The Charm Of Ireland Part 30

Another curiosity of the peninsula is not a natural but an artificial one--a ca.n.a.l dug during famine times with government money to connect Lough Corrib with Lough Mask. This was expected to be a great blessing to the west of Ireland, extending navigation from Galway clear up across Lough Mask and Lough Conn to Ballina; but, alas, when it was finished, it was found that the ca.n.a.l wouldn't hold water, for the rock through which it was cut was so porous that the water ran through it like a sieve, and left the ca.n.a.l as dry as a bone. So there it remains to this day, and one may walk from end to end of it dryshod and ponder on the marvels of English rule in Ireland!

One thing more at Cong is worth inspecting, and that is the old cross which stands at the intersection of the street with the road to the abbey. It was erected centuries ago to the memory of two abbots, Nicol and Gilbert O'Duffy, whose names may yet be read on its base; and it is a cross that can work miracles. Here is one of them:

There was a boy here at Cong, once, who was stupid and could learn nothing, but spent all his time wandering along the river or climbing the hills or lying in the fields staring up at the sky. Everybody said he would come to a bad end; but one day he sat down on the base of this cross, and fell asleep with his head against it; and that night, when he went home, he took up the newspaper which his father was reading and read aloud every word that was on it; and they took him to the priest, thinking a spell was on him, and there was not a book the priest had, in Latin or Irish or any language whatever, but the boy he could read it at a glance; and they sent him down to Cork to the college there, but there was nothing his masters could teach him that he did not know already; and the fame of him became so great that when Queen Victoria was looking about her for a man to put at the head of the new college at Galway, she hit upon him, and so he was given charge of Queen's College, and his name was...o...b..ien Crowe, and he made that college a great college, and he taught things there that no other man in Ireland had ever so much as dreamed of!

I am sorry I had not heard this tale when I was at Galway; I should have liked to ask Bishop O'Dee how much of it is true.

We returned to Leenane by a different road, which lay for some miles close beside the sh.o.r.e of Lough Corrib, white-capped now under a stiff wind which had arisen, and studded with lovely green islands. It is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful of the Irish lakes, but even here the shadow of Land League days still lingers, for close by the sh.o.r.e is Ebor Hall, which was the residence of Lord Mountmorris, who was beaten to death near by; and as we drove on, our jarvey pointed out the scenes of similar if less famous tragedies, whose details I have forgotten. But all that was thirty years ago; the problem which the Land League tried to solve has been solved in another fas.h.i.+on; the peasantry of Ireland have won the fight for fair rent, fixed hold, and free sale, and can afford to forget the past.

Just beyond the Doon peninsula, the road opens up the long expanse of the narrow arm of the lake which runs back many miles into the mountains, and on an island a little distance from the sh.o.r.e, towers the keep of a ruined castle--Caislean-na-Circe, or Hen Castle in the prosaic vernacular. Islands, as you will have remarked before this, were a favourite place in Ireland for castles and monasteries, and the deeper the water about them the better, for it was a welcome defence in the days when midnight raids were the favourite pastime of every chief, and no sport was so popular with the English as that of hunting the Irish "wolves."

There are many legends to explain the name of this castle in Lough Corrib. One is that the castle was built in a single night by an old witch and her hen, and she gave it and the hen to The O'Flaherty, telling him that, if the castle was ever besieged, he need not worry about provisions, since the hen would lay eggs enough to keep the garrison from want. It was not long before a force of O'Malleys ferried over from the mainland and camped down about the walls, and O'Flaherty, forgetting the witch's words, killed the hen and was soon starved out.

Another legend is that the castle was held during a long siege by the formidable Grainne, wife of Donell O'Flaherty, and that her husband was so proud of her that he named the place Hen Castle in her honour. Still another is that the Joyces were holding it against the O'Flaherties, but were about to surrender, when the famous Grace O'Malley marched a party of her clansmen over the mountains from the sea and drove the O'Flaherties off, and so it was named after her. These are examples of what the Irish imagination can do when it turns itself loose; for the fact is that the castle, at least as it stands now, was built by Richard de Burgo, that first old doughty Norman ruler of Connaught, to hold the pa.s.s from the isthmus of Cong into the wilds of Connemara. The keep is plainly Anglo-Norman, flanked by great square towers of cut limestone.

A few miles farther on is the village of Maam, set in the midst of magnificent scenery at the intersection of two valleys, one running to the west and one to the south, closed in by the wildest, bleakest, ruggedest of mountains. Our driver drew up here to water and wind the horse, and I wandered about the village for a while, and stopped at last at the open door of a little cottage where an old woman and some children were sitting before a flaring fire of turf, and a hen was hovering some chickens in a basket in one corner. Three or four others were wandering about the dirt floor, looking for crumbs as a matter of habit, though they must have known perfectly well that there were no crumbs there.

