CHAPTER XVIII. GLENGARRIFF TO CORK

Mounted on the Cork car next morning, we passed the estuaries of _Bantry Bay_, where, the tide being out, the heron stood, lone and aristocratic, and the curlew ran nimbly among the dank seaweed. By the roadside, the goats, tied in pairs, and cruelly hoppled, tumbled over the embankments as we passed. We went by the picturesque old ruins of _Carriginass_, and by various sights and scenes, until we reached the _Pass of Keimaneigh_, a defile through the mountains, the appropriate refuge of the _Rockites_, in 1822, and an elegant situation for a still. _Burns_, that poetical gauger, might have been happy here, so long as, dreamily wandering among the heath-clad steeps, he had confined his attentions to the beauties of nature, and ignored the paraphernalia of art; but a more practical man, intent on business, would have had but an uncomfortable home of it, until a bullet put an end to his dreary quest, and

“The de'il flew away with the exciseman.”

The driver pulled up his horses by a way-side cottage, and inquired whether we wished to see _Gougane-barra_. It was only a mile or so out of our route, Patrick there would take us in his car, and he would wait for us with all the pleasure in life. So, making this little deflection, we reached, as speedily as a good pony could take us over bad roads, the gloomy lake and mountains. Here we were received by a troop of juvenile guides, led on by an old man, who with a long white beard, and staff, intended, I believe, to give us the idea of a venerable and pious pilgrim, to remind us probably of _St. Fion Bar_, the “Saint of the Silver Locks,” who founded a monastery here; but roguery so twinkled in his eye, and imposition so quavered in his voice, that I have no hesitation in speaking with regard to him, as _the Edinburgh Review_ spake of _Edgar Poe_:--“He was a blackguard of undeniable mark.”

The Irish poet _Callanan_ sings,

“There is a green island in lone Gougane-barra, Where Allua of songs rushes forth as an arrow.”

We visited the “green island,” reaching it by an overland route (a method of access which I do not remember to have noticed out of Ireland); and the “Allua of Songs” was represented by a discordant din in Anglo-Irish, from the illustrious humbug in the beard, and his satellites, which would have interested us in a greater degree, had we understood only a twentieth part of it.

Ultimately, we caught a small boy, intelligent and intelligible, and he told us how the great Saint had here made himself deliciously miserable, feasting upon the idea of his fasts; contemplating his macerations in the lake, as complacently as a cornet his new uniform, or his sister her first ball-dress, in the glass; whipping himself as industriously as a schoolboy his top; hugging himself in his hair shirt, and nestling cosily as a child in its crib, in a bed composed of ashes and broken glass.

These and other austerities by which the Reverend Mr. Bar so signally extinguished himself, have made Gougane-barra, even to this day, a great resort for pilgrims; you see “the Stations,” and you see graven upon a stone, which was formerly an altar-stone, the list of prayers to be said there; and you hear of many wonderful cures, which have been performed (I always like that story of the priest, who was overheard, while telling his friend, that he must be so good as to excuse his absence, as he was engaged “_to rehearse a miracle at two 0 clock!_”) at the _Holy Well_ hard by,--the very well, it may be, to which Larry O'Toole took Sheelah, his wife, and Phelim (as they thought) was “the consekins of that manoover.”

These pilgrims, some fifty years ago, used to drink diligently as soon as they had finished their prayers, laying aside the staff for the shillelagh, and kicking off their sandals for a jig on the green. Having paid off the old score, they began a new account like gentlemen, just as an undergraduate, having advanced ten pounds to his tailor, immediately orders clothes to the amount of twenty.

Regaining the car and main road, we pass by small silvery lakes from which the trout are leaping, “_bekase_,” says our driver, “_the wather's so full o' fish that whinever they want to turn round they must jist jump out and do it in the air_,” through a country prettily diversified with

“Woods and corn-fields, and the abode of men, Scatter'd at intervals, and wreathing smoke, Arising from _such_ rustic roofs”

as are only to be seen in Ireland, and so come to _Inchigeela_.

_À propos_ of cornfields, I must not forget a striking example of scientific ingenuity, which we saw in this neighbourhood. A small cornstack had been raised, so grievously out of the perpendicular, that the tower of _Pisa_ would have looked severely straight by it. But the builder saw his error, before it was too late, and had gloriously saved his cereal structure, by erecting another, opposite to and abutting towards it, until they supported each other, like the commencement of those card houses, which we built in early youth, a chevron in heraldry, or two drunken sots “seeing each other home.”

At _Inchigeela's_ clean and comfortable inn, we had a capital luncheon for ninepence, and then “lionised” the village. The first object of interest was a pig, asleep under a tree by the brookside.

“Pinguem, nitidumque Bene curatâ cute.”

(I may add bene _curandâ_, as the bacon that is to be cannot possibly hear), and so serenely dignified in its complete repose, so “mildly majestical,” that one almost expected to see a point-lace nightcap, and fair girls fanning away the flies! He looked as happy as _Gryllus_, that companion of _Ulysses_, who, being transformed into a pig by _Circe_, and, being subsequently offered redintegration, preferred the swinish estate; huge and handsome as the famous boar, who ate _the Reverend Mr. Haydn_, after the victory of the rebels at _Enniscorihy_; 1 obese and sleepy, as _Silenus_, when found by the shepherds, _Chromis and Mnasylus_; 2 refreshed and comfortable, like that great _O'Neill_, who (_Camden_ says so) was wont to plunge himself into the mire, as a cooler and restorative, after great excess.

