Chapter XVI: Scottish Ireland

ENNISKILLEN.

If you did not know beforehand that you are entering a new Ireland through Enniskillen, an Ireland, Scotch, Protestant, manufacturing, a glance through the carriage-window would suffice to reveal the fact. Over the hill, on the right, a fine country-house waves to the wind, as a defiance to the League, his orange-coloured flag, the colours of the “_Unionists_.” The landlords of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, who are Orangemen, as well as others, dare not proclaim their opinions so boldly, hoist them at the top of the main mast, so to say; for it might simply cost them their lives. You must come to “loyal Ulster” to see such acts of daring, for the simple reason that they are without danger here.

Another symptom, more eloquent still than the colour of the flag, is the aspect of the landscape; no more uncultivated fields, no more endless bogs and fens. Instead of those long, red, or black streaks of peat, alternating with consumptive oat and potato-fields, green, fat meadows, mown by steam, studded with cows, in the most prosperous condition, spread themselves before your eyes. Some trees are to be seen now. The hedges are in good repair, the horses well harnessed to solid carts; the hay-stacks have a symmetrical outline, and vast fields of flax nod under the breeze; the farm-houses are well built, flanked by neat kitchen-gardens; in short, all gives the general impression of a properly cultivated land. Nothing like the agricultural opulence of Kent or Warwickshire though, but the normal state of a tolerably good land, where human industry is not fighting against an accumulation of almost insuperable obstacles.

Is it that the law is different in Ulster? Not so, but the custom is. From immemorial times the tenant-right has been admitted here; and in consequence the farmer has never hesitated to introduce the necessary improvements, and to invest his hoard in the land, sure as he is to profit by it.

That tenant is three times out of five of Scotch origin; three times out of five he belongs to the Protestant persuasion (Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist); there is not between him and his landlord the antagonism of race and worship which is to be found in other provinces. The landlord himself fulfils his duty better, and does not affect to spend abroad the money he draws from his estate; often that landlord is some guild or municipal corporation of London or elsewhere, which perhaps does not make the best use possible of its income, but is nevertheless obliged to justify more or less its privilege by some philanthropic foundation, trials of culture on the large scale, innovation, and examples.

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Lastly, Ulster is a neighbour to Scotland, and belongs to the same geological, ethnological, commercial, and religious system. Capital is less timorous here. It ventures to come, to stay, to circulate. By the side of agriculture there are important factories, which help to sustain and feed it. Instead of keeping invariably to oats, turnips, and the time-honoured potato, the farmers grow flax on a large scale for the 400,000 spindles which are spinning at Belfast, Dundalk, and Drogheda.

A certain tendency to aggregate small holdings, and to constitute in that way great and middling farms, has been developing lately in Ulster. The peasants are better lodged and fed than elsewhere in Ireland. They find day-work more easily because agriculture is conducted there on more scientific principles, and they are not condemned to remain idle four days out of seven. In short, the economic condition of Scotch Ireland, without being such as to be offered as a pattern to the civilised world, is about as good as possible under the feudal _régime_ and landlordism.

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LONDONDERRY.

The signs of that relative prosperity are obvious. Thus in the neighbourhood of Derry (we say Londonderry, but the natives all say Derry), you observe with pleasure a line of tramcars moved by steam machinery, which puts remote places in communication with the railway. The carriages are of superior make, divided into three classes, towed by an engine heated with petroleum. Coming, as you do, out of Mayo and Galway, that steam tramway puffs in your face a breath of civilisation. You seem to enter a different world.

Derry, with its active traffic, its elegant iron bridge over the Foyle, the fine, new buildings which attest its wealth, justifies that impression. It is the capital of the famous “Ulster plantation” of James I., entrusted by him to the “Honourable Irish Company,” which included twelve guilds of the city of London. For a century or two those grants of land did not answer as had been expected. But they have ended, in the course of time, by being prosperous. The municipal estates of Coleraine and Derry are accounted now the most flourishing in the island.

