Penelope's Irish Experiences

“It is a darlin’ year for the pitaties,” the drivers says; and there are plenty of them planted hereabouts, even in stony spots not worth a keenogue for anything else, for “pitaties doesn’t require anny inTHRICKet farmin’, you see, ma’am.”

The clergyman remarks that only three things are required to make Ireland the most attractive country in the world: “Protestantism, cleanliness, and gardens”; and Mr. Shamrock, who is of course a Roman Catholic, answers this tactful speech in a way that surprises the speaker and keeps him silent for hours.

The Birmingham cutler, who has a copy of Ismay’s Children in his pocket, triumphantly reads aloud, at this moment, a remark put into the mouth of an Irish character: “The low Irish are quite destitute of all notion of beauty,—have not the remotest particle of artistic sentiment or taste; their cabins are exactly as they were six hundred years ago, for they never want to improve themselves.”

Then Mr. Shamrock asserts that any show of prosperity on a tenant’s part would only mean an advance of rent on the landlord’s; and Mr. Rose retorts that while that might have been true in former times, it is utterly false to-day.

Mrs. Shamrock, who is a natural apologist, pleads that the Irish gentry have the most beautiful gardens in the world and the greatest natural taste in gardening, and there must be some reason why the lower classes are so different in this respect. May it not be due partly to lack of ground, lack of money to spend on seeds and fertilisers, lack of all refining, civilising and educating influences? Mr. Shamrock adds that the dwellers in cabins cannot successfully train creepers against the walls or flowers in the dooryard, because of the goat, pig, donkey, ducks, hens, and chickens; and Veritas asks triumphantly, “Why don’t you keep the pig in a sty, then?”

The man with the evergreen heart (who has already been told this morning that I am happily married, Francesca engaged, Salemina a determined celibate, but Benella quite at liberty) peeps under Salemina’s umbrella at this juncture, and says tenderly, “And what do you think about these vexed questions, dear madam?” Which gives her a chance to reply with some distinctness, “I shall not know what I think for several months to come; and at any rate there are various things more needed on this coach than opinions.”

At this the Frenchman murmurs, “Ah, she has right!” and the Birmingham cutler says, “‘Ear! ‘ear!”

On another day the parson began to tell the man with the evergreen heart some interesting things about America. He had never been there himself, but he had a cousin who had travelled extensively in that country, and had brought back much unusual information. “The Americans are an extraordinary people on the practical side,” he remarked; “but having said that, you have said all, for they are sordid, and absolutely devoid of ideality. Take an American at his roller-top desk, a telephone at one side and a typewriter at the other, talk to him of pork and dollars, and you have him at his very best. He always keeps on his Panama hat at business, and sits in a rocking-chair smoking a long cigar. The American woman wears a blue dress with a red lining, or a black dress with orange trimmings, showing a survival of African taste; while another exhibits the American-Indian type,—sallow, with high cheekbones. The manners of the servant classes are extraordinary. I believe they are called ‘the help,’ and they commonly sit in the drawing-room after the work is finished.”

“You surprise me!” said Mrs. Shamrock.

“It is indeed amazing,” he continued; “and there are other extraordinary customs, among them the habit of mixing ices with all beverages. They plunge ices into mugs of ale, beer, porter, lemonade, or Apollinaris, and sip the mixture with a long ladle at the chemist’s counter, where it is usually served.”

“You surprise me!” exclaimed the cutler.

“You surprise me too!” I echoed in my inmost heart. Francesca would not have confined herself to that blameless mode of expression, you may be sure, and I was glad that she was on the back seat of the car. I did not know it at the time, but Veritas, who is a man of intelligence, had identified her as an American, and wishing to inform himself on all possible points, had asked her frankly why it was that the people of her nation gave him the impression of never being restful or quiet, but always so excessively and abnormally quick in motion and speech and thought.

“Casual impressions are not worth anything,” she replied nonchalantly. “As a nation, you might sometimes give us the impression of being phlegmatic and slow-witted. Both ideas may have some basis of fact, yet not be absolutely true. We are not all abnormally quick in America. Look at our messenger boys, for example.”

“We! Phlegmatic and slow-witted!” exclaimed Veritas. “You surprise me! And why do you not reward these government messengers for speed, and stimulate them in that way?”

