarney since, and am sure that Glengariff loses nothing by comparison with this most famous of lakes. Rock, wood, and sea stretch around the traveller—a thousand delightful pictures: the landscape is at first wild without being fierce, immense woods and plantations enriching the valleys—beautiful streams to be seen everywhere.
Here again I was surprised at the great population along the road; for one saw but few cabins, and there is no village between Glengariff and Kenmare. But men and women were on banks and in fields; children, as usual, came trooping up to the car; and the jovial men of the yacht had great conversations with most of the persons whom we met on the road. A merrier set of fellows it were hard to meet. ‘Should you like anything to drink, sir?’ says one, commencing the acquaintance. ‘We have the best whisky in the world, and plenty of porter in the basket.’ Therewith the jolly seamen produced a long bottle of grog, which was passed round from one to another; and then began singing, shouting, laughing, roaring, for the whole journey. ‘British sailors have a knack, pull away ho, boys! Hurroo, my fine fellow, does your mother know you’re out? Hurroo, Tim Herlihy! you’re a fluke, Tim Herlihy.’ One man sang on the roof, one hurrooed to the echo, another apostrophised the aforesaid Herlihy as he passed grinning on a car; a third had a pocket-handkerchief flaunting from a pole, with which he performed exercises in the face of any horsemen whom we met; and great were their yells as the ponies shied off at the salutation and the riders swerved in their saddles. In the midst of this rattling chorus we went along: gradually the country grew wilder and more desolate, and we passed through a grim mountain region, bleak and bare, the road winding round some of the innumerable hills, and once or twice, by means of a tunnel, rushing boldly through them. One of these tunnels, they say, is a couple of hundred yards long; and a pretty howling, I need not say, was made through that pipe of rock by the jolly yacht’s crew. ‘We saw you sketching in the blacksmith’s shed at Glengariff,’ says one, ‘and we wished we had you on board. Such a jolly life we led of it!’—They roved about the coast, they said, in their vessel; they feasted off the best of fish, mutton, and whisky; they had Gamble’s turtle-soup on board, and fun from morning till night, and vice versâ. Gradually it came out that there was not, owing to the tremendous rains, a dry corner in their ship; that they slung two in a huge hammock in the cabin, and that one of their crew had been ill, and shirked off. What a wonderful thing pleasure is! To be wet all day and night; to be scorched and blistered by the sun and rain; to beat in and out of little harbours, and to exceed diurnally upon whisky-punch—‘faith, London, and an arm-chair at the club, are more to the tastes of some men.
After much mountain-work of ascending and descending (in which latter operation, and by the side of precipices that make passing cockneys rather squeamish, the carman drove like mad to the hooping and screeching of the red rovers), we at length came to Kenmare, of which all that I know is that it lies prettily in a bay or arm of the sea; that it is approached by a little hanging-bridge, which seems to be a wonder in these parts; that it is a miserable little place when you enter it; and that, finally, a splendid luncheon of all sorts of meat and excellent cold salmon may sometimes be had for a shilling at the hotel of the place. It is a great vacant house, like the rest of them, and would frighten people in England; but after a few days one grows used to the Castle Rackrent style. I am not sure that there is not a certain sort of comfort to be had in these rambling rooms, and among these bustling, blundering waiters, which one does not always meet with in an orderly English house of entertainment.
After discussing the luncheon, we found the car with fresh horses, beggars, idlers, policemen, etc., standing round, of course; and now the miraculous vehicle, which had held hitherto seven with some difficulty, was called upon to accommodate thirteen.
A pretty noise would our three Englishmen of yesterday, nay, any other Englishmen for the matter of that, have made, if coolly called upon to admit an extra party of four into a mail-coach! The yacht’s crew did not make a single objection; a couple clambered up on the roof, where they managed to locate themselves with wonderful ingenuity, perched upon hard wooden chests, or agreeably reposing upon the knotted ropes which held them together: one of the new passengers scrambled between the driver’s legs, where he held on somehow, and the rest were pushed and squeezed astonishingly in the car.
Now the fact must be told, that five of the new passengers (I don’t count a little boy besides) were women, and very pretty, gay, frolicsome, lively, kind-hearted, innocent women too; and for the rest of the journey there was no end of laughing, and shouting, and singing, and hugging, so that the caravan presented the appearance which is depicted in the opposite engraving.
Now it may be a wonder to some persons, that with such a cargo the carriage did not upset, or some of us did not fall off; to which the answer is that we did fall off. A very pretty woman fell off, and showed a pair of never-mind-what-coloured garters, and an interesting English traveller fell off too: but, Heaven bless you! these cars are made to fall off from; and considering the circumstances of the case, and in the same company, I would rather fall off than not. A great number of polite allusions and genteel inquiries were, as may be imagined, made by the jolly boat’s crew. But though the lady affected to be a little angry at first, she was far too good-natured to be angry long, and at last fairly burst out laughing with the passengers. We did not fall off again, but held on very tight, and just as we were reaching Killarney, saw somebody else fall off from another car. But in this instance the gentleman had no lady to tumble with.
For almost half the way from Kenmare, this wild, beautiful road commands views of the famous lake and vast blue mountains about Killarney. Turk, Tomies, and Mangerton were clothed in purple like kings in mourning; great, heavy clouds were gathered round their heads, parting away every now and then, and leaving their noble features bare. The lake lay for some time underneath us, dark and blue, with dark misty islands in the midst. On the right-hand side of the road would be a precipice covered with a thousand trees, or a green rocky flat, with a reedy mere in the midst, and other mountains rising as far as we could see. I think of that diabolical tune in Der Freischütz, while passing through this sort of country. Every now and then, in the midst of some fresh country or enclosed trees, or at a turn of the road, you lose the sight of the great, big, awful mountain; but, like the aforesaid tune in Der Freischütz, it is always there close at hand. You feel that it keeps you company. And so it was that we rode by dark old Mangerton, then presently past Mucruss, and then through two miles of avenues of lime-trees, by numerous lodges and gentlemen’s seats, across an old bridge, where you see the mountains again and the lake, until, by Lord Kenmare’s house, a hideous row of houses informed us that we were at Killarney.
Here my companion suddenly let go my hand, and, by a certain uneasy motion of the waist, gave me notice to withdraw the other too; and so we rattled up to the Kenmare Arms; and so ended, not without a sigh on my part, one of the merriest six-hour rides that five yachtsmen, one cockney, five women and a child, the carman, and a countryman with an alpeen, ever took in their lives.
As for my fellow-companion, she would hardly speak the next day; but all the five maritime men made me vow and promise that I would go and see them at Cork, where I should have horses to ride, the fastest yacht out of the harbour to sail in, and the best of whisky, claret, and welcome. Amen, and may every single person who buys a copy of this book meet with the same deserved fate!
