the scenery on leaving clifden is for a time bleak and monotonous, but soon becomes varied and beautiful. you pass, by streamstown and ballinakill, through the pleasant village with its pretty cottages, fuchsia-hedges, and general look of neatness and comfort, which it owes to mr. ellis, an english resident, and who, (so it was told to me, as our friend herodotus hath it) is much respected, although a quaker, by the roman catholics around. between this place and kylemore, you enter upon one of the grandest scenes, to my taste, to be found in all connamara, a kind of mountain pass, with the rocks rising to a great height, in huge blocks and broken masses, piled one above another, and sometimes jutting over the road in fearful contiguity, densely timbered from base to summit, the gray stone contrasting beautifully with the bright green foliage of the trees. here the eagles build, and had become so numerous, (so our driver said), that the owner had had recourse to poison. it sounded awfully in our ears, like trapping a fox or shooting an albatross; and, surely, if the king of birds must be slain (and i cannot deny that his majesty's conduct, in perpetually flying off with lambs, is open to some criticism) he might fall more nobly to the rifle of the sportsman.
we reached the solitary inn by kylemore lake for luncheon; and i purposely make these memoranda about meals, and take my time from the kitchen clock, because the delightful air of connamara very speedily induces that vacuum, which nature and the tourist yearn to fill. so frank and i danced in triumph around our undisputed lobster, blades languishing at clifden, and a fellow passenger, who had stopped at kylemore, and whom, being almost hairless, we distinguished as “balder the beautiful,” having previously lunched, as we came along, upon the largest biscuit i ever met with, and which, when he first produced it, we both of us mistook for a fox-and-goose board. contemplating the shell and other débris, in a state of placid plethora, and reflecting, in a spirit of tooth-pick philosophy, what a glorious economy it would be for us undergraduates, and what a grim despair for the tailors, if we, like the lobster, could annually cast our clothing, and reappear, as he does, in customary suit of solemn black, without any pecuniary investment,—i was startled by the wild conduct of francis, who, suddenly springing from his chair, and favouring me with a slap upon the back, which immediately induced a determination of bitter beer to the head, exclaimed, at the very apex of his voice, “and now, old cock, for a salmon!” forthwith he entered into solemn consultation with our worthy host, mr. duncan, and produced for his inspection a small library of fly-books. alas, the inspector looked grave and shook his head, as an examiner surveying infirm latin. “one or two might raise a fish;” but this was said in a tone, which quite convinced me, that, unless frank should come across a salmon, which happened to be helplessly drunk, his entomological specimens would be treated with most profound contempt. what was to be done? mr. d.'s own flies had been stolen, during a recent illness, by his visitors; and, indeed, as they were kept, with true irish liberality, in the hall of the inn, one can scarcely wonder at the felonious fact. but he was determined, the weather being most propitious, and the lake full of “fish,” (not to mention the white trout, of which there is abundance) that frank should not be disappointed, and forthwith commenced the operation, most interesting to me who had never seen it, of “tying a fly.” he began with a bare hook, a piece of fishing gut, and a few bits of silk and feathers; and lo, in about three minutes, there issued from his consummate manipulation a gorgeous fly, so beautiful, and, withal, so plump and appetising, that for a salmon to see it was to look and die. then armed with a gaff, which would have landed a sturgeon, or made a glorious pastoral staff for his grace the archbishop of brobdingnag, and which was borne before him, as the crozier of saint grellen was carried before the tribes of hy-many, when, ages ago, they conquered here in connaught, away went frank to his boat; and i, rodless, to wander, wondering, among the great mountains and to cull a bouquet of ferns and flowers. this i had just arranged satisfactorily, and was thinking how admirably that little wayside rush (epiphorum), with its snow-white silky flag, would serve for some lilliputian clerk of the course to drop before a ruck of fairy jocks, and start them for a queen mab's plate, when a ringing shout in the distance, which might have been emitted by a triumphant fox-hunter, or by an indian scalping his foe, drew my attention to the lake, and i could see dear old frank standing in the boat, and holding up a glorious salmon, with its silver scales glittering in the sun.
hurrying back, i was just in time to meet the conquering hero as he came ashore; and i am quite sure that neither julius cæsar, nor any other human being, ever landed with greater dignity. had he been coming to weigh after winning “the liverpool,” or into the pavilion at lords' after an innings of five hundred, he could not have looked more happy and glorious, and i felt it a privilege to strew the path he trod upon with three bits of heather and my pocket-handkerchief.
there was an amusing little dialogue, as he left his bark:—
“boatman!” quoth the illustrious fisherman, “how much is the boat?”
