Chapter XIV: Part 14

In the garden of Myrtle Lodge Sir Walter Raleigh planted, probably in the year 1586, the first potatoes that were brought to Ireland. Potatoes are natives of Peru and their merits were discovered there by the Jesuits, who accompanied Pizarro during the conquest. They sent samples back to Spain, as they did with quinine or cinchona bark, which was named in honor of the Countess of Cinchona, wife of the Spanish viceroy of Peru. They also sent potatoes to the Spanish colonies in the West Indies, where Sir Walter Raleigh obtained the seed that he planted in his garden at Youghal, and the fruit of that seed has fed the population of Ireland for nearly three centuries. The garden is also interesting because the first cherry tree in Europe was grown there. Sir Walter Raleigh brought the seed of the affane cherry from the Azores Islands, whence it is believed to have been transplanted to America. The cherry orchards throughout the United Kingdom can nearly all be traced to this source.

You can run down to Youghal from Cork by rail in an hour, for the distance is only thirty miles and the train passes through a very pretty country. Shortly after leaving the station it dashes by Black Rock Castle, now a lighthouse and a storehouse for extra buoys and cables and lights for the harbormaster, the place from which William Penn embarked for America. His father, an admiral in the navy, lived at Macroom, about thirty miles west of Cork, where the great Quaker was born. On the other side, a little farther down, as we follow the banks of the River Lee, is Tivoli, an amusement resort, which was once the home of Sir Walter Raleigh, and Lady Raleigh lived there while he was off on his final expedition to America.

"Wood Hill" was the home of John Philpott Curran, the great orator and barrister, whose daughter was the sweetheart of Robert Emmet.

Youghal is a summer resort. There is sea bathing and boating and delicious salt air which gives one a lazy feeling and takes away his eagerness for antiquities and history. The only thing in the town to attract strangers is the home of Sir Walter Raleigh and St. Mary's Protestant Church, which is said to be the oldest house of worship in which service is regularly held in all the world. It remains practically unaltered from the eighth century, and one of the transepts dates from the sixth century. There are tombs dating back to the eighth and ninth and tenth centuries, and a slab of marble upon the altar is said to have been taken from a Druid temple which stood on the same site.

Four holes about five inches in diameter have been made in the walls each side of the chancel about two-thirds of the way to the roof opening into large chambers within the walls. The verger told us that this was an invention to relieve an echo and had been entirely successful. I have never seen it anywhere else, and he insisted that it is unique.

He also pointed out Masonic emblems on tombs of the twelfth century and several quaint epitaphs. One of them was as follows:

"A burial for Cristas Harford
Here is made,
Where he and his intend
For to be laid.
His life is known
Both what he was and is.
Who hopes to end the
Same in Heavenly Bliss.
1618.
Mayor of Youghal and Knight,
Knight of the Garter."

The tomb of Sir Edward Villiers, brother of the great Duke of Buckingham, is decorated with his lance and his banner. He died "Lord President of Munster, Anno Domini 1620," and his epitaph reads:

"Munster may Curse
The time that Villiers came
To make us Worse.
While leaving such a Name
Of noble Parts
As none can Imitate.
But those whose Harts
Are married to the State.
But if they Press
To imitate his Fame
Munster may Bless
The time that Villiers Came."

Mrs. Charles Fleetwood, daughter of Oliver Cromwell and widow of General Ireton, who died from wounds during the siege of Limerick, is buried in the center of the chancel. Cromwell had his headquarters here for some time and appointed his son-in-law, Fleetwood, lord deputy in 1649.

Raleigh was twenty-eight years old when he came to Ireland from Devonshire in 1579 as captain of a levy of troops, and Youghal is the only home he ever had so far as we know. He sailed from there upon his last and fatal voyage on Aug. 6, 1617.

There is still another association which will appeal with force to the majority of the masculine readers of these lines. From Myrtle Lodge Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco into the United Kingdom, having brought it home from the West Indies where the Spaniards found the natives smoking it at the time of the discovery of America. Columbus and his followers carried it back with them to Spain. Fifty years afterward Sir Walter Raleigh introduced it at the court of Queen Elizabeth and brought to Youghal the first tobacco ever seen in Ireland, which he smoked under a group of four wonderful yew trees while he read the manuscript of Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene," which had been submitted for his criticism by the author. A considerable part of the fourth book of the poem was written at Myrtle Lodge while Spenser was Sir Walter's guest, and the remainder at Kilcolman Castle on the River Blackwater. The poem was never finished, but its publication is due to Sir Walter, for he took the manuscript to London, placed it with the printer, and provided the means to pay the expense. He thought so highly of the poem that, in a double sonnet, composed while Spenser was visiting him at Youghal, he says:

"All suddenly I saw the Faerie Queene,
At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept."

It is therefore very natural that Spenser should reply in these lines:

"Thou only, fit this argument to write,
In whose high thoughts pleasure hath built her bower,
And dainty love learnt sweetly to indite."