“We do,” Francesca answered; “that is the only way in which we ever get them to arrive anywhere—by rewarding and stimulating them at both ends of the journey, and sometimes, in extreme cases, at a halfway station.”

“This is most interesting,” said Veritas, as he took out his damp notebook; “and perhaps you can tell me why your newspapers are so poorly edited, so cheap, so sensational?”

“I confess I can’t explain it,” she sighed, as if sorely puzzled. “Can it be that we have expended our strength on magazines, where you are so lamentably weak?”

At this moment the rain began as if there had been a long drought and the sky had just determined to make up the deficiency. It fell in sheets, and the wind blew I know not how many Irish miles an hour. The Frenchman put on a silk macintosh with a cape, and was berated by everybody in the same seat because he stood up a moment and let the water in under the lap covers. His umbrella was a dainty en-tout-cas with a mother-of-pearl handle, that had answered well enough in heavy mist or soft drizzle. His hat of fine straw was tied with a neat cord to his buttonhole; but although that precaution insured its ultimate safety, it did not prevent its soaring from his head and descending on Mrs. Shamrock’s bonnet. He conscientiously tried holding it on with one hand, but was then reproved by both neighbours because his macintosh dripped over them.

“How are your spirits, Frenchy?” asked the cutler jocosely.

“I am not too greatly sad,” said the poor gentleman, “but I will be glad it should be finished; far more joyfully would I be at Manchester, triste as it may be.”

Just then a gust of wind blew his cape over his head and snapped his parasol.

“It is evidently it has been made in Ireland,” he sighed, with a desperate attempt at gaiety. “It should have had a grosser stem, and helas! it must not be easy to have it mended in these barbarous veelages.”

We stopped at four o’clock at a wayside hostelry, and I had quietly made up my mind to descend from the car, and take rooms for the night, whatever the place might be. Unfortunately, the same idea occurred to three or four of the soaked travellers; and as men could leap down, while ladies must wait for the steps, the chivalrous sex, their manners obscured by the circular tour system, secured the rooms, and I was obliged to ascend again, wetter than ever, to my perch beside the driver.

“Can I get the box seat, do you think, if I pay extra for it?” I had asked one of the stablemen before breakfast.

“You don’t need to be payin’, miss! Just confront the driver, and you’ll get it aisy!” If, by the way, I had confronted him at the end instead of at the beginning of the journey, my charms certainly would not have been all-powerful, for my coat had been leaked upon by red and green umbrellas, my hat was a shapeless jelly, and my face imprinted with the spots from a drenched blue veil.

After two hours more of this we reached the Shan Van Vocht Hotel, where we had engaged apartments; but we found to our consternation that it was full, and that we had been put in lodgings a half-mile away.

Salemina, whose patience was quite exhausted by the discomforts of the day, groaned aloud when we were deposited at the door of a village shop, and ushered upstairs to our tiny quarters; but she ceased abruptly when she really took note of our surroundings. Everything was humble, but clean and shining—glass, crockery, bedding, floor, on the which we were dripping pools of water, while our landlady’s daughter tried to make us more comfortable.

“It’s a soft night we’re havin’,” she said, in a dove’s voice, “but we’ll do right enough if the win’ doesn’t rise up on us.”

Left to ourselves, we walked about the wee rooms on ever new and more joyful voyages of discovery. The curtains rolled up and down easily; the windows were propped upon nice clean sticks instead of tennis rackets and hearth brushes; there was a well-washed stone to keep the curtain down on the sill; and just outside were tiny window gardens, in each of which grew three marigolds and three asters, in a box fenced about with little green pickets. There were well-dusted books on the tables, and Francesca wanted to sit down immediately to The Charming Cora, reprinted from The Girl’s Own Paper. Salemina meantime had tempted fate by looking under the bed, where she found the floor so exquisitely neat that she patted it affectionately with her hand.

