But the Irish waiter is, notwithstanding, a capital fellow, good-tempered, prompt, colloquial, large-hearted. I say “large-hearted” because he will undertake to serve any conceivable number of persons, and “colloquial,” remembering that, when a neighbour, at a table d'hôte, mildly expressed his conviction, that one waiter was insufficient to satisfy the emergencies of seventeen persons, the individual referred to immediately exclaimed from the other end of the apartment, but with all good humour and civility, “Shure, thin, and every gintleman will be having his fair turn.”
Well, I prefer this scant attendance, with all its good humour and elasticity, to the solemn dreariness of our English waiter, who has nothing to say but “Yezzur,” and knows not how to smile. If the Irishman cannot come to you, he will at all events recognise your summons, and favour you with a grin on account, whereas the Englishman hath an unpleasant habit of affecting not to hear you, and of rushing off in a contrary direction.
We remained a Sunday at Glengarriff (there is an air of rest and peace about the place, as of a perpetual Sabbath), and went up to the little edifice upon the hill, half cottage and half church. Indeed, the inhabited part has the more ecclesiastical aspect, and I was surprised on entering it, uncovered, and with obeisance, to confront an old woman washing potatoes!
The clergyman, having duties elsewhere, was somewhat late for matins, and it sounded strangely to be speaking of “the beginning of this day,” an hour and a half after the meridian. But that sacred service is ever seasonable, and we were glad, after an earnest sermon, to drop our thankful alms into the Offertory basin, though it was but a cheese plate of the willow pattern.
In the afternoon, we climbed the high hills which overlook Glengarriff and, after losing our way, and meeting with an apparition, which alarmed us fearfully, we reached the highest point, and surveyed, with wonder and gladness, the glorious view beneath us.
MOUNTED on the Cork car next morning, we passed the estuaries of Bantry Bay, where, the tide being out, the heron stood, lone and aristocratic, and the curlew ran nimbly among the dank seaweed. By the roadside, the goats, tied in pairs, and cruelly hoppled, tumbled over the embankments as we passed. We went by the picturesque old ruins of Carriginass, and by various sights and scenes, until we reached the Pass of Keimaneigh, a defile through the mountains, the appropriate refuge of the Rockites, in 1822, and an elegant situation for a still. Burns, that poetical gauger, might have been happy here, so long as, dreamily wandering among the heath-clad steeps, he had confined his attentions to the beauties of nature, and ignored the paraphernalia of art; but a more practical man, intent on business, would have had but an uncomfortable home of it, until a bullet put an end to his dreary quest, and
The driver pulled up his horses by a way-side cottage, and inquired whether we wished to see Gougane-barra. It was only a mile or so out of our route, Patrick there would take us in his car, and he would wait for us with all the pleasure in life. So, making this little deflection, we reached, as speedily as a good pony could take us over bad roads, the gloomy lake and mountains. Here we were received by a troop of juvenile guides, led on by an old man, who with a long white beard, and staff, intended, I believe, to give us the idea of a venerable and pious pilgrim, to remind us probably of St. Fion Bar, the “Saint of the Silver Locks,” who founded a monastery here; but roguery so twinkled in his eye, and imposition so quavered in his voice, that I have no hesitation in speaking with regard to him, as the Edinburgh Review spake of Edgar Poe:—“He was a blackguard of undeniable mark.”
The Irish poet Callanan sings,
We visited the “green island,” reaching it by an overland route (a method of access which I do not remember to have noticed out of Ireland); and the “Allua of Songs” was represented by a discordant din in Anglo-Irish, from the illustrious humbug in the beard, and his satellites, which would have interested us in a greater degree, had we understood only a twentieth part of it.
Ultimately, we caught a small boy, intelligent and intelligible, and he told us how the great Saint had here made himself deliciously miserable, feasting upon the idea of his fasts; contemplating his macerations in the lake, as complacently as a cornet his new uniform, or his sister her first ball-dress, in the glass; whipping himself as industriously as a schoolboy his top; hugging himself in his hair shirt, and nestling cosily as a child in its crib, in a bed composed of ashes and broken glass.