Yet it does not follow that the tenant’s situation is very brilliant, even in Ulster. One of the counties of the province, Donegal, is the poorest in all Ireland, and two or three others are not much better. Even in the richest parts the tenant bears chafingly the yoke of landlordism. The Antrim Tenant Association went so far this year as to ask for a 50 per cent. reduction on rent, owing to the low price of produce and the sheer impossibility of going on paying at the previous rate. It must be noted that tenant-right being rigorously observed in Ulster, the farmer always pays when he is able; for any remissness in paying would diminish by as much the value of his share in the proprietorship, which is estimated on an average at 8 or 10 times the annual farm rent.

The newspapers of the county, even when unfavourable to agrarian revendications, unanimously acknowledge that by reason of the constant going down of prices, resulting from American competition, the present condition of the agriculturist is about as bad as it was in the worst famine times. All the farmers without exception, be they of Scotch or Irish race, aver that they actually pay from their own pockets every penny they give the landlords; that is to say, they borrow it in the shape of a loan on the value of their tenant-right.

Such a state of things cannot continue. It explains how it is that Presbyterian peasants, the most ardent enemies of Papistry—in theory—none the less give the majority, even in Ulster itself, to the representatives of Home Rule and the liquidation of landed property.

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PORTRUSH AND THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY.

Portrush is a delicious sea-side place, at the mouth of Lough Foyle, on the most wonderful coast in Europe; it is seated on the edge of the Antrim table-land, which is of volcanic origin: probably a dependency of Scotland geologically, rather than belonging properly to Ireland, to which it came and welded itself, at some unknown epoch. The traveller has there the agreeable surprise of a delightful hotel—one should say a perfect one—a regular miracle of comfort; and the still greater surprise of seeing there the only electric railway actually working on this planet. That bijou-line is used to take the visitors to the wonder of Ireland, the Giant’s Causeway. It ascends on the sea-side an acclivity of about three to four hundred yards, and runs over a length of five miles up to Bushmills, where the generators of electricity are set to work by hydraulic power. Nothing is so fresh or unexpected as that drive in open carriages. The train ascends lustily along the electric guiding-rail in the midst of a well-nourished fire of sparkles called to life by its iron hoofs. As it rises higher the prospect gets wider and wider, and you get a view of the Scotch mountains only fifteen miles distant, while the most extraordinary basaltic formations are following one another under your eye along the coast.

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The Antrim table-land, so geologists tell us, was formed by a layer of lava three or four hundred yards high, spread over the chalky bottom of the sea. Of the volcanoes which vomited that lava no vestige is to be seen to-day. The glaciers, tumbling down from the neighbouring heights, have cleared them away. In times remote, that table-land extended across to Scotland, to which it united Ireland as by a sort of prodigious bridge of lava. But the unremitting, incessant, work of the waters has eaten away by degrees the cretaceous masses which supported it. The arches of the bridge were then dislocated and precipitated into the ocean. Only some traces of it on both sides are left standing now: the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, the point of Cantire in Scotland, and between the two, the little Island of Rathlin.

Along the coast of Antrim the waves continuing their destructive work, go on gnawing the foundations of the cliffs, which they dig and carve like lacework. Numberless grottoes, rocky needles shaped into the likeness of steeples, deep chasms at the bottom of which the foaming waters are for ever contending, are the result of that perennial work.

Occasionally, as at Dunluce, to the fantastic work of nature, some ruin that was once an illustrious stronghold, whose walls, literally hanging over the abyss, seem to be attached to the firm ground only by a curved arch of half-a-yard’s breadth, adds an element of tragic poetry. Under the rock which bear those dilapidated walls, the sea has dug for itself caves which are resounding night and day with the deafening noise of the beating waves. It is grand and terrible in summer; one can imagine what it must be when the tempest of a winter night unloosens its fury within those caverns.

Naturally they are, more than any other place in the world, rich in legendary lore. The M’Quillans, to whom belonged Dunluce Castle, boast an antiquity which outshines greatly that of the descendants of the Crusaders. These are not people to be content, like Montesquieu, with two or three hundred years of acknowledged nobility. They came from Babylon, it appears, at an epoch exceptionally prehistoric, and can trace their origin back to 4,000 years ago. The only branch in existence now dwells in Scotland, and bear the title of lords of Antrim and Dunluce.

