Part 15

The eighth earl subdued all the native chieftains and made them submit to English authority. An early historian describes him as "A mightie man of stature, full of honoure and courage, who has bin Lord Deputie and Lord Justice of Ireland three and thirtie yeares. He was in government milde, to his enemies stearne, he was open and playne; hardley able to rule himself, but could well rule others; in anger he was sharp and short, being easily displeased and easily appeased."

Thomas Gerald, the twelfth earl, having incurred the enmity of Cardinal Wolsey, was called to England and committed to the Tower for treason. When he left Ireland he intrusted his official authority and responsibilities to his son and heir, familiarly known as "Silken Thomas," because of the gorgeous trappings of his retinue. The boy was then but twenty-one, bold, brave, patriotic, and generous, and became the victim of a plot devised by agents of Cardinal Wolsey, who spread a report that his father had been beheaded in the Tower. The impetuous young lord left the Castle of Maynooth, rode into Dublin, and, entering the chamber where the council sat, openly renounced his allegiance to the King of England, gave his reasons and laid mace and sword, the symbols of office, upon the table. Archbishop Cromer, the lord chancellor, besought him to reconsider, explaining that the rumor from London might be false, and the young earl was about to yield when the voice of the family bard, who had followed him to Dublin, was heard through the window singing the death song of the Kildares. "Silken Thomas" seized his sword, summoned the Geraldines, the family clan, which was the mightiest and most numerous in Ireland, assaulted the castle, and soon involved the entire country in a desperate revolution. When the old earl heard the news in his cell in the Tower he sent a message to Henry VIII. asking pardon for the rashness of his son and then died of a broken heart.

All Ireland was in flames; three-fourths of Kildare County and the greater part of Meath was burned; thousands of innocent people died of starvation and thousands in battle before the rebellion was suppressed. Finally Kildare, who was then but twenty-four, surrendered upon a promise that he should receive full pardon when he arrived in London and renewed his allegiance personally to the king. This pledge was shamefully violated. Henry VIII. refused to receive him, and sent him to the Tower, where for eighteen months he lay neglected and in great misery. He wrote an old servant asking money for clothes, saying: "I have gone shirtless and barefoot and bare-legged divers times, and so I should have done still but that poor prisoners of their gentleness hath sometimes given me old hosen and shirts and shoes."

Five of his uncles, although it was well known that three of them had remained stanch adherents of the crown, were hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, Feb. 8, 1537, and orders went forth from Henry VIII. that the house of Kildare should be exterminated.

Gerald, the baby heir, the only survivor of his race, was wrapped in warm flannels by Thomas Leverus, afterward Bishop of Kildare, carried across bog and mountain, and committed to the protection of the O'Brians, who by sending the infant from place to place were able to save its life. The O'Brians passed the child over to the MacCarthys, and Lady Eleanor MacCarthy, a widow, disguised as a peasant, conveyed him to St. Mels, France, upon a fishing boat. Even there he was pursued from one place of refuge to another, by detectives and adventurers in hopes of the great reward, until finally he obtained a safe retreat in Rome, where Cardinal Pole, a distant relative, protected and educated him. When he grew to manhood he entered the service of Cosmo de Medicis, the great Duke of Florence, with whom he remained until Henry VIII., the vindictive enemy of his family, was dead. He could then return in safety to his native country, and Queen Mary soon after pardoned him and restored his hereditary titles and estates. Fourteen generations of Kildares have passed across the stage since then, and the present Duke of Leinster represents a family that has had more exciting experiences than any other in the United Kingdom.

XI

DROGHEDA, AND THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE

One of the loveliest railway or automobile rides in Ireland is from Dublin northward to the ancient town of Drogheda (pronounced Drawdah). The railroad runs parallel with the highway along the shore of St. George's Channel. Both touch several popular seaside resorts, fishing settlements, and busy manufacturing towns, which alternate with beautiful pastures filled with sleek cattle and unshorn sheep, and here and there ivy-clad towers and little groups of chimney pots rise above the foliage. The pastures and meadows, when we saw them, blazing with yellow buttercups, looked like the Field of the Cloth of Gold. They are divided into small plots by hedges of hawthorn twelve and fifteen feet high, which in the early summer are as white as banks of snow, and so fragrant that the perfume floated into the car windows.

