Part 20

We had come to Clonmel solely to pass the night, since it was the only place where we might count on fair accommodations. We had gone somewhat out of our way, for we must turn northward for Cashel, whose cathedral is perhaps the most remarkable ruin in the Kingdom. It is nearly twenty miles from Clonmel, and the road is surprisingly good.

We soon came in sight of the mighty rock which legend--ever busy in Ireland--declares was torn from the distant hills by the enraged devil and flung far out into the plain of Tipperary. When the fiend performed this wonderful feat, it perhaps did not occur to him that he was supplying a site for a church; but had he exercised moderate foresight he would have known that no such opportunity would be neglected by the cathedral builders. And so it chanced that more than a thousand years ago the fortified church that rears its vast granite bulk upon the rock was begun. It grew by various accretions until it stood complete in the twelfth century. It has passed through fire and siege, but the massy walls are still as solid as the granite on which they stand. The roadway winds up the side of the rock and we are able to drive to the very entrance. A group of youngsters is awaiting us, and one unspeakably dirty and ragged little fellow volunteers to "watch the car."

The custodian greets us at the gate, a keen old fellow, well posted in the history and tradition of his native land and speaking with little trace of brogue. He learns that we are from America; his brother is over there and doing well, as he reckons it, in that Eldorado of every Irishman forced to remain at home.

"O, yes! it is a great country, and how closely the old sod is bound to it; there is no house that you will pass in all your journeys that has not someone there. It has been the one hope of my life to go to America, but it has slipped away from me. I am too old now and must die and be buried in Cashel."

He said this with a look of sadness, which suddenly forsook his face as he noted our interest in the ruin. It was the joy of his life to tell the story of its every nook and corner.

We found a strange mixture of art and crudity; the square, unadorned lines of the walls and towers would not lead one to expect the exquisite artistic touches that are seen here and there. The great structure once served the purpose of a royal residence as well as a cathedral. The date of the stone-roofed chapel is placed at 1127; that of the perfect round tower is unknown, though doubtless much earlier. The active history of the cathedral-fortress closed with its surrender to the forces of Cromwell, which was followed by the massacre of the garrison and dismantling of the buildings.

Our guide urges us to ascend the tower--it is the day of all days to see the golden vale of Tipperary from such a viewpoint--and indeed the prospect proves an enchanting one. It is a perfect day and the emerald-green valley lies shimmering under the expanse of pale-blue sky. In the far distance on every hand are the purple outlines of the hills--they call them mountains in Ireland--and stretching away toward them the pleasant fields intersected by sinuous threads of country roads. The landscape is cut up into little patches by the stone fences and gleams with tiny whitewashed cottages. Flashing streams course through the valley and herds of cattle graze upon the luxuriant grasses. It is a scene of perfect peace, and though the lot of the people may be one of poverty, it is doubtless one of contentment. Right at the foot of the ruin-crowned rock lies the wretched little town, and on leaving the cathedral we stop in the market place. A busy scene greets our eyes; it is market day and the people of the surrounding country are thronging the streets. The market place is full of donkey carts and our car seems in strange company. Old crones with shawls thrown over their heads, barefooted and brown as Indians, are selling gooseberries and cabbages. There appears to be little else in the market and business is far from brisk. There are many husky farmers from the country and bright-looking young maidens that seem of a different race from the old market women. We see and hear much to interest us during our hour's stop in Cashel.

To one other Tipperary shrine we must make a pilgrimage--Holy Cross Abbey, which is only a few miles away. We see its low square tower just above the trees as we approach the town which bears the same name as the abbey, and we find the caretaker living in wretchedly dirty quarters in a part of the ruin. A genuine surprise awaits the visitor to Holy Cross Abbey. Like Cashel, its outlines give no hint of the superb and even delicate touches of art one will find about the ruin. Nothing of the kind could be more perfect than the east window, in which the stone tracery and slender mullions are quite intact, and there are other windows, doors and arches of artistic design and execution. The abbey stands on the banks of the Suir, and it is just across the shallow river that one gets the finest viewpoint. It took its name from the tradition that it once possessed a portion of the true cross which had been given it by Queen Eleanor of England, one of whose six sons was buried here. And thus it chances that a brother of Richard the Lion-Hearted sleeps amid the mouldering fragments of Holy Cross. The footprints of history cross and recross one another in these ancient shrines, and how often they bring remote sections of the Kingdom to common ground!

