Penelope's Irish Experiences Part 8

We also heard the testimony of a girl who had run away from her employer before the completion of her six months' contract, her plea being that the fairies pulled her great toe at night so that she could not sleep, whereupon she finally became so lame that she was unable to work. She left her employer's house one evening, therefore, and went home, and curiously enough the fairies 'shtopped pulling the toe on her as soon as iver she got there!'

Not the least enlivening of the prisoners was a decently educated person who had been arrested for disturbing the peace. The constable a.s.serted that he was intoxicated, but the gentleman himself insisted that he was merely a poet in a more than usually inspired state.

"I am in the poetical advertising line, your wors.h.i.+p. It is true I was surrounded by a crowd, but I was merely practising my trade. I don't mind telling your wors.h.i.+p that this holiday-time makes things a little lively, and the tradesmen drink my health a trifle oftener than usual; poetry is dry work, your wors.h.i.+p, and a poet needs a good deal of liquid refreshment. I do not disturb the peace, your wors.h.i.+p, at least not more than any other poet. I go to a grocer's, and, standing outside, I make up some rhymes about his nice sweet sugar or his ale. If I want to please a butcher--well, I'll give you a specimen:--

'Here's to the butcher who sells good meat-- In this world it's hard to beat; It's the very best that's to be had, And makes the human heart feel glad.

There's no necessity to purloin, So step in and buy a good sirloin.'

I can go on in this style, like Tennyson's brook, for ever, your wors.h.i.+p." His wors.h.i.+p was afraid that he might make the offer good, and the poet was released, after promising to imbibe less frequently when he felt the divine afflatus about to descend upon him.

These disagreements between light-hearted and bibulous persons who haunt the courts week after week have nothing especially pathetic about them, but there are many that make one's heart ache; many that seem absolutely beyond any solution, and beyond reach of any justice.

Chapter XIII. 'O! the sound of the Kerry dancing.'

'The light-hearted daughters of Erin, Like the wild mountain deer they can bound; Their feet never touch the green island, But music is struck from the ground.

And oft in the glens and green meadows, The ould jig they dance with such grace, That even the daisies they tread on, Look up with delight in their face.'

James M'Kowen.

One of our favourite diversions is an occasional glimpse of a 'crossroads dance' on a pleasant Sunday afternoon, when all the young people of the district are gathered together. Their religious duties are over with their confessions and their ma.s.ses, and the priests encourage these decorous Sabbath gaieties. A place is generally chosen where two or four roads meet, and the dancers come from the scattered farmhouses in every direction. In Ballyfuchsia, they dance on a flat piece of road under some fir-trees and larches, with stretches of mountain covered with yellow gorse or purple heather, and the quiet lakes lying in the distance. A message comes down to us at Ardnagreena--where we commonly spend our Sunday afternoons--that they expect a good dance, and the blind boy is coming to fiddle; and 'so if you will be coming up, it's welcome you'll be.' We join them about five o'clock--pa.s.sing, on our way, groups of 'boys' of all ages from sixteen upwards, walking in twos and threes, and parties of three or four girls by themselves; for it would not be etiquette for the boys and girls to walk together, such strictness is observed in these matters about here.

When we reach the rendezvous we find quite a crowd of young men and maidens a.s.sembled; the girls all at one side of the road, neatly dressed in dark skirts and light blouses, with the national woollen shawl over their heads. Two wide stone walls, or d.y.k.es, with turf on top, make capital seats, and the boys are at the opposite side, as custom demands.

When a young man wants a partner, he steps across the road and asks a colleen, who lays aside her shawl, generally giving it to a younger sister to keep until the dance is over, when the girls go back to their own side of the road and put on their shawls again. Upon our arrival we find the 'sets' are already in progress; a 'set' being a dance like a very intricate and very long quadrille. We are greeted with many friendly words, and the young boatmen and farmers' sons ask the ladies, "Will you be pleased to dance, miss?" Some of them are shy, and say they are not familiar with the steps; but their would-be partners remark encouragingly: "Sure, and what matter? I'll see you through." Soon all are dancing, and the state of the road is being discussed with as much interest as the floor of a ballroom. Eager directions are given to the more ignorant newcomers, such as, "Twirl your girl, captain!" or "Turn your back to your face!"--rather a difficult direction to carry out, but one which conveys its meaning. Salemina confided to her partner that she feared she was getting a bit old to dance. He looked at her grey hair carefully for a moment, and then said chivalrously: "I'd not say that that was old age, ma'am. I'd say it was eddication."

