Travelling in Ireland.
And is it you’d be riding, by Blackwater to Fermoy?
You’ll be accommodated, to your heart’s content and joy,
There’s not a beast, nor car, but what’s beautiful and easy;
And then the pleasant road—bad’s the luck but it’ll please ye!
MS. Ballad.
Mr. Crofton Croker’s “Researches in the South of Ireland,” besides accounts of scenery and architectural remains, and illustrations of popular manners and superstition, conveys a very good idea of the roads and the methods of travelling in that part of the sister kingdom. The usual conveyance is called a car; its wheels are either a solid block rounded to the desired size, or they are formed of three pieces of wood clamped together. The wheels are fixed to a massive wooden axletree; this supports the shafts, which are as commonly constructed on the outside as on the inside of the wheels. In one of these machines Mr. Croker, with a lady and gentleman who accompanied him on his tour, took their seats. The car and horse were precisely of that description and condition in the [engraving]. Mr. W. H. Brooke painted a picture of this gentleman’s party, from whence he has obligingly made the drawing for the present purpose; the only alteration is in the travellers, for whom he has substituted a family on their removal from one cabin to another.
This, which is the common Irish car, is used throughout the province of Leinster, the midland counties, and some parts of the north. The country, or farmer’s car always has the wheels on the outside of the shafts, with a balustrade or upright railing fixed from the shaft to the side bars, which rise diagonally from them; this sort of enclosure is also at the back. This car is open at top for the convenience of carrying hay, corn, vegetables, tubs, packages, and turf, which is generally placed in wicker baskets, called a “kish;” two or four of these placed side by side occupy the entire body. The car, with the wheels between the shafts, is used for like purposes, but has the additional honour of being rendered a family conveyance, by cart ropes intertwisted or crossing each other from the top bars, whereon a ticking, stuffed with straw, and a quilt or coverlid, form a cushion for the comfort of the travellers. The car is the common, and indeed the only, mode of carrying coals in the city of Dublin to the houses of the consumers: from six to nine sacks, making about half a ton, lie very snugly across the bars. Of course, as a family conveyance, it is only in use among the poorest class in the country.
The common car somewhat varies in shape, as will appear from the following [figure], also drawn by Mr. Brooke.
It must be added, that though these cars maintain their ground in uncultivated districts, they are quickly disappearing, in the improved parts of Ireland, before the Scotch carts introduced by the agricultural societies.
The Irish “jaunting-car,” the “jingle,” the “noddy,” and a variety of other carriages, which ply for hire in Dublin, are wholly distinct and superior vehicles.