We had scarcely donned our dry clothing when the hotel proprietor sent a jaunting-car for our drive to the seven-o’clock table d’hote dinner. We carefully avoided our travelling companions that night, but learned the next morning that the Frenchman had slept on four chairs, and rejected the hotel coffee with the remark that it was not ‘veritable’—a criticism in which he was quite justified. Our comparative Englishman had occupied a cot in a room where the tin bathtubs were kept. He was writing to The Times at the moment of telling me his woes, and, without seeing the letter, I could divine his impassioned advice never to travel in the west of Ireland in rainy weather. He remarked (as if quoting from his own communication) that the scenery was magnificent, but that there was an entirely insufficient supply of hot water; that the waiters had the appearance of being low comedians, and their service was of the character one might expect from that description; that he had been talking before breakfast with a German gentleman, who had sat on a wall opposite the village of Dugort, in the island of Achill, from six o’clock in the morning until nine, and in that time he had seen coming out of an Irish hut three geese, eight goslings, six hens, fifteen chickens, two pigs, two cows, two barefooted girls, the master of the house leading a horse, three small children carrying cloth bags filled with school-books, and finally a strapping mother leading a donkey loaded with peat-baskets; that all this poverty and ignorance and indolence and filth was spoiling his holiday; and finally, that if he should be as greatly disappointed in the fishing as he had been in the hotel accommodations—here we almost fainted from suspense—he should be obliged to go home! And not only that, but he should feel it his duty to warn others of what they might expect.

“Perhaps you are justified,” said Francesca sympathetically. “People who are used to the dry, sunny climate and the clear atmosphere of London ought not to expose themselves to Irish rain without due consideration.”

He agreed with her, glancing over his spectacles to see if she by any possibility could be amusing herself at his expense—good, old, fussy, fault-finding Veritas; but indeed Francesca’s eyes were so soft and lovely and honest that the more he looked at her, the less he could do her the injustice of suspecting her sincerity.

But mind you, although I would never confess it to Veritas, because he sees nothing but flaws on every side, the Irish pig is, to my taste, a trifle too much in the foreground. He pays the rent, no doubt; but this magnificent achievement could be managed from a sty in the rear, ungrateful as it might seem to immure so useful a personage behind a door or conceal his virtues from the public at large.

Chapter XXIV. Humours of the road

‘Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose,Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes.’Oliver Goldsmith.

If you drive from Clifden to Oughterard by way of Maam Cross, and then on to Galway, you will pass through the O’Flahertys’ country, one of whom, Murrough O’Flaherty, was governor of this country of Iar (western) Connaught. You will like to see the last of the O’Flaherty yews, a thousand years old at least, and the ruins of the castle and banqueting-hall. The family glories are enumerated in ancient Irish manuscript, and instead of the butler, footman, chef, coachman, and gardener of to-day we read of the O’Flaherty physician, standard-bearer, brehon or judge, master of the revels, and keeper of the bees; and the moment Himself is rich enough, I intend to add some of these picturesque personages to our staff.

We afterwards learned that there was formerly an inscription over the west gate of Galway:—

‘From the fury of the O’Flaherties,Good Lord, deliver us.’

After Richard de Burgo took the town, in 1226, it became a flourishing English colony, and the citizens must have guarded themselves from any intercourse with the native Irish; at least, an old by-law of 1518 enacts that ‘neither O’ nor Mac shalle strutte ne swaggere thro’ the streetes of Galway.’

We did not go to Galway straight, because we never do anything straight. We seldom get any reliable information, and never any inspiring suggestions, from the natives themselves. They are all patriotically sure that Ireland is the finest counthry in the world, God bless her! but in the matter of seeing that finest counthry in the easiest or best fashion they are all very vague. Indirectly, our own lack of geography, coupled with the ignorance of the people themselves, has been of the greatest service in enlivening our journeys. Francesca says that, in looking back, she finds that our errors of judgment have always resulted in our most charming and unforgettable experiences; but let no one who is travelling with a well-balanced and logical-minded man attempt to follow in our footsteps.

Being as free as air on this occasion (if I except the dread of Benella’s scorn, which descends upon us now and then, and moves us to repentance, sometimes even to better behaviour), we passed Porridgetown and Cloomore, and ferried across to the opposite side of Lough Corrib. Salemina, of course, had fixed upon Cong as our objective point, because of its caverns and archaeological remains, which Dr. La Touche tells her not on any account to miss. Francesca and I said nothing, but we had a very definite idea of avoiding Cong, and going nearer Tuam, to climb Knockma, the hill of the fairies, and explore their ancient haunts and archaeological remains, which are more in our line than the caverns of Cong.

