Part 1

Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. Words printed in italics are noted with underscores: _italics_.

CONNAUGHT

Described by Stephen Gwynn

Pictured by Alexander Williams

BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY 1912

Beautiful Ireland

LEINSTER ULSTER MUNSTER CONNAUGHT

_Uniform with this Series_

Beautiful England

OXFORD THE ENGLISH LAKES CANTERBURY SHAKESPEARE-LAND THE THAMES WINDSOR CASTLE CAMBRIDGE NORWICH AND THE BROADS THE HEART OF WESSEX THE PEAK DISTRICT THE CORNISH RIVIERA DICKENS-LAND WINCHESTER THE ISLE OF WIGHT CHESTER AND THE DEE YORK

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Page

Lough Breenbannia _Frontispiece_

Lowlands, Ballinlough, Roscommon 8

Mweelrea and the Killary, from Tully Strand, Renvyle 14

A Fisherman's Home under Diamond Mountain, Ballynakill Bay 20

On the Owenbrin River, Lough Mask 26

Castle Kirke and Upper Lough Corrib 32

In the Pass of Delphi, Killary Bay 36

Wrack-Gathering on the West Coast 42

Croagh Patrick, from Oldhead, Clew Bay 46

The Minaun Cliffs, Achill Island 50

Nephin, from Lough Conn 54

Lough Gill 58

I

Connaught--or Connacht, as it is more properly spelt and spoken--is geographically the best-marked among the provinces of Ireland; and, as usual, other discriminations follow. I would not say that it is of all provinces the most Irish; nobody has better rights to stand for Ireland than the "boys of Wexford", and at a Wexford fair or meeting you will see scores of big farmers the very picture of Mr. Punch's John Bull, only not so round about the abdomen. But Connaught, Connaughtmen, and Connaught ways certainly come nearest to an Englishman's traditional conception of Ireland and its inhabitants; the stage Irishman is based upon Connaught characteristics. In West Mayo people do say "shtruck" (or in moments of emotion "shhtrruck"); and you can see still in places the traditional costumes. Shawled heads and bare feet are (thank goodness) to be met with all along the Atlantic seaboard; but the red petticoat (home-dyed with madder, though alas! aniline dyes are fast replacing the costlier and more beautiful crimson) is characteristic of Galway and Mayo; and in remote recesses of Joyce country and Connemara old and lovely fashions of braiding the hair and training ringlets to stray over the forehead still hold their own. In Connemara and on Aran, the tall lad of thirteen may still, though rarely, be seen in the long-petticoated shirt (his only garment) of red or blue flannel; but this is only a relic of sheer poverty. The men's clothes, however, keep to antique and excellent fashions: throughout Galway, east of the Corrib, almost everyone wears the cut-away skirted coat of dark heavy frieze, and for the most part its wearers hold to the custom of clean-shaven face with a narrow strip of close-cropped whisker past the cheekbones. In Connemara the "bawneen" or sleeved waistcoat of whitish flannel is general and very becoming to its wearers, among whom are to be found the handsomest men in Ireland. Kerry women, who in certain parts really have the "black-blue Irish hair and Irish eyes", may perhaps hold their own even with the girls of Connaught; but for fine-looking men I would back Galway against any county in the British Isles.

There is much talk of a Spanish strain on this coast, and undoubtedly commerce was constant between Galway Bay and the Iberian peninsula: but the truth is that you have in western Ireland, as in western Spain, survivals of a race which the red-haired people pushed off the good lands towards the limit of the sea. On the Claddagh at Galway I have seen a man at work in his cottage mending a net, who might have posed for the model of a Basque peasant; and the olive-skinned fisher folk about the great mackerel-curing station at Cleggan (near Clifden) are simply variants of a type that repeats itself along the coasts of Spain.

