So we lit our pipes, and then the boatmen, whose colloquial powers we generally evoked, as we tendered the calumet, or rather the tobacco-pouch, of friendship, began to tell us, how, once upon a time, it was all dry land about here; how some indiscreet, but anonymous individual had removed the lid from an enchanted well; and how the enchanted well had set to work, in consequence, and had flooded the valley in which stood the palace of King O'Donoghue, so suddenly, that a facetious sentinel had only just time to shout “All's Well!” at the top of his voice, when the waters, rising above his chin, and entering his vocal orifice, put a stop to further elocution.
It does not appear, as ordinary minds might have expected, that the prospects or spirits of the Donoghue were at all damped by this proceeding; and though his property seemed to be hopelessly “dipped,” and his capital to be sunk beyond all recovery, he contrived not only to get his head above water, but even to ride the high horse afterwards. For the boatmen say, that the royal edifice still remains, with all its inmates, unaltered and unalterable, at the bottom of the lake, and there the king entertains his court, with fish-dinners and aquatic fêtes on an unprecedented scale of magnificence, save when requiring air and exercise, he rides over the waters on a snowy steed, and turns the whole locality into an Irish “Vale of White Horse.”
“And there's plinty as has seen him, your 'onnour,” (so said the bow-oar historian), “and will take their swear of it—glowry to God!” Very little glowry, thought I, from the perjury of these delectable witnesses, who must have seen this quaint display of horsemanship through a “summer haze” of whiskey, and been very deliriously drunk. But our boat touches Innisfallen.
Everyone falls in love with this sweet little island. It has such grand, old, giant trees, such charming glades and undulations, “green and of mild declivity,” that here, childhood might play, manhood make love, and old age meditate, unwearied, from morn to night. Mr. Grieve would, in spite of his name, be joyful, to wander through its vistas and alleys green, and find fresh scenes for his canvas. What dear little glens, what “banks and braes” for the fairies. Can this be Titania coming towards us over the moonlit sward, and leaning upon the arm of Oberon? No; it is a couple of nuptial neophytes, looking so happy, that, as they pass, I could take off my hat and cheer. Ah, if fair lnnisfallen is so beautiful to us poor bachelors by ordinary moonlight, what must it be to Benedict, to the man in the moon of honey? What must be the happiness of my Lord Castlerosse, the eldest son of the Lord of the Isles of Killarney, who has just brought home his bride? 1
1 August, 1858.
Were I ever constrained to be a monk and celibate, I should wish my monastery to be at lnnisfallen, and I admire the taste of St. Finian (an ancestor, I presume, of Mr. Finn, our estimable host at the Victoria Hotel), who, some thirteen hundred years ago, selected this island for his retreat. The picturesque ruins of an ancient abbey still attest, that long after his time, men sought, in this sylvan solitude, that peace which they found not in the world.
Sweet Innisfallen! “thy praise is hymned by loftier harps than mine,” so lofty indeed, that my obtuse understanding is unable to read some of their music, as, for instance, where Moore sings,
“The steadiest light the sun e'er threw
Is lifeless to one gleam of thine.”
And, therefore, in plain prose, but with a full heart, Good night!