Leaving Cashel on the main highway to Cork, we begin to verify the stories we have heard of the dreadful condition of much of the Irish roads. We have so far found them stony, rough and ill-kept in places, but on the whole fair to one who has had much experience with very bad roads. But we now come into a broad stone road that has been neglected for years, and words are quite inadequate to characterize it. It is a series of bumps and depressions over which the car bounces and jumps along, seemingly testing every bolt and rivet to the utmost. Any speed except one so slow as to be out of the question results in the most distressful jolting, to which there is not a moment's respite. A fine gray dust covers the road to a depth of two or three inches and rolls away from the wheels in dense clouds. There is considerable traffic and for several miles along one section are military barracks; the soldiers are maneuvering on the road with cavalry and artillery. Some of the horses go wild at the car and it is only by great effort that the soldiers bring them under control. But the dust they kick up! It hangs over the road like a fog and makes the sky seem a dull gray. It settles thickly over the car, almost stifling its occupants, for it is really warm. On we go--bounce, bump, half blinded and nearly choked. Why did we ever come to Erin, anyway?--we could have gotten this experience at less cost nearer home. There are few towns on the road; Caher, Mitchelstown and Fermoy, all bald and untidy, are the only places of any size. We pass through the "mountains" for a considerable distance, but the wretched road and blinding dust distracts attention from the country, which in places is rather pretty. Our route is well away from the railroad and we see much of retired rural sections which would not be easily accessible by other means of travel. The infrequent cottages are mean and dirty, but those we saw later were so much worse that the recollection of the first is nearly effaced.

Never did a hotel seem more inviting to us than did the Imperial at Cork. The car and everything about it is a dirty gray; one tire is flat, and has been--we don't know how long. But we are fortunate in our hotel and our troubles are soon forgotten. Our room is an immense high-ceilinged apartment with massive furniture and a vast deal of bric-a-brac, including a plaster bust of Washington. There are plenty of settees and easy chairs--things uncommon enough in hotels to merit special mention. We have an excellent dinner served just to suit, and the experiences of the day soon begin to appear in a different light than they did when we were undergoing them. We are soon in the ample tall-posted beds, clean and unspeakably comfortable, and our sleep is too deep to even dream of Irish roads and motor cars.

XIX

THROUGH SOUTHERN IRELAND

Cork is the gateway by which a large number of visitors enter Ireland, and is pretty sure to be on the route of anyone making a tour of the Island. It manifestly has no place in this record, nor has Blarney Castle, the most famous ruin in the world--among Americans, at least. And yet, who could write of an Irish tour and make no reference to Blarney. We may be pardoned for a hasty glance at our visit to the castle on the day after our arrival at Cork.

The head porter at the Imperial, clad in his faultless moss-green uniform, the stateliest and clearly the most important man in the hotel, marshals his assistants and they strap our luggage to the car--he does no work himself, nor would anyone be so presumptuous as to expect it of a man of such mighty presence. We recognize the fact that his fee must be in proportion to his dignity, and he receives it much as his forefathers, the ancient Irish kings, exacted tribute from their vassals. He is not content to have us take the direct route to Blarney, only five or six miles, but tells us of a longer but more picturesque route and gives us a rather confusing lot of directions, which we have some little difficulty in following. Suffice it to say that after a deal of inquiry and much wandering through steep stony lanes--an aggregate of more than fifteen miles out of our way--we catch sight of the square-topped tower of Blarney and hear the shouts and laughter of a train-load of excursionists who are just arriving.

Though annoying at the time, we now have no regret for the many miles we went astray; we saw much of rural life along these lonely little lanes. We passed tiny huts as wretched as any we saw in Ireland, which is to say they were wretched beyond description; but in them were cheery, good-natured people whose efforts to tell us the way to Blarney only got us farther from it.

Blarney Castle to some extent deserves the encomiums that have been so lavishly heaped upon it. It is the one place in Ireland that every tourist is expected to see; and its fame is probably due more to its mythical Blarney stone than to its historical importance. As we saw it on a perfect summer day, the great square tower with overhanging battlements rising out of the dense emerald foliage and darkly outlined against the bluest of Irish skies, it seemed to breathe the very spirit of chivalry, but a rude, barbarous chivalry, for all that. From the tower, which we ascended by ruinous and difficult stairs, the view was magnificent, though the groves, famous in song and story, have been largely felled. And after all, Blarney seems rather "blase" on close acquaintance, with its throngs of trippers and souvenir hawkers at every turn. Even the Blarney stone is a sham, a new one having been placed in a rebuilt portion of the wall knocked down by Cromwell's cannon; the original is said to be quite inaccessible.

During the afternoon we follow the valley of the Lee over a road that averages fairly good and that seldom takes us out of sight of the river. In many places it ascends the rugged hills and affords a far-reaching prospect over the valley. At Macroom, the only town of any size, the road branches; one may cross the hills and reach Killarney in only twenty miles or may follow the coast along Kenmare River and Dingle Bay, a total of about one hundred and twenty miles. While we pause in the village street, a respectable-looking citizen, divining the cause of our hesitation, approaches us. He urges us to take the coast route, for there is nothing finer in Ireland. We can heartily second his enthusiastic claims, but would go farther--there is nothing finer in the world.

