the sound of the mowing-machine awakened us early on the morning that we were to leave renvyle house hotel. to and fro the rattle came, with a measured crescendo and diminuendo that slowly aroused our sleepy minds to the consciousness that the tennis ground was being mown, and that it was monday, and that—this finally, after sluggish eyes had become aware of pink roses swaying in sunshine in and out of the open window—another fine day had been bestowed upon us whereon to make our journey. the clatter of the mowing-machine grew louder, and the smell of the cut grass came in at the window, blending sweetly with the strong language of the gardener to his underling, as the machine was steered in its difficult course among the flower beds.{158}
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the renvyle donkey.
when we leaned out across the broad window sill, the business was almost finished, and the panniers of a donkey, who was standing on the gravel walk with his head drooped between his forelegs, in a half-doze were spilling over with the short green grass, and the chopped-off heads of the daisies. we stared at the donkey in a kind of bewilderment. the top of his head was tufted like a houdan hen’s, but stare as we might we could not see his ears, and it was so aston{159}ishing a phenomenon that we went downstairs to investigate it.
it was a genuine summer morning at last; the sun shone hotly down on our bare heads as we passed the smooth lawn-tennis ground, with the long alternate grey and green lines ruled on it by the machine, and we stood for a moment or two in the shade of the thick fuchsia arch that led to the old-fashioned garden plot, and listened to the bees fussing in and out of the masses of blood-red blossom over our heads. the donkey was still dozing under his panniers as we came up to him, and we saw beyond any manner of doubting that the only ears he possessed were little circles no higher than napkin-rings, out of which sprouted thick tufts of wool and coarse brown hair. just then the men neared us with the machine, and we asked them for an explanation.
“his ears was cut off in the time of th’ agitation,” the gardener replied, in a voice that showed that the fact had long ago ceased to have any interest for him, as he emptied the last boxful of grass into the panniers.{160} “he was a rale good little ass thim times, faith he was.”
probably our faces conveyed our feelings, for the gardener went on: “indeed, it was a quare thing to do to him; but, whatever, they got him one morning in the field with the two ears cut off him as even with his head as if ye thrimmed them with that mow-sheen.”
we passed our hands over the mutilated stumps with a horror that evidently gratified the gardener. “there was one of the ears left hanging down when we got him,” he proceeded. “i suppose they thought it was the most way they could vex us. they grewn what ye see since then, and no more, and the flies has him mad sometimes.”
we went into breakfast with what appetite we might, and felt what terrible facts had conduced to the circumstance that we, tourists and strangers, were able to take our places in the old renvyle dining-room, and partake of hot breakfast-cakes and coffee—coffee whose excellence alone was enough to make us forget{161} we were in an hotel—as if we, and not the blakes, had been its proprietors for centuries.
we spent the morning in making a final tour of the house, up and down the long passages, and in and out of the innumerable charming panelled rooms. we have left the library to the last, and now that we are face to face with the serious business of description, our consciences tell us that we are not competent to pronounce on ancient editions and choice bindings. it seemed to us that every book in the tall mahogany cases that stood like screens about the room was old and respectable enough to have been our great grandfather; we certainly had in our hands a contemporary edition of sir walter raleigh’s “history of the world,” not to mention an awful sixteenth century treatise on tortures, with illustrations that are still good, handy, reliable nightmares when the ordinary stock runs short. my second cousin has, i fancy, privately set up a reputation as a book-fancier, among people who do not know her well, on the strength of her graphic descriptions of one massive tome, a{162} treatise on spain, written in latin, with gorgeous golden hieroglyphics stamped on its white vellum cover, and a date far back in 1500 on its yellow title-page.
i am sure that sibbie felt small gratitude to the sulphate of zinc that brought about the complete healing of her sore shoulder, which took place during her visit at renvyle. probably never before since her entrance into society had she spent three whole days in a stable on terms of delightful equality with real horses, and with at least two feeds a day of real oats. “beggars can’t bear heat,” is a tried and trusted saying in ireland, and it soon became apparent that the moral and physical temperature in which sibbie had been living had been too high for her. when we went to the hall-door to superintend the stowage of our effects in the governess-cart, we found her on her hind legs, with a stable-boy dangling from her bit, and flat on his back in front of her lay the respectable butler, overwhelmed in the rugs which he had brought out on his arm. we hastened to the rescue;{163} the butler got up, sibbie got down, and we proffered apologies for her misconduct.
