M. F. Mansfield

“ Blarney Castle itself, with its surrounding “groves of Blarney which look so charming,” and its real and tangible fabric, is of vastly appealing interest; but, usually, it has faded into insignificance in the eyes of those who contemplate the setting which has been given to the all-powerful block of stone. The glib tongue of the native has done much to perpetuate the tradition that whoever kisses it—and accompanies the act with persuasive eloquence, so perceptible in all the folk around about Cork Harbour—is for ever endowed with blessings innumerable, if not actually with superhuman power. ”

“ The scenery of lake and sea, of bracken-clad hills and plains, and of great sombre, gloomy mountains makes up an ensemble of surpassing beauty. The centres of population are few, far between, and of minute dimensions.
The railway line from Galway ends at Clifden, a town so unimportant and quiet that, in itself, it does not warrant remark. It was founded in the reign of George IV., and this early foundation consisted of but a single house, though it is the gateway to the wonderful coast scenery of the region to the northward, not actually in Connemara, but what is known as “Joyce’s Country.” ”

“ Lying just inside Valentia Island is Cahirciveen, the birthplace of Daniel O’Connell, and from this point to Dingle, across the bay, is to be seen—though from the seaward side only—the finest rock scenery on the southwest coast. Here Nature seems to have done her best to produce the picturesque with ocean and rock, twisted and split, pierced and tunnelled; every rock seems to have been torn in some gigantic struggle against total destruction, and left to still wage war against storm and tempest. ”

“ Underground, there is a range of small, gloomy dungeons, hewn out of the solid rock, where many a gallant life must have been worn away in bitter agony and despair, seven centuries ago, in those times when chivalry and romance were inextricably mixed with brutality. Just above the dungeon-cells runs the ruined stone terrace, looking out to sea, where (tradition says) the lords and ladies who accompanied King John to Ireland used to walk up and down of a summer evening, in the cool of the sunset wind. ”

“ North of the Boyne estuary is Dundalk Bay, in itself a beautifully disposed body of water which, if not possessed of the ruggedness of the fiords of Western Ireland, is in every way an attractive setting for Dundalk itself, which is mostly a town of one long vertebrate street along which short spines radiate for a brief distance and lose themselves in the background of hills or in the strand of the sea. ”

“ Thousands have left Ireland every year from these quays, “the torn artery through which the country’s best blood drains away year by year.” To see an emigrant-ship cast loose from the quay and steam out of the harbour is a sight, once witnessed, that will never be forgotten; that will haunt one’s very dreams in years to come.
Until 1849 Cove was the name of the city, but during a visit of Queen Victoria here at that time, her first visit to Irish soil, the name was changed, in her honour, to that which it now bears.
Cork Harbour, to most travellers, is little more than a memory ”

“ She was often accompanied to battle by her stalwart sons of middle age; and her own years are reported to have counted well over a century before death at last loosened her iron grip on blood-stained Connaught. One can well understand how such a woman, dying, chose to be buried where, even in death, her sightless eyes might look down upon the land of lake and island, forest, hill, and sea that had been hers so long.
A lively French writer, who travelled in Ireland in the early part of the nineteenth century, was evidently much smitten with the fair sex. ”

“ Donegal is assuredly a land of intermittent beauty, and the hill-encircled loughs and the verdant glens of Donegal Bay give way here to a stern, relentless gray stone formation, with here and there patches of green and purple which indicate nothing so much as the lonesomeness which is inevitable under such conditions. ”

“ Within the immediate vicinity of Belfast—at least within the area of the great city’s influence—is the sleepy old town of Carrickfergus, once the site of one of the most powerful fortresses in Ireland. Now it is but a memory, so far as its impregnability goes, though its remains are suggestive enough of the position it once occupied; one of great strategic value when the means of ancient warfare are considered. ”

“ Sometimes a clear green wave would roll its huge volume on the rocks before it broke; at others, dash greenly up to it and dissolve in wreaths of purest white spray, causing, as it broke, a delicate iris to glow on the opposite rocks; while toward the west a veil of foam overhung the coast, lighted up by the golden rays of the setting sun. No words can describe the fascination of the scene.”
To observe the contrast between nature and the works of man, one has only to visit the isolated premises of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company. ”

“ The greatest gaiety reigns there,—in fact, the belles of Galway are capable of instructing most French young ladies in the art of coquetry. In the early morning, one sees five or six young ladies, perched upon a jaunting-car, go two miles from the city to refresh their charms by a sea bath, and in the afternoon, if there be no assembly, they go from shop to shop, buying, laughing, and chatting with their friends. ”

“ Newcastle, in the minds of many, is merely the home of “The best golf-links in Ireland.” This is perhaps a sign of the advanced age in which we live, but Newcastle, forty miles north of Dublin, can lay claim to more than that.
Newcastle, as a tourist point and “a beauty-spot,” really exists by means of, and on account of, Slieve Donard, the highest mountain in Ulster, which hangs its 2,796 feet right over the little seacoast town, and provides non-golfing visitors with a continual field for pleasant excursions. ”

“ QUEENSTOWN, CORK, AND BLARNEY QUEENSTOWN has been called a mere appendage to its harbour, and, truly, it is a case of the tail wagging the dog, though the residents of Cork will tell you it is Cork Harbour, anyway, and Queenstown is nothing but a town that was made by the American War of Independence, and by the emigration rush that, during the past sixty years, has deprived Ireland of more than half her population. ”

“ As some poetic soul—possessed by an Irishman of course—has said: “No one cares for Limerick now. Of all the fierce possessors who fought for her when she was young, the local government officially alone remains, like the gray elderly husband of some housewifely woman who was a beauty and a ‘toast,’ and made men’s swords leap from their scabbards for love of her—once.” ”

