Tipperary

“ As I rode at a slow walk, one soft autumn evening, from the once noted and noticeable town of Emly, now a squalid village, towards the no less remarkable town of Tipperary, I fell into a meditative mood. ”

“ LEGENDS OF THE SHEFRO.
THE LEGEND OF KNOCKSHEOGOWNA.
I.
In Tipperary is one of the most singularly shaped hills in the world. It has got a peak at the top like a conical nightcap thrown carelessly over your head as you awake in the morning. On the very point is built a sort of lodge, where in the summer the lady who built it and her friends used to go on parties of pleasure; but that was long after the days of the fairies, and it is, I believe, now deserted. ”

“ With all its drawbacks, and the failings of the people, I have learned to love my Tipperary home, and to deplore very bitterly the late outrages committed in other parts of the county, praying sincerely that civilisation may increase, that true Christianity be established, and that landlord and tenant may learn to live together in peace and unity. ”

“ I was not born in that county, for “under the blue sky of Tipperary” my eyes first saw the light of day, but, as you say, my mother was born in Ross Carbery; and where is the son who does not love the spot where his mother was born? I do, with a fondness akin to veneration.
Oh, what memories you will call up in those recollections of yours! How the hearts of the sons and daughters of Ireland will throb as they feel themselves [20] carried back in spirit to the abbeys, the raths and, alas! the ruins, around which in infancy their young feet wandered. ”

“ Whilst many possessing a personal interest in everything tending to improve or enrich the country have been so misled or inconsiderate as to repel by exaggerated statements British capital from their doors, this foreigner chose Tipperary as the centre of his operations, wherein to embark all the fruits of his industry in a traffic peculiarly exposed to the power and even to the caprice of the peasantry. ”

“ Industries.—Tipperary ranks among the best agricultural districts of Ireland. The subsoil in the lower grounds is limestone, which is overlaid by a rich calcareous loam, capable of yielding the finest crops. The centre of the county is occupied by the Golden Vale, the most fertile district in Ireland, which stretches from Cashel to the town of Limerick. On the higher districts the soil is light and thin, partaking much of the character of the clay slate and sands on which it rests. ”

“ The very sound of it calls up visions of healthy, sturdy young British manhood marching out in its millions to engage its lives and fortunes in what it believed to be the most righteous war that ever was waged. Surely, I thought, if any place in Ireland should be sacred to Englishmen and to the memory of the 250,000 Irishmen who enlisted in England’s battles, it should be Tipperary. ”

“ Never surely was there a greater frost in the mining industry than the property known as the "Great Tipperary." After half a dozen firms, at least, had lost money in it, and had been glad to get out of it again at any cost, it had passed into the hands of a little Jew storekeeper who had advanced money to its owners, and who, seeing that there was nothing else to be got, had been glad to take the mine in lieu of payment, on the chance of being able to dispose of it again. ”

“ There are scarcely any Protestants in the county of Tipperary. His offices were fired, and his servants, with difficulty, saved their lives. Compelled to abandon Tipperary—that sink of Popish iniquity, every nook and corner of which I am acquainted with—this generous and fine-hearted young nobleman retires to his family mansion, in Waterford ”

“ Is it in the energy, courage, and perseverance of the army of Tipperary, that we must find the realisation of the long-cherished hopes of Irish independence, and the demonstration of the solid foundation on which the much vaunted prospects of Hibernian success against British oppression is to be founded! It must augment the admiration which all the world must feel at the gallant conduct of the Irish, in this memorable struggle, to reflect that they owed their success to themselves alone ”

“ Many of these monsters used to complain of their life, and their caning, and their long drills, and their small pay; but Morgan was not one of the grumblers. “It’s a deal better,” said he, “to get fat here in Berlin, than to starve in rags in Tipperary!”’
‘Where is Tipperary?’ asked my companion.
‘That is exactly what Morgan’s friends asked him. It is a beautiful district in Ireland, the capital of which is the magnificent city of Clonmel: a city, let me tell you, sir, only inferior to Dublin and London, and far more sumptuous than any on the Continent. ”