Spenser was a man of delicate sensibilities and great refinement of character, but lacked the masterful spirit, the ambition, the energy, and the dominating will of Raleigh. The latter, however, had rare literary taste. He is better known as soldier, adventurer, sailor, and explorer. Spenser called him the "shepherd of the seas," but some of his sonnets are immortal. They rank with those of Shakespeare in poetic fancy, delicacy of expression, and sublimity of thought, and his prose work, especially his history of the world, which was begun at Myrtle Lodge and finished while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London, ranked among the literary triumphs of his day and generation.

Sir John Pope Hennessy, to whom I have already referred as the former owner of the home of Raleigh at Youghal, spent several years in an investigation of state papers and other historical material relating to the administration of Irish affairs during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and does not leave a fragment of Raleigh's reputation as a man of honor. He has written a book entitled "Raleigh in Ireland," which is begun and finished in an unfriendly spirit, and holds Raleigh responsible for all the troubles that occurred in Ireland at his time and since.

If one-half that Hennessy tells of Raleigh's work in Ireland is true, he was a man of treachery, untruth, unbridled passion, and monstrous cruelty, but this is no place to discuss that question. Raleigh was a prisoner in the Tower of London with James, Earl of Desmond, successor of the man whose estates he confiscated and occupied. The death of the earl prompted Raleigh in a letter from the Tower to say:

"Wee shal be judged as wee judge--and bee dealt withal as wee deal
with others in this life--if wee beleve God Hyme sealf."

Myrtle Lodge remains very much as it was when Raleigh lived there. Few historical houses have been altered so little or have been preserved with greater care. Sir Walter's study is hung with an original painting of the first governor of Virginia and a contemporary engraving of "Elizabeth, Queen of Virginia." The long table at which he wrote, an oak chest in which he kept his papers, a little Italian cabinet filled with old deeds and parchments, some bearing his seal; two bookcases of vellum-bound volumes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and all of the furniture dates from his time. We are assured that there is nothing in the room that was not in the house at the time he occupied it. The dining-room is one of the choicest examples of fifteenth century domestic architecture that can be found, having a deep projecting bay window and porch, an orieled closet, a wide, arched fireplace, and walls wainscoted with rich, ripe Irish oak. The drawing-room has a carved oaken mantelpiece which rises to the ceiling. The cornice rests upon three figures representing Faith, Hope, and Charity. In the adjoining bedroom is another mantelpiece of oak, and the fireplace is lined with old Dutch tiles. Behind the wainscoting of this room, while repairs were being made fifty years ago, an ancient monkish library was found, which, it was thought, was hidden there to escape the Covenanters at the time of the Reformation.

A gentleman on our train to Youghal made the interesting statement that Sir Walter Raleigh was the first patron of Protestant foreign missions. He contributed £100 to start the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Lands. I had never heard of this fact before, but my informant said that it came out at the three hundredth anniversary of the organization of that society which was celebrated in London in 1906.

Until the Congested Districts Board undertook the work, lacemaking was practically confined to the convents. There are two classes of true Irish lace--needle-point, which is made by the needle, and the bobbin lace--the threads of which are twisted around small bobbins of bone, wood, or ivory. Both of these laces are made entirely by hand, which is not true of the Limerick and Carrickmacross laces. Needle-point lace was first introduced into Ireland by the sisters of the Presentation Convent of Youghal, as a means of helping the famine-stricken inhabitants to earn money in the terrible years of 1847-50. It was imitated from Italian models, but has since been much developed and enriched both in design and execution so that it may be considered original. Irish point lace has its individuality as strong as Brussels point.

The Presentation Convent was founded in 1833 by Rev. Mother Mary Magdalene Gould, a wealthy Irish woman, who had lived many years in foreign countries. She was distinguished for her benevolence and love for the poor, and consecrated her life and her property to the education of the children of the poor. When the famine occurred in 1847 she admitted to the convent every child that could be accommodated, and also gave asylum to many widows who were left homeless and destitute. In order to furnish her _protégés_ some occupation and and enable them to earn a little for their own support, she decided to teach them the art of lacemaking, which had been carried on for centuries in the convents of Italy. She took some of her own lace, examined the process by which it had been made, unraveled the threads one by one, and put them back again over and over again until she at last succeeded in mastering the intricacies of the construction of needle-point. She next selected the brightest and most deft-fingered children and women in the convent and taught each separately what she herself had learned. Most of the women and girls displayed an aptitude for the work, and after the necessities of the occasion were over and the emergency passed, she had about her many well-trained lacemakers. Some of them developed considerable ingenuity and taste, inventing new designs and easier methods of handling the needle. Other convents throughout Ireland imitated the nuns of Youghal, and the same lace is now made in every part of the island.

Limerick lace is of two kinds, known as the "tambour" and "run lace." "Tambour" is made on net and the pattern is formed by working with a tambour needle in white or colored thread. "Run lace" is made with an ordinary needle and a more open stitch. Limerick lace is in disfavor at present, owing to the large amount of miserable specimens that have been hawked about the streets of Limerick and forced upon the London markets.