I was welcomed heartily and invited to sit down before the fire, with that instinctive courtesy and open-heartedness which is characteristic of the Irish peasantry. Let the traveller take shelter anywhere, pause before any door, and he will be greeted warmly. There is an old Irish riddle which runs something like this:

From house to house it goes, A wanderer frail and slight, And whether it rains or snows, It bides outside in the night.

It is the footpath the Irish mean; and if they could bring it in out of the rain and the snow, I am sure they would, just as they bring their chickens and cats and dogs and pigs and donkeys in, to share the warmth of the fire.

So in this little cottage a stool was at once vacated for me and set in a good place, and a ring of smiling faces closed around me, and the rain of eager questions began as to whence I came and whither I was going. I wish I could give you some idea of the tangle of trash that littered the single room of that hovel--old clothes, old boards, broken baskets, a pile of turf in one corner but scattered all about where the chickens had been scratching at it, a low shelf piled with rags and straw for a bed, a rude dresser displaying some chipped dishes--but I despair of picturing it. And the dirty, ragged children, with their bright eyes and red cheeks; and the old woman, wrinkled and toil-worn, but obviously thinking life not so bad, after all. . . .

A whistle from Joyce told me that he was ready to start, and we were soon climbing out of the valley, emerging at last upon a vast moor, with great mountain ma.s.ses away to the south, their summits veiled in mist.

We could see groups of people working in the bog here and there, and at last we came upon two men and two boys cutting turf close to the road. I asked them if I might take their picture, and they laughed and agreed, and it is opposite this page, but the sun was setting and the light was not good enough to give me a sharp negative. Still one can see the man at the bottom of the ditch cutting the peat with a sharp-edged instrument like a narrow spade and throwing the water-soaked bricks out on the edge, where the boys picked them up and laid them out at a little distance to dry.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TURF-CUTTERS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GIRL OF "JOYCE'S COUNTRY"]

"There's one would make a picture," said Joyce, about ten minutes later, and I turned to see him pointing with his whip at a little girl unloading turf from the panniers of a donkey by the side of the road.

Needless to say, I was out of my seat in an instant, and Betty, scarcely less excited, was asking the girl if I might not take her picture; and then Joyce said something to her in the Irish, and then from across the bog came her mother's voice telling her, also in Irish, to hold still and do as the gentleman wished.

She was a child of eight or ten, with dark hair and eyes, and slighter and frailer than the average Irish child; and she wore the characteristic garment fas.h.i.+oned from red flannel which all the poor children in Connemara wear; and she was bare-headed and barefooted; and her task was to drive the ragged little donkey out into the bog and fill the panniers with the bricks, and drive it back again to the side of the road, and pile the turf there, ready for the cart which would take it away. From the place where the turf was being cut to the roadside was at least a quarter of a mile, and how often that child had travelled that road that day I did not like to think. From the pile of turf that lay at the side of the road, it was evident she had not idled!

She was not without her vanity, for she had her skirt kilted up, and let it quickly down as soon as she realised what I wanted; and then she let me pose her as I wished. You should have seen her astonishment when I pressed a small coin into her hand, as some slight recompense for the trouble I had given her; you should have seen her s.h.i.+ning eyes and trembling lips. . . .

Up we went and up, with the mists of evening deepening about us; and at last we reached the summit of the pa.s.s, and dropped rapidly down toward Leenane. Half an hour later, we trotted briskly up to the hotel, the little mare apparently as fresh as ever, in spite of the fifty miles, up hill and down, she had covered that day.

CHAPTER XXI

THE REAL IRISH PROBLEM

IT was well we went to Cong when we did, for the next day was cold and rainy, with a clammy mist in the air which settled into the valleys and soaked everything it touched. I walked over to the village, after breakfast, to keep my promise to the school-teacher. The school is a dingy frame building with two rooms and two teachers, a man for the older pupils and a woman for the younger ones. They are brother and sister, and from their poor clothes and half-fed appearance, I judge that teachers are even worse paid in Ireland than elsewhere. But they both welcomed me warmly, and the man hastened to set out for me the only chair in the place, carefully dusting it beforehand.

He called the roll, and it was delightful to hear the soft, childish voices answer "Prisent, sorr," "Prisent, sorr." Then he counted heads to be sure, I suppose, that some child hadn't answered twice, once for himself and once for some absent friend. There were about thirty children present, ranging in age from six to fifteen; and they were all barefoot, of course, and such clothing as they had was very worn and ragged, and most of them had walked four or five miles, that morning, down out of the hills. The teacher said sadly that the attendance should be twice as large, but there was no way of enforcing the compulsory education law, though the priest did what he could.