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At Bushmills the electric train stops. There you alight and take your seat in the car which brings you to the Causeway Hotel. Here, as the air is decidedly bracing, and the majority of the tourists English, luncheon is ready, as you may imagine. The classic salmon despatched in company with a glass of ale or porter, the only thing to do is to look to business and visit the marvels of the place. A wall, which the provident administration of the hotel have raised for purposes of safety, hides them as yet from your sight. When you have passed that obstacle you find yourself within a sort of circus, delineated by the cliffs, and at the extremity of which descends a path that looks anything but safe. Total absence of causeway. Where must we look for it? This a swarm of guides, cicerones, boatmen, beggars of all descriptions, offer to show you. They all speak at the same time, fight, wrangle, make you deaf with their jabbering. Wise is he who sends them to the devil, and follows peacefully the pathway which goes to the extremity of the circuit, turns alone round the foot of the cliff on the right, and penetrates, unaccompanied, into the neighbouring bay. He will have the joy of a powerful, wholly personal sensation, unalloyed by any impure element. But alas! how is one to guess that? You think you are doing the right thing in giving the lead to a professional guide. You choose among the howling crew the less ruffianly face, and you deliver yourself into the hands of a cicerone. Fatal error! Henceforward you cease to belong to yourself. You are no longer a being endowed with reason and volition, with the free exercise of your rights; you are an article of luggage in the hands of a porter, a disarmed traveller in the power of a Calabrian desperado.

Instead of taking you to the bay on the right, the arbiter of your destiny begins by laying down as a dogma that the only means of seeing the causeway properly is to approach it by sea. On the same occasion you shall visit the marine caves. Allured by that programme, you follow the man, and you embark with him in a boat rowed by two oarsmen, who greet your advent rapturously.

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Five minutes later you find yourself in total darkness under the oozing vault of a cavern, where the fluctuations of the mountainous waves now let the boat sink suddenly five or six yards down, now heave it up against the roof, and threaten to shiver your skull to pieces. In the midst of that frantic jogging and tossing the guide lights up a Bengal flame, in order to display to better advantage the variegated tints of the damp walls, or, it may be, to create the said tints, if they do not exist. Then he lets off a pistol in your ear to awake the echoes of the cavern, which answer to the call with deafening unanimity.

This is the “psychological moment.” The rowers, laying down their oars, take off their caps and hold them to you, explaining at the same time that gunpowder is expensive. You hasten to accede to the request, and soon after you find yourself, not without pleasure, in the daylight again.

Not for long, however; for you are expected to do another cavern. You submit meekly to the programme. Again that homicidal tossing; another Bengal flame; a second pistol shot. This time the boatmen offer you a box of geological specimens. As it is, you happen to abhor geology; but how is one to resist people who have him in their power in a marine cave?

Liberation comes in time. You breathe again. The miscreants have the face to mention a third cavern! But this time you rebel. “No more caverns! The causeway instantly!”

You double a little promontory, and after two or three oar-strokes you land on what seems to you at first a quay with a pavement made with hexagon slabs.

“Here you are, sir! This is the Giant’s Causeway.” Let us confess it candidly: the first impression is disappointment. Is it then that famous Causeway, that unrivalled wonder? You are ready to believe in a mystification. But this is only a passing impression for which the guides, not the Causeway, are responsible.

The truth is, you must not approach it by sea if you wish to see it well. It is by land only that it can be understood, like a symphony which would lose half its charm if executed in the open air. The treason of the guides is so cruel that it really cries for vengeance and must be denounced.

At last you have managed to get rid of them, and leaving the Causeway, you have climbed up the steep neighbouring cliffs. And now looking round, you are struck with stupefaction and rapture at the spectacle which offers itself to your eyes. That sort of quay or footpath you deemed at first mean or insignificant is in reality, when viewed properly, the most stupendous whim of nature. Imagine a formidable array of forty thousand columns of prismatic shape (some one gifted with patience has numbered them), rising tall and majestic, and pressed against each other so as to form a continuous, almost level pavement, which emerges from the sea like a quay of marble. The symmetry of that pavement is so remarkable, all those shafts of columns are so well clamped together, that it seems almost impossible to admit that this is not human work. You fancy you are walking on the hexagonal slabs of some Babylonian palace, whose walls the storm has destroyed. These paving-stones are neat and even, about one foot wide, and perfectly regular. Towards the middle of the quay they rise in a sort of swelling, which permits one to study their anatomy and to perceive that they are really formed by the section of as many upright parallel prismatic columns.

