And finally, no man could be received until he had first sworn fidelity and obedience to the king and commander of the Fianna.
It’s a sin that there is no place for visitors to stay at Tara. The nearest hotel is seven miles away, and the lord of the manor cannot entertain every American tourist that comes along. I know of no lovelier landscape or more attractive site for a summer hotel, but I suppose the patronage would be limited, because Tara is a long way from the railroad and an automobile costs five guineas a day with an allowance of seven shillings for the board and lodging of the chauffeur and whatever gasoline may be used.
We were sorry to leave the historic place. One is sorry to leave almost every place in Ireland. It is such a fascinating country. But the next stop will develop something else quite as novel and interesting as it did to us at Castle Dunsany, the ancient home of the Plunkett family.
The “Annals of the Four Masters” relate that there were fierce lords upon the road from Dublin to Tara, and that if the traveler was not robbed by the Lord of Dunsany Castle he would be robbed by the Lord of Killeen, and if he managed to escape Killeen he was sure to be robbed at Dunsany. These two famous places stand on both sides of the highway not more than a mile apart, and, although both have been restored and remodeled for modern occupants they are still very old and associated with much interesting history. Dunsany Castle was built by Hugh de Lacy about the middle of the twelfth century. Killeen Castle was the seat of the Earl of Fingal. Both are surrounded by magnificent demesnes or wooded parks inclosed with high walls and filled with game, according to the Irish custom. Near by Castle Dunsany, in the midst of a glorious grove of trees that have been growing there for centuries, are the roofless walls of the ancient Church of St. Nicholas, rebuilt upon the site of an older sanctuary by Nicholas Plunkett in the fifteenth century and named in honor of his patron saint. His sarcophagus is in the center surrounded by other tombs of the Plunkett family for several generations. At Killeen is another church of similar age and in similar condition, and that also contains the monuments of the founder and his family for many generations.
Hugh de Lacy was the original owner and occupier of the Abbey of Bective, one of the finest of the many ruins in this section, and in its time a very important establishment. He was a Norman knight of ancient French family, who came over with Strongbow at the first English invasion of Ireland and was given the Province of Meath for his possessions. Although not the greatest fighter, he was the wisest and best governor of all the barons who served Henry II. in Ireland. He built strong castles in all parts of Meath, including Castle Dunsany and Castle Killeen, and greatly increased his power and influence by marrying a daughter of the old king of this province, Roderick O’Conor. He was accused of conspiring to make himself King of Ireland, and did not live to clear himself of the charge. One day while he was superintending the building of a new castle at Durrow a young Irishman drew a battle ax that was concealed under his cloak, and with one blow cut off the great baron’s head. The murderer afterward explained that it was done to revenge the desecration of a venerated oratory that had once been occupied by St. Columba and had been torn away by De Lacy.
Hugh de Lacy’s son and namesake, after his father’s death, attempted to seize the throne of Connaught and was betrayed and killed in the Cathedral of Downpatrick on Good Friday in the year 1204, where, barefooted and unarmed, he was saying his prayers and doing penance for his sins. When he was attacked he seized the nearest weapon, a large brass crucifix, and dashed out the brains of thirteen of his assailants with it before he was overpowered. When the elder Hugh de Lacy was murdered his head was taken to the Abbey of St. Thomas, in Dublin, according to the terms of his will, made several years previous. The monks demanded the remainder of the body, but the abbot of Bective would not surrender it until he had been commanded to do so by the pope.
XIII
SAINT PATRICK AND HIS SUCCESSOR
The little cathedral city of Armagh (pronounced with a strong accent upon the last syllable) is the most sacred town of Ireland. It is the ecclesiastical headquarters of both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant churches, the seat of the most ancient and celebrated of Irish schools of learning; the burial place of Brian Boru, the greatest of all the Irish kings; the home of St. Patrick for the most important years of his life, and the cradle of the Christian church in the United Kingdom. It was from Armagh that the message of the gospel was sent to the people of Scotland and England, and there was the genesis of the faith that is now professed by all the nation.
Armagh is a quiet, well kept town of about eight thousand inhabitants, built on a hill around the cathedral founded by St. Patrick in the year 432, and the streets are steep and rather crooked. It resembles an English university town, and looks more like Cambridge or Winchester than the rest of Ireland. More than twelve hundred years ago it was the greatest educational center in the civilized world, and it still has several important schools, including a Roman Catholic theological seminary, a large convent for young women, a technological school, an astronomical observatory, a public library of twenty thousand volumes and a little old-fashioned Grecian temple of a building with a sign to advertise it as the rooms of the Philosophical Society. The houses are packed together very closely, as is the custom in all Ireland, although there is plenty of room for the town to spread out, if it were the fashion to do so. There are ranges of green hills all around, and their sunny slopes are closely planted to grain, and other crops. We saw them at harvest time when the song of the reaper and the mower was heard in the land. There are several linen factories in the neighborhood which furnish employment for the wives and daughters of the town, and a small automobile factory. The population is about equally divided between Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths. There are three Presbyterian churches and one Methodist, which assert themselves boldly even in the presence of an ecclesiastical see that is nearly fourteen hundred years old.