The Charm of Ireland

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

It is an eighty mile run from Belfast to Drogheda, and one of the most picturesque and interesting in the east of Ireland; and the weather god was kind to the last, for a brighter, sweeter day it would be impossible to imagine. As the train leaves the city, there are glimpses to the right of the purple hills of Antrim; and then the train pauses at the busy town of Lisbun, and continues on over the Ulster canal, past the battlefield of Moira, past the beautiful woods of Lurgan, and then through a prosperous and fertile country, with broad fields of grain and flax, and pretty villages, and so into Portadown, once the stronghold of the McCahans.

I was travelling third that day, as always when alone, and the compartment had four or five people in it; and I had noticed that one of them, a man poorly clad and with a kit of tools in a little bag, had been looking anxiously from the window for some time. Finally he leaned over and touched me on the knee.

"Can you tell me, sir, if this is the train to Derry?" he asked.

"No; it's going to Dublin," I said; and just then it rumbled to a stop, and he opened the door and slipped hastily out.

What happened to him I don't know, but he was in no way to blame for the mistake, which was due to the abominable custom they have in Ireland of starting trains for different places from the same platform, within a minute or two of each other. That morning, at Belfast, there had been a long line of coaches beside one of the platforms; no engines were as yet attached to them, but the front part of the line was destined for Dublin, and the rear portion for Derry, but there was no way to tell where one train ended and the other began, and no examination was made of the passengers' tickets before the trains started.

I was wary, for I had been caught in exactly the same way once before, at Claremorris Junction, and had escaped being carried back to Westport only by stopping the train, amid great excitement, after it had started. So, that morning at Belfast, I had assured myself by repeated inquiry of various officials that the carriage I was in was going the way I wanted to go; but any traveller unwary or unaccustomed to the vagaries of Irish roads, such as this poor fellow, might easily have been caught napping. Where it is necessary to start two trains close together from the same platform, it would seem to be only ordinary precaution to examine the passengers' tickets before locking the doors.

From Portadown, the road runs along the valley of the Bann, past the ruins of the old fortress of Redmond O'Hanlon, an outlaw almost as famous in Irish history as Robin Hood is in English; and then it passes Scarva, with a mighty cairn marking the grave of Fergus Fogha, who fell in battle here sixteen centuries ago. Here, too, are the ruins of one of General Monk's old castles, and on a neighbouring slope the grass-green walls of a great rath, the stronghold of some more ancient chieftain. Indeed, there are raths and cashels and ivy-draped ruins all about, the work of Irish and Dane and Norman and later English, for here was a pass across the bog from Down into Armagh, and so a chosen spot for defence and the exacting of tribute.

Then the train is carried by a viaduct half a mile long over the deep and wild ravine of Craigmore, leaves Newry on the left and climbs steadily, with beautiful views of the Mourne mountains to the right, plunges at last through a deep cutting, and comes out under the shadow of the Forkhill mountains, with the mighty mass of Slieve Gullion overtopping them. Just beyond is Mowry Pass, the only pass between north and south, except round by the coast, and so, of course, the scene of many a desperate conflict.

From this point on, for many miles, the scenery is very wild and beautiful, and every foot of it has been a battle-ground. Just before the train reaches Dundalk, it passes close to the hill of Faughart, topped by a great earthwork, and it was here that Edward Bruce was slain in battle a year after he had been crowned king of Ireland; and farther on is another rath, the Dun of Dealgan, where dwelt Cuchulain, chief of the Red Branch Knights, and one of the great heroes of Irish legend. It was from Dun Dealgan that Dundalk took its name, and Dundalk was for centuries the key to the road to Ulster and the northern limit of the English pale, which had Dublin for its centre. Merely to enumerate the battles which have been fought here would fill a page; but the train rumbles on, past a little church which uses the fragment of a round tower for a belfry, past the modern castle of the Bellinghams, built from the proceeds of a famous brewery, past a wayside Calvary, and so at last into Drogheda. And when I arrived there, I had completed the circuit of Ireland.

The car which was to make the round of the Boyne valley was waiting outside the station, at the top of that long, ugly street which looked so familiar now that I saw it again; and after waiting awhile for other passengers and finding there was none, we drove down into the town, where another passenger was waiting—a clergyman with grey hair and blue eyes and white refined face, Church of England by his garb, and, as I found out afterwards, Oxford by residence.