CHAPTER XIV. KILLARNEY
A car and guide, as per order, were waiting for us, when we had breakfasted next morning, and we set forth for the Gap of Dunloe. Entering upon the main road, we seemed to be in a drying-ground of immense proportions, with its perpetual posts and endless clothes-lines, extending along the wayside for miles. But it proved to be a continuation of that faithless messenger, the Atlantic telegraph, on its way between Valencia and the rail. Passing the ruins of Aghadoe, church, castle, and tower, and shortly afterwards those of Killaloe, we cross the river Latme, over a charming old bridge, and get views of the great Tomies Mountain, and also of Macgillicuddy's Reeks. Miles, our guide, a most intelligent and civil one, here told us the story, or rather one of the stories, concerning the latter mountains.
It seems that Mr. Macgillicuddy, a gentleman of extensive estates in this neighbourhood, went to visit some friends in England, and took with him an Irish servant, more prone to patriotism than truth. Whatever he saw among the Saxons was just nothing at all, at all, to what might be seen in Ireland. In short, he would have been a most appropriate attendant upon that Hibernian, who, being asked why he wept at sight of Greenwich Hospital, replied with sorrowful emotion, “Ah, sure, the buildings there remind me of mee dear father's stables!”
Now it befel that the English gentleman, possessing a large extent of rich meadow land, took especial delight in his hay-stacks, and his valet, sympathising with his master's vanity (as all good valets should), soon led the Irishman to look at the stack-yard, expecting to see him mightily astonished; but Paddy, having gazed around with the most sublime indifference, coolly said, “It's a nice bit o' grass you've brought home here for present use; now let us have a peep at the ricks.”
“Ricks!” exclaimed the Englishman, “why these be they.”
“Well, then,” says Paddy, “I'll just tell ye: there's about enough hay in this stack-yard to make the bands for thatching my master's ricks. Happen” (this he added as though he wished to be liberal, and to pay his companion a compliment), “there might be a couple of yards or so to spare.”
You may imagine that when, in the following year, the English valet came with his master to return the visit at Killarney, he was not long before he requested his Irish friend to favour him with a view of the haystacks. To be sure he would, with all the pleasure in life, and sorry he was to be prevented by circumstances (over which, he might have added, he had every control) from making the inspection before evening. Accordingly, in the dusk and gloom of twilight, he took the Englishman forth, and showed him, dim in the distance, this lofty mountain range. “There are our ricks,” said he.
In that belief the astonished stranger slept; and ever since that time men call these hills Macgillicuddy s Reeks!
Mr. Miles, in the next place, made our fingers to itch, eyes to strain, and mouths to water, as he told of red deer among the mountains, and of woodcocks in their season, twenty couple to be bagged per diem. Thus conversing, we drew near to the Gap, and to the cottage of Mrs. Moriarty, née Kearney, and grand-daughter of the beautiful Kate. But it is by no means a case of