Part 1

THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.

NUMBER 12. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1840. VOLUME I.

Travellers whose only knowledge of our towns is that derived in passing through the principal street or streets, will be very apt to form an erroneous estimate of the amount of picturesque beauty which they often possess, and which is rarely seen save by those who go out of their way expressly to look for it. This is particularly the case in our smaller towns, in which the principal thoroughfare has usually a stiff and formal character, the entrance on either side being generally a range of mud cabins, which, gradually improving in appearance, merge at length into houses of a better description, with a public building or two towards the centre of the town. In these characteristics the highway of one town is only a repetition of that of another, and in such there is rarely any combination of picturesque lines or striking features to create a present interest in the mind, or leave a pleasurable impression on the memory. Yet in most instances, if we visit the suburbs of these towns, and more particularly if they happen, as is usually the case, to be placed upon a river, and we get down to the river banks, we shall most probably be surprised and gratified at the picturesque combinations of forms, and the delightful variety of effects, presented to us in the varied outline of their buildings, contrasted by intervening masses of dark foliage, and the whole reflected on the tranquil surface of the water, broken only by the enlivening effect of those silvery streaks of light produced by the eddies and currents of the stream.

Our prefixed view of the town of Antrim may be taken as an illustration of the preceding remarks. As seen by the passing traveller, the town appears situated on a rich, open, but comparatively uninteresting plain, terminating the well-cultivated vale of the Six-mile-water towards the flat shore of Loch Neagh; and with the exception of its very handsome church and castellated entrance into Lord Ferrard’s adjoining demesne, has little or no attraction; but viewed in connection with its river, Antrim appears eminently picturesque from several points as well as from that selected for our view--the prospect of the town looking from the deer-park of Lord Massarene.

In front, the Six-mile-water river flowing placidly over a broad gravelly bed, makes a very imposing appearance, not much inferior to that of the Liffey at Island-bridge. The expanse of water at this point, however, forms a contrast to the general appearance of the stream, which, although it brings down a considerable body of water, flows in many parts of its course between banks of not more than twenty feet asunder. The vale which it waters is one of the most productive districts of the county, and towards Antrim is adorned by numerous handsome residences rising among the enlivening scenery of bleach-greens, for which manufacture it affords a copious water-power. Scenes of this description impart a peculiar beauty to landscapes in the north of Ireland. The linen webs of a snowy whiteness, spread on green closely-shaven lawns sloping to the sun, and generally bounded by a sparkling outline of running water, have a delightfully _fresh_ and cheerful effect, seen as they usually are with their concomitants of well-built factories and handsome mansions; and in scenery of this description the neighbourhood of Antrim is peculiarly rich. The Six-mile-water has also its own attraction for the antiquary, being the _Ollarbha_ of our ancient Irish poems and romances, and flowing within a short distance of the ancient fortress of Rathmore of Moylinny, a structure which boasts an antiquity of upwards of 1700 years.

In our view the river appears crossed by a bridge, which through the upper limbs of its lofty arches affords a pretty prospect of the river bank beyond. In building a bridge in the same place, a modern county surveyor would probably erect a less picturesque but more economical structure, for the arches here are so lofty, that the river, to occupy the whole space they afford for its passage, must rise to a height that would carry its waters into an entirely new channel.

But the principal feature in our prospect is the church, the tower and steeple of which are on so respectable a scale, and of such excellent proportions, as to render it a very pleasing object as seen from any quarter or approach of the town. It would be difficult to say in what the true proportions of a spire consist, whether in its obvious and practical utility as a penthouse roofing the tower, or in its emblematic aptitude aspiring to and pointing towards heaven. Still, every cultivated eye will remark how much more dignified and imposing is the effect of a spire which is only moderately lofty, as compared with the breadth of its base, than that of one which is extremely slender. We would point out the spire of St Patrick’s Cathedral, for example, or that before us, on a smaller scale, as instances of the former sort. Any one acquainted with the proportions of those attenuated pinnacles which we so often find perched on the roofs of churches erected within the last ten years, cannot be at a loss for examples of the latter. The church itself at Antrim is, however, rather defective in point of size, as compared with its nobly proportioned tower and spire.

The suburb of the town, on this side of the bridge, runs up to the demesne wall of Lord Ferrard’s residence, Antrim Castle, an antique castellated mansion, seated boldly over the river in a small park laid out in the taste of Louis XIV., from the terraced walks and stately avenues of which there are many beautiful views of the surrounding scenery.

