Chapter VI: Part 6

Passing a rugged point where the causeway projects considerably, we came suddenly upon the Scallop or Clamshell Cave, so justly esteemed one of the most wonderful features of this famous island. This cave is a large rent or fissure in the rock, one hundred and thirty feet long, thirty in height, and eighteen in breadth at its entrance, where it presents on one side the singular phenomenon of the curved and contorted, yet as usual polygonal, columns of basalt, bent so as to form a series of ribs, each forty or fifty feet long, without a joint, their ends standing up and terminating abruptly, not unlike the inside view of the timbers of a ship. On the opposite side of the cave the broken ends of the pillars are so disposed as to bear a general resemblance to the surface of a honeycomb. The lateral dimensions of this cave gradually contract until they terminate in a long, narrow fissure in the rock. By the continued basaltic causeway on the northern side access is obtained to the table-summit of the island, upon which black cattle find good pasturage, though a ruined hut and an extensive prospect are all that can be expected in requital of the fatigue of the ascent.

This celebrated island, it may be remarked, lies in the same longitude with the Giant's Causeway on the northern coast of Ireland.

Returning from the Clamshell Cave round the point of the causeway, we regained the Buachaille rock, under which, in the narrow channel between it and the causeway, just sufficient to allow it to swim, we found our boat, and were conveyed in it back to the steamboat, whence we surveyed, with unsated curiosity, the wonderful island we had just explored, and had ample opportunity of appreciating the truth of its Norwegian derivation from _staff_, a stave, to which those barbarians likened its columns. The grand southern facade of the island is formed of three beds of trap-rock of unequal thickness; the lowest being a conglomerate tufaceous trap, about fifty feet thick on the western side, but, in consequence of its inclination, disappearing under the sea a little to the westward of the great cave. The middle bed is composed of basaltic columns, placed vertically on the plane of their bed, and of unequal depth, varying from thirty-six to fifty-four feet. The upper stratum consists of amorphous and tufaceous trap, intermixed with small basaltic veins and columns, and by its inequality and depth forms the contour of the island, whose surface is covered with turf, and presents nothing remarkable. The cliffs upon the northern shore of the island are very rugged and irregular, and contain about five caves of lesser note, being remarkable only for the resounding of the waves upon breaking into them, resembling much "the cannon's opening roar."

[Not far removed from Staffa is the famous isle of Iona,
celebrated as the place where Columba, an Irish sixth century
saint, founded a monastery and converted the inhabitants from
Druidism to Christianity. The establishment founded by him
flourished for centuries, and the ruins of the cathedral and
other antique buildings still remain. One of these, "the Reilig
Ouran, to the south of St. Oran's Chapel, was for centuries the
ordinary burial-place of the Scottish kings, whose tombs, to
the number of forty-eight, form a long and continuous series of
oblong narrow stones, laid flat side by side, and bearing
scrolls and effigies, but no inscriptions."]

Tradition has recorded Fergus the Second as the earliest monarch of the line, having been entombed about 420 A.D., and included among the number his successors down to Macbeth; though Macculloch conjectures, from the circumstance of the body of Alexander II., who died at Kerrera, having been conveyed to Melrose for burial, that Iona did not enjoy so great a reputation as the burial-place of kings as it is commonly said to have done in the earlier ages of the Scottish monarchy. However, our conductor, parallel to the royal tombs of Scotland, pointed out to us a similar line, containing eight Norwegian princes or viceroys of the island, during the remote period when that barbarous people exercised sovereignty over the Isles of the Gael. These tombs are chiefly distinguished by the Runic knots and curious representations of vessels rudely sculptured upon the oblong pieces of primitive rock which cover their graves. Adjoining these, a row of four similar stones indicate the graves of as many Irish kings, near to which is said to lie one king of France. Altogether they constitute perhaps the most extensive association of crowned heads in the habitable globe.

[The latter "kings" were perhaps but chiefs, and here, near the
royal tombs, are buried most of the insular Highland
chieftains, the Macdonalds, the Macleans, and others of ancient
days.]

IRELAND AND ITS CAPITAL.

MATTHEW WOODS, M. D.

[Among recent books of travel few have attained more immediate
and flattering success than Dr. Woods's "Rambles of a
Physician," the racy story of a run through Ireland, Britain,
and the continent of Europe. The author has keen powers of
observation and fluency in description, and has put on record
much that other travellers fail to mention. We give his
_resume_ of his run through Ireland and his telling description
of what he saw in the people's quarter of Dublin.]

I have been strolling at leisure through the streets, and find myself at the end of the long twilight perplexed instead of pleased by what I have seen. Why is it so difficult to get at the truth about Ireland? Why is it that, when a man begins to talk about even its beauty, he exaggerates it beyond recognition, and that the very few who do give the plain facts are not believed? Why do I read in a little book that I have just found on the parlor table, and which explains the origin of the name "Emerald Isle," the following words, paraphrased from a popular history: "The name Emerald Isle is generally supposed to have been derived from the _evergreen appearance of her shores_, whereas it really originated from the ring which was set with the words 'Optimo Smaragdo,' and which Pope Adrian sent to King Henry IV. as the instrument of his investiture with the dominion of the land." Now, the truth is, Ireland's shores are not "evergreen;" not green at all, but brown and barren, with occasional patches of bright yellow when the _prussach's_ in bloom, and bronze when the blossoms fall.

