Chapter 17

After leaving the school, went over to the booths to buy some trifle as a memorial of Knock. The man in the booth told me I had come from America. There was another man with his arm in a sling, who had come from America also. He had come to visit Knock. I asked him if his arm was better. He said it was, but not entirely well. I asked the man in the booth if he had ever seen anything. He said that he did not come there to see anything, but to make a living. He and the American had both bits of the original plaster, which they showed to me.

The priest of the place was not at home. He lives in a cottage down the hill a bit, in sight of the church. I had seen all there was to be seen, so I made my purchase and bid good-bye to Knock, and drove back to Claremorris.

Claremorris is a nice enough little town, very quiet, as if not much of any great work was going on. Where there are factories I notice the people step quickly and look straight ahead. Over towns which depend on the trading of the country round there is an air of repose and leisure. I did not see much of Claremorris, for I soon left it behind in going to Ballinrobe by car.

The land here seems very rich. I remarked this to my travelling companions, who told me that I was on the rich plains of Mayo. The fields are large and well cultivated. There were no signs of the abject poverty, wee, stony fields, horrible rookeries of houses that exist in the shadow of the Ox hills. Not that the houses of the laborers here were good; for that, a good, decent laborer's house, I have not yet seen in Ireland, except on Mr. Young's Galgorm estate. They may exist on other estates, I dare say they do, but I have not seen them. This country over which we were travelling was as rich with round-headed trees and wide meadows as a gentleman's park. The road, a particularly meandering one, passed through Hollymount--a lovely place--and through Carrowmore, my companions telling me of the landlords and the tenants as we drove along. The rent was high and hard to make up, the turf far to draw, that was all. There was no account of vexatious office rules or special acts of tyranny related to me at all.

Ballinrobe, on the river Robe, is near Lough Mask, and is another quiet, pretty, leisurely little town. I was troubled with neuralgia and did not see much of it. Opposite the hotel was the minister's residence, amid gardens, all shut in behind a stone wall high enough for a rampart. Through an archway from the street was the church where he ministered, sitting meditating among the tombs. I wandered into this place one day on my way to the post-office. Noticed the great number of the name of Cuffe who were buried there. Cuffe is the family name of Lord Tyrawley.

The Catholic church sits back from the street a good way and the ground before it is laid out in flowers. There are some images of saints through the grounds, which are set in arches of rock work, over which climbing plants are trained. There is also a community of Christian Brothers, who have a school here. Their building had so much glass in front, with so many geraniums in flower, a perfect blaze of them behind the glass, that it looked like a conservatory.

Left Ballinrobe behind and drove to Lough Mask Castle, where the celebrated Captain Boycott managed to kick up such a fuss. We passed a couple of iron huts occupied by policemen, who came out to look at us. I may as well mention that after I left Ballinrobe I found that the driver was more "than three-quarters over the bay." He had a way of talking to himself on the land question, of Captain Boycott, Lord Mountmorris and Lord Ardilaun, that was not pleasant to listen to, especially as he spiced his monologue with many words that savored strongly of brimstone. I was not without hope that the fresh air might dissipate the fumes of liquor from his brain as we drove along. I had the more hope of this as I could see that he was a habitual drinker, poor man, as his face but too plainly testified. Drink is universal here, as medicine a universal remedy, as a daily, almost hourly, stimulant for young, and old, rich and poor, man and woman. They tell me that Scotland is worse; if so, Scotland should be prayed for. I confess that I have not seen much drunkenness. I saw very few that I could call drunk, but it is constant, steady, universal, or almost so, sipping and tippling.

XLII.

LOUGH MASK CASTLE--CAPTAIN BOYCOTT AND HIS POLICY--LORD MOUNTMORRIS.

Well, my Jehu did sober up considerably before we halted at the entrance gates of Lough Mask Castle. The sharp hi! hi! of the driver brought out the gate keeper, a poor looking and sour looking woman, who admitted us into the drive which lay through some fields and beside some young plantations. In one place the driver pulled up, our way lay through a large field divided by the road into two unequal parts.

He told me to look round me, which I did. "On one side here, were the dragoons; their horses were picketed here; on the other side was the infantry. It was awful weather. What them men and their horses stood of hardships and misery no tongue could tell. The dragoons marched down here, looking fine and bowld, their horses were sleek and fat and shining, when they marched away they wor staggering with the wakeness and the men wor purty wilted looking. He made them believe he needed protection." This with a growl that had depths of meaning in it.