These and other austerities by which the Reverend Mr. Bar so signally extinguished himself, have made Gougane-barra, even to this day, a great resort for pilgrims; you see “the Stations,” and you see graven upon a stone, which was formerly an altar-stone, the list of prayers to be said there; and you hear of many wonderful cures, which have been performed (I always like that story of the priest, who was overheard, while telling his friend, that he must be so good as to excuse his absence, as he was engaged “to rehearse a miracle at two 0 clock!”) at the Holy Well hard by,—the very well, it may be, to which Larry O'Toole took Sheelah, his wife, and Phelim (as they thought) was “the consekins of that manoover.”
These pilgrims, some fifty years ago, used to drink diligently as soon as they had finished their prayers, laying aside the staff for the shillelagh, and kicking off their sandals for a jig on the green. Having paid off the old score, they began a new account like gentlemen, just as an undergraduate, having advanced ten pounds to his tailor, immediately orders clothes to the amount of twenty.
Regaining the car and main road, we pass by small silvery lakes from which the trout are leaping, “bekase,” says our driver, “the wather's so full o' fish that whinever they want to turn round they must jist jump out and do it in the air,” through a country prettily diversified with
as are only to be seen in Ireland, and so come to Inchigeela.
À propos of cornfields, I must not forget a striking example of scientific ingenuity, which we saw in this neighbourhood. A small cornstack had been raised, so grievously out of the perpendicular, that the tower of Pisa would have looked severely straight by it. But the builder saw his error, before it was too late, and had gloriously saved his cereal structure, by erecting another, opposite to and abutting towards it, until they supported each other, like the commencement of those card houses, which we built in early youth, a chevron in heraldry, or two drunken sots “seeing each other home.”
At Inchigeela's clean and comfortable inn, we had a capital luncheon for ninepence, and then “lionised” the village. The first object of interest was a pig, asleep under a tree by the brookside.
(I may add bene curandâ, as the bacon that is to be cannot possibly hear), and so serenely dignified in its complete repose, so “mildly majestical,” that one almost expected to see a point-lace nightcap, and fair girls fanning away the flies! He looked as happy as Gryllus, that companion of Ulysses, who, being transformed into a pig by Circe, and, being subsequently offered redintegration, preferred the swinish estate; huge and handsome as the famous boar, who ate the Reverend Mr. Haydn, after the victory of the rebels at Enniscorihy; 1 obese and sleepy, as Silenus, when found by the shepherds, Chromis and Mnasylus; 2 refreshed and comfortable, like that great O'Neill, who (Camden says so) was wont to plunge himself into the mire, as a cooler and restorative, after great excess.
Progressing, we come to the Constabulary Barracks, where a couple of constables, with such moustaches as would make a young Cornet groan, are polishing up their carbines. Our London police are well-favoured in appearance, but if the Irish constables were to take their place, there would not be a single female-servant, to be “warranted heart-whole,” in the great Metropolis, and the very name of Meat-safe would become a by-word and a laughing-stock.
In the river hard by, a girl, standing ankle-deep, from time to time, like the young lady in “the Soldiers Tear” held aloft a snowy—never mind what; and, having plunged it into the stream, and placed it upon a stone, belaboured it (as though it were a drunken husband) with an implement of wood, which much resembled a villager's clumsy cricket-bat.
Two Schools, and one actually at work! real pupils, making the pace too severe to last (when they saw us looking at them), with real slate-pencils over real slates! I wonder whether they were doing the “Irish Arithmetic,” of which O'Hara declares the following to be a faithful specimen:—
Returning, after a prolonged and pleasant stroll, we found the horses in the car, and the driver seated on his box. Now, an English coachman would have yelled at us, and English passengers would have scowled on us, for detaining them; but the Irishman gave us a pleasant smile of recognition, as though it was very kind of us to come back at all, and did not start for full five minutes, to assure us that we had caused no inconvenience. Certainly, it was one of those warm, still, delicious summer days on which nobody wants to start, satisfied with the calm enjoyment of the present, and so absorbed and occupied in doing nothing, that it seems to be quite a triumphal effort to rouse one's-self and light a cigar! At length, our charioteer speaks to his horses, whose drooping heads acknowledge the soporific influence of the day; and, awaking from their favourite night-mares, they bear us on our road to Cork.