Carrickmacross lace has been made in the neighborhood of that town, in County Monaghan, since the year 1820, when it was brought from Florence by Mrs. Grey-Porter, wife of the rector of the parish church, and introduced among the peasant women as a means of earning a livelihood. It is made upon a foundation of net. There are two varieties. In appliqué the pattern is traced out on fine muslin and sewed down round the edges to the net. So far it is not strictly a lace, but rather a sort of embroidery or net. Open spaces, however, are generally provided for, which leaves the effect and which are filled with lace stitches like those of flat point. In Carrickmacross guipure, much the same procedure as in appliqué is adopted, only that instead of the foundation being allowed to remain it is ultimately cut away, the figures of the pattern, which, as in appliqué, are wrought on muslin, being joined to each other by lace stitches known as "brides." A very interesting and striking development of Carrickmacross lace is found in a combination of appliqué and guipure, the main design being appliqué, while the panels of guipure are introduced into it.

A little to the northward of Cork is the famous Trappist Monastery of Mount Mellery. It was founded here about thirty years ago upon the site of an ancient monastery by Cistercian monks who were expelled from France. They have about seven hundred acres of rich woodland, fertile pastures, and vegetable gardens, with large and comfortable buildings which they erected with their own hands. They maintain two schools, one free for poor children, and another for boarding pupils whose parents pay moderate fees for the instruction. There is a guesthouse in connection with the monastery, where all travelers are welcome to shelter, saint and sinner, Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Gentile, and no questions asked and no bills presented. Any person can have a bed with clean, sweet linen and a hard but comfortable mattress, coffee and rolls for breakfast, cold meat and milk for luncheon, soup and a roast and a tart or pie for dinner, without charge, although there is a box at the door where the guest at his departure is expected to drop a coin, large or small according to his means and disposition. There are limited accommodations for women, which are sparsely but comfortably furnished, and, what is more important, as clean as a Danish dairy--an unusual condition for Ireland.

There are seventy monks who dress in white and maintain perpetual silence, living entirely upon a vegetable diet with water and skimmed milk as their only drink. About twenty lay brothers, dressed in brown, do the heavy labor and the menial work about the place. The white monks rise at two o'clock in the morning and spend four hours in the chapel in silent devotion. Then they take a light meal and go to their work in the fields, the gardens, or the schoolroom, where the rule of silence is relaxed only enough to permit of imparting instruction. At six o'clock they have dinner, consisting of vegetable soup, boiled vegetables, bread, and skimmed milk, after which they spend two hours at prayer in the chapel, and retire at nine. This is the only Trappist community in Ireland, but there are two in the United States.

There has been very little trouble with the landlords in County Cork. Perhaps that is due to a considerable degree to the fact that the soil is rich and the harvests are good, and because the farmers are able to get a satisfactory return for their labor and their money. Nearly all the large estates are being broken up, however, and have been purchased by the tenants under the Act of 1903. Very soon County Cork and all the southern section of Ireland will be owned by the men who till the soil. Each farmer will have his own permanent home.

XXV

GLENGARIFF, THE LOVELIEST SPOT IN IRELAND

It isn't far across the southern counties of Ireland and from Cork to Glengariff, the loveliest place in the United Kingdom and one of the loveliest spots on earth, only seventy-five miles. There are two routes. You can go by rail to the little old-fashioned town of Bantry at the head of Bantry Bay, which is the rendezvous of the British fleet and the place of their regular annual maneuvers, and from there by coach around the shore of the bay or by a little steamer across its matchless blue waters; or you can take the more interesting and picturesque route by rail as far as Macroom, and then by coach or carriage over the mountains, through the most picturesque canyon in Ireland and up and down the mountain sides. Glengariff is 'way down in the southwesternmost corner of Ireland, and as a gentleman said the other day in describing its location: "If you go jist one step further, there'll not be a dry spot to rist yer foot on till you enter the harbor of New York, bedad, or maybe Boston."

The best route in every respect and one of the most interesting journeys that can be found anywhere is by way of Macroom, and it is such a favorite with tourists that during the summer season there is an almost continuous procession that way. The arrangements for taking care of travelers are perfect, and all you have to do is to buy your tickets and let the attendant look after the rest. The railroad carries you about thirty miles, an hour's ride from Cork, and there is a good deal of interest to be seen from the car windows on the way. The conductor sticks his head in the window every now and then and warns the passengers what to look out for. There is a castle on one side or a ruined abbey on the other or some sign of the devastation committed by Cromwell and his Covenanters when they were trying to convert the Irish to Protestantism, two or three centuries ago.

I became very skeptical about the Cromwellian ruins. Every time we came across an abandoned limekiln or the roofless walls of some cabin from which a family has been evicted and burned out, they told us that the damage was done by Cromwell's soldiers. Kate Douglas Wiggin satirizes that situation in "Penelope's Irish Experiences" by having her party occupy rooms in Irish hotels where Cromwell, in the confusion of his departure, forgot to sweep under the bed.

You can't convert people from one religion to another by the use of the sword, by burning houses and sacking monasteries, and murdering innocent women and children. That has been clearly demonstrated by the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, by Philip II. in Spain, and by Cromwell in Ireland. It partially restores one's cheerfulness to be able to realize that such means of evangelization have been abandoned.

