Éire

“ The early History of Ireland clings around and grows out of the Irish barrows until, with almost the universality of that primeval forest from which Ireland took one of its ancient names, the whole isle and all within it was clothed with a nobler raiment, invisible, but not the less real, of a full and luxuriant history, from whose presence, all-embracing, no part was free. ”

“ We've never been far on the land. Deep down under the sea it's the same way it is under the sea about Ireland. There's the land at the bottom, with the sand all fine and firm, like a floor, and there's the water above, like a green sky, and there are the shells and the sea-flowers, and there are the weeds that wave around you and over you, like red and green and purple curtains to your house, and it's all as cool and as neat as any of the sea-places around Ireland. ”

“ Florent is bordered by acacia trees most of the way, while the Loire winds through the meadows on either hand, is pleasant and pretty. Up a narrow lane, from whose walls of unhewn stones hung common English ferns, I passed more huge boulders wedged in the ground. Some peasant women were sitting on them, resting and enjoying the lovely view of the valley of the Loire, with Saumur and its four-towered castle crowning the rocks. For the French peasant has a keen sense of natural beauty. ”

“ So many fairy lakes were never found in any other country. Green meadows never offered sweeter resting places than those of the Emerald Isle; yet its young people turn their backs to it, and their blue eyes toward the more barren worlds beyond the seas.
[vi]
This story of Irish Kathleen gives glimpses of ancient Ireland, as well as pictures of the life of to-day with its tales of wee folk and giants, its picnics and turf-cutting, its dancing and sheep-shearing, its hunting and farming. ”

“ Hence you must, if you would know aught of Ireland, see Muckross Abbey, Blarney Castle, and the Giant’s Causeway. The harps, the shamrocks, the blackthorns, and the peat-bogs, all of which are genuine enough, will then fit themselves accommodatingly into the ensemble, and you will have a picture so impressed upon the memory that the recollection of it will rival most things of this earth with which one has had but a passing intimacy. ”

“ Ireland is beautiful, but not so beautiful as the Great Plain I call you to. The beer of Ireland is heady, but the beer of the Great Plain is much more heady. How marvellous is the country I am speaking of! Youth does not grow old there. ”

“ None who has ever breathed the air of Ireland can breathe in another land without memory of the ancient harp of Ireland. But it is as a memory-deep, wonderful, and abiding, yet a memory. I sometimes think I have forgotten, and then I hear coming through this Virginia the notes of some old Irish melody, the song of some wayfarer of Mayo or Connemara, and I know then that Ireland is persuasive and perpetual ”

“ Ireland is very beautiful. Its pasture-lands and meadow-lands, blossom-decked and water-fed, crossed and recrossed by never-ending hedgerows, that stretch away and lose themselves in misty nothingness, are fair as a poet's dream. ”

“ It was Ireland in the tropics,—“the Green Isle” in the Indian Ocean! Only imagine such a spot converted into a watering-place! With a lodge for the Queen on that slope sheltered by the ilex-copse, crescents, and casinos, and yacht stations, and ornamental villas rose on every side by his descriptive powers, and the old Earl—for he was dining with him—saw at one glance how he had suddenly become a benefactor of mankind and a millionnaire. “That little angle of the shore yonder, my Lord,—the space between the pointed rock and the stone-pine trees,—is worth fifty thousand pounds ”

“ Many coming to the son of Donnchadh from the north, no less from the south, an assembly of scholars: a billeting from west and east, a company seeking for cattle.
“There will be jurists, of legal decisions; wizards, and good poets; the authors of Ireland, those who compose the battle rolls, will be in his dwelling.
“The musicians of Ireland—vast the flock—the followers of every craft in general, the flood of companies, side by side—the tryst of all is to one house. ”