Between the meadows and the pastures along the coast are plots of cultivated ground, gardens of potatoes, cabbages, and other vegetables and glorious groves. It isn't a bit like the Ireland one expects to see after reading newspaper accounts of the terrible conditions that the politicians complain of. It is not a country of downtrodden peasants and a wretched tenantry crushed under the heels of oppressive landlords. Right is not upon the scaffold in that section of Ireland, nor is wrong upon the throne. On the contrary, every evidence of prosperity and contentment and happiness abounds. The neatly whitewashed, straw-thatched cottages are surrounded with gay gardens filled with old-fashioned flowers, such as you see in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Large stables and storehouses are attached to almost every cottage, which indicates that the farmer has something to put in them. The traveler cannot see the mansions of the rich, because they are hidden in glorious parks and protected by high walls. Occasionally in the distance, however, he can catch glimpses of the towers of ancient castles, each having a romance or a tragedy, and sometimes several of both, contained in their history.

At Malehide forty or fifty golf players alighted from the train, with kits of clubs over their shoulders, for there are two links near that village--one for an exclusive club of rich Dubliners, and the other for any one who is able to pay half a crown for the privilege of chasing a little gutta-percha ball over the grass. Malehide is a lovely place, situated on the seashore at the mouth of a little stream called Meadow Water, with hotels of all grades and prices, fashionable and unfashionable, and some of them are open for health seekers the year around.

The chief attraction to tourists is the ancient castle of the Talbot family, who have owned and occupied it continuously for seven hundred years, an unusual record for Ireland or for anywhere else. The original castle, built about 1180, in the reign of Henry II., is still standing, although modern restorations and additions have changed it much. The exterior has suffered more than the interior. The dining-hall, a very large apartment, is considered one of the finest rooms in Ireland. The wainscoting and the ceiling are of oak, richly carved, and mellowed by exposure for more than six centuries. The chimney-piece, an exquisite example of fourteenth century carving, represents the Conception. From 1653 to 1660 the castle was inhabited by Miles Corbet, the regicide, and the very day he took possession of the place, according to tradition, the figure of the Blessed Virgin was mysteriously detached from the rest of the carving and disappeared until the night after the unholy tenant fled from the place, when it was miraculously restored.

There is a fine collection of paintings in the castle, including portraits by Van Dyck and other famous artists, three panels of scripture subjects by Albert Dürer, which formerly belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, and were purchased by Charles II. for $2,000. The library is a treasure-house of old tomes and manuscripts, and upon the wall, in a heavy oaken frame, hangs the original patent by which the estate was granted to the Talbot family by King Edward IV.

Within the roofless walls of an ancient abbey near by is the altar-tomb of Maud Plunkett, whose husband, Sir Richard Talbot, according to the epitaph, "fell in a fray immediately after the wedding breakfast, thus making her maid, wife, and widow in a single day."

The village of Swords, three miles distant, has another ancient castle, where the bodies of Brian Boru and his son Morrough rested the first night after the battle of Clontarf while they were being carried to their final tomb at Armagh.

All the little towns along the coast of the Irish Channel are associated with St. Patrick and St. Columba, who spent more or less time there, founding monasteries and building churches. One of the monasteries, called "the Golden Prebend" because it was so rich, was held by William of Wykeham in 1366 and was the seat of a cardinal for a century or two.

A mile and a half from the main line, beyond Swords, is the village of Portraine, where Dean Swift's "Stella" lived for several years, and where a branch of the insane asylum he founded in Dublin has since been erected. It stands upon lands given by Sigtryg of the Silken Beard, the Danish king of Dublin, for the endowment of a Christian church. The house was occupied for many years by the nuns of St. Augustine, where "the womankind of the most part of the whole Englisher of this land are brought up in virtue, learning and in the English tongue and behaviour."

The little town of Rush, famous for its early potatoes and its tulip bulbs, is called "Holland in Ireland." It has an old church, with beautiful pointed arches, which dates back to the sixteenth century, and contains a richly decorated monument to Sir Christopher Barnwell and his beloved wife, who died in 1607.

Skerries is a fishing-town, where St. Patrick lived for several years, and a quaint little chapel, like many others in Ireland, is attributed to him, although it could not possibly have been built for several centuries after his time. But in the history of these ancient sanctuaries a few hundred years do not count.

While ruins are picturesque and ivy-clad castles that date back beyond the Middle Ages have a fascination for tourists from a new world like ours, it was a relief when the chauffeur brought us up to the entrance of an old-fashioned factory in the compact little town of Balbriggan, which has given its name to a certain kind of knitted goods that are worn the world over. It is a quaint mass of high houses, built of stone and brick on both sides of narrow but neatly kept streets, which seems unnecessary when miles of green fields and glowing gardens encircle them and give them every chance to spread out. But you will find the same tendency to snuggle up as closely as possible in all the manufacturing communities of Europe.

