The long and short of the matter is, that on getting off the lake, after seven hours’ rowing, I felt as much relieved as if I had been dining for the same length of time with her Majesty the Queen, and went jumping home as gaily as possible; but those marine lawyers insisted so piteously upon seeing Ross Castle, close to which we were at length landed, that I was obliged (in spite of repeated oaths to the contrary) to ascend that tower, and take a bird’s-eye view of the scene. Thank Heaven, I have neither tail nor wings, and have not the slightest wish to be a bird; that continual immensity of prospect which stretches beneath those little wings of theirs must deaden their intellects, depend on it. Tomkins and I are not made for the immense. We can enjoy a little at a time, and enjoy that little very much; or if like birds, we are like the ostrich—not that we have fine feathers to our backs, but because we cannot fly. Press us too much, and we become flurried and run off, and bury our heads in the quiet bosom of dear mother earth, and so get rid of the din, and the dazzle, and the shouting.
Because we dined upon potatoes, that was no reason we should sup on buttermilk: well, well! salmon is good, and whisky is good too.
CHAPTER XII
KILLARNEY—THE RACES—MUCROSS
THE races were as gay as races could be, in spite of one or two untoward accidents that arrived at the close of the day’s sport. Where all the people came from that thronged out of the town was a wonder; where all the vehicles, the cars, barouches, and shandrydans, the carts, the horse-and donkey-men, could have found stable and shelter, who can tell? Of all these equipages and donkeypages I had a fine view from Mrs. Macgillicuddy’s window, and it was pleasant to see the happy faces shining under the blue cloaks as the carts rattled by.
A very handsome young lady—I presume Miss MacG.—who gives a hand to the drawing-room, and comes smiling in with the teapot,—Miss MacG., I say, appeared to-day in a silk bonnet and stiff silk dress, with a brooch and a black mantle, as smart as any lady in the land, and looking as if she was accustomed to her dress too, which the housemaid on banks of Thames does not. Indeed, I have not met a more ladylike young person in Ireland than Miss MacG.; and when I saw her in a handsome car on the course, I was quite proud of a bow.
Tramping thither, too, as hard as they could walk, and as happy and smiling as possible, were Mary the coachman’s wife, of the day before, and Johanna with the child, and presently the other young lady—the man with the stick, you may be sure; he would toil a year for that day’s pleasure: they are all mad for it; people walk for miles and miles round to the race; they come without a penny in their pockets often, trusting to chance and charity, and that some worthy gentleman may fling them a sixpence. A gentleman told me that he saw on the course persons from his part of the country, who must have walked eighty miles for the sport.
For a mile and a-half to the racecourse there could be no pleasanter occupation than looking at the happy multitudes who were thronging thither; and, I am bound to say, that on rich or poor shoulders I never saw so many handsome faces in my life. In the carriages, among the ladies of Kerry, every second woman was handsome; and there is something peculiarly tender and pleasing in the looks of the young female peasantry that is perhaps even better than beauty. Beggars had taken their stations along the road in no great numbers, for I suspect they were most of them on the ground, and those who remained were consequently of the oldest and ugliest. It is a shame that such horrible figures are allowed to appear in public as some of the loathsome ones which belong to these unhappy people. On went the crowd, however, laughing and gay as possible; all sorts of fun passing from car to foot passengers as the pretty girls came clattering by, and the ‘boys’ had a word for each. One lady with long flowing auburn hair, who was turning away her head from some ‘boys’ very demurely, I actually saw, at a pause of the cart, kissed by one of them. She gave the fellow a huge box on the ear, and he roared out ‘Oh, murther!’ and she frowned for some time as hard as she could, whilst the ladies in the blue cloaks at the back of the car uttered a shrill rebuke in Irish. But in a minute the whole party was grinning, and the young fellow who had administered the salute may, for what I know, have taken another without the slap on the face, by way of exchange.
And here, lest the fair public may have a bad opinion of the personage who talks of kissing with such awful levity, let it be said that with all this laughing, romping, kissing, and the like, there are no more innocent girls in the world than the Irish girls; and that the women of our squeamish country are far more liable to err. One has but to walk through an English and Irish town, and see how much superior is the morality of the latter. That great terror-striker, the Confessional, is before the Irish girl, and, sooner or later, her sins must be told there.
By this time we are got upon the course, which is really one of the most beautiful spots that ever was seen; the lake and mountains lying along two sides of it, and of course visible from all. They were busy putting up the hurdles when we arrived—stiff bars and poles, four feet from the ground, with furze-bushes over them. The grand stand was already full; along the hedges sate thousands of the people, sitting at their ease doing nothing, and happy as kings. A daguerreotype would have been of great service to have taken their portraits, and I never saw a vast multitude of heads and attitudes so picturesque and lively. The sun lighted up the whole course and the lakes with amazing brightness, though behind the former lay a huge rack of the darkest clouds, against which the cornfields and meadows shone in the brightest green and gold, and a row of white tents was quite dazzling.
There was a brightness and intelligence about this immense Irish crowd, which I don’t remember to have seen in an English one. The women in their blue cloaks, with red smiling faces peering from one end, and bare feet from the other, had seated themselves in all sorts of pretty attitudes of cheerful contemplation; and the men, who are accustomed to lie about, were doing so now with all their might—sprawling on the banks, with as much ease and variety as club-room loungers on their soft cushions—or squatted leisurely among the green potatoes. The sight of so much happy laziness did one good to look on. Nor did the honest fellows seem to weary of this amusement. Hours passed on, and the gentlefolks (judging from our party) began to grow somewhat weary; but the finest peasantry in Europe never budged from their posts, and continued to indulge in talk, indolence, and conversation.