many and varied elements which make Ireland attractive unconsciously weave a spell which, mayhap, will allure many another to seek for himself the charm of Ireland, in preference to all other neglected tourist points. It certainly stands first and foremost as a new touring-ground for those who would not perforce wander too far afield, or at too remote a point from a metropolitan daily paper.
Not that the mountain fastnesses or the isolated headlands and unfrequented lakes and loughs are always within quick communication with more populous centres of civilization. Far from it; one may journey many a weary hour from some remote hamlet in order to strike again the railway which is to take him to some newer and possibly more appealing centre of interest; and, when he reaches that same railway, or one of its newly made tentacles, which are for ever reaching out toward new lands to conquer, he may be forced to pass an equally lonely, though perhaps awe-inspiring, vigil at the base of some bald, bare mountain-peak, awaiting the main line connection which was due at this point a couple of hours before. All of which, were one imbued with anything but the spirit with which he ought to be imbued, might gall and chafe, with some sense of reason, but which, for the true vagabond, even though he may not choose to travel by foot and on the road, ought to be the very essence of enjoyment.
CHAPTER III.
THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE
ONE hundred or more years ago, when Arthur Young first wrote his journal of a tour in Ireland, those who had Ireland’s welfare most at heart deplored the fact that “her greatness was still practically unexplored, and the early history of her brighter days excited no interest even among her own people.”
Doctor Johnson felt this himself when he wrote, “I have long wished that Irish literature were cultivated, as Ireland is known by tradition to be a seat of piety and learning, … and surely it would be very acceptable to be further informed regarding a people at once so ancient and illustrious.”
It has been said, too—the words are taken from the mouth of a poor parish priest—that “the Celt is melting like the snow: he lingers in little patches in the corner of the field, and hands are stretched on every side. It is human to stretch hands to fleeting things, but as well might we try to retain the snow.”
From this it would appear that Ireland and its institutions, as they have existed in the past, and as they exist to no small extent to-day, are not yet the familiar ground that many might suppose.
Just what the reason for this indifference to its charms may be, it is impossible for any one to state; but, at all events, it is traditional to a large extent, and is a long time being lived down.
During the period of the varied fortunes of the ancient kings of Ireland’s four great divisions—from perhaps the fifth century until the coming of Henry II. of England—there was little connection between Ireland and the outside world, excepting always the Church which attached Ireland to Christendom.
It was, perhaps, small wonder that the Plantagenet Henry, who was in favour at Rome, was desirous of uniting the four kingdoms of Ireland as a Roman Catholic whole. He had already sent three bishops to Rome, and its most famous of all “Irish bulls,” if the levity be pardoned, came forth naturally from Nicholas Breakspeare, the English Pope.
The Church in Ireland, or, rather, religion in Ireland, is a subject that one approaches with dread. So much so, that it had best be avoided altogether so far as its controversial elements are concerned.
The real significant ecclesiastical aspect of Ireland of the past—or of the present, for that matter—can be discussed with less trepidation.
Of the devotion of the people to their Church there can be no question, though it smacks not a little of the devotion of the ivy to the tree.
It has been said before now that “the houses of the people are indecently poor and small, and the houses of the Church are indecently rich and large. Out of the dirt and decay they rise always proud and sometimes ugly and substantial, as though to inform the world that at least one thing is not dying and despondent, but keeps its loins girded and its lamps trimmed.”
All of which is—or was—perhaps, true enough in the abstract; but, tempus fugit, and Ireland, if not actually grown, as yet, more prosperous, or, in many parts, any less primitive, is without question becoming, throughout, more enlightened; and the traveller, walking or driving across the wastes of the west, will not cavil at the fact that the first thing to break the monotony of the horizon is a church spire or tower, or that it towers over a little group of cottages huddled about it. Sometimes, indeed, these church buildings are poor and rough; but these are becoming fewer and fewer, and are now gradually, even in the poorest districts, being replaced by more pretentious structures. The last few years have seen in Ireland a great activity in the building of these chapels, though they are not always of the artistic value of many of the older examples.
The economists and political agitators have, of late, drawn attention to the “positive sinfulness” of the increase of chapels and religious buildings side by side with the increase of poverty. This may have existed up to the last half-century, but, as surely as the seasons change, a new era for Ireland is close upon it,
and the increase of what is called the “religious vocation” is not the bugaboo that it once was.
One should pay a hearty tribute to the patriotic efforts of the Gaelic League to inspire throughout Ireland a wholesome and invigorating sense of nationality, and to guide its energies into industrial and intellectual channels. This movement, from within and without, is doing noble work, and, if it is uninterrupted in its progress by religious or political jealousies, Ireland may yet come to her own again.
More than seven centuries have rolled onward since the English have become intimately connected with Ireland, and yet how little is really known of the land and its people, in spite of all that the political economists, the ecclesiasts, and the antiquarians have written concerning it.
Professor Van Raumer, a German, in his “Letters from Three Kingdoms” (which it is only proper to say has been criticized before now as a mass of bold trivialities and solemn inaccuracies), says that he never knew what poverty meant until he travelled in Ireland. Its existence, to a very large extent, is undeniable; and, in times of stress and strife, it has even become virulent; but ragged dress, frugal fare, and mean houses do not always indicate actual distress. The trouble seems to be with those who commit themselves to written observations that they never appear as apologists, but condemn, from the start, anything and everything which falls below a certain preconceived standard which they may have unknowingly set.
In spite of the fact that the population in certain parts of Ireland was proclaimed as being, at the beginning of the Victorian era, at its lowest ebb—in many parts of Ulster conditions have since changed but little—there was often no apparent haggardness or lack of nourishment to be observed; the children notably, like the children of the slums in great cities, were rosy, chubby, and high-spirited—a very good indication of the general health of a community. This is one of the anomalies of travel and observation which cannot be explained.
A statement was made in the public prints, at the beginning of the year 1903, that Ireland had lost, in the twelvemonth previous, a population