The men folks at Balbriggan fish and farm the soil, and the women work in the mills, but the law, which is strictly enforced there, prohibits child labor and compels the children to attend school for at least one hundred and twenty-eight days in the year until they pass their fourteenth birthday. The superintendents of the mills tell the same story that I heard in the cotton factories of South Carolina and Georgia, that they prefer adult operatives; that the children are careless and inefficient and seldom earn their wages, but they are compelled to employ them or lose the services of the parents. There are two factories in Balbriggan for the manufacture of knitted hosiery and underclothing by machinery invented here more than one hundred and fifty years ago and since imitated everywhere. Both factories still remain under the control of the families which founded them, but the shares are distributed among a larger number of people by inheritance from generation to generation.

Scattered along the coast at intervals of two or three miles, and generally at the summits of hills overlooking the sea, are "martello towers," fifty, sixty, and sometimes ninety feet high, and from forty to a hundred feet in diameter. They were erected early in the nineteenth century as defensive watch-towers, when the country was in dread of an invasion by Napoleon. The name was taken from similar towers in Corsica and Sardinia, where they were erected for protection against pirates in the time of Charles V. These towers are said to have originally had bells which were struck by hammers to alarm the people in case of danger; hence they were called "martello" towers, that being the Italian word for "hammer."

It makes a Protestant ashamed when he reads the history of Drogheda and sees the ruins that Cromwell left there. Thousands of men and women and children were butchered in the name of the Lord by Cromwell's soldiers when he took that quaint old town by storm in September, 1649. It was a ferocious massacre, and Cromwell admitted the facts while proclaiming himself the agent of the Almighty to punish a rebellious people. This is what he wrote with his own hand:

"The governor, Sir Arthur Aston, and divers considerable officers being there, our men, getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the sword, and, indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town; and I think that night they put to death about two thousand persons. Divers officers and soldiers being fled over the bridge into the other part of the town, where about a hundred of them possessed St. Peter's Church steeple, some the West Gate, and others a strong round tower next to the gate called St. Sundays. These being summoned to yield for mercy refused. Whereupon I ordered the steeple of St. Peter's Church to be fired. The next day the other two towers were summoned. When they submitted their officers were knocked on the head and every tenth man of the soldiers was killed. The rest shipped for the Barbadoes. The soldiers in the other tower were all spared as to their lives only and shipped likewise for the Barbadoes.

"I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future."

Two of the towers have remained these two hundred and fifty years just as grim old Oliver left them, and there is much else of interest to the antiquarian in the town, although today it is given up to linen factories, flour mills, tanneries, and soap works, and has a large provision trade with England. It is the center of a prosperous agricultural community, and everybody seems to be doing well.

The greatest attraction is the ruins of Monasterboice, an extensive monastery, founded by St. Patrick, like every other ecclesiastical institution in this country, and three magnificent crosses which arise among them, about six miles from town. We tried to get a carriage instead of a jaunting car for the drive, because the latter allows you to see only one side of the roadway, but Mrs. Murphy, who has a livery stable and a tongue that is hung in the middle, could furnish us nothing else. It is a delightful drive. On the outward journey we saw what there is to see on one hand, and coming back we saw everything on the other.

The ruins of Monasterboice cover a large area, for five hundred monks and several thousand students were there eight or nine hundred years ago. It was one of the largest educational institutions in the world, as well as a religious retreat. It dates back to the fifth century, and was probably founded by St. Patrick,--certainly by one of his disciples,--although there is no tangible evidence to prove that fact. A "round tower" still in good condition, dates from the ninth century. It is one hundred and ten feet high and fifty-one feet in diameter at the base. It was intended for observation, for signaling to the country around, for the storage of valuables and military supplies, and for defensive purposes. Strangely enough, it sits in a hollow, in the lowest part of an amphitheater, surrounded by hills, but the Irish monks as well as the Irish warriors of ancient times always built beside streams of running water and not upon the heights, like the Goths, the Huns, the Teutons, and the Romans.

There are similar "round towers" at Cashel, Glendalough, Kildare, Antrim, and other places in the interior of Ireland which have long been subject of an irreconcilable dispute among archæologists. While no one knows definitely who built them, or what they were for, the most credited theory is that I have given above.

Dr. Petrie, who is a high authority, believes that they were built between the years 890 and 1238, when the Danes were in the habit of invading Ireland and plundering the ecclesiastical establishments. One of the most perfect of these towers, at Antrim, is ninety-two feet in height and forty-nine feet in circumference at the bottom; the summit terminates in a cone twelve feet high, which, with the tower itself, is of undressed stone, the walls being two feet nine inches in thickness. The door is on the north side at a height of seven feet nine inches from the ground. The tower was apparently divided into four stories by timber floors, which, of course, vanished long ago. Each of the three lower stories is lighted by a square window, and the upper story by four square perforations opening to the cardinal points. It stands in the grounds of a mansion. The turf between the two shows the dim outline of buildings, supposed to be those of a monastery founded by Aodh, a disciple of St. Patrick, the earliest notice of which occurs in the year 495. It was destroyed during the Danish incursions.