The town of Killarney was in a violent state of excitement with a series of horse-races, hurdle-races, boat-races, and stag-hunts by land and water, which were taking place, and attracted a vast crowd from all parts of the kingdom. All the inns were full, and lodgings cost five shillings a day, nay, more in some places; for though my landlady, Mrs. Macgillicuddy, charges but that sum, a leisurely old gentleman whom I never saw in my life before, made my acquaintance by stopping me in the street yesterday, and said he paid a pound a day for his two bedrooms.
The old gentleman is eager for company; and, indeed, when a man travels alone, it is wonderful how little he cares to select his society; how indifferent company pleases him; how a good fellow delights him; how sorry he is when the time for parting comes, and he has to walk off alone, and begin the friendship hunt over again.
The first sight I witnessed at Killarney was a race-ordinary, where for a sum of twelve shillings any man could take his share of turbot, salmon, venison, and beef, with port, and sherry, and whisky-punch at discretion. Here were the squires of Cork and Kerry, one or two Englishmen, whose voices, amidst the rich humming brogue round about, sounded quite affected (not that they were so, but there seems a sort of impertinence in the shrill, high-pitched tone of the English voice here). At the head of the table, near the chairman, sat some brilliant young dragoons, neat, solemn, dull, with huge mustachios, and boots polished to a nicety.
And here of course the conversation was of the horse, horsy. How Mr. This had refused fifteen hundred guineas for a horse which he bought for a hundred; how Bacchus was the best horse in Ireland; which horses were to run at Something races; and how the Marquis of Waterford gave a plate or a purse. We drank ‘the Queen,’ with hip, hip, hurra! The ‘winner of the Kenmare stakes,’ hurray! Presently the gentleman next me rose and made a speech; he had brought a mare down, and won the stakes, a hundred and seventy guineas, and I looked at him with a great deal of respect. Other toasts ensued, and more talk about horses; nor am I in the least disposed to sneer at gentlemen who like sporting and talk about it; for I do believe that the conversation of a dozen fox-hunters is just as clever as that of a similar number of merchants, barristers, or literary men. But to this trade, as to all others, a man must be bred; if he has not learnt it thoroughly or in early life, he will not readily become a proficient afterwards, and when therefore the subject is broached, had best maintain a profound silence.
A young Edinburgh cockney, with an easy self-confidence that the reader may have perhaps remarked in others of his calling and nation, and who evidently knew as much of sporting matters as the individual who writes this, proceeded nevertheless to give the company his opinions, and greatly astonished them all; for these simple people are at first willing to believe that a stranger is sure to be a knowing fellow, and did not seem inclined to be undeceived even by this little pert grinning Scotsman. It was good to hear him talk of Haddington, Musselburgh—and Heaven knows what strange outlandish places, as if they were known to all the world. And here would be a good opportunity to enter into a dissertation upon national characteristics; to show that the bold swaggering Irishman is really a modest fellow, while the canny Scot is a most brazen one; to wonder why the inhabitant of one country is ashamed of it, which is in itself so fertile and beautiful, and has produced more than its fair proportion of men of genius, valour, and wit; whereas it never enters into the head of a Scotchman to question his own equality (and something more) at all: but that such discussions are quite unprofitable; nay, that exactly the contrary propositions may be argued to just as much length. Has the reader ever tried with a dozen of Mr. Tocqueville’s short crisp philosophic apothegms and taken the converse of them? The one or other set of propositions will answer equally well, and it is the best way to avoid all such. Let the above passage, then, simply be understood to say, that on a certain day the writer met a vulgar little Scotchman—not that all Scotchmen are vulgar;—that this little pert creature prattled about his country as if he and it were ornaments to the world, which the latter is no doubt; and that one could not but contrast his behaviour with that of great big stalwart simple Irishmen, who asked your opinion of their country with as much modesty as if you—because an Englishman—must be somebody, and they the dust of the earth.
Indeed, this want of self-confidence at times becomes quite painful to the stranger. If, in reply to their queries, you say you like the country, people seem really quite delighted. Why should they? Why should a stranger’s opinion who doesn’t know the country be more valued than a native’s who does?—Suppose an Irishman in England were to speak in praise or abuse of the country, would one be particularly pleased or annoyed? One would be glad that the man liked his trip; but as for his good or bad opinion of the country, the country stands on its own bottom, superior to any opinion of any man or men.
I must beg pardon of the little Scotchman for reverting to him (let it be remembered that there were two Scotchmen at Killarney, and that I speak of the other one); but I have seen no specimen of that sort of manners in any Irishman since I have been in the country. I have met more gentlemen here than in any place I ever saw, gentlemen of high and low ranks, that is to say: men shrewd and delicate of perception, observant of society, entering into the feelings of others, and anxious to set them at ease or to gratify them; of course exaggerating their professions of kindness, and in so far insincere; but the very exaggeration seems to be a proof of a kindly nature, and I wish in England we were a little more complimentary. In Dublin, a lawyer left his chambers, and a literary man his books, to walk the town with me—the town, which they must know a great deal too well; for, pretty as it is, it is but a small place after all, not like that great bustling, changing, struggling world, the Englishman’s capital. Would a London man leave his business to trudge to the Tower or the Park with a stranger? We would ask him to dine at the club, or to eat whitebait at Lovegrove’s, and think our duty done, neither caring for him, nor professing to care for him; and we pride ourselves on our honesty accordingly. Never was honesty more selfish. And so a vulgar man in England disdains to flatter his equals, and chiefly displays his character of snob by assuming as much as he can for himself, swaggering and showing off in his coarse, dull, stupid way.
‘I am a gentleman, and pay my way,’ as the old fellow said at Glengariff. I have not heard a sentence near so vulgar from any man in Ireland. Yes, by the way, there was another Englishman at Cork: a man in a middling, not to say humble, situation of life. When introduced to an Irish gentleman, his formula seemed to be, ‘I think, sir, I have met you somewhere before.’ ‘I am sure, sir, I have met you before,’ he said, for the second time in my hearing, to a gentleman of great note in Ireland. ‘Yes, I have met you at Lord X——‘s.’ ‘I don’t know my Lord X——,’ replied the Irishman. ‘Sir,’ says the other, ‘I shall have great pleasure in introducing you to him.’ Well, the good-natured simple Irishmen thought this gentleman a very fine fellow. There was only one, of some dozen who spoke about him, that found out Snob. I suppose the Spaniards lorded it over the Mexicans in this way: their drummers passing for generals among the simple red men, their glass beads for jewels, and their insolent bearing for heroic superiority.
Leaving, then, the race-ordinary (that little Scotchman with his airs has carried us the deuce knows how far out of the way), I came home just as the gentlemen of the race were beginning to ‘mix,’ that is, to forsake the wine for the punch. At the lodgings I found my five companions of the morning with a bottle of that wonderful whisky of which they spoke; and which they had agreed to exchange against a bundle of Liverpool cigars: so we discussed them, the whisky, and other topics in common. Now there is no need to violate the sanctity of private life, and report the conversation which took place, the songs which were sung, the speeches which were made, and the other remarkable events of the evening. Suffice it to say, that the English traveller gradually becomes accustomed to whisky-punch (in moderation, of course), and finds the beverage very agreeable at Killarney; against which I recollect a protest was entered at Dublin.