"He's coming back here again. Out among nagurs or anywhere else he could not find them to put up with him like ourselves." Of course I omit the strong words that were used as garnishing. I must own that this was the first time that any carman had used profane language before me--and it wasn't himself was in it at all at all but the whiskey. "The soldiers, whin they wor here," continued the old man, "cut down the trees of the plantation for firing. That went to his heart, it did. How could they help themselves, I'd like to know? Sure they would have perished with the cowld and the wet among the pelting of the snow and the sleet. Wherever they are this blessed day they don't admire the memory of Captain Boycott. What I like is behaviour in aither man or baste, and Captain Boycott had no behaviour. They killed a sheep to ate, or maybe two, and sorra a blame to them. It was ate or die wid them; but ye see the gallant Captain didn't like it." About this time a volley of anathemas was poured out against the absent Captain.

During all this we were sitting on the car viewing the field where the bivouac had been. A policeman with a questioning look on a pleasant face came along from the great house with a tin pail in his hand. "What have you got in the can!" asks this inquisitive car driver. "Milk," responded the policeman. "You would have got no milk at the big house in Captain Boycott's time."

"Oh; yes, I would," said the other, "when I paid for it." I did not like to question this man, for he did swear so, but I ventured to ask if Mrs. Boycott were equally as much disliked as her husband. "Never heard a word against her in my life. The people had no reason but to like her. Hard word or hard deed she left no memory of behind her."

We drove past the residence where Captain Boycott lived, a fine spacious house finished in plaster to imitate stone. The grounds near the house were nicely laid out, but that is the universal rule in Ireland. Drove through a gateway into the yard. In a stable loft in the yard some policemen were lodged. The driver hallooed at them, and one came down the stone steps to see what protective duty was asked of him. I asked him to show me the ruins, and he complied in the kindest manner. Across the barnyard and through a shed we made our way into the castle ruins. There are many nooks and crannies, as is the case in these ancient ruins generally, but the main body of the castle was divided into two large apartments, with the roof on the floor of course. I noticed the track of recent fire along the old walls. He said it was made by the officers who were down there on protective service for Capt. Boycott. They had one apartment and cooked there, and the police the other. These quarters open to the sky, and having stones on the floor, did not look comfortable.

We went up the circular stairs to the ramparts at the top. There is a walk round the top behind the battlements. Looking down at the remains of a fireplace in what was a lofty second story, my guide told me there was a name and a date there. The name Fitzgerald, I forget the date; so this must have been one of the Geraldine castles.

There is a fine view from the battlements. Lough Mask, which is very shallow here, a little water and a great many stones overtopping it in profusion, lies before us, and an extensive country, partly fertile, in round hills and green valleys, partly crusted over with stones.

A policeman, not my guide on this occasion, told me, illustrative of the disposition of Captain Boycott, that the hut in which the police were sheltered was very damp--water, in fact, was running on the floor under their bed. They had a small coal stove, and on the coal becoming exhausted before they got a further supply, one of the men being down sick, they ventured to ask Captain Boycott for the loan of a lump or two of coal to keep their stove going till their supplies were received, and he refused them. They were obliged to protect his ass and water cart down into the lake to draw water from out beyond the edge where the water was deep, and, therefore, could be dipped up clean. He would not allow them to get any of the water for their own use after it was drawn, or lend them the ass to draw for themselves. They had either to wade out in the lake or dip up as they could at the edge. I made a slight mistake in saying that the castle was entirely roofless; there was part of an arched roof where the fire had been. I asked the policeman if they had any night patrol duty now. Oh, yes, he said, we patrol every night, although we never see anything worse than ourselves.

Left Lough Mask, its castled ruins and modern mansion behind us, and drove through the gates again. I felt convinced that the people were not filled with an unreasoning hate against Captain Boycott. They thought they had reason, deep reason, and they scrupulously excepted Mrs. Boycott from any censure bestowed on him.

Along the road we drove, until from an eminence we could see Lough Mask in its beauty, with its bays and islands spread out beneath us. This view gave us a part of the Lough where the water covers the stones. This particular evening the water was as calm as a mirror and as blue as the sky above it, and the trees on the hills and bays around it in their greenness and leafiness, round-headed and massive, were all bathed in sunlight. We came to fields a little more barren-looking, where bare stone fences took the place of the rich hedgerows, turned up a road that lay between these stony ramparts, and drove along for a little time.

I was wondering in my own mind about Captain Boycott. Did he, in his own consciousness, think he was doing right in his system of fines? He knew how small and miserable the wages were: he knew of the poor, comfortless homes and the "smidrie o' wee duddy weans" that depended on the poor pennies the father brought home; he knew that he came out well fed and leisurely to find fault with a peasant who was working with a sense of goneness about the stomach. Did he think that increasing the hunger pain would make him more thoughtful, more orderly? Would he have done better if he had been suddenly brought to change places with his serf? If he could not help fining the people until he fined off the most of their wages, were they to blame for refusing to work for him? Was the Government right in taking his part when it had neither eye nor ear for his people's complaint? I was questioning with myself in this helpless fashion, when I heard my driver inquire in Irish of a bare-footed country girl if we were near the spot where Lord Mountmorris was murdered.

