One Irish Summer

by William Eleroy Curtis

The jarvey who drove our jaunting car told us that there are nine hundred people in the poorhouse and nine hundred more in the insane asylum, the latter “bein’ mostly women who came there from drinkin’ too much tay”—and the excessive use of that herb is destroying the nerves of the feminine population.

I have often been told to “Go to Ballyhack,” and many a time I have heard people wish that somebody they were offended at might go there, but I never had an opportunity to do so until I reached Waterford. Ballyhack is quite an attractive place, a pretty little fishing village of about one hundred people on the bank of the River Suir, eight miles south of the city and nine miles from the sea. It is not considered profane to condemn a person to Ballyhack any more than to Halifax, although you may have a warmer place in your mind. It is a delightful excursion from Waterford in a jaunting car, through fertile farms and velvety meadows, to the town of Passage, whence a boatman will take you across the river to Ballyhack, which is a group of stone buildings, fish-packing houses, and tenements of the fishermen, with a tall, picturesque old tower rising from their midst by the roadside. The top is crumbling, the stones are loose, but the walls for sixty feet or more from the ground are yet perfectly solid and quite as firm as they were when they were erected by the Knights Templar a thousand years ago to defend one of the most convenient landing places on the river.

It is believed that the tower of Ballyhack was intended as an outpost for the protection of these two monasteries against pirates and other marauders and that the monks stored their arms and munitions there and a supply of provisions. There is no dock. The fishboats are hauled up on the gravel beach and their cargoes are carried across a narrow roadway in big baskets to the packing-houses, where they are cleaned and salted or shipped fresh to London and Liverpool.

Curragmore, the seat of the famous Beresford family, is twelve miles in the opposite direction from Waterford, over hill and down dale, and through a most delightful country. It is an ancient place, for the Beresfords are a very old family, descended from Sir Robert la Poer, who landed with Prince John at Waterford in 1185 and was given a vast tract of land that had belonged to an Irish earl who refused to submit to the sovereignty of the Norman king. That was the fashion in those days when people were not so particular about the rights of others as at present. In this highly moral and righteous generation there’s a court sitting regularly to hear any complaints that a tenant may wish to make concerning the rent exacted for his farm or his cottage. A difference of opinion over a bed of turnips or a rabbit or “any other kind of bird” is argued one side and then the other by the lawyers, and many people are questioned to ascertain who is wrong and who is right. But at the date when the first Beresford arrived at Waterford from over the channel, his majesty the king decided the ownership of the territory in Ireland according to his whims. A frown could cost a man a farm and a smile could win him one. But life has not been all sunshine and taffy for the Beresfords. They have had their troubles like the rest of us. In 1310 the wife of John la Poer was burned as a witch—one of the grandmothers of that much beloved and hearty old sailor, admiral of the North Atlantic fleet of Great Britain, who visited us only a few years ago and made so many friends among the people of America.

The motto of the Beresford family is not exactly what one would expect, knowing the character and disposition and habits of the men. It is: “Nil Nisi Cruce” (No Dependence but the Cross). I suppose it is all right for Lord Charles Beresford, the “Fighting Bob” Evans of the British navy, to wear those words upon his crest, but his words and his acts do not always conform to such a pious phrase. The people round here are very proud of him and of Earl Roberts also—“Both fighters from their very cradles,” as a gentleman said.

“And there was Bill Beresford,” he continued, “a gallant soldier and the best horseman in Ireland—good, old ‘Ulundi Bill,’ as he was fondly known. There isn’t a man between the four seas to-day that can compare with him, either for a fight or a frolic. Bill Beresford overtopped them all. He did more to improve and encourage horse racing in Ireland than any man that ever lived except it was his father, Lord Henry Beresford, the third Marquis of Waterford. They called him the Nestor of the Irish turf, and he did deeds of daring and devilment in every corner of the world. His lordship was killed in the saddle, the place where he would prefer to die, for he loved horses as much as men, and there was mourning in all Ireland. His son Bill took closely after him. As colonel of the Ninth Lancers, Bill saved the British forces at the battle of Ulundi and was given a big jeweled star and a Victoria Cross for the job. But Charley is just as good a man as Bill. The Beresfords are all fighters. No family in Ireland has drawn the sword so often or so effectively, even if you go back to the invasion of the Normans when they first came into the country. And what’s the matter with the motto, ‘No dependence but the cross’?”

Lord “Bill” Beresford was laid to rest on the first day of the twentieth century and his obituaries said that he was the most popular man in Ireland. He was the third husband of that beautiful American woman, Lillian Warren-Hammersley-Churchill-Beresford, originally of Troy, N.Y., and afterward of Washington, widow of the late Duke of Marlborough and still one of the most charming women in London society. There was another brother, who recently died in Mexico, where he lived for many years as a ranchman, and left a large family of half-breed children.

The present Marquis of Waterford, Henri de la Poer Beresford, was born in 1875 and married Lady Beatrice, daughter of the Marquis of Lansdowne, in 1897. He is a lieutenant in the Horse Guards at London, is said to be a fine young fellow, and is developing the hereditary traits of the family. He has a son—the Earl of Tyrone, born in 1901—and three daughters who are younger.

Carrick Castle, which stands on the banks of the Suir not far from Waterford, is another beautiful place, built in 1309 by the great Earl of Ormonde. The Carricks were originally Butlers, and trace their descent as far back as Rollo, Duke of Normandy, grandfather of William the Conqueror. Edmund Butler was created Earl of Carrick in 1315, and his descendants have owned this estate ever since his time. The beautiful but unfortunate Anne Boleyn, wife of Henry VIII. and mother of Queen Elizabeth, was born in Carrick Castle and lived there until she was fifteen years old, when she went to England with Sir Thomas Boleyn, her father, and Lord Rochford, her brother, who was executed upon the same scaffold with herself.

The Province of Munster might be called properly “the Land of Ruined Castles,” for they are more numerous here than on the banks of the Rhine. You are scarcely ever out of sight of a crumbling tower or a useless gigantic wall wearing a mantle of ivy. Nearly all of these ruins are attributed to Cromwell and his army, who have no defenders, and the religious historians and local guides tell us that they were destroyed by that man of mighty prejudices and purposes in order to plant Protestantism upon the ruins of the papal power in Ireland. Cromwell was undoubtedly guilty of atrocious cruelty and devastation at the cost of thousands of innocent lives and hundreds of millions of property, but he could not have destroyed all these castles and monasteries if he had remained in Ireland ten times as long as he did, because many of them were in ruins when he arrived and many were not built until after his departure.