There are ruined castles and monasteries all the way from Cork to Glengariff, and nature has done her best to hide the shame and cruelty that are associated with them by the glorious mantles of ivy which cover their crumbling walls. Kilcrea Abbey, founded by Cormac MacCarthy, the king of this country in 1465, for the Franciscan friars, was the burial place of the MacCarthy family, the owners of Blarney Castle for two centuries or more. Several of the tombs are well preserved. A little farther along, at Crookstown, is another of the MacCarthy strongholds called Castlemore, and still farther are the ruins of Lissardagh and Clodagh, where they kept their forces and received the tribute of their dependents as they did at Blarney Castle, near Cork. Those ancient kings had strings of castles through their territories, each one of them in charge of a seneschal, who kept the place with a guard of retainers and received tribute from the peasant farmers of the surrounding country as payment for protection and blackmail. Within the thick walls the loot they brought from battle was stored; their prisoners were held for ransom, and there they entertained their allies and their friends, reveling for days and nights together in the spacious halls. The MacCarthys were energetic citizens and ruled the south shore of Ireland with a despotism that had no parallel in Ireland at the time. But they were as generous to their friends as they were vindictive to their foes.

This country used to abound in fairies, gnomes, koboles, pixies, and all kinds of queer little people, but they are all gone now. Our jarvey, as the driver of a jaunting car is called, insists that they have emigrated to America, but when I asked him where we could find them over there, he confessed that he didn't know. He had no acquaintance with the place.

There are all kinds of fairies, or rather there used to be in Ireland, friendly and unfriendly, good and bad, and they formerly appeared in a great diversity of form and for a variety of purposes, but they are seldom seen nowadays, even among the ivy-draped ruins of the castles and among the moss-covered rocks where they used to make their homes.

Sidheog is a friendly fairy and Sidhean and Sheeaun are places where fairies live. Certain hills and forests which were thickly peopled with fairies in the early days can be identified by such names as Shean, Sheaun, and similar variations of the terms that are applied to haunted hills. There are "good people" and "bad people" who invade the privacy of those who dwell in mountain cottages and bring them blessings or treat them badly, as the case may be. At one time they were numerous up in these woods. The best known fairy, however, the busiest of them all, and an odd mixture of merriment, mischief, and malignity, is "Pooka," who is known in England, in Germany, and other places under the name of "Puck." Shakespeare describes him as "a merry wanderer of the night," who boasts that he can "put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes." This capricious goblin is known to every child in the mountains, and stories are told of him in every cabin. Carrig-Peeka, the Pooka's home in a great rock, can be seen two miles west of Macroom. It overhangs the Sullane River near the ruins of one of the MacCarthy castles. This rock is well known as the place where Daniel O'Rourke started on his celebrated voyage to the moon on the back of an eagle, and for generations Pooka made it his headquarters and used to play all kinds of pranks upon the peasants in that neighborhood.

There is a hideous kind of hobgoblin called a dullaghan who can take off and put on his head at will; in fact, people generally see him with that useful member under his arm or absent altogether, and on such an occasion it is well to pass on as quietly as possible without disturbing him. Sometimes giddy and frivolous bands of dullaghans have been seen in graveyards at midnight amusing themselves by flinging their heads at one another and kicking them about like footballs. Down in this neighborhood there is a little lake called Lough Gillagancan, which means "the Lake of the Headless Man," because they are in the habit of haunting it during the long winter nights and playing their ridiculous games there.

Cleena is the queen of the fairies, and once exercised a powerful spell over the peasants around Glengariff, but she is losing her influence. The national school board is opposed to her. The teachers have disputed her power and authority with such persistence that she cannot exercise them among the present generation as she did among those of the past. It is only among the schoolless communities, far back in the rocky glens along the seashore, where the people cannot read or write and do not have candles to illuminate their lonely cabins during the long winter nights, that she is remembered at all. In more thickly settled parts of the country where the national schools stand at three-mile intervals, the children even scoff at her and ridicule her and say that she may play all the pranks she likes with them and welcome. Cleena has been a favorite of the Irish poets for ages, and appears in many old-fashioned love stories.

"God grant 't is not Cleena, the queen that pursues me;
While I dream of dark groves and O'Donavan's daughter."

Cleena often did a kindly act, and when Dooling O'Hartigan, the bosom friend of Murrough, the eldest son and heir apparent of Brian Boru, was on his way to the battle of Clontarf, she met him and tried to persuade him to stay out of the fight. But nothing could induce him to abandon his friends in such an emergency, particularly as the aged king had given Murrough the command of the army that day. Having failed to persuade him, Cleena placed a magic cloak around O'Hartigan and warned him solemnly that he would certainly be slain if he threw it off. He fought fiercely all day by the side of his friend and made fearful havoc among the Danes. The field was strewn with the bodies of the men he slew, and Murrough, observing the slaughter, but being unable to recognize the cause of it, cried out:

"I hear the blows of O'Hartigan, but I cannot see him!"

