Photo by W. Leonard
Hallway, Curraghmore House
Our car goes rushing and singing along until we round a bend of the road and are immediately involved in wild confusion. An old lady—as usual—seated on the smallest of carts, drawn by a most diminutive donkey,—Ireland is full of old ladies in carts, in fact one rarely sees any others in them,—is vainly trying to stop the wild circles it is describing, cart and all, in fright at our appearance. It whirls her around at least a half-dozen times before a passing postman seizing the bridle leads it by us, while the ancient dame, the flowers on her much awry bonnet trembling with her indignation, hurls curses at us. "Blarst yer sowls" comes back at us as she is borne away.
Truly sunshine and shadow, laughter and sadness chase each other closely in this Isle of Erin. Don't for a moment imagine, though you may seem to be in the densest solitude of the country, that there is nobody about; any instant a sudden turn may find you in the midst of shrieking women, flying chicks, quacking ducks, and scoffing geese, where clatter and confusion and curses reign supreme, but again those curses imply nothing generally here, they are only a form of salutation, and rarely mean what is said.
We pass down long stretches of road with the sparkling sea spread out before us until we draw up near the ruins of the seven churches of Clonmines, close down by the placid waters of the river.
Of the churches there is little left, save a few ruined towers. In the centre of one where the sunshine falls warmest and many flowers grow, the late priest of the parish has found his resting-place.
After all there seems to have been close connection between the far east and this Emerald Isle. At these seven churches of Clonmines, there was once held a Moorish slave market, and one cannot but think that that keening for the dead must have come from the chant which one may still hear amongst the followers of the prophet.