From Queenstown to Cork there is, I admit, a refreshing verdure, especially attractive because of the monotony of the recently-crossed sea, and the houses, too, in this strip, are enveloped in flowers; but this is not because they are in Ireland, but is rather due to their being occupied by English or Scotch or their descendants, who sing thus "the Lord's song in a strange land." Yet from Cork to Killarney, by the Prince of Wales route, you rarely see a bit of verdure; not a flower by the roadside, nor in a window, nor the slightest attempt at the beautification of a home, or to make the best of little. For part of the way not a green field, nor a tree, nor a shrub, nor a weed, nor a blade of grass, nor the song of a bird, nor the hum of an insect,--nothing, absolutely, but brown, barren desolation, associated with a sort of solitude that but intensifies the gloom. Occasionally a narrow belt of potatoes encircling a cabin, always built without mortar, as there is no sand in Ireland, is the only relief from the depressing waste until you reach Glengariff, where you find the English idea again, which has covered the barren rocks with flowers and fruit, comfortable homes and waving grain, the contrast, indeed, making the most taciturn eloquent in praise. From Glengariff to Killarney the same sterile desolation. Miles and miles without a bit of pleasant vegetation to rest the weary eyes. The district suggesting rather some of the dismal places described by Dante or Virgil, Ariosto, Tasso, or Milton, as the abode of souls condemned, rather than districts occupied by living men.

After passing through these regions of perpetual misery and despair, these birdless and treeless wastes, you get to regard any little bit of green as a godsend. You have, perhaps, closed your eyes to shut out the depressing melancholy of the apparently anathematized place; you cannot shut out all thoughts of the wretched and benighted men that relentless fate seems to have anchored on these more relentless shores. You have for some time past been ascending the side of a whin-spangled mountain; having reached the summit, the vehicle stops,--you look abroad, and behold the Islands of the Blest, Civitas Solis, Utopia, the New Atlantis, Paradise, what you will; otherwise, Killarney is at your feet, and you feel

"Like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes,
He stared at the Pacific,--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise,--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

It was here that, when we sought O'Holleron [an enthusiastic Irish patriot of the party], who had suddenly disappeared, we found him with bent head, tears running down his cheeks, and sobbing. You descend from this Pisgah to the lakes, and remain for a few days, until you have exhausted your collection of exclamations, and have repeated them again in writing to your friends, when you proceed.

From here to the Liffey the country is not so brown as the region through which you have passed, but still unattractive in the extreme. It is not green, but greenish, with most of the small fields, as is the mode here, enclosed within thick walls of stone, built without mortar, and void of vegetation. Farms small (average size about six acres), tumble-down houses, no inspiring legends nor traditions, intellects dead, no past, present, nor future, nothing but the same dreary lament, in which everything participates,--the emigrant, landlord, tenant; the very clouds weep over it; hardly ever cease. At every cluster of houses, at a crossroad, the number of bare-limbed women, wearing but two garments, one of them a petticoat, coming only below the knees, makes you think of Gros's remark, that "Irishwomen have a dispensation from the pope to wear the thick end of their legs downward."...

Visitors here find the country so ludicrously, or rather so mournfully, different from what they have been taught to expect--the Isle of Saints; the Emerald Isle; "the land of chaste women and brave men;" the hospitable land; "a kind-hearted people;" "a people of sobriety and industry," are some of the epithets used--that, unless sickened into silence by the humiliating reality, they think of what they have read and heard as a joke, and, to keep the tears back, joke too; and this I believe is the origin of many of the hilarious things written about Ireland.

You might think the birth of the Duke of Wellington and Oliver Goldsmith here would have raised this part of the island above the commonplace, as that of Burns did Ayr; of Shakespeare, Stratford; of Gray and Penn, Stoke Poges; of Goethe, Frankfort; or of Emerson, a few white houses upon a New England plain; but no, there are no memorials in this district at all, except the scant fragments left by the old pagan and semi-christianized natives before the land was the home of thriftlessness and whiskey. The picture is the saddest of all the sad pictures of modern retrogression, with no prospect of the advent of a mind capable of suggesting the proper remedy.

[Certainly one cannot but say, after this depressing picture
by one "to the manner born," that Ireland needs regenerating.
We give next his impressions of Dublin, which are no more
enlivening in tone.]

But about Dublin. What of it? It is certainly a place of handsome municipal buildings, and others, too, built in an imposing manner, and yet all there is architecturally great in the whole city you see at a glance, the moment you cross O'Connell's Bridge. The first view, therefore, is impressive in the extreme; the buildings magnificent, splendidly proportioned, symmetrical. You can see them all at once, and are delighted; but penetrate those vistas, and behold them,--a suit of sixteenth-century mail for man and horse on Sancho Panza and his mule, or a gracefully painted window that shuts off an ugly view,--all that you see at the first glance is all that there is.

To be sure, there are many churches,--perhaps one hundred,--including Methodists, Moravians, Friends, Baptists, Unitarians, Presbyterians, Jews, besides those belonging to the two religious bodies most numerous here,--the Churches of Ireland and Rome; some of them of great beauty; ostentatious, to be sure, as if they were competing with each other in display; and yet with all this the city has none of those pleasant surprises that you expect in old towns, and that you find even with us [in America], and more so, I judge, in towns on the Continent; that is to say, narrow, clean streets opening into wide courts, having buildings with carved fronts and pillars, and the like, or sudden bends in a street, where the commonplace becomes magnificence. There is nothing of this in Dublin,--no curious doors or windows, no "jutty frieze" nor "coign of vantage." Very often an attempt at grandeur, but marred by defective details. The interiors, too, as far as I could penetrate, indicating more the desire for elegance than the capacity,--gay-colored window-shades, but torn; door- and window-curtains, but faded; window-boxes, broken and hanging askew, with flowers withering, either from the smoky atmosphere or neglect; everything black from coal-dust, and no flowers at all. No wonder Moore wrote so touchingly about the last rose of summer.