“ When you have asked where it is and why it is so called, you have been told it is only another name for that small island to the northwest of the continent of Europe called Ireland.
The rains there fall so often, and the sun shines so warmly afterward, that Mother Nature is able to dress herself in the brightest and loveliest of colours. The people there are cheerful and good-natured. They are always ready to smile through their tears and see the funny side of every hardship. ”

“ They led us to the top of the hill, where we could stand beside the spot once occupied by the coronation stone and admire all Ireland, spread out like a cyclorama around us. It is one of the most beautiful landscapes in the universe. There are no mountains, except in the far distance; there are no rocks or other ungainly objects in view, but as serene and peaceful and fertile a tract of territory as can be found upon God’s footstool. Ireland is the greenest country that ever was. The turf and the foliage have a brighter color and a richer luster than those of any other country. ”

“ Then the Norman barons built castles and married Irish ladies, and they no more desired to return to England, for Ireland was a country abounding in treasure.
"The old chieftains of Erin prospered under these princely English lords, who were the chief rulers and who had given up their surliness for good manners, their stubbornness for sweet-mildness and their perverseness for hospitality." ”

“ I have already spoken of the wonders of the River Shannon, which rises in a bubbling cauldron away above Lough Allen, and flows down through ten counties to the sea; widening into lakes twenty miles long, or draining vast stretches of impassable bog; navigable for more than two hundred miles; and, finally, the great barrier between eastern Ireland, which the Danes and English over-ran and conquered, and western Ireland, which has never ceased to be Irish, and where the old Gaelic is still the language of the people. ”

“ Yes, among the nations of the earth, Ireland stands number one in the physical strength of her sons and in the beauty and purity of her daughters. Ireland, land of my forefathers, how my mind expands, and my spirit walks abroad in something of majesty, when I contemplate the high qualities, inestimable virtues, and true purity and piety and religious fidelity of the inhabitants of your green fields and productive mountains. ”

“ The Irish rivers are many, and, in the main, beautiful streams. The Shannon 10is the greatest river in the realm of Great Britain and Ireland, while the Suir, the Barrow, the Nore, the Slaney, the Corrib, the Erne, the Foyle, the Boyne, and the Liffey are also considerable rivers and possess enough waterpower, were it scientifically utilized, to turn the wheels of the world’s machinery. The Munster Blackwater, celebrated, like its sister river, the Suir, in the charming poetry of Edmund Spenser, is called, because of its peculiar loveliness, “the Irish Rhine.” ”

“ We should not see or feel the landscape of Ireland or its skies, the streams, the woods, the animals and birds, the mountain solitudes, as we feel and see them in the original tales. We should not hear, as we hear in their first form, the stormy seas between Scotland and Antrim, or the great waves which roar on the western isles, and beat on cliffs which still belong to another world than ours. ”

“ There is a river called the Eure which runs between low hills often wooded, with a flat meadow floor in between. It so runs for many miles. The towns that are set upon it are for the most part small and rare, and though the river is well known by name, and though one of the chief cathedrals of Europe stands near its source, for the most part it is not visited by strangers.
In this valley one day as I was drawing a picture of the woods I found a wandering Englishman who was in the oddest way. ”

“ For the wonder of Ireland is, that it is the West Pole of things; there is no place else nearer the Unseen; its next-door neighbor-land westward is this Great Plain, whither sail the Happy Dead in their night-dark coracles,—to return, of course, in due season; and all the peoplings of Ireland were from this Great Plain. So you see why the Crest-Wave, passing from dying Europe, "went west" by way of Ireland. ”

“ Ireland must be known to her Ballad Historians, not by flat, but by shaded maps, and topographical and scenic descriptions; not by maps of to-day only, but by maps (such as Ortelius and the maps in the State Papers) of Ireland in time past; and, finally, it must be known by the eye. A man who has not raced on our hills, panted on our mountains, waded our rivers in drought and flood, pierced our passes, skirted our coast, noted our old towns, and learned the shape and colour of ground and tree and sky, is not master of all a Balladist's art. ”

