[XVIII]
FROM DUBLIN TO CORK
We are off for the Emerald Isle. There was much of interest in the three days between London and Dublin, but I will not follow our journey here; in a later chapter I will endeavor to gather some of the scattered threads. We reach Ludlow the first night, one hundred and forty-eight miles in six hours—very speedy going for us—but a day from Ludlow to Barmouth and another to Holyhead is more in keeping with our usual leisurely progress.
One can never truly feel the plaintive sweetness of Lady Dufferin’s song until with his own eyes he beholds the melancholy beauty of the “Sweet Bay of Dublin.” We enter its gates in the opalescent light of a perfect morning. The purple mists hanging over the headlands are glowing with the first rays of the sun and the pale emerald waters flash into burnished gold as the low beams strike along their surface.
The voyage has been an easy one; our tickets were purchased, our cabin reserved, and provision made for the transport of the motor, all in a few minutes at the office of the Royal Automobile Club in London, and the genial touring-secretary, Mr. Maroney, has supplied us with necessary maps and information. We have not long to wait at the pier; a swinging crane picks up the car from the boat and carefully deposits it on the pavement. A railway employee is at hand with a supply of petrol and we are soon ready for the road. The night voyage has been a comfortable one; we were able to go aboard at nine o’clock and take possession of our cabin, quite as large and well-appointed as those of the best ocean-going steamers, and breakfast was served on the ship. Altogether, nothing is easier than a trip to Ireland with a motor car if one only goes about it rightly.
An unknown land lies before us. Much has been written of Ireland—books of travel, history, and fiction—and poets have sung her beauties and sorrows; we have read much of the Island, but nothing that has given us more than a hint of what we are about to see. To know Ireland, one must take a pilgrim’s staff, as it were; he must study her ruins and ancient monuments, see her cities and her towns, her half-deserted villages, her wretched hovels and her lonely places, and above all, must meet and know her people; then, after all, he can only say to others, “If you wish to know the reality, go and do likewise.”
Dublin is a handsomely built modern city of three hundred thousand inhabitants and has an air of general prosperity. It has much of interest, but it does not rightly belong in this chronicle. The low hum of our motor calls us to the open road, the green fields, and the unfrequented villages. We are soon away on the Carlow road with Cork as our objective.
The road out of Dublin is distressingly rough as compared with English highways, though it improves before we reach Naas. Our first impressions are distinctly melancholy; a “deserted village”—a row of stone cottages, roofless, windowless, and with crumbling or fallen walls—speaks of Ireland’s sorrows more plainly than any words. And such sad reminders are not uncommon; wholly or partly ruined villages greet us every little while on the way.
Naas, the first town of any size, is dirty and unattractive, but its historic importance ill accords with its present meanness. Its traditions are not antedated by any town in the Island; it was once the capital of the Leinster kings—half-clad savages, no doubt, but kings none the less. Cromwell thought it important enough to visit, and incidentally wiped its strong castle out of existence. Rory O’More a century later burned it to the ground, destroying some eight hundred houses—it has not so many now. Adjoining the town is the ruin of Jigginstown House, an unfinished palace begun on a vast scale by the Earl of Strafford, who expected to entertain Charles I. here; but Charles failed to arrive and the Earl had other matters—among them the loss of his head—to engage his attention.
The road to the south of Naas lies in broad, straight stretches and the surface is better, but we found it almost deserted. This impressed us not a little. We ran many miles, meeting no one; there were few houses—only wide reaches of meadowland with but few trees—and altogether the country seemed quite uninhabited.
Carlow, scarce thirty miles from Naas, is rather above the average, though it has the bare appearance characteristic of the Irish town. We had been rather dreading the country-town hotels and here we had our first experience. The Club House—why so called we did not learn—is a building not unsightly inside, but on entering it is with difficulty we could find anyone to minister to our wants. Finally an untidy old man with bushy whiskers appeared and officiated as porter, chambermaid, and waiter. He was slow in performing his duties, but the luncheon was better than we had hoped for. He took our money when we left, but whether he was boots or proprietor, we never learned.