Danu

“ I may admire them but not love them. Nor does my imagination wander down into their valleys. Down in the interior of the vast and ocean-like plains, there I am at home, and that is my world. If I look at the endless plains my thoughts fly far away, and near to the clouds. I see between the Danube and the Tisza the smiling picture of the plains. ”

“ Here, among lofty rocky mountains, we are in a centre of romance and of legend. To a craggy rock, standing about twenty feet above the water that eddies round its base, attaches a story of love and revenge; the ruins of Galambócz (Golubacz) on the left, and of Lászlóvár on the right, remind us of the days when these were rival fortresses, guarding what was recognized to be “the key of the Danube” ”

“ In spring particularly, when the Danube each year overflows its banks, the beauty of the landscape baffles description. It is reminiscent of the tropics, with virgin forests standing in the water, and islands covered with luxuriant growth scattered here and there. It is an ideal country for the sportsman. All kinds of birds, herons, ducks, pelicans, and others, are to be met with, besides wolves and wild cats, and days may be spent in rowing and walking in this Paradise without wearying of it. ”

“ The Danube was nowhere more than two hundred paces wide; he must reach the shore somewhere if he kept straight on. But in mist and darkness one does not know which way one goes; a barrier of ice which must be avoided takes one, in spite of every care, out of the right road—one walks in zigzags and comes back to the spot where one was before; even if you get into the right path, and would only have to walk on to reach the bank, you think of something else, deviate slightly, and get back into that confounded ice labyrinth again. ”

“ We can learn, however, nothing but a few names of any ancestors of the Gaelic giants. This is equally true of the Gaelic gods. Those we know are evidently not without parentage, but the names of their fathers are no more than shadows following into oblivion the figures they designated. The most ancient divinity of whom we have any knowledge is Danu herself, the goddess from whom the whole hierarchy of gods received its name of Tuatha Dé Danann. ”

“ After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. ”

“ THE GODS IN EXILE But though mortals had conquered gods upon a scale unparalleled in mythology, they had by no means entirely subdued them. Beaten in battle, the people of the goddess Danu had yet not lost their divine attributes, and could use them either to help or hurt. ”

“ As the Danube moves majestically between ever recurring islets, green with willow and birch, and wooded heights crowned with ruins of castles and monasteries telling of times long past, the veil of romance, with which legend invests everything, seems to become heavier and more variegated. ”

“ Where were they?—bright Greek and delicate Persian, ravening Hun and haughty Latin, swift Scythian and black-browed Tartar, brute Mogul and patrician Roman, whose bones lay buried there, unmarked, unparted, in the community of the grave?
The Danube rolled along its majestic waters, while centuries and cycles passed; sweeping onward under the same sun that once flashed on the diadem of Darius; flowing in solemn melody through the night under the same stars which the wistful eyes of Julian once studied in the still lonely watches of his tent. ”

“ By-and-by, from behind these knolls, the Danube made his appearance; not broader, certainly, than he had seemed to be at Fischamend, or even above it, but evidently deeper, I think, more rapid;—and altogether, with a degree of majesty about him which attaches to the one object, that gives its peculiar character to a living landscape. The Danube is, indeed, a magnificent river; albeit the people who inhabit his banks are only just beginning to find out that he may be turned to more accounts than that of mere beauty.
The interval between Hainburg and Presburg is but a single post ”

“ The shores of the Danube here are extremely beautiful. The valley where it spreads out, is filled with groves, but where the hills approach the stream, its banks are rocky and precipitous, like the Rhine. Although not so picturesque as the latter river, the scenery of the Danube is on a grander scale. On the south side the mountains bend down to it with a majestic sweep, and there must be delightful glances into the valleys that lie between, in passing down the current. ”