In order to console and encourage his friend, O'Hartigan threw off the cloak that made him invisible. The moment he stood unprotected an arrow from the bow of a Dane smote him in the temple, and he died for neglecting Cleena's words of warning.

It is only occasionally that the fairies interfere with people nowadays. Then it is to make trouble for innocent men who are out later than they should be and get bewildered in their brains or suffer other lapses that they are not responsible for. A friend of mine told an amusing story of his coachman, who frequently suffered from the mischievousness of a fairy not long ago, and explained in the morning:

"If yer honor will belave me, it's the most mystarious thing that ever happened to a mortal man. I was coming p'aceably home along the roadside when I saw the strangest sight that mortal eyes ever looked upon, an' the ground seemed to go away from me and funny little cr'atures were dancing from one side of the road to the other. Thin all at once I fell down, and I didn't know another thing until I picked myself up from out of the ditch in the morning.

"Dhrinking, was it, ye say; divil a bit did I taste a drop at all, at all, that day, barring a few glasses I had wid me frinds on the way home."

Macroom is a pretty village with a castle, of which Admiral Penn, father of the founder of Pennsylvania, was once in command, and where William Penn is said to have been born. The venerable old pile was built originally in the time of King John, more than seven hundred years ago, has been burned down no less than four times, and was besieged and plundered in the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries again and again. It now belongs to Lord Ardilaun, one of the sons of Benjamin Guinness, the greatest brewer in the world, who has erected a beautiful modern residence near by and occasionally occupies it. Lord Ardilaun owns so many castles that he would find it difficult to live in all of them the same year. He would be kept moving about like a commercial traveler. He has a beautiful estate on one side of Glengariff and a shooting lodge on the other, and his favorite residence is a stately château near Muckross Abbey on the shores of the Lakes of Killarney. He has a shooting lodge at Ashford, and another at Ross Hill in Central Ireland, a fishing lodge at Kylemon Pass in Connemara, and city residences on Stephens Green, Dublin, and at No. 11 Carleton House Terrace, London.

The traveler bound for Glengariff changes from the railway train to an open coach at the railway station of Macroom. The coach is built for mountain travel, strong and heavy, and the seats, which extend from side to side, accommodate four people of ordinary dimensions. The handbags are stowed away under the seats and in a cavern which opens from the rear. A couple of steamer trunks can be taken along also. There is a roof to the stage, which is very much needed to keep off the rain, and it can be rolled up into a ridge in the middle of the supporting hoops in the sunshine.

The driver of a stage in Ireland doesn't flourish and crack his whip like the gentlemen who pursue that line of business in Montana and Colorado. He is usually a talkative chap, and tells interesting stories with a deep, rich brogue and quaint wit that is charming, but he drives quietly through the villages and pulls up at his destination as modestly as if he were on a cart instead of a coach full of tourists. In the Rocky Mountains the stage driver always "shows off" at the end of his journey, but he never tries to do anything of that sort in Ireland.

The road follows along the banks of the Sullane River until it reaches a string of lakes called Inchageela, which are dotted with lovely little islands, and are said to be full of fish. There is not a tree to be seen, but the ground is covered with a rich, thick, velvet turf, and myriads of wild flowers of all colors and all varieties--a crazy quilt of bloom. No one ever imagined that there could be so many wild flowers or such beautiful ones.

The little town of Inchageela is the lunch station, where we were served with a wholesome meal of roast mutton, potatoes, lettuce, and gooseberry tart that tasted as good as anything I ever had at the Waldorf, and the buxom, red-faced landlady gave us a hearty, cordial blessing as we climbed back into our seats to continue the journey. We passed several ruined castles, some of them near the roadside and the others picturesquely situated on the mountain slopes among the rocks. They all once belonged to the MacCarthys, who were kings in this country until they lost their power by foolish fighting, and to-day I have been assured that not one foot of sod in the County of Cork or in the County of Kerry is owned by a man of that name or clan.

After a while we turned from the main road at a little village called Carrinacurrah, which is hardly as big as its name, and slowly climbed a picturesque hill to the mystic lake of Gougane-Barra, and stopped to rest the horses and ourselves at a neatly kept inn. As it was a holiday, all the people in the neighborhood were gathered at Cronin's Inn when the two coachloads of passengers drove in from Macroom, and several of them accompanied us across to Gougane Island and told us the history of that sacred place. There was an old man with bog-oak walking sticks to sell, and boys with post cards, for there isn't a spot in Ireland that hasn't been photographed and transferred to a post card in hideous colors. Mr. Benjamin Shorten, a man of importance in the community, had hailed the coach when it passed his house, and was therefore not only an entertainer but a fellow-passenger of the strangers within his gate. And it was a strange story that he told us of the restoration of the ruins and the erection, by Mr. John R. Walsh of Chicago, in memory of his parents, of the little shrine on the site of St. Fin-Barre's oratory which had been blessed by St. Patrick fourteen hundred years ago.