The people have changed very little in themselves since Lever wrote of them: where food has always been too scarce, as at the extremity of the Mullet peninsula curving about Blacksod Bay, famine and famine fever have weakened the stock terribly, and in such places you can see that looped and windowed raggedness and that squalor of hovels which go to make up the Englishman's conception of the sister island. But you can see also in markets in north Mayo many a handsome old man, springy and active even in his extreme age, who wears the blue tail coat, with its complement of brass buttons, which perhaps his father handed down to him--and a fine figure he makes in it, especially if he still keeps to the tight knee breeches and buckled shoes which were universal in his boyhood.

Here and there, too, the ancient beaver hat with its long nap still lingers: such things must be almost indestructible. A few years ago the beautiful ruin of Ross Errilly Abbey near Headford was guarded by an old peasant in this headgear; corduroy breeches and gaiters completed the picture. But on the whole, Connaught--more's the pity--is trouser-wearing like the rest of Europe: yet for all that the Connaught-man remains distinctive.

Smooth-tongued you will find them: supple you may think them: but the fire which kindles in Connaught is no flicker. Michael Davitt was born in a Mayo peasant's cabin, his earliest memory the eviction which drove him and his adrift on the world. He died in early middle age, yet before he died, what he himself called the Fall of Feudalism was accomplished: he himself, more than any other man, had destroyed the old order under which such eviction was the universal terror hanging over every peasant's head. Lord MacDonnell of Swinford was a poor man's son in Connaught, his parents hardly rich enough to equip him for the priesthood. He got an even cheaper education at the Queen's College in Galway, won his place in the Indian Civil Service, and there proved himself a governor as imperious and as capable and as beneficent as India had known since the Lawrences. It is a poor province, but it breeds notable men. I sat at dinner not long ago with three who had been at school together in the west, poor lads all of them. One had become bishop of his diocese; one was the best-known journalist in England and no mean force in politics; the third, perhaps, the greatest orator in America, something of a party to himself--but beyond all doubt a power.

It is perhaps well to remember such facts in visiting a country where poverty stares you in the face, where, at least in certain parts, it has become a disease. Courtesy in the poor is apt to seem obsequious; yet courtesy is of all things most native to Connaught, and it is finest shown where the folk have acquired some stable security. I fished one afternoon with an old man in a lake in the mountains behind Leenane, a poor man but evidently not needy; he and his wife pressed on us the best they had to give, and because our fishing had been unsuccessful, wanted to refuse all payment. What we paid was little enough for those hours of easy paddling in the sunshine amid noble hills, and for the pleasure of that old boatman's wise, shrewd, and witty company.

That lake--Lough na Fooey--lies midway, beautiful itself but unutterably wild, between the two most beautiful centres in Connaught: between Killary Bay and the upper end of Lough Corrib. With Lough na Fooey for centre, a radius of twenty miles would take in all or almost all the scenic beauty of County Galway--and a good deal of what is finest in Mayo. North of that again is fine scenery about Westport: then comes the superb cliff-front of Achill: then after a long interval, you come again to Sligo with yet another noble grouping of mountain, lake, river, and sea.

In the other two of Connaught's five counties--Roscommon and Leitrim--there is very little to tempt the tourist; though a great deal of interest for the student in Irish history, whether of to-day or the remotest past. Croghan, Cruachan, was the seat of Connaught's kingdom when Emain Macha at Armagh made a fortress for the Red Branch chivalry. It was from Cruachan that Maeve and her army set out to win the Brown Bull of Cooley to enrich the Connaught herds; and to-day no part of Ireland has greater store of fine cattle, fine sheep, and fine horses than Roscommon's fertile plains. Nor is there anywhere better to see that work of resettling on the good land (left for decades in mere prairie) those people whose fathers were huddled too thick on the bogs and moors where grass would not grow. Roscommon contributes more than its share--though five counties take a part--to what is still the great event of the year in Connaught, the fair of Ballinasloe, lasting through the first week in October. To that wonderful muster comes the pick of all the sheep and cattle, and above all, of the horses from western and central Ireland. The sheep fair, held in Lord Clancarty's demesne, covers a huge space of the park--Galway, Roscommon, and Tipperary each having its allotted quarter: but unless you rise early, all you will see is trampled ground, over which hangs the greasy smell of wool, and only some few scores of the twenty thousand animals that were gathered there, by pen and pen, in the grey dawn, bleating and huddling together. But any day and all day in the week, on the broad fair green outside the town you may see the best of Ireland's horses being galloped and trotted and shown off and examined--for the benefit of buyers from over all Europe. You may hear German, Italian, French, Spanish, all, or any of them spoken on that astonishing mart; and you may observe the likeness in diversity which stamps itself upon horsey men, whatever their nationality.