This question, and the surprise with which I became aware that I understood it, made me forget Captain Boycott for the time being and wake up to the present time. We had stopped our car and were waiting on the girl's answer, which she seemed in no hurry to give. At length lifting a small stone she threw it on the road a car's length behind us, answering in Irish that there was the spot where he was found. The murderer was hidden in the field opposite. The road was bare of the shelter of hedge or ditch, bush or tree. It was late; he was coming home alone, his police escort for some reason were not with him that particular night. Lord Mountmorris was murdered, and some one has a mark on his hand that all the water of the Lough will not wash off.

We drove along the road, a bleak and bare road, with a hill on one side of it and a steep slope down on the other, until we came to a small plantation, a lodge gate, and drove up an avenue with small plantations of young trees here and there, some grass lands, a few beasts grazing about, some signs of where flower beds and flower borders had been better cared for once on a time than now, and came to a comfortable, roomy square house finished in plaster. This was castle something, the residence of the late Lord Mountmorris. With a blessing, content and three hundred a year one could fancy that person sung of by Moore, "With the heart that is humble," being able to make out life nicely here. When a man has a title to his name with all the requirements which it implies and demands, one could imagine a constant and wearing struggle going on.

I have earnestly and constantly sought to find a reason that could possibly irritate an ignorant and exasperated peasant to the point of taking the life of this man, I have found none. He was unhappily addicted to drink, it is said, but he must have had a large majority of the inhabitants of Ireland of all creeds and classes on the same side with him in this, to judge by the number of houses licensed to sell liquor to be drunk on the premises which are required for the drouthy part of the population. He is accused of having warped justice to favor his friends in his capacity of magistrate. I have heard that accusation brought against other magistrates again and again, who were not molested. He is said to have boasted when _fou_ that he was a spy for the castle authorities, and could have any of them he chose to point at taken up. This was mere bluster, I suppose. There does seem no reason why the poor man should be cut off in the midst of his days by a guilty hand, for there is no record of any tangible injury which he had done to any man. Here on the spot where he fell, among the common people, I did not hear anything that seemed to give a reason for any hatred that would lead to murder being entertained against the deceased nobleman.

We turned away from the house and grounds, and I felt sad enough when we passed the place where he lay in the dark night amid bare, barren loneliness until the alarm was given. Heath in full blossom of purple clung to the ditch back, foxglove in stately array nodded at us from above, flowers that creep and flowers that wave were springing everywhere, the rains of heaven had washed off the red stain, but I could not shut my eyes to it. I saw the human body, dignified into something awful by the presence of death, lying there waiting for the hands that were to take it up reverently, and bear it away for investigation and burial. I saw the dyed stones of the road that will never lose the mark of guilt that colored them with the blood shed there.

Lord Mountmorris' residence was a nice, roomy house. All these houses are called castles, and castles they are compared with the cabins. The land around it did not seem very good. There was something pathetic in the evident attempt to keep up lordly state on a poor income and off poor soil. Happy America, whose people are not compelled by the inexorable logic of circumstances to be lords, but can be plain farmers. It is really a hard thing to be a lord sometimes, when a place is sunk with mortgages, and burdened with legacies and annuities, and no means of redemption but the rents and these stopped.

We drove back the way we came. Ascending the hill we met a little beast, so small, so black and shaggy, that I thought at first it was one of our Canadian black bears. I asked what it was, and--laughing at my ignorance--the man told me that it was a Highland Kyloe, one of the famous black cattle that I have heard so much about, but had never seen a specimen of the breed before. It would have been big for a bear, but certainly was small for a cow, while a goat has the appearance of giving as much milk.

XLIII.

CONG

The land as we neared Cong, between Cong and Lough Mask, as seen from the rather roundabout road we travelled, has a very peculiar appearance. It is stony with a very different stoniness from any part of Ireland which I had seen before. In some places the earth, as far as the eye could reach, was literally crusted with stone. The stone was worn into rounded tops and channelled hollows, as if it was once molten, like red hot potash, and every bubbling swell had become suddenly petrified, or as if it had once been an uptilted hillside over which a rapid river had fallen, wearing little hollows, and sparing rounded heights as it dashed over in boiling fury for ages, accomplishing which result it deserted this channel; and through some internal movement the bed of the torrent was levelled into a plain. Some agency or other has worn this solid rock into a truffle pattern that is very wonderful to see. Over all this part the stony formation recurs again and again. A person remarked to me that it looked like the bottom of a former ocean. Judging by the marks worn into the stone I should say it was not a pacific ocean.

