"Men of Corcabascinn, men of Clare's brigade,
Hearken, stony hills of Clare, hear the charge we made,
See us come together, singing from the fight,
Back to Corcabascinn in the morning light."
Yet in truth it may be that only the native born will find any special charm in this stormy Corcabascinn or its wild winds and waters; for of prettiness and favour it has none, owning grandeur rather than beauty. The counties of Munster which appeal to every human being who has eyes in his head to see with are Cork and Kerry—but Kerry above all.
[III]
The unhappy inconveniences of sea travel prevent most folk from visiting County Cork under the best conditions. Access should be by boat: and surely the entrance into that wonderful Cove where the great liners halt to take off mails is noblest of all gateways into Ireland. All the encircling ring of hills is rich with vegetation, but above all on the east by Queenstown is the choicest and most varied wooding. Anything will grow there and nearly everything has been made to grow. The little town itself is picturesque, climbing the steep slope and dominated by Pugin's great cathedral, which stands on the disembarkation quay, making a centre for the last impressions and emotions of those—alas! how many thousands yearly—who leave Ireland.
It is not now as I saw it in the early 'eighties, when hopeless, broken, half-famished peasants were pouring out in a ghastly torrent, mere wreckage on the flood: emigration was then eighty thousand a year, to-day it is less than half that number. Those who go to-day, go reasonably equipped, go for the most part to friends in cities, of which they have heard so much, where they have so many kindred and acquaintances, that the journey seems hardly into exile—hardly to a strange land. Yet, even to-day, every train that brings the emigrants leaves behind it, through the West and South and Midlands, its wake of bitter weeping; at station after station it has gone out amid tearing away of locked hands, last embraces severed, faces of old men twitching, faces of women convulsed with sobs, and sped on its journey to the accompaniment of that dreadful heartrending "keene", the Irish wail, which is heard nowadays more often at the ship's side, or on the railway platform, than at the grave. "Och, the poor soft Irish," I heard a woman say this year, leaving some platform in Cork; on her way, evidently, to a home in the States, where she had lived, no doubt for many years, with the hard-faced, swaggering Yankee, who accompanied her, and who looked with ill-concealed contempt on the tears and emotions of the "poor soft Irish"; but she at least still kept the homely tongue and kind heart.
From Queenstown up to Cork is one of the loveliest waterways in the world, little towns on either bank under the steep wooded shores, and here and there some old castle. Cork itself may have no very great architectural beauties, but the whole lie of the city, spread between its hills, divided by the various streams of that delightful river, makes a beauty of its own: you see it best from the high ground over against the famous steeple where hang "the bells of Shandon that sound so grand on the pleasant waters of the river Lee".
"Pleasant" is the word for Cork, the county, and its soft-voiced, quick-speaking people, with the odd little turn upwards at the end of their sentence. It was called "the Athens of Ireland", though I would say rather, the Naples: in any case, Cork has always sent out far more than its share of brains. In the days of "Father Prout", who wrote the "Bells of Shandon" and other immortal ditties, Cork had a regular coterie of wits—among the best known being a Dowden, father or grandfather of the illustrious man of letters who is to-day one of the chief lights in Trinity College. The late Provost, Dr. Salmon, a still greater luminary, came also from the southern county—as did half a dozen more of the Fellows whose names are familiar enough to all in Ireland; though some, perhaps, enriched legend and chronicle rather than history, and survive as remembered oddities—after all, not the least loveable of survivals.
The south coast of Cork, from Youghal to the Kenmare River, is the pick of Ireland for yachtsmen. Endless is the succession, from Cork itself with all its lesser creeks and havens, Carrigalo, Carrigaline, and Ringabella, on past Kinsale harbour, Courtmacsherry and Clonakilty bays, Roscarbery, Glandore, and west to Baltimore and Roaring Water, off which lies Cape Clear. Then past Mizen Head, on the west shore, are greater bays, harbours not for yachts, but for navies—Dunmanus, Bantry, and the Kenmare River, whose northern shore belongs to Kerry, but which has a frontier certainly in paradise.
I write of what I have seen, in the Kenmare River: all these southern harbourages are to me only names on the map, save for the quaint little bay of Roscarbery and the long winding creek of Baltimore—both of which I know only as winter shows them, and shows them from the land. Yet of the people of Roscarbery I form at least some picture from the sketches drawn by the two ladies who relate the varied Experiences of an Irish R.M.—though West Cork needs to be supplemented by knowledge of Connemara, to realize the scenes that they have in mind. And from Baltimore, or rather from a mile outside it, I carry away a picture of a congregation dividing after mass into two rival political assemblies, and the one that I addressed consisted largely of women wearing the great black cloak, with black hood giving an odd framework to the wearer's face, which is one of the few and cherished relics of traditional costume. I was told on good authority (when I lamented myself) that if I had the women I had the votes, for West Cork was in all matters under female governance. But of that I cannot testify.