The Charm of Ireland

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

Cheered and heartened by this encounter, we walked on to look at Coleraine, but found it an uninteresting manufacturing town, with nothing in it of historical importance, for it is one of the plantations made by the London Companies, some time after 1613. It was closed as tightly, that afternoon, as on a Sunday, and we soon wearied of looking at ugly houses and silent factories, and made our way back to the station, meditating upon that black day for the Irish when this whole county, having been duly confiscated, was made over by royal edict to the hundred London adventurers, whose heirs or assigns still own it. Yet the conquest had one advantage: the O'Dohertys and the O'Cahans knew only the arts of war; the newcomers brought with them the arts of peace. One of them was distilling, and the Irish had never drunk such whiskey as the "Coleraine" which was produced here in the succeeding years. There is no more popular story in this region than that of the priest who was preaching a temperance sermon, and, after pointing out the evils of over-indulgence, continued with great earnestness, "And, me boys, 'tis the bad stuff you be takin' that does the worst of the mischief. I niver touch a drop meself—but the best Coleraine!"

We got away from Coleraine, at last, and ran northward toward the sea again, across uneven sand-drifts, past Port Stewart, where Charles Lever was once a dispensary doctor and occupied his leisure hours, which were many, in setting down the adventures of Harry Lorrequer; and then the road ran on close beside the sea to Portrush, with its pleasant beach and rock-bound bathing-pool, which was full of people on this holiday. But Portrush is a place of summer hotels, so we did not linger there, but transferred quickly to the electric line which runs on to the Giant's Causeway, fourteen miles away.

This line was established in 1883, and so is the oldest electric road in the world; and I judge that it is still using the cars it started out with. At least, the two which composed the train that day were exceedingly primitive; one was open and the other was closed, and you took your choice. We chose the open one, of course, on the side overlooking the sea; and presently we started through the town, a man ringing a bell with one hand and waving a flag with the other, preceding us to make certain the track was clear. The bell, I suppose, is for blind people and the flag for deaf people, and the fact that the man is armed with both proves how thorough the Irish can be when they really put their minds to it.

Although the line has been in operation for thirty years, it is still evidently regarded with fear and wonder by the people who live along it. Time was when the power was conveyed by means of the "third rail," so common in the United States. With us, however, the rail is only used along a guarded right-of-way. Here it was exposed close up by the fence at the roadside, and though it was well out of the way, it was nevertheless stumbled over by many men and beasts, with the usual result. There were many protests, and in the course of fifteen or twenty years, the Board of Trade was moved to investigate.

The evidence at the hearing was most conflicting. The people of the neighbourhood asserted that their lives were in constant danger. The company, on the other hand, claimed that no sober man would ever step on the rail, since to get to it he had to cross the tracks. The people of the neighbourhood protested indignantly against this reflection upon their habits, and asked triumphantly if the horses and cows and other poor beasts that were killed were also drunk. The company retorted that, so far as the horses and cows were concerned, it was the practice of the natives, for miles around, whenever they had an animal about to die, to lead or, if it was unable to walk, to haul it to the railway, and prop it against the fence with a foot on the rail, and then to demand compensation for its death. There was, perhaps, a grain of truth in this; but the board, nevertheless, ordered the company to take up the rail and substitute an overhead wire for it, and this has been done.

The only way the natives can get damages now is to inveigle a car to run into them, and this is well-nigh impossible, for the cars are run very slowly and carefully, and at every curve there is a signal cabin, where a watchful guard, armed with a red flag and a white one, keeps careful eyes upon the track.

We were just gathering speed outside the town, when we saw in a near-by field an aggregation whose bills had attracted our attention, more than once, in our journeyings about Ireland. It was "Buff Bill's Circus," and the picturesqueness of its lithographs had made us most anxious to see it. Here it was, at last, and it consisted of three tiny tents and one van and three or four horses, and five or six people, who at this moment were eating their midday meal, seated on the ground about a sheet-iron stove, while the youngsters of the neighbourhood looked on. I am sorry we did not get to see the show, for I am sure we should have enjoyed it.

Then the road mounted to a terrace high above the sea, and the views over coast and water were superb. The effects of erosion are especially fantastic, and the line passes fretted spires, and yawning caverns, and deep gullies and mighty arches, all worn in the chalk and basalt cliffs by the ceaseless action of the waves; and at one place there is a grotesque formation which does indeed, as may be seen from the picture opposite the next page, resemble a "Giant's Head."

And there is one most picturesque ruin, for, ten miles out from Portrush, all that is left of Dunluce castle overhangs the sea from the summit of a precipitous rock, separated from the mainland by a deep chasm. The chasm is twenty feet wide, and in days of old there was a drawbridge over it; but the bridge has disappeared, and now there is just an arch of masonry about two feet wide and without protection of any sort. It takes a steady head to cross it, but the Irish are fond of just such breakneck bridges. The castle itself, with its roofless gables and jagged walls, seems a part of the rock on which it is built. It is said to possess a banshee, and one can well believe it!

Dunluce is interesting because it was once a stronghold of the Scotch invaders who succeeded in conquering all this northeast coast of Ireland from here around to Carlingford Lough, away below Belfast. Scotland is only a few miles away across the North Channel—one can see its coast on a clear day from the cliffs above Benmore; and it was natural enough that there should be sailing back and forth. Owen, first lord of Tyrone, brought a wife from Scotland—that Aileach, after whom he named his fortress; and they had many children, one of whom went back to Scotland and became the head of that princedom whose chief afterwards called himself "Lord of the Isles." In Ireland, the family was O'Donnell; but in Scotland the members of Clandonnell were not Os but Macs. Angus MacDonnell married a daughter of the great house of O'Cahan, and by this means and by that, the Scotch gradually won a foothold on the Irish coast and built castles up and down it; and finally, in a pitched battle, defeated the Irish who held the land about Dunluce and had built this castle here.