Speaking of Dr. La Touche reminds me that we have not the smallest notion as to how our middle-aged romance is progressing. Absence may, at this juncture, be just as helpful a force in its development as daily intercourse would be; for when one is past thirty, I fancy there is a deal of ‘thinking-it-over’ to do. Precious little there is when we are younger; heart does it all then, and never asks head’s advice! But in too much delay there lies no plenty, and there’s the danger. Actually, Francesca and I could be no more anxious to settle Salemina in life if she were lame, halt, blind, and homeless, instead of being attractive, charming, absurdly young for her age, and not without means. The difficulty is that she is one of those ‘continent, persisting, immovable persons’ whom Emerson describes as marked out for the blessing of the world. That quality always makes a man anxious. He fears that he may only get his rightful share of blessing, and he craves the whole output, so to speak.

We naturally mention Dr. La Touche very often, since he is always writing to Salemina or to me, offering counsel and suggestion. Madame La Touche, the venerable aunt, has written also, asking us to visit them in Meath; but this invitation we have declined, principally because the Colquhouns will be with them, and they would surely be burdened by the addition of three ladies and a maid to their family; partly because we shall be freer in our own house, which will be as near the La Touche mansion as possible, you may be sure, if Francesca and I have anything to do with choosing it.

The La Touche name, then, is often on our lips, but Salemina offers no intimation that it is indelibly imprinted on her heart of hearts. It is a good name to be written anywhere, and we fancied there was the slightest possible hint of pride and possession in Salemina’s voice when she read to us to-night, from her third volume of Lecky’s History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, a paragraph concerning one David La Touche, from whom Dr. Gerald is descended:—

‘In the last of the Irish Parliaments no less than five members of the name sat together in the House of Commons, and his family may claim what is in truth the highest honour of which an Irish family can boast,—that during many successive governments, and in a period of most lavish corruption, it possessed great parliamentary influence, and yet passed through political life untitled and unstained.’

There is just the faintest gleam of hope, by the way, that Himself may join us at the very end of June, and he is sure to be helpful on this sentimental journey; he aided Ronald and Francesca more than once in their tempestuous love-affair, and if his wits are not dulled by marriage, as so often happens, he will be invaluable. It will not be long then, probably, before I assume my natural, my secondary position in the landscape of events. The junior partners are now, so to speak, on their legs, although it is idle to suppose that such brittle appendages will support them for any length of time. As soon as we return in the autumn I should like to advertise (if Himself will permit me) for a perfectly sound and kind junior partner,—one who has been well broken to harness, and who will neither shy nor balk, no matter what the provocation; the next step being to urge Himself to relinquish altogether the bondage of business care. There is no need of his continuing in it, since other people’s business will always give him ample scope for his energies. He has, since his return to America, dispensed justice and mercy, chiefly mercy, to one embezzler, one honest fellow tempted beyond his strength, one widow, one unfortunate friend of his youth, and two orphans, and it was in no sense an extraordinary season.

To return to notes of travel, our method of progression, since we deserted the high-road and the public car, has been strangely varied. I think there is no manner of steed or vehicle which has not been used by us, at one time or another, even to the arch donkey and the low-backed car with its truss of hay, like that of the immortal Peggy. I thought at first that ‘arch’ was an unusual adjective to apply to a donkey, but I find after all that it is abundantly expressive. Benella, who disapproves entirely of this casual sort of travelling, far from ‘answerable roads’ and in ‘backwards places’ (Irish for ‘behind the times’), is yet wonderfully successful in discovering equipages of some sort in unlikely spots.

In towns of any size or pretensions, we find by the town cross or near the inn a motley collection of things on wheels, with drivers sometimes as sober as Father Mathew, sometimes not. Yesterday we had a mare which the driver confessed he bought without ‘overcircumspectin’ it,’ and although you couldn’t, as he said, ‘extinguish her at first sight from a grand throtter, she hadn’t rightly the speed you could wish.’

“It’s not so powerful young she is, melady!” he confessed. “You’d be afther lookin’ at a chicken a long time and niver be reminded of her; but sure ye might thry her, for belike ye wouldn’t fancy a horse that would be leppin’ stone walls wid ye, like Dan Ryan’s there! My little baste’ll get ye to Rossan before night, and she won’t hurt man nor mortial in doin’ it.”