Plants, to my sorrow, were not in abundance. I searched the grounds of Trinity and everywhere else in vain for a rose or anything else that bloomed, and feel, therefore, as if Tom Moore's rose must have been the last of its race; but what Dublin lacks in flowers it makes up in taverns. Myriads--to quote again from Adam Clarke--of groggeries and distilleries; one of these so large that it looks as if the muddy river that runs through the city was dug there merely to carry its barges of stout to people at the other end. It appears also here, like home, as if these same gentry, who become rich on the drunkenness of the people, were rather important factors in municipal affairs. One of these, Guinness,--I feel, though, like apologizing for mentioning his name in connection with liquor-dealers, as his commodity is stout,--however, is the philanthropist of Dublin, the restorer of St. Patrick's, the supporter of missionaries, the insurer of all his employes' lives, etc., and not only has a monument here by Foley, but was also knighted during the present reign. You remember Dickens,--"The nobility can brew, but they can't bake."

The streets are ornamented with many good statues, including Goldsmith, Moore, Burke, Grattan, Stokes, Lords Carlisle, Corrigan, Eglinton, Smith O'Brien, and others; but the University, the gift of that friend of learning, Queen Elizabeth, is perhaps the chief glory of the town; while "the Liberties," a portion of which I explored to-day, is probably her greatest disgrace. From the lanes and alleys that penetrate this malodorous district emerge the most curious race, I would judge, that has ever been found in a civilized town. Here you find illustrations in abundance, not only of the "philosophy of clothes," but of the comedy and tragedy as well; this tendency to wear other people's garments being one of the characteristics of the tribe, and the city being very liberal in the matter of supplying them with shops where they may procure their wares.

In Cork the chief articles of _petit_ commerce are cast-off clothing and "bits of mate," especially tails of things piled up on stalls, the clothing spread on the streets; while in Dublin it is second-hand clothing and bones, sold in mouldy dens,--"bone warehouses,"--twelve feet wide, yawning like Elijah's cave after the ravens had been doing the generous thing by him for months. In turning a corner, a fellow, standing on his knees (stumps) near one of these, accosted me, asking for money to help pay for a pair of cork legs, his own blown off in a dynamite "experiment." Why not Dublin legs? I thought. "He needed but five shillings more," he said; "they were already made, but the thief of a maker would not let him have them until he had paid every penny." Looking up into my face in a sort of confidential aside, he added, "True enough, sir; he's giving them to me at cost."

In the act of contributing to the needed balance, a young lady of perhaps thirty-five autumns, and dressed in a crape hat, linen duster, split down the back, and who had heard the pitiful story of the descendant of Simon Tappertit, approached and said, "Don't give him a ha'penny, sir; he has one pair of legs in pawn already; and he has two wives and nine children that beg for him besides. If you have anything to spare, give it to me, sir; I'm an orphan."

What could not Herr Diogenes Teufelsdroeckh say about such a pandemonium of rags as are to be found here? "Happy he who can look through the clothes of man into the man." No difficulty here in being happy, if holes can help you. You are among a colony of savages, as much in conceit with their parti-colored wardrobe as a Mohawk with his beads. Everything, from the "goodly Babylonish garments--the mantles of Shinar, from Assyrian looms," down to the cast-off tarpaulin of discharged or disgraced tars, are on the backs of the denizens of the Liberties. No one is wearing the clothes made for him. The unexpected is the most common. One fellow had on the cast-off coat of a policeman, too small to reach across his naked body, with a pair of trousers with scarlet stripes, billowing down to the uppers of his soleless shoes. Another bare-footed man had nothing on but an ulster; another, daintily picking his way across the street to one of the rag and bone shops that are as thick here as leaves in Vallombrosa, and between his trousers and short-waisted coat, with long tails, was a yawning gulf of dark flesh, that a crimson sash tried in vain to conceal. Another had on an overcoat with but one sleeve; a hole in the back large enough for him to thrust his head through; fastened down the front by having bits of the coat pulled through the buttonholes, and kept from slipping back by butchers' skewers.

Knee-breeches, red coats, cocked and battered stove-pipe hats, swallow-tailed coats, costumes of every clime, together with the official garments of the army in rags, are found here on the backs of scoundrels that look as if they would run from a bit of soap as if it were the plague,--if, indeed, they would _run_ from anything. The women, like the men, indescribable. The saddest part of it, the children; scores of half-naked little souls, swarming around and looking as if all they ever had to eat they picked up in the streets; have nothing of childhood about them but its seriousness; children that have never been combed or washed; boys having nothing on but the trousers of men, the waistband tied about their necks, their arms thrust through the pocket-holes, and the legs rolled up like the coat-sleeves of "the Artful Dodger." One little fellow wore a swallow-tailed coat and stockings, nothing else; the strange thing about it, they are not aware how curious they look; but the ladies! the very exuberance of grotesque finery they exhibit silences my modest pen....

