XXXIX
From the rich plains of Meath to the barren lands of Galway, it is a far cry and an unforgettable journey. The country grows more and more desolate, and grand in desolation, as one approaches the Atlantic. There was an orange sunset that evening, over an illimitable stretch of bog, a vision of savage, haunting beauty that went with us into the darkness of the fast closing day like a strain of wild music.
Ireland has always been as a living creature to her children. She has taken, in their fanciful minds, a distinct personality. To get such a glimpse of her as that, is to understand the passionate ardour of fealty which she has had the power to inspire; to understand how she has come to be “Kathleen na Hoolihan,” and “My dark Rosaleen,” to those poet hearts. We were speeding now to that very corner of land from which her younger lovers have chiefly sprung.
It was pitch dark when we alighted at a town which had once been large and prosperous and was now forlornly sunk in decay; mute witness, like so many others, to that act of tyranny—blunder and crime—the effects of which England can never wipe away.
Our kind friends had ordered “a carriage from the hotel” to meet us. We had a long cross-country drive before us. Looking doubtfully by the light of the station lamp at the two emaciated animals that were to draw us, we wondered, in our tired brains, if two bad horses are not worse than one. It had begun to drizzle rain, a fine soft rain that is like a caress in the air.
A TYPICAL JARVEY
If anything could beat the Dublin cab, it was that Galway carriage. We set off lurching and rattling; and soon, the wind catching us from over the fields, the rain began to strike in across the open windows. To have a window up seemed the simple remedy; but things simple elsewhere are not so in the West of Ireland. One window was as impossible to lift out of its socket as the oyster out of its closed shells, for it was strapless. We fell upon the other strap and instantly the window shot outwards at right angles, with the evident intention of casting itself on the road, had we not held it despairingly by its shabby appendage. If you have ever tried to hold a window in that position by its strap you will know how agonizing is the process. The driver was hailed.
“Look here! Your window’s loose!—You’d better stop and put it back.”
The slogging trot of the horses slackened, and over his shoulder the man of Galway demanded: