One Irish Summer

by William Eleroy Curtis

Bantry Bay is a magnificent inlet twenty-one miles long, and with an average breadth of four miles and an average depth of sixty fathoms, without a shoal or sandbank or any other peril to navigation. It is completely sheltered from the weather and is considered the finest harbor in Ireland. It is the rendezvous of the British North Atlantic fleet and the fleet of the channel, which come here regularly to practice maneuvers, to correct their compasses and regulate their range finders and do light repairs. The only town on the bay is a village of the same name, which has been described as a seaport without trade, a harbor without shipping, and a fishery without a market. There is a convent, a monastery, and a factory for the manufacture of Irish tweeds.

Glengariff Bridge

Adjoining the village is Bantry House, a stately mansion surrounded by a beautiful lawn and grove, which was the residence of the late Earl of Bantry, and was inherited by his nephew, Leigh White. Another nephew, Simon White, occupies the ancient Glengariff Castle, which is nearer the head of the bay—a large and gloomy-looking structure almost entirely hidden by the surrounding trees. Thirty-one thousand acres of land around the bay was inherited by these two young men, but it is very poor land. Three-fourths of it is bare rock, and the entire population upon their holdings is only about four hundred men, women, and children. A daughter of the late Earl of Bantry married Lord Ardilaun, who was Arthur Edward Guinness, a son of the great brewer of Dublin and probably the richest man in Ireland. The hotel is inclosed in a beautiful hedge of fuchsias, which flourish in this climate, and are commonly used for hedges. The grounds of the hotel extend over two hundred and fifty acres, mostly dense forest, with a beautiful garden of twelve acres or more. All the vegetables, poultry, eggs, and other produce are raised on the place, and the milk and cream and butter come from a private herd of cows, which is a great luxury.

There is splendid fishing, both in the bay and in two small lakes, one hour’s walk from the hotel, also boating, swimming, and any number of beautiful walks and drives through the woods and along the mountain roads. The only antiquity in the immediate neighborhood is a picturesque ruin called Cromwell’s bridge. While the grim old Covenanter was passing up the glen with an escort to visit the O’Sullivans, citizens of Glengariff who had heard of the devastation he had created elsewhere tore down a bridge over a mountain gorge, hoping that it would turn him back. But after much trouble he and his men succeeded in crossing the canyon into the village, and there he summoned the inhabitants and told them that if they did not restore the bridge by the time he returned from his visit he would hang a man for every hour’s delay. The bridge was ready for him, “fur they knew the auld villain would kape his word.”

The surrounding country is sparsely settled by a hardy, stubborn race, who fish in the winter and farm in the summer, like the people who live on the bleak New England coast. The children herd cattle, sheep, and goats upon the mountain sides; the pigs and the poultry share the ancient stone hovels occupied by their owners; the women cultivate a little spot of soil wherever they can find it in the crevices among the rocks, raising a few potatoes and cabbages, and look after the chickens and the babies. Scattered over the mountain side and reached by steep but perfect roads, are the roofless walls of what once were the homes of neighbors who have emigrated to America. The fate of those who remained seemed hopeless until recently, but the benevolent purposes of the government are brightening the lives and improving the condition of many of them. At Glengariff I got my first chance to observe the work of the Congested Districts Board through which the government is trying to relieve the distress of the poor and make life worth living for those wretched but courageous souls who dwell always in the mists of the mountains and among the moorlands and the peat bogs on the west coast of Ireland. They are the poorest, the least nourished, and the most helpless portion of the population. They are scattered widely. The arable soil is so scarce that they cannot live in communities and survive. Here and there among the rocks, where the kindly winds have dropped grains of earth during the ages, they are cultivating little patches of potatoes and cabbage. They follow a few cows and goats that nibble at the blades of grass that grow in the cracks of the rock and keep a few chickens, which share with them the roof shelter of a leaky, straw-thatched cabin built of rough stone and with a mud floor.

The cabins are as comfortless as one can imagine, but they are no worse than thousands that may be found in our southern States, in the mountains of Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia. Thousands of “crackers” in Georgia have no better homes and no more consolations in life, but their cabins are more neatly kept and are not situated among such filthy and loathsome surroundings as those of the poor “bog-trotters” of Ireland.

The interior of the cabins is quite as repulsive as the exterior. The chickens run in and out with the children, and they “kape the pig in the parlor” because that is the only room in the house and there is no other pen. The inevitable baby—you never enter a cabin without finding one—is always in its mother’s arms and another is generally clinging to her skirts, while two or three more are playing in the filth around the door. There is only one room, where they all sleep, the elder ones upon rough benches, covered with pallets of straw, and the younger ones on the floor—grandparents, parents, children, pigs, and chickens—young and old, both sexes, lying side by side, with whatever covering their scanty earnings enable them to provide. There are no sheets or mattresses; no pillows, only comfortables that have been used for generations, and tattered blankets that are never washed. There is no furniture but a table and two or three stools. There are shelves, and a few nails and hooks driven into the walls. There is no stove, but a peat fire under the chimney where the mother cooks in pans and kettles when the weather is stormy and uses a rock outside for a kitchen when it doesn’t rain or blow. There are few dishes, mostly broken china, and the covers of tin cans. The walls are windowless; there is no light but that which comes through the door, and during the long winter nights, when, in this latitude, it becomes dark at four o’clock, the family hibernate in the darkness because candles are beyond their means and burning peat gives no light. You can understand why so many of these poor wretches lose their wits. The insane asylums of Ireland are filled with unfortunates from this coast, most of them are hereditary and chronic cases caused by melancholia, nervousness, and starvation. I have been trying in vain to find out how they spend their time during the long winter evenings, but have been unable to get any satisfactory information on that point.

Notwithstanding these conditions a stranger always receives a polite and a cordial welcome and usually an invitation to come in and rest and drink a cup of milk. There is no apology for poverty, or the appearance of things; there is no obsequiousness and no insolence, but a dignified, hearty handclasp at the coming and at the going and a cheerful invitation to call again. The Children of the Mist are invariably well behaved and polite. Although their clothes are ragged and their bodies are filthy with dirt, they have the same manners you would expect among the nobility. They are always obedient, deferential, and unselfish. They are kind and attentive to their younger brothers and sisters, and show perfect respect to their parents and elders. We have seen them in the cabins, in the fields, and in the schools. I have asked everybody where they get their manners, and who teaches them deportment in this barren wilderness of filth and bad smells. I asked Miss Walshe, the medical officer of the district, who goes from cabin to cabin as an angel of healing; I asked Miss O’Donnell, who has charge of the lace school; I asked the head constable at the police station; I asked the school-teachers and others, and they all say that the politeness of the Irish peasants, like their pride, is inborn and final proof that they are the descendants of kings. This pride is a strange thing, and it is most surprising. Every woman you find in a soiled and ragged dress in a wretched cabin receives you as her equal and talks with dignity and without restraint, and Mr. Duke, manager of the Eccles Hotel, told me this morning of a mountain peasant whose raggedness aroused his sympathy, but who would not accept a suit of clothes.