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CHAPTER XVIII. GLENGARRIFF TO CORK
MOUNTED on the Cork car next morning, we passed the estuaries of Bantry Bay, where, the tide being out, the heron stood, lone and aristocratic, and the curlew ran nimbly among the dank seaweed. By the roadside, the goats, tied in pairs, and cruelly hoppled, tumbled over the embankments as we passed. We went by the picturesque old ruins of Carriginass, and by various sights and scenes, until we reached the Pass of Keimaneigh, a defile through the mountains, the appropriate refuge of the Rockites, in 1822, and an elegant situation for a still. Burns, that poetical gauger, might have been happy here, so long as, dreamily wandering among the heath-clad steeps, he had confined his attentions to the beauties of nature, and ignored the paraphernalia of art; but a more practical man, intent on business, would have had but an uncomfortable home of it, until a bullet put an end to his dreary quest, and
“The de'il flew away with the exciseman.”
The driver pulled up his horses by a way-side cottage, and inquired whether we wished to see Gougane-barra. It was only a mile or so out of our route, Patrick there would take us in his car, and he would wait for us with all the pleasure in life. So, making this little deflection, we reached, as speedily as a good pony could take us over bad roads, the gloomy lake and mountains. Here we were received by a troop of juvenile guides, led on by an old man, who with a long white beard, and staff, intended, I believe, to give us the idea of a venerable and pious pilgrim, to remind us probably of St. Fion Bar, the “Saint of the Silver Locks,” who founded a monastery here; but roguery so twinkled in his eye, and imposition so quavered in his voice, that I have no hesitation in speaking with regard to him, as the Edinburgh Review spake of Edgar Poe:—“He was a blackguard of undeniable mark.”
The Irish poet Callanan sings,