Except on a fair day, Ballinasloe has no special interest or beauty, but five miles west of it lies the field of Aughrim, where was fought the greatest though not the most decisive battle of the Williamite wars. It is easy to trace the lie of the fight, along the range of hillocks by Aughrim where St. Ruth, James's general, took up position, facing the bog which divided him from Urrachree, to which Ginkel had moved out from Ballinasloe. Till quite lately a thorn-tree marked the spot where St. Ruth lay, struck down by a cannon shot as he headed what should have been the decisive charge. One can guess, too, at the position behind the ridges, where the Frenchman's jealousy kept Ireland's own leader, Sarsfield, out of action with the reserves, chafing for action, till St. Ruth's fall disorganized everything, and the call for Sarsfield came too late. In the north of Ireland they still perform a play representing this great encounter, and every Orangeman is more anxious to be Sarsfield than any hero on the Orange side.

But no one goes to Aughrim in search of beauty (in truth no one goes there at all, which is a strange effect of indifference to history), and on the main Connaught line you do not reach fine scenery till at Oranmore an old castle rises by the inner shallow waters of Galway Bay, here strewn with numberless little reefs and islets.--Salute the best stretch of oyster-breeding water which these counties know: Galway Bay oysters, from Red Bank on the Clare side, to Ardfry where the Department of Agriculture controls a spawning ground a few miles from Galway itself, are not only the best in flavour but the freest from any suspicion of pollution of all oysters in the world, and in Galway at the proper season they should always be demanded by every visitor while it is still time: for the English market will almost certainly engross them, when it becomes really aware of their existence. Ten years ago as you travelled in summer round the coast of Galway or Mayo, the hotels were not splendid, their menu was rudimentary, but always there was a dish of lobsters big and little piled up in careless profusion; you ate one or two or three as the fancy took you. Now, you hardly buy a lobster along that coast; a company has contracted for the whole take, fishermen bring them in their curraghs to a depot where they are put into anchored crates, until the steamer comes up to collect and direct them into that vast maw which has its tentacles exploring the very shores of Iceland and Russia for daily supply.

Still, when you get to Connemara or Mayo, you will not grudge these folk the access to a market which makes lobster fishing almost the most profitable of their industries. Along Galway Bay you look out over one of the most beautiful scenes in Ireland, and the most barren. Across, opposite you, is the mountainous shore of Clare, where, in the limestone district called Burren, Ireton (down there on some errand of mercy) reported that there was not water enough to drown a man, soil enough to bury him, nor wood enough to hang him. Off the mouth of the bay, making a natural breakwater for its superb natural harbour, lie the three islands of Aran which are, like Burren, built up of flat limestone slabs--in whose crevices there grows herbage, sweet and nourishing for cattle; but how human beings, let alone cows, travel those rocks without breaking a leg a week in the fissures passes all comprehension.

Rocky though the soil, these waters are not barren, and Aran lives by its nets, and lives much better than it did in the old days before the Congested Districts Board set up the folk with strong boats and good gear, and established a steamer to bring them in touch with the market. Yet Synge's wonderful and terrible little drama, _Riders to the Sea_, tells the true story of their life, shows how encompassed it is at any moment by the deadliest peril; for the waves on that western coast have been seen to break where there was nearly a hundred feet in depth of water, so vast, so tremendous are the movements of storm where the Atlantic swings in its full force upon the first bulwark it meets--a bulwark planted in the deep, and dreadfully sudden therefore in its check to the whole power of ocean.