P.S.--You know that it is a custom among the subjects of England to conclude all public meetings, especially of a secular nature, by singing "God save the Queen." The only exception to this rule, I believe, are the Irish Nationalists; they don't want God to do anything of the sort, and have consequently substituted for the National Anthem a song entitled "God save Ireland," which they sing in season and out of season. You can always tell the politics of a district by the number of fiddlers, _prima donnas_, tin whistle and jews-harp performers that play this new vent for patriotism.

_A propos_ of this, in coming home this evening I read on a great sign, at the door of a dingy little drug-shop near the Liberties, the following combination of enterprise and patriotism (which struck me as being odd, and which, for your amusement, I transcribed, punctuation points and all):

"Prepared Castor Oil a penny a dose!
God Save Ireland?
Epsom salts 4 doses for a half-penny!
God Save Ireland?
Seidlitz Powder 6 pence a box!
God Save Ireland?"

and so on, all the way to the bottom, until God had saved Ireland, I think, some fifteen or sixteen times, but always after a powerful physic; the last line of the placard was,--

"Home Rule Forever!
God Save Ireland?"

FROM CORK TO KILLARNEY.

SARAH J. LIPPINCOTT.

[Mrs. Lippincott, the favorite "Grace Greenwood" of former
American readers, was the author of several works of European
travel. The following selection is from her "Haps and Mishaps
of a Tour in Europe," and includes her interesting description
of Blarney Castle, Killarney, and the country between.]

The passage from Holyhead to Kingstown was accomplished in four hours; but throughout the trip I felt that I would sooner cross the Styx to the Plutonian shores than attempt it again. I thought that I had sounded the lowest depths of mortal suffering in the way of sea-sickness, but I found that my Atlantic experiences were but a faint prelude to a mild suggestion of this.

A gentleman at Cork told me an anecdote of a company of emigrants who were observed passing back and forth on one of the ferry-boats during an entire day, and when questioned in regard to their strange movements, answered, they were bound to America in the next ship, and were "practising at say-sickness, just." So the tourist in the utmost he may endure on an Atlantic voyage, before crossing the Irish Channel, may have the consolation of knowing that he is but "practising at say-sickness."

At Kingstown we were treated to a taste of nationality in the shape of a bit of a row between two carmen. At the Dublin station we took that peculiar and distinctive Irish vehicle, an outside jaunting-car, which has the merit of giving you a variety in the way of exercise,--joltings, backward, forward, and sidewise,--a vigilant and vigorous endeavor to keep yourself and your luggage on, and an alert watchfulness to keep other vehicles off. There are two kinds of jaunting-cars, which are thus distinguished by the Irish carmen: "The outside car, yer honor, has the wheels inside, and the inside car has the wheels outside."...

The route from Dublin to Cork leads mostly through a barren, boggy, miserable country, with here and there an oasis of waving green and gold, telling of careful cultivation and wise husbandry. There are some fine old ruins along the way, among which I best remember those of Kilmallock, Kildare, where the pious nuns once kept the holy fires burning "through long ages of darkness and storm," Loughman Castle, and the Rocks of Dunamore and Cashel. But all along the line the ruins are almost countless. You grow mortally weary of crumbling turrets, tumble-down gate-ways, battered arches, and staggering towers, all standing out boldly in the sun and storm, for the absence of trees and shrubbery is a marked feature in the agricultural districts of Ireland. Indeed, the larger part of this ill-fated isle seems, in contrast with fruitful, prosperous, beautiful England, a wild, weary, shadowless waste, scathed, peeled, desolated, and abandoned.

On the following morning [after a night spent at Cork], amid golden sunshine and silvery showers, we drove to Blarney Castle, and wandered through those umbrageous grounds immortalized by the poet in the famous song of the "Groves of Blarney." The castle itself is a noble old ruin, and its situation and surroundings are remarkably picturesque and curious. There are natural subterranean passages leading down to the lake, and a black dungeon, where, according to our guide, "Cromwell, the bloody nagur," confined his prisoners. The lake is small, but, according to the above-mentioned authority, quite bottomless. He told us, with a grave face, that the late "Lady Jeffers," having taken a whim into her head to draw it off, had a drain dug full three feet below the surface, but not a drop would run out,--a sturdy, conservative old lake.

We ascended the great tower, at the top of which we all kissed the new Blarney stone,--it being morally and physically impossible for ladies to salute the real Simon Pure, which is outside the wall some feet from the summit. The gentlemen who accomplish this feat must be held by the feet over the wall, one hundred and twenty feet from the ground, by a stout guide, who is liable to be seized with a sudden weakness, and to call out that he must stop "to spit on his hands,"--that he can _howld_ on no longer, unless his fee is double; and the unhappy dog in suspense pledges himself to a treat. Our guide assured me that the new Blarney stone was quite as good as the "rale,"--that a certain "widdy lady" made a pilgrimage all the way from the north of England, kissed the spurious stone most rapturously, and made a great match soon after. The question arises, Lay the virtue in the stone, or in the pilgrim's faith?

Our return drive was very charming,--the rain was past and sunlight and fresh breezes poured beauty and gladness on our way. I cannot remember to have seen anywhere within so short a distance so many wild flowers. The shrubbery was more luxuriant, the trees finer and more abundant, than we had ever seen,--everything on our path was beautiful and gracious save the _humanity_, which was wretched and poverty-stricken in the extreme. From the miserable little mud huts along the road ran scores of children, of all sizes, bare-headed, bare-footed, and bare-legged, with rags of all imaginable hues and textures fluttering in the wind, and attached to their bodies by some unknown and mysterious law of attraction, certainly by no visible bond or support. With faces begrimed by smoke, and wild eyes overhung with wilder locks, they stretched out their dirty beseeching palms, and assailed us on all sides of our outside car,--most assailable of vehicles,--fit contrivance for a beggared land.