There are three Causeways,—the Great, the Little, and the Middle Causeway. They occupy the centre of a semi-circular bay, formed by lofty cliffs, which let you see under a thin covering of clay and grass other rows of basaltic columns that show their profile, and have been called “the Organ.” On the right the bay is limited by a jutting rock, above which tower two or three needles—“the Chimneypots.” A local tradition relates that the Invincible Armada, driven against the cliffs by a strong gale, mistook the needles for the towers of Dunluce, and stormed them uselessly a whole day long.

Beyond those basaltic piers a spring of sweet water forms the “Giant’s Well;” further on a rock, roughly shaped as a church desk, is called “the Pulpit.” All those sports of nature compose a whole truly unique and wonderful. Neither the Alps, nor the chain of the Andes, nor Mount Vesuvius, nor Etna, can give you such an impression of grandeur—are able to that degree to put you as it were into communion with the mysteries of labouring Nature.

What strikes you further about those basaltic formations is that they are both colossal, like all works directly resulting from the great cosmic forces, and at the same time almost Greek by the quality and symmetry of their arrangements. For once the volcanos seem to have had the whim to work according to the canons of art. It is both human and super-human—verily a Giant’s Causeway!

The Giant Fin M’Coul, so the legend says, was the guardian genius of Ireland. He had for a rival a certain Scotch Giant of mighty conceit and insolence, whose boast it was that none could beat him. The sea alone, if that Scotch braggart was to be believed, prevented his coming to let M’Coul feel the might of his arm, as he was afraid of getting a cold if he attempted to swim across the Straits. So he remained at home. M’Coul was riled at last by that swaggering. “Since thou art afraid to get wet,” he cried to his rival, “I am going to throw a causeway between Scotland and Ireland, and we shall see then whether thou darest use it!” The building of the bridge took only a few thousand years, and then the Scot, having no pretence left, accepted the challenge, was beaten flat, and obliged to eat humble pie. After which, with true Irish generosity, the good-natured giant gave him his daughter in marriage, and allowed him to come and settle near him, which the Scot accepted, nothing loth, Erin being an infinitely sweeter and generally superior country to his own. But perhaps, after all, M’Coul found no cause to rejoice over the match he had arranged for his daughter, as he subsequently allowed the sea to destroy his work so as to prevent any more Scots from settling in his dominions. Only some of its piles remain standing, one of which is the Isle of Rathlin, half-way across the Straits.

The legend, as you see, is not so foolish. It answers at all points to geological data, and even to historic truth, viz., the invasion of Ulster by the Scots. But, let its origin be what it may, the fact remains that the Giant’s Causeway, with its neighbour, Portnoffen Bay, the most perfect amphitheatre in the world, with the marvellous colonnade of the Pleaskin, Dunluce Castle, Dunseverick, and the bridge of rope of Carrick-a-Rede, thrown over a chasm that measures a hundred feet above the waters,—constitute one of the grandest, most moving spectacles that the traveller may see. You can go round the world without having such extraordinary sights. Add to it that few of the gems of nature are of so easy an access. From Paris you can be on the coast of Antrim in twenty hours, by London, Liverpool, and Belfast. Portrush, with its admirable sea-shore, its electric railway, and stupendous cliffs, is the ideal frame for a honeymoon excursion. I had resolved to recommend it to tourists, and to point out the guides of the Causeway to public execration. Now I have done my duty.

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BELFAST.

The capital of Ulster is naturally the most flourishing town of Ireland. Whereas the others decrease in population and wealth, Belfast is rapidly thriving. From 20,000 inhabitants, which it numbered at the beginning of the century, it has risen in eighty years to 210,000. Another ten years and it will outdo Dublin itself. It is a manufacturing city as well as a big trading port. By an exception, unique in the island, it occupies a great number of workers, male and female—60,000, at the lowest computation—for the most part, in the weaving trade and naval construction. A single linen factory, that of Messrs. Mulholland, gives work to 29,000 pairs of hands. It is those weaving looms which utilize the product of the 110,000 acres of flax fields in Ulster. Out of nineteen ships of over 300 tons annually built in the docks of the island eighteen come out of the Belfast wharves. It is, in short, the maritime gate of Irish import and export—the insular suburb of Liverpool and Glasgow.