Now we pass the tower, antique and ivy-clad, of Carrigadrohid, (nice name for a naughty pointer, requiring frequent reprimands on a broiling day in September!); a handsome residence on the hill beyond, with the pleasant waters of the river Lee, which accompanies us from its source at Gougatie-Barra to Cork, winding below it; and change horses at Dripsey. Between this latter place and Cork, the signs of civilisation became so painfully prominent, and the scenery so excruciatingly English, that, having secured ourselves by our rug-straps, to the iron bar behind us, our “custom always of an afternoon,” when we felt inclined for a siesta, we closed our eyes in sadness, and tried to dream of Connamara and Killarney. But sights, too dreadful for description, scared sleep away. Carts, whereupon was gaudily emblazoned “Albert Bakery,” and “Collard and Collard” fascinated our unwilling gaze; and we shortly found ourselves among the suburbs disgustingly neat, and the houses offensively comfortable, of “that beautiful city called Cork.”
On the right and left, as you approach, are two very imposing and extensive structures, Queen's College, and (“great wit to madness nearly is allied”) the Lunatic Asylum,—the latter so large, that it might have been erected to accommodate those numerous patients who have lost their reason in vain attempts to understand Mr. Bradshaw's Railway Guide.
Cork is, indeed, a “beautiful city,” delightfully situated, handsomely built, and having more the appearance of energy, prosperity, and comfort, than any other city we saw in Ireland. To my fancy the old prophecy is fulfilled,—
The river Lee, dividing here, flows round the island on which principally the city stands; and upon the wooded hills above, the richer part of the community have their pleasant, healthful homes.
Now, although I have deplored our transition from the wild scenery of Connamara and Kerry to the formalities of cultivation and refinement, I am not so bigoted as to deny that civilisation has its advantages; and, among them, I would specially include “the Imperial Hotel” in Pembroke Street. An excellent dinner, in pleasant society (the exception being a vulgar, garrulous old female, who ate with her knife, and told us how, in one of the foreign churches, she had “tried very 'ard to convert an aconite, quite a genteel young man,”) followed by some irreproachable claret,
disposed us to criticise very leniently the defects and inferiorities of art; and we left our inn to see the fireworks in the Mardyke Gardens, not only consoled, but cheery. All Cork appeared to be going in procession up that long avenue of fine old trees; and as the subsequent exhibition appeared to be quite satisfactory, I can pay “all Cork” the compliment of saying, that it is very easily pleased. To us, as we stood in the long, damp grass, and the varnish was retiring from our favourite boots, intervals of twenty minutes between the pyrotechnic performances soon began to be rather tedious; and we longed to repeat an experiment, originally introduced at the Henley Regatta, when a dozen of us combining, applied our cigars to all the “fixed pieces” at once, and the grand design, which was to crown the whole, anticipated its glories by a couple of hours, and wished the bewildered spectators “Good Night” (in glittering letters two feet long) almost as soon as they had paid for their admission!
