m\ k

THROUGH CONNEMARA IN A
GOVERNESS-CART.

THROUGH CONNEMARA

IN A

GOVERNESS CART.

THE AUTHORS OF "AN IRISH COUSIN."

Illustrated by W. W. Russell, from Sketches by
Edith CE. Somerville.

LONDON :
W. H. ALLEN & CO., LIMITED,
13, WATERLOO PLACE, S.W.
1893.

The following pages, with their accompanying illus
trations, originally appeared in the columns of " The
Ladies' Pictorial," and are here reprinted by per
mission of the Proprietors.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

"in the seclusion of the back bedroom"  5
"if ye bate him any more he'll lie down" ... 19
"she's a little giddy about the head, miss " ... ... 28
" we viewed the stowing of the governess-cart " 31
"mr. Flaherty's boy was demonstrating with a pitch
fork"  35
"we pursued our way to recess"  39
A fisherman at recess  43
the two hotel dogs ...  49
"now"  53
" ballinahinch came slowly into sight" ... ... 65
"WE heard wheels close at hand"  71
" HANGING ON EACH TO OUR REIN"  85
"SITTING ON LITTLE STOOLS INSIDE THE BIG FIREPLACE" 97
"REVEALED A MONSTROUS GREY GOOSE"  105

MR. MITCHELL HENRY'S PLACE, KYLEMORE CASTLE 1 19
JACK'S FATHER 125
AT TULLY FAIR 1 29
RENVYLE HOUSE HOTEL I4I
" IT WAS THE BROAD WINDOW SEAT, IN CONJUNCTION WITH
THE MOUNTAINS, THAT TURNED THE SCALE" ... I47
"SHE WAS AN AMERICAN LADY" 149
THE RENVYLE DONKEY ... 1 58
"DOWN THE HILL OF SALRUCK " 169
"THE HOLY WELL, SALRUCK " 175
"EIGHT O'CLOCK BREAKFAST, PLEASE, AND CALL US SHARP
AT SEVEN " 191
"THE REGRET WITH WHICH WE PAID OUR HOTEL BILL
WAS NOT WHOLLY MERCENARY, BUT WAS BLENDED
WITH THE FINER PATHOS OF FAREWELL" 197

THROUGH CONNEMARA IN' A
GOVERNESS-CART.

CHAPTER I.
|\ /T Y second cousin and I came to London for ten
days in the middle of last June, and we stayed
there for three weeks, waiting for a fine day.
We were Irish, and all the English with whom we
had hitherto come in contact had impressed upon us
that we should never know what fine weather was
till we came to England. Perhaps we came at a bad
moment, when the weather, like the shops, was hav
ing its cheap sales. Certainly such half-hours of sun
shine as we came in for were of the nature of " soiled
remnants," and at the end of the three weeks aforesaid
we began to feel a good deal discouraged. Things

2 THROUGH CONNEMARA
came to a climax one day when we had sat for three-
quarters of an hour in a Hungarian bread shop in
Regent Street, waiting for the rain to clear off enough
to let us get down to the New Gallery. As the fifth
party of moist ladies came in and propped their
dripping umbrellas against the wall behind us, and
remarked that they had never seen such rain, our
resolution first began to take shape.
" Hansom ! " said my second cousin.
" Home ! " said I.
By home, of course we meant the lodgings — the
remote, the Bayswaterian, but still, the cheap, the
confidential ; for be they never so homely, there's no
place — for sluttish comfort and unmolested unpunc-
tuality — like lodgings.
" England is no fit place for a lady to be in," said '
my second cousin, as we drove away in our hansom
with the glass down.
" I'd be ashamed to show such weather to a Conne-
mara pig," I replied.
Now Connemara is a sore subject with my second

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 3
cousin, who lives within sight of its mountains, and,
as is usually the case, has never explored the glories
of her native country, which was why I mentioned
Connemara. She generally changes the conversation
on these occasions ; but this time she looked me
steadily in the face and said,
" Well, let's go to Connemara ! "
I was so surprised that I inadvertently pressed the
indiarubber ball of the whistle on which my hand was
resting, and its despairing wail filled the silence like
a note of horror.
" Let's get an ass and an ass-car ! " said my cousin,
relapsing in her excitement into her native idiom, and
taking no notice of the fact that the hansom had
stopped, and that I was inventing a lie for the driver ;
" or some sort of a yoke, whatever, and we'll drive
through Connemara."
In the seclusion of the back bedroom we reviewed
the position, while around us on the lodging-house
pegs hung the draggled ghosts of what had been our
Sunday dresses.

