the next morning at breakfast, a scotch gentleman, with an amazing accent, would read the newspaper in such loud tones to his friend, that, not being monks, nor accustomed to be read to, more monastico, at our meals, we really could not enjoy our food, and were compelled to toss up which of us should recite to the other the list of bankrupts from the times. i lost, but had not progressed far in my distinct enunciation of the unhappy insolvents, when the caledonian took the hint, and we ate our mackerel in peace.
leaving dublin by the “midland great western railway,” at 10.30, we reached galway at 3.45. the intermediate country is, for the most part, dreary and uninteresting, at times resembling the bleaker parts of derbyshire, and at times chat moss. “i am no botanist,” as the undergraduate remarked to the farmer, who expostulated with him for riding over his wheat; but the agriculture appeared to be feeble, and to show want of management in its twofold signification. the green crops looked well everywhere, but the corn was thin, and the pastures by no means of that emerald hue which we had expected to find. with the exceptions of peasants, cutting and stacking peat for their winter fuel, children at the doors of cottages, the railway passengers and officials, there seemed to us, coming from densely populated england, to be really “nobody about;” and the contrast between our present route and that which we had travelled, two days before, through the “potteries,” was as marked as contrast well could be. this comparative quietude and silence prevailed wherever we went, as though we were wandering through the grounds of some country place, “the family” being abroad, and most of the servants gone out to tea. ah, when will the family come back to live at home, to take delight in this beautiful but neglected garden, weed the walks, turn out the pig, and look after these indolent and quarrelsome servants?—indolent and quarrelsome, only because there are none to encourage industry and to maintain peace.
we passed the station of maynooth, but did not see the “royal college of st. patrick,” and are therefore unable to vituperate that establishment, as otherwise it would be our duty to do.
missing this fashionable christian exercise, i amused myself by attiring a portly, closeshaven priest—who sat opposite to me, and who had a face which would have represented anybody with the aid of a clever costumier—in all sorts of imaginary head-dresses, dowagers' turbans, grenadiers' caps, gampian bonnets, beadles' hats, &c., and endeavoured to fancy the feelings of his flock, if they were to see him in reality, as i in thought.
passing through county meath, we were again reminded of swift, who held the rectory of agher, with the vicarages of laracor and rathbeggan therein, and of the beautiful hester, sacrificed to his vanity, and crying aloud, in piteous tone, “it is too late! it is too late!”
nigh to athlone (of which more hereafter) is the village of auburn, formerly called lissoy, the residence of parson goldsmith, and the early home of the poet. the scenes of his childhood and his youth were doubtless remembered by him, when he wrote “the deserted village,” and many features of resemblance may still be traced.
at ballinasloe (everybody has heard of its great horse-fair, and how the hunters jump over the walls of the “pound,” in height about eight feet, irish) we entered the county of galway, and tremblingly anticipated, after all we had heard of its wild, reckless sons, that some delirious driver would spring upon the engine, with a screech louder than its own, put on all steam, run us off the line for fun, and cause us to be challenged by our fellow-passengers, should we escape with our lives, for not appreciating the sport. but we travelled onwards, demurely and at peace; and, indeed, throughout our little tour, so far from being provoked or annoyed, we met with nothing but kindness and courtesy, and a good-humoured willingness to be pleased and to please.
the railway hotel at galway is the largest that we saw in ireland, and contains, as we had been informed, “a power o' beds.” these want sleepers sadly, and at present the tourist, as he wanders from coffee-room to dormitory, feels very much
“like one that treads alone
some banquet-hall deserted,
whose guests are fled,” &c.,
and cheers his loneliness with the thought, that should galway become (as all who care for ireland must hope) the port for america, this solemn stillness shall depress no more. the inn forms one side of the principal square, and, the neighbour buildings being comparatively small and dingy, resembles some grand lady, in all her crinoline, teaching the third class at a sunday school. the grass-plat and garden are nicely kept, but their chief ornaments struck us as being rather incongruous, to wit, hydrangeas and cannon! the guns were pointed at our bedroom windows, and it really required some little resolution next morning to shave ourselves with placidity “at the cannons' mouth.” having secured places for the morrow on the car to clifden, specially stipulating for “the lake side” of the conveyance, we selected a shrewd-looking lad from a crowd of candidates (the roman candidati wore white togas in the market-place, but these young gentlemen did not), and went to see the sights. we saw a great deal that was very interesting, and a great deal that was very dirty; we saw the traces of spanish architecture, in quaint gateways and quadrangular courts, but were not “reminded of seville,” our only association with that city being a passionate love of marmalade; we saw lynch's castle, and its grotesque carving is very curious; we saw the house in deadman's lane, where lived that fitz-stephen, warden of galway, who, according to the worst authenticated tradition, assisted at the hanging of his own son; we saw warehouses sans ware; granaries, some without grain, and others with “the meal-sacks on the whitened floor;” we saw and greatly admired queen's college; we saw chapels and nunneries, whence the angelus bell sounded as we passed; above all, we saw the claddagh. going thither, our little showman told us of the big trade in wines between this place and spain which flourished in the good times of old, and i foolishly thought to perplex him by the inquiry, “whether much business was done in the spanish juice line?”