I was dreaming that I met Lord Evelyn, at sunrise, in the Gap of Dunloe; that he put into my hand, with a graceful bow and striking amenity, the largest horse-pistol I ever saw, constructed, as he said, upon novel principles, by which it loaded itself, and would continue to go off until three o'clock, with appropriate airs from a musical box in the handle; that, leaving me with a kind of Pas de Basque, which I thought very inappropriate at such a crisis, and taking up a position twelve paces from me, he produced a weapon, similar to mine, and requested me to “blaze away;” that I was making frantic, but futile efforts to get my deadly instrument on full cock, and that my Lord, disdaining to take any advantage, was pinking the eagles, as they flew overhead; when the loud ringing of a contiguous bell recalled me to the realities of life. There is ever in these large hotels some unhappy inmate, who is unable to put himself into communication with Boots, who rings his bell with an ever-increasing energy, until he performs, at last, in his wild fury, such a continuous peal, as must bring up somebody, or bring down the rope. It is interesting to listen to these bells. First they suggest, then they entreat, then they remonstrate, then they insist, and then they curse and swear! Like the music of the Overture to Guillaume Tell, they begin pleasantly and peacefully, then they grow grand and warlike, crescendo-ing, from andante pianissimo, until they arrive at allegro fortissimo; and reminding me of a village dame, whom I heard calling from her cottage door to a child, playing in the distance, and hearing but not heeding its mother:
“Lizzie, luv!”
“Liz—a—buth!”
epithet too suggestive of the kennel for readers of polite literature.
Of course we went to see the old Cove of Cork, who, in a spirit of loyalty, but to the great disappointment of facetious visitors, has changed his name to Queenstown. We travelled by rail to Passage, and thence by steamer. What shall I say of this glorious haven, “Statio bene fida carinis,” twelve miles from city to sea? What a refreshment and gladness must it be to the weary sailor, to come from his lone voyage on “the sad sea waves,” to this safe home and refuge, to listen to the summer breeze, softly sighing in those upland groves, instead of to the tempest, as it bends the creaking mast, and to look down upon those calm and glittering waters, with the gay craft of Peace and Pleasure gliding gracefully to and fro.
Should it ever be my happy lot to revisit the city and haven of Cork, I shall most certainly decline to land at Queenstown. The gentleman who took a Census of the smells at Cologne, and said,
might, perhaps, be interested in this locality, and would find an ample field for his nasal arithmetic. The heat was intense, the tide low; and, though I have no doubt that, further from the sea, the place is sweet and healthy enough, I never remember to have inhaled so offensive an atmosphere as that which prevailed, upon St. Bartholomew's Day, in the year 1858, and in the front street of the Queenstown. As an Irishman, Chief Baron Woulfe, once wrote of Paris, “the air is so loaded with stenches of every kind, as to be quite irrespirable;” and turning to my friend, I said, “O Francis, it is written, in this 'Handbook to the Harbour and City of Cora,' that 'Queenstown is celebrated, and justly so, for the equality, mildness, and salubrity of its temperature,' and that 'many medical men prefer it to the climate of Madeira;' but take thy kerchief from thy nose brief while, and answer me, my Francis, terse and true, doth not this statement seem to thee, in boyhood's phrase, 'a Corker!'”
He replied, that “as the stinks were not quite sufficiently defined to sketch, he should hire a boat and bathe;” and, having purchased a couple of oyster-cloths, the nearest approximation he could find to towels, so indeed he did, leaving me (incapable of natation), to contemplate the Garrison, an extensive pile with a very military and practical look, Spike Island, once the residence of Mr. Mitchell, and now occupied by some 2000 malefactors of less illustrious name, and Rocky and Hawlbowline Islands, which are used as ammunition stores.
The heat and the incense (how I envied the white gulls, flying lazily over the waters, and ever and anon dipping, as one thought, to cool themselves!) were so oppressive and irritating, that when a small boy, buying apples, would keep dropping them on the ground, in a vain attempt to thrust more into his pocket than the cavity could possibly accommodate, I almost thirsted for his blood, and like the stern old Governor in Don Juan, I could have seen him
Yea, should have esteemed it to be Hari-kari, which is Japanese, you know, for “happy dispatch.” 1
In expiation of these sanguinary thoughts, I subsequently presented a fourpenny piece, as conscience money, to a miserable-looking beggar, who “had not tasted food,” &c. &c. &c. &c., and who only asked for “a halfpenny, to buy a piece of bread.” But he had scarcely left me (having previously requested all the saints to pay me particular attention), when I heard one of two men, who were leaning against the wall, on which I sat smell-bound, say to his neighbour that “the jintleman must have more brass than brains, to go and give his money to a drunken shoemaker, who'd been out three days on the spree.” Yes, my groat was gone to buy alcohol for this impostor, this Cork Leg; and I felt as though I very closely resembled that bird which the French call “Le Bruant Fou,” and we “The Foolish Bunting,” because it is so easily ensnared.
