The Charm Of Ireland Part 12

CUSHLA MA CHREE

IT was very evident, as we went back to Cork, that the people who live there do not regard it as an earthly paradise, for it seemed as though the whole population of the place was out in the fields. We had seen the same thing at Dublin the Sunday before--every open s.p.a.ce near the city crowded with men and women and children; from which I infer that the Irish have sense enough--or perhaps it is an instinct--to get out of their slums and into the fresh, clean air whenever they have a chance.

And the way they lie about in the moist gra.s.s on the damp ground is another proof of the amenity of the Irish climate.

When we got back to the town, we decided we could spend an hour very pleasantly driving about and seeing the place; and, since the day was fine, we voted for an outside car. Be it known, there are two varieties of car in Cork: one the common or garden variety, the outside car, and the other a sort of anti-type called an inside car. The difference is that, in an outside car you sit on the inside, that is in the middle with your feet hanging over the wheel, while in an inside car you sit on the outside, that is over the wheel with your feet hanging down in the middle. Also the inside car has a top over it and side-curtains which can be let down in wet weather. I hope this is clear, for I do not know how to make it clearer without a diagram. Both inside and outside cars are rather more ramshackle in Cork than anywhere else in Ireland.

The legal rate for a car in Cork is one s.h.i.+lling sixpence per hour, and I decided in advance that, come what might, come what may, I would not pay more than twice the legal rate for the use of one. So when we got off the train at the Cork terminus, I pa.s.sed under review the cars standing in the street in front of it, while each individual jarvey, seeing I was interested, stood up in his seat and bellowed at the top of his voice. Finally I picked out the least disreputable one and looked the jarvey in the eye.

"We want to drive around for an hour or two," I said. "How much will you charge an hour?"

"Jump right up, sir," he cried, and wheeled his car in front of me with a flourish.

"You'll have to answer my question first."

"'Twill be only five s.h.i.+llings an hour, sir."

I pa.s.sed on to the next driver, who had been listening to this colloquy with absorbed interest. His price was four s.h.i.+llings. So I pa.s.sed on to the third. His price was three s.h.i.+llings. I suppose if I had pa.s.sed once again, the price would have been two s.h.i.+llings; but three s.h.i.+llings was within my limit, so we mounted into our places and were off.

I fear, however, that that phrase, "we were off," gives a wrong idea of our exit. We did not whirl up the street, with our horse curvetting proudly and the jarvey clinging to the reins. No, nothing like that. The horse trotted--I convinced myself of this, from time to time, by looking at him--but he was one of those up-and-down trotters, that come down in almost exactly the same place from which they go up. The jarvey encouraged him from time to time by touching him gently with the whip, but the horse never varied his gait, except that, whenever he came to a grade, he walked. Sometimes we would catch up with a pedestrian sauntering in the same direction, and then it was quite exciting to see how we worked our way past him, inch by inch. This mode of progression had one advantage: it was not necessary to stop anywhere to examine architectural details or absorb local atmosphere. We had plenty of time to do that as we pa.s.sed. In fact, in some of the slum streets, we absorbed rather more of the atmosphere than we cared for.

Cork is an ancient place, built for the most part on an island in the River Lee. St. Fin Barre started it in the seventh century by founding a monastery on the island; the Danes sailed up the river, some centuries later, and captured it; and then the Anglo-Normans took it from the Danes and managed to keep it by ceaseless vigilance. The Irish peril was so imminent, that the English had to bar the gates not only at night, but whenever they went to church or to their meals, and no stranger was suffered inside the walls until he had checked his sword and dagger and other lethal weapons with the gate-keeper.

But the Irish have always had a way with them; and what they couldn't accomplish by force of arms, they did by blarney;--or maybe it was the girls who did it! At any rate, at the end of a few generations Cork was about the Irishest town in Ireland, and levied its own taxes and made its own laws and even set up its own mint, and when the English Parliament attempted to interfere, invited it to mind its own business.

The climax came when that picturesque impostor, Perkin Warbeck, landed in the town, was hailed as a son of the Duke of Clarence and the rightful King of England by the mayor, and provided with new clothes and a purse of gold by the citizens, together with a force for the invasion of England. The result of which was that the mayor lost his head and the city its charter.

Cork is a tragic word in Irish ears not because of this ancient history, but because of the dreadful scenes enacted here in the wake of the great famine of 1847. It was here that thousands and thousands of famished, hopeless, half-crazed men and women said good-bye to Ireland forever and embarked for the New World. Hundreds more, unable to win farther, lay down in the streets and died, and every road leading into the town was hedged with unburied bodies. That ghastly torrent of emigration has kept up ever since, though it reached its flood some twenty years ago, and is by no means so ghastly as it was. Yet every train that comes into the town bears its quota of rough-clad people, mere boys and girls most of them, with wet eyes and set faces, and behind it, all through the west and south, it leaves a wake of sobs and wails and bitter weeping.