“ If Tipperary and some of the adjoining parts of Munster were blotted out of the moral map of the country, we would stand as a nation in a far higher position than that which we occupy in the opinion of our neighbors. ”

“ The young women of the town rarely undress when they go to bed, so fearful are they of a midnight entry and search. The Irish girl has a delicacy all her own in matters of this sort. The nerves of the children are fearfully affected, and many of them scream in the dark. Ruin, misery, desolation and death in Tipperary—“It’s a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart’s right there.”
It was not very easy to go about Ireland’s more remote districts. ”

“ Tipperary (173) , a south-midland county of Ireland, in the province of Munster, stretching N. of Waterford, between Limerick (W.) and Kilkenny (E.) ; possesses a productive soil, which favours a considerable agricultural and dairy-farming industry; coal is also worked; the Suir is the principal stream; the generally flat surface is diversified in the S. by the Galtees (3008 ft.) and Knockmeledown (2609 ft.) , besides smaller ranges elsewhere; county town Tipperary (7) , 110 m. SW. of Dublin ”

“ From the rich level country the rock of Cashel, also composed of limestone, rises with great boldness and abruptness. Tipperary has only one river, the Suir, which has its source in the Devil's Bit Mountains, and flows south wards by Templemore, Thurles, Caher, and Clonmel. The Nore, which also rises in the Devil's Bit Mountains, soon passes into Queen's county, and the Shannon forms part of the western border. A spur of the Leinster coal-field, the most important in Ireland, runs into Tipperary, extend ing to Cashel, a distance of 20 miles with an average breadth of 5 miles. ”

“ Because I am asked I re-baptize with great pleasure this beautiful estate and call it “Clonmel.” “Clonmel” is a beautiful place in the County Tipperary. The determined immigrants from Tipperary and from every part of the Emerald Isle have come to the front as they deserved in America. There is no element and no strain in our civilization that has manifested itself to be stronger, more enterprising, more shrewd in business, more tenacious of its principles than the Irishmen, from North and South, who come to this country to make it their own. ”

“ One Tipperary man was hanging between heaven and earth, with his foot in a bucket; a second was letting him down the shaft. So that there were four Tipperary men left to confront, and if necessary do battle with, twenty-two Chinamen. Long odds: but the Tipperary men did not seem to think so, did not seem even to consider that there was the slightest danger. ”

“ Through Lismore Glen, where the woods are thick on either side and the road is canopied over with the spreading green foliage, one enters the Gap, a famous pass in the Knockmeledown Mountains, where the hills rise on one side to frowning heights, crowned in the gold of the gorse, which gives an additional glory to the land, and, on the other side, fall sheer down in an almost precipitous steep, across which there is a vast and enchanting view over the rolling plains of Tipperary. ”

“ And then the line mounted the hills which divide the Vale [205] of Tipperary from the valley of the Shannon, crossed them, and came out upon a land as beautiful and fertile as any we had seen in Ireland. Such lushness, such greenness, such calm, quiet loveliness can surely be matched in few other spots upon this earth.
It was still early afternoon when the train rolled in to the station at Limerick, and on the platform we met the actor and his wife whom we had talked with at Blarney a week before. ”

“ An English gentleman, who had from his earliest years been educated with the most violent prejudices against the Irish, came, when advanced in life, to inherit a considerable property in the county of Tipperary, but under the express condition that he should reside on the land. ”

“ Another Tipperary man laid hold of the handle of the windlass, and the Chinaman was whirled aside, screaming and yelling, and, after spinning like a teetotum for a dozen yards, found himself in a favourable position for studying the celestial sphere. A third Tipperary man put his foot into the bucket which was about to be sent empty to the bottom of the shaft, and grasped the rope above him with one firm hand, while the second man, working at the windlass, slowly unwound the rope, and let his mate down the pit. ”

