shall we admit that, after all, the first stage of our journey was accomplished by means of the mail-car? we had been assured, on reliable authority, that oughterard, fourteen irish miles from galway, was the place where we should find what we wanted, and with a dubious faith we climbed the steep side of the mail car, and wedged ourselves between a stout priest and an english tourist. above us towered the mail baskets, and a miscellaneous pile of luggage, roped together with that ingenuity that necessity has developed in the irish carman, and crowning all, the patriarchal countenance of a goat looked down upon us in severe amazement from over the rim of an immense hamper.
we have said in our haste that we never hold on on{24} jaunting-cars, but as the dromedary to the park hack, so is the mail-car to the ordinary “outside” of its species. it is large enough to hold six people on each side, and is dragged by three horses at a speed that takes no account of ruts and patches of stones and sharp corners, or of the fact that the unstable passenger has nothing to grasp at in time of need, except his equally unstable fellow-traveller. we held on to the priest and the tourist with all the power of our elbows, and derived at least some moral support from the certainty that when we fell off the car we should, like samson, carry widespread disaster with us. but somehow people do not fall off these cars; and even the most unschooled of saxons sits and swings and bows on the narrow seat with a security that must surprise himself.
an irish mile is, roughly speaking, a mile and a quarter english, so we leave to the accomplished reader the computation of the distance from galway to oughterard according to the rightful standard. it is not in the ordinary sense a very interesting drive;{25} the guide-books pass it over in a breath in their haste to blossom out into the hotels and fisheries of connemara; but to the eye that comes fresh to it from the offensively sleek and primly-partitioned pastures of england this first impression of galway and its untrammelled bogs and rocks will be as lasting as any that come after. we ourselves might have framed many moving sentences about the desolate houses standing amongst the neglected timber within their broken demesne walls, but “all our mind was clouded with a doubt,” and from the peculiar protrusion of my cousin’s nether lip, i could gather that her moodiness was the outward token of an agitated mental parade of all the oughterard horseflesh with which she was acquainted.
we spent that night at oughterard in miss murphy’s comfortable little hotel, and the next morning found us embarked once more in search of a means of travel. the trap had been unearthed—the trap of our brightest dreams—a governess-cart that would just hold two people and a reasonable amount of luggage; but the{26} horse was the trouble. various suggestions had been made: some had been feasible, and the one thing on which we were firmly decided, viz., the governess-cart, seemed an impossibility.
“well, miss, ye see, she’s only just in off grass; sure she’ll rejoice greatly in the coorse of the next few days, and she’d fit the shafts well enough so.”
thus spoke the proprietor of many flocks and herds to whom we had addressed ourselves. “it’s a pity there’s nothing would suit ye only the little thrap, but surely ye might thry her whatever.”
“she” was a farm mare of mountainous proportions, who after violent exertions had been squeezed between the shafts of the governess-cart, and she now stood gazing plaintively at us, and switching her flowing tail, while the shafts made grooves for themselves in her fat sides.
“sit in now, miss, and dhrive her out o’ the yard.” my second cousin got in with ease, the step of the trap being almost on the ground, owing to the unnatural elevation of its shafts, and the mare strode{27} heavily forward. my cousin clutched the front rail convulsively.
“i am slipping out!” she said with a sudden tension in her voice. had she thought of it she might have held on by the tail, which hung down like a massive bell-rope above her, but as it was, after a moment or two of painful indecision, she made a hurried but safe exit over the door of the trap. the fate of the expedition trembled in the balance, and the group of spectators who had formed round us began to look concerned. the mare was extracted with some difficulty from the pinioning shafts, and all things were as they were, the governess-cart with its shafts on the ground, and my cousin and i with our hearts in our boots, when a voice came to us from the crowd—
“johnny flaherty have a nice jinnet.”