But after we had talked of hunting, racing, regatting, and all other sports, I came to a discovery which astonished me, and for which these honest kind fellows are mentioned publicly here. The portraits, or a sort of resemblance of four of them, may be seen in the foregoing drawing of the car. The man with the straw hat and handkerchief tied over it is the captain of an Indiaman; three others, with each a pair of mustachios, sported yacht-costumes, jackets, club-anchor buttons, and so forth; and, finally, one on the other side of the car (who cannot be seen on account of the portmanteaus, otherwise the likeness would be perfect), was dressed with a coat and hat in the ordinary way. One with the gold band and mustachios is a gentleman of property, the other three are attorneys every man of them. Two in large practice in Cork and Dublin; the other, and owner of the yacht, under articles to the attorney of Cork. Now did any Englishman ever live with three attorneys for a whole day, without hearing a single syllable of law spoken? Did we ever see in our country attorneys with mustachios; or, above all, an attorney’s clerk the owner of a yacht of thirty tons? He is a gentleman of property too—the heir, that is, to a good estate; and has had a yacht of his own, he says, ever since he was fourteen years old. Is there any English boy of fourteen who commands a ship with a crew of five men under him? We all agreed to have a boat for the stag-hunt on the lake next day; and I went to bed wondering at this strange country more than ever. An attorney with mustachios! What would they say of him in Chancery Lane?
CHAPTER XI
KILLARNEY—STAG-HUNTING ON THE LAKE
MRS. MACGILLICUDDY’S house is at the corner of the two principal streets of Killarney town, and the drawing-room windows command each a street. Before one window is a dismal, rickety building, with a slated face, that looks like an ex-town hall. There is a row of arches to the ground floor, the angles at the base of which seem to have mouldered or to have been kicked away. Over the centre arch is a picture with a flourishing yellow inscription above, importing that it is the meeting-place of the Total Abstinence Society. Total abstinence is represented by the figures of a gentleman in a blue coat and drab tights, with gilt garters, who is giving his hand to a lady; between them is an escutcheon, surmounted with a cross and charged with religious emblems. Cupids float above the heads and between the legs of this happy pair, while an exceedingly small tea-table with the requisite crockery reposes against the lady’s knee; a still, with death’s-head and bloody bones, filling up the vacant corner near the gentleman. A sort of market is held here, and the place is swarming with blue cloaks and groups of men talking; here and there is a stall with coarse linens, crockery, a cheese; and crowds of egg-and milk-women are squatted on the pavement, with their ragged customers or gossips; and the yellow-haired girl, on the opposite page, with a barrel containing nothing at all, has been sitting, as if for her portrait, this hour past.
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Carts, cars, jingles, barouches, horses, and vehicles of all descriptions rattle presently through the streets; for the town is crowded with company for the races and other sports, and all the world is bent to see the stag-hunt on the lake. Where the ladies of the Macgillicuddy family have slept, heaven knows, for their house is full of lodgers. What voices you hear! ‘Bring me some hot watah,’ says a genteel, high-piped English voice. ‘Hwhere’s me hot wather?’ roars a deep-toned Hibernian. See over the way, three ladies in ringlets and green tabinet taking their ‘tay’ preparatory to setting out. I wonder whether they heard the sentimental songs of the law-marines last night? They must have been edified if they did.
My companions came, true to their appointment, and we walked down to the boats, lying at a couple of miles from the town, near the Victoria Inn, a handsome mansion, in pretty grounds, close to the lake, and owned by the patriotic Mr. Finn. A nobleman offered Finn eight hundred pounds for the use of his house during the races, and, to Finn’s eternal honour be it said, he refused the money, and said he would keep his house for his friends and patrons, the public. Let the Cork Steam Packet Company think of this generosity on the part of Mr. Finn, and blush for shame; at the Cork Agricultural Show they raised their fares, and were disappointed in their speculation, as they deserved to be, by indignant Englishmen refusing to go at all.
The morning had been bright enough, but for fear of accidents we took our macintoshes, and at about a mile from the town found it necessary to assume those garments and wear them for the greater part of the day. Passing by the Victoria, with its beautiful walks, park, and lodge, we came to a little creek where the boats were moored; and there was the wonderful lake before us, with its mountains, and islands, and trees. Unluckily, however, the mountains happened to be invisible; the islands looked like grey masses in the fog, and all that we could see for some time was the grey silhouette of the boat ahead of us, in which a passenger was engaged in a witty conversation with some boat still farther in the mist.
Drumming and trumpeting was heard at a little distance, and presently we found ourselves in the midst of a fleet of boats upon the rocky shores of the beautiful little Innisfallen.
Here we landed for a while, and the weather clearing up, allowed us to see this charming spot. Rocks, shrubs, and little abrupt rises and falls of ground, covered with the brightest emerald grass; a beautiful little ruin of a Saxon chapel, lying gentle, delicate, and plaintive on the shore; some noble trees round about it, and beyond, presently, the tower of Ross Castle, island after island appearing in the clearing sunshine, and the huge hills throwing their misty veils off, and wearing their noble robes of purple. The boats’ crews were grouped about the place, and one large barge especially had landed some sixty people, being the Temperance band, with its drums, trumpets, and wives. They were marshalled by a grave old gentleman with a white waistcoat and queue, a silver medal decorating one side of his coat, and a brass heart reposing on the other flap. The horns performed some Irish airs prettily; and, at length, at the instigation of a fellow who went swaggering about with a pair of whirling drumsticks, all formed together, and played ‘Garryowen’—the active drum of course most dreadfully out of time.
Having strolled about the island for a quarter of an hour, it became time to take to the boats again, and we were rowed over to the wood opposite Sullivan’s cascade, where the hounds had been laid in in the morning, and the stag was expected to take water. Fifty or sixty men are employed on the mountain to drive the stag lakewards, should he be inclined to break away; and the sport generally ends by the stag, a wild one, making for the water with the pack swimming afterwards; and here he is taken and disposed of, how I know not. It is rather a parade than a stag-hunt: but, with all the boats around and the noble view, must be a fine thing to see.
Presently, steering his barge, the Erin, with twelve oars and a green flag sweeping the water, came by the president of the sports, Mr. John O’Connell, a gentleman who appears to be liked by rich and poor here, and by the latter especially is adored. ‘Sure we’d dhrown ourselves for him,’ one man told me; and proceeded to speak eagerly in his praise, and to tell numberless acts of his generosity and justice. The justice is rather rude in this wild country sometimes, and occasionally the judges not only deliver the sentence but execute it; nor does any one think of appealing to any more regular jurisdiction. The likeness of Mr. O’Connell to his brother is very striking; one might have declared it was the Liberator sitting at the stern of the boat.