It was, indeed, a joyous departure from humbug, dead fish, and sewers, to the waves, that were dancing in a pleasant breeze (which prudently declined to venture ashore); and we were as glad to make an escape as our great sailor, Sir Francis, when, outnumbered by the Spaniards, he came, crowding all sail, into Cork Harbour, and hid himself securely in “Drakes Pool.”
Lovely as the scene around her, there sat upon the deck, as we returned to Passage, a winsome Irish bride, fondly gazed upon by her happy husband, and less ostensibly by ourselves, and about a dozen officers, who were bound for Cork, from the Garrison and Club house at Queenstown. Was it that mysterious talent of beauty, which without words can say, “I recognise your homage, and it does not displease me;” or was it only our own enormous vanity which caused each of us to imagine, as I feel convinced we did, that, could she only have foreknown our peculiar fascinations, she would have laughed to scorn the inferior animal, who was now grinning by her side?
We returned to the Imperial for luncheon (and I am unacquainted with any midday refreshment more interesting than prawns, fresh and full-grown, with bread and butter à discrétion, and the golden ales of Burton), and then took car for Blarney. Our horse was evidently as fond of his home as that enthusiastic citizen who, with a charming indifference to anachronisms, declared that Athens was called “the Cork of Greece,” and would keep perpetually turning round to gaze upon the beautiful city. In vain the driver inquired satirically whether he had dropped his umbrella, or forgotten to order dinner, or whether there was anything on his mind; in vain he addressed him vituperatively, called him an old clothes-horse, and threatened to take him to the asylum; in vain, trying the persuasive, he assured him that we had come all the way from England to see him, having heard so much of his speed and beauty, and that, if he would keep up his character, and be a gentleman, he should have such a feed of old beans that day, as would cause him to neigh for joy. All in vain! from time to time round went this uncomfortable horse, until at last, as some fond lover takes one more look at his beloved, and then rushes wildly away, where duty calls or glory waits him, our eccentric quadruped suddenly started off at full trot, and during the remainder of our journey comported himself with great propriety.
THE old Castle of Blarney, like the castle of Macbeth, by Inverness,
and it commands a fine view “over the water and over the Lee” over lake and meadow, and over “the Groves of Blarney,” renowned in song. The landscape rewards your exertions, when you have ascended the narrow staircase of the sole remaining tower, and this somewhat resembles (“magna componere”) an excellent “Stilton,” which has gone the way of all good cheeses, and is now a hollow ruin—a ruin on which some sentimental mouse might sit, like Marins at Carthage, and bitterly recall the past.
Looking down this cavity, made gloomier by the dark ivy and wild myrtle, which grow from floor to battlement, one feels that fainty thrill and chilliness which is equally unpleasant and indescribable, and gladly divert our attention, first to the stone displaced by a cannon shot, in the days of the incomparable Lady Jeffreys, when
and then to another stone lower down in the tower, and bearing the inscription, “Cormac Macarthy Fort is Me Fieri Fecit, a.d. 1446,” which may be translated liberally,
This is said to be the original Blarney Stone, but as no man could possibly kiss it, unless (as Sir Boyle Roche observed) he happened to be a bird, or an acrobat, twelve feet long, and suspending himself by his feet from the summit of the Tower, we were content to believe in the conventional granite, which now bears the name, and which, being situated at the top of one of the turrets, is very accessible for osculation.
