present castle of Dunboy is modern, and is therefore less appealing than the older fabric, which so successfully defended itself against Sir George Carew. The story of the chiefs of Dunboy is familiar in outline to most; but the story of its famous siege, when MacGeoghegan fought Dunboy against Carew and his interesting army of four thousand men, has often been overlooked in favour of more theatrically magnificent performances.
Why this should be so, it is hard to realize. History has recorded with fidelity and minutely many of its incidents, and, in “The Two Chiefs of Dunboy,” it has inspired an historical romance of the first rank.
When Donal took his last farewell of his once proud home, it had become a smoking, blood-clotted ruin.
“The halls where mirth and minstrelsy
Than Beara’s wind rose louder,
Were flung in masses lonelily,
And black with English powder.”
The tragic story of the siege is thus condensed: The garrison consisted of only 143 chosen fighting men, who had but a few small cannons; while the comparatively large army which assailed them was well supplied with artillery and all the means of attack. At length, on the 17th of June, when the castle had been nearly shot to pieces, the garrison offered to surrender if allowed to depart with their arms; but their messenger was immediately hanged, and the order for the assault given.
Although the proportion of the assailants in point of numbers was overwhelming, the storming party were resisted with the most desperate bravery. From turret to turret, and in every part of the crumbling ruins, the struggle was successively maintained throughout the livelong day. Thirty of the gallant defenders attempted to escape by swimming; but the soldiers, who had been posted in boats, killed them in the water; and, at length, the surviving portion of the garrison retreated into a cellar, to which the only access was by a narrow, winding flight of stone steps. Their leader, MacGeoghegan, being mortally wounded, the command was given to Thomas Taylor, the son of an Englishman, and the intimate friend of Captain Tyrell, to whose niece he was married.
Nine barrels of gunpowder were stowed away in the cellar; and Taylor declared that he would blow up all that remained of the castle, burying himself and his companions, with their enemies, in the ruins, unless they received a promise of life. This was refused by the savage Carew, who, placing a guard upon the entrance to the cellar, as it was then after sunset, returned to the work of slaughter next morning. Cannon-balls were discharged among the Irish in their last dark retreat; and Taylor was forced by his companions to surrender unconditionally. When, however, some of the English descended into the cellar, they found the wounded MacGeoghegan, with a lighted torch in his hand, staggering to throw it into the gunpowder. Captain Power thereupon seized him by the arms, and the others despatched him with their swords. Fifty-eight of those who had surrendered were hanged that day in the English camp, and others a few days after; so that not one of the 143 heroic defenders of Dunboy survived. On the 22d of June the remains of the castle were blown up by Carew with the gunpowder of the besieged.
It was Thackeray, who, if possessed of a certain smugness, was often moved by patriotic and sometimes by charitable motives, said:
“What sends picturesque tourists (What, if you please, Mr. Thackeray, are picturesque tourists?) to the Rhine or Saxon Switzerland, when, within five miles of the pretty inn at Glengarriff, there is a country of the magnificence of which no pen can give an idea? I would like to be a great prince, and bring a train of painters over to make, if they could, and according to their several capabilities, a set of pictures of the place. Were such a bay lying upon English shores, it would be the world’s wonder.”
Glengarriff is all that Thackeray pictured it in prose. It is more than that, – more, indeed, than is within the power of words to describe, though its beauty is somewhat of the stage-scenery and landscape-painting order.
Travellers from all the corners of the earth have raved over its charm; but they all fail utterly to describe the insinuating peacefulness of its mirrored sky and emerald-clad hills. No one but the artist can at all successfully portray its moods: at times brilliant with sunshine and verdure, and again, sombre and mist-laden with the rains of autumn; but never, or seldom ever, even in the most abnormal winter, bare or bleak. Indeed, this region, together with many others in Ireland, has been, by many eminent scientists, proclaimed one of nature’s most famous sanitoria.
Prince Puckler Muskau, in his tour of Ireland, wrote thus of Glengarriff: “The climate is most favourable for vegetation, moist and so warm that not only azaleas and rhododendra, and all sorts of evergreens stand abroad through the winter, but, in favourable aspect, even camellias, dates, pomegranates, magnolias, etc., attain their fullest beauty.” Lord Macaulay and Sir David Wilkie called it the fairest spot in the British Isles.
The former’s stanzas, as given below, are perhaps not of his usual heroic order, and may, once and again, appear unduly sentimental, but they are emphatically true and appreciative:
“Hail, charming scene! Glengarriff’s bay,
Yon mountains, streams, and dells,
The Atlantic waters’ foaming spray,
Creation’s wonder tells.
“Hail, Bantry’s noble harbour deep,
Where Britain’s fleet may ride,
And giant ships, in safety’s keep,
May in or outward glide.
“Thy glorious waters, green and gemmed,
With beauteous islands crowned,
While the enchanting scene is hemmed
With purple hills around.
“At morning’s dawn or evening’s shade
Thy glory’s still the same:
And ever will be so arrayed,
With English tourists’ fame.”
An enthusiastic American, who subscribed himself as from New Jersey, has left the following lines upon the register of the hotel at Glengarriff:
“Glengarriff! on thy shaded shore
I’ve wandered when the sun was high,
Have seen the moonlit showers pour
Through thy umbrageous canopy:
Glengarriff! might I but delay,
I would not say good-bye to thee:
Alas! far distant is the day
When I thy charms again may see.
Yet, in the land remote of mine,
Remembrance will thy grace renew,
So, as thou canst not call me thine,
Glengarriff! loveliest, best, adieu!”
This valleyed and landlocked harbour of Glengarriff terminates Bantry Bay, which, says Mr. Kipling, “lies just to the eastward of the Fastnet, that well-worn mile-post of the Atlantic liner.”
In Kipling’s “Fleet in Being,” which first appeared in the Morning Post (London) in
1898, and of which even this author’s most ardent devotees appear too frequently to have no knowledge, are to be found some wonderful bits of descriptions of Irish coast scenery. Therein are recounted virile experiences and observations on board the flag-ship of the Channel fleet during the autumn manœuvres; and, from Lough Swilly in the north to Bantry Bay in the south, the author depicts, with a master mariner’s fidelity, the characteristics of the coast-line, – its harbours, bays, headlands, and ports, – in so incomparable
