J. Comyns Carr: Stray Memories, by His Wife

by Alice Vansittart Strettel Carr

So he was, but he went a fine pace, and the waiter at the inn, who told us he was the girl’s brother, told us also that that cool lad was her lover, so perhaps he was eager to show his prowess.

At Glengariff our weather was hot and fine, and the water of that land-locked end of the Bay was so calm that the pleasure boats round the jetty, and indeed every tree on the shore and on the near island, would lie reflected on its surface in the rosy dawns or the golden sunsets as they do on the Italian lakes. But out beyond the island the breeze would freshen, and thither Joe hied him with a friendly fisherman every morning to lie in wait for the bass and the mackerel.

Our friends—Mr. and Mrs. Annan Bryce—owned the beautiful island at the mouth of the bay, and there we spent happy afternoons wandering over the heather and gazing afar from the old castle’s ruined battlements; but Joe’s mornings were his own, and he would go even further out to sea than the island, to where the seals sunned themselves on the rocks, unscared by the approach of man, but scuttling under water when the fishing-reel ran out, the old ones calling their young to safety with an eerie cry.

Perhaps Glengariff was the most lovely spot that we saw, but the hothouse atmosphere of it made a prolonged stay too trying, hence we enjoyed Waterville and Lough Currane best, where the more invigorating air of the open Atlantic in our wake kept even the moisture of the valleys freshened with soft breezes.

Also it is here that Joe rejoiced in the only branch of angling that he really loved; sunshine, mist or rain he was off on the lough with his faithful gillie, his trout-rod set up, his old hat well-adorned with every likely fly and, if necessary, his oilskins about him.

It took him all his time—easy as it usually was with him to make friends—to make them with that gillie: a curiously sad and silent lad, whose rage at the “lack of pride” in a besotted old poacher who would hang about the landing-stage, knew no bounds.

But Joe would only laugh, and give the old beggar the “tanner” that he begged “for the love of God,” with a willing heart.

“Don’t be too hard on him,” he would say to the young boatman. But the boy had been in America, and, as it presently appeared, was ashamed of the lazy ways of his countrymen.

“Home Rule might be arl right,” he would say—adding shrewdly—“if it don’t keep the visitors” (generally meaning the English) “away. But, begorra, let us work for it!”