In point of historical interest, there are but two events connected with Antrim worthy of any particular note--the defeat of the insurgents here in the rebellion of 1798, on which occasion the late Earl O’Neill lost his life; and a great battle between the English and native Irish, in the reign of Edward III., hitherto little spoken of in history, but forming one in a series of events which exercised a great influence over the destinies of this country.

Very soon after the first invasion of Ulster by John de Courcy, the English power was established not only throughout the counties of Down and Antrim, but even over a large portion of the present county of Londonderry, then called the county of Coleraine. We find sheriffs regularly appointed for these counties, and the laws duly administered, down to the time of Edward III. The native Irish, who had been pushed out by the advance of this early tide of civilization, took up their abode west of the Bann, and in the hilly county of Tyrone, from whence they watched the proceedings of their invaders, and, as opportunities from time to time presented themselves, crossed the intervening river and “preyed” the English country. The district around Antrim was from its situation the one chiefly exposed to these incursions, and the duty of defending it mainly devolved on the powerful sept of the Savages, who at that time had extensive possessions in the midland districts of Antrim, as well as in Down.

The most formidable of these incursions was that which took place immediately after the murder of William de Burgho, Earl of Ulster, who was assassinated by some malcontent English at the fords of Belfast, A. D. 1333. The earl had been a strenuous asserter of the English law, and had rendered himself obnoxious to the turbulent nobles of the country by the severity with which he prohibited their adoption of Irish customs, which, strange to say, had always great charms for the feudal lords of the English pale, arising probably from the greater facilities which the Brehon law afforded for exacting exorbitant rents and services from their tenants. The immediate object of the assassins of the earl was to prevent him carrying the full rigour of the law into operation against one of his own _hibernicised_ kinsmen; but the ultimate consequences of their act were felt throughout all Ireland for two centuries after. For the Irish, taking advantage of the consternation attendant on the death of the chief officer of the crown in that province, crossed the Bann in unexampled numbers, and after a protracted struggle, in which they were joined by some of the degenerate English, succeeded at length in recovering the whole of the territory conquered by De Courcy, with the exception only of Carrickfergus in Antrim, and a portion of the county of Down, which the Savages with difficulty succeeded in holding after being expelled from their former possessions at the point of the sword. It was during this struggle that the battle to which we have alluded was fought at Antrim. The story is told at considerable length and with much quaintness by Hollinshed; but want of space obliges us to present it to our readers in the more concise though still very characteristic language of Cox:--

“About this time lived Sir Robert Savage, a very considerable gentleman in Ulster, who began to fortifie his house with strong walls and bulwarks; but his son derided his father’s prudence and caution, affirming that “a castle of _bones_ was better than a castle of _stones_,” and thereupon the old gentleman put a stop to his building. It happened that this brave man with his neighbours and followers were to set out against a numerous rabble of Irish that had made incursions into their territories, and he gave orders to provide plenty of good cheer against his return; but one of the company reproved him for doing so, alleging that he could not tell but the enemy might eat what he should provide; to which the valiant old gentleman replied, that he hoped better from their courage, but that if it should happen that his very enemies should come to his house, ‘he should be ashamed if they should find it void of good cheer.’ The event was suitable to the bravery of the undertaking: old Savage had the killing of three thousand of the Irish near Antrim, and returned home joyfully to supper.”

Sir Henry Savage’s “castles of bones” were found insufficient in the end to resist the multitudes of the Irish; and the English colonists, as we have mentioned, notwithstanding their victory at Antrim, were finally obliged to cede the valley of the Six-mile-water to the victorious arms of the Clan-Hugh-Buide, whose representative, the present Earl O’Neill, still holds large possessions in the territory thus recovered by his ancestors.

With respect to the origin of the place, there is little to be said beyond the fact, that, like that of most of our provincial towns, it was ecclesiastical. The only remnant of the ancient foundation is the round tower, which still stands in excellent preservation about half a mile north of the town. The name is properly “Aen-druim” signifying “the single hill,” or “one mount.”

A CHAPTER ON CURS.