“oh, thin that one’s the divil painted!” said the stable-boy, speaking, probably, on the principle of “penny plain, tuppence coloured.” “he went to ate the face off me to-day, an’ i claning out his stall! faith, ’twas hardly i had time to climb out over the side of the stall before he’d have me disthroyed.”
the miscreant’s appearance was that of a swollen sausage propped on hairpins, and, as having regretfully bade farewell to the hospitable house of renvyle, we set off down the avenue at a showy canter, we promised ourselves that we would not strain the tender quality of mercy by any philanthropic nonsense of walking up hills.
our route lay along our old acquaintance the switchback road for two or three miles, and then we said farewell to it, and turned to our left to follow the easterly line of the coast. it was not a bad little road in its way, but it was sufficient to chasten the exuberance of sibbie’s gaiety before we had travelled very{164} far along it; in fact, as a midshipman observed of madeira, “the scenery was lovely, but very steep.” the coast thrust long rocky fingers into the sea, and we drove across the highly-developed knuckles; that is, if not picturesque, the most practical description that we can give of this stage of our journey. to try to convey the blueness of the sea, the variety and colour of the innumerable bays and creeks, the solemn hugeness of lettergash mountain that towered on our right, is futility, and a weariness of the flesh. rather let us speak of such things as we are able, of the dogs whose onslaught from each successive cabin made it advisable to keep a pile of stones in the trap, and justified the time spent in practice at the bladder campion; of the london pride and the great bell-heather that ably decorated the rocks; and, lastly, the amenities of these are past. this tract of country had a baneful practice of tempting us to pass by a deferential retreat into the ditch, and of then instantly starting in emulous pursuit. on one of these occasions, after a stern-chase of half a mile, in despair{165} of otherwise putting an end to it, my cousin and i pulled up at a moderate hill, and got out and walked, hoping that the cart that had been clattering hard on our heels would now pass us by. far otherwise; it also pulled up, and one of its many occupants called out in tones of genial politeness: “ah! don’t be sparin’ him that way, ladies. he’s well able to pull the pair of ye; nourish him wid the whip!”
our destination was leenane (pronounced leenahn), but we had been advised to turn off the main road in order to see the pass of salruck. slowly rounding the flank of lettergash, we turned our backs to the sea and struck inland again into the now familiar country of lake and heather. we had been told that a fishing-lodge by a lake would be a sign unto us that we had arrived at the by-road to salruck. here was the lake, and here the fishing-lodge; but could this be the by-road? if so, it certainly was not promising; in fact, before we committed ourselves to its stony ferocities, my cousin alighted in order to collect information from the peasantry, a task{166} in which she believed herself to excel. in this instance the peasantry consisted of an elderly man, breaking stones by the side of the road, and the perspiring stare with which he received my cousin’s question was not encouraging. she repeated it. he stared up at the sun, wrinkled his face till it looked like a brown paper parcel too tightly tied with string, and replied, “i’d say it’d be somewhere about a quarther behind three—or thereabouts.”
“no,” said my cousin in her shrillest tones, “i asked you whether that is the road to salruck?”
“oh, it will—the day’ll be fine, thank god,” wiping his forehead with his sleeve, “but we’ll have rain on it soon—to-morrow, or afther to-morrow. ye couldn’t put yer thumb bechuxt the shtarr and the moon lash’ night, an’ they’d reckon that a bad sign.”
“stone deaf,” remarked my cousin to me in a “just-heaven-grant-me-patience” sort of voice; then, pointing towards the hill, “is—salruck—over—there?” she slowly screamed.
the echoes squealed the inquiry from rock to rock.{167} even sibbie looked round with a cold surprise; but the stonebreaker had not heard.
“oh, is it throut?” in a tone of complete comprehension; “divil sich throuts in all connemara as what’s in that lake! ye’d shtand in shnow to be looking at capt’in thompson whippin’ them out of it!”
“thank you,” said my second cousin very politely; “good morning!”
we thought it better to chance the by-road than to try conversation. it was the first really bad road we had come upon in connemara; but, though there was only a mile of it, it was enough to throw discredit on the whole district. half a mile of walking and of pushing the trap from behind brought us to the top of the hill, and when there an equally steep descent was in front of us before we could get down to the level of the little arrow-head shaped bay that thrust its long glittering spike between the mountains of salruck. to hang on to the back of a trap as a kind of improvised drag is both exhausting and undigni{168}fied, so much so that we did not drive quite down to the bottom of the valley, but paused on a perch of level ground outside the gates of a shooting-lodge, and asked a woman what the further road was like.
