Photo by Wm. Lawrence
Chapel, Tanderagee Castle
As we wait in the quadrangle one morning for our motors, to my astonishment I am accosted in salutation by a name used only at home, and by those I have known for years. "How de do, Mr. Mike?" Around me rise the walls of the castle, but aside from the expressionless faces of the house servants standing near I can see no one until in a dark corner of the court a yet blacker spot suddenly shows a white gleam of teeth, and out into the light comes the speaker. "How de do, sir?—I'se de cook on de boss's car, and I knowed you all your life. Don't you remember nigger John and Miss Nancy Ballentine?" Convulsed with laughter, I can scarcely answer. This explains the hot bread and waffles on the breakfast table, which surprised me for the moment, but which I had entirely forgotten. Bowing and scraping came black "Tom" into the sunshine and it seemed to do his heart good to talk of the old times, of Black John our own cook, and Miss Nancy Ballentine, who "tended de ladies' waitin' room in the C. H. & D. station" when she was not assisting at the marrying or burying of most of us, at the latter wearing a dress composed of the crêpe from many a doorbell. That it did not match in degrees of blackness mattered not at all to the good dame. She arranged it in stripes and she could tell you which particular funeral each of those stripes came from. She has been dead many years, and to have her recalled here was strange indeed, but—the cars come with a rush, and we are off with a rush, speeding through the beautiful park whose trees certainly equal any I have seen except of course those of California.
I find that my fifteen horse-power Clements keeps up very fairly with the Duke's motor of sixty horse-power. Of course on the wide straight roads of France this could not be, but on these narrow and crooked lanes of Ireland we are never very far apart, and have had many good runs together.
Our motoring carries us often to the town of Armagh where one comes across traces of the hatred of that Catholic Queen, Mary I., for the Irish. She burned this see and three other churches. The cruelties of that Queen to the people of Kings and Queens counties equals anything told in Irish history, but is rarely mentioned by the historians of the day. In fact, all the territory forming now those counties was stolen from its ancient owners and the name changed as above, resulting in a warfare which lasted into the reign of Elizabeth until the people finally disappeared into the mountains. No torture or cruelty was spared.
In Forgotten facts in Irish History we read that "it seems very apparent to the student of Irish history that these people received their persecutions not because they were Catholics, but because they were Irish. The most terrible persecutions took place under the Catholic sovereigns of England and not until those monarchs became so-called heretics was the Church of Rome turned against them, so that at the present time it is the effort of all to show that the persecution if it exists is because of the religion."