Of this lapideous phenomenon, the author of “The Groves of Blarney” sings,
Now it is my conviction, primarily suggested by my own sensations, and subsequently confirmed by what I noticed in others, as I lingered on that ancient tower, that the majority of those who kiss the Blarney Stone, do wish and try to believe in it. We English have so scanty a stock of superstitions, and some of these so wanting in refinement and dignity, as, for instance, the “crossing out” of an isolated magpie, the ejection of spilt salt over the left shoulder, deviations into the gutter to avoid a ladder, the mastication of pancakes upon Shrove Tuesday, and the like, that we are glad of any pretext for gratifying that innate love of the marvellous, which exists, more or less, in us all,—ay, and will exist, until John Bright is Premier of England, and our Fairy Tales and Arabian Nights, and all our books of pleasant fiction are solemnly burnt at Oxford, before a Synod of costive Quakers.
And then it is so gratifying for Mammas to fancy, as they bend to kiss the magic stone, that assuredly they “stoop to conquer,” henceforth, by a new and dulcet eloquence, those little idiosyncrasies of “dear Papa,” which have thwarted their happiest schemes, such as his insuperable apathy on the subject of that new Conservatory, although “you know, darling, both Mr. Nesfield and Mr. Thomas declared it to be indispensable.”
Pleasant, too, for their charming daughter of nineteen, to think that she hereafter shall not ask in vain for that tour in Switzerland, that ball at home, those boxes, varying in shape and size; small, from the stores of Howell and of James; medium, from Messieurs Hill and Piver; and large, very large, from “the infallible Mrs. Murray,” and Jane Clark, in the Street of the Regent.
Enlivening, moreover, for that Eton boy to believe, as he salutes the Blarney Stone, that now he has only to give the Governor a hint, and “that clipping little horse of young Farmer Smith's” will be purchased forthwith, and presented to him, to carry him next season with the Belvoir hunt.
Miserable Father, how shall he meet this irresistible incursion upon his purse and peace. Well may he look coldly on the Blarney Stone! Well may he express, from heart and hope, his belief that it's “all humbug.” And yet, methinks, remembering that last Election, that distressingly effete experiment to nominate Sir John Golumpus, that fearful silence, when he came to grief, that vulgar gibe “go 'ome, and tak' a pill,” he too must sigh for this gift of Blarney, and long to kiss the Stone.
See, they are leaving the battlements,—first the Etonian, then his sister, and then Mamma. O, wily Paterfamilias! Suddenly remembering that he “has left his stick” (he has, and purposely), he steps briskly back, and, stooping for his cane,—salutes the rock! He, at all events, won't “kiss, and tell!”
But everybody kisses it. The noisy old girl, whom we met yesterday at the table d'hôte, and who preferred steel to silver, as a medium for the transmission of food, reached the summit of the tower very short of wind, but resumed, as soon as ever she could speak, a severe sermon upon the errors of “Room,” and its superstitions in particular. And yet, ultimately (affecting to do it in ridicule,—let us be charitable, and hope that, in her heart of hearts, she had in view the conversion of her “genteel Aconite”), she kissed the Stone; and we were glad to have already done so.
We saw the kitchen, where beeves were cooked in the merry old times, and the banquet-hall wherein they were carved. The latter was appropriated to a miscellaneous collection of rickety old farming implements,—rust, and dust, and decay, where brave knights laughed over the winecup,—
Shall we re-ascend the tower, and preach, from that old stone pulpit, on “pulvis et umbra sumus?” Perhaps, as there is no congregation, and a Lunatic Asylum mighty convanient, we may as well postpone our sermon, and turn our steps to the gardens and groves of Blarney.
If the poet had not told us that “they are so charming,” I should scarcely have discovered the fact for myself, as they are but feebly ornamented with flowers, and—
are damply suggestive of a cold in the head. At the same time, from their pleasant position and varied surface, these grounds have a charm about them; and I should much like to wander in them, by moonlight, with—(I must decline, like the Standard Bearer, to communicate the young lady's name), just to see whether I had derived any benefit from my salutation of the Blarney Stone; whether I could say mavourneen with a sweeter tenderness, and discourse more fluently those “sugared glosses,” which are called by the sentimental “heart music,” and by the unsentimental “bosh.”