Irish carmen are a race of Jehus,--driving with eccentric flourishes of the whip, and when more than usually excited, with strange barbaric whoops and hellos, making their odd little vehicles jump along at an astonishing rate. They are commonly communicative and amusing, though by no means the quaint, cunning, delightful, inimitable wags and wits your Lovers and Levers, your Edgeworths and Halls, have pictured. It is a singular thing that, though they are from the first free and easy in word and manner, they are never offensively so. Native tact, good humor, and warmth of heart take from their advances all appearance of boldness or impertinence. Our driver on this occasion was disposed to be particularly sociable, though not in the jocular way. He was a man of much intelligence for his station, of a serious, even sad expression of face, and he talked powerfully and with intense bitterness of the wrongs and sorrows of the Irish peasantry. I was struck by hearing him ascribe most of their sufferings not to the English government but to the _native_ _Irish proprietors_, who, he averred, had revelled in heartless, wasteful extravagance, while the people starved, until, since the failure of the potato, many of them have been reduced to absolute want. It was almost fearful to mark the wild gleam in the man's eye as he spoke his fierce joy in this retributive justice....

On the morning of August 16 we left Cork for Killarney, by way of Bantry and Glengariff. After a short run on the rail we took a stage-coach, choosing outside seats, like enthusiastic tourists as we are, though the day was dark and showery. There was little in the scenery, and less in the condition of the country and people, to repay us for our exposure to wind and weather till we reached Bantry. I can never forget the forlorn unmitigated wretchedness of the people who thronged around us at the little town of Dunmanway. Among the crowd appealing to us, in all possible variations of the whine mendicious and mendacious, we saw not one man or woman in the national costume and cover-all,--the double cape great-coat and the hooded cloak; all was squalor and tatters soul-sickening and disgusting. Here was infancy, nude and needy, reaching out its dirty little hands; and second childhood bent and tottering, with palsied palm extended, eying you with all the mute wistfulness of a starved spaniel. There was a full assortment of the halt, the hump-backed, and the crippled,--all degrees of sightlessness and unsightliness. I turned away from the miserable creatures with a heart heavy with hopeless sympathy and vain pity, and with a conscience stricken for all my own sins of unthankfulness and discontent.

And here I may as well pause to remark briefly on the condition and appearance of the peasants in the south of Ireland. Knowing that I could not fairly judge of this class by the idle and ragged crowd who gather round the coach or car in the towns and hamlets, I took occasion, during my stay at Cork, to visit several of the country cottages of the working peasants in company with one of the landed proprietors. In but one out of six did I find a regular fireplace and chimney; in but one was there a window of glass, and that consisted of a single pane. The others had--with the exception of the door, and a hole in the roof, from which the smoke, after wandering at its own sweet will through the cabin, found its way out--no opening whatever for light or ventilation. But I forget--we did remark a sort of improvised window in one other. In a low, miserable hovel, belonging to a carman, we found a horse occupying full a third of the scanty room; and above his manger a small hole had been made through the mud wall, the good man having found that the health of the animal required what himself and family lived without,--air.

To the mistress of this unique habitation, whose one apartment served for kitchen, sleeping-room, _stable_, and hall, I said, in horrified amazement, "How is it possible you can live with that horse?" "Sure, miss, he's no throuble," she replied; "and it's little room he takes, after all; for the childer can sleep on the straw under him, just, and creep between his legs, and he never harming them at all, the sensible cratur." It is a common thing to see hens drying their feathers by the genial peat glow, and pigs enjoying the pleasures of the domestic hearth. In another cabin we found two curious old crones, living together on apparently nothing, who loaded us with blessings in the original tongue, and actually went on their knees to offer up thanksgiving for a few half-pence, which we gave as a consideration for intruding on their retirement.

Yet, though living in low, smoky, ill-ventilated cabins,--often with mouldering thatches, and always with damp earth floors, with a pool of stagnant water or a dung-hill before the door,--though themselves ill fed and but half clad, it is a singular fact that the peasants of southern Ireland are apparently a healthful and hardy race. You occasionally see fine specimens of manly and childish beauty among them; but a pretty Irish peasant girl we found the rarest of _rara avises_. There are some families of Spanish origin about Bantry, and of these we encountered one or two dark-eyed, olive-cheeked beggar boys, who seemed to have leaped out of one of Murillo's pictures. The policemen everywhere are a particularly fine-looking set of fellows; indeed, none but well-made, tall, and powerful men have any chance of enrolment in this honorable terror-inspiring, omnipresent corps.

The professional beggars of Ireland seem a peculiarly hopeless and irredeemable class,--not because of the poverty of the country alone, but from their own inherent and inherited idleness and viciousness. They are persistent, pertinacious, sometimes impudent, and often quick-witted and amusing. A friend of ours was waylaid by a certain "widdy" woman, with an unlimited amount of ragged responsibilities at her heels. On hearing her doleful story, our friend advised the fair mendicant to take refuge in the poor-house. "The poor-house!" she exclaimed; "sure it's meself that keeps the poorest house in all Cork, yer honor." I was amused by an appeal made by an elderly dame to one of our fellow-passengers: "Here's a fine fat gentleman, sure; sure he'll give a sixpence to a poor bony body that hasn't broken her fast at all the day."