I wish I could paint you a picture of that school, so that you could see it, as I can, when I close my eyes. In the larger room there was a little furniture--a chair and cheap desk for the teacher, some rude forms for the children, and a small blackboard; but the other room was absolutely bare, and the children sat around on the floor in a circle, with their legs sticking out in front of them, red with cold, while the teacher stood in their midst to hear them recite. Each of them had over his shoulder a cheap little satchel, usually tied together with string; and in this he carried his two or three books--thin, paper-covered affairs, which cost a penny each; and all the children, large and small, had to carry their books about with them all the time they were in school because there was no place to put them.

The reading lesson had just started when I entered the room where the smaller children were, and it was about the advantages of an education.

It brought tears to the eyes to hear them, in their soft voices and sweet dialect, read aloud with intense earnestness what a great help education is in the battle of life and in how many ways it is useful.

When the reading was done, the teacher asked them the meaning of the longest words, and had them tell again in their own way what the lesson had said, to be certain that they understood it.

Poor kiddies! As I looked at them, I could see in my mind's eye our schoolhouses back home, heated and ventilated by the best systems--there was ventilation enough here, heaven knows, for the door was wide open, but no heat, though the day was very raw and chilly, and the children were s.h.i.+vering--equipped with expensive furniture and the latest devices of charts and maps; and I could see the well-fed, well-clothed children, with their beautiful costly books which make teachers almost unnecessary, languidly reading some such lesson as was being read here in Connaught, on the advantages of an education! It would not have been read so earnestly, be sure of that, nor with such poignant meaning.

And in that moment, I thrilled with a realisation of Ireland's greatest and truest need. It is not land purchase, or reform of the franchise, or temperance, or home rule, though these needs are great enough; it is education. It is education only that can solve her industrial problems and her labour problems; and, however she may prosper under the favouring laws of a new political regime, it is only by education, by the banishment of ignorance and illiteracy, that she can hope to take her place among the nations of the world.

It was a sort of vision I had, standing there in that bare little room, of a new Ireland, dotted with schools and colleges, as she was a thousand years ago, illumined with the white light of knowledge; but here, meanwhile, were these eager, bright-eyed, ragged little children, stumbling along the path of knowledge as well as they could; but a rocky path they find it, and how deserving of help they are! I wish you could have seen those soiled, thumbed little readers, which cost, as I have said, only a penny each, and which, if they had cost more, would have been beyond the reach of the average Connaught family.

I bought a few of them, afterwards, to bring home with me, and when I looked through them, I found them very primitive indeed. Here, for instance, is Lesson Six in the primer:

Pat has a cat.

It is fat. It is on the mat.

The cat ran at the rat.

It bit the fat cat.

Pat hit the rat.

The rat ran. The cat ran at it.

The rat bit the fat cat.

Cats and rats used, I remember, to be favourite subjects in the readers of my own early school days; and so were dogs. It is still so in Ireland, as Lesson Eight will show:

Is it a dog?

It is a fox.

Was the fox in a box?

The dog was in the box.

He was in the mud.

Rub the mud off the dog.

He ran at the fox in the mud.

The dog ran at the fox and bit it.

My princ.i.p.al objection to this is that it is nonsense: how, for example, if the dog was in the box, could it have been also in the mud? These questions occur to children even more readily than to adults, and to teach them nonsense is wrong and unjust. Also these lessons tell no story; they have no continuity; they ask questions without answering them; they change the subject almost as often as the dictionary. Here, for instance, is the first lesson of the second term:

Tom put the best fish in a dish.

The cat sat near it on a rug.

Let the hen rest in her nest.

Frank rode a mile on an a.s.s.

He went so fast he sent up the dust.

The last sentence shows it was an Irishman made this book; but why, in this lesson, did he not continue with the story of the fish in the dish, which the cat was plainly watching from the rug with malicious intent, instead of branching off to a wholly irrelevant remark about a hen, and then to an account of Frank's adventure with an a.s.s? Perhaps the first step to be made in educational reform in Ireland is the adoption of better school-books, and there is no reason why this step should be delayed.

I went back, presently, to the other room where the larger boys and girls were reciting in small sections, standing shrinkingly before the shrivelled little teacher, whose fierceness, I am sure, was a.s.sumed for the occasion, and he got out for me a sheaf of compositions which the boys and girls had written on the subject, "My Home," and of which he was evidently very proud. They were written in the round, laborious penmans.h.i.+p of the copy-book, and the homes which they described were, for the most part, those poor little cabins clinging to the rocky hillsides, which I have tried to picture; but here the picture was drawn sharply and simply, with few strokes, without any suspicion that it was a tragic one. For instance, this is John Kerrigan's picture of