XXXIX.
BY THE SHORE OF CLEW BAY—ACROSS ACHILL ISLAND—A LONELY LOVELY RETREAT.
The drive from Newport, Mayo, to Mulrany was very pleasant. The roads winds along Clew Bay, that bay of many islands, for quite a distance. Clew Bay was resting, calm as a mirror, blue and bright, not a lap of the wave washed up on the shore of Green island or Rocky Point the day we drove past. No fisher's boat divided the water with hopeful keel. The intense solitude of bays and inlets as well as the loughs looks like enchantment. It reminds one of the drowsy do-nothingness of "Thompson's Castle of Indolence," only here the indolence is not the indolence of luxurious ease but of hunger and rags. If the knight of arts and industry will ever destroy monopoly, and these silent waters will be alive with enterprise:
"When many fishing barks put out to fish along the coast."
there will be a happy change in the comfortless cabins that dot the shores of Clew Bay.
The islands of Clew Bay, being treeless and green, have a new look, as if they had just heaved up their backs above the waters and were waiting for the fiat that shall pronounce them good. I looked with longing eyes in the direction of Clare Island, that has one side to the bay and one side to the broad Atlantic which lies between me and home. On Clare Island is the remains of Doona Castle, the principal stronghold, of the heroic Grace, where she held the heir of Howth captive till ransomed, and till his father learned to understand what Cead mille failte means at dinner time.
Here, by Tulloghan Bay, I was told to look across the bay, where the heather-clad mountains rise above the broad heather-clad bog, where the road to Ballycroy winds along between the bay and the mountains, past houses of mortarless stone, hard to be distinguished from the heath; for over there in a certain spot occurred the shooting affray which has made young Mr. Smith, the son of the then agent for the Marquis of Sligo, a man of renown.
The hard feeling between the exterminating Marquis, the agent who executed his will and the tenantry was intense. Four men were lying in wait here with the intention of shooting Mr. Smith, who was expected to pass that way. He drove along accompanied by his son. The would-be assassins fired; they were concealed above the road; the shots passed harmlessly over the heads of the two Smiths. Young Mr. Smith, who is an exceptionally good shot—can hit a small coin at an immense distance— saw the men run and fired after them, killing one, fired again, wounding another, and would have fired again, but was prevented by his father.
Young Mr. Smith is quite a hero among the people on this account. There is an expressed regret that Mr. Smith the elder interfered to prevent the young marksman from shooting them all; very few would blame him if he did, as the men, though too nervous to do harm, lay in wait for the purpose of murder. Still it is revolting to hear people in cold blood regret so heartily that there was not more bloodshed.
The scenery—as scenery—was as grand as bare heathery mountains and wide desolate waters could make an almost treeless solitude, but viewed as a home for human beings, viewed as land that has rent and taxes and existence to be carved out of it, it has a hopeless look.
The houses are something dreadful, to consider them in the light of human habitations. Limestone does not abound here, and therefore the houses of the poorer sort are built like a cairn or a fence of loose stones without mortar. When the Atlantic winds sweep in here in winter time, the crevices in these houses will be so many chinks to whistle through. God pity the poor!
The people along the road here had a thrifty look; the men wore homespun coats; the pinned-up dresses of the women showed petticoats which were homespun of warm madder red, well dyed, good and comfortable looking. Of course the majority of the women were barefoot, but they were used to it.
At Molraney we stopped to deliver mails. In these cases the passengers sit on the car in the street, while the driver hands in the mail, gossips awhile, goes into the convenient "licensed to sell" for a taste of something, and the police saunter down for the mail and look you over, judiciously but not offensively, and at last you make another start.
Arrived at the Sound, you find a nice-looking hotel for such a remote place. There is any amount of liquor to be got: you can also get the never-varying chop or steak served up with another variety of miserable cooking, but you cannot get a bit of fish any more than if the sea were five hundred miles off instead of lapping on the rocks less than a perch away. Was pulled across the Sound by two young girls, who handled the big oars as if they were used to them, and urged the boat with its load of men across the green waters very swiftly with their strong white arms. As we neared the island of Achill trees were conspicuous by their absence, and purple heather was plentiful.
Achill island is a treeless place. There are mountains beyond mountains lying against the sky, heather clad or mossgrown; there are small lakes lying at the foot of mountains or between mountains; there are dreary expanses of bog stretching for miles on each side of the road between us and the mountains, and rising out of the bog are wee bits of fields and most horrible habitations. We passed the plantation, noticeable because there is not another, that Mr. Pike has coaled to flourish round his fine house. There are dark green firs, feathery light green larches, birches, and other trees that dress in green only when summer comes; great clumps of laurel and rhododendron, the latter one mass of blossoms that almost hide the leaves beneath their rosy purple. Mr. Pike has already made for himself a delicious looking home amid this barren waste. It enriched our eyes to look at it.
