It is not however an hour for hurry or speed and our car glides slowly along while we enjoy the delicious air.
Photo by W. Leonard
Macroom Castle
As we pass by the door of an humble cabin, the turf fire within illuminates the interior, throwing the bright scarlet dress of a girl into bold relief against a dark wall, and lighting up the bent figure of an old man smoking on a bench by the fireplace. In one corner is a bed while in another a huge pig lies asleep. The dark eyes of the girl meet mine for an instant with a pathetic hopeless expression but the old man pays no sort of attention, and we roll away, only to come suddenly just around a corner on a donkey drawing a cart, upon which is perched a buxom old lady. The beast objects most decidedly to our appearance, and after an instant of inaction, during which he stares in afright with his ears pointed forward, he begins to back, and the old woman to screech, more in indignation than fear, it strikes me, but be that as it may, both keep in action until brought to a standstill under the bending boughs of a gigantic fuchsia, whose purple blossoms are cast downward, and all over the vast white frilled cap of the old lady. Except in plastering the dame against that beautiful tree, no harm was done, and I throw her a kiss as we roll away, while faintly on the air is borne to my ears the anathema, "Ye spalpeen, yez." There is more, but our wings are out by now and it is lost in the distance. However I would not hesitate to apply to that old lady were I in trouble and I know I would not apply in vain, though she might read me a lecture the while and even bestow a clout with her big soft hand which would be more in the nature of a caress than a censure.
How time and people have changed in America during the past forty years! Then our land was sprinkled with settlements by these Irish, where one could find all the quaint manners and customs of their homeland; wakes were as strictly carried out there as here, weddings were just the same, and around each humble home clustered a bit of atmosphere of the old world.