Some scores more boats were there, darting up and down in the pretty, busy waters. Here came a Cambridge boat; and where, indeed, will not the gentlemen of that renowned University be found? Yonder were the dandy dragoons, stiff, silent, slim, faultlessly appointed, solemnly puffing cigars. Every now and then a hound would be heard in the wood, whereon numbers of voices, right and left, would begin to yell in chorus—Hurroo! Hoop! Yow—yow—yow! in accents the most shrill or the most melancholious. Meanwhile the sun had had enough of the sport, the mountains put on their veils again, the islands retreated into the mist, the word went through the fleet to spread all umbrellas, and ladies took shares of macintoshes and disappeared under the flaps of silk cloaks.
The wood comes down to the very edge of the water, and many of the crews thought fit to land and seek this green shelter. There you might see how the dandium summâ genus hæsit ulmo, clambering up thither to hide from the rain, and many ‘membra’ in dabbled russia-ducks, cowering viridi sub arbuto, ad aquæ lene caput. To behold these moist dandies the natives of the country came eagerly. Strange, savage faces might be seen peering from out of the trees; long-haired, bare-legged girls came down the hill, some with green apples and very sickly-looking plums; some with whisky and goat’s-milk; a ragged boy had a pair of stag’s-horns to sell: the place swarmed with people. We went up the hill to see the noble cascade, and when you say that it comes rushing down over rocks and through tangled woods, alas! one has said all the dictionary can help you to, and not enough to distinguish this particular cataract from any other. This seen and admired, we came back to the harbour where the boats lay, and from which spot the reader might have seen the following view of the lake—that is, you would see the lake, if the mist would only clear away.
But this for hours it did not seem inclined to do. We rowed up and down industriously for a period of time which seemed to me atrociously long. The bugles of the Erin had long since sounded ‘Home, sweet home!’ and the greater part of the fleet had dispersed. As for the stag-hunt, all I saw of it was four dogs that appeared on the shore at different intervals, and a huntsman in a scarlet coat, who similarly came and went: once or twice we were gratified by hearing the hounds; but at last it was agreed that there was no chance for the day, and we rowed off to Kenmare Cottage—where, on the lovely lawn, or in a cottage adjoining, the gentry picnic, and where, with a handkerchief full of potatoes, we made as pleasant a meal as ever I recollect. Here a good number of the boats were assembled; here you might see cloths spread and dinner going on; here were those wonderful officers, looking as if they had just stepped from bandboxes, with, by heavens! not a shirt-collar disarranged nor a boot dimmed by the wet. An old piper was making a very feeble music, with a handkerchief spread over his face; and farther on a little smiling German boy was playing an accordion, and singing a ballad of Hauff’s. I had a silver medal in my pocket, with Victoria on one side and Britannia on the other, and gave it him, for the sake of old times and his round friendly face. Oh, little German boy, many a night as you trudge lonely through this wild land, must you yearn after Brüderlein and Schwesterlein at home—yonder in stately Frankfurt city that lies by silver Mayn. I thought of vineyards and sunshine, and the greasy clock in the theatre, and the railroad all the way to Wiesbaden, and the handsome Jew country-houses by the Bockenheimer-Thor.... ‘Come along,’ says the boatman, ‘all the gintlemin are waiting for your honour.’ And I found them finishing the potatoes, and we all had a draught of water from the lake, and so pulled to the middle of Turk lake, through the picturesque green rapid that floats under Brickeen bridge.
What is to be said about Turk Lake? When there, we agreed that it was more beautiful than the large lake, of which it is not one-fourth the size; then, when we came back, we said, ‘No, the large lake is the most beautiful.’ And so, at every point we stopped at, we determined that that particular spot was the prettiest in the whole lake. The fact is, and I don’t care to own it, they are too handsome. As for a man coming from his desk in London or Dublin and seeing ‘the whole lakes in a day,’ he is an ass for his pains; a child doing sums in addition might as well read the whole multiplication table, and fancy he had it by heart. We should look at these wonderful things leisurely and thoughtfully; and even then, blessed is he who understands them. I wonder what impression the sight made upon the three tipsy Englishmen at Glengariff? What idea of natural beauty belongs to an old fellow who says he is ‘a gentleman, and pays his way’? What to a jolly fox-hunter, who had rather see a good ‘screeching’ run with the hounds than the best landscape ever painted? And yet they all come hither, and go through the business regularly, and would not miss seeing every one of the lakes and going up every one of the hills—by which circumlocution the writer wishes ingenuously to announce that he will not see any more lakes, ascend any mountains or towers, visit any gaps of Dunloe, or any prospects whatever, except such as nature shall fling in his way in the course of a quiet reasonable walk.
In the middle lake we were carried to an island where a ceremony of goat’s-milk and whisky is performed by some travellers, and where you are carefully conducted to a spot that ‘Sir Walter Scott admired more than all.’ Whether he did or not, we can only say on the authority of the boatman; but the place itself was a quiet nook, where three waters meet, and indeed of no great picturesqueness when compared with the beauties around. But it is of a gentle, homely beauty—not like the lake, which is as a princess dressed out in diamonds and velvet for a drawing-room, and knowing herself to be faultless too. As for Innisfallen, it was just as if she gave one smiling peep into the nursery before she went away, so quiet, innocent, and tender is that lovely spot; but, depend on it, if there is a lake fairy or princess, as Crofton Croker and other historians assert, she is of her nature a vain creature, proud of her person, and fond of the finest dresses to adorn it. May I confess that I would rather, for a continuance, have a house facing a paddock, with a cow in it, than be always looking at this immense overpowering splendour? You would not, my dear brother-cockney from Tooley Street,—no, those brilliant eyes of thine were never meant to gaze at anything less bright than the sun. Your mighty spirit finds nothing too vast for its comprehension, spurns what is humble as unworthy, and only, like Foot’s bear, dances to ‘the genteelest of tunes.’
The long and short of the matter is, that on getting off the lake, after seven hours’ rowing, I felt as much relieved as if I had been dining for the same length of time with her Majesty the Queen, and went jumping home as gaily as possible; but those marine lawyers insisted so piteously upon seeing Ross Castle, close to which we were at length landed, that I was obliged (in spite of repeated oaths to the contrary) to ascend that tower, and take a bird’s-eye view of the scene. Thank Heaven, I have neither tail nor wings, and have not the slightest wish to be a bird; that continual immensity of prospect which stretches beneath those little wings of theirs must deaden their intellects, depend on it. Tomkins and I are not made for the immense. We can enjoy a little at a time, and enjoy that little very much; or if like birds, we are like the ostrich—not that we have fine feathers to our backs, but because we cannot fly. Press us too much, and we become flurried and run off, and bury our heads in the quiet bosom of dear mother earth, and so get rid of the din, and the dazzle, and the shouting.
Because we dined upon potatoes, that was no reason we should sup on buttermilk: well, well! salmon is good, and whisky is good too.