That is what gives a special character to all the scenery of western Ireland. It is not only sea you are looking at, it is ocean: ocean in its full depth within a few miles of the shore, and the blueness of deep water is a very different thing from the blue of the Irish Channel or the English, to say nothing of the yellowish waters of the North Sea. And the wash of waves there, even on a calm day, has in it a slow, heavy rhythm, a sense of power which rocks and soothes the senses. But to face that sea on that coast, not only rockbound but flanked with a line of reefs and islands, in hooker or pookaun or canvas-covered curragh, is an enterprise that might well dismay. Yet, oddly enough, these men whose daily life is one long risk of drowning, who endanger themselves times innumerable in the mere act of entering or leaving a curragh when a sea runs, are more frightened than women by the unknown adventure of sailing in a strong vessel clear away to sea, and when they first lose sight of land and see only water round them, they will lie down and give themselves over for lost.

All the north shore of Galway Bay is long, low, and indented with a hundred creeks and bays. It is the paradise of fishermen, full of small lakes connected by little rivers up which the white trout run as nowhere else, and on a good day you may kill three or four dozen--but such fishings are of course not for the chance comer. The most famous and beautiful of these lake and river systems is that of Ballynahinch, once the home of the Martins--types of all that was kindest, oddest, wildest, and most feudal in the old feudal days. Miss Edgeworth came there on a journey in the early days of last century, while roads as yet were little more than a name, and the illness of a travelling companion detained her party as guests for a stay that ran into weeks: lucky chance, to which we owe a picture, such as she only could sketch, of that primitive family hospitality, its table loaded with delicacies of the wilds, salmon, venison, oysters, and the rest, presided over by a host used to administer patriarchal justice among the clansmen, sometimes by form of law, sometimes by the strong fist. The hostess was a lady of the old school; but strangest and most picturesque of all, was their one child, a daughter, the lovely "Princess of Connemara", creature of the mountains no less than any Flora MacIvor with her train of ragged gillies--yet instructed not only in the modern tongues but also in the ancient classics. She read the Greek poets, back there among her ragged mountain peaks: she spoke fluently a French which savoured oddly of the camp, for her teacher was a waif from Napoleon's armies, and this young chieftainess had the French Revolution in her heart.--God be with the old days, now passed clean out of sight, if not out of mind. When the Martin estate went down in the ruin that involved so many of the landed gentry sixty years ago, it at least perished nobly; for the Martin of that day beggared himself in the effort to feed the population that was starving by thousands in the great famine. Old folk remember still the _droch-aimsir_, the bad times, all over Ireland: yet in the nakedness of Connemara I have not heard any such awful tales as come down by word of mouth and written record relating to places far less out of reach of help.

The Martins are gone from Ballynahinch and a newcomer has their home, and for the moment something of their lordship, though here the Congested Districts Board is at last seriously at work, striving to settle the people not only on holdings of their own, but on holdings which may support them. But the beauty of that region is unchanged: the mountain group which we call the Twelve Pins rises in peaks from out of moor and lake and river: the marble which it holds glistens in rain and sun: and whether you see it from the south by the shore of Galway Bay, from Camus water near Rosmuck, or beside the broader water of Kilkerrin, or from the west where Ballinakill Bay runs up in creeks and windings towards the pretty village of Letterfrack,--wherever you take your view point, no mountain group in all Ireland can quite compare with it for grace and for perfection of line.

At Recess, near Ballynahinch, where is the railway hotel, one is too close under the heights, too shut in; to see the Connemara Mountains rightly, they should be seen from the shore of the sea. Clifden, where the railway has its terminus, is a little too far off; and upon the whole my choice would be for Letterfrack (_Leitir-bhreac_, the speckled meadow) on the shore of Ballinakill, where a delightful river has its outfall. Yet perhaps one who cared less for the running water and its chance of fish would like that country best of all from Renvyle, where an old country house is kept open as a hotel--facing the Atlantic, and commanding full view not of the Twelve Pins only but of the mountains which lie about Killary harbour and beyond.