“Begorra, you’re right, nor herself nayther,” said Dan Ryan; “and if it’s leppin’ ye mane, sure she couldn’t lep a sod o’ turf, that mare couldn’t! God pardon ye, melady, for thrustin’ yerself to that paiceable, brindly-coloured ould hin, whin ye might be gettin’ a dacint, high-steppin’ horse for a shillin’ or two more; an’ belike I might contint meself to take less, for I wouldn’t be extortin’ ye like Barney O’Mara there!”

Our chosen driver replied to this by saying that he wouldn’t be caught dead at a pig fair with Dan Ryan’s horse, but in the midst of all the distracting discussions and arguments that followed we held to our original bargain; for we did not like the look of Dan Ryan’s high-stepper, who was a ‘thrifle mounTAIny,’ as they say in these parts, and had a wild eye to boot. We started, and in a half-hour we could still see the chapel spire of the little village we had just left. It was for once a beautiful day, but we felt that we must reach a railway station some time or other, in order to find a place to sleep.

“Can’t you make her go a bit faster? Do you want to keep us on the road all night?” inquired Francesca.

“I do not, your ladyship’s honour, ma’am.”

“Is she tired, or doesn’t she ever go any better?” urged Salemina.

“She does; it’s God’s truth I’m tellin’ ye, melady, she’s that flippant sometimes that I scarcely can hould her, and the car jumps undher her like a spring bed.”

“Then what on earth IS the matter with her?” I inquired, with some fire in my eye.

“Sure I believe she’s takin’ time to think of the iligant load she’s carryin’, melady, and small blame to her!” said Mr. Barney O’Mara; and after that we let him drive as best he could, although it did take us four hours to do nine Irish miles. He came, did Mr. Barney, from County Armagh, and he beguiled the way with interesting tales from that section of Ireland, one of which, ‘the Old Crow and the Young Crow,’ particularly took our fancies.

“An old crow was teaching a young crow one day, and says to him, ‘Now, my son,’ says he, ‘listen to the advice I’m going to give you,’ says he. ‘If you see a person coming near you and stooping, mind yourself, and be on your keeping; he’s stooping for a stone to throw at you,’ says he.

“‘But tell me,’ says the young crow, ‘what should I do if he had a stone already down in his pocket?’ says he.

“‘Musha, go ‘long out of that,’ says the old crow, ‘you’ve learned enough; the divil another learning I’m able to give you.’”

He was a perfect honey-pot of useless and unreliable information, was Barney O’Mara, and most learned in fairy lore; but for that matter, all the people walking along the road, the drivers, the boatman and guides, the men and women in the cottages where we stop in a shower or to inquire the way, relate stories of phookas, leprehauns, and sprites, banshees and all the various classes of elves and fays, as simply and seriously as they would speak of any other occurrences. Barney told us gravely of the old woman who was in the habit of laying pishogues (charms) to break the legs of his neighbour’s cattle, because of an ancient grudge she bore him; and also how necessary it is to put a bit of burning turf under the churn to prevent the phookas, or mischievous fairies, from abstracting the butter or spoiling the churning in any way. Irish fays seem to be much interested in dairy matters, for, besides the sprites who delight in distracting the cream and keeping back the butter (I wonder if a lazy up-and-down movement of the dasher invites them at all, at all?), it is well known that many a milkmaid on a May morning has seen fairy cows browsing along the banks of lakes,—cows that vanish into thin mist at the sound of human footfall.

When we were quite cross at missing the noon train from Rossan, quite tired of the car’s jolting, somewhat vexed even at the mare’s continued enjoyment of her ‘iligant load,’ Barney appeased us all by singing, in a delightful, mellow voice, a fairy song called the ‘Leprehaun,’10 This personage, you must know, if you haven’t a large acquaintance among Irish fairies, is a tricksy fellow in a green coat and scarlet cap, with brave shoe buckles on his wee brogues. You will catch him sometimes, if the ‘glamour’ is on you, under a burdock leaf or a thorn bush, and he is always making or mending a shoe. He commonly has a little purse about him, which, if you are quick enough, you can snatch; and a wonderful purse it is, for whatever you spend, there is always money to be found in it. Truth to tell, nobody has yet succeeded in being quicker than Master Leprehaun, though many have offered to fill his cruiskeen with ‘mountain dew,’ of which Irish fairies are passionately fond.