CHAPTER XII
KILLARNEY—THE RACES—MUCROSS
THE races were as gay as races could be, in spite of one or two untoward accidents that arrived at the close of the day’s sport. Where all the people came from that thronged out of the town was a wonder; where all the vehicles, the cars, barouches, and shandrydans, the carts, the horse-and donkey-men, could have found stable and shelter, who can tell? Of all these equipages and donkeypages I had a fine view from Mrs. Macgillicuddy’s window, and it was pleasant to see the happy faces shining under the blue cloaks as the carts rattled by.
A very handsome young lady—I presume Miss MacG.—who gives a hand to the drawing-room, and comes smiling in with the teapot,—Miss MacG., I say, appeared to-day in a silk bonnet and stiff silk dress, with a brooch and a black mantle, as smart as any lady in the land, and looking as if she was accustomed to her dress too, which the housemaid on banks of Thames does not. Indeed, I have not met a more ladylike young person in Ireland than Miss MacG.; and when I saw her in a handsome car on the course, I was quite proud of a bow.
Tramping thither, too, as hard as they could walk, and as happy and smiling as possible, were Mary the coachman’s wife, of the day before, and Johanna with the child, and presently the other young lady—the man with the stick, you may be sure; he would toil a year for that day’s pleasure: they are all mad for it; people walk for miles and miles round to the race; they come without a penny in their pockets often, trusting to chance and charity, and that some worthy gentleman may fling them a sixpence. A gentleman told me that he saw on the course persons from his part of the country, who must have walked eighty miles for the sport.
For a mile and a-half to the racecourse there could be no pleasanter occupation than looking at the happy multitudes who were thronging thither; and, I am bound to say, that on rich or poor shoulders I never saw so many handsome faces in my life. In the carriages, among the ladies of Kerry, every second woman was handsome; and there is something peculiarly tender and pleasing in the looks of the young female peasantry that is perhaps even better than beauty. Beggars had taken their stations along the road in no great numbers, for I suspect they were most of them on the ground, and those who remained were consequently of the oldest and ugliest. It is a shame that such horrible figures are allowed to appear in public as some of the loathsome ones which belong to these unhappy people. On went the crowd, however, laughing and gay as possible; all sorts of fun passing from car to foot passengers as the pretty girls came clattering by, and the ‘boys’ had a word for each. One lady with long flowing auburn hair, who was turning away her head from some ‘boys’ very demurely, I actually saw, at a pause of the cart, kissed by one of them. She gave the fellow a huge box on the ear, and he roared out ‘Oh, murther!’ and she frowned for some time as hard as she could, whilst the ladies in the blue cloaks at the back of the car uttered a shrill rebuke in Irish. But in a minute the whole party was grinning, and the young fellow who had administered the salute may, for what I know, have taken another without the slap on the face, by way of exchange.
And here, lest the fair public may have a bad opinion of the personage who talks of kissing with such awful levity, let it be said that with all this laughing, romping, kissing, and the like, there are no more innocent girls in the world than the Irish girls; and that the women of our squeamish country are far more liable to err. One has but to walk through an English and Irish town, and see how much superior is the morality of the latter. That great terror-striker, the Confessional, is before the Irish girl, and, sooner or later, her sins must be told there.
By this time we are got upon the course, which is really one of the most beautiful spots that ever was seen; the lake and mountains lying along two sides of it, and of course visible from all. They were busy putting up the hurdles when we arrived—stiff bars and poles, four feet from the ground, with furze-bushes over them. The grand stand was already full; along the hedges sate thousands of the people, sitting at their ease doing nothing, and happy as kings. A daguerreotype would have been of great service to have taken their portraits, and I never saw a vast multitude of heads and attitudes so picturesque and lively. The sun lighted up the whole course and the lakes with amazing brightness, though behind the former lay a huge rack of the darkest clouds, against which the cornfields and meadows shone in the brightest green and gold, and a row of white tents was quite dazzling.
There was a brightness and intelligence about this immense Irish crowd, which I don’t remember to have seen in an English one. The women in their blue cloaks, with red smiling faces peering from one end, and bare feet from the other, had seated themselves in all sorts of pretty attitudes of cheerful contemplation; and the men, who are accustomed to lie about, were doing so now with all their might—sprawling on the banks, with as much ease and variety as club-room loungers on their soft cushions—or squatted leisurely among the green potatoes. The sight of so much happy laziness did one good to look on. Nor did the honest fellows seem to weary of this amusement. Hours passed on, and the gentlefolks (judging from our party) began to grow somewhat weary; but the finest peasantry in Europe never budged from their posts, and continued to indulge in talk, indolence, and conversation.
When we came to the row of white tents, as usual it did not look so brilliant or imposing as it appeared from a little distance, though the scene around them was animating enough. The tents were long humble booths stretched on hoops, each with its humble streamer or ensign without, and containing, of course, articles of refreshment within. But Father Mathew has been busy among the publicans, and the consequence is that the poor fellows are now condemned for the most part to sell ‘tay’ in place of whisky; for the concoction of which beverage huge caldrons were smoking, in front of each hut-door, in round graves dug for the purpose and piled up with black smoking sod.
Behind this camp were the carts of the poor people, which were not allowed to penetrate into the quarter where the quality cars stood. And a little way from the huts, again, you might see (for you could scarcely hear) certain pipers executing their melodies and inviting people to dance.
Anything more lugubrious than the drone of the pipe, or the jig danced to it, or the countenances of the dancers and musicians, I never saw. Round each set of dancers the people formed a ring, in the which the figurantes and coryphées went through their operations. The toes went in and the toes went out; then there came certain mystic figures of hands across, and so forth. I never saw less grace or seemingly less enjoyment, no, not even in a quadrille. The people, however, took a great interest, and it was ‘Well done, Tim!’ ‘Step out, Miss Brady!’ and so forth, during the dance.
Thimble-rig too obtained somewhat, though in a humble way. A ragged scoundrel—the image of Hogarth’s Bad Apprentice—went bustling and shouting through the crowd with his dirty tray and thimble, and, as soon as he had taken his post, stated that this was the ‘royal game of thimble,’ and calling upon ‘gintlemin’ to come forward; and then a ragged fellow would be seen to approach, with as innocent an air as he could assume, and the bystanders might remark that the second ragged fellow almost always won. Nay, he was so benevolent, in many instances, as to point out to various people who had a mind to bet, under which thimble the pea actually was; meanwhile, the first fellow was sure to be looking away and talking to some one in the crowd. But somehow it generally happened, and how of course I can’t tell, that any man who listened to the advice of rascal No. 2 lost his money. I believe it is so even in England.
Then you would see gentlemen with halfpenny roulette-tables; and, again, here were a pair (indeed they are very good portraits) who came forward disinterestedly with a table and a pack of cards, and began playing against each other for ten shillings a game, betting crowns as freely as possible.