1 Sir Jonah Barrington's Personal Sketches, vol. iii., p. 422.

2 Virgil. Edogue vi. 13.

Progressing, we come to the Constabulary Barracks, where a couple of constables, with such moustaches as would make a young Cornet groan, are polishing up their carbines. Our London police are well-favoured in appearance, but if the Irish constables were to take their place, there would not be a single female-servant, to be “warranted heart-whole,” in the great Metropolis, and the very name of Meat-safe would become a by-word and a laughing-stock.

In the river hard by, a girl, standing ankle-deep, from time to time, like the young lady in “_the Soldiers Tear_” held aloft a snowy--never mind what; and, having plunged it into the stream, and placed it upon a stone, belaboured it (as though it were a drunken husband) with an implement of wood, which much resembled a villager's clumsy cricket-bat.

_Two_ Schools, and one actually at work! real pupils, making the pace too severe to last (when they saw us looking at them), with real slate-pencils over real slates! I wonder whether they were doing the “_Irish Arithmetic_,” of which O'Hara declares the following to be a faithful specimen:--

“Twice 5 is 6; The 9s in 4 you can't; So dot 3, and carry 1; And let the rest walk!”

Returning, after a prolonged and pleasant stroll, we found the horses in the car, and the driver seated on his box. Now, an English coachman would have yelled at us, and English passengers would have scowled on us, for detaining them; but the Irishman gave us a pleasant smile of recognition, as though it was very kind of us to come back at all, and did not start for full five minutes, to assure us that we had caused no inconvenience. Certainly, it was one of those warm, still, delicious summer days on which _nobody wants to start_, satisfied with the calm enjoyment of the present, and so absorbed and occupied in doing nothing, that it seems to be quite a triumphal effort to rouse one's-self and light a cigar! At length, our charioteer speaks to his horses, whose drooping heads acknowledge the soporific influence of the day; and, awaking from their favourite night-mares, they bear us on our road to _Cork_.

Now we pass the tower, antique and ivy-clad, of _Carrigadrohid_, (nice name for a naughty pointer, requiring frequent reprimands on a broiling day in September!); a handsome residence on the hill beyond, with the pleasant waters of the river _Lee_, which accompanies us from its source at _Gougatie-Barra_ to _Cork_, winding below it; and change horses at _Dripsey_. Between this latter place and Cork, the signs of civilisation became so painfully prominent, and the scenery so excruciatingly English, that, having secured ourselves by our rug-straps, to the iron bar behind us, our “custom always of an afternoon,” when we felt inclined for a siesta, we closed our eyes in sadness, and tried to dream of Connamara and Killarney. But sights, too dreadful for description, scared sleep away. Carts, whereupon was gaudily emblazoned “Albert Bakery,” and “Collard and Collard” fascinated our unwilling gaze; and we shortly found ourselves among the suburbs disgustingly neat, and the houses offensively comfortable, of “that beautiful city called Cork.”

On the right and left, as you approach, are two very imposing and extensive structures, _Queen's College_, and (“great wit to madness nearly is allied”) _the Lunatic Asylum_,--the latter so large, that it might have been erected to accommodate those numerous patients who have lost their reason in vain attempts to understand Mr. Bradshaw's Railway Guide.

Cork is, indeed, a “beautiful city,” delightfully situated, handsomely built, and having more the appearance of energy, prosperity, and comfort, than any other city we saw in Ireland. To my fancy the old prophecy is fulfilled,--

“Limerick was, Dublin is, and Cork shall be The finest city of the three.”

The river Lee, dividing here, flows round the island on which principally the city stands; and upon the wooded hills above, the richer part of the community have their pleasant, healthful homes.

Now, although I have deplored our transition from the wild scenery of Connamara and Kerry to the formalities of cultivation and refinement, I am not so bigoted as to deny that civilisation has its advantages; and, among them, I would specially include “the Imperial Hotel” in Pembroke Street. An excellent dinner, in pleasant society (the exception being a vulgar, garrulous old female, who ate with her knife, and told us how, in one of the foreign churches, she had “tried very 'ard to convert _an aconite_, quite a genteel young man,”) followed by some irreproachable claret,

“with beaded bubbles, winking at the brim,”

disposed us to criticise very leniently the defects and inferiorities of art; and we left our inn to see the fireworks in the Mardyke Gardens, not only consoled, but cheery. All Cork appeared to be going in procession up that long avenue of fine old trees; and as the subsequent exhibition appeared to be quite satisfactory, I can pay “all Cork” the compliment of saying, that it is very easily pleased. To us, as we stood in the long, damp grass, and the varnish was retiring from our favourite boots, intervals of twenty minutes between the pyrotechnic performances soon began to be rather tedious; and we longed to repeat an experiment, originally introduced at the Henley Regatta, when a dozen of us combining, applied our cigars to all the “fixed pieces” at once, and the grand design, which was to crown the whole, anticipated its glories by a couple of hours, and wished the bewildered spectators “Good Night” (in glittering letters two feet long) almost as soon as they had paid for their admission!