We came to a blacksmith's shop with the arch of the door formed into a perfect horse-shoe; this, I was told, was the boundary line between Mayo and Galway. In a few minutes we stopped before the "Carlisle Arms," in the little village of Cong. Cong village is not very large, and has not a wealthy appearance. There is a look generally spread over the people who come in to trade as if their fortune was as stoney as their fields.

I had not been long in the "Carlisle Arms" before my attention was called to certain framed mementos that hung round the room. By some of these mementos hung the tale as to how Cong hotel came to be named the "Carlisle Arms." On a certain occasion, when the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Carlisle, was making some sort of progress through Ireland, he proposed stopping at the hotel at Maam, a hotel under the thumb of the late Lord Leitrim, who had some pique at the Lord Lieutenant, which determined him to order under pain of the usual penalty that there be no admittance to the Viceroy of Ireland at this hotel. His Lordship for once felt the power of a text of Scripture, and sent orders that from the highways and hedges they should be compelled to come in; that his house should be filled to the entire exclusion of Her Majesty's representative. Lord Carlisle did not, like Mr. Goddard the other day at Charleville, proffer money, or take any steps to try the lawfulness or unlawfulness of this proceeding, but, having sent a courier to precede him, hurried on to Cong, and conferred the distinction of his presence on that hotel. That the proprietors did their best to entertain him I have no doubt, speaking from experience. That he appreciated their efforts he has left on record in a neat acknowledgement, which hangs above the mantlepiece framed and glazed, as Uncle Tom desired to do with his letter from Massa George. The Lord Lieutenant's photo hangs there too, in a nice frame, as a memento of his having been received at Cong when refused at Maam. Also he consented that the hotel should be known as the "Carlisle Arms" henceforth. I wonder very much that there was not at least as much public indignation felt against Lord Leitrim or the innkeeper whom he influenced when he refused shelter to Her Majesty's representative here, the head of the executive, as is now expressed against this hotel-keeper, who refused to receive Mr. Goddard. I suppose the cases are different someway.

During the famine time a large sum of money was voted, partly by Government, partly from the county taxes, for Relief Works. It was determined to make a canal to connect Lough Corrib and Lough Mask. The canal was made at the expense of much blasting, much building of strong and costly stone work. If they could only have resurrected the famous Irish architect _Gobhan Saer_, he would have advised making a well- cemented bottom for the canal considering that a subterraneous river runs from one lake to the other under it. They did not do this, however, and when the grand canal was finished and the water let on the bottom fell out in places and the waters fell through to their kindred waters. The next famine they will require to dig and blast downward and still downward till they find the underground river and the runaway water. Coming past the costly and well-built bridge which spans the almost dry stream that pours into the leaky canal somewhere, I saw some women round a hollow in the stream that retained a little water. They were rinsing out some woollen stuffs after dying them blue. They had warm petticoats of madder red, and I was glad to see them look so comfortably clad and thrifty.

After returning to the hotel I was waited on by an elderly lady of the peasant class, a woman over eighty years of age. She had for sale some pillow lace edging of her own manufacture, which she offered at threepence per yard. This was the way she made her living, paid her rent and kept herself out of the workhouse. The lace was pretty and very strong. She generally succeeds in disposing of it to lady tourists.

There were some lady tourists as well as gentlemen staying at Cong. They were on pleasure bent, and had been dreadfully annoyed and disgusted in Galway at the heartbreaking scene attending the departure of some poor Irish emigrants. They are unreasonable in their grief, and take parting as if it were death; but it is as death to many of the aged relatives who will see these faces whom they love no more. I could not help thinking how differently people are constituted. When I saw the streaming eyes, the faces swollen with weeping, and heard the agonized exclamations, the calls upon God for help to bear the parting, for a blessing on the departing, I had to weep with them. These people were all indignation where they were not amused. The old women's cries were ill-bred howlings to their ears, their grief a thing to laugh at. They made fun of their dress--how they were got up--as if their dress was a matter of choice; grew indignant in describing their disgust at the scene. Ah, well, these poor mountain peasants were not their neighbors, they were people to be looked at, laughed at, sneered at, and passed by on the other side; but I--these people are my people and their sorrow moveth me.

XLIV.

THE ASHFORD DEMESNE--LORD ARDILAUN--LOUGH CORRIB.

The Ashford demesne affords walks or drives for miles. Everything that woods and waters, nature and art can do to make Ashford delightful has been done. I got a companion, a pretty girl, a permit from some official who lived in a cottage at Cong, and set out by way of the Pigeon Hole to see at least part of the place.