The Eccles Hotel is a rambling old house, situated at the head of Bantry Bay on Glengariff Harbor. It stands beneath the sharply rising hill and only the highway lies between it and the water's edge; the outlook from its veranda is not surpassed by any we saw in the Kingdom, not even by the enchanting harbor of Oban or the glorious surroundings of Tintagel. True, we saw it at its best, just as the sun was setting and transforming the blue waters into a sheet of burnished gold. As far as the eye can reach the long inlet lies between bare granite headlands, interspersed here and there with verdant banks, while the bright waters were dotted with wooded islets. The sun sank beneath the horizon, purple shadows gathered in the distance, and the harbor gleamed mirrorlike in the twilight. An old coast-defense castle, standing on a headland near the entrance, lent the needed touch of human interest to the scene. Well might Thackeray exclaim, "Were such a bay lying upon English shores it would be a world's wonder. Perhaps if it were on the Mediterranean or Baltic, English travellers would flock to it by the hundreds. Why not come and see it in Ireland?" Indeed, more are coming to see it today; the hotel was crowded almost to our exclusion and we had to take what was left. The motor is bringing many, for it is more than ten miles from Bantry, the nearest railway station, and is not easily accessible to travelers whose time is somewhat limited.

Our route from Glengariff leads directly over the hills to Kenmare. The ascent is steep in places and a long tunnel pierces the crest of the hill. We see much weather-beaten country, stretches of purple granite boulders devoid of vegetation and bleak beyond description. From the summit of the hills we glide down a winding and stony road into Kenmare, passing with considerable difficulty many coaches loaded with trippers, for this is a favorite coaching route.

Someone has said that Ireland is like an ugly picture set in a beautiful frame. We may dissent from the view that the interior is ugly; we have seen much charming country, though on the whole not the equal of England or Scotland. The vast peat bogs are dreary, the meadowlands monotonous, the villages, if interesting, far from beautiful, and the detached cottages often positively painful in their filth and squalor. But the frame of the picture--the glorious coast line--surely, mile for mile, its equal may hardly be found on the globe. One will behold every mood of sea and shore and sky; beauty and grandeur combined and every range of coloring, from the lucent gold of the sunset and the deep blue stillness of the summer noonday to the gray monotone of the storm-swept granite waste.

Out of Kenmare, we follow the wide estuary of the river, leaving it only when the road sweeps a few miles inland to the village of Sneem. And we behold this Sneem in astonishment; we have seen nothing so primitive and poverty-stricken since we landed in Ireland, nor do we see anything later that may match it in apparent wretchedness. Two or three long rows of low thatched-covered cottages--the thatch green with weeds--of one or two rooms each, with sagging doors and tiny windows, make up the village. The interior of the huts is the plainest imaginable; earthen floors, rough stone walls and open roof under the rotting thatch. The cottages surround a weed-grown common where the domestic animals roam at will. A native approaches us, a man of fair intelligence, who talks freely of the wretched condition of the people. All who were able to get away have gone to America; only the old, the desperately poor, and the incompetent remain, and what can one expect under such conditions? Many eke out their existence on the money that comes from over the sea. There is no use trying to improve the situation; if anyone has any ambition, there is no chance for him in Ireland, and the speaker illustrates with concrete instances. No doubt Sneem is typical of many retired villages. It is twenty-five miles to the nearest railroad, and to see this phase of Ireland the motor is indispensible.

The road soon takes us again to the estuary of the Kenmare, following it to the extreme western point of Kerry, with views of river and ocean on one hand and the stern granite hills on the other. Cahersiveen is the terminus of the railway and famous in Ireland as the birthplace of Daniel O'Connell. A memorial chapel of gray granite overshadows everything else in the village, which, mean and dirty as it is, looks live and prosperous to one coming from Sneem. Just out of the town is the ivy-covered ruin of Carhan House, where O'Connell was born.

I would that the language were mine to even faintly portray the transcendent beauty of Dingle Bay, along which we course most of the afternoon. The day is serenely perfect and the sky is clear save for a few fleecy clouds that drift lazily along the horizon. Our road climbs the hills fronting on the bay--in places the water lies almost sheer beneath us--and the panorama that lies before us is like a fairyland. Of the deepest liquid blue imaginable, the still water stretches out to the hills beyond the bay, which fade away, range after range, into the dun and purple haze of the distance; in places their tops are swept by low-hung clouds of dazzling whiteness--an effect of light and color indescribably glorious. We have seen the Scotch, Swiss and Italian lakes, and, second to none of them, our own Lake George, but among them all there is no match for this splendid ocean inlet on such a day as this. And truly, the day is the secret of the beauty; the color and the distant hills vanish in the gray mists that so often envelop the Irish coast.