“sure, your onour, the boat'll be in the bill. your onour'll give the boatman what you please.”
“but what is generally given!”
“well, your 'onour, some'll give two shillings, and some eighteen pince. a tailor'd be for giving eighteen pince.”
how much frank gave, i know not; but from the expression of satisfaction, which brightened the faces of his aquatic friends, i infer that he exceeded in munificence a whole street of tailors. and, indeed, he was bound so to do, since, in our eyes, “was never salmon yet that shone so fair,” as we bore it in triumph to our inn; and i sang, in the joy of my heart, to the
they may rail at this land, they may slander and slang it,
but we've found it a land to admire and enjoy;
and until they convince us au contraire, why, hang it,
we will speak as we find, won't we, frank, my dear boy?
air “they may rail at this life.”
so long as kylemore has such lakes and such fishing,
as from duncan's hotel at this moment we see,
and of salmon for dinner we bring such a dish in,—
connamara's the planet for you, frank, and me!
so we carried it to the kitchen, where it cost my friend no little effort to transfer his captive to the cook; and i am quite convinced, that could he have escaped ridicule, he would have preferred to take that fish to bed with him. i am glad he did not; for a firmer, flakier, curdier salmon never gladdened a table d'hôte, and there were “lashings and lavings” for our party of eight, when we met at dinner that evening.
after the banquet, frank caused us to be rowed in triumph over the scene of his victory, sitting in the stern with an enormous regalia, and surveying the waters with a grand complacency, which made me feel myself quite contemptible. very different would my sensations have been, had i been then acquainted with the fact, which my friend subsequently revealed to me, that he had hooked and lost two much finer fish than that on which we dined.
the boatmen—one of whom, from his sapient and solemn manner, had the sobriquet of lord bacon; and the other, a fine, cheery young fellow, wearing his rightful appellation of johnny joyce—joined us in our tobacco and talk, “turning to mirth all things of earth, as only” irishmen can. when two of the visitors came out of the inn, lingered a few seconds in conversation at the gate, and then started for their evening walk, in opposite directions, as englishmen are wont,—“bedad,” said my lord bacon, “the gentlemen have quarrelled, more's the pity. sure, one of 'em has been ating the biggest dinner, and made the other jealous. that's the jealous one,” he continued, pointing to our friend balder the beautiful, “there's something in the set of his back, which says that he is disappointed.” and there really was a misanthropic expression, to be observed upon the shoulders in question, which we might not otherwise have noticed, but which was immediately patent to an irishman, who detects more quickly, and ridicules more cleverly, though he cannot despise more heartily than we do, any exposition of a sulky temperament. i remember going to a horse-fair with paddy o'hara, of merton, and that we overtook on the road an agriculturist of a staid and sullen deportment. he was riding by a rustic groom who led a handsome, but somewhat heavy-looking horse, too good for harness, but scarcely good enough for hunting, though the farmer evidently regarded him as quite the animal for high leicestershire. well, we pulled up the tandem, that we might examine the tit (thinking ourselves amazingly knowing in horse-flesh, as undergraduates do), and o'hara led off with a “good morning!”
“good morning,” replied agricola, but very sternly.
“it's lonely your horse is looking this morning, sir,” continued pat, as serious as a mute.
“don't know what you mean,” said the farmer.