In these grounds the portly old gardener showed us one of those Cromlechs, which were used by the Druids for sacrificial or sepulchral purposes, and in which, I am ashamed to say, we professed an all-absorbing interest, though, on my asking Frank, as we left the gardens, “what a Cromlech was?” he replied that, prior to inspection, his idea had always been that it was a species of antediluvian buffalo!
Then we saw the lake
They say that, from this lake enchanted cows, snow-white and of wondrous beauty, come forth in the summer mornings, and wander among the dewy meads, to the intense astonishment and admiration, doubtless, of the celebrated Irish Bulls. 1
And they say, moreover, that beneath these waters (which we ventured to designate Cowesharbour, in allusion to the mysterious kine), lies the plate-chest of the Macarthys, about the size of a gasometer, and never to be raised until once again a Macarthy shall be lord of Blarney. It will be a busy day for the butler, and a happy one for those who deal in plate-powder, whenever this restoration shall occur.
Our driver gave us, as we returned, a taste of his autobiography. I wish that I could repeat it verbatim, for Irish humour loses its bloom if it is not faithfully rendered; but my memory only retains the incidents, and, here and there, a phrase of his story.
He was in England several years ago, at the time of harvest, travelling, sickle in hand, with a dozen of “the boys,” and looking out for employment in the neighbourhood of, or, as he termed it, “contagious to th'ould castle of Newark-upon-Trent.” A hot wind blew the dust along the road, for “the good people were a-going their journeys;” 1 and they were resting awhile, and looking at a fine crop of wheat, by the wayside, when two young men on horseback stopped, and asked them “whether they wanted work?”
Now, it seems, that there lived in these parts, at the period of our history, one of those unhappy malcontents whose counsel, like Moloch's, is for open war with everything and everybody about them; who can believe no good of their neighbours, because they find none in themselves; who murmur at the rich, and are mean and merciless to the poor; who go to meeting house to spite the parson, and to church to vex the preacher; who attend parish-meetings to stir up quarrels, and to set one class against another; who poison foxes, and put their great ugly boots into partridge-nests; and sedulously devote themselves in every way to promote the misery of mankind.
A bear of this calibre, calling himself a farmer, was tenant of the field on which the Irishman gazed; and a plan occurred to the merry young gentlemen by which they might amuse themselves, occupy the reapers, and annoy “that mangy old hunks.” Accordingly, they at once retained our friend the car-driver, and his company, to cut the crop before them, giving them particular directions to get it down as quickly as they could, and agreeing to pay them liberally by the acre, as “their father was anxious to get it stacked, and would not mind their doing the work a bit slovenly, if only they lost no time.” And then, having warned them “not to take any notice of a poor half-witted fellow, who lived near, and who, fancying that all the land about was his own, might possibly try to interrupt their proceedings,” the horsemen wished them “good-day.”
They had been at work for nearly an hour, and had left behind them, in their anxious haste, such an untidy example of sheaf and stubble as would have broken Mr. Mechi's heart, when a loud bellowing in the distance announced the arrival of the unhappy lunatic! He came on, roaring and raving, shaking his fist, and foaming at the mouth. He actually danced with rage among the sickles, until the reapers, fearing the excision of his legs, forcibly removed him, and with twisted strawbands, secured him to his own gate! There, trussed and pinioned, he sent forth such howlings through “the alarmed air,” as scared every crow from the parish, and very speedily attracted the surprised attention of the British public travelling upon the Great North Road.
The reapers, eventually, found it expedient to retire with considerable agility, much disgusted and discomfited, at being “sich a distance on the wrong side of the wage, bedad,” until they were met by their delighted employers, who not only presented them with a couple of sovereigns, but introduced them, with the anecdote, to a jolly old gentleman, hard by, from whom they had employment until the end of harvest.
In allusion to the subject of Irishmen in England, I asked the car man, when he had concluded his story, whether he was aware that there were as many of his countrymen living in London as in the city of Dublin itself? 1 And his reply, to the effect, that I had “brought away a dale o' vartue from th' ouldstone a top o Blarney,” reminded me of an observation made, when I was at school, by our French master, to a boy named Drake. “Monsieur Canard, I shall not call you a liar but I do not believe von vord of vot you say!”
