It would not be a bad rule for the traveller in Ireland to avoid those inns where theological works are left in the coffee-room. He is pretty sure to be made to pay very dearly for these religious privileges.
We waited for the coach at the beautiful lodge and gate of Annsbrook; and one of the sons of the house coming up, invited us to look at the domain, which is as pretty and neatly ordered as—as any in England. It is hard to use this comparison so often, and must make Irish hearers angry. Can’t one see a neat house and grounds without instantly thinking that they are worthy of the sister country; and implying, in our cool way, its superiority everywhere else? Walking in this gentleman’s grounds, I told him, in the simplicity of my heart, that the neighbouring country was like Warwickshire, and the grounds as good as any English park. Is it the fact that English grounds are superior, or only that Englishmen are disposed to consider them so?
A pretty little twining river, called the Nanny’s Water, runs through the Park: there is a legend about that, as about other places. Once upon a time (ten thousand years ago), St. Patrick being thirsty as he passed by this country, came to the house of an old woman, of whom he asked a drink of milk. The old woman brought it to his reverence with the best of welcomes, and——here it is a great mercy that the Belfast mail comes up, whereby the reader is spared the rest of the history.
The Belfast mail had only to carry us five miles to Drogheda, but, in revenge, it made us pay three shillings for the five miles; and again, by way of compensation, it carried us over five miles of a country that was worth, at least, five shillings to see—not romantic or especially beautiful, but having the best of all beauty—a quiet, smiling, prosperous, unassuming, work-day look, that in views and landscapes most good judges admire. Hard by Nanny’s Water, we came to Duleek Bridge, where, I was told, stands an old residence of the De Bath family, who were, moreover, builders of the picturesque old Bridge.
It leads over a wide green common, which puts one in mind of Eng—— (a plague on it, there is the comparison again!), and at the end of the common lies the village among trees: a beautiful and peaceful sight. In the background there was a tall, ivy-covered old tower, looking noble and imposing, but a ruin and useless—then there was a church, and next to it a chapel—the very same sun was shining upon both. The chapel and church were connected by a farmyard, and a score of golden ricks were in the background, the churches in unison, and the people (typified by the corn-ricks) flourishing at the feet of both—may one ever hope to see the day in Ireland when this little landscape allegory shall find a general application?
For some way, after leaving Duleek, the road and the country round continue to wear the agreeable cheerful look just now lauded. You pass by a house where James II. is said to have slept the night before the Battle of the Boyne (he took care to sleep far enough off on the night after), and also by an old red-brick hall, standing at the end of an old chace or terrace-avenue, that runs for about a mile down to the house, and finishes at a moat towards the road. But as the coach arrives near Drogheda, and in the boulevards of that town, all resemblance to England is lost. Up hill and down, we pass low rows of filthy cabins in dirty undulations. Parents are at the cabin-doors dressing the hair of ragged children; shockheads of girls peer out from the black circumference of smoke, and children inconceivably filthy, yell wildly and vociferously as the coach passes by. One little ragged savage rushed furiously up the hill, speculating upon permission to put on the drag-chain at descending, and hoping for a halfpenny reward. He put on the chain, but the guard did not give a halfpenny. I flung him one, and the boy rushed wildly after the carriage, holding it up with joy. ‘The man inside has given me one,’ says he, holding it up exultingly to the guard. I flung out another (by-the-bye, and without any prejudice, the halfpence in Ireland are smaller than those of England), but when the child got this halfpenny, small as it was, it seemed to overpower him—the little man’s look of gratitude was worth a great deal more than the biggest penny ever struck.
The town itself, which I had three-quarters of an hour to ramble through, is smoky, dirty, and lively. There was a great bustle in the black main street, and several good shops, though some of the houses were in a half state of ruin, and battered shutters closed many of the windows, where formerly had been ‘Emporiums,’ ‘Repositories,’ and other grandly-titled abodes of small commerce. Exhortations to repeal were liberally plastered on the blackened walls, proclaiming some past or promised visit of the great agitator. From the bridge is a good bustling spectacle of the river and the craft; the quays were grimy with the discharge of the coal-vessels that lay alongside them; the warehouses were not less black; the seamen and porters loitering on the quay were as swarthy as those of Puddledock; numerous factories and chimneys were vomiting huge clouds of black smoke: the commerce of the town is stated by the Guide-book to be considerable, and increasing of late years. Of one part of its manufactures every traveller must speak with gratitude—of the ale namely, which is as good as the best brewed in the sister kingdom. Drogheda ale is to be drunk all over Ireland in the bottled state: candour calls for the acknowledgment that it is equally praiseworthy in draught. And while satisfying himself of this fact, the philosophic observer cannot but ask why ale should not be as good elsewhere as at Drogheda; is the water of the Boyne the only water in Ireland whereof ale can be made?
Above the river and craft, and the smoky quays of the town, the hills rise abruptly, up which innumerable cabins clamber. On one of them, by a church, is a round tower or fort, with a flag; the church is the successor of one battered down by Cromwell in 1649, in his frightful siege of the place. The place of one of his batteries is still marked outside the town, and known as ‘Cromwell’s Mount’; here he ‘made the breach assaultable, and, by the help of God, stormed it.’ He chose the strongest point of the defence for his attack.
After being twice beaten back, by the divine assistance he was enabled to succeed in a third assault: he ‘knocked on the head’ all the officers of the garrison; he gave orders that none of the men should be spared. ‘I think,’ says he, ‘that night we put to the sword two thousand men, and one hundred of them having taken possession of St. Peter’s steeple and a round tower next the gate, called St. Sunday’s, I ordered the steeple of St. Peter’s to be fired, when one in the flames was heard to say, “God confound me, I burn, I burn!”’ The Lord General’s history of ‘this great mercy vouchsafed to us’ concludes with appropriate religious reflections: and prays Mr. Speaker of the House of Commons to remember that ‘it is good that God alone have all the glory.’ Is not the recollection of this butchery almost enough to make an Irishman turn rebel?
When troops march over the bridge, a young friend of mine (whom I shrewdly suspect to be an Orangeman in his heart) told me that their bands play the ‘Boyne Water.’ Here is another legend of defeat for the Irishman to muse upon; and here it was, too, that King Richard II. received the homage of four Irish kings, who flung their skenes or daggers at his feet and knelt to him, and were wonder-stricken by the riches of his tents and the garments of his knights and ladies. I think it is in Lingard that the story is told; and the antiquarian has no doubt seen that beautiful old manuscript at the British Museum where these yellow-mantled warriors are seen riding down to the king, splendid in his forked beard, and peaked shoes, and long, dangling, scalloped sleeves, and embroidered gown.