“indeed, thin, god knows, it’s a conthrairy road,” she said, with a sympathetic glance at our heated faces, “but whether or no ye can go in it.”
we thanked her, but made up our minds to throw ourselves on the kindness of the shooting-lodge, at whose gates we were standing; and the trap and sibbie having been hospitably given house room there, we were free to explore salruck. we went down through a tunnel composed of about equal parts of trees and midges, and, following the conthrairy road over a bridge that crossed a little river, we sat ourselves down by the sea-shore and looked about us.
it may be said at once that salruck is a place which would almost infallibly be described as “spot.” a spot should be wooded, sheltered, sunk between mountains if possible, and, failing a river, a brook of respectable size should purl or babble into a piece of{169}
{170}
{171}
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“down the hill of salruck.”
water large enough to mirror the trees. a church is not an absolute necessity, but is generally included in the suite, and even down to this refinement salruck was thoroughly equipped. having formulated this theory to our satisfaction, we addressed ourselves to our duties as tourists. we climbed the heathery pass of salruck, a stiff windy climb; we viewed from the top of it the lovely harbour of the killaries, and mountains and islands innumerable and unpronounceable; we came down again by a short cut suggested by my cousin, of a nature that necessitated our advancing in a sitting posture and with inconvenient rapidity down a species of glacier. the pass happily accomplished, we knew there was but one thing more to be done—the graveyard. our benefactors at the shooting-lodge had told us how to find our way to it, and without such help we certainly should not have discovered it. it was hidden in the side of a wooded hill, a grassy cart-track was its sole approach, a pile of branches in a broken wall was its gate, and, instead of funereal cypresses, tall ash trees and sycamores stood thickly{172} among the loose heaps of stones that marked the graves. at a first glance we might even have thought we had taken a wrong turn and strayed into a stony wood, but the kneeling figure of a woman told us that we had made no mistake. she got up as we came along the winding, trodden path among the trees, and we recognised her as the woman whom we had met on the hill an hour before.
“this is a quare place, ladies,” she said in a loud, cheerful voice. “there’s manny a one comes here from all sides of the world to see it.”
we agreed that it was a queer place, and proceeded without delay into a long conversation. we found out that the high square mound of stones, about the height and length of a billiard-table, was an altar, in which only priests were buried; and she pointed out to us under one of its stones some clay pipes and even a small heap of tobacco, which she told us had been left there by the last funeral for the use of “anyone that comes to say a prayer, like meself.” in fact, all the graves were littered with broken pipes and{173} empty boxes for holding the tobacco—grocery boxes most of them labelled with glowing announcements of colman’s mustard and reckitt’s blue, lying about in all directions, and almost dreadful in their sordid garish poverty.
“there isn’t one that dies from all round the counthry but they’ll bury him here,” said our friend, “and with all that’s buried in it there’s not a worrum, nor the likes of a worrum in it.”
a little below where we were standing a circle of stones, like a rudimentary wall, stood round some specially sacred spot, and we stumbled over the ghastly inequalities of the ground towards it. inside the stones the ground was bare and hard, like an earthern floor, and in the centre there was a small, round hole, with the gleam of water in it.
“that’s the holy well of salruck,” said the woman, leaning comfortably against a great ash tree, one of whose largest limbs had been half torn from its trunk by lightning, and hung, white and stricken, above the little enclosure. “there’ll be upwards of thirty sit{174}ting round it some nights prayin’ till morning. it’s reckoned a great cure for sore eyes.” this with a compassionate glance towards my second cousin’s pince-nez. “but what signifies this well towards the well that’s out on the island beyond!” went on the country woman, hitching her shoulders into her cloak, and preparing to lead the way out of the graveyard; “sure the way it is with that well, if anny woman takes so much as a dhrop out of it the wather’ll soak away out of it, ever, ever, till it’s dhry as yer hand! yes faith, that’s as thrue as that god made little apples. shure there was one time the priest’s sisther wouldn’t put as much delay on herself as while she’d be goin’ over to the other spring that’s in the island, and she dhrew as much wather from the holy well as’d wet her tay. i declare to ye, she wasn’t back in the house before the well was dhry!”
she paused dramatically, and we supplied the necessary notes of admiration.
“well, when the priest seen that,” she went on, “he comminced to pray, and bit nor sup never crossed{175}
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the holy well, salruck.
{177}{176}
his mouth for a night and a day but prayin’; there wasn’t a saint in heaven, big nor little, he didn’t dhraw down on the head o’ the same well. afther that thin ag’in, he got his books, and he wint back in the room, and he was readin’ within there till he was in a paspiration. oh, faith! it’s not known what he suffered first and last; but before night the wather was runnin’ into the well the same as if ye’d be fillin’ it out of a kettle, and it’s in it ever and always since that time. the priest put a great pinance on the sisther, i’m told, but, in spite of all, he was bet by the fairies afther that till he was near killed, they were that jealous for the way he put the wather back. the curse o’ the crows on thim midges!” she continued, with sudden fury, striking at the halo of gnats that surrounded her head as well as ours, “the divil sich an atin’ ever i got.”
we had been slaughtering them with unavailing frenzy for some time, and at the end of her story we fled from the graveyard, and made for the high-road.{178}
the hospitalities of the shooting-lodge did not end with sibbie. its hostess was waiting to meet the two strangers as they toiled, dishevelled and midge-bitten, to its gate, and with a most confiding kindness, brought them in and gave them the afternoon tea for which their souls yearned.
