Lough Swilly is an arm of the Atlantic and its waters are salt. At Rathmullan the lough is surrounded by lofty green hills, mostly treeless, gently sloping to the water, and for the better part of the time softened in tone by an Indian summer haze indescribably beautiful.
We came down according to the program I have outlined, and traveled third class for the reason I have stated, but as the only other occupant of the coach was a lone "widow woman" we were unable to get any characteristic conversation. In fact, up here in Donegal, as far as I have observed, the natives talk more like the Scotch than they do like the Irish made known to us by certain actors. When I get south I expect to hear rich brogues, but here the burr is Scotch.
We were ferried from Fahan in a side-wheel steamer, and soon the painfully neat-looking white houses of Rathmullan lay before us and we disembarked, and carrying our own grips unmolested (a sure sign of an unusual place) we made our way up the stone pier between restless steers who were waiting for us to get out of the way so that they could go to the slaughter house. There had been a cattle fair that day in Rathmullan.
We knew little of the town save what Stephen Gwynn says of it in his delightful "Highways and Byways in Donegal and Antrim."
There is a most picturesque and ivy-grown ruin of an abbey dating back to the fifteenth century. It is much more beautiful than Kenilworth.
We bent our steps to the plain-looking little inn, and entering the taproom we asked for lodgings for the night. The inn is kept by a widow who still bears trace of a beauty that must have been transcendent in her girlhood. As it is, she could serve as a model to some artist for an allegorical painting representing "Sorrowful Ireland"; the arched eyebrows, the melting eyes, the long, classic nose, and the grieving mouth—very Irish and very lovely.
We have seen many pretty women here in Ireland, but in her day this inn keeper must have been the peer of any.
Her husband kept the inn formerly, but as an Irishman told me, "He died suddenly. Throuble with the head," said he, tapping his own. "'Twas heart disease, I think." This is the first Irish bull I've heard.
To the Men of '98 OLIVER SHEPHARD, SCULPTOR