“ Shortly beyond Silistria the Danube leaves Bulgarian territory, after which Rumania is on both sides of the stream, for the land on the right, the Dobrudja, extending from the Danube to the Black Sea, was awarded to Rumania by the Treaty of Berlin. Both sides, too, become flat alike. The river is still greatly diversified by islands covered with bushes and reeds—“more resembling a sea studded with innumerable islets than a river”—while the avi-fauna is particularly rich, immense flocks of wild swans, wild geese, pelicans, herons, and other waterfowl being often seen. ”

“ THE GODS ARRIVE The people of the goddess Danu were not the first divine inhabitants of Ireland. Others had been before them, dwellers in “the dark backward and abysm of time”. In this the Celtic mythology resembles those of other nations, in almost all of which we find an old, dim realm of gods standing behind the reigning Pantheon. Such were Cronos and the Titans, dispossessed by the Zeus who seemed, even to Hesiod, something of a parvenu deity. Gaelic tradition recognizes two divine dynasties anterior to the Tuatha Dé Danann. ”

“ This scattered town, with its broad roads, its tree-grown front, exercises a peculiar fascination over the visitor. It is not particularly beautiful in itself, it has no interest-compelling associations, no buildings of great importance, and yet—it grows on one. It is true that it is beautifully situated near the junction of the river Cerna with the Danube, that the views up towards the Kazán and down to Ada Kaleh, and across the broad swift-running river to the Servian hills, are all fine. ”

“ I first came on the Danube at Budapest in the evening after dinner and saw, close in front of me, what looked to be some curious electric-light sign. It seemed odd in war time, and I stared for a moment before I saw that this strange design was really the black, opposite bank with its zigzag streams of lamps.
Few cities have so naturally beautiful a drop-curtain, and, instead of spoiling it with gas-works' and grain-elevators as we should do, the Hungarians have been thoughtful enough to build a tree-covered promenade between the Danube and the string of hotels which line the river. ”

“ If we looked to the right, we could trace the windings of the Danube for twenty miles, his current filled with green, wooded islands; white cities lie at the foot of the hills, which, covered to the summit with grain fields and vineyards, extended back one behind another, till the farthest were lost in the distance. ”

“ Continuing through a rich agricultural plain we pass Dályai, and at Vukovár, a town of over twelve thousand inhabitants, reach the centre of one of the chief Hungarian fruit districts—with many plum-orchards and vineyards. (Hungary exports dried plums to the value of over half a million sterling each year, while the national spirit, Slivovitz, is prepared from plums.) Here the Danube trends more directly to the east, and for some distance flows more or less parallel with the Save, which runs at the further side of the range of hills we see to the south. ”

“ Beyond, the left-hand shore extended north-west and north, to the mountains of the Balkan, “the sentinels of an enchanted land,” and thence to the dark, swift rolling Danube. To the right, the mountainous shores stretched in a continuous range towards the site of Sinope, the ancient capital of Pontus and the birth-place of Diogenes. Towards the north and north-east was one broad expanse of water, which, so far from presenting a gloomy appearance, rippled its tiny waves before the breath of a gentle breeze, and basked in the rays of an unclouded sun. ”

“ On the opposite side of the river—with which it is connected by an iron bridge of over 550 yards—is Párkány and a little beyond, also on the left side, the river Garam (Gran) flows into the Danube. The river winds considerably during the next few miles, and looking back, the magnificent cathedral that we have just passed shows even more strikingly picturesque than as it is approached down-stream—especially when seen against a gorgeous crimson sunset sky. The hills draw together and the scenery once more becomes variedly beautiful. ”

“ The Danube is so fiercely agitated by the stormy wind, that it rises into waves like a sea. We are suffering lamentably from cold; unable to warm ourselves, we stand gazing ruefully at the place where the stove stood—once upon a time.
At four o’clock we reached Drenkova without accident, but completely benumbed: we hurried into the inn built by the steamboat company, where we found capital fare, a warm room, and tolerably comfortable beds. This was the first place we had reached since leaving Pesth at which we could thoroughly warm and refresh ourselves. ”

“ Island, near Buda-Pesth—quite a miniature paradise, frequented by a great many strangers, who come here to get the benefit of its excellent baths. Of the numerous affluents of the Danube the Theiss is the most important; it has its sources in the country and empties into the Danube on Hungarian soil, near Titel. It is navigable for steamships. The Save and Drave are after the Theiss the largest tributaries of the Danube. All these rivers send their waters, through the medium of the Danube, into the Black Sea. ”

“ The Danube carries fleets of grain and timber ships all summer; they go round by Byzantium."
"The people are well off by your account," said Balbinus.
"They are," Proculus boasted. "It is a cold country, but they will soon be as well-housed as people in Gaul or Britain and they have even a superabundance of clothing and food. Furs are good and cheap, wool and flax plenty. Everybody is well-fed, all the slaves are fat, no one poor anywhere." ”

“ Yet the fact is that much of the beauty of the Upper Danube may [Pg viii] be explored by the holiday-maker who has but a fortnight or three weeks to spend, for the river has a length of nearly two thousand miles from where it rises in the duchy of Baden to where it joins the Black Sea, crossing or bordering in its course the States of Bavaria, Würtemburg, Austria, Hungary, Servia, Rumania and Bulgaria, and touching at the northernmost of its various mouths the vast territory of the Russian Empire. ”

“ The Tribes of the goddess Danu can take all shapes, and those that are in the waters take often the shape of fish. A woman of Burren, in Galway, says, 'There are more of them in the sea than on the land, and they sometimes try to come over the side of the boat in the form of fishes, for they can take their choice shape.' At other times they are beautiful women ”

“ It was autumn when I journeyed down the Danube, but even then, at every place I stayed and along such stretches of the river as I explored afoot, the wealth of flowers was such as to suggest how much greater it must be in spring and summer. And it may be said that, impressive as is the ever-changing panorama seen from the comfortable steamers, the river becomes the more endeared to us the more we can explore of such details as cannot be seen, or can be but glanced at from the water. ”

“ I suggest that the battle between the Tribes of the goddess Danu, the powers of light, and warmth, and fruitfulness, and goodness, and the Fomor, the powers of darkness, and cold, and barrenness, and badness upon the Towery Plain, was the establishment of the habitable world, the rout of the ancestral darkness; that the battle among the Sidhe for the harvest is the annual battle of summer and winter; that the battle among the Sidhe at a man's death is the battle of life and death ”

“ Below, on the Danube, which runs very rapidly here, darting with the speed of an arrow through the pontoon bridge, lay a new steamer, that had just arrived, laden with strangers; then the extensive view of the flat but wooded country, and meadows overflowed by the Danube; of the embankments and streets swarming with human beings, and mountains clothed with Hungarian vines—all this was not a little strange and foreign. Then the pleasant contrast of living in the same house with the best and most friendly people in the world, and finding novelty doubly interesting in their society. ”

“ At the Iron Gate the Danube quits the Austrian Dominions and enters those of Turkey. The country on the south continues for some time mountainous, then hilly, and by degrees sinks into a plain: on the north is the great level of Wallachia. In its course towards the Black Sea, the Danube divides, frequently forming numerous islands, especially below Silistria. Its width where undivided now averages from fifteen hundred to two thousand yards, its depth above twenty feet. Before reaching its mouth, several large rivers flow into it, as the Alt, Sereth, and Pruth. ”

“ Bridges barring the way down the stream indicate that we are in the neighbourhood of a big city, though the Danube approach to Vienna may well seem disappointing. The grand buildings, the bright streets which we associate with the name must be sought at a distance from the main stream, the buildings along which are mainly wharves and offices connected with the river trade, dominating them being the great warehouses and passenger hall of the Donau Dampfschiffahrts Gesellschaft, whence the fine steamers set out up-stream to Passau and down to Budapest, Belgrade, and the Black Sea. ”