A Little Tour in Ireland

by S. Reynolds Hole

Now we pass by the mountain of the Eagles Nest, a glorious throne for the royal bird, and listen, at the Station of Audience, to the marvellous, manifold echoes of the bugler's music, as he wakes the soul and the scene with his “tender strokes of Art,”—now wild and spirit-stirring, as though kings hunted in some distant forest, and now dying, so sweetly, so softly, that we know not when they cease, but listen

“pensively,
As one that from a casement leans his head,
When midnight bells cease ringing suddenly,
And the old year is dead.”

Then our boat, swiftly as an arrow, shoots the rapids of the Old Weir Bridge, and, having lingered awhile, in the pool beyond, to admire and sketch, we leave the Middle Lake (reserved for our morrow's excursion) on the right, and pass by the Islands of Dinish and Brie keen to the entrance of the Lower Lake.

I have said nothing, and can say nothing worthily, of the trees, which grow by the waters of Killarney,—oak, yew, birch, hazel holly, the wild apple, and the mountain-ash, with its berries of vivid red, growing confusedly one into the other, but en masse of faultless unity. And among them, brightest and greenest of them all, the arbutus! Wherever you see it, it gleams amid the duller tints, refreshing as a child's laugh on a rainy day, or (as Frank suggested) a view-halloo in the coverts of a vulpicide, or the ace of trumps in a bad hand at whist. Like Xerxes, we fell in love with the arbutus (Herodotus and Ælian say that it was “a plane tree of remarkable beauty,” but this assertion is self-contradictory, and, if it were not so, I am not, I hope, so bereft of the spirit of the nineteenth century, as to care for historical facts); and though we could not pour wine in honour of our idol, as the Romans were wont to do, we drank our pale ale admiringly beneath its branches, and made a libation (principally of froth) to its roots.

And now by the lovely bay of Glena, we enter the Lower Lake. In front of Lord Kenmare's Cottage, to which visitors have access, 1 numerous boats are moored; and the bright green sward about this pretty rustic retreat, contrasts remarkably with the under-robes of brilliant scarlet, which are sweeping slowly over it, while, from the walks above, gay little bonnets flash among the trees, and the cock-pheasants and other ornithological specimens, now worn in the hats of Englishwomen, seem to rejoice, reanimate, in their leafy homes.

1 The public are greatly indebted to Lord Kenmare and Mr.
Herbert for their indulgent liberality.

Here again, opposite the sublime mountains of Glena, so fairly dight from crown to foot in their summer garb of green, we awake and listen to the echoes, until “the big rain comes dancing to the” lake, and we row hastily homeward, changing places half way with the boatmen, and astonishing them considerably with an Oxford “spirt.”

It was pleasant, when we reached the Victoria, and had “cleaned ourselves” (as housemaids term a restoration of the toilette), to find letters from England, to hear that the good wheat was shorn and stacked, and the mowers “in among the bearded barley.” There was still a short interval, when these letters were answered, to elapse before dinner, and this I occupied in perusing the account of “the Prince of Wales's visit to Killarney” in April, 1858.

Now Heaven preserve our dear young Prince from that excessive loyalty, which loves to “chronicle small beer.” The historian told how “alighting from his vehicle, the Prince, who seems passionately fond of walking, proceeded on foot for a mile or two, with gun in hand, firing from time to time at bird, leaf, or fissure in the rock, in the exuberance of those animal spirits, which belong to his time of life,” but which must be somewhat perilous to those of his Royal Mother's liege subjects, who may be wandering in the immediate vicinity. Then we are informed, how that, “His Royal Highness and party drove on to the Victoria Hotel, with rather keen appetites;” how he visited “the tomb of O' Sullivan, and inspected it with much gravity of demeanour,” as though to ordinary minds there was something in sepulchres irresistibly comic; how “having drunk in all the glories of this wondrous scene,” (the view from Mangerton) “the Prince amused himself for some time in rolling large stones into the Devil's Punch Bowl” for the satisfaction, doubtless, of hearing them “go flop;” how when he went to Church on Sunday, “the Venerable Archdeacon read prayers, and seemed, as it were, reinvigorated by his presence,” which suggests the idea of a subsequent jig with the clerk in the vestry, or of an Irish chassez down the centre aisle; and how, to make a final extract, Mr. Carroll, the tailor, presented His Royal Highness with “a whole suit of Irish tweed, admirably calculated for mountain excursions, and with the texture of which, as well as the fit,—which Mr. Carrolls eye hit off to a nicety”—does this mean that Mr. C. “took a shot” at the royal dimensions?—“the Prince was much pleased.”

I remember nothing of the table d'hôte that evening, except that a Cambridge man, who sat next to me, remarked of some miserable carving hard by, that “the gentleman seemed well up in Comic Sections;” and that a boy of seventeen, with a violent shooting-coat, and a few red bristles in the vicinity of his mouth, officiating as “Vice,” and looking it, mumbled three hurried words as grace after meat, in the presence of four English clergymen, and two Roman Catholic priests.