“ The gentlemen of Tipperary came to meet him, but could or would do nothing. ‘Every man stands at gaze, and suffers the rascals to rob and pillage all the English about them.’ Ormonde’s own cattle were driven off. St. Leger’s brother-in-law having been pillaged, he took indiscriminate vengeance, and some innocent men were probably killed. He as good as told the Tipperary magnates that they were all rebels. In the meantime the Leinster insurgents had crossed the estuary of the Suir in boats, and ravaged the eastern part of Waterford. ”

“ At the same time the county palatine of Tipperary, seized by James I from his grandfather Walter, was restored to him, and he recovered his own Irish estates, which had been parcelled out amongthe adventurers, as well as those which he had mortgaged, and the prisage of wines, hereditary in the family, while large grants in recompense of the fortune he had spent in the royal service were made by the king. In the following year the Irish parliament presented him with 30,000l. ”

“ After having mingled with the Nationalist crowd that followed the Balfour column in the Dublin torchlight procession, after having escaped unhurt from the blazing Nationalists who swarm in the Royal Victoria Hotel, Cork, having walked down the Limerick entrance to the balmy Tipperary, a little shooting, more or less, is unworthy a moment's consideration. ”

“ I got out the map of Ireland, learned the geography of the province of Munster, discovered Cashel almost in the centre of Tipperary, and trusted to the future to enlighten me further. In those days, reader, travelling was not so expeditious and comfortable as now-a-days. Railroads had not penetrated far through Ireland, and many of the principal towns were as unapproachable as they had been fifty years before. ”

“ And bartering his purple for the greed of his heart
He lost both the sceptre and Chrism of Kings.
For Miss Katherine Brégy.
TIPPERARY
(New version.)
I'm not going to Tipperary for I've better work to do,
I am dreaming of a new device to catch each German crew;
And when we've chased them thro' the deep, Ach Gott! what
fun there'll be
Rounding up the Teuton "subs" in the blue and vasty sea.
So, good-bye, Tipperary! Farewell, Slieve-na-mon! ”

“ Like almost all Tipperary landlords who choose to live on their property, he finds it necessary to cast aside all doubts and fears. Unless armed with a never-failing courage, a landowner in this county would, as it were, suffer a hundred deaths in the year. Denis is determined to dread no one or nothing, and never to flinch from any act that ho thinks proper among his tenantry. Were I he I would just do the same; but you see, Captain Stapleton, the misfortune is our lot being cast as it is. We are Tipperary people. We do not wish to abandon our ancestral home ”

“ Latterly I had spent more than two months of leave on the Continent, and on my return to England for a short visit home I received the announcement that my regiment had been sent to Tipperary—head-quarters Templemore, detachment at Cashel, where my company was now stationed. I had only a few days to loiter over my preparations for departure to Ireland, and it was with no small degree of curiosity that I contemplated a sojourn in the heart of a proverbially dangerous locale. ”

“ The people became accustomed to travelling. They might still walk to Cahir; but going by car saved their legs, saved their brains, and saved their time. They might go to Cahir market, do their business there, and be comfortably back within the day. Bianconi then thought of extending the car to Tipperary and Limerick. In the course of the same year, 1815, he started another car between Clonmel, Cashel, and Thurles. Thus all the principal towns of Tipperary were, in the first year of the undertaking, connected together by car, besides being also connected with Limerick. ”

“ Ireland, who was usher to Mr. Garnett, schoolmaster of Tipperary. Mr. Garnett died lately: he has given Mr. Ireland a very good certificate, and most of the gentlemen in and about Tipperary have recommended Mr. Ireland to succeed Mr. Garnett: as you are one of the governors of that school, I hope you will do Mr. Ireland all the service you can, which will very much oblige me. ”

“ I replied quickly; “the scenery is charming, and the people excessively pleasant. I am afraid we hear sad untruths about Ireland altogether across the Channel, Miss Barnett.”
She smiled a little sadly, I thought, and uttered a half-suppressed sigh.
“I wish we lived anywhere else,” she said, after a pause.
“Indeed! Then you fear the lawlessness of Tipperary tenants, perhaps.”
“And not without cause,” she added, fixing her eyes full on my face. “Our family have long been obnoxious to the people about here. ”