The Charm Of Ireland Part 40

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GRAINAN OF AILEACH]

That ended its earthly glory, but it remains glorious in legend; for it is beneath its old grey walls that the Knights of the Gael stand deathless and untiring, each beside his steed with his hand upon the saddlebow, waiting the trumpet-call that shall break the charm that binds them, and release them to win back their heritage in Erin. In the caves within the hill the knights stand waiting--great vaulted chambers whose entrance no man knows. Nor does any man know when their release will come, whether to-morrow or not till centuries hence, for 'tis Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan herself who must choose the day and hour.

Sore disgrace it is to see the Arbitress of thrones Va.s.sal to a Saxoneen of cold and sapless bones!

Bitter anguish wrings our souls; with heavy sighs and groans We wait the Young Deliverer of Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan.

Glorious is the view from the top of those old walls. To the right is Lough Foyle, to the left Lough Sw.i.l.l.y, with the hills of Donegal, draped in silver mist, beyond--wild, grey crags, rising one behind the other; and away to the north, beyond the wide valley, are the hills of Inishowen--Owen's Island, if you know your Irish. I have never gazed upon a more superb picture of alternating lake and hill and meadow, of flas.h.i.+ng mountain-top and dark green valley.

But if I was to get back to Derry that night, I had need to hasten; so I clambered down, after one long last look. I had still my picture to take, and made two exposures, but they give only a faint idea of the majesty of this great fort, standing here on this wild, deserted hilltop; and then I started downwards, with long steps, past the cottages, with the beautiful valley before me, back to the highway, down and down among the trees, past the village and so to the station. The guard was waiting there.

"Well," he said, as I sat down mopping my face, for I had covered three miles in half an hour, "did you see the fort?"

"I did so," I answered, for I had long since fallen naturally into the Irish idiom; and I told him what it was like; but I think he was unconvinced.

"Was there a man stopped you?" he asked.

"There was--a man at the end of the lane right under the fort, who made me pay three-pence before he would let me pa.s.s."

"Ah, that would be O'Donnell," said the guard, convinced at last. "He has been given the key to keep. Did he give you the key?"

"He did not. But the iron gate was unlocked."

"That was by accident, I'm thinking," said the guard. "He is not caring whether one can enter or not, so long as he has his three-pence."

So I would advise all wayfarers to the Grainan of Aileach to make sure that the gate of it is unlocked, or to demand the key, before surrendering their three-pence to O'Donnell.

When I got into the train again, I found as a fellow-pa.s.senger one of the men who had come out from Derry with me, and after I had described the cashel to him--for he had never seen it--we got to talking about Home Rule. In spite of its militant Protestantism, Derry has a very large Catholic population, and my companion said that opinion in the town was about equally divided for and against Home Rule.

"The result is," he went on, "that whenever we have a meeting, no matter which side it's on, there's sure to be a s.h.i.+ndy, and the police has their hands full. Most of the fellys who do the fighting don't care a rap about Home Rule, but they just take pleasure in layin' a stick against somebody's head. It's all done in a friendly spirit, and next day they will be workin' side by side the same as ever. The only ones who are really fighting Home Rule are the big landlords and manufacturers, who imagine they'll get the worst of it in the matter of taxation at the hands of a Catholic parliament, and they do everything they can to keep their people stirred up. That has always been their policy; and the big Catholic employers in the south--what few of them there are--aren't a whit better. They're all afraid that if the Catholic workingmen and the Protestant workingmen once get together they'll fix up some kind of a union, and demand better wages. As long as they can be kept fighting each other, there's no danger of that; and the poor idiots haven't sense enough to see how they're being made fools of. But they'll see it some day, and then look out!"

"How about this army of Ulster the papers are so full of?"

My companion laughed.

"There isn't any army around here, unless you can call a few hundred devil-may-care boys an army. I did hear something about some drill going on, but as far as fighting goes that's all nonsense. The boys are ready enough to crack a head with a stick, but they're the first to run when the police arrive, and they'll think a long time before they try to stand up against the British army. I'll not say that they're not more in earnest over Belfast way; but even there, a few politicians have stirred up most of the talk--Sir Edward Carson and the likes of him. It's all a political game, that's how I look at it."

I walked around Derry for a time that afternoon, and so far as public buildings go, Catholicism and Protestantism seem about equally represented--and with the strangest contrasts. Across the road from St.

Columb's College are the Nazareth Homes; around the corner from St.

Augustine's Church is the Apprentice Boys' Hall; a few steps farther on is a Presbyterian church, and the Freemasons' Hall, and then St.