Mr. Walsh could not have chosen a more beautiful or a more appropriate place for a memorial to his parents, and the work has been well done. It is a sacred as well as a most romantic spot. Gougane-Barra is what they call a "tarn," a jagged glen in the mountains nearly a mile long and about a quarter of a mile wide, almost entirely filled with water like a Norwegian fiord and entirely inclosed with walls of rock rising to a height of nearly eighteen hundred feet. The principal peaks are called Conicar (1,886 feet), Bealick (1,762 feet), and Foilasteokeen (1,698 feet). The cliffs cast a deep shadow over the water and add to the solemnity and mystery with which the place has been invested from its association with the patron saint of the city of Cork and one of the earliest apostles in Ireland. After heavy rains each mountain side becomes a foaming cataract, and the natives say that the sound of the water pouring down the rocks may be heard for miles. The lake is very deep and is the source of the River Lee, which runs sixty-five miles from here to the Bay of Cork.

The island is approached by a narrow, artificial causeway, at the head of which is an arched tomb built into the side of the mountain, in which Father Mahoney, a recluse, was buried in 1728. He was the last of the monks to live in the little abbey. He is regarded by the peasants as next to St. Fin-Barre in holiness, and Fin-Barre is ranked next to St. Patrick, only a little below him in their veneration. When the old women passed Father Mahoney's tomb they knelt and kissed it and said their prayers.

The ruins of St. Fin-Barre's hermitage, which has been carefully restored, consist of a quadrangle of stone about thirty-six feet square, and there are eight cells with arched entrances in which the monks used to live. Over the entrance to each cell are modern plaster casts of the stations of the cross, and in the center, upon a pyramid of five steps, a plain wooden cross has been erected.

The little chapel erected by Mr. Walsh upon the foundation of St. Fin-Barre's Oratory is thirty-six feet long by fourteen feet broad with a simple little altar and an altar rail. The remainder of the space is filled with wooden seats. There is no organ or other musical instrument, and the services that are held there every third Sunday in the month by an itinerant priest are of the simplest order. But the celebration of the anniversary of the saint on the 24th of September brings the peasants from all the country around and is attended with great solemnity. The people carry their rations with them, and camp upon the shore of the lake and along the roadway that leads down from the tarn. When we were there in June the entire island was a mass of rhododendrons in the fullness of their purple glory. If you searched the world over you could not find a more beautiful abode for a saint in peace and retirement. It has been the theme of many poems, and a native bard has painted with graphic lines the scene that is hallowed by so many pious associations and surrounded with so much natural beauty.

It is one of the holiest places in Ireland, and the consecrated waters of a spring called St. Fin-Barre's Well, which has been carefully walled in, have the power to heal all kinds of diseases except those that have been caused by dissipation. At the annual festival of St. Fin-Barre the peasants bring their sick children and even their ailing animals to be cured. And the neighboring bushes that surround the well and the wooden crosses that have been erected there in recognition of relief are hung with votive offerings. A penitent who comes to be cleansed of his sins may find full instructions engraven upon a large slab of brown stone. It is said to be more than two hundred years old, but records the good deeds of Rev. Dennis Mahoney, who died in 1728. It is necessary to say five "aves" and five "paters" at the first station of the cross within the ruins, and add five more at each as they are passed, making forty "aves" and forty "paters" at the last cell.

Of course, there is a legend connected with the well--there always is--and in this case St. Patrick, after banishing the reptiles from the country, overlooked one hideous snake. It crawled into the Well of Gougane to escape him, and it created serious depredation in the surrounding country, coming out at night to attack the flocks of sheep and the herds of goats and cattle, until St. Patrick came here and drove it out by sprinkling the well with holy water. "The ould enemy" vanished and has never since ventured to leave his loathsome slime upon the green banks of the island. In order to prevent his return St. Patrick sent St. Fin-Barre here to watch the well and exterminate the monster if it came again. But it has not reappeared, and as a token of gratitude St. Fin-Barre erected the Cathedral of Cork and founded a great monastery beside it, leaving several devoted priests here in his hermitage to keep watch of things.

The driver gave us an hour to see this lovely and sacred place, and then we returned to the main road, resumed our journey, and soon entered the Pass of Keimaneigh, which divides these savage mountains in twain and permits people to pass from the former kingdom of the MacCarthy clan to that of the outlawed O'Sullivans. The mountains were split by some terrible cataclysm ages ago, but Nature has done what she could to heal the wound. The almost perpendicular walls were clothed with wild ivy, arbutus, hawthorn, laburnum, rhododendron, and other trees and shrubs, which were glorious in color and light up the gloom of the gorge with wonderful beauty. We have many grander canyons in the Rocky Mountains, and several of the fiords on the Norwegian coast are grander and inclosed by loftier peaks and more precipitous walls, but none of them that I have seen are anywhere near as beautiful.

Nor do I remember a panorama where the fiercer and the gentler moods of nature are expressed in such striking contrast. The eagles and hawks that soar in the narrow skyline, directly above our heads, and encircle the rugged and irregular peaks that rise on either side, look down upon an exhibition of wild flowers that was never surpassed, and the colors seem to be more brilliant than elsewhere.