Gambling, however, must have been fatal to both of these gentlemen, else might not one have supposed that, if they were in the habit of winning much, they would have treated themselves to better clothes? This, however, is the way with all gamblers, as the reader has, no doubt, remarked; for, look at a game of loo or vingt-et-un played in a friendly way, and where you, and three or four others, have certainly lost three or four pounds: well, ask at the end of the game who has won, and you invariably find that nobody has. Hopkins has only covered himself; Snooks has neither lost nor won; Smith has won four shillings; and so on. Who gets the money? The devil gets it, I dare say; and so, no doubt, he has laid hold of the money of yonder gentleman in the handsome greatcoat.
But, to the shame of the stewards be it spoken, they are extremely averse to this kind of sport; and presently comes up one, a stout old gentleman on a bay horse, wielding a huge hunting-whip, at the sight of which all fly, amateurs, idlers, professional men, and all. He is a rude customer to deal with, that gentleman with the whip: just now he was clearing the course, and cleared it with such a vengeance that a whole troop on a hedge retreated backwards into a ditch opposite, where was rare kicking, and sprawling, and disarrangement of petticoats, and cries of ‘Oh, murther!’ ‘Mother of God!’ ‘I’m kilt!’ and so on. But as soon as the horsewhip was gone, the people clambered out of their ditch again, and were as thick as ever on the bank.
The last instance of the exercise of the whip shall be this. A groom rode insolently after a gentleman, and calling him names, and inviting him to fight. This the great flagellator hearing, rode up to the groom, lifted him gracefully off his horse, into the air, and on to the ground, and when there administered to him a severe and merited fustigation; after which he told the course-keepers to drive the fellow off the course, and enjoined the latter not to appear again at his peril.
As for the races themselves, I won’t pretend to say that they were better or worse than other such amusements; or to quarrel with gentlemen who choose to risk their lives in manly exercise. In the first race there was a fall; one of the gentlemen was carried off the ground, and it was said he was dead. In the second race, a horse and man went over and over each other, and the fine young man (we had seen him five minutes before, full of life and triumph, clearing the hurdles on his grey horse, at the head of the race):—in the second heat of the second race, the poor fellow missed his leap, was carried away stunned and dying,—and the bay horse won.
I was standing, during the first heat of this race (this is the second man the grey has killed—they ought to call him the Pale Horse), by half a dozen young girls from the gentleman’s village, and hundreds more of them were there, anxious for the honour of their village, the young squire, and the grey horse. Oh, how they hurra’d as he rode ahead! I saw these girls—they might be fourteen years old—after the catastrophe. ‘Well,’ says I, ‘this is a sad end to the race.’ ‘And is it the pink jacket or the blue has won this time?’ says one of the girls. It was poor Mr. C——‘s only epitaph: and wasn’t it a sporting answer? That girl ought to be a hurdle-racer’s wife; and I would like, for my part, to bestow her upon the groom who won the race.
I don’t care to confess that the accident to the poor young gentleman so thoroughly disgusted my feelings as a man and a cockney, that I turned off the racecourse short, and hired a horse for sixpence to carry me back to Miss Macgillicuddy. In the evening, at the inn (let no man who values comfort go to an Irish inn in race-time), a blind old piper, with silvery hair, and of a most respectable, bard-like appearance, played a great deal too much for us after dinner. He played very well, and with very much feeling, ornamenting the airs with flourishes and variations that were very pretty indeed, and his pipe was by far the most melodious I have heard: but honest truth compels me to say that the bad pipes are execrable, and the good inferior to a clarionet.
Next day, instead of going back to the racecourse, a car drove me out to Mucross, where, in Mr. Herbert’s beautiful grounds, lies the prettiest little bijou of a ruined abbey ever seen—a little chapel with a little chancel, a little cloister, a little dormitory, and in the midst of the cloister a wonderful huge yew-tree which darkens the whole place. The abbey is famous in book and legend; nor could two young lovers, or artists in search of the picturesque, or picnic-parties with the cold chicken and champagne in the distance, find a more charming place to while away a summer’s day than in the park of Mr. Herbert. But depend on it, for show-places and the due enjoyment of scenery, that distance of cold chickens and champagne is the most pleasing perspective one can have. I would have sacrificed a mountain or two for the above, and would have pitched Mangerton into the lake for the sake of a friend with whom to enjoy the rest of the landscape.
The walk through Mr. Herbert’s domain carries you through all sorts of beautiful avenues, by a fine house which he is building in the Elizabethan style, and from which, as from the whole road, you command the most wonderful rich views of the lake. The shore breaks into little bays, which the water washes; here and there are picturesque grey rocks to meet it, the bright grass as often, or the shrubs of every kind which bathe their roots in the lake. It was August, and the men before Turk Cottage were cutting a second crop of clover, as fine, seemingly as a first crop elsewhere; a short walk from it brought us to a neat lodge, whence issued a keeper with a key, quite willing, for the consideration of sixpence, to conduct us to Turk waterfall.
Evergreens and other trees, in their brightest livery; blue sky; roaring water, here black, and yonder foaming of a dazzling white; rocks shining in the dark places, or frowning black against the light, all the leaves and branches keeping up a perpetual waving and dancing round about the cascade: what is the use of putting down all this? A man might describe the cataract of the Serpentine in exactly the same terms, and the reader be no wiser. Suffice it to say, that the Turk cascade is even handsomer than the before-mentioned waterfall of O’Sullivan, and that a man may pass half an hour there, and look, and listen, and muse, and not even feel the want of a companion, or so much as think of the iced champagne. There is just enough of savageness in the Turk cascade to make the view piquante. It is not, at this season at least, by any means fierce, only wild; nor was the scene peopled by any of the rude, red-shanked figures that clustered about the trees of O’Sullivan’s waterfall—savages won’t pay sixpence for the prettiest waterfall ever seen,—so that this only was for the best of company.
The road hence to Killarney carries one through Mucross village, a pretty cluster of houses, where the sketcher will find abundant materials for exercising his art and puzzling his hand. There are not only noble trees, but a green common and an old water-gate to a river, lined on either side by beds of rushes, and discharging itself beneath an old mill-wheel. But the old mill-wheel was perfectly idle, like most men and mill-wheels in this country: by it is a ruinous house, and a fine garden of stinging-nettles; opposite it, on the common, is another ruinous house, with another garden containing the same plant; and far away are sharp ridges of purple hills, which make as pretty a landscape as the eye can see. I don’t know how it is, but throughout the country the men and the landscapes seem to be the same, and one and the other seem rugged, ruined, and cheerful.