Columb's Temperance Hall, and then a convent; and if you walk back again to the Diamond and make some inquiries, you will find that one of the radiating streets is the home of militant Catholics, and the next the home of militant Orangemen, and you will be accommodated with a fight at any time if you go into the latter and shout "To h.e.l.l with King Billy,"

or into the former and shout "To h.e.l.l with the Pope!" And if you buy one of the two papers which the town supports, you will read denunciations of Home Rule and contemptuous references to "croppies," while, if you buy the other, you will read denunciations just as fierce of Orange plots against Ireland.

I have wondered since how much of this agitation is subsidised and how much is real. I have heard both Catholics and Protestants complain that it is kept alive in great part by professional agitators, working in very diverse interests but to a common selfish end--and that end, as my friend of the morning pointed out, the continuance and, if possible, the deepening of the rift between the two religions. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that Protestants and Catholics alike take a fierce joy in an occasional fight, as lending a real interest to life. But I am convinced that religion has really little to do with this--that it is just the peg upon which the quarrels are hung. If it wasn't that, it would probably be something else, for Irishmen have been fighting each other ever since history began. The fights at Donnybrook were as fierce as any, though there wasn't a Protestant in the crowd!

The Orange Societies, of course, with their parades and taunting songs and flaunting banners and praise of Cromwell and "King Billy," do not make for peace. Usually, on such occasions, blows are exchanged; and so the name of Orangeman has come to be a.s.sociated with riots. But, as another writer has pointed out, in considering these things, "you should not forget the common pugnacity. Only an Irishman can appreciate the fierce joy of shouting 'To h.e.l.l with the Pope!' Many a man who had no claim to belong to the Orange Society has known the delight of breaking Catholic heads or of going down in a lost battle, outnumbered but damaging his foes to the last. And many who are slow to attend Ma.s.s, are quick to seize their cudgels when they hear the Orange bands play the tune of Boyne Water. Like the Crusaders, the Protestant and Catholic champions alike feel that by their battles they make amends for the errors and shortcomings of peace."

So it is a mistake to take these rows too seriously. To an Irishman they are never serious; they are rather the innocent and natural diversions of a holiday, small events which add to the savour of existence; and, indeed, they are far less numerous and far less deadly than they once were. In time, if the people are let alone and old sores are allowed quietly to heal, they will probably cease altogether.

It is a mistake, too, I think to take the Orangemen too seriously. They have such a habit of hyperbole that most Irishmen smile at their hysterics and threats of civil war as at sheer fudge. In fact, the Ulster controversy is so full of comic opera elements that it is difficult to keep from smiling at it. For instance, Sir Edward Carson's elder son is a member of the United Irish League because he believes in a united Ireland, while John Redmond's nephew and adopted son is enrolled among the Ulster Volunteers because he is opposed to coercion!

Gilbert and Sullivan never invented anything more fantastic.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE BRIDGE OF THE GIANTS

THERE is no busier place in Derry than the stretch of quays along the river, and one may see s.h.i.+ps there not only from England and Belgium and France, but from Australia and Argentina and India and Brazil. The river is wide and deep, with the channel carefully marked by a line of buoys extending clear out into Lough Foyle; but there are no better facilities here for s.h.i.+pping than at any one of half a dozen ports along the western coast, all of which are silent and deserted. For a port is of no use unless there is something to s.h.i.+p out of it in exchange for the things which are s.h.i.+pped in, or money to pay for them--and there is neither in the west of Ireland.

And, just as there is no more dismal sight than a line of deserted quays, so there is no more interesting sight than a line of busy ones, and we loitered for a long time, next morning, along those of Derry, on our way to the Midland station, on the other side of the river. There is a big iron bridge across the river just above the quays, but that seemed a long way around, so when we came to a sign-board announcing a ferry we stopped. My first thought was that the ferry-boat was on the other side; then I perceived a small motor-propelled skiff moored beside the quay, and one of the two men in it asked me if we were looking for the ferry, and I said yes, and he said that that was it.

So we clambered down into the boat and started off; and I scarcely think that that trip paid, for we were the only pa.s.sengers, and the river is wide, and gasolene is expensive, and somebody had to pay the men their wages--and the fare is only a penny.

The part of the town which lies east of the river is industrial and unattractive. There are some big distilleries there, and a lot of mills and a fish-market, and row upon row of dingy dwellings; but the biggest building of all is the workhouse--one point, at least, in which the towns of the north resemble those of the south. There is another point, too--the jail, without which no Irish town is complete. Derry has one of which it is very proud--the latest word in jails, in fact--a great, circular affair, with the cells arranged in so-called "panoptic"

galleries, that is in such a fas.h.i.+on that the guards stationed in the centre of the jailyard can see into all of them.