“ To judge of Ireland by the conversation one sometimes hears in England, it would be supposed that one-half of it was covered with bogs, and the other with mountains filled with Irish ready to fly at the sight of a civilised being. ”

“ THE EYES THAT COME FROM IRELAND Don't you love the eyes that come from Ireland?
The grey-blue eyes so strangely grey and blue,
The fighting loving eyes,
The eyes that tell no lies—
Don't you love the eyes that come from Ireland?
Don't you love the eyes that come from Ireland?
The dreaming mocking eyes that see you through,
The eyes that smile and smile,
With the heart-break all the while,—
Don't you love the eyes that come from Ireland?
Don't you love the eyes that come from Ireland? ”

“ Perhaps if we think of the Lapps of the present day, and picture them wandering about the country, catching the hares and rabbits in nooses, burrowing in the earth or amongst rocks, and being, not impossibly, looked down on with scorn by the great Irish elk which still stalked majestically over the hills; rearing ugly little altars to dim, formless gods; trembling at every sudden gust, and seeing demon faces in every bush and brake, it will give us a fairly good notion of what these very earliest inhabitants of Ireland were probably like. ”

“ Rich as Ireland is in picturesque river scenery, we know nothing more beautiful than the valley through which the Nore flows between Thomastown and New Ross. The gently sloping meadows, backed by deep woods, and dotted with cheerful farm-houses, gradually give way to a bolder landscape as you descend the stream and enter a dark gorge, whose high beetling sides throw their solemn shade over the river, receding at last to form a kind of amphitheatre wherein stands the little village of Inistioge. ”

“ You'll go on thinking that you're English until some one speaks disparagingly of Ireland, and then you'll flare up, and you'll be Irish, not only in nature, but in knowledge. Ireland does that to people, so you cannot hope to escape. Good-night, my very dear!"
6
On Sunday, he went into the mountains, and in the evening he returned to Dublin. There was an extraordinary quietness in the streets, though they were crowded with people ... the quietness that comes when people are tired and happy. ”

“ The Kongspell—mirror of Kings—which was compiled in Norway about the year 1200, says that Ireland is almost the best of the lands we are acquainted with although no vines grow there. The Scandinavian Vikings and emigrants, who often contented themselves with such poor countries as Greenland and the islands in the north Atlantic, must, therefore, have especially turned their attention to the 'Emerald Isle,' particularly as it bordered closely upon their colonies in England and Scotland. ”

“ They look to England as their mother-country. But Ireland is an ancient nation and a mother-country in her own right. She has herself peopled the earth with her children. Her empire is as far-flung as England’s. ”

“ The mountain haze is seen in great perfection, and the hills are well wooded, and exhibit a splendid verdure. There is a peculiar moisture and softness in the air, with a fragrant and stimulating quality. In contradistinction to the Irish lakes, these of Scotland have a bold and masculine appearance. We speak of elegance and nicety at Ireland's lakes, but here we have, added to those qualities, vastness and power reflected from their mountains. ”

“ The Rhine in the north-west, the Loire, and the River Rhone.”
Finally, he comes to Ireland, which, in loving language, he proclaims to be
“A pleasant and joyous land, wealth-abounding; the land of the sons of Milesius; a land of branching stems; the most fertile land that is under the sun.”
So ends this most interesting manual of geography written by an Irish scholar, in the Irish tongue, and taught to the students of Ross-ailithir, whilst the Danish pirates were roaming round our seas, and ruling with strong hand in Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick. ”

“ We see much weather-beaten country, stretches of purple granite boulders devoid of vegetation and bleak beyond description. From the summit of the hills we glide down a winding and stony road into Kenmare, passing with considerable difficulty many coaches loaded with trippers, for this is a favorite coaching route.
Someone has said that Ireland is like an ugly picture set in a beautiful frame. We may dissent from the view that the interior is ugly; we have seen much charming country, though on the whole not the equal of England or Scotland. ”