Without doubt I am a benevolent character: the grudge gratuitous to my nature is unknown: I never take offence where no offence is given. Hence, on most animals I look with complacency--for most animals never intermeddle with my comfort--and on only a few with antipathy, for only a few so behave as to excite it. High up on the list of the latter--I was going to say at the very top, but that pestering, pertinacious fly impudently alighting, through pure mischief alone, on the tickle-tortured tip of--but he’s gone--no, he’s back--there now I have him under my hat at last--tut! he’s out again under the rim--up with the window and away with him! At the head, then, ay, at the very head--how my grievances come crowding on my brain!--I unhesitatingly place that thrice-confounded breed of curs, colleys, mongrels, or whatever else they may be called, with which the rural regions of this therein much-afflicted country are infested. The milk of my humanity--yea, I may say the cream, for such it was with me--has in respect to them been changed to very gall--an unmitigable hostility has possessed me, which--did not the scars of the wofully-remembered salting, scrubbing, scarifying, and frying (to say nothing of two months’ maintenance of an hospital establishment of poultices and plasters), to which my better leg was twice submitted, counsel me to mingle discretion with my ire--would absolutely make me turn Don Quixote for their extirpation.

Let flighty philosophers frolic as they list with the flimsy phantasies no optics save their own can spy--let political economists prate about public problems, till other people’s pates are nearly as addled as their own--let flaming patriots propound and placid placemen promise this, that, and t’other, as grievous burdens or great concessions; but let men of sense give heed to things of substance--let them exclaim with me, “Out upon all abstract gammon--out upon all squabbling about what we can only hear, but neither see nor feel, taste nor smell--bodily boons--real redress--and first and foremost, ‘to the lamp-post’ with the curs!” I have suffered more at their teeth, both in blood and broad-cloth, than all the benefactions I have ever received at the hands of any government would balance. The inviolable independence of British subjects, forsooth! the parental guardianship of the constitution, the security for life and person--faugh!--away with the big inanities, so long as a peaceful pedestrian cannot take an airing along a highway, much less adventure on a devious ramble, without exposing person and personalities to the cruel mercies of a tribe of half-starved tykes issuing from every cabin, scrambling over every half-door, and almost throttling themselves in their emulous ambition to be the first to tatter the ill-starred wight who has stumbled on their haunts. Let no one urge in their behalf that they are faithful to the misguided men who own them: so much the worse, since in their small system, fidelity to one must needs manifest itself in malice, hatred, and uncharitableness to every creature else, dead or alive. No, there is no redeeming trait--they are _curs_, essentially biting, barking, cantankrous, crabbed, sneaking, snarling, treacherous, bullying, cowardly _curs_, and nothing else. This, under all circumstances, I undertake to maintain against all gainsayers, though at the same time I am free to confess that I write under considerable excitement, having just returned from the country (whither--besotted mortal not to be content with the flag way of a street, and the scenery of brick and mortar--I had repaired, forsooth, for air, exercise, and rural sketching) with a couple of new coats, to say nothing of trousers, curtailed beyond recovery, a bandaged shin smarting beyond description, and a host of horrid hydrophobic forebodings consequent thereon. It chanced that in an evil hour I made an engagement with an ailing friend, whose house was situate in what I may emphatically term a most _canine_ locality, which constrained me to make several calls upon him. Unhappily it was only approachable by one road, the sides of which were here and there dotted with a clutch of cabins, in each of which was maintained a standing force of the aforesaid pests. This ambushed defile, about three miles in length, dire necessity compelled me to traverse thrice, and never did general more considerately undertake a march through a hostile country, or an enemy more vigilantly guard a pass therein, than did I and they respectively. On each and all of these occasions have I debated with myself whether I should not fetch a secure though sinuous compass through the fields, even with the addition of a few miles and other discomforts to my walk; but as often--with honest, though, as I look upon my leg, with melancholy pride I write it--did my pluck preserve me from so disgraceful a detour. What! my indignant manhood would exclaim, shall I, one of the lords of the creation--shall I, who have dared and have accomplished so and so--recalling some of my most notable exploits by flood and field, in crossing the Channel and cantering in the Park--shall I, one of her majesty’s liege subjects, a grand jury cess-payer and a freeholder to boot, be driven from the highway which I pay to support, and obliged to skulk like a criminal from view, scramble over walls and splutter through swamps, daub my boots, rend mayhap my tights, and risk other contingencies, and all by reason of such vile scrubs? No, perish the thought!--though their name be Legion, and their nature impish, I will face them, ay, and write the fear of me upon their hides too, if they dare molest me--that I will. Thus spoke the man within me, as I fiercely griped my cane; and if, as I cooled, an occasional shrinking of the calves of my legs in fancied supposition of a tooth inserted therein, betokened aught like quailing, I recalled Marlborough’s saying on the eve of battle, “How this little body trembles at what this great soul is about to perform!” and felt that I too was exemplifying that loftiest courage in which the infirmity of the flesh succumbs to the vigour of the spirit.