Cork possesses nothing of antiquarian interest. The old churches have all been swept away. The oldest one still standing dates only from 1722, and is worth a visit not because of itself, but because of some verses written about its bells by a poet who lies buried in its churchyard. St.

Anne Shandon, with its tall, parti-coloured tower surmounted by its fish-weathervane, stands on a hill to the north of the Lee. The tower contains a peal of eight bells, and it was their music which furnished inspiration for Father Prout's pleasant lines:

With deep affection and recollection I often think of the Shandon bells, Whose sounds so wild would, in the days of childhood, Fling round my cradle their magic spells.

On this I ponder where'er I wander, And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee,-- With thy bells of Shandon, that sound so grand on The pleasant waters of the River Lee.

Of course we wanted to see St. Anne Shandon and to hear the bells, so, with some difficulty, we persuaded our driver to put his horse at the ascent. The streets rising up that hill are all slums, with little lanes more slummy still ambling away in various directions; and all of them were full of people, that afternoon, who hailed our advent as an unexpected addition to the pleasures and excitements of the day, and followed along, inspecting us curiously, and commenting frankly upon the details of our attire. The impression we made was, I think, on the whole, favourable, but there is a certain novelty in hearing yourself discussed as impersonally as if you were a statue, and after the first embarra.s.sment, we rather enjoyed it. At last we reached the church, and stopped there in the shadow of the tower until the chimes rang. They are very sweet and melodious, and fully deserve Father Prout's rhapsody.

The wife of the inspector we met at Glendalough had told Betty of a convent at Cork where girls were taught lace-making, and had given her the names of two nuns, either of whom, she was sure, would be glad to show us the school. It is in the convents that most of the lace-making in Ireland is taught nowadays, and of course we wanted to see one of the schools, so Monday morning we sallied forth in search of this one. We found it without difficulty--a great barrack of a building opening upon a court. Both nuns were there, and I do not remember ever having received anywhere a warmer welcome. Certainly we might see the lace-makers, and Sister Catherine took us in charge at once, explaining on the way that there were not as many girls at work as usual that morning, because one of their number had been married the day before, and the whole crowd had stayed up very late celebrating the great event.

And then she led us into a room where about twenty girls were bending over their work.

They all arose as we entered, and then I sat down and watched them, while Sister Catherine took Betty about from one girl to the next, and explained the kind of lace each was making. Some of it was Carrickmacross, of which, it seems, there are two varieties, applique and guipure; and some of it was needle-point, that aristocrat of laces of which one sees so much in Belgium; and some of it was Limerick, and there were other kinds whose names I have forgotten, but all of it was beautifully done. The designing is the work of Sister Catherine, and, while I am very far from being a connoisseur, some of the pieces she afterwards showed us were very lovely indeed. Then we were asked if we wouldn't like to hear the girls sing, and of course we said we would, so one of them, at a nod from the Sister, got to her feet and very gravely and earnestly sang John Philpot Curran's tender verses, "Cushla ma Chree," which is Irish for "Darling of My Heart":

Dear Erin, how sweetly thy green bosom rises!

An emerald set in the ring of the sea!

Each blade of thy meadows my faithful heart prizes, Thou queen of the west! the world's cushla ma chree!

Thy gates open wide to the poor and the stranger-- There smiles hospitality hearty and free; Thy friends.h.i.+p is seen in the moment of danger, And the wanderer is welcomed with cushla ma chree.

Thy sons they are brave; but, the battle once over, In brotherly peace with their foes they agree; And the roseate cheeks of thy daughters discover The soul-speaking blush that says cushla ma chree.

Then flourish forever, my dear native Erin, While sadly I wander an exile from thee; And, firm as thy mountains, no injury fearing, May heaven defend its own cushla ma chree!

It is a very characteristic Irish poem of the sentimental sort, and it has been set to a soft and plaintive air also characteristically Irish, and it took on a beauty which the lines by themselves do not possess as we heard it sung that morning, with the girls, bending to their work, joining in the chorus. Then we were shown over the convent, and finally taken to the parlour, where Sister Bonaventura joined us, and where we had a very pleasant talk.

The convent's chief treasure is the great parchment volume in which its history is noted from day to day. How far back it goes I have forgotten, but I think to the very founding of the inst.i.tution, and it is illuminated throughout very beautifully, while the lettering is superb.

The great events in the life of every nun are recorded here, and those events are three: when she became a novice, when she took the final vows, and when she died. Those are the only events that concern the community, except that sometimes when death followed a painful and lingering illness, it was noted how cheerfully the pain was borne.

Occasionally some delicate woman found the hard life more than she could endure, and then she was permitted to put aside her robes and go back into the world.

I spent half an hour looking through the book, and Sister Bonaventura showed me the record of her own entry into the convent. It was in the year in which I was born, and I s.h.i.+vered a little at the thought that, during all the long time I had been growing to boyhood and manhood and middle age, she had been immured here in this convent at Cork; during all the years that I had been reading and writing and talking with men and women and knocking about the world, she had been doing over and over again her little round of daily duties; but when I looked at her bright brave face and quiet eyes, and listened to her calm sweet voice, I wondered if, after all, she hadn't got farther than I!