Having been employed all day (making some abominable attempts at landscape-drawing, which shall not be exhibited here), it became requisite, as the evening approached, to recruit an exhausted cockney stomach, which, after a very moderate portion of exercise, begins to sigh for beefsteaks in the most peremptory manner. Hard by is a fine hotel with a fine sign stretching along the road for the space of a dozen windows at least, and looking inviting enough. All the doors were open, and I walked into a great number of rooms, but the only person I saw was a woman with trinkets of arbutus, who offered me, by way of refreshment, a walking-stick or a card-rack. I suppose everybody was at the races; and an evilly-disposed person might have laid main-basse upon the greatcoats which were there, and the silver spoons, if by any miracle such things were kept—but Britannia-metal is the favourite composition in Ireland, or else iron by itself, or else iron that has been silvered over, but that takes good care to peep out at all the corners of the forks: and blessed is the traveller who has not other observations to make regarding his fork, besides the mere abrasion of the silver.
This was the last day’s race, and on the next morning (Sunday) all the thousands who had crowded to the race seemed trooping to the chapels, and the streets were blue with cloaks. Walking in to prayers, and without his board, came my young friend of the thimble rig, and presently after sauntered in the fellow with the long coat, who had played at cards for sovereigns. I should like to hear the confession of himself and friend the next time they communicate with his reverence.
The extent of this town is very curious, and I should imagine its population to be much greater than five thousand, which was the number, according to Miss Macgillicuddy. Along the three main streets are numerous arches, down every one of which runs an alley, intersected by other alleys, and swarming with people. A stream or gutter runs commonly down these alleys, in which the pigs and children are seen paddling about. The men and women loll at their doors or windows, to enjoy the detestable prospect. I saw two pigs under a fresh-made deal staircase in one of the main streets near the Bridewell: two very well-dressed girls, with their hair in ringlets, were looking out of the parlour-window: almost all the glass in the upper rooms was of course smashed, the windows patched here and there (if the people were careful), the woodwork of the door loose, the whitewash peeling off,—and the house evidently not two years old.
By the Bridewell is a busy potato-market, picturesque to the sketcher, if not very respectable to the merchant: here were the country carts and the country cloaks, and the shrill beggarly bargains going on—a world of shrieking, and gesticulating, and talk, about a pennyworth of potatoes.
All round the town miserable streets of cabins are stretched. You see people lolling at each door, women staring and combing their hair, men with their little pipes, children whose rags hang on by a miracle, idling in a gutter. Are we to set all this down to absenteeism, and pity poor injured Ireland? Is the landlord’s absence the reason why the house is filthy, and Biddy lolls in the porch all day? Upon my word, I have heard people talk as if, when Pat’s thatch was blown off, the landlord ought to go fetch the straw and the ladder, and mend it himself. People need not be dirty if they are ever so idle; if they are ever so poor, pigs and men need not live together. Half an hour’s work, and digging a trench, might remove that filthy dunghill from that filthy window. The smoke might as well come out of the chimney as out of the door. Why should not Tim do that, instead of walking a hundred-and-sixty miles to a race? The priests might do much more to effect these reforms than even the landlords themselves: and I hope, now that the excellent Father Mathew has succeeded in arraying his clergy to work with him in the abolition of drunkenness, they will attack the monster Dirt with the same good-will, and surely with the same success.
CHAPTER XIII
TRALEE—LISTOWEL—TARBERT
I MADE the journey to Tralee next day, upon one of the famous Bianconi cars—very comfortable conveyances too, if the booking officers would only receive as many persons as the car would hold, and not have too many on the seats. For half an hour before the car left Killarney, I observed people had taken their seats: and, let all travellers be cautious to do likewise, lest, although they have booked their places, they be requested to mount on the roof, and accommodate themselves on a bandbox, or a pleasant deal trunk with a knotted rope, to prevent it from being slippery, while the corner of another box jolts against your ribs for the journey. I had put my coat on a place, and was stepping to it, when a lovely lady with great activity jumped up and pushed the cloak on the roof, and not only occupied my seat, but insisted that her husband should have the next one to her. So there was nothing for it but to make a huge shouting with the book-keeper, and call instantly for the taking down of my luggage, and vow my great gods that I would take a postchaise and make the office pay; on which, I am ashamed to say, some other person was made to give up a decently comfortable seat on the roof, which I occupied, the former occupant hanging on—Heaven knows where or how.
A company of young squires were on the coach, and they talked of horse-racing and hunting punctually for three hours, during which time I do believe they did not utter one single word upon any other subject. What a wonderful faculty it is! The writers of Natural Histories, in describing the noble horse, should say he is made not only to run, to carry burdens, etc., but to be talked about. What would hundreds of thousands of dashing young fellows do with their tongues, if they had not this blessed subject to discourse on?
As far as the country went, there was here, to be sure, not much to be said. You pass through a sad-looking, bare, undulating country, with few trees, and poor stone-hedges, and poorer crops; nor have I yet taken in Ireland so dull a ride. About half-way between Tralee and Killarney is a wretched town, where horses are changed, and where I saw more hideous beggary than anywhere else, I think. And I was glad to get over this gloomy tract of country, and enter the capital of Kerry.
It has a handsome description in the guide-books; but, if I mistake not, the English traveller will find a stay of a couple of hours in the town quite sufficient to gratify his curiosity with respect to the place. There seems to be a great deal of poor business going on; the town thronged with people as usual; the shops large and not too splendid. There are two or three rows of respectable houses, and a mall, and the townspeople have the further privilege of walking in the neighbouring grounds of a handsome park, which the proprietor has liberally given to their use. Tralee has a newspaper, and boasts of a couple of clubs; the one I saw was a big white house, no windows broken, and looking comfortable. But the most curious sight of the town was the chapel, with the festival held there. It was the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (let those who are acquainted with the calendar and the facts it commemorates say what the feast was, and when it falls), but all the country seemed to be present on the occasion, and the chapel and the large court leading to it were thronged with worshippers, such as one never sees in our country, where devotion is by no means so crowded as here. Here, in the courtyard, there were thousands of them on their knees, rosary in hand, for the most part, praying, and mumbling, and casting a wistful look round as the strangers passed. In a corner was an old man groaning in the agonies of death or colic, and a woman got off her knees to ask us for charity for the unhappy old fellow. In the chapel the crowd was enormous: the priest and his people were kneeling, and bowing, and humming, and chanting, and censer-rattling: the ghostly crew being attended by a fellow that I don’t remember to have seen in Continental churches, a sort of Catholic clerk, a black shadow to the parson, bowing his head when his reverence bowed, kneeling when he knelt, only three steps lower.
But we who wonder at copes and candlesticks, see nothing strange in surplices and beadles. A Turk, doubtless, would sneer equally at each, and have you to understand that the only reasonable ceremonial was that which took place at his mosque.
Whether right or wrong, in point of ceremony, it was evident the heart of devotion was there: the immense dense crowd moaned and swayed, and you heard a hum of all sorts of wild ejaculations, each man praying seemingly for himself, while the service went on at the altar. The altar candles flickered red in the dark, steaming place, and every now and then from the choir you heard a sweet female voice chanting Mozart’s music, which swept over the heads of the people a great deal more pure and delicious than the best incense that ever smoked out of the pot.