When the sets, which are very long and very decorous, are finished, sometimes a jig is danced for our benefit. The spectators make a ring, and the chosen dancers go into the middle, where their steps are watched by a most critical and discriminating audience with the most minute and intense interest. Our Molly is one of the best jig dancers among the girls here (would that she were half as clever at cooking!); but if you want to see an artist of the first rank, you must watch Kitty O'Rourke, from the neighbouring village of Dooclone. The half door of the barn is carried into the ring by one or two of her admirers, whom she numbers by the score, and on this she dances her famous jig polthogue, sometimes alone and sometimes with Art Rooney, the only worthy partner for her in the kingdom of Kerry. Art's mother, 'Bid' Rooney, is a keen matchmaker, and we heard her the other day advising her son, who was going to Dooclone, to have a 'weeny court' with his colleen, to put a clane s.h.i.+rt on him in the middle of the week, and disthract Kitty intirely by showin' her he had three of thim, annyway!

Kitty is a beauty, and doesn't need to be made 'purty wid cows'--a feat that the old Irishman proposed to do when he was consummating a match for his plain daughter. But the gifts of the G.o.ds seldom come singly, and Kitty is well fortuned as well as beautiful; fifty pounds, her own bedstead and its fittings, a cow, a pig, and a web of linen are supposed to be the dazzling total, so that it is small wonder her deluderin' ways are maddening half the boys in Ballyfuchsia and Dooclone. She has the prettiest pair of feet in the County Kerry, and when they are encased in a smart pair of shoes, bought for her by Art's rival, the big constable from Ballyfuchsia barracks, how they do twinkle and caper over that half barn door, to be sure! Even Murty, the blind fiddler, seems intoxicated by the plaudits of the bystanders, and he certainly never plays so well for anybody as for Kitty of the Meadow. Blindness is still common in Ireland, owing to the smoke in these wretched cabins, where sometimes a hole in the roof is the only chimney; and although the scores of blind fiddlers no longer traverse the land, finding a welcome at all firesides, they are still to be found in every community. Blind Murty is a favourite guest at the Rooney's cabin, which is never so full that there is not room for one more. There is a small wooden bed in the main room, a settle that opens out at night, with hens in the straw underneath, where a board keeps them safely within until they have finished laying. There are six children besides Art, and my ambition is to photograph, or, still better, to sketch the family circle together; the hens cackling under the settle, the pig ('him as pays the rint') snoring in the doorway, as a proprietor should, while the children are picturesquely grouped about. I never succeed, because Mrs. Rooney sees us as we turn into the lane, and calls to the family to make itself ready, as quality's comin' in sight. The older children can scramble under the bed, slip shoes over their bare feet, and be out in front of the cabin without the loss of a single minute. 'Mickey jew'l,' the baby, who is only four, but 'who can handle a stick as bould as a man,' is generally clad in a ragged skirt, slit every few inches from waist to hem, so that it resembles a cotton fringe. The little coateen that tops this costume is sometimes, by way of diversion, transferred to the dog, who runs off with it; but if we appear at this unlucky moment, there is a stylish yoke of pink ribbon and soiled lace which one of the girls pins over Mickey jew'l's naked shoulders.

Moya, who has this eye for picturesque propriety, is a great friend of mine, and has many questions about the Big Country when we take our walks. She longs to emigrate, but the time is not ripe yet. "The girls that come back has a lovely style to thim," she says wistfully, "but they're so polite they can't live in the cabins anny more and be contint." The 'boys' are not always so improved, she thinks. "You'd niver find a boy in Ballyfuchsia that would say annything rude to a girl; but when they come back from Ameriky, it's too free they've grown intirely." It is a dull life for them, she says, when they have once been away; though to be sure Ballyfuchsia is a pleasanter place than Dooclone, where the priest does not approve of dancing, and, however secretly you may do it, the curate hears of it, and will speak your name in church.

It was Moya who told me of Kitty's fortune. "She's not the match that Farmer Brodigan's daughter Kathleen is, to be sure; for he's a rich man, and has given her an iligant eddication in Cork, so that she can look high for a husband. She won't be takin' up wid anny of our boys, wid her two hundred pounds and her twenty cows and her pianya. Och, it's a thriminjus player she is, ma'am. She's that quick and that strong that you'd say she wouldn't lave a string on it."

Some of the young men and girls never see each other before the marriage, Moya says. "But sure," she adds shyly, "I'd niver be contint with that, though some love matches doesn't turn out anny better than the others."

"I hope it will be a love match with you, and that I shall dance at your wedding, Moya," I say to her smilingly.

"Faith, I'm thinkin' my husband's intinded mother died an old maid in Dublin," she answers merrily. "It's a small fortune I'll be havin' and few lovers; but you'll be soon dancing at Kathleen Brodigan's wedding, or Kitty O'Rourke's, maybe."