As a consequence, signs of prosperity are showing themselves everywhere. The public walks are vast and carefully kept, the houses well built, the shops substantial and elegant, the educational establishments important and richly endowed. The town has a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon aspect. London fashions are scrupulously followed there. If you enter the Botanical Garden, maintained by voluntary contributions, you find there the lawn-tennis, the dresses, the ways of the metropolis. If you follow the road up to Cave Hill, one of the heights on the western side of Belfast, you embrace a vast landscape, where the flying steamers on the Lagan, the smoking factory-chimneys, the innumerable and opulent villas round its shores, all speak of wealth and prosperity.

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The population is about equally divided between Protestants and Catholics. The consequence is that party hatred and the struggle for local influence are far more ardent and long-lived here than in places where one of the two elements has an overwhelming majority. Electoral scuffles easily turn to bloody battles; political anniversaries—that of the Battle of the Boyne, above all—are a pretext for manifestations which often degenerate into regular battles.

Belfast is the bulwark of Orangeism; and Orangeism may be described as Protestant and loyalist fanaticism, as opposed to Catholic and national fanaticism. Shankhill Road, which is frequently used as a battle-field by the antagonistic parties, is a long suburb which divides as a frontier line the Orangeist from the Irish quarters.

Hardly one pay-day passes without the public-houses of that suburb being the theatre of some pugilistic feat accomplished by some voluntary representatives of the opposite camps. If the police happen to rush into the fray, reinforcements are called from either side; stones, cudgels, revolvers come to the rescue, and, on the morrow, the jails are filled with prisoners, and the hospitals with the dead and the wounded.

Sad to relate, it is the clergy on both sides who incite them to those fratricidal struggles. There are certain Protestant preachers who are in no way behindhand in bitterness and virulent abuse with the most fanatic priest of Roscommon or Mayo. I have heard personally in Falls Road a Methodist preaching in the open air incite his audience to the extermination of Papists in strains which the creatures of Cromwell would not have disowned.

In order that nothing should be missing to the parallel, Ulster has its Orangeist League, not unlike the National League of Ireland (save for the respect of legality and the general moderation of proceedings). That League is formed into battalions and companies which are privately drilled, they say, and lose no occasion to make a pageant in the streets with accompaniment of trumpets and drums, and whose ways remind one of the Salvation Army.

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On the whole, Ulster is the only province of Ireland where the Unionist forces are about equally matched with the party of Home Rule; that is to say, the former command a majority in Antrim, part of Down, part of Armagh, part of Derry and Donegal, whilst the Home Rulers have the stronger array of voters in the remaining parts of the province. Except in the above-delineated band of north-eastern territory, the result of the elections is always taken for granted beforehand all over the island, and is for—Home Rule. But this is not saying that the contest is at all passionate even in Belfast. I happened to be there on the occasion of the General Election of 1886, and was most struck by the comparative calm of the population pending the momentous ballot. I could not help expressing my surprise, over the mahogany, to my host, a wealthy mill-owner, a zealous Presbyterian, and an active Orangeist into the bargain, to whom an English friend had given me a letter of introduction.

“You wonder at our calm?” he said. “The explanation is very simple. In Ireland the respective position of parties can hardly be much altered by the incidents of the struggle. Whether the Home Rulers take one seat from us or we gain one on them, we shall neither of us be much benefited by it. It is in Great Britain that the true battle is taking place. Let us suppose that Mr. Gladstone, instead of finding himself in a minority in the next Parliament, returns to the House with a majority. This majority can in no case be very strong, and we may still doubt that it will consent to follow him to the end in the path he has chosen. But let us go farther, and suppose Home Rule to have been voted by this majority,—let us suppose it to have been voted by the Upper House,—a still more unlikely contingency. Well, our decision is taken irrevocably. We are perfectly resolved not to bow to such a vote, and not to submit to Home Rule.”

“What! shall you rebel against the constitution?”