We had a fine view, as we returned, of the beautiful city and its environs, and re-entering by another route, we passed the ornate chapel, commenced by Father Mathew, at the date and with the design, so charmingly recorded by the poet,
Next morning, having purchased, as we were commissioned and as we recommend other tourists to do, a good stock of highly finished but low-priced gloves from Mollard, in the street of St. Patrick, we started by rail for Dublin.
THERE are objects, I doubt not, in the well-cultivated country which lies between Cork and Dublin, well worthy of special notice, but we did not pause to observe them, passing once more the pretty town of Mallow, and the Limerick Junction, reminded at Thurles of the famous Synod, and longing, as we passed the Curragh (Ireland's Newmarket), for a gallop over its green, elastic sward.
The latest intelligence, which we obtained from Mark, on our arrival at Morrisson's was that Cardinal Wiseman had arrived in Dublin, and the Fair in Donnybrook. To the latter we went, as soon as we had dined, but did not meet with His Eminence, wiser in his maturity than Wolsey in his youth, for Wolsey not only went to the fair, but got there so particularly drunk, that he was put into the stocks by Sir Amyas Paulett,—if you doubt it, ask “Notes and Queries.”
The glories of Donnybrook have declined dismally since those more happy days, when Paddy
The showmen shouted, and the drums rumbled, and the cymbals clanged, and the fiddlers fiddled, but the dancing was limp and feeble, and the general effect was dreary. We visited Mr. Batty's Menagerie, and were offered a mount upon a young elephant, at the low charge of one penny. And I am glad that we declined; because the quadruped in question, having gone round the show, until it was tired of doing so, suddenly dropped upon its stern, and discharged its jockeys into the sawdust, as though they were a load of coals!
Then we visited the Theatre of Ferguson, and there a Prima Donna appeared to us, from the arrangement of her mouth, to be singing with remarkable energy; but we had no further means of verifying the supposition, as the whole House, incited by her example, was chanting at the top of its voice. And I must say that, although I stood, most uncomfortably and insecurely, on a narrow plank at the top of “the Boxes,” I never enjoyed a concert more; and I very much doubt whether the Pope himself could have resisted joining in the Chorus.
We saw nothing at all suggestive of a shindy until (to our great joy) we met a couple of our college friends, Hoare, the stroke of our boat, tall among the tallest, as Arba among the Anakims, arm in arm with little Dibdin, the coxswain (they have been sworn friends, ever since Hoare took him by the collar, and dropped him into the Isis, for some mistake in steering); and these gentlemen were armed with shillelaghs, and anxious, as the old lady in the captured city, to know when the fun would begin. “For now I see,” said Hoare,—
Let us haste to Kelvin Grove—I mean, let us return to Morrisson's!”
We steamed away next morning from Kingston Quay. Looking back upon that lovely bay, I thought of the poor Irishman's most touching words, as he gazed for the last time on his native land, “Ah, Dublin, sweet Jasus be with you!” and from my heart I breathed an earnest prayer for the good weal of beautiful Ireland!
And now our “Little Tour” is over; and its story must go forth, like some small boy to a public school, to find its true place and level. It may, perhaps, receive more pedal indignities than donations of a pecuniary kind; vulgarly speaking, more kicks than halfpence; but as no severities can deprive the boy of his pleasant memories of the past, nor chase the smile from his tear-stained and inky cheek, as he sleeps to dream of home; so no criticism, however caustic, can ever mar my glad remembrance of our happy days in Ireland.
And in mine adversity, should such befall, I shall have yet another solace. Hooted, like some bad actor, from the stage, I can hide myself behind scenery, which has a charm for all, and which, like Phyllis the fair, “never fails to please.”
Cheered or condemned, whether “the Duke shall say, Let him roar again,” or the poor player shall hear