“a betther never shtud in galway!” said another voice. “she’s able to kill anny horse on the road.”
an excited discussion followed, in the course of which it was brought forward as the jennet’s strongest{28}
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“she’s a little giddy about the head, miss.”
recommendation that she was the daughter of the lady whose majestic build had lost to us the enjoyment of her admirable moral qualities. finally a portion of the crowd detached itself and ran up the street, returning in a few minutes with johnny flaherty and{29} a long-legged, long-eared brown animal, which, as it approached, cast an eye of sour suspicion upon us and its mother. there was no doubt but that this creature would fit the trap, but with haunting memories of the iniquities of mules and their like we asked if it was gentle.
“she’s a little giddy about the head, miss,” said the owner diffidently; “but if ye’ll not touch the ears she’s the quietest little thing at all. back in, sibbie!”
sibbie backed in with an almost unwholesome docility, and was harnessed in the twinkling of an eye, the lookers-on assisting enthusiastically. she was led out of the yard. we got in with mr. flaherty, and before the crowd had time to cross themselves we were out of sight.
“perfection!” i gasped, with the wind whistling in my teeth as sibbie sped like a rat between the shafts that had given her good mother her first insight into tight lacing. “she goes splendidly—the very thing! but now isn’t it time to go back and get in our things?{30}”
my cousin did not answer; she was driving, and something told me that the same idea had occurred to her. she was leaning rigidly back, and one of her gloves had burst at the knuckles. johnny flaherty extended a large hand and laid it on the reins.
“she’s over-anxious for the road,” he said apologetically, as he brought the jennet to a standstill; “but i’ll put a curb-chain on her for ye.”
we turned and wheeled back into oughterard, a positive adoration for sibbie, with her discreet brown quarters and slender, rapier-like legs, welling up in us. now, thinking over these things, it seems possible that her week’s hire approached her net value, but at the time of bargaining we felt that her price was far above rubies.
as this is the record of a genuine expedition, it is perhaps advisable to say that our luggage consisted of a portmanteau, a dressing bag, a well-supplied luncheon basket, and a large and reliable gingham umbrella, purchased for the sum of three shillings in oughterard. we viewed the elaborate stowing of{31}
{32}
{33}
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“we viewed the stowing of the governess-cart.”
these in the governess cart, and then went to mr. flaherty for his final sailing orders.
“ye’ll mind her passing flanigan’s; she have a fashion of running in there; and as for passing our own place, i have a boy standin’ there now in the archway with a stick, the way he’d turn her back out of it if she’d make a dart for the stable, and i’ll put a rope in the thrap for fear anything might break on ye.”
mr. flaherty looked a little anxious as he gave us these directions, and when he had gone for the rope, an old woman, who had been regarding us with a sympathetic solicitude, came up to my cousin and took her by the arm.
“that the lord may save yees! that’s all i’ll say,” she groaned; “if ’twas a horse itself, i’d say nothin’, but thim mules is nayther here nor there. sure asthore, ye couldn’t tell the minnit he’d turn into a boghole, when he doesn’t know ye, and thim cunnemarra roads has nothin’ before him to shtop him only the grace of god! and the wather up aich side of the road by yees as deep as a well!{34}”
it was painful to find that oughterard credited the jennet with the sole conduct of the expedition, and regarded us as helpless dependents on her will and pleasure. but the old woman’s agitation was quite unaffected, and the last thing we heard, as we flourished down the main street, was her voice uplifted in prayerful lamentation.
owing possibly to the fact that mr. flaherty’s boy was demonstrating with the pitch-fork in the archway leading to the stable, sibbie made no attempt to “dart” into it as her owner had anticipated, and nothing marred the dignity of our departure. we turned cautiously over the crooked bridge, and drove along beside the river, running black under tall trees, with patches of foam sailing fast on it. villas with trimly clipped ivy and flower-beds all ablaze were on our other hand, suburban in self-respecting neatness, romantic by force of surroundings and of something old-fashioned and solid in their build.
