We bade adieu to the kindly sergeant and drove back to Castlebar in the quiet evening. Opposite the Turlough round tower is the charming residence of a Fitzgerald, one of the race whose dust moulders in an aristocratic manner in the ruined abbey of Turlough. This gentleman, not thinking himself safe even under protection, has left the country. Only fancy a squad of police marching from their barracks in the dusk, five or ten miles as the case may be, pacing round a gentleman's house in rain or snow, sleet or hail, no shelter for their coercion heads, no fire at which to warm their protecting fingers; pace about from dusk till dawning, march back to barracks and to a few hours' rest. I was silly enough to suppose that the protected family would provide a bowl of hot coffee for their protectors through the silent watches of the night, or a glass of the handier and very popular whiskey, but dear, oh no! the most of them would not acknowledge the existence of the Royal Irish protectors with a word or a nod no more than if they were watch dogs.
XXXVII.
CASTLEBAR—WASTING THE LAND—CASTLE BOURKE—BALLINTUBBER ABBEY.
Castlebar is not a large town at all. It is, like all other towns which I have yet seen in Ireland, swarming with houses licensed to sell liquors of different kinds to be drunk on the premises. In one street I noticed on the side of the car on which I sat every house for quite a little distance was a licensed whiskey shop.
The country people bring in ass-loads of what they have to sell. Very few horses are to be seen in the hands of country people. Their trading is on a decidedly small scale. The number of women who attend market barefoot is the large majority. The ancient blue cloth cloak is the prevailing hap. Upon a day my friend and I went out to see the glories of Ballintubber Abbey. It was not possible for him to go in plain clothes so soon again; so I had the appearance of an obnoxious lady of the land, protected by a member of the force.
We drove out of Castlebar some seven or eight miles in the opposite direction from where Pontoon Bridge lies. Our road lay for miles through the country wasted of inhabitants by the Marquis of Sligo after the great famine. Here and there a ruin where a cabin has been speaks that it was once inhabited. The people tell that Lord Sligo's people were rented the land in common by the settlement. All but two of one settlement had paid; as those two could not pay, the whole were evicted. My informant thought the settlement deserved eviction when they did not subscribe and pay for the two who could not pay. He never seemed to think they might not be able to do so, nor that it was cruel to evict all for the sake of two.
Lord Lucan made a great wasting also at that time. Between the land near the town devoted to private demesnes, laid out for glory and beauty, and the lands wasted of inhabitants, you can travel miles and miles on more than one side of Castlebar and see scarcely a tenant; a herd's cabin, a police station, being the only houses. As soon as we come to barren land over-run with stones, tenant houses become thicker.
We passed a cabin of indescribable wretchedness; a woman who might have sat for a picture of famine stood at the door looking at us as we passed. She had a number of little children, of the raggedest they were, around her. Some time ago the father of these scarecrows was suspected of having stolen some money, and a posse of the much enduring police were sent out to search in the dead of the night. The family were in bed. The bed was a few boards laid on stones, on which was spread a little green hay, and among the loose hay they slept. The terror of the little creatures pulled out of bed, while the wretched lair was searched and they stood on the floor naked and shivering, was described to me by one who assisted at the search. The bed was overturned, but the money was not found. We drove on through the "stony streak" out to a clearer grass country to Castle Bourke, a lonely looking ruin sitting among her own desolations. It once covered a great deal of land, and there is evidence of additions having been made to it at different times. This Castle Bourke was one of the castles of the Queen of the West, the celebrated Grace O'Malley. This castle is one of those given to Grace by her husband of a year, Sir Richard Bourke.
There are still the remains of three buildings; one, said to be the prison, was loopholed through the solid stone, some loopholes being quite close to the ground, some straight through, some slanting, so as to cover a man come from what direction he might, or what height soever, even if he crept on the ground. Most of the castle, as well as these buildings attached, had their roof on the floor, but in the square tower of the castle proper still remains a stone staircase of the circular kind.
As you go up this stair lit by narrow slits in the wall formed in hewn stone you find an arched door at three different places admitting to three arched galleries roofed and floored with stone. These have their loophole slits to peep out of, or fire out of, stone spouts through which molten lead or boiling water could be poured on the besiegers. In one gallery a trap door let down to an underground passage which came out at the lake some distance off. By this they could send a messenger to raise the O'Malley clans, or by it could escape if necessary.