“oh, sure,” replied o'hara, with an expression of intense grief, as though his heart bled for the poor quadruped, “it's desolate, and melancholy, and beraved he's looking, and very, very lonely—without the plough!”
and he blew such a blast upon our long horn, as made the welkin ring; and the big horse, he pranced and reared, and the farmer and his man they blasphemed in unison, as we sped merrily onwards.
as we had some thoughts of spending a day at a place in this neighbourhood called coolna carton, we asked johnny joyce if there was much to see there. and the answer which we got was “divil a taste!”
“but surely,” we remonstrated, “there is wild mountain and lake scenery?”
“oh, faith,” said johnny, “there's mountains and sthrames, if it's the likes o' them that ye're wanting;” and he looked at us, as though he would have added, “but you, surely, cannot be such fools!”
ah, johnny joyce! there's a homily for us all in that “divil a taste!” the beautiful, so close to us, over head, under foot, we prize not; the great hills are voiceless to the mountaineer; and the lowlander sees no loveliness in valleys thick with corn. ashore, we sigh for the wild magnificence of ocean; and, at sea, our unquiet spirit yearns for the landscape's rest and peace. let us ask for eyes to read, and loving hearts to understand, the declarations of wisdom and of goodness god-written everywhere!
we spent a pleasant evening in the common-room of our inn. there was, among others, a landscape-painter, who, manfully confessing that he “could do nothing with connamara,” showed us, nevertheless, some very interesting sketches; and there was a clever, merry, young graduate, of our sister university at dublin, as full of good sense as good humour. he told us, as we sipped our punch, how that whiskey derived its name from the irish uiske, the water; “the only water,” quoth he, “that's good for a gentleman to drink;” how that usquebaugh meant “water of life,” as aqua vitae in latin, and eau de vie in french; and how this reminded him that the phoenix park in dublin, derived its name from finniske, or fionuisge, fair-water, and was so called from a spring in the neighbourhood, once much resorted to as a chalybeate spa.
as we became confidential, i asked him what he thought of ireland's prospects?
“well,” he said, after a long, reflective pull at his little, black, dudeen, “i am not so sanguine as some with regard to the prosperity of ireland. that which pope said of man in general, seems to me to be especially true with regard to an irishman in particular, he 'never is, but always to be, blessed.' every history, or book of travels, written no matter when or by whom, always has the same moral,—ireland is emerging from a state of misery and degradation—followed by some fine, old-crusted quotations with regard to our capabilities, and the wonderful results which might be achieved, 'if only the hand of man did join with the hand of nature.'” 1
1 lord bacon, the original, not the boatman.
“pity,” i thought, “that the hand of man should be unhappily preoccupied—with a blunderbuss!”
“no,” he continued, “physicians, danish, saxon, and norman, have prescribed for us (generally a course of bleeding and depletion) with so little success; the grand panacea, protestantism, has been administered to us,—as gently as a ball to some restive horse, with a twitch upon our national nose, and a thrust down our national throat,—with so few favourable results, that i begin to fear our malady is chronic, and that affliction must be regarded as our normal.
“i have heard before,” i remarked, “that ireland has not been considered by her medical advisers to be a very good subject.”
“i see,” he answered, “but we are more loyal, perhaps, than you are inclined to suppose, and quite as much so as you have a right to expect. some people seem surprised that we irish do not set up statues of turgesius, the norwegian gentleman, who favoured us with a tax called nosestate. money, by which he merely meant, that, if we declined to pay, he should remove the facial adjunct alluded to; that we do not paint memorial pictures of prince john and his normans ridiculing our irish chiefs, when they came to welcome them at waterford, and chaffing them about their long hair and their short yellow shirts, which, i grant, must have been rather funny; that we exhibit no restlessness for the canonisation of cromwell, and make no pious pilgrimages to the tomb of dutch william. now, i by no means say, with junius, that 'ireland has been uniformly plundered and oppressed,' but i do say that the bride which pope adrian, himself an englishman, gave, with a gay marriage-ring of emeralds, to your second henry, has not been very lovingly dealt with.”