But we had crossed the river not to see the town which lay beyond it, but to take train for Portrush, and we were soon rolling northward close beside the bank of the river, with a splendid view of "The Maiden on her hill, boys," on the opposite sh.o.r.e, dominated by the cathedral tower and Walker's white monument. Just before the river begins to widen into the lough, the train pa.s.ses the ruins of an old castle of the O'Dohertys, standing on a point which juts out into the water--a castle which saw rather more than its share of siege and sally; for this is Culmore, which was always the first point of attack when any expedition advanced against Derry.

Beyond it the water widens, and on the farther sh.o.r.e, which is Inishowen, there are pretty villas, standing in luxuriant woods--the homes of some of Derry's wealthy citizens. Then the train turned inland across a stretch of country so flat and carefully cultivated that it might have been Holland; and then the hills began to crowd closer and closer to the sh.o.r.e, until the train was running along its very edge, under precipitous crags, past grotesque pinnacles of white chalk or black basalt, and fantastic caverns worn in the cliffs by the century-long action of the waves. For that stretch of blue water stretching away to the north, so calm and beautiful, was the Atlantic, and it thunders in upon this coast, sometimes, with a fury even the rocks cannot withstand.

We turned away from it, at last, up the wide estuary of the River Bann, and so we came to Coleraine, chiefly connected in my mind with that beautiful Kitty, who, while tripping home from the fair one morning with a pitcher of b.u.t.termilk, looked at Barney MacCleary instead of at the path, and stumbled and let the pitcher drop; but, instead of crying over the spilt milk, accepted philosophically the kiss which Barney gave her; with the result that

"very soon after poor Kitty's disaster The divil a pitcher was whole in Coleraine."

Among the innumerable other laws for which Lloyd-George is responsible, there is one requiring all the shop-keepers of the United Kingdoms to close their places of business one afternoon every week in order to give their employes a short vacation; and in every town the shop-keepers get together and decide which afternoon it shall be; and if you arrive in the town on that afternoon, you will find every shop closed tight, often to your great inconvenience. It was Thursday afternoon when we reached Coleraine, and Thursday is closing day there; and we found that not only were the shops closed, but the train schedule was so altered that we had a long wait ahead of us.

But we were richly compensated for the delay, for, as we started out to explore the town, we saw written in chalk on a wall just outside the station,

To h.e.l.l with the pope!

and under it in another hand,

To h.e.l.l with King Billy!

and then a third hand had added,

G.o.d save King Will! No more pope!

I had heard, of course, that the accepted retort for Catholics to make, when the Pope was insulted, was to consign William of Orange to the infernal regions; but such a retort seemed so weak and ineffective that I could hardly believe in its reality. Yet here it was, and some Orangeman had paused long enough to add what is probably the usual third article of the controversy. What the fourth article is I can't guess; perhaps it is at this point that the cudgels rise and the rocks begin to fly. And it seems to me characteristic of Ireland that the Catholic in this case, instead of erasing the offending sentence, should have let it stand and answered it in kind.

Cheered and heartened by this encounter, we walked on to look at Coleraine, but found it an uninteresting manufacturing town, with nothing in it of historical importance, for it is one of the plantations made by the London Companies, some time after 1613. It was closed as tightly, that afternoon, as on a Sunday, and we soon wearied of looking at ugly houses and silent factories, and made our way back to the station, meditating upon that black day for the Irish when this whole county, having been duly confiscated, was made over by royal edict to the hundred London adventurers, whose heirs or a.s.signs still own it. Yet the conquest had one advantage: the O'Dohertys and the O'Cahans knew only the arts of war; the newcomers brought with them the arts of peace.

One of them was distilling, and the Irish had never drunk such whiskey as the "Coleraine" which was produced here in the succeeding years.

There is no more popular story in this region than that of the priest who was preaching a temperance sermon, and, after pointing out the evils of over-indulgence, continued with great earnestness, "And, me boys, 'tis the bad stuff you be takin' that does the worst of the mischief. I niver touch a drop meself--but the best Coleraine!"

We got away from Coleraine, at last, and ran northward toward the sea again, across uneven sand-drifts, past Port Stewart, where Charles Lever was once a dispensary doctor and occupied his leisure hours, which were many, in setting down the adventures of Harry Lorrequer; and then the road ran on close beside the sea to Portrush, with its pleasant beach and rock-bound bathing-pool, which was full of people on this holiday.

But Portrush is a place of summer hotels, so we did not linger there, but transferred quickly to the electric line which runs on to the Giant's Causeway, fourteen miles away.