People always ask, How did they come there?--these blotches of scarlet and purple and pink and blue and gold against the dark gray surface of the rock. The wind was the landscape gardener here, and a wonderful artist he is. The dust that gradually accumulated in the crevices and scars of this mountain wall was carried, storm by storm, from some dry spot, upon the wings of the wind. And the same messenger carried the seeds, perhaps for many miles, and dropped them in the nest that he had already provided, where the sun and the rain could reach them and they could germinate and their souls could awaken. The germs of life that lay hidden in their tiny cells then reached out for air and began to grow and bloom and illuminate this stern and gloomy canyon with their smiles. As the journey continues the gorge grows wilder, the walls higher, and the vegetation less, except in the turf beside the roadway, where the violet, the forget-me-not, the belated shamrock, and that other modest little flower called "London Pride," sing a silent song of praise to Heaven.

They call Glengariff "the Madeira of Great Britain," because its climate varies only a few degrees, winter and summer, and is about the same as that of the Madeira Islands, without a trace of frost or snow except up among the rugged mountains that protect it from the cold winds and make it an ideal resort for those who seek health, rest, or solitude. The name signifies "a rough glen," and that describes it exactly--a deep cleft in the mountains, a gash which some irresistible glacier made ages ago in the rugged rocks, about three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide, which terminates upon an exquisite little sheet of water, a branch of the Bay of Bantry, on the far southwestern coast of Ireland. The glen is filled with wonderful trees and wonderful flowers, which seem to bloom perennially. The surrounding mountains are of the wildest description, being naked moorlands covered with heather and gorse and huge gray bowlders and peaks which project into the air. Among them, it is said, there are no less than 365 little lakes, that number having suggested to the pious peasants, who attribute everything to apostolic interposition, that some holy saint prayed effectually for a separate one to supply water for each day of the year. The rocks reach far away to the westward and down into the cold blue of an uneasy ocean, which beats impetuously upon the outer walls, but the water is seldom disturbed by more than a ripple within the bay. For a combination of ocean, mountains, lakes, rocks, waterfalls, forests, and flowers I have never seen the like, and any one can easily understand why Glengariff is called the most beautiful spot in Ireland.

The town of Glengariff is composed of fourteen houses, six saloons, a post office, a vine-covered headquarters for the constabulary, which looks altogether too picturesque and beautiful for such a practical purpose, a Catholic church, brand new and built with money from America, an old church where the Catholics formerly worshiped, now used as a school for teaching lace making, a pretty little Church of Ireland chapel, an ivy-clad rectory adjoining, and several comfortable hotels. There are four hundred inhabitants in the parish, mostly farmers, scattered within the glen and upon the surrounding rocks. They are mostly Harringtons, Sullivans, Caseys, and O'Sheas, and are nearly all related. All the population are Roman Catholics, except twelve families who belong to the Church of Ireland and are ministered to by the Rev. Mr. Harvey, who is paid a salary of £200 a year and is given a picturesque old manse in the midst of one of the loveliest gardens and groves you can imagine.

Eccles Hotel has been famous for more than a century. You will find a flattering account of it in Mrs. Hall's book on Ireland, published in the '50s. And, by the way, that work contains a charming description of the country, although so much in detail that it fills three ponderous volumes that weigh four or five pounds each. There have been many changes since the book was written, but they concern only the people and their customs. Its historical references, its legends, and descriptions of scenery hold good to-day.

The hotel, not the book, is a rambling, irregular structure with many gables and many chimneys, and is almost completely covered with a lustrous robe of English ivy. It sits at the foot of the glen where the rocks and the ocean meet and the prospect from the front windows is unsurpassed. The bay is enclosed like a wall with mighty mountains. Titanic rocks have rolled down into the water in some great cataclysm and now lie in picturesque shapes, here and there, as a tasteful artist would have arranged them, clad in vivid green. The outlines of the bay are irregular. Little arms of water reach up among the rocks that inclose it, and, when the tide goes out, it discloses deep beds of wondrous seaweed, curious vegetable and animal forms that Nature in her fantastic moods has designed in her studio under the waters of the sea. In the foreground at the right is a landing place for the little steamer that comes over from Bantry twice a day, and beyond it, rising from a rocky eminence, are the ruins of an ancient castle with a tower intact that was once a stronghold of the O'Sullivans, when they were kings in these parts. Now it belongs to the estate of the late Earl of Bantry.

On the other side of the bay a long point of land protrudes across the horizon, and there it was that the French troops intended to land under Wolfe Tone and General Hoche on Dec. 26, 1796. There were 17 ships of the line, 13 frigates, 5 corvettes, 2 gunboats, and 6 transports, with about 14,000 men and 45,000 stands of arms, and it was expected that the news of their landing would be the signal for an uprising of the Irish people. Simon White, who lived near the point where the landing was to be made, was a man of quick movements and energy, and as soon as the fleet was sighted he saddled his horse and rode direct to Cork--sixty-five miles--in half a dozen hours to notify the military commander and other authorities of the invasion. For that the king made him the Earl of Bantry and gave him a strip of land around the bay twenty-two miles on one side and twenty-two miles on the other, stretching back into the mountains an average of six miles. The title has lasted through three generations, but has expired because the third Earl of Bantry left no son to wear it when he died a few years ago.

