Popular tradition ascribes the utter destruction of the house to the fairies, who, on its becoming untenanted, used to take up their quarters there, and pursue their nocturnal sports in great content. But a tenant being found, and repairs of the house being commenced, a huge man in huge jack-boots used to come every night, and making a horse of it by bestriding the roof, would push his legs through the tiles, and, imitating galloping, shake the roof to pieces. It was therefore obliged to remain empty, till, falling into ruin, it was at length cleared clean away, with the exception of these few stones.
The very ordinary character of this scene, and of the country round, almost extinguished my desire for proceeding onward five miles further to Lissoy, the reputed Auburn, especially as the Edgeworths had told me it was not worth my while. I inquired, however, of a farmer that I met on my return to the car that waited for me on the road, what sort of a place Lissoy was. "Oh, a very beautiful place!" said he, "a very beautiful place! You must see it: that was where Oliver Goldsmith lived and died." "Lived, but not died," I replied: "he died in London." "Oh no! your honor," replied the man, "I assure you he died there, and lies buried at Kilkenny West."
The accuracy of the man's account was about equal in all its parts. Lissoy was just as truly beautiful as Goldsmith was buried there. But this is always the way with the Irish peasantry. Unlike the Scotch, whose local knowledge is generally very correct, they seem to look upon all remarkable men as they do on their saints, and insist on their remains being preserved among them. At Kilcolman Castle I was assured with equal positiveness that Spenser was buried just below the castle, and the spot pointed out to me. There was, however, sufficient charm in the farmer's assurance that Lissoy was a very beautiful place, to turn the scale for going on. In such cases one is willing to be deceived, and follow the slightest word, though with an inward consciousness that we shall not find what we are promised. We drove on, therefore, six or seven miles further, over a very monotonous, naked country, only marked by a few banks for fences, and a few little smoky cabins with a poor population. It is a country that to Goldsmith's boyish fancy might be charming, but is certainly to an English eye by no means romantic. A part of an old round tower, however, stands near Auburn. There are the ruins of an old castle not far off, and old parks that are charming. One I passed, old, gray, craggy, and full of fern, but having not a single tree in it except old thorn-trees, large and of venerable age. There was a desolate antiquity about it that was attractive to the imagination. From the higher part of the road, too, approaching Lissoy, you see the Shannon hastening on toward the west. Presently, at a turn of the road, we passed the public house said to be that alluded to in The Deserted Village, and were in that "very beautiful place," Lissoy. It consists, in fact, of a few common cottages by the road side, on a flat, and by no means particularly interesting scene. A few hundred yards beyond these cottages stand, at some distance from the road, the ruins of the house where Goldsmith's father lived, and which continued in the family till 1802, when it was sold by Henry, the son of Henry, Oliver Goldsmith's brother, the nephew of the poet who had gone to America. This house was described in 1790 by the Rev. Mr. Hancock, of Athlone, who was intimately acquainted with the Goldsmith family, and, indeed, managed their property for them, as "a snug farm-house, in view of the high road, to which a straight avenue leads, with double rows of ash-trees, six miles northeast of this town—Athlone. The farm is still held under the Naper family, by a nephew of Goldsmith at present in America. In the front view of the house is the 'decent church' of Kilkenny West, that literally 'tops the neighboring hill;' and in a circuit of not more than half a mile diameter around the house, are 'the never-failing brook,' 'the busy mill,' 'the hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade,' 'the brook with mantling cresses spread,' 'the straggling fence that skirts the way, with blossomed furze unprofitably gay,' 'the thorn that lifts its head on high, where once the sign-post caught the passing eye,' 'the house where nut-brown draughts inspired;' in short, every striking object of the picture. There are, besides, many ruined houses in the neighborhood, bespeaking a better state of population than at present."
Such it was. Prior's description of it at his visit a few years ago would very nearly do for it now. "The house once occupied by the rector of Kilkenny West, pleasantly situated and of good dimensions, is now a ruin, verifying the truth of the pathetic lines of his son—
'Vain, transitory splendors! Could not all
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall!'
The front, including a wing, extends, as nearly as could be judged by passing it, sixty-eight feet by a depth of twenty-four; it consisted of two stories, with five windows in each. The roof has been off for a period of twenty years: the gable-ends remain, but the front and back walls of the upper story have crumbled away, and if the hand of the destroyer be not stayed, will soon wholly disappear. Two or three wretched cottages for laborers, surrounded by mud, adjoin it on the left. Behind the house is an orchard of some extent, and the remains of a garden, both utterly neglected. In fact, a pretty avenue of double rows of ash-trees, which formed the approach from the high road, about sixty yards distant, and at one time presented an object of interest to travelers, has, like every other trace of care or superintendence, disappeared—cut down by the ruthless hand of some destroyer. No picture of desolation can be more complete. As if an image of the impending ruin had been present, the poet has painted with fearful accuracy what his father's house was to be:
'Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,
And still where many a garden flower grows wild;
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.'"
Little can be added to that account. There still stands the long, white ruin of the house which sheltered Goldsmith as a boy, at the right-hand end one tall gable and chimney remaining aloft, the other having, since Mr. Prior's visit, fallen in. At the left hand, near the house, still remains one of the wretched cottages he mentions. I went into it. The floor of mud was worn into hollows, in which geese were sitting in little pools. There was a dresser on one side, with a few plates laid on it; a few chairs of a rudeness of construction such as no Englishman who has not visited an Irish cabin has any conception of; and the interior of the roof, for ceiling it had none, was varnished into a jetty brilliancy with the smoke.