On a recent occasion, when King Edward visited the Punchestown races in state, it was even a more brilliant event than usual. Here a great concourse of people awaited the arrival of the king and queen, and the grand stand was closely packed with a representative assembly of Irish aristocracy. The racing provided some very excellent sport. There were very full fields; and, when the horses got away, there was a splendid splash of colour, as the jockeys in all the tints of the rainbow streamed along the emerald course.
The return from Punchestown on this occasion, as the writer has reason to remember, was far and away a wilder nightmare than any “Derby-day drive back to town” which could possibly be recalled. Imagine a solid, motionless block of cars nearly a mile long, with drivers, passengers, and police storming, threatening, and entreating, till at last a passage is slowly forced to the little wayside station at Naas. Here the railway officials had long ago given up the traffic problem in despair, and every train apparently got back to Dublin, or did not get back, by the unaided wit of the engine-driver. Yet one arrived at last, and a request to the officials for a full return of the killed and wounded was met with derision.
From the newspaper accounts the next morning we learned that:
“At a quarter to six, nearly half an hour late, the king and queen arrived in Dublin, and were met by all that was left of the population. They drove rapidly to the Viceregal Lodge, along roads crowded with cheering humanity, and looked very much pleased with their reception.”
For ourselves, after this informal procedure, we had retired to our hotel to remove somewhat the stains of pleasure-making,—which are often as ineradicable as those of battle,—and, after the inevitable “meat tea” of the smaller hostelries throughout the British Isles, followed Mr. Pepys’s practice, “and so to bed.”
Near Curragh is Monasterevan, with its ruined refuge-sanctuary, and Lea Castle. A prominent woody eminence is Spire Hill, beyond which are the picturesque ruins of Strongbow’s Castle on the isolated rock of Dunamase. Beyond is Maryborough and the plantations of Ballyfin, which clothe the feet of the Slievebloom mountains, and frame the flat bogland district. At Aghaboe, i. e., Ox-field House, stands the ancient abbey founded by St. Canice in the sixth century.
Near the river Suir is a plain-fronted, square-towered edifice, known as Loughmore Castle, and a near-by ridge with a curious notched appearance has for its name Sliav Ailduin,—the Devil’s Bit Mountain. Here is Thurles, the scene of William Smith O’Brien’s capture. Here, also, Doctor Cullen summoned a Romish council in the mid-nineteenth century.
Within three miles of Thurles is Holy Cross, where “the wearied O’Brien laid down at the feet of Death’s angel his cares and his crown.”
“There sculpture her miracles lavished around,
Until stone spoke a worship diviner than sound;
There from matins to midnight the censers were swaying,
And from matins to midnight the people were praying;
As a thousand Cistercians incessantly raised
Hosannas round shrines that with jewelry blazed.
While the palmer from Syria—the pilgrim from Spain—
Brought their offerings alike to the far-honoured fane;
And in time, when the wearied O’Brien laid down
At the feet of Death’s angel his cares and his crown,
Beside the high altar, a canopied tomb
Shed above his remains its magnificent gloom;
And in Holy Cross Abbey high masses were said,
Through the lapse of long ages, for Donald the Red.
O’er the porphyry shrine of the founder, all-riven,
No lamps glimmer now but the cressets of heaven!”
—Simmons.
Across the plain of Curragh is Kildare, i. e., Wood of Oaks, where St. Bridget founded a nunnery, in which the vestal sisterhood guarded the ever-burning fire, so beautifully and picturesquely alluded to by Moore: