“Omagh. Monday August 16. 1810.
“My dearest Nan,
“By making a forc’d march with Smyly here I have arrived some hours before the other Judge, Cavalcade &c. and I have for the first time since I left town sat down in a room by myself with something like tranquillity, at least that negative Repose that consists in the absence of stress or clamour fuss and hurry. The day has fortunately been good and without stopping we rode here, 21 miles across the mountains. This I found pleasant and indeed necessary after the Confinement and bad weather which we have had uninterruptedly since we left Dublin. You have no notion of such a den as Cavan is. It is no wonder that poor Smyly us’d to get fever in it, I am only astonish’d that I ever got out of it for I was not for a moment well. It lies at the bottom of a Bason form’d by many hills closing in on each other, and is surrounded by bogs and lakes. The Sun can scarcely reach it, you look up at the heavens as you do out of a jail yard that has high walls and I was glad to have a large Turf fire in my Room. The Water is quite yellow and deranges the stomach &c. so that my poor head was a mass of confusion and my Spirits were slack enough.... After breakfast, bad as the day was, I got a boat and went on the lake (Lough Erne) and sail’d to the Island of Devenish where there is a curious Ruin of an antient place of worship and a Round Tower in as perfect preservation as the day it was built.... Short as the time was if the weather had been favourable I was determined upon seeing Lough Derg and St. Patrick’s purgatory which is in a small island in the middle of it and which is in its history certainly one of the greatest Curiosities in Europe.[18] It has maintained its Character as the principal place of penance in the World since the first Establishment of Christianity in Ireland and is as much frequented now by Pilgrims from all Countries as it was in what we are in the habit of calling the darker ages, as freely as if our own was enlighten’d. Miller’s house is about ten miles from it and he has by enquiries from the Priests and otherwise ascertained that the average number of pilgrims during the season which begins with the Summer and ends with the first of August exceeds ten thousand. This last Season in this present year the number was much greater. They all perform their journey barefooted and in mean Dress but those of the upper Class are discover’d by the delicacy of their hands and feet. There is a large ferry Boat which from morning to night is employ’d in transporting and retransporting them. Each Pilgrim remains 24 hours in the Island performing Devotions round certain stone altars call’d Stations, at which five Priests perpetually officiate. All this time and for some time before they strictly fast, and on leaving the Island the Priest gives them what is called Bread and Wine, that is Bread and Lake water which they positively assert has the Taste of wine and the power of refreshing and recovering them....”
The end of this letter, giving a description of a visit to Edgeworthstown, appears in the book, Chapter II, page 47.
APPENDIX II
The following is written by Captain Stephen Gwynn, M.P., Member for Galway City, who has very kindly permitted me to include it among these memories.
Probably no one can have really known “Martin Ross” who did not spend some time in her company either in Connemara or West Cork. I, to my sorrow, only met her once, at a Dublin dinner table. That hour’s talk has left on my mind a curiously limited and even negative impression. She looked surprisingly unlike a person who spent much of her life in the open air; and it was hard to associate her with the riotous humour of many “R.M.” stories. What remains positive in the impression is a sense of extreme fineness and delicacy, qualities which reflect themselves in the physical counterparts of that restraint and sure taste which are in the essence of all that she signed.
That one meeting served me well, however, because out of it arose casually an intermittent correspondence which passed into terms of something like friendship. Once at all events I traded, as it were, on a friend’s kindness; for when a boy of mine lay sick abroad, and I was seeking for acceptable things to bring to his bedside, I wrote repeatedly to Martin Ross, provoking replies from a most generous letter-writer—letters very touching in their kindness.
But most of our communications had their source in the prompting which urged her to speak her mind to a Nationalist Member of Parliament, concerning happenings in Ireland. These letters show how gravely and anxiously she thought about her country, and events have written a grim endorsement on certain of her apprehensions. She was never of those who can be content to regard Ireland as a pleasant place for sport, full of easy, laughable people; or she would never have understood Ireland with that intensity which can be felt even in her humour. If her letters show that she was often angry with her countrymen, they show too that it was because she could not be indifferent to the honour of Ireland.