“ With inquiries of this nature, perhaps not the least gain is the knowledge of how much lies beyond the limits of our inquiries, and how many things that lie so plainly before our eyes, which we can see and handle, may yet be wrapped in unfathomable mystery. We see in the Giant’s Causeway the most certain and obvious effects produced by the operation of active and powerful forces which entirely escape our scrutiny. ”

“ Next in order come the books of pictorial travel and “table books” of the “wonders of the world,” where the same picture appears again; and, finally, the astute proprietors of ardent spirit which is distilled at Bushmills,—an ancient town of perhaps a thousand inhabitants, between Portrush, Coleraine, and the basalt-bound coast of Northern Ireland,—have covered walls and fences with quite the most pleasing and alluring of all the pictorial representations of this unique rocky formation.
By these various means, the aspect of “The Giant’s Causeway” has become familiar to all. ”

“ More one could not wish to know unless he were profoundly interested, and less would not even satisfy him if he became at all enamoured of these islands, so full of dreary old places and quaint customs, to say nothing of the wealth of tradition and legend which hangs about it all.
Westward, the nearest land is America, where so many stalwart sons of Galway—and daughters, too—have migrated. Here the peasants still reverently believe in the far-famed land of Hy or O,—Brazil, the paradise of the ancient pagan Irish. ”

“ Just how far one may go in promulgating a theory, in a book such as this, remains an open question. With regard to the Spaniards in Ireland, it is not so much conjecture as to the time of their advent, or their numbers, as it is with the causes which led up to it. Galway was one day to be the pride and hope of Erin’s Isle. This we all know and recognize, and, with this end in view, huge warehouses and quays were built to accommodate a vast ocean-borne traffic which was to come and make it the rival of Liverpool. ”

“ But the first, the final, the deepest and most enduring impression of Killarney is that of beauty unspeakably tender, which puts on at times a garb of grandeur and a look of awe, only in order to heighten by passing contrast the sense of soft, insinuating loveliness. How the missel-thrushes sing, as well they may! How the streams and runnels gurgle and leap and laugh! For the sound of journeying water is never out of your ears ”

“ The design is that of a heart over two clasped hands, surmounted by a crown, the signification being “Love and friendship reign.” Among the upper classes in Ireland, these rings are often used as guards for engagement and wedding rings.
A more interesting monument than any memorial stone in the abbey, or, indeed, in Sligo, is Misgoun Meave, which dominates the whole neighbourhood, the traditional burial-place of Queen Meave. On the top of Knocknarea, a hill over one thousand feet high, stands an immense cairn of stones, almost like a second peak to the hill. ”

“ BELFAST AND ARMAGH THE stranger to Ireland will never imagine, as the result of his visit to Belfast, that the land is the home of the effete civilization that some English writers would have him believe.
Belfast, more than all other centres of population in Ireland, more even than Dublin, the capital, is the equal of any city of its size in the known world for transportation facilities of a thoroughly up-to-date order. ”

“ The rock opens and displays within a scene of revelry and joy, to which a page bids him welcome, and ushers him through a brilliant assemblage to the very throne of the Queen-fairy Una. She smiles graciously upon him; urges him to leave the world and all its woes to become one of her happy subjects ”

“ Kells, in the county of Meath, is, or should be, coupled, in the minds of visitors, with the name of Tara. They have nothing in common, but they are neighbours, and properly should be seen in connection with each other. Tara presents, at first glance, nothing more than a small conical elevation rising above the Boyne; but its memories as the residence of the magnificent Cormac, St. Patrick, the Druids, the law-givers, the bards, and all the ancient prehistoric civilization which centred around it, are very great. ”

“ One looks over the bridge into the water, and sees what is apparently the dark bed of the river; but drop in a pebble, and instantly there is a splash and a flash of silver, and a general movement along the whole bed of the stream. Then one comes to know that what apparently were closely packed stones are salmon, squeezed together like herrings in a barrel, unable to get up-stream for want of water. ”

“ The Irish jaunting-car is much more a real accessory of Irish life than the shillalah or the shamrock. In Wicklow one finds the cars more numerous than elsewhere; in the west they are the most decrepit, and in Dublin the most luxurious; but in Cork, of all centres of population, they appear to be the most in use. ”

“ Donegal itself is an improvement. It is a small but attractively placed town at the head of its own bay, and, in spite of its being a coast town, it is more allied with agricultural interests than with trade by sea.
The guide-books tell one little of Donegal, and so much the better. One enjoys finding{196} out things for oneself, and so one has practically a virgin field at Donegal unless he will delve deep into frowsy historical works, such as the “Annals” of the “Four Masters” of the old Abbey of Donegal. ”

“ At the mouth of the Shannon, near where its tidal waters meet the sea, Limerick has its “fashionable watering-place” of the conventional pattern. The chief “amusement” of this delectable place appears to be the gathering of “Irish moss,” as it is commonly known. Here they call it “Carrageen moss,” but it is the same thing, and ultimately turns{101}
LIMERICK CASTLE.
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up as a dainty and nourishing jelly. The peasantry gather it for profit, the visitors for pastime. It is found in many shallow rock pools at low tide, and grows in short, bushy tufts, coralline in shape. ”

“ The project fell through, but the island was afterward selected as the old-world end of the Atlantic cable of 1865, and also that laid by the leviathan steamship, the Great Eastern, in 1866. The principal village on the island is called Knightstown. If favoured with a fresh westerly breeze, one beholds from the hillside a scene of grandeur unsurpassed. The ocean engages in conflict with the rugged headlands rising hundreds of feet out of the sea, and hurls its foaming breakers with ceaseless rhythm against the base of the rocks, only to be rolled back in spray and foam. ”