“Against the constitution, no. But if needs must be against Mr. Gladstone and his party. We shall appeal from the ignorant electors to the better informed ones. We shall protest against a decision that would in a way deprive us of our rights as British subjects. And in the meanwhile we shall refuse to acknowledge a Dublin Parliament. We shall refuse to pay the taxes that it may fix upon, or to obey the laws it may vote. We shall repeat loudly that we are Englishmen, and will not be anything else; that we depend on the British Parliament and recognize no other authority; and we shall see then if our appeal raise no echo in the United Kingdom!”

“But still, the right of making laws generally entails the power of enforcing them. What shall you do on the day when the Dublin Parliament, having voted the taxes for you as for the rest of Ireland, shall send tax-gatherers to collect them?”

“_We shall receive them with rifle-shots._”

“What! are you going to tell me that you, sir, ‘worth’ half a million sterling, if the public voice speaks the truth, that this fat gentleman there, the father of those two pretty daughters, that this respectable doctor in gold spectacles, and all your other guests to-night, all peace-loving, middle-aged gentlemen, comfortable and with good rent-rolls, seriously entertain the idea of buckling on your shooting-gaiters and going to battle in the street?”

“We shall go, if we are obliged, rather than submit to the Dublin people!... After all, have we not a right to remain English, if it suits us?... The very principle of Home Rule, if it is adopted, implies that we shall govern ourselves as it seems good to us. Well, here in Ulster, we are nearly two million loyalist Protestants, who cherish the pretension of not being given over to the three million Papists entrusted with the making of the Dublin Parliament,—who shall dare to deny this right to us?”

“Mr. Parnell and his friends will certainly deny it as soon as their programme is embodied into law. They will say to you, ‘Henceforth Ireland shall govern herself. Let those who do not like it go away.’”

“But it is precisely what we shall never do!... Our title to the Irish soil is as good as the Parnellites’.... Let them try to dislodge us, and they shall have a warm welcome, I promise you.”

In the course of conversation my worthy interlocutor had let the number of 100,000 Orangemen, armed to the teeth and ready to defend Ulster against the Home Rulers, escape him. I took advantage of this to ask him for a few details on this organization. I learnt this: that the Orangeist army is by no means a fallacy, as one might imagine, and that it forms a sort of latent militia, with its active forces, and its reserve. At first, established as a kind of freemasonry, and formed in “circles” or “lodges,” it comprises actually four divisions, subdivided into twenty-two brigades: each of these brigades consists of two or three regiments, infantry, cavalry, and artillery; in each regiment are sections and companies, each composed of affiliates belonging to the same district. Three divisions are recruited in Ulster proper; the fourth in Dublin and Cork, in Wicklow and in King’s County. All those affiliates take the engagement to observe passive obedience and to render personal service on the first requisition of their supreme council; they furnish their own arms and recognise the authority of a commander-in-chief.

Does all this have any substantial existence besides what it has on paper? Do the Orangemen secretly drill, as it is averred, both for the infantry and the cavalry manœuvres? Is it true that most of the volunteer companies in Ulster are exclusively Orange companies? Lastly, are those volunteers really ready in case of an open rupture with Dublin, to take up their arms and fight for their cause?... Many people think it doubtful. The Home Rulers especially think it pure moonshine and humbug. I remember one of their papers publishing the following advertisement last year to show in what esteem they held the Ulster army:

ROTTEN EGGS! ROTTEN EGGS! ROTTEN EGGS!

_Wanted: 100,000 rotten eggs, to be delivered in Tipperary,
worthily to welcome 20,000 Orangemen, armed with rifles and
guns, under command of the illustrious Johnson. Offers to be
addressed to the printing office of this paper._

This certainly does not indicate a very exalted idea of the valour of the Orangeist forces on the part of the southern populations. But that does not mean that no other sugar plums shall be exchanged. In all civil wars such pleasantries take place, yet they do not prevent rivers of blood being shed. One fact alone is beyond doubt, that the Orange organization has immense ramifications among the regular troops, and is openly favoured by General Wolseley; that a large number of retired officers have entered it; that one would perhaps find it difficult to find one among the Queen’s regiments ready to fire on the loyalists, and that the most ardent partisans of Home Rule hesitate to grant to the Irish Parliament the faculty of raising an armed force.

In conclusion, the last word in Ulster may very well be said by the Orangemen.