On the chapel-floor, just at the entry, lay several people moaning, and tossing, and telling their beads. Behind the old woman was a font of holy water, up to which little children were clambering; and in the chapel-yard were several old women, with tin cans full of the same sacred fluid, with which the people, as they entered, aspersed themselves with all their might, flicking a great quantity into their faces, and making a curtsey and a prayer at the same time. ‘A pretty prayer, truly!’ says the parson’s wife. ‘What sad, sad benighted superstition!’ says the Independent minister’s lady. Ah! ladies, great as your intelligence is, yet think, when compared with the Supreme One, what a little difference there is after all between your husbands’ very best extempore oration, and the poor Popish creatures’! One is just as far off Infinite Wisdom as the other: and so let us read the story of the woman and her pot of ointment, that most noble and charming of histories; which equalises the great and the small, the wise and the poor in spirit, and shows that their merit before Heaven lies in doing their best.
When I came out of the chapel, the old fellow on the point of death was still howling and groaning in so vehement a manner, that I heartily trust he was an impostor, and that on receiving a sixpence he went home tolerably comfortable, having secured a maintenance for that day. But it will be long before I can forget the strange, wild scene, so entirely different was it from the decent and comfortable observances of our own church.
Three cars set off together from Tralee to Tarbert: three cars full to overflowing. The vehicle before us contained nineteen persons, half a dozen being placed in the receptacle called the well, and one clinging on as if by a miracle at the bar behind. What can people want at Tarbert? I wondered; or anywhere else, indeed, that they rush about from one town to another in this inconceivable way? All the cars in all the towns seem to be thronged: people are perpetually hurrying from one dismal tumbledown town to another; and yet no business is done anywhere that I can see. The chief part of the contents of our three cars was discharged at Listowel, to which, for the greater part of the journey, the road was neither more cheerful nor picturesque than that from Killarney to Tralee. As, however, you reach Listowel, the country becomes better cultivated, the gentlemen’s seats are more frequent, and the town itself, as seen from a little distance, lies very prettily on a river, which is crossed by a handsome bridge, which leads to a neat-looking square, which contains a smartish church, which is flanked by a big Roman Catholic chapel, etc. An old castle, grey and ivy-covered, stands hard by. It was one of the strongholds of the Lords of Kerry, whose burying-place (according to the information of the coachman) is seen at about a league from the town.
But pretty as Listowel is from a distance, it has, on a more intimate acquaintance, by no means the prosperous appearance which a first glance gives it. The place seemed like a scene at a country theatre, once smartly painted by the artist; but the paint has cracked in many places, the lines are worn away, and the whole piece only looks more shabby for the flaunting strokes of the brush which remain. And here, of course, came the usual crowd of idlers round the car: the epileptic idiot holding piteously out his empty tin snuff-box; the brutal idiot, in an old soldier’s coat, proffering his money-box, and grinning, and clattering the single halfpenny it contained; the old man with no eyelids, calling upon you in the name of the Lord; the woman with a child at her hideous, wrinkled breast; the children without number. As for trade, there seemed to be none; a great Jeremy-Diddler kind of hotel stood hard by, swaggering and out-at-elbows, and six pretty girls were smiling out of a beggarly straw-bonnet shop, dressed as smartly as any gentleman’s daughters of good estate. It was good, among the crowd of bustling, shrieking fellows, who were ‘jawing’ vastly and doing nothing, to see how an English bagman, with scarce any words, laid hold of an ostler, carried him off, vi et armis, in the midst of a speech, in which the latter was going to explain his immense activity and desire to serve, pushed him into a stable, from which he issued in a twinkling, leading the ostler and a horse, and had his bag on the car and his horse off in about two minutes of time, while the natives were still shouting round about other passengers’ portmanteaus.
Some time afterwards, away we rattled on our own journey to Tarbert, having a postillion on the leader, and receiving, I must say, some graceful bows from the young bonnet-makeresses. But of all the roads over which human bones were ever jolted, the first part of this from Listowel to Tarbert deserves the palm. It shook us all into headaches; it shook some nails out of the side of a box I had; it shook all the cords loose in a twinkling, and sent the baggage bumping about the passengers’ shoulders. The coachman at the call of another English bagman, who was a fellow-traveller,—the postillion at the call of the coachman, descended to re-cord the baggage. The English bagman had the whole mass of trunks and bags stoutly corded and firmly fixed in a few seconds; the coachman helped him as far as his means allowed; the postillion stood by with his hands in his pockets, smoking his pipe, and never offering to stir a finger. I said to him that I was delighted to see in a youth of sixteen that extreme activity and willingness to oblige, and that I would give him a handsome remuneration for his services at the end of the journey: the young rascal grinned with all his might, understanding the satiric nature of the address perfectly well; but he did not take his hands out of his pockets for all that, until it was time to get on his horse again, and then, having carried us over the most difficult part of the journey, removed his horse and pipe, and rode away with a parting grin.
The cabins along the road were not much better than those to be seen south of Tralee, but the people were far better clothed, and indulged in several places in the luxury of pigsties. Near the prettily situated village of Ballylongford, we came in sight of the Shannon mouth; and a huge red round moon, that shone behind an old convent on the banks of the bright river, with dull green meadows between it and us, and wide purple flats beyond, would be a good subject for the pencil of any artist whose wrist had not been put out of joint by the previous ten miles’ journey.
The town of Tarbert, in the guide-books and topographical dictionaries, flourishes considerably. You read of its port, its corn and provision stores, etc., and of certain good hotels; for which, as travellers, we were looking with a laudable anxiety. The town, in fact, contains about a dozen of houses, some hundreds of cabins, and two hotels; to one of which we were driven, and a kind landlady, conducting her half-dozen guests into a snug parlour, was for our ordering refreshment immediately,—which I certainly should have done, but for the ominous whisper of a fellow in the crowd as we descended (of course a disinterested patron of the other house), who hissed into my ears, ‘Ask to see the beds,’ which proposal, accordingly, I made before coming to any determination regarding supper.
The worthy landlady eluded my question several times with great skill and good-humour, but it became at length necessary to answer it; which she did by putting on as confident an air as possible, and leading the way upstairs to a bedroom, where there was a good large comfortable bed, certainly.
The only objection to the bed, however, was that it contained a sick lady, whom the hostess proposed to eject without any ceremony, saying that she was a great deal better, and going to get up that very evening. However, none of us had the heart to tyrannise over lovely woman in so painful a situation, and the hostess had the grief of seeing four out of her five guests repair across the way to Brallaghan’s or Gallagher’s Hotel,—the name has fled from my memory, but it is the big hotel in the place; and unless the sick lady has quitted the other inn, which most likely she has done by this time, the English traveller will profit by this advice, and on arrival at Tarbert will have himself transported to Gallagher’s at once.
The next morning a car carried us to Tarbert Point, where there is a pier not yet completed, and a Preventive station, and where the Shannon steamers touch, that ply between Kilrush and Limerick. Here lay the famous river before us, with low banks and rich pastures on either side.