Decided by some such discipline to run the gauntlet, and in a state of temper alternating between war and peace, inclining, as I remarked, strange contradiction! to the former when the latter was in prospect, and to the latter when the former, I proceeded in guarded vigilance. “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” no doubt, but in my case evil deferred doth oftentimes as much. The substantial presence of danger for me, before its fearful imminence--the real onset of a canine crew, before the terrible suspense of passing the open den in which haply they lay wait, the shrill gamut of attack splitting your ear worse in apprehension than in action. But attention! yonder is the first position. Egad! I’m in luck to-day; the coast seems clear, and--the pacific now prevails amain--poor devils, I won’t make any ruction.

“Ever follow peace If you’d live at ease,”

saith the tuneful proverb, and I’ll pass inoffensively if I can. Ay, i’faith, I may well say _if I can_, for if my eyes are worth a turnip, yonder is an outpost stretched before that sty. No, I’m wrong, it is a young pig--worthy little fellow, would I had the craft of Circe to change every cur in the land into your similitude! A grunt before a snarl, a snore before a snap any day. But what am I gabbling about?--there is evil at hand indeed, for yonder is a lurching devil squatted behind that stone, and no mistake. But softly: he seems asleep, and I may perchance steal past unnoticed--about as probable, my present experience assures me, as that you could ring my well-bred friend Piggie without an acknowledgment--he is sole sentry, and if I can but bilk him, I’ll do. Vain hope--he is waking, he is giving a preparatory stretch to his limbs and to his jaws, and, miserable sinner that I am! I’m in for it. But there is yet a single chance--I’ll try the magic of the human eye: there is wonder-working majesty, they say, in it. Did I not myself see Van Amburgh’s brutes blench before it?--am not I too a man?--ay, and I’ll let them see it. Whereupon, with the most astounding corrugation of my brows I could accomplish, I fixed my grim regards upon the cur, expecting to see him sneak in awe away as I drew nigh. But, alas! for the majesty of man, in a pinch like this let me tell him it is but a sorry safeguard--the veriest whelp in the land will bandy surly looks, and haply something worse, in its despite: a cudgel or a “hardy,” I now say, on such an emergency, before the most confounding countenance that ever frowned beneath a diadem. The foe, then, recking but little my display of the tremendous, gave a fierce alarm, while in the vehemence of his wrath he described three circles, his hind legs being the centre, which brought the whole posse of aids and abettors fast and furious into view. And now commenced the fray in earnest: beleaguered on every side, my blood, not to speak boastfully, rose with the great occasion: my tongue gave vigorous utterance to my fury, and my cane swept gallantly from right to left and from left to right, though from the wariness with which, ’mid all their fuss and clamour, the war was waged by my assailants, it was but seldom that a shrill yelp piercing through the din announced its collision with flesh and blood. Never was man more thoroughly put to it. As I made a dash forward upon one, my unprotected rear was promptly invested by another: my only security lay in the rapidity of my evolutions, and considering I am a man five feet five in height and fifteen stone in weight, I fairly take credit to myself for performances in this line, which poor Joe Grimaldi himself were he alive could not eclipse. But a man’s sinews are not of steel, nor are his lungs as tough as a pair of bellows, and under my extraordinary exertions I speedily began to think of vacating a field whereon nothing but a barren display of prowess without satisfaction was to be reaped. Accordingly, all my craft in strategy was put in practice, and by a most dexterous combination of manœuvres--now advancing, now receding, now stooping _as if_ to seize a stone (incomparable among expedients in canine encounters), for the road here of course was as bare of them as a barn-floor, and now feigning to fling it--I at length contrived to draw the battle from their own ground, and their pugnacity being inversely as their distance from home, had the relief, for by this time I was blowing like a grampus, of seeing them retire in detachments, giving volleys in token of triumph and defiance so long as I remained in view. This brisk affair concluded with the loss only of a mouthful or two of my coat-tails, and the gain of a few trifling transparencies in the legs of my trousers--thank my boots, I have not to add in those of my person--I proceeded to the scene of my next “passage at arms,” about half a mile off. So ruffled was I that at first, after a few score peghs and puffs restorative, I bustled bravely on, desiring nothing so much as an opportunity of wreaking my wrath on some of the odious race, to which purpose I providently deposited a few pretty pebbles in my pocket.