"The Southern Irish are the most lovable people in the world, with all their faults, if they were not led astray by hireling agitators, who ruin the country by playing on the people's ignorance, exciting the Catholic hope of religious domination, and trusting to damage England as a great spreader of Protestantism. A lie is no lie if told to a Protestant. To keep a Protestant out of heaven would be a meritorious action. And they would readily damage themselves if by doing so they could also damage England. Englishmen hardly believe this, but every commercial traveller from an English house knows it is true."
I tested a number of English commercials on this point. All confirmed the statement above given. Many had been Gladstonians, but now all were Unionists. None of them knew an English or Scotch commercial who, having travelled in Ireland, remained a Home Ruler. Such a person, they thought, did not exist. Admitted that for business purposes the apparent rara avis might possibly, though not probably, be found, all agreed that no Englishman in his senses, with personal knowledge of the subject, could over support Home Rule. Two Gladstonians went from Chester to Tipperary to investigate the troubles: both returned converted. Six men from a shop-fitting establishment in Birmingham worked some weeks in Dublin: all returned Unionist to the core. This from Mr. Sibley, of Grafton street, Dublin, in whose splendid shop I met the Duchess of Leinster, handsomest woman in Ireland, and therefore (say Irishmen) handsomest in the world. She was buying books for Mr. Balfour, who, she said, was a great reader of everything connected with Ireland or Irish affairs. Mr. Sibley is a partner of Mr. Combridge, of New street, Birmingham, and is a leading Irish Unionist. Returning to the cancelling of orders, I will add that Mr. Richard Patterson, J.P., of Belfast, the largest buyer of hardware in Ireland, has cancelled very largely, together with two other large firms, whose names he gave me. You will remember Mr. John Cook, the Protestant Home Ruler, of Derry. His manager, Mr. Smith, has written the Birmingham factor of the house, to omit his usual visit, as the firm will have no orders for him. A strange comment on Mr. Cook's theories of confidence. Mr. Cook is an excellent, a high-minded man. He asked me how I would class him among his party. I called him a Visionary in Excelsis.
Every self-respecting Saxon visitor to Cork visits the famous castle of Blarney, seven miles away, to see the scenery and kiss the Blarney Stone, the apparent source of Home Rule inspiration.
There is a stone there
That whoever kisses
Och! he never misses
To grow eloquent.
'Tis he may clamber
To a lady's chamber,
Or become a member
Of Parliament.
A clever spouter
He'll sure turn out, or
An out-an'-outer
To be let alone!
Don't hope to hindher him
Or to bewildher him—
Sure, he's a pilgrim
From the Blarney stone!
The walk is delightful, not unlike that from Colwyn Bay to Conway, but more beautiful still, as instead of the London and North Western Railway a lovely river runs along the valley on your right. The Cork and Muskerry Light Railway occupies the roadside for the first four miles, relic of the beneficent Balfour—winding by the river side for the rest of the journey, through fat meadows dotted with thriving kine, and having a background of richly-wooded hills. At Carrickrohane your left is bounded by a huge precipitous rock, covered from base to summit with ivy and other greenery, a great grey building on the very brink of the abyss, flanked by Scotch firs, peering over the precipice. A fine stone bridge, garrisoned by salmon-fishers, leads to the Anglers' Rest, and here I found a splendid character, one Dennis Mulcahy, who boasted of his successful resistance to the Land League. Having told me of his adventures in America, and how his oyster-bar experiences in the Far West had opened his eyes to the fact that the Irish people were being humbugged, he narrated his return to his native land, on his succession to a small farm left him by "an ould aunt he had." His language was so forcible and picturesque that I despair of conveying its effect, more especially as no pen can describe the rich brogue, which, notwithstanding his two years' residence in the States, was still thick enough to be cut with a knife. Apart from its amusing side, his story has a moral, and may be instructively applied.
"'Twas at Ballina I was, the toime o' the Land Lague. 'Twas there Captain Moonlight started from, an' the whole disthrict was shiverin' in their shoes. I refused to subscribe to the Land Lague, an' they started to compil me, but, be the powers, they tackled the wrong tom-cat whin they wint to coarce Dennis Mulcahy. Threatenin' letthers, wid pictures o' death's-heads, an' guns, an' pikes, an' coffins, was but a thrifle to the way they wint on. But they knew I had a thrifle of a sivin-shooter, an' bad luck to the one o' thim that dared mislist me at all. At last it got abroad that I was to get a batin' wid blackthorn sticks, for they wor tired the life out o' them, raisonin' wid me. Well, says I, I'm here, says I, an' the first man that raises a hand to me, I'll invite him to his own inquist, says I, for, bedad, I'll perforate him like a riddle, says I. Well, it wint on an' on, till one day I was stayin' at a bit of a shebeen outside the place, when a slip o' a girleen kem to me—I was sittin' on a bench in the back garden, the way I'd enjoy my pipe in the fresh air, an', says she, 'Get out o' this, for there's a whole crew o' thim inside going to bate you.' That was six or seven o' a fine summer's night, an' I walked into the house an' took a look at thim—a thievin' heap o' blayguards as iver ye seen wid your two eyes."
"I wint out again an' sat in the haggard, where I could kape my eye on the dure. Prisintly out comes one o' thim, to commince the row, I suppose.
"He spoke o' the Land Lague, an' I towld him I didn't agree wid it at all, and 'twas a thievin' invintion o' a set o' roguish schamers.
"'Ye'd betther mind yer manners,' says he, 'onless ye have yer revalver,' says he, lookin' at me maningly.