“this is the best village for its size this side of galway,” said my cousin, with a languid indifference{35} that, as i well knew, masked the seething self-satisfaction of the resident in the neighbourhood. “and the place has improved so wonderfully. for instance, there’s the widow’s almshouse. it isn’t so very long ago since an old woman said to my grandmother, ‘that’s the widdies’ almhouse, and sorra widdy in it but one little owld man,’ and now it’s simply bursting with widows—at least, i mean——”
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“mr. flaherty’s boy was demonstrating with a pitch-fork.”
this remarkable illustration of the prosperity of oughterard was suddenly interrupted. we had forgotten that the residence of the too fascinating mr. flanigan was at hand, but not so sibbie. with the subtlety of her race, she cloaked her design in a fulsome submissiveness, as the deadly spirit is sheathed in the syrup of the liqueur, and turning in full career,{36} without so much as an indication from her long expressive ears, she made for the gate of which we had been warned. by a special interposition of providence it was closed, but we were both jerked forward in a very humiliating way, and there was much unseemly hectoring and lashing before we could drag her from the haven where she would be. the seeds of distrust were from that moment sown in our hearts, and we proceeded with a want of confidence that we had never afterwards reason to regret.
a few moments of steep ascent brought us out on to the moor that is the entrance to connemara; a wide brown place of heather and bog, with the sinuous shining of the oughterard river saving it from the suspicion of monotony. the level road ran out in front of us till it dwindled into a white thread, the distant hills were no more than confidential blue hints of what we were to see, the sun shone, the strong west wind made us rejoice that we had stitched elastic into our hats, and the exhilaration of our feelings found vent in one passion-fraught word—luncheon.{37}
a great many people have asked us why we did not make our journey through connemara on tricycles: the roads are so good, the mail-cars offer such facilities for the transport of baggage, the speed and simplicity are so great. to this we have our reply—what then of the luncheon hamper? these objectors have not taken into account the comfortable wayside halt by the picturesque and convenient lake; the unpacking of the spirit lamp, and its glittering bride the tin kettle, the dinner knives at sixpence apiece, the spoons at two-pence-halfpenny; the potted meats, the bath olivers, the bovril and the burgundy. in the abstract we are not fond of picnics, and agree with the bard of “ballads from punch” in thinking that—
they who in contempt, the dryad’s haunts
profane with empty bottles and loose papers,
find tongues in tarts, ants running on their boots,
wasps in the wine, and salt in everything!
but a long road and an early breakfast create an earnestness and sincerity in the matter of luncheon{38} that were lacking in the artificial junketings of the bard. certainly, our stopping-places were not such as a dryad could haunt with any degree of comfort. on this first day we pulled up under the lee of a low bank, one of the few roadside fences we had come to in that waste of heather and grey-blue lakes, and spread out our eatables on the seats of the cart with a kind of bashfulness of the possible passer-by; a bashfulness soon to be hardened by custom into a brazen contempt for even the passing mail-car and the fraternal backward grin of its driver. most people who have wolfed the furtive sandwich in a crowded railway carriage have felt all of a sudden how gross and animal was the action, but how, if persevered in, a callous indifference may be attained; this was the case with us.
after that first lunch the complexion of things changed. the wind sharpened into a wet whip, the clouds swooped down on the hilltops, the lakes turned a ruffled black, like a spanish hen with its plumage blown the wrong way, and the first mishap to the{39}
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“we pursued our way to recess.”
expedition occurred. i turned my head to look with mild surprise at the end of an iron bedstead with which an ingenious farmer had closed an opening in his stone wall, and as i did so my hat soared upwards from my head, and flew like a live thing towards the lake by which we were driving. i followed with as much speed as i possess, while my cousin lay in idiot laughter in the cart, and had the pleasure of seeing{40} my hat plunge with the élan of a marcus curtius into a bed of waterlilies by the bank. from this i drew it, pale, half-drowned, but sane and submissive; and placing it in solitary confinement at the bottom of the trap, i donned a chilly knitted tam o’shanter, and we pursued our way to recess.
