THE MEETING OF THE WATERS, WOODENBRIDGE
A little farther on the Avonbeg meets the Avonmore; farther yet, beyond Woodenbridge and its hotel, this main stream is joined by the Aughrim River, and controversy still rages as to which of the two confluences was honoured in Moore’s melody:
“There is not, in the wide world, a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the wild waters meet!”
Moore himself very diplomatically said he was not sure; but at any rate the valley through which the train runs till it reaches Arklow at the river’s outfall is Moore’s “Sweet Vale of Avoca”; there is no mistake about that, and no question of its gentle loveliness. Arklow itself is an ancient town, whose name keeps, like Wicklow, a memory of Danish beacon fires—“low” or “lue” is the word for flame (still preserved in lowland Scotch). Its population keep the hardy seagoing tradition—Ireland has no better fishermen; but they are incommoded by an odd circumstance. At this point of the coast there is practically no rise and fall of tide, and many a useful harbour is useful only because it can be reached with the flood, which never comes to Arklow.
Here first one meets a landmark of the great “ninety-eight” rising. The Wexford insurgents received at Arklow the decisive check which curbed their very wonderful successes. The rebellion spread no farther north, though, after the rout of Vinegar Hill, stray parties of fugitives maintained themselves for long enough in the mountains where the meeting waters have their rise.
To reach this wider and more open region—far less beautiful, yet having for some eyes an even greater charm—you should follow up the valley of the Aughrim River. A train will take you to Aughrim town, then comes a road, passing at first between slopes of cultivated and well-planted land. But as you go on, the valley widens and spreads, the woods recede, and before you are the great brown flanks of Lugnaquilla, highest of all the Wicklow Mountains—higher indeed than many a hill in Donegal or Kerry whose bolder shape gives a far more imposing appearance.
Here at last, far up on the moors, you strike the military road near its southernmost point; and planted on it, facing down the glen, is a queer, gaunt, half-ruined building, evidently a barrack. A barrack it was; but in more recent times it fell to Parnell, who rented these moors, and he used it as a shooting-lodge—furnished in the roughest way, with a few bedsteads and chairs. There is a kind of legend about the haughty, unbending chief, who treated all his followers with the scantest courtesy. Very different is the impression I have got from those who were privileged to walk the hills after birds with him and to camp in that bare but friendly shelter. To-day, indeed, its grimness is somewhat mitigated; but, as you may readily discover, the old barrack has not lost its associations with the nationalism of to-day.
From Aughavanagh the military road will carry you north across the hill, till beyond it you reach the valley of the Avonbeg and Drumgoff Bridge. Here is the foot of Glen Malure—boldest and wildest of all these glens—which divides Lugnaquilla from Lugduff. This valley, commanding the pass westward into the plains at Dunlavin, was always the central stronghold of the O’Byrnes, the great Irish clan who held out stubbornly among the hills. Lord Grey de Wilton, Elizabeth’s deputy, tried to drive them out in 1580, but his force was cut to pieces by the mountaineers, and a few years later they had a sure asylum to offer to Red Hugh O’Donnell, when he escaped from Dublin Castle and the captivity into which he had been foully kidnapped.
But the spot in all this region which offers most attraction to travellers is Glendalough, site of the Seven Churches, a place of most venerable memories. Kevin, to whom it owes its fame, was born A.D. 498, sixty-six years after Patrick first preached in Ireland. His name, Caomh-ghen, means the Gentle-born, and he was son of the King of Leinster. The whole of this princely family became passionately religious, for two brothers and two sisters of Kevin were canonized, and their names are in the Calendar.