If you wish to take a meditative walk among the hills, the chances are that you will return with a considerable ragged retinue; but the larger detachment of this ignoble army of alms-seekers are stationed along the public roads. They make their startling sorties from the most lonely, wild, and inaccessible places; like Roderick Dhu's men, they leap up from "copse and heath." Every rock hides a waiting mendicant, and every tuft of broom stirs as we approach with a lurking tatterdemalion. They leap on your way from behind walls, and drop down upon you from overhanging trees,--small footpads, or rather _paddies_, who present palms instead of pistols, and blarney and worry you alike out of pence and patience.

After a day of wet and weary travel through a melancholy country, we enjoyed to the utmost the beautiful approach to Bantry, under a clear and sunny sky, and welcomed with enthusiasm the sight of its lovely and famous bay. But even this bright vision was soon eclipsed by Glengariff, where we spent the night. Thus far on my tour I have seen nothing to compare with the glorious beauty of that place. In all the solemn shadows of its wild loneliness, the dark deeps and frowning heights of its grandeur, in all the sweet lights of its loveliness, it lives, and must ever live, in my charmed memory; but I will not attempt to picture it in words.

After dinner, though a light rain was falling, we took a row around the bay, and remained on the water until the night set in. I think we shall none of us soon forget that row over the smooth and silent bay, in the rain and deepening twilight, under the shadows of mountain and rock. The scene would have been too wild, solemn, and awfully lonely but for the peculiar wit and story-telling talent of "Jerry," our guide and helmsman. He entertained us with some wonderful legends of a certain Father Shannon, a priest, and a famous character in this region about half a century ago.

One anecdote illustrative of the holy man's quick-wittedness impressed me as an instance of "cuteness" passing the cuteness of Yankees. "The good father," says Jerry, "was one day fishing, in his boat, on the bay, when he heard a swarm of bees buzzing about him. Then he begins to rattle with a knife, or spoon, in an iron kettle he had with him in the boat, till he feels that all the bees have settled on his shoulders. Then he slyly reaches back, and takes hold of the tail of his shirt (begging your pardon, ladies!) and he suddenly turns it over his head, bees and all, and puts it into the kettle, which he covers over in a second just; and so he takes the whole swarm to Lord Bantry, and sells them for three pounds, and gets his shirt back, too, yer honor."...

The mountain road from Glengariff to Killarney is a splendid specimen of engineering, and leads through scenery wild and beautiful in the extreme. On the sunny morning of our leaving Glengariff, landscape and air were fresh and delicious after the night's abundant rain, and with thrills and palpitations of inexpressible joy my heart responded to the gladness of nature. I shall never forget the childish ecstasy of delight with which I gazed around me, and drank in the fragrant air of the morning.

The three lakes of Killarney descended upon by this road are likely to disappoint the tourist, especially if he be an American, more especially if he be a reader of, and a devout believer in, Mrs. Hall's beautiful and most poetical book, "A Week in Killarney." In truth, such fairy sheets of water seem little to deserve the name of lakes at first, but they grow on your respect rapidly as you approach; their beauty is, near or afar, quite exquisite and undeniable, and the mountains which surround them are really very respectable elevations. Our first visit was to the Tore Waterfall, by far the most beautiful cascade I have seen since coming abroad. The fall is between sixty and seventy feet; the glen into which the water comes leaping, and foaming, and flashing is wild and rocky, and overhung with richest foliage....

Our first expedition was to the Gap of Dunloe, a wild and gloomy mountain-pass, especially interesting to the reader of Gerald Griffin's fine novel of "The Collegians" as the scene of poor Eily Connor's happy honeymoon and tragic taking off. Our guide furnished myself and a pleasant English friend with ponies; the remainder of the party took a car.

Though tolerably well mounted, and able to abruptly cut the company of the old, crippled, and blind of the begging fraternity, we found that we had small advantage over the boys; the fleet-footed little rascals kept up with us for miles,--one juvenile Celt, literally _sans culotte_, but in a shirt of elder-brotherly dimensions, giving us a sort of Tam O'Shanter chase. A pretty, dark-eyed boy, running by my side, held up a bunch of purple heather and wild honeysuckle, saying, with an insinuating smile, "Plase, my lady, buy these ilegant bright flowers, so like yer honor's self, this beautiful summer morning." What woman could resist such an appeal?

At the entrance of the Gap we were met by a detachment of volunteer guides, and a company of "mountain-dew" girls,--maidens with cans of goats' milk and flasks of "potheen," with which they are happy to treat the traveller, for a consideration. After listening to some grand echoes, called forth by the rich bugle-notes of our guide, we proceeded through the pass. This, by itself, did not equal our expectation; its finest feature is the "Purple Mountain," which in the glorious sunlight of that morning was beautiful beyond conception.

From Lord Brandon's demesne we embarked upon the upper lake, rowed among its fairy islands, and ran down "the long range" to the middle lake, pausing for a little gossip with the echoes of "Eagle Nest," and shooting "Old Wier Bridge" on our way. The bay and mountain of Glena are the gems of Killarney. Even now, looking back upon the scene through the sobered light of recollection, it is all enchantment,--the shore gorgeous with magnificent foliage, the waters flashing with silver gleams, the sky golden with sunset light; and it is difficult for me to believe that there is under the broad heaven a lovelier spot. Even the echoes from this beautiful green mountain seemed clearer, yet softer and more melodious, than any we had heard before.