It is a jar to one's sensibilities to pass from such lofty and inspiring scenes into Killorglin, the shabbiest, filthiest, most utterly devil-may-care village we see in the Island. It does not show the almost picturesque poverty of Sneem, but for sheer neglect and utter lack of anything in the nature of civic pride, we must give Killorglin the supremacy among numerous competitors for the honor--or rather, dishonor. The market square is covered with masses of loose stone intermingled with filth; the odors are what might be expected from the general condition of the town. There is little temptation to linger here, and we make hasty inquiries for the Killarney road. It proves dreadfully rough and stony, a broad and apparently once excellent highway, but now quite neglected. There is nothing to detain us on the way and we soon turn into the grounds of the Victoria Hotel just before we reach Killarney.

The Victoria, fronting on the lake, is most pretentious, but there are many little signs of the laxity and untidiness that is seen everywhere in Ireland. We wait long for a porter to remove the luggage from the car, and finally begin the task ourselves, when the porter appears and takes our chaffing good-naturedly. An old lame crow--he has been a hanger-on at the Victoria for fifteen years, the porter says, and comes regularly to the kitchen yard for food--clings to a chimney pot and pours out his harsh guttural jargon.

"Swearing at us, isn't he?" we remark.

"Not at all," answers the ready-witted son of Erin. "That's just his way of expressin' his pleasure at your arrival."

The Royal Victoria boasts of even a more astonishing array of distinguished and royal guests than the Royal Bath at Bournemouth--both have surely earned the prefix to their names. In the drawing-rooms were posted letters and autographs of royalty from King Edward (as Prince of Wales) down to ordinary lords and ladies; and there were also letters from other guests of distinction, including well-known Americans. All of which only partially atoned for the rather slack service which we found in many particulars. Still, the Royal Victoria suffered from no lack of patronage; we had telegraphed the day before and yet with difficulty were able to secure satisfactory accommodations.

I will not write of Killarney's "Lakes and Fells," pre-eminently the tourist center of Ireland. The drive to Muckross Abbey and along the shores of the lake is one of surpassing beauty, though the road is narrow and crooked. Much of the drive is through the private grounds of Lord Ardilaun, the poetical title which has been accorded to Mr. Guinness, whose "stout" has given him a wider and more substantial fame than he can ever hope for from a mere title of nobility. However, the famous product is responsible for the title, since the wealthy brewer was elevated to the peerage ostensibly on account of his immense benefactions to the city of Dublin. His Killarney house--one of several he owns in Ireland--a modern mansion in the Elizabethan style, may be plainly seen from the road. And one can hardly wonder that Lord Ardilaun has thriven greatly and built up what is freely advertised as the largest brewery in the world, when he has such an unlimited market for his product right at home--for Ireland is cursed with drink perhaps beyond any country on earth. Fortunately there is now a marked tendency toward improvement and the Catholic church is exerting a strong influence against the drink evil.

But these reflections are not altogether germane to the transcendent lake whose bright waters shimmer through the trees or ripple gently on some open beach as we course along them. Out beyond lie the mountains against the pale sapphire sky of a perfect summer morning, and the lake makes a glorious mirror for its wooded islands and encircling hills. We pass the "meeting of the waters," crossing a rustic bridge over the narrow strait. Altogether, there is a succession of delightful scenery, which the motor car affords the ideal means of seeing.

But I am poorly carrying out my resolution not to write of Killarney, though surely the theme tempts one to linger; there is much I have not even hinted at; Ross Castle and Muckross Abbey alone might occupy many pages were I competent to fill them. But we will leave them all, though we must pause a moment in the town itself, surely a paradise for lovers of Irish laces and for seekers after trinkets and souvenirs galore. It is rather cleaner and more substantial than the average small Irish town, yet Killarney and its environs have all the earmarks of a tourist-thronged resort and in this particular, at least, are disappointing. While there is much of beauty and interest, we cannot help a feeling as we leave the town behind us that some of the encomiums may have been a little over-enthusiastic.

But Killarney rapidly recedes as we hasten toward Tralee through a country whose bleak hill-ranges alternate with still drearier peat bogs, often of great extent. Everywhere one sees piles of cut and dried peat, the almost universal fuel in Ireland. Its use is evidenced by the thin blue smoke curling from the rude chimneys and by the pungent odor as it falls to the earth under the lowering sky. For the sky has become overcast and gray. We have had--very unusual, too, they tell us--several days of perfect weather; the rule is almost daily showers in Ireland during the summer.