Providence intervened, however, on the side of the English, and averted what might have been a disastrous struggle with France, with Ireland as the battlefield, as well as a civil war for the overthrow of British authority. A storm came up and dispersed the fleet. When the wind subsided, a dense fog overspread Bantry Bay and the ocean. When the air cleared the ships were so scattered that each sailed away on its own account during the next fortnight, and one by one they returned to the harbors of France. General Hoche, in the _Fraternitie_, finally reached Rochelle, after several narrow escapes, with his ship in a sinking condition. Several of the largest ships went upon the rocks, and about eighteen hundred sailors and soldiers perished. No Frenchman trod upon Irish soil with the exception of a lieutenant and seven seamen, who were sent out in a small boat from one of the ships during the fog to reconnoiter, and, running aground, were captured by James O'Sullivan.

Bantry Bay is a magnificent inlet twenty-one miles long, and with an average breadth of four miles and an average depth of sixty fathoms, without a shoal or sandbank or any other peril to navigation. It is completely sheltered from the weather and is considered the finest harbor in Ireland. It is the rendezvous of the British North Atlantic fleet and the fleet of the channel, which come here regularly to practice maneuvers, to correct their compasses and regulate their range finders and do light repairs. The only town on the bay is a village of the same name, which has been described as a seaport without trade, a harbor without shipping, and a fishery without a market. There is a convent, a monastery, and a factory for the manufacture of Irish tweeds.

Adjoining the village is Bantry House, a stately mansion surrounded by a beautiful lawn and grove, which was the residence of the late Earl of Bantry, and was inherited by his nephew, Leigh White. Another nephew, Simon White, occupies the ancient Glengariff Castle, which is nearer the head of the bay--a large and gloomy-looking structure almost entirely hidden by the surrounding trees. Thirty-one thousand acres of land around the bay was inherited by these two young men, but it is very poor land. Three-fourths of it is bare rock, and the entire population upon their holdings is only about four hundred men, women, and children. A daughter of the late Earl of Bantry married Lord Ardilaun, who was Arthur Edward Guinness, a son of the great brewer of Dublin and probably the richest man in Ireland. The hotel is inclosed in a beautiful hedge of fuchsias, which flourish in this climate, and are commonly used for hedges. The grounds of the hotel extend over two hundred and fifty acres, mostly dense forest, with a beautiful garden of twelve acres or more. All the vegetables, poultry, eggs, and other produce are raised on the place, and the milk and cream and butter come from a private herd of cows, which is a great luxury.

There is splendid fishing, both in the bay and in two small lakes, one hour's walk from the hotel, also boating, swimming, and any number of beautiful walks and drives through the woods and along the mountain roads. The only antiquity in the immediate neighborhood is a picturesque ruin called Cromwell's bridge. While the grim old Covenanter was passing up the glen with an escort to visit the O'Sullivans, citizens of Glengariff who had heard of the devastation he had created elsewhere tore down a bridge over a mountain gorge, hoping that it would turn him back. But after much trouble he and his men succeeded in crossing the canyon into the village, and there he summoned the inhabitants and told them that if they did not restore the bridge by the time he returned from his visit he would hang a man for every hour's delay. The bridge was ready for him, "fur they knew the auld villain would kape his word."

The surrounding country is sparsely settled by a hardy, stubborn race, who fish in the winter and farm in the summer, like the people who live on the bleak New England coast. The children herd cattle, sheep, and goats upon the mountain sides; the pigs and the poultry share the ancient stone hovels occupied by their owners; the women cultivate a little spot of soil wherever they can find it in the crevices among the rocks, raising a few potatoes and cabbages, and look after the chickens and the babies. Scattered over the mountain side and reached by steep but perfect roads, are the roofless walls of what once were the homes of neighbors who have emigrated to America. The fate of those who remained seemed hopeless until recently, but the benevolent purposes of the government are brightening the lives and improving the condition of many of them. At Glengariff I got my first chance to observe the work of the Congested Districts Board through which the government is trying to relieve the distress of the poor and make life worth living for those wretched but courageous souls who dwell always in the mists of the mountains and among the moorlands and the peat bogs on the west coast of Ireland. They are the poorest, the least nourished, and the most helpless portion of the population. They are scattered widely. The arable soil is so scarce that they cannot live in communities and survive. Here and there among the rocks, where the kindly winds have dropped grains of earth during the ages, they are cultivating little patches of potatoes and cabbage. They follow a few cows and goats that nibble at the blades of grass that grow in the cracks of the rock and keep a few chickens, which share with them the roof shelter of a leaky, straw-thatched cabin built of rough stone and with a mud floor.

The cabins are as comfortless as one can imagine, but they are no worse than thousands that may be found in our southern States, in the mountains of Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia. Thousands of "crackers" in Georgia have no better homes and no more consolations in life, but their cabins are more neatly kept and are not situated among such filthy and loathsome surroundings as those of the poor "bog-trotters" of Ireland.