The difference did not consist merely in the quantity either. Some of their lands, like Sir Walter's at Youghal, on the Blackwater, were splendid lands; those of Spenser were wild moorlands, facing the wilder mountains, where the Irish, yet smarting under defeat and expulsion, the destruction of their great chief, and this plan, which was to continue that expulsion forever, and plant on their own soil the hated Saxon, were looking down, ready to descend and take sanguinary vengeance. Such was the lot which Spenser chose in preference to the degrading slavery of court dependence. No doubt he pleased himself with the idea of a new English state, established in this newly-conquered region; where, surrounded by English gentlemen, and one of the lords of the soil, he should live a life of content and happiness, and hand down to his children a fair estate. But in this fond belief how much of the poet's self-delusive property was mixed! Hear what the authority I have already made such use of, because I know it to be good, says: "It was a wild and lonesome banishment at best, for one who had lived so much in courts, and in companionship with the rich and high-born. Mountains on all sides shut in the retreat, and in the midst of the long and level plain between them stood a strong fortalice of the Earl of Desmond, which was to be the poet's residence, Kilcolman Castle. Hard by the castle was a small lake, and a mile or two distant, on either side, a river descended from the hills. In position, likewise, it was insecure, forming, as it did, the frontier of the English line in the south, and the contiguous hills affording lurking-places for the Irish kerns, whence they could pour down in multitudes to plunder. In the insurrectionary warfare that shortly succeeded, these mountain passes became the scene of many a skirmish; and the first object of the commander of the English forces, when he heard of any partial outbreak, was to send off a detachment of light-armed troops to occupy them in the name of the queen."
But, overlooking all these hazards, Spenser came hither full of bright views of the future. "The sunshine of the years to come," says the author we have been quoting, "were to atone for the darkness and the gloom of life's morning." His poetry, which had been previously of a pastoral cast, became now imbued with the wildness of the sylvan solitude around him: wood-nymphs and fairies were inhabitants he could summon up at will, and with them the hill-tops about him were peopled. Such names of places and things as his musical ear pronounced inharmonious were exchanged for others which quaint fancy suggested, and which read more sweetly in his tender verse. He sang sweet strains of the bridal or separation of his rivers; told how their stern sires, the mountains, ofttimes forced their unwilling inclinations, and brought about a union which the water-nymph detested; and how sometimes she, in her faithful attachment to the one she loved, effected her wish by a circuitous course, or even sought beneath the earth's surface the waters dear to her bosom. Before an imagination so vivid the iron desolateness of Kilcolman vanished; and in its stead a fairy world arose to gladden the eyes of the dreamer with its bowers of bliss, and enchanted palaces, and magnificence more gorgeous than the luxuries of Ind.
"The Ballyhowra Hills, which formed the northern boundary of the poet's retreat, appeared in this new world under the feigned title of the Mountains of Mole; while the highest of them, which, like Parnassus, has a double summit, was dignified by the name of "Father." Sometimes Spenser seems to have extended the name of Mole to the entire range of hills which run along the northern and eastern limits of the county of Cork, and divide it from Limerick and Tipperary. In one place he speaks of a river rising from the Mole, and thence styled by him Molana; which undoubtedly takes its origin from the Tipperary Hills. The plain in which his castle stood was rebaptized in Helicon by the name of Armulla Dale. Of his two streamlets, one was suffered, for a special purpose, to retain its original name of Bregoge, i.e., false, or deceitful:
"'Bregog hight
So hight became of his deceitful traine;'
and the other, the Awbeg, was specially appropriated to himself by the name of Mulla:
"'And Mulla mine, whose waves I whilom taught to weep.'
"The rivers here mentioned flowed at some distance on each side of Spenser's castle. The Bregoge on the east, at the distance of a mile; the Mulla on the west, at about two miles. Both rise, as the poet sings, in the Mole Mountain. They spring from wells, in glens about a mile and a half asunder, on the opposite sides of Corringlass, the highest mountain in the range. The Bregoge proceeds, in a winding course, to the southwest, and falls into the Mulla a mile above the town of Doneraile. It is a very inconsiderable stream, forcing itself with difficulty among the rocks with which its channel is encumbered; and, like many mountain rivulets, is dry during the summer heats. When we saw it, in the course of the present year, its bed was a mass of dusty sand.
"The Mulla rises on the remote side of the hill from the Castle of Kilcolman, but has a more northerly head in Annagh bog, five miles from Anster's birth-place, Charleville, which perhaps, in strictness, should be deemed its source. Spenser, in the foregoing passage, describes it as springing out of Mole. It proceeds to Buttevant, and receives a branch a little above that town, at Ardskeagh; it then winds away toward Kilcolman, and meets the Bregoge near Doneraile. Directing its course thence, it turns to the south, and flows through a deep romantic glen to Castletown Roche, after which it enters the Blackwater at Bridgetown Abbey. It is now called the Awbeg, in contradistinction to the Awmore or Avonmore, one of the names of the Blackwater."
I have been the more particular in quoting from one well acquainted with the scene the geography of Spenser's domain, because those who have not been on the spot can really form no idea of the proportion of matter drawn hence, and from Ireland generally, in his poems. The Faërie Queene, Colin Clout, and his two cantos on "Mutabilitie," abound with allegorical or actual descriptions of his Irish life, and of the scenery, and especially the rivers, about his estate here. I must now trace my own visit to it.
Starting from Fermoy with a car, I ascended the Valley of the Blackwater, a river which for beauty of scenery is worthy of all its fame. About six miles up, I was told that Spenser had lived at a place called Rennie. I found it a gentleman's house, standing at a field's distance from the highway, and drove up to it. It is the property of Mr. Smith, a merchant and magistrate of Fermoy. He was there with his lady, come out to see their splendid dairy of cows which they kept there, forty in number. They were at luncheon, and would insist on my going in and partaking; after which they both set out, most hospitably, to show me the place. The house stands on a lofty rock, overlooking the valley of the river, but at a field's distance from it. It is one of the places of exuberant vegetation, where vegetation in grass and trees seems perfectly exhaustless. The richest pastures, the most abundant and overshadowing trees, every where. In the little garden close to the house, and lying on the verge of the precipice, all glowing with dahlias, still remains a wall of the castle, which was undoubtedly inhabited by Spenser. There is an old oak on the river bank, at some distance above the house, under the precipice, which is called Spenser's Tree, and where he is said to have written part of the Faërie Queene. This property was inherited by Spenser's eldest son Sylvanus, who married a Miss Nagle, of Monanimy, in Cork, and lived at this Rennie.
In a life of Spenser, the following scanty information, which has been collected relative to his descendants, is given, and may help us to a clearer conception of the matter. Sylvanus had, by the marriage with Miss Nagle, two sons,