It would be a mistake, however, to think of these nuns--or of any I ever met--as pious, strait-laced, lachrymose creatures. They were quite the reverse of that; they were fairly bubbling over with good humour and with big-hearted blarney. Some one had given them a victrola, and it was evidently the supreme delight of their lives.

"We can't go to the opera," they said; "but the opera comes to us. We have a concert nearly every evening, and it's sorry we are when the bell rings and we have to go to bed."

They showed us their austere little chapel, after that, and introduced us to the Mother Superior, a very delicate, placid, transparent woman of more than eighty, who reminded me of the sister of Bishop Myriel; and I am sure they were sorry when we had to say good-bye.

We went down to Monkstown by rail, that afternoon, to see Queenstown harbour. The line runs close to the river, pa.s.sing Pa.s.sage, whose charms have been celebrated by Father Prout, and finally reaching Monkstown, on the heights above which stands the famous, four-square castle which cost its owner only fourpence. The story goes that, in 1636, John Archdeckan marched away to the war in Flanders, and his wife determined to surprise him, on his return, by presenting him with a stately castle. So she gathered a great number of builders together and gave them the job on the condition that they would buy all their food and drink and clothing from her. When the castle was done, she balanced her accounts and found that she had expended fourpence more than she had received.

At Monkstown, we took a boat and ferried across the harbour, past many grey men-of-war which lay at anchor there. Very beautiful it is, with the high, green-clad hills pressing about it on all sides, and shrouding the entrance so completely that one might fancy oneself in a landlocked lake. Queenstown is built on the side of one of these hills, and is dominated by the great, white cathedral, which has been building for fifty years, and is not yet finished.

It is a curious coincidence that the two ports of Ireland by which most visitors enter and leave it should be named after two people whom the Irish have little reason to love. In 1821, when George IV embarked at the port of Dunleary, just below Dublin, he "graciously gave permission"

that its name might be changed to Kingstown in honour of the event. In 1849, Queen Victoria paid one of her very few visits to Ireland, and sailed into the Cove of Cork. As she herself wrote, "To give the people the satisfaction of calling the place Queenstown, in honour of its being the first spot on which I set foot on Irish ground, I stepped on sh.o.r.e amidst the roar of cannon and the enthusiastic shouts of the people."

Forty years later, when the Irish had come to realise that the Queen had no interest in them, they had the dignity and good sense to put aside the servility to which they have sometimes been too p.r.o.ne, and to refuse to take part in the celebration of her Jubilee. But Queenstown is still Queenstown.

The town consists of a single long street of public houses and emigrant hotels and steams.h.i.+p offices facing the water, and some steep lanes running back up over the hill, and the day we were there, it was crowded with emigrants, Swedes and Norwegians mostly, who had been brought ash.o.r.e from the stranded _Haverford_, and who spent their time wandering aimlessly up and down, trying to find out what was going to happen to them. There were many sailors and marines knocking about the grog-shops, as well as the crowd of navvies and longsh.o.r.emen always to be found lounging about a water-front. This water-front is one great landing-stage, and it is here that perhaps a million Irish men and women have stepped forever off of Irish soil.

We climbed up the hill presently to the cathedral, which owes not a little of its impressiveness to its superb site. Its exterior is handsome and imposing--good Gothic, though perhaps a trifle too florid for the purest taste; but the effect of the interior is ruined by the absurd columns of the nave, made of dark marble, and so slender that the heavy structure of white stone above them seems to be hanging in the air.

We had hoped to go by rail to Youghal and take steamer up the Blackwater to Cappoquin, and from there drive over to the Trappist monastery at Mt.

Melleray; but we found that the steamer did not start until the fifteenth of June, so most regretfully that excursion had to be abandoned. Those who have made it tell me it is a very beautiful one.

Cloyne is also perhaps worth visiting; but we were tired of Cork and hungering for Killarney, and so decided to turn our faces westward next day.

CHAPTER X

THE SHRINE OF ST. FIN BARRE

THERE are two ways of getting from Cork to Killarney, one by the so-called "Prince of Wales Route," because the late King Edward went that way in 1858, and the other by way of Macroom. Both routes converge at Glengarriff and are identical beyond that, and as the best scenery along the route is between Glengarriff and Killarney, I don't think it really matters much which route is chosen. The "Prince of Wales Route"

is by rail to Bantry, and then either by boat or coach to Glengarriff, which is only a few miles away. The other route is to Macroom by rail, and from there there is a very fine ride by coach of nearly forty miles to Glengarriff. We chose the Macroom route because of the longer coach ride and because it touches Gougane Barra, the famous retreat of St. Fin Barre. I think, on the whole, it is the more picturesque of the two routes; but either is vastly preferable to the all-rail route. Indeed, the visitor to Killarney who misses the run from Glengarriff, misses some of the most beautiful and impressive scenery in all Ireland.