We took dinner on shore, in a delicious little nook shadowed by arbutus-trees, dining off a large rock, some seated _a la Turc_, some reclining in the ancient Oriental style. Oh, we had merry times! And what with toasts and songs and legends, and joyous laughter ringing out, peal on peal, over the still water, the wonder is we failed to rouse the great O'Donoghue, who, according to popular tradition, dwells in a princely palace under the lake, and only comes to the surface to take an airing on horseback every May morning. Our row homeward, through the soft lingering sunset light, with the plash and murmur of the blue waves, rising with the rising wind, heard in the intervals between the sweet songs of our guide, was a fitting close to a day of shadowless pleasure.

NORTH OF IRELAND SCENES.

W. GEORGE BEERS.

[We have described a run through the south of Ireland, which to
the traveller seemed but a brown and barren commentary on the
so-called Emerald Island. The traveller from whom we now quote
found the aspect of nature verdant enough fully to justify this
title. But the poverty and shiftlessness which appeared so
patent to Dr. Woods proved equally evident to Mr. Beers, to
whom the lack of snakes in Green Erin seemed more than replaced
by the multitude of beggars.]

Up in the forecastle of an ocean steamer a group of sea-tired souls look away to starboard, where a faint shape lies on the horizon like an early-morning cloud. "It's only a bit of old-country fog," mutters the Grumbler, and goes back to his bed. A thrush had been playing for over an hour on the spars and rigging, and we fancied we could smell the land from which it had flown to greet us. And by and by the dim line took a more solid shape, and soon we could see the rough rocks of the northern coast. We were nearing Innistrahull light-house and Malin Head, and the ship's engines stopped, for the first time since leaving the New World, to take on a pilot. A short sail along the rocky coast, passing the ivy-covered ruins of an ancient castle, the green refreshing grass, the hedges, and the white houses, and the beautiful panorama of Moville, at the mouth of the Foyle, was unfolded, and Nature tinged the sea and sky with a masterpiece of sunset. Suddenly a few jaunting-cars came flying down the hill like highway comets, and the Grumbler came up again, in time to find that we were only a hundred yards from shore. "That's Ireland," said he. We felt enlightened. It was not long before we were ashore at Moville, a quiet watering-place for the people of Derry, Tyrone, and Donegal counties.

Our first reception was from a sturdy beggar, who apologized for the absence of the mayor and corporation. I had heard of this genius of Moville before. He is a character of the place, and one of the most original hypocrites among the begging fraternity. When I was in Queenstown, a few weeks afterwards, I saw a perfect shoal of his kind, of all degrees of dirt, disease, and disaster,--a sort of ragged resurrection through which passengers from an American steamer had to pass. There were beggars with strong lungs and stout legs; beggars with scarce a lung and but one leg; paupers in all the traditional heraldry of rags and wretchedness,--blind, crippled, crooked, and crazy; with bags and babies, sticks and dogs, canes and crutches, all colors of hair and all sorts of disease, real or feigned; some funny, some furious, some bold, some blushing, nearly all overwhelming in benediction.

One sore-eyed veteran, whose apostolical succession from blind Bartimeus I should have been easily disposed to accept, stuck to my heels, and in a tone that would have melted the Blarney stone implored me, "A pinny, yer honor." With New-World innocence of Old-World wickedness, I gave my Irish Moses a sixpence, upon which the crowd came upon me in a ring of blessing, until I pushed through it with some rough epithet. In the twinkling of an eye the circle of sickly saints fell into a close column of renovated sinners, and yelled after me the characteristic south-of-Ireland curses, from the mild "Bad luck to ye!" to the more historical "The curse of Cromwell upon ye!" One crooked old lady had got close to my ear: "Shure, yer honor, I've been bint up like this these twinty year wid the rheumatiz, and me back's bruk and one of me lungs is gone;" but when I shook her off she straightened up like a giantess and swore at me with as hearty a pair of respiratory organs as any Glasgow fish-wife might boast. I felt as if I had performed a miracle upon the old lady's spine. But I nearly collapsed with laughter when I saw one mild-looking fellow, who had been limping near me with his right leg held up in a wooden crutch and his right hand apparently shrivelled beyond the power of use, holding the crutch, which he had unhitched, under his left arm and shaking the game leg and the lame fist at my back.

Our arrival at the north, however, was less ceremonious. I do not know whether our Moville beggar was the last of the mendicant Mohicans of the coast or had simply stolen a march upon the rest of his fraternity, but there he stood, a monopolist of the art: "Good luck to ye, jintlemen! Ye're welcome to Ireland. Ye'll give me a few pennies for luck, yer honors, won't ye? Jist whativer ye like, jintlemen. Be good to the motherless and sivin small childer, and niver a bite to ate since yesterday mornin'. Jist whativer ye like, jintlemen." Our first Old-World beggar had caught us in the tide of good nature, and the pennies soon grew to shillings. It was our first experience, and we were on the "Green Isle." We learned to be wiser before we had gone much farther, and by the time we left the island we felt as if we could throttle every beggar we met.

"How long have you been begging?" I asked the Moville suppliant.

"I began wid me mother, sir, soon after I was born."

"And do you never work?"

"Work, is it? Shure, sir, I was niver educated to it. And there's too many people working already, sir."

"How long is it since you used soap and water?" said I.

