Yet, though living in low, smoky, ill-ventilated cabins,—often with mouldering thatches, and always with damp earth floors, with a pool of stagnant water or a dung-hill before the door,—though themselves ill fed and but half clad, it is a singular fact that the peasants of southern Ireland are apparently a healthful and hardy race. You occasionally see fine specimens of manly and childish beauty among them; but a pretty Irish peasant girl we found the rarest of rara avises. There are some families of Spanish origin about Bantry, and of these we encountered one or two dark-eyed, olive-cheeked beggar boys, who seemed to have leaped out of one of Murillo’s pictures. The policemen everywhere are a particularly fine-looking set of fellows; indeed, none but well-made, tall, and powerful men have any chance of enrolment in this honorable terror-inspiring, omnipresent corps.
The professional beggars of Ireland seem a peculiarly hopeless and irredeemable class,—not because of the poverty of the country alone, but from their own inherent and inherited idleness and viciousness. They are persistent, pertinacious, sometimes impudent, and often quick-witted and amusing. A friend of ours was waylaid by a certain “widdy” woman, with an unlimited amount of ragged responsibilities at her heels. On hearing her doleful story, our friend advised the fair mendicant to take refuge in the poor-house. “The poor-house!” she exclaimed; “sure it’s meself that keeps the poorest house in all Cork, yer honor.” I was amused by an appeal made by an elderly dame to one of our fellow-passengers: “Here’s a fine fat gentleman, sure; sure he’ll give a sixpence to a poor bony body that hasn’t broken her fast at all the day.”
If you wish to take a meditative walk among the hills, the chances are that you will return with a considerable ragged retinue; but the larger detachment of this ignoble army of alms-seekers are stationed along the public roads. They make their startling sorties from the most lonely, wild, and inaccessible places; like Roderick Dhu’s men, they leap up from “copse and heath.” Every rock hides a waiting mendicant, and every tuft of broom stirs as we approach with a lurking tatterdemalion. They leap on your way from behind walls, and drop down upon you from overhanging trees,—small footpads, or rather paddies, who present palms instead of pistols, and blarney and worry you alike out of pence and patience.
After a day of wet and weary travel through a melancholy country, we enjoyed to the utmost the beautiful approach to Bantry, under a clear and sunny sky, and welcomed with enthusiasm the sight of its lovely and famous bay. But even this bright vision was soon eclipsed by Glengariff, where we spent the night. Thus far on my tour I have seen nothing to compare with the glorious beauty of that place. In all the solemn shadows of its wild loneliness, the dark deeps and frowning heights of its grandeur, in all the sweet lights of its loveliness, it lives, and must ever live, in my charmed memory; but I will not attempt to picture it in words.
After dinner, though a light rain was falling, we took a row around the bay, and remained on the water until the night set in. I think we shall none of us soon forget that row over the smooth and silent bay, in the rain and deepening twilight, under the shadows of mountain and rock. The scene would have been too wild, solemn, and awfully lonely but for the peculiar wit and story-telling talent of “Jerry,” our guide and helmsman. He entertained us with some wonderful legends of a certain Father Shannon, a priest, and a famous character in this region about half a century ago.
QUEENSTOWN HARBOR
One anecdote illustrative of the holy man’s quick-wittedness impressed me as an instance of “cuteness” passing the cuteness of Yankees. “The good father,” says Jerry, “was one day fishing, in his boat, on the bay, when he heard a swarm of bees buzzing about him. Then he begins to rattle with a knife, or spoon, in an iron kettle he had with him in the boat, till he feels that all the bees have settled on his shoulders. Then he slyly reaches back, and takes hold of the tail of his shirt (begging your pardon, ladies!) and he suddenly turns it over his head, bees and all, and puts it into the kettle, which he covers over in a second just; and so he takes the whole swarm to Lord Bantry, and sells them for three pounds, and gets his shirt back, too, yer honor.”...
The mountain road from Glengariff to Killarney is a splendid specimen of engineering, and leads through scenery wild and beautiful in the extreme. On the sunny morning of our leaving Glengariff, landscape and air were fresh and delicious after the night’s abundant rain, and with thrills and palpitations of inexpressible joy my heart responded to the gladness of nature. I shall never forget the childish ecstasy of delight with which I gazed around me, and drank in the fragrant air of the morning.