Photo by W. Leonard
Clonmacnoise
You may spend a time in her old church of St. Nicholas, but if you enter the adjoining graveyard the terrible neglect will drive you forth in horror, a horror in no way quieted by a sojourn at the awful railway hotel, a place so vilely dirty that nothing save acute hunger forces us to remain an instant within its doors. I ask the waiter for a toothpick. "Well, really, sor, we have none, but here's one of me own, which I'll lend yez." In the search for it he pulls from the same pocket a dirty handkerchief and a stump of a clay pipe. My laughter brings a twinkle to his eyes and procures us a much better luncheon than we had reason, from the appearance of the dirty table, to expect.
There is no excuse for this hotel. It is a disgrace to the railroad which owns and runs it. These railway hotels are generally cleanly and well kept. Certainly such is the case in England and Scotland and in the west and north of Ireland. But in Galway the broken-down, dilapidated, and filthy state of affairs is disgusting in the extreme. One hesitates to eat anything which comes from the kitchen, and we confine ourselves to boiled ham and cheese.
From Galway our route lies eastward to Parsonstown and had we followed the map would have been simple enough, but the advice of sundry home-going men, all somewhat the worse for liquor, sent us astray several times, but in a motor that is of little moment.
Parsonstown, or Birr, lies directly east of Galway and en route we pass by Lorrha, where I stop a moment to inspect its ancient abbey. It is of interest to some Americans as having been the burial-place for centuries of a well-known family, the Carrolls. There are no monuments or tablets, as dead have been buried upon dead within the ruined walls for years on years, even unto to-day, as a fresh mound with a half-withered wreath of flowers upon it testifies.
Birr Castle was the original seat of the Carrolls, but they appear to have owned numerous others in this locality, such as Leap and Ffranckfort.