I do not pretend to understand these humble romances, with their foundations of cows and linen, which are after all no more sordid than bank stock and trousseaux from Paris. The sentiment of the Irish peasant lover seems to be frankly and truly expressed in the verses:--

'Oh! Moya's wise and beautiful, has wealth in plenteous store, And fortune fine in calves and kine, and lovers half a score; Her faintest smile would saints beguile, or sinners captivate, Oh! I think a dale of Moya, but I'll surely marry Kate.

'Now to let you know the raison why I cannot have my way, Nor bid my heart decide the part the lover must obey-- The calves and kine of Kate are nine, while Moya owns but eight, So with all my love for Moya I'm compelled to marry Kate!'

I gave Moya a lace neckerchief the other day, and she was rarely pleased, running into the cabin with it and showing it to her mother with great pride. After we had walked a bit down the boreen she excused herself for an instant, and, returning to my side, explained that she had gone back to ask her mother to mind the kerchief, and not let the 'cow knock it'!

Lady Kilbally tells us that some of the girls who work in the mills deny themselves proper food, and live on bread and tea for a month, to save the price of a gay ribbon. This is trying, no doubt, to a philanthropist, but is it not partly a starved sense of beauty a.s.serting itself? If it has none of the usual outlets, where can imagination express itself if not in some paltry thing like a ribbon?

Chapter XIV. Mrs. Mullarkey's iligant locks.

'Where spreads the beautiful water to gay or cloudy skies, And the purple peaks of Killarney from ancient woods arise.'

William Allingham.

Mrs. Mullarkey cannot spoil this paradise for us. When I wake in the morning, the fuchsia-tree outside my window is such a glorious ma.s.s of colour that it distracts my eyes from the unwashed gla.s.s. The air is still; the mountains in the far distance are clear purple; everything is fresh washed and purified for the new day. Francesca and I leave the house sleeping, and make our way to the bogs. We love to sit under a blossoming sloe-bush and see the silver pools glistening here and there in the turf cuttings, and watch the transparent vapour rising from the red-brown of the purple-shadowed bog fields. Dinnis Rooney, half awake, leisurely, silent, is moving among the stacks with his creel. How the missel thrushes sing in the woods, and the plaintive note of the curlew gives the last touch of mysterious tenderness to the scene. There is a moist, rich fragrance of meadowsweet and bog myrtle in the air; and how fresh and wild and verdant it is!

'For there's plenty to mind, sure, if on'y ye look to the gra.s.s at your feet, For 'tis thick wid the tussocks of heather, an' blossoms and herbs that smell sweet If ye tread thim; an' maybe the white o' the bog-cotton waves in the win', Like the wool ye might shear off a night-moth, an' set an ould fairy to spin; Or wee frauns, each wan stuck 'twixt two leaves on a grand little stem of its own, Lettin' on 'twas a plum on a tree.' [*]

* Jane Barlow.

As for Lough Lein itself, who could speak its loveliness, lying like a crystal mirror beneath the black Reeks of the McGillicuddy, where, in the mountain fastnesses, lie spell-bound the sleeping warriors who, with their bridles and broadswords in hand, await but the word to give Erin her own! When we glide along the surface of the lakes, on some bright day after a heavy rain; when we look down through the clear water on tiny submerged islets, with their gra.s.ses and drowned daisies glancing up at us from the blue; when we moor the boat and climb the hillsides, we are dazzled by the luxuriant beauty of it all. It hardly seems real--it is too green, too perfect, to be believed; and one thinks of some fairy drop-scene, painted by cunning-fingered elves and sprites, who might have a wee folk's way of mixing roses and rainbows, dew-drenched greens and sun-warmed yellows; showing the picture to you first all burnished, glittering and radiant, then 'veiled in mist and diamonded with showers.' We climb, climb, up, up, into the heart of the leafy loveliness; peering down into dewy dingles, stopping now and again to watch one of the countless streams as it tinkles and gurgles down an emerald ravine to join the lakes. The way is strewn with lichens and mosses; rich green hollies and arbutus surround us on every side; the ivy hangs in sweet disorder from the rocks; and when we reach the innermost recess of the glen we can find moist green jungles of ferns and bracken, a very bending, curling forest of fronds:--

'The fairy's tall palm-tree, the heath bird's fresh nest, And the couch the red deer deems the sweetest and best.'

Carrantual rears its crested head high above the other mountains, and on its summit Shon the Outlaw, footsore, weary, slept; sighing, "For once, thank G.o.d, I am above all my enemies."