“the wedding,” i said, “has not been, as yet, productive of much happiness; but you must remember, that if the husband has been harsh at times, and disagreeable, the conduct of the lady has been very aggravating and suspicious. hath she not flirted with monsieur and jonathan? hath she not decked herself with ribbons of obnoxious hue, and gone after strange priests, whom john bull honoureth not? could he have foreseen the troublous consequences of the union, he might have wished to imitate the example of jupiter, who, having considered the subject in all its bearings, devoured metis, his wife, lest she should produce an offspring wiser than himself.”
“pergite pierides! go it, lemprière!” here broke in that boisterous frank, who, i regret to say, has an ubiquitous ear, and a consequent power of joining the conversation from any distance, and when you least expect him. “what are you two mythological bloaters driving at?”
“francis,” i replied, reprovingly, “your mind, a feeble one at best, is unhinged by success and whiskey. calm yourself, and go to bed.”
but he only crowed like a cock.
“the fact is,” resumed my irish friend, “we are too near a great country ever to be great ourselves, and are too proud, unhappily, to perform on violin no. 2.”
“you won't be angry with me,” i said, “if i doubt your ability, under the most favourable circumstances, ever to play a first fiddle in the monster concert of nations. you may let me say so, for i love the irish. i should be disloyal to friendships, which i value dearly, forgetful of a thousand merry-makings enhanced by irish humour, and of many a sorrow relieved by irish sympathy, if i did not speak well of irishmen, to say nothing of the interesting fact, that, on several delightful occasions, i have been in love with your sweet irish girls. but if i have read your history aright, you have never, nationally, shown any ambition or aptitude to hold a prominent place.”
“confound your impudence,” he answered, “did you never read in that self-same history, that ireland was once 'the school of europe,' 'insula sanctorum,' and i don't know what, before those danish ruffians destroyed the monasteries,—from the purest and most pious motives, doubtless, like your own dear henry viii.!”
“i have read,” i rejoined, “that a scotch gentleman (for 'saint patrick was a gentleman,' if ever there was one) preached druidism out of this country, and gave you, in its place, the blessings of a heaven-sent faith; and i know, furthermore, that irishmen, such as sedulius, your poet, and your saints, columbkill, and aidan, and finian, and cuthbert, names known and beloved through christendom, have been ever esteemed and honoured among the champions of our holy religion; but i am speaking of ireland politically, and maintain, that, even in the brighter epoch, of which you treat, say from the fifth to the ninth century, ireland, socially and generally, was in a state of trouble and disquietude. indeed it would seem from your history that until a recent period, which (i say it with all reverent earnestness) may god prolong, you have either been repelling invaders, or fighting among yourselves, or both, ever since partholan, the sixth in descent from magog, noah's second son, took ireland, with his thousand men. why, even in what you would consider a period of profound peace, you have been about as orderly as a lot of schoolboys, when the master is absent, or a pack of young hounds, who have got away from their huntsman; and suggest in every phase of your existence, the stern remark of your greatest irishman,1 'ireland is to be governed only by an army.' l'empire, c'est l'epée!” 2
1 wellington.
2 punch's version of louis napoleon's words, “l'empire,
c'est la paix”
“you seem to think,” he said, “with another illustrious countryman of mine, mr. john cade, that 'then are we in order, when most out of order,' and that ireland, like the lady in the farce, 1 only 'glories in her topsy-turvy-tude;' but when you speak of the schoolmaster being abroad, do you not in great measure account for eccentricities, repeating that grand enigma, 'what makes treason reason, and ireland wretched?' and answering, 'absent t.' collisions and explosions may be looked for on the rail, when they, who should be its directors, never come near the line; and in my opinion the best thing that could happen to ireland would be the revival of the act against non-residence which was made in 1379.” 2
1 the king's gardener.
2 moore's history of ireland, vol. iii., p. 113.
“would it not,” i asked, “be a wiser and more agreeable inducement, if you could assure the returning landlord that his plans of improvement would not be disturbed by an injection of lead into his brain? at all events, i think, we shall see shortly what resident men can do. the estates, which absenteeism, as much as anything, has encumbered and finally estranged, will be occupied, to a great extent, by their new owners:—will these ever make paddy industrious?”