"Now, yer honor, where'd _I_ get soap, when I can't get bread? Me childer would ate it if there was any in the house."

"Well, I'd like to see what you look like when you're clean. There's another sixpence for you,--half for your stomach and half for your skin. If you'll get some soap and go down to the sea there and wash yourself well while we're away, I'll give you sixpence more when we come back."

"Shure," quickly replied the Moville wit, "doesn't yer honor know that ye can't use soap in salt water? But I'll go to the pump, so I will."

It was quite a disappointment afterwards to learn that, like Montaigne's page, our beggar was never guilty of telling the truth, that the "sivin small childer" had yet to be born, and that he considered our party the best fools he had met that season.

We were to drive down to Green-Castle, in the vicinity of which the jarvies said we should be sure to hear the cuckoo. Our first experience of a jaunting-car was pleasant, though precarious. It had the dash of danger which spices adventure. A sober foreigner can seldom keep his seat at first; an Irishman may be so drunk that he walks zigzag on the sidewalk, but he never falls off a car--unless he's sober. At first blush, especially in the cities, the jaunting-car seems an ingenious device to furnish Irish surgeons with amputations. As you go tearing along the streets and flying around corners, your legs hanging over the sides in close proximity to other "highway comets" tearing along the opposite way, you have a choice of death by being dashed to "smithereens" on your face by a jerk or dying in desperate collision with a street-car. Our jarvie was a genuine Paddy, full to the brim of wit and song. Between the stretches of his imagination in tale-telling (all his native geese were royal swans, and for the one ruin we were approaching he built a score of castles in the air) he made the road lively with local Irish airs. During the winter these jarvies have little or nothing to do, and one of them, being asked how they spent that season, replied, "Making up stories, sir, to tell the travellers in summer."

However much we were imposed upon in the matter of tale and tradition, there was no deception in the interest of the drive. The sea lay to the right. Along the highway and in many of the fields, though much of the country to the left was barren and hilly, the daisy was peeping up for our first recognition; the primroses lay in rich golden clumps upon the banks; violets, blue, red, and white, little purple bluebells, day-nettles, which the bees and boys love to suck, and many other new and old wild flowers, were pointed out to us as we jogged along. Sometimes we jumped down to pick them, gathering whole handfuls of the faintly-perfumed primroses and burying our noses in their exquisite blossoms in a way to make an emigrant homesick. On we jolted, and soon came within sight of the romantic hamlet, its picturesque castle and fort facing the sea. With a final quick trot and a jerk our driver pulled up at the Green-Castle Hotel, with the artless hint that its champagne for jintlemen and its whiskey for jarvies had no rival from Malin Head to Cape Clear.

[After giving his readers the legendary history of Green-Castle
our author proceeds to describe its present appearance.]

The old castle is now a roofless wreck of time and siege, but enough is left of its walls--eight feet thick--and its deep dungeons to show that it was in its time a strong fortress. We walked over the space between the walls, about eighty yards by forty, upon which the sun and the rains descend and where the grass grew knee-deep. Detached bits of wall were covered with splendid ivy. On the walls here and there we saw the little whitlow-grass, and in the crevices of the rocks the lilac flowers of the toad-flax, which one sees in all such sea-side ruins in Ireland. We climbed the steep crag of the highest portion facing the sea. Many of the stones were loose and slipped out from under our feet. We mounted to the very top of the old battlement,--a glorious spot from which to watch a storm when the great waves roll up in close column and break over the rocks. Creeping from the base of the perpendicular rock a hundred feet below, thick ivy had grown to the very summit, its rootlets and tendrils turning and twisting into and upon each other, binding the stones better than mortar, sucking out the moisture of the wall, and keeping it as dry as punk. Everywhere in Ireland one is struck by the wonderful tenacity of ivy, which creeps along the ground or crawls up and clings to the barest flint. If you lift one of the young shoots, it clings to the earth like a hungry leech to human skin. If you turn it up, you see rootlets, like the legs of a caterpillar, by which it attaches itself to the ground, and which it seems to lose when transplanted to America.

We leaned over on the thick leaves and tendrils to pull the pungent berries, when out flew two scared jackdaws just below. We rustled the tendrils, and away scudded a score or more of birds to tell the sea-gulls of this invasion of their ancient nest. Down near the shore white daisies speckled the green grass like a first snow-fall.

But hark! Is that the mystic cry of the cuckoo we are hearing for the first time? How plaintive and lonely its monotone!--"Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!" We have never heard that sound in America except from wretched Swiss clocks. What a world of delightful associations thrills through our veins! How the old familiar stories told us of our parents' romps in the green lanes of the old country come to our memories, and the wonder with which in their childhood days they stopped to listen to this classic bird. There it is again, over in the woodland. Hark! "Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!" One of our company, born in the old land, and now returned for the first time in thirty years, began to reach the melting-point, when, looking in the direction of the cry, we caught sight of an incautious Irish boy peeping from behind a tree, with one hand to his mouth, just in the act of repeating this old Green-Castle trick of "fooling the people from America who want to hear the cuckoo."

When we came down from the battlement we were told that a drunken sailor of H. M. "Vanguard" had fallen asleep on top of the wall a few weeks before and had rolled off to the bottom, a distance of a hundred feet, but had not been hurt enough to prevent his marriage the day before our arrival. Our informant added that it was the "potheen" that had saved him: "If he'd been sober, sir, shure he'd have wakened up a dead man."