I recall the evidence the great Earl adduced to prove that Sir Walter did really hand him over his Irish estates on the eve of that journey to Virginia—for a small consideration of money and plenishing for the expedition. “If you do not take the lands, some Scot will have them,” said, or is reported to have said, Sir Walter, which reminds us that Jamie had succeeded Elizabeth, and was already transplanting his Scots—Jamie, who was to keep so brilliant a bird as Sir Walter in so squalid a cage as a prison till he made up his mind to send him to the block. Youghal is haunted by Sir Walter and Spenser. My memories of the place in a windy autumn are brightened by sudden gleams, as of splendid attire and golden olive faces with the Elizabethan ruff and the Elizabethan pointed beard.
The Blackwater, which runs through Youghal, dropping into the sea at that point, had at Rhincrew Point its House of Knights Templars. From Youghal they also sailed away in search of El Dorado, but a heavenly one. May they have found it!
And also there is Templemichael, of the Earls of Desmond, the southern branch of the Fitzgeralds, which Cromwell battered down for “dire insolence.” There is a story of a Desmond lord who was buried across the water at Ardmore, the holy place of St. Declan, where there is a pilgrimage and a patronage to this day. But holy as Ardmore was and is, Earl Gerald could not sleep there. He wanted to be back at Templemichael, where his young wife lay in her lonely grave. So that night after night there came a terrible cry, “Garault Arointha! Garault Arointha!”—that is to say: “Give Gerald a ferry!” So at last some of his faithful followers rowed over by night, took up the body of Earl Gerald, and carried it back to Templemichael and to the dead Countess’s side. And after that Earl Gerald slept in peace.
My memory of Youghal in that far-away windy autumn is compounded of three or four things. There was purple wistaria hanging in great masses over the walls of the college which was the foundation of one of the Desmonds. There was provision there for so many singing men—twenty, was it?—who were to sing in St. Mary’s choir. The great Earl of Cork had a great maw, one that never suffered from indigestion. The revenues of St. Mary’s College went the same way as Sir Walter’s slice of the Desmond lands. Then, again, in a little shop-window of the town, there was a glorious show of fruit—great scarlet-skinned tomatoes, gorgeous plums and pears and apples, which reminded one that Raleigh had planted orchards at Affane, on the Blackwater. As a rule, fruit is sadly to seek in a small Irish town, although Cork produces some of the finest fruit I have ever seen. Then, again, there was a room in Raleigh’s house, Myrtle Grove, unlit save for the flicker of firelight, the darkness all about us, and an old voice bidding us to notice the earthy smell, which was supposed to enter the room from a subterranean passage that led to St. Mary’s.
Again, I have another widely different memory. It is of a fine, tall, beautifully-complexioned girl standing behind the counter of a draper’s shop, her shining red-golden head showing against a background of little plaid shawls and kerchiefs, while she lamented in her wailing southern brogue the fact that no one could hope to get married in Youghal, unless one had £300 to buy an old “widda-man”; and they were all the men that were going.
I like to get back from Youghal and its ghosts, and Rosanna, who never thought of rebelling against the marriage customs of her forbears, to cheerful Cork of the living and not the dead, with her tramcars, her jingles—the curious covered car which takes the place of the outside car in other Irish towns—her citizens laughing and button-holing each other with a greater gaiety than the Dubliners; her excellent shops, her beautiful girls promenading Patrick Street, her club-houses, her churches, her Queen’s College, and all the rest of it, down to her river with its busy steamers. Cork’s citizens live outside her gates, at Monkstown, at Blackrock, at Glenbrook; and the busy steamers carry them to and fro by the loveliest of waterways. “Are the steamers punctual?” I asked a Cork friend. “Is it punctual?” repeated he. “They’re the most punctual things in Ireland, for they always get in before their time.”
Father Mathew is one of Cork’s memories; Father Prout is another; Dr. Maginn is another. But the list of Cork’s worthies is a long one, and I shall not enter upon it here.