“sure,” he answered, “we'll be the grandest nation upon earth, the moment we get a taste of encouragement. meanwhile i'll concede, that we're a trifle awkward to manage, and, when we're not famished by dearth of food, nor depressed by a drought of whiskey, that we're mighty fond of a scrimmage. and you'll allow, i take it, that no men fight in a gentaler form than we do: your irish regiments have done you good service on the battle-field, to say nothing of our having supplied you with the grandest warrior of your history. and long may we fight, side by side, and keep out of all hot water, but this,” and he touched my glass with his own, and sang with a voice so pliable and mellow, that even the knight of the surly shoulders,—whom we also named thersites, described by homer as “the ugliest chap of all who came to troy,”—smiled and nodded in accompaniment,—
“o quam bonum est!
o quam jucundum est!
poculis fraternis gaudere!”
and so we became, as dennis o'shaughnessy 1 bids, the “sextons to animosity and care;” and having buried them decently, were going to bed, when dulcet notes from a musical instrument, which the performer thereupon alluded to as his “feelute,” and which was joyously warbling an irish jig, attracted us to the kitchen. and what mortal man “that hadn't wooden legs,” could see blushing biddy joyce footing it merrily, and not feel himself as irresistibly disposed to dance, as a nigger when he hears a fiddle? in thirty seconds frank and i were involved in a series of such swift, untiring saltations, as the world hath not seen, since mevelava, the dervish, danced for four days to the flute of hamsa!
when we awoke the next morning (sunday), “the richest cloudland in europe,” as kohl terms ireland, was investing such abundance of its surplus capital in the lakes and mountains of connamara, that it was impossible to leave our inn; and as difference of creed unhappily prevented a common service, every man became his own priest, and every bed-room an oratory. my friend, the irish graduate, played some most solemn and impressive music, including the “cujus animam,” from the stabat mater, upon a concertina, which now breathed forth notes sweet and clear, like a flute, and anon was grand and organ-like. at a later period, a perfume, which, at first, i supposed to be incense, issued from his dormitory; but it ultimately resolved itself into latakia.
at last, the clouds began to break, and the grand old mountains to emerge from the mist, like the scenery in a dissolving view; the sunlight seemed to reach one's heart; and we sallied forth for a walk, the irishman, frank, and i, as happy as bees on the first warm day of spring, or as the gallant kane, when, after a long arctic winter, he saw the sun shine once more, and felt “as though he were bathing in perfumed waters.” the conversation, as we strolled towards letter-frack, was theological and brisk. paddy said that “our church resembled a branch broken from the vine, withering and moribund from inanition;” and we affirmed that “his church was like a tree unpruned, all leaves, and no fruit.” then he pretended to have heard that mr. spurgeon had refused the see of canterbury, and that lord shaftesbury was bringing in a bill to abolish the apostles' creed. “you miscellaneous christians,” he said, “will shortly have nothing to believe in common, unless it be—dr. cumming!”
“and you, magnificent christians,” i rejoined, “who, by the way, have had your rival popes, and still have divisions among you, you have already got more to believe than scripture, tradition, or common sense acknowledge. as to our being 'miscellaneous,' we churchmen have no communion with the sects, though you delight to identify us with them, and though some disloyal teachers among us may 'apply the call of dissent to their own lost sheep, and tinkle back their old women by sounding the brass of the methodists,' 1 our church, unswerving, still maintains the old, catholic faith, and earnestly entreats deliverance from all false doctrine, heresy, and schism.”
1 horace walpole.
and so we went on, strophe, and antistrophe, with an occasional epode from frank (who kindly applauded both parties, encouraging us, more liberally than respectfully, with “bravo babylon!” “now heretic!” and the like), and only arrived at unanimity, when it was proposed that we should return and dine.
our host, mr. duncan, told us this evening, with other very interesting details, concerning the famine of 1847, how that, at a public meeting in the neighbourhood, he had said, somewhat incautiously, that rather than the people should starve, they might take his sheep from the hills; and how that, when want and hunger increased, they kept in remembrance his generous words, and, taking advantage, like macbeth, of “the unguarded duncan,” turned ninety of his sheep into mutton.