The walls of the chapel at Monasterboice are standing firm and strong, but without a roof, and the grounds surrounding them and the ruins of the monastery are still used for the burial of the families of the parish. It is a free cemetery and belongs to the government and not to the Catholic Church. Anybody--Protestant, Quaker, or Jew--can lay his tired bones down under the hospitable trees by application to the secretary of the board of public works. The oldest grave is that of Bishop O'Rourke, who was buried there in 982; the latest, marked by a clumsy wooden cross, was made in 1907.

What people go there to see are three splendid Celtic crosses, the finest specimens of the kind in Ireland, and that means the universe. They are believed to have been erected in the fifth century in honor of St. Patrick, St. Columba, and St. Bridget. This, however, is questionable. One of them bears the inscription, "A prayer for Murriduch, by whom was made this cross." From the Irish Annals it may be learned that two men of that name have lived in this neighborhood, both of wealth and distinction, and they died, one in the year 844 and the other in 924. It is entirely probable that either of them may have erected the splendid monoliths. The largest is twenty-seven feet high, and all of them are covered with carvings of religious subjects. The crosses of Monasterboice have been photographed and reproduced many times, and models have been shipped to all parts of the world. Perfect replicas may be found in the museum at Dublin.

Four miles further on are the ruins of Mellifont Abbey, which was founded in the twelfth century, and has had an important part in the political as well as the ecclesiastical history of Ireland.

There are several drawbacks to motoring in Ireland, the chief of which is that the country is so short on good hotels and so long on showers. The next is the inability to see through or over walls of stone and hedges that rise twice as high as one's head. Nevertheless, wherever there is much to see and little time to see it in, one has to put up with some annoyances, and an automobile is no longer a luxury or a mere convenience, but an actual necessity.

The Irish climate is like the Irish character. A witty native once said of his fellow countrymen, "They smile aisy and they cry aisy," and that describes the habits of the heavens also. Clouds assemble and do business in quicker time than in any other place I have ever been, but, although it will "rain cats and dogs" for fifteen or twenty minutes, the sun will be shining almost instantly afterward, as if nothing had happened.

Unfortunately the hotel proposition is not so easily disposed of. Most of the inns of the country districts and in the small cities are absolutely intolerable. It isn't so much because of a lack of luxuries and modern conveniences that the traveler finds in England, Scotland, and on the Continent at similar places, as it is the excess of dirt and bad smells. In the average country hotel in Ireland everything is in disorder and out of repair. The bells don't work; the furniture is crippled and decrepit; the mattresses are lumpy and half the springs are broken or out of joint; the bedrooms are seldom swept, the table cloths are seldom washed; sheets and pillow-cases, are seldom changed, and if a guest should call for a clean towel the landlord would be likely to ask what is the matter with the one he gave him a few days ago. The only alternative to stopping at a dirty hotel is to ride on until you come to a clean one, and that may be as far as the ends of the earth. The more practical, and indeed the only, way is to accept the situation good naturedly and get the best you can out of it. Any person who takes an interest in this subject can find further and accurate information in that charming book, "Penelope's Irish Experiences," by Kate Douglas Wiggin. It is asserted by those who know that there are only five good hotels in Ireland. We found nine, but did not keep count of the other kind. They are too numerous to mention.

The road from Drogheda to Tara, the ancient capital of Ireland, follows the valley of the famous Boyne River, and passes through the famous battlefield where William of Orange, with thirty thousand men, in 1690, overcame James II. with twenty-three thousand, and deprived the latter of his dominion and his crown and gave the Protestants control of Ireland for the next two hundred and fifty years. A stately monument has been erected upon the field, and various small markers have been placed about to show where important incidents took place.

The Valley of the Boyne is extremely beautiful. The banks are densely wooded for miles, and the river flows through many fine estates owned and occupied by rich people from London, Dublin, and other cities. The climate is agreeable and healthful for nine or ten months in the year. Only February, March, and April are unpleasant, because of the winds. The scenery is peaceful and attractive, the foliage of the groves and forests is rich beyond comparison, and it is difficult to conceive of more desirable surroundings for a summer home for men of wealth and leisure. To the antiquarian and the archæologist there is an unlimited field for exploration that has only been touched thus far.