One Irish Summer

by William Eleroy Curtis

Another trolley line, with cars marked “Howth” (pronounced Ho-th), starting from the same place, Nelson’s Pillar, on Sackville Street, will take you entirely around the great island hill at the north entrance of the harbor of Dublin and for a mile or two on the shore of the Irish Sea. For the first fifteen or twenty minutes the car runs through the busy streets of the city, past the Amiens railway station, which, a friendly priest who occupied the adjoining seat told me, occupies the site of the house in which Charles Lever wrote “Harry Lorrequer,” “Charles O’Malley,” and other famous novels, and the good father sighed when he said that the reckless gayety and the jolly folks that Lever painted with his pen existed no longer. He was a most interesting companion was this friendly priest, and talked incessantly of the scenes and associations through which our little journey led.

We passed a monumental gate supported by two classic columns. One of them was marked in large letters “Deo Duce” and the other “Ferro Comitante” (With God for my guide and a sword by my side), which, he told me, was the motto upon the coat of arms of the great Lord Charlemont, who had taken so active a part in the history of Ireland. It was a famous family, he said, although the present earls are decadents and have no place in public affairs.

This ancient family seat, called “Marino,” was built at a tremendous cost by a dilettante earl who never allowed his expenditures to trouble him, but left the anxiety entirely to his creditors. The interior of the villa at the time it was built was the perfection of art and luxury. The floors, the ceilings, and the wainscoting were of mosaic. The walls were hung with the finest Irish poplin and decorated by the most noted artists of the time. The villa has been the scene of ghastly carousals and assemblies of the finest intellects in Ireland. The grave and the gay have gathered and dined beneath its roof, but the estate was sacrificed to the extravagance of the family, and its splendor, somewhat tarnished and rusty, to be sure, is now enjoyed by the students of the Christian Brothers, who occupy the beautiful villa for a school.

On one side of the car line high walls shut out to the ordinary passer-by the beauties they are intended to protect, but from the top of the tram cars any one can share them for “tuppence.” On the other side is the water, the Bay of Dublin, and, running parallel with the shore, is a long spit of land called the North Bull, which was formerly a terrible menace to the commerce of the coast. Nearly every winter’s gale sent a ship or two to destruction, and the bodies of hundreds of poor seamen have been washed up where the children are now playing in the sand. Here and there the skeletons of dead vessels may yet be seen, but the North Bull is no longer dangerous. Modern devices protect navigation, and in the midst of the heather and the glowing yellow gorse golf links have been laid out and a clubhouse has been erected, surrounded by lilacs, laburnums, and hawthorns, now in the full glory of their bloom. It is only twenty minutes’ ride by street car from the center of Dublin, and the business men can come out here to spend the long summer evenings at their sport.

Bailey Light at Howth, Mouth of Dublin Bay

A little farther on is a beautiful mansion built in 1835 upon the site and with the materials of Clontarf Castle, one of the oldest and most famous within the English Pale—which was an area sixty miles long and thirty miles wide around the city of Dublin. The castle originally belonged to the Knights Templar, and from them passed to the Knights of St. John. In 1541 it was surrendered to the crown by Sir John Rawson, prior of Kilmainham, who was created Viscount of Clontarf as compensation.

The famous battle of Clontarf, the final struggle between Christianity and heathenism on the soil of Ireland, was fought here on Good Friday in the year 1014 between the Danes under Sigtryg, the Viking, and the Irish under Brian Boru. Eight thousand men were slain on one side and four thousand on the other, including every prominent chief. The Irish were victorious, and, although the Danes were not immediately driven from the island, it was the end of their domination. They came in a thousand boats all the way from Denmark, from Scotland, the Orkneys, and from the many islands of the north, and when their leaders were killed they fled to the water to regain their ships, which lay at anchor or were beached on the shore of Dublin Bay. The Irish warriors followed and continued to slay them until the sea was crimson with heathen blood.

Brian Boru was not a myth, although we commonly associate him with fairy tales. He was the real thing, and it is often said that he was the only Irishman that ever did rule successfully over all Ireland. He was the first of the O’Briens and was King of Munster. His early career was very much like that of Alfred the Great, who lived but a short time before him in the middle of the ninth century, and he was not only the greatest warrior, but the greatest lawgiver and executive, and the greatest benefactor of his native country in the semi-savage days. His rival was Malachi the Great, the first of the O’Neills, who became king of Meath in 980 and reigned at Tara. To keep the peace Brian Boru and Malachi agreed to divide Ireland between them; but they did not get along well together, and Brian drove Malachi from his capital far into the north. Malachi finally submitted, and then all Ireland, for the first time in its history, was at peace under a single monarch for nearly forty years.