The Letters of "Norah" on Her Tour Through Ireland

by Norah

I have earnestly and constantly sought to find a reason that could possibly irritate an ignorant and exasperated peasant to the point of taking the life of this man, I have found none. He was unhappily addicted to drink, it is said, but he must have had a large majority of the inhabitants of Ireland of all creeds and classes on the same side with him in this, to judge by the number of houses licensed to sell liquor to be drunk on the premises which are required for the drouthy part of the population. He is accused of having warped justice to favor his friends in his capacity of magistrate. I have heard that accusation brought against other magistrates again and again, who were not molested. He is said to have boasted when fou that he was a spy for the castle authorities, and could have any of them he chose to point at taken up. This was mere bluster, I suppose. There does seem no reason why the poor man should be cut off in the midst of his days by a guilty hand, for there is no record of any tangible injury which he had done to any man. Here on the spot where he fell, among the common people, I did not hear anything that seemed to give a reason for any hatred that would lead to murder being entertained against the deceased nobleman.

We turned away from the house and grounds, and I felt sad enough when we passed the place where he lay in the dark night amid bare, barren loneliness until the alarm was given. Heath in full blossom of purple clung to the ditch back, foxglove in stately array nodded at us from above, flowers that creep and flowers that wave were springing everywhere, the rains of heaven had washed off the red stain, but I could not shut my eyes to it. I saw the human body, dignified into something awful by the presence of death, lying there waiting for the hands that were to take it up reverently, and bear it away for investigation and burial. I saw the dyed stones of the road that will never lose the mark of guilt that colored them with the blood shed there.

Lord Mountmorris' residence was a nice, roomy house. All these houses are called castles, and castles they are compared with the cabins. The land around it did not seem very good. There was something pathetic in the evident attempt to keep up lordly state on a poor income and off poor soil. Happy America, whose people are not compelled by the inexorable logic of circumstances to be lords, but can be plain farmers. It is really a hard thing to be a lord sometimes, when a place is sunk with mortgages, and burdened with legacies and annuities, and no means of redemption but the rents and these stopped.

We drove back the way we came. Ascending the hill we met a little beast, so small, so black and shaggy, that I thought at first it was one of our Canadian black bears. I asked what it was, and—laughing at my ignorance—the man told me that it was a Highland Kyloe, one of the famous black cattle that I have heard so much about, but had never seen a specimen of the breed before. It would have been big for a bear, but certainly was small for a cow, while a goat has the appearance of giving as much milk.

XLIII.

CONG

The land as we neared Cong, between Cong and Lough Mask, as seen from the rather roundabout road we travelled, has a very peculiar appearance. It is stony with a very different stoniness from any part of Ireland which I had seen before. In some places the earth, as far as the eye could reach, was literally crusted with stone. The stone was worn into rounded tops and channelled hollows, as if it was once molten, like red hot potash, and every bubbling swell had become suddenly petrified, or as if it had once been an uptilted hillside over which a rapid river had fallen, wearing little hollows, and sparing rounded heights as it dashed over in boiling fury for ages, accomplishing which result it deserted this channel; and through some internal movement the bed of the torrent was levelled into a plain. Some agency or other has worn this solid rock into a truffle pattern that is very wonderful to see. Over all this part the stony formation recurs again and again. A person remarked to me that it looked like the bottom of a former ocean. Judging by the marks worn into the stone I should say it was not a pacific ocean.

We came to a blacksmith's shop with the arch of the door formed into a perfect horse-shoe; this, I was told, was the boundary line between Mayo and Galway. In a few minutes we stopped before the "Carlisle Arms," in the little village of Cong. Cong village is not very large, and has not a wealthy appearance. There is a look generally spread over the people who come in to trade as if their fortune was as stoney as their fields.

I had not been long in the "Carlisle Arms" before my attention was called to certain framed mementos that hung round the room. By some of these mementos hung the tale as to how Cong hotel came to be named the "Carlisle Arms." On a certain occasion, when the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Carlisle, was making some sort of progress through Ireland, he proposed stopping at the hotel at Maam, a hotel under the thumb of the late Lord Leitrim, who had some pique at the Lord Lieutenant, which determined him to order under pain of the usual penalty that there be no admittance to the Viceroy of Ireland at this hotel. His Lordship for once felt the power of a text of Scripture, and sent orders that from the highways and hedges they should be compelled to come in; that his house should be filled to the entire exclusion of Her Majesty's representative. Lord Carlisle did not, like Mr. Goddard the other day at Charleville, proffer money, or take any steps to try the lawfulness or unlawfulness of this proceeding, but, having sent a courier to precede him, hurried on to Cong, and conferred the distinction of his presence on that hotel. That the proprietors did their best to entertain him I have no doubt, speaking from experience. That he appreciated their efforts he has left on record in a neat acknowledgement, which hangs above the mantlepiece framed and glazed, as Uncle Tom desired to do with his letter from Massa George. The Lord Lieutenant's photo hangs there too, in a nice frame, as a memento of his having been received at Cong when refused at Maam. Also he consented that the hotel should be known as the "Carlisle Arms" henceforth. I wonder very much that there was not at least as much public indignation felt against Lord Leitrim or the innkeeper whom he influenced when he refused shelter to Her Majesty's representative here, the head of the executive, as is now expressed against this hotel-keeper, who refused to receive Mr. Goddard. I suppose the cases are different someway.

During the famine time a large sum of money was voted, partly by Government, partly from the county taxes, for Relief Works. It was determined to make a canal to connect Lough Corrib and Lough Mask. The canal was made at the expense of much blasting, much building of strong and costly stone work. If they could only have resurrected the famous Irish architect Gobhan Saer, he would have advised making a well- cemented bottom for the canal considering that a subterraneous river runs from one lake to the other under it. They did not do this, however, and when the grand canal was finished and the water let on the bottom fell out in places and the waters fell through to their kindred waters. The next famine they will require to dig and blast downward and still downward till they find the underground river and the runaway water. Coming past the costly and well-built bridge which spans the almost dry stream that pours into the leaky canal somewhere, I saw some women round a hollow in the stream that retained a little water. They were rinsing out some woollen stuffs after dying them blue. They had warm petticoats of madder red, and I was glad to see them look so comfortably clad and thrifty.