Mr. Pike and Mr. Stoney, of the castellated new building down at the edge of Clew Bay, have the distinction of being the most unpopular landlords in this part of the country. After we passed Mr. Pike's place there were no more trees. The houses are very bad indeed; the cattle in the pasture are of the small native breed, and have little appearance of milk; the sheep are very miserable and scraggy. I have often heard of Cook's recipes saying, "Take the scrag end of a piece of mutton." These recipes must have emanated from Achill Island, where the mutton must be pretty much all scrag.
After we drove a long way—what appeared a long way—I do not believe they measure all the crooks and turns this most serpentine of roads into the miles—we passed establishment of lay brothers called the Monastery. There is quite a block of white buildings, and a good many reclaimed fields, green with the young crops, lie in the valley below them. There is a bell in a cupola that will call to work and worship, and a chapel where they meet to pray. The valley where their fields lie stretches to the sea, and in the bay lay a smack of some kind by which they trade to Westport. They labor with their own hands, so have not the name of employing any laborers, but have the name of dispensing charity. I should have liked to see the buildings and the brethren, but did not make the attempt.
At length we came to Dugart, the Missionary settlement. A little row of white-washed houses on one side of a street that ran up hill, another row of whitewashed houses that ran along the brow of the hill at a right angle. Slieve Mor behind towering up between the village and the sea; below the hill at the foot of another mountain is the rectory, beside it the church, both having a trimming of young trees; some good fields, the best I have seen in Achill, and a pretty garden lie round both rectory and church. This is the mission village of Dugart.
At the corner where the two rows of whitewashed houses meet is the Post Office. As we drove up there was a gentleman with a northern kindliness in his face, a long brown beard, an unmistakable air of authority, whom we found out was the rector of Achill. After introduction and some conversation, he kindly invited me to the rectory after I had brushed off some of the dust of travel.
The Dugart hotel possesses a large collection of stuffed sea birds, the proprietor having taste and skill in that direction, and I was enabled to take a nearer view of specimens of the birds that sail and scream round the Achill mountains, eagles and gulls, puffins and cormorants, than I would otherwise have done. After a little rest and refreshment I walked down the hill to the lonely, lovely rectory in the valley below.
There is a solidity about a stone house, stone porch and stone wall in every part of Ireland; a strength that makes one think how easily a house could be turned into a fortalice at a short notice.
I confess I liked this rector, so tall and stately, with his long beard, grave, kindly face, northern speech, penetrating look, with a certain air of authority as became a pastor in charge. When he asked me pleasantly if I had come as a friend, I thought at once of the Bethlehem elders to Samuel, "Comest thou peaceably?" I think I almost envied this man his position, the power which he holds as a leader to be a patriot worker for the good of his countrymen and countrywomen on the barren isle of Achill.
We walked upon the shady path that leads from rectory to church, under green arches of leafage, in the real dim religious light which grand cathedrals only imitate. There is a nice useful garden on one side of the path, stocked with things good for food and pleasant to the eye. Along one side is a hedge eight feet high of fuschia growing thus in the open air, proving that it is possible to turn sheltered spots of barren Achill into nooks suggestive of Eden.
The little church to which this romantic path brought us was such a church as one might snuggle down in to learn the way to Zion, and enjoy the comfort of the old, old story. This mission was begun by the Rev. Edward Naugh, I believe, in the famine time. It invaded the island with bread and the Bible. I hear that it has done much good, chiefly, I believe, in educating and emigrating the people.
The village of the mission opposite the rectory has two schools, an inn or hotel, a co-operative store, a post-office, some dwellings of coastguard's men and other official and semi-official people, the agent over the mission property for one. A little further away on the sea sands is a miserable collection of cabins inhabited by the people. There were some poor-looking farmhouses dotting the mountain side.
As far as I could learn there was no industry on Achill Island but tilling their miserable crofts. The fishing was monopolized by one man, a Mr. Hector, a Scotchman. The people as far as I could learn had no boats fitted for deep sea fishing and the coast fishing was monopolized. They are said to be lazy, unthrifty, unenergetic. I enquired a little about this and it seemed to me as if there was a door locked and barred between them and any field for the display of energy with hope—without an atmosphere of hope, energy is a plant that will not thrive. It is hope, and nothing but hope, that nerves the backwoods settler of Canada to do battle with summer heat and winter snow, with the inexorable logic of circumstances, and he conquers because he has hope. Over every peasant holding in Ireland of the western part there is written, "Here is no hope." The superior mind looks upon the peasantry as minors who are not able to judge for themselves, who need to be tied down with office rules, and held in by proprietory bit and bridle. They admit, that they do well in the free air of Canada, but they contend that thrift, forethought, frugality is produced in them by desperation. I see desperation all round here producing a recklessness and despair. I know that hope is the star that shines for the backwoods Canadian to light him to competence.
I did not see any of the mission tenants in Achill. I saw nothing but what lay on the surface. I have no doubt that the mission has done good in many ways, great good. I am sorry, however, that they lost the opportunity of testing the capabilities of the islanders to flourish as peasant proprietors; it is not always well for the church to have vineyards and oliveyards, manservants and maidservants. It is well sometimes for the church to come down like her Master and to be alongside of the discouraged mortal who has toiled through a lifetime and caught nothing but hunger and rags, to share with them the toil and want.