You must go to sweet Innisfallen, too, and you must not be prosaic or incredulous at the boatman's stories, or turn the 'bodthered ear to them.' These are no ordinary hillsides: not only do the wee folk troop through the frond forests nightly, but great heroic figures of romance have stalked majestically along these mountain summits. Every waterfall foaming and das.h.i.+ng from its rocky bed in the glen has a legend in the toss and swirl of the water.

Can't you see the O'Sullivan, famous for fleetness of foot and prowess in the chase, starting forth in the cool o' the morn to hunt the red deer? His dogs sniff the heather; a splendid stag bounds across the path; swift as lightning the dogs follow the scent across moors and glens. Throughout the long day the chieftain chases the stag, until at nightfall, weary and thirsty, he loses the scent, and blows a blast on his horn to call the dogs homeward.

And then he hears a voice: "O'Sullivan, turn back!"

He looks over his shoulder to behold the great Finn McCool, central figure in centuries of romance.

"Why do you dare chase my stag?" he asks.

"Because it is the finest man ever saw," answers the chieftain composedly.

"You are a valiant man," says the hero, pleased with the reply; "and as you thirst from the long chase, I will give you to drink." So he crunches his giant heel into the rock, and forth burst the waters, seething and roaring as they do to this day; "and may the divil fly away wid me if I've spoke an unthrue word, ma'am!"

Come to Lough Lein as did we, too early for the crowd of sightseers; but when the 'long light shakes across the lakes,' the blackest arts of the tourist (and they are as black as they are many) cannot break the spell.

Sitting on one of these hillsides, we heard a bugle-call taken up and repeated in delicate, ethereal echoes,--sweet enough, indeed, to be worthy of the fairy buglers who are supposed to pa.s.s the sound along their lines from crag to crag, until it faints and dies in silence. And then came the 'Lament for Owen Roe O'Neil.' We were thrilled to the very heart with the sorrowful strains; and when we issued from our leafy covert, and rounded the point of rocks from which the sound came, we found a fat man in uniform playing the bugle. 'Blank's Tours' was embroidered on his cap, and I have no doubt that he is a good husband and father, even a good citizen, but he is a blight upon the landscape, and fancy cannot breathe in his presence. The typical tourist should be encouraged within bounds, both because he is of some benefit to Ireland, and because Ireland is of inestimable benefit to him; but he should not be allowed to jeer and laugh at the legends (the gentle smile of sophisticated unbelief, with its twinkle of amus.e.m.e.nt, is unknown to and for ever beyond him); and above all, he should never be allowed to carry or to play on a concertina, for this is the unpardonable sin.

We had an adventure yesterday. We were to dine at eight o'clock at Balkilly Castle, where Dr. La Touche is staying the week-end with Lord and Lady Killbally. We had been spending an hour or two after tea in writing an Irish letter, and were a bit late in dressing. These letters, written in the vernacular, are a favourite diversion of ours when visiting in foreign lands; and they are very easily done when once you have caught the idioms, for you can always supplement your slender store of words and expressions with choice selections from native authors.

What Francesca and I wore to the Castle dinner is, alas! no longer of any consequence to the community at large. In the mysterious purposes of that third volume which we seem to be living in Ireland, Francesca's beauty and mine, her hats and frocks as well as mine, are all reduced to the background; but Salemina's toilet had cost us some thought. When she first issued from the discreet and decorous fastnesses of Salem society, she had never donned any dinner dress that was not as high at the throat and as long in the sleeves as the Puritan mothers ever wore to meeting.

In England she lapsed sufficiently from the rigid Salem standard to adopt a timid compromise; in Scotland we coaxed her into still further modernities, until now she is completely enfranchised. We achieved this at considerable trouble, but do not grudge the time spent in persuasion when we see her en grande toilette. In day dress she has always been inclined ever so little to a primness and severity that suggest old-maidishness. In her low gown of pale grey, with all her silver hair waved softly, she is unexpectedly lovely,--her face softened, transformed, and magically 'brought out' by the whiteness of her shoulders and slender throat. Not an ornament, not a jewel, will she wear; and she is right to keep the nunlike simplicity of style which suits her so well, and which holds its own even in the vicinity of Francesca's proud and glowing young beauty.

On this particular evening, Francesca, who wished her to look her best, had prudently hidden her eyegla.s.ses, for which we are now trying to subst.i.tute a silver-handled lorgnette. Two years ago we deliberately smashed her spectacles, which she had adopted at five-and-twenty.

"But they are more convenient than eye-gla.s.ses," she urged obtusely.

"That argument is beneath you, dear," we replied. "If your hair were not prematurely grey, we might permit the spectacles, hideous as they are, but a combination of the two is impossible; the world shall not convict you of failing sight when you are guilty only of petty astigmatism!"