“and sure,” said he, “your onner must know, that was the thrade intirely. divil a taste of anything else did they bring us, but the juist of their spanish vines.”
the englishman who desires a new sensation should pay a visit to the claddagh. when we arrived, the men were at sea; but the women, in their bright red petticoats, descending half-way down the uncovered leg, their cloaks worn like the spanish mantilla, and of divers colours, their headkerchiefs and hoods, were grouped among the old grey ruins where the fish market is held, and formed a tableau not to be forgotten. though their garments are torn, and patched, and discoloured, there is a graceful simple dignity about them which might teach a lesson to parisian milliners; and to my fancy the most becoming dress in all the world is that of a peasant girl of connamara. compare it, reader, with our present mode, and judge. look at the two, sculptor, and say which will you carve? say, when “santa philomena” is graved in marble, shall it be with flounces and hoops?
no, whatever may be the wrongs of ireland no lover of the picturesque and beautiful would wish to see her re-dressed (so far as the ladies are concerned—the gentlemen might be improved); no one would desire to see her peasant girls in the tawdry bonnets and brass-eyed boots, which stultify the faces and cripple the feet of the daughters of our english labourers.
as to the origin of these claddagh people, i am not sufficiently “up” in ethnology, to state with analytical exactness the details of their descent; but i should imagine them to be one-third irish, one-third arabian, and the other zingaro, or spanish gypsy. 1 i thought that i recognised in one old lady an ojibbeway chief, who frightened me a good deal in my childhood, but she had lost the expression of ferocity, and i was, perhaps, mistaken.
the men are all fishermen (very clumsy ones, according to miss martineau, who talks about harpoons as if they were crochet needles, in her interesting “letters from ireland”); but they give up their cargoes to the women on landing, only stipulating that from the proceeds they may be supplied with a good store of drink and tobacco, and so get due compensation on the shore for their unvarying sobriety at sea.
1 wales is also represented by members of the jones family.
the original john may have come over with thomas joyce, who
was good enough to appropriate “the joyce country” to
himself and family, in the reign of edward the first.
they live (some 1500 souls in all) in a village of miserable cabins, the walls of mud and stone, and for the most part windowless, the floors damp and dirty, and the roofs a mass of rotten straw and weeds. the poultry mania—(and if it is not mania to give ten guineas for a bantam, in what does insanity consist? l)—must be here at its height, for the cocks and hens roost in the parlour. but “the swells” of the claddagh are its pigs. they really have not only a “landed expression,” as though the place belonged to them, but a supercilious gait and mien; and with an autocratic air, as though repeating to themselves the spirited verses of mr. a. selkirk, they go in and out, whenever and wherever they please. i saw one of them, bold as the beast who upset giotto, 2 knock over a little child with his snout; and i have a sad impression that the juvenine was whipped for interfering with the royal progress. frank solemnly declared that he saw one, as portrayed with his back against the lintail of his home, and smoking his evening pipe.
1 this form of delirium is by no means of modern origin.
opvi-ôofiavta, a passionate love of rare birds, was known
among the ladies of athens.
2 we read in lanzi's history of painting, that as giotto
was walking with his friends, one sunday, in the via del
cocomero at florence, he was overthrown by a pig running
between his legs. whereupon the painter, albeit he was in
his best clothes, philosophically recognised a just
retribution, “for,” said he, “although i have earned many
thousand crowns with the bristles of these animals, i never
gave to one of them a spoonful of swill in my life!”
i receive this statement cum grano salis (always appropriate to bacon), as i do phil purcel's, that “there was in ireland an old breed of swine, which is now nearly extinct, except in some remote parts of the country, where they are still useful in the hunting season, if dogs happen to be scarce;” 1 and (with all deference to the lady).
1 carleton's “traits and stories of the irish peasantry.”
mr. and mrs. s. c. hall's, “an acquaintance of ours taught one to point, and the animal found game as correctly as a pointer. he gave tongue, too, after his own fashion, by grunting in a sonorous tone, and understood when he was to take the field as well as any dog.” 1 but, however this may be, everything in the claddagh is done to “please the pigs:”
“pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
you see them, lords of all around, pass by;”
and og reigneth once more in basan. he is precious and he has his privileges. “i think” (said phil from the hob) “that nobody has a better right to the run of the house, whedher up stairs or down stairs, than him that pays the rint” such is the great destiny of the irish pig. he is not associated in the prospective contemplations of his owner with low views of pork and sausages; for paddy says, with launcelot, “if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money,” and
“as for eating a rasher of what they take pride in,
they'd as soon think of eating the pan it is fryed in. 1
but he represents the generous friend and benefactor, who is about to render an important service at considerable personal discomfort.
1 in their pleasant volume, “the west and connamara.”
goldsmith's “letter to lord clare.”
it was washing-day at one of the cabins, and a great variety of wearing apparel was hung out to dry. we could not discover a single article which at all resembled anything known to us, or which a schoolboy would have accepted for any part of his faux.
nevertheless, one likes the people of the claddagh; they seem to be honest, industrious, and good-tempered, and they have, at least, one great virtue—like lady godiva, they are “clothed on with chastity.” sir francis head, who had the best means of getting information from the police, and used them with his exhaustive energy, could not hear that there had ever been an illegitimate child born in the claddagh. they never intermarry with strangers, and “their marriages are generally preceded by an elopement” (vide the article on “galway,” in the encyclopodia britannica, which one is surprised to find discoursing on such festive pleasantries), “and followed by a boisterous merry-making.”
