There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of that Irish poem, transmitted in ancient manuscript, which a scholar has thus translated—Columba's lyric cry towards the Ireland which he had left.
Yet, after all, the new is more to us than the old, and Derrymen have good right to be proud of Derry walls. The famous siege was a great event, the resistance was indeed heroic, though I think that popular fame has selected the wrong man to be the centre of hero-worship. A tall column which rises from the walls behind the bishop's palace is Walker's monument, and Walker was no soldier but an elderly, loquacious, and somewhat vain, preacher. If contemporary records are any safe guide, the true organizer and inspirer of that long resistance was Murray—whose fame, I am glad to say, is kept alive by a Murray club. Yet the man who best of all, perhaps, deserves commemoration has no memorial in Derry. The siege had lasted from April 18, and on June 13 the town was already starving when a fleet was sighted in Lough Foyle. Kirke, who commanded it, lay outside, intimidated by the defences of the narrow channel. So it went on for six weeks; but there was at least one Derry man with the fleet who could brook the delay no longer. This was Captain Browning, of the Mountjoy, and he insisted that attempts should be made to run the batteries and to break the boom, whose site is still preserved in the name "Boom Hall". The Mountjoy was a merchant-man, and another, the Phoenix, of Coleraine, joined the venture, and a frigate was sent with them to help in drawing the enemy's fire. The Mountjoy, with Browning himself at the helm, headed straight for the boom under full sail, struck it, and with the impact the boom gave. But the shock caused a rebound which flung the ship back on a mudbank, and at the same moment Browning was shot down at his post. The Phoenix had slipped already through the gap and was away with her full cargo of meal. Boats were out from the forts to seize the Mountjoy; but she fired a broadside, and the recoil lifted her off the bank, and she too slipped through, carrying the body of her dying skipper to the wharf of the city which his courage and determination had rescued from famine and from enforced surrender. Life stayed in him long enough to let him hear the cries of welcome, to know that the goal was reached, the blockade broken, and his city saved, before the rush of blood from his pierced lungs finally choked him: and surely no man ever died a more enviable death.
Yet in truth it was the people who had rescued themselves. In the previous month of December, before hostilities were really declared, King James had been imbecile enough to withdraw the troops which held the city. A fresh garrison under Lord Antrim was marching in, and was seen actually outside the walls. The city fathers deliberated; it was thirteen prentice boys of the town who armed themselves, rushed to the Ferryquay gate, seized the keys, and locked it in the teeth of Antrim's men, when they were within sixty yards of the entrance.
This deed is commemorated annually on December 18th, when Lundy, the officer who commanded in James's interest, is duly burnt in effigy—or used to be. Nowadays Catholic and Protestant are so evenly balanced in the "Maiden City" that such demonstrations risk a formidable riot, and are accordingly kept in check.
But the embers are always hot, and crave wary walking. Once a concert was being held, "strictly non-sectarian", and it had been decided to omit "God save the King", which in Ireland is made into a party tune. All went off smoothly, and the building was being emptied, when suddenly war rose. The organist, a stranger, had thought it would be proper to play the people out with "Auld Lang Syne"—not knowing that to this tune is sung "Derry Walls", most aggressive of Protestant melodies.
Derry walls are there, broad and solid—you can drive a coach on them. But, what is more important, you can there find the best entertainment that I know in Ireland. A little hotel, whose doorway gives on to the east wall, is kept by Mrs. MacMahon, and all persons of understanding go there to get the kind of meal which you may hope for in the pleasantest north of Ireland country home: the fruits of the earth, the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea, each according to his kind (not omitting Lough Swilly oysters), with the home-made bread, which is one of Ulster's greatest charms. It is not an elaborate modern hotel. If it were, you would not get the sort of entertainment that I describe; but to stay there is to get an insight, and a most happy insight, into the homeliness, the hospitality, the shrewdness, and the good housewifery of Ulster.
LONDONDERRY FROM THE WATERSIDE