T is nearly thirty years since I, Archibald Green, first entered the little town of Ballymoy, in the west of Ireland, and became acquainted with one of the honestest fellows and best Christians whom it has ever been my good fortune to know. For twenty years he and I were fast friends, though he was much my elder. As he has now been ten years beneath the sod, I may tell the story of our first meeting.
Ballymoy is a so-called town,—or was in the days of which I am speaking,—lying close to the shores of Lough Corrib, in the county of Galway. It is on the road to no place, and, as the end of a road, has in itself nothing to attract a traveller. The scenery of Lough Corrib is grand; but the lake is very large, and the fine scenery is on the side opposite to Ballymoy, and hardly to be reached, or even seen, from that place. There is fishing,—but it is lake fishing. The salmon fishing of Lough Corrib is far away from Ballymoy, where the little river runs away from the lake down to the town of Galway. There was then in Ballymoy one single street, of which the characteristic at first sight most striking to a stranger was its general appearance of being thoroughly wet through. It was not simply that the rain water was generally running down its unguttered streets in muddy, random rivulets, hurrying towards the lake with true Irish impetuosity, but that each separate house looked as though the walls were reeking with wet; and the alternated roofs of thatch and slate,—the slated houses being just double the height of those that were thatched,—assisted the eye and mind of the spectator in forming this opinion. The lines were broken everywhere, and at every break it seemed as though there was a free entrance for the waters of heaven. The population of Ballymoy was its second wonder. There had been no famine then; no rot among the potatoes; and land around Ballymoy had been let for nine, ten, and even eleven pounds an acre. At all hours of the day, and at nearly all hours of the night, able-bodied men were to be seen standing in the streets, with knee-breeches unbuttoned, with stockings rolled down over their brogues, and with swallow-tailed frieze coats. Nor, though thus idle, did they seem to suffer any of the distress of poverty. There were plenty of beggars, no doubt, in Ballymoy, but it never struck me that there was much distress in those days. The earth gave forth its potatoes freely, and neither man nor pig wanted more.
It was to be my destiny to stay a week at Ballymoy, on business, as to the nature of which I need not trouble the present reader. I was not, at that time, so well acquainted with the manners of the people of Connaught as I became afterwards, and I had certain misgivings as I was driven into the village on a jaunting-car from Tuam. I had just come down from Dublin, and had been informed there that there were two “hotels” in Ballymoy, but that one of the “hotels” might, perhaps, be found deficient in some of those comforts which I, as an Englishman, might require. I was therefore to ask for the “hotel” kept by Pat Kirwan. The other hotel was kept by Larry Kirwan; so that it behoved me to be particular. I had made the journey down from Dublin in a night and a day, travelling, as we then did travel in Ireland, by canal boats and by Bianconi’s long cars; and I had dined at Tuam, and been driven over, after dinner on an April evening; and when I reached Ballymoy I was tired to death and very cold.
“Pat Kirwan’s hotel,” I said to the driver, almost angrily. “Mind you don’t go to the other.”
“Shure, yer honour, and why not to Larry’s? You’d be getting better enthertainment at Larry’s, because of Father Giles.”
I understood nothing about Father Giles, and wished to understand nothing. But I did understand that I was to go to Pat Kirwan’s “hotel,” and thither I insisted on being taken.
It was dusk at this time, and the wind was blowing down the street of Ballymoy, carrying before it wild gusts of rain. In the west of Ireland March weather comes in April, and it comes with a violence of its own, though not with the cruelty of the English east wind. At this moment my neck was ricked by my futile endeavours to keep my head straight on the side car, and the water had got under me upon the seat, and the horse had come to a stand-still half-a-dozen times in the last two minutes, and my apron had been trailed in the mud, and I was very unhappy. For the last ten minutes I had been thinking evil of everything Irish, and especially of Connaught.
I was driven up to a queerly-shaped, three-cornered house, that stood at the bottom of the street, and which seemed to possess none of the outside appurtenances of an inn.
“Is this Pat Kirwan’s hotel?” said I.
“Faix, and it is then, yer honour,” said the driver. “And barring only that Father Giles——”