Killary is the deep narrow cleft which strikes far in past the base of Mweelrea, the highest mountain in all Connaught, and runs up to where the flank of the Devil's Mother divides the village of Leenane from the outflow of the Erriff river, plunging over the fall at Aasleigh. I recite a litany of names well known to every angler in the west--and to more than anglers, for the hotel at Leenane is a halting place on the coachroad which follows the coast from Clifden to Westport; and no sea lough in all Ireland is more beautiful than Killary on its own day.

Leenane is on the boundary of the two counties, Galway and Mayo (which latter name is properly pronounced with the accent on the _o_). From the hamlet a steep road runs back climbing the skirts of the Devil's Mother--where eagles build--and then plunges down the pass which leads to Maam at the upper end of Lough Corrib, and so to the isthmus of Cong, under which water makes a subterranean pathway for the eels of Lough Mask into Corrib, whence they go by the weir at Galway (where eel traps take toll of them) to their spawning grounds in the deepest sea.

This road is one of the boundaries about the region of the Twelve Pins, through which wild sanctuary no made track for wheels has been driven. You have the Pins (or "Bens" rather) on the south as you go from Leenane to Maam; on the west as you go from Maam to Maam Cross; on the north from Maam Cross to Recess, and on the east as you take the beautiful road from Recess by Lough Inagh, and so through the defile at Kylemore, where the great house stands with long terrace facing on to the exquisite lower lake, approached by a roadway along which are mile-long hedges of crimson fuchsia. Kylemore means the Big Wood, and the name is natural enough, for here only in Connemara is there any considerable growth of trees; the country is too bare and wild for them. At Carna, on the shore of Galway Bay, can be seen the lamentable remains of an experimental plantation, replaced now by a new and much more successful planting of the New Zealand flax, which with its yucca-like fronds grows very freely on the west, and gives some hope of a new industry.

But beyond Maam, on the shores of Corrib, is wooding and to spare; none denser, more undisturbed. About Cong are the famous woodcock covers where Lord Ardilaun's guests have killed five hundred birds in a day. Almost every island on the lake (and there is said to be an island for every day in the year) is set thick with leafage, and there are those who claim that Corrib where it broadens out between Cong and Oughterard is a rival to Killarney. I do not seek to decide such a contention; but the place is far richer in antiquarian interest than Killarney, and infinitely less tourist-ridden.

It is no business of mine here to write about hotels; but still one wishes to show what is practicable for those who may care to explore this great line of western lakes. By far the easiest way to go is by the little steamer from Galway to Cong--a run of some thirty miles, done very leisurely. There is a comfortable inn at Cong: a larger one three or four miles off at Clonbur; at Ballinrobe, I suppose, quarters can be had, and certainly in Tourmakeady on the west shore of Mask. If, however, you have followed the line from Recess to Letterfrack, and so to Leenane, then there is an admirable possibility for varying the journey. Take the road from Leenane to Maam. Halfway down it, near Kilmilkin, another road turns off steeply to the left so that you still contrive to skirt the Devil's Mother; and after a mile or two through bog, it goes corkscrewing down a woeful hill, and you are in the basin of Lough na Fooey, high among the hills of Joyce Country. Beyond the lake the road climbs again to emerge from that basin, and you pelt away down the long slope of Maamtrasna, the valley at the head of upper Lough Mask. Savage memories dwell there; memories of killings between peasants in the land war of the 'eighties, memories of high diplomatic slaughter when the heir to the earldom of Ulster was done away with in Illaun an Iarla, a little island which your driver will show you. The Stauntons who carried out that killing kept a bad name from it through centuries of Irish tradition.