4 THROUGH CONNEMARA
" That's the thing I wore last night ! " said my
second cousin, in a hard, fiat voice, lifting with
loathing finger a soaked flounce. As she did so, the
river sand fell from it into the boots that stood be
neath. " Soil of tea-garden, Kingston-on-Thames. Result
of boating-picnic that has to fly for refuge to an inn-
parlour ten minutes after it has started."
" It will wash," I answered gloomily. " But look at
that ! " Here I pointed to an evening gown erstwhile,
to quote an Irish divine, " the brightest feather in my
crown." " That's what comes of trailing through.
Bow Street after the opera, looking' for a hansom
during the police riots. Give me Irish weather and
the R.I.C. ! We will go to Connemara ! "
The Milford and Cork boat starts at eight, and at
half-past eight a doomed crowd was sitting round its
still stationary tea-table. My second cousin was
feverishly eating dry toast and drinking a precau
tionary brandy and soda, but the others were revelling

^Z THE SECLUSION OF THE BACK BEDROOM.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. j
on beefsteak and fried fish. The company was mixed.
Opposite to us sat an American and his bride, both
young, and both uncertain of the rules that govern
the consumption of fish ; the bride feeling that a
couple of small forks, held as though they were pens,
would meet the situation, while her big, red-headed
husband evidently believed that by holding the fork
in the right hand and the knife in the left the im
propriety of using the latter would be condoned.
Beside us were two elderly ladies, returning, like us,
to their native land.
" Yes, me dear," we heard one saying to the other ;
" I had nothing only my two big boxes and seven
little small parcels, and poor little Charlie's rabbit, and
that porther wanted to get thruppence out o' me ¦! "
" D'ye tell me so ? " remarked the friend.
" Yes, dear, he did indeed ! He wanted thruppence
and I gave him tuppence ; he was tough, very tough.
but I was shtubborn ! "
" Ah, them English is great rogues," said the friend,
consolingly.

8 THROUGH CONNEMARA
" More fish, Miss ? " said the unobservant steward
to my second cousin, thrusting a generous helping
under her nose. . It wanted but that, and she retired
to the doubtful security of the ladies' cabin.
We have travelled with many stewardesses on the
various routes between England and Cork, and we
have found that, as a species, they have at least two
great points in common. They are all Irish, and they
are all .relentlessly conversational. They have no
respect for the sanctity of the silence in which the
indifferent sailor wishes to shroud herself; it is im
possible for them to comprehend those solemn mo
ments, when the thoughts are turned wholly inwards
in a tumult of questioning, while the body lies in
mummy stillness waiting for what the night shall
bring forth. Their leading object seems to be to
acquire information, but they are not chary of per
sonal detail, and, speaking from experience, I should
say that a stewardess will confide anything to the
passenger by whose berth she has elected to take
down her hair. For stewardesses generally do their

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 9
hair two or three times in the course of a twelve
hours' crossing. When you go on board you find
them at it. Your evening ablutions are embittered
by the discovery of their hair-pins in the soap-dish,
and at earliest dawn the traveller is aware of the
stewardess combing her shining tresses over the
washing-stand. I have sometimes wondered if from
this custom arose the fable that the mermaid,
when not decoying sailors to their fate, is incess
antly " racking her poll," as they say in the county
Cork. We will not linger on the details of the night, the
sufferings of little Charlie, who, on the plea of ex
treme youth, had been imported by his mother into
the ladies' cabin ; the rustlings and chumping of the
rabbit, whose basket occupied the greater part of the
cabin table, or the murmured confidences exchanged
through the night hours by the stewardess and the
friend of Charlie's mother. These things are being
forgotten by us as fast as may be ; but my second
cousin says she never can forget the waft of pigs that

to THROUGH CONNEMARA
came to her through the porthole as the steamer drew
alongside of the Cork quay.
The exigencies of return tickets had compelled us
to go to Connemara via Cork and Milford, and it
certainly is not the route we would recommend ; how
ever, it has its advantages, and we were vouchsafed a
tone of precious rest before the starting of our train
for Limerick at 2.10, and we reposed in peace on the
sofas of the ladies' drawing-room in the Imperial
Hotel. Much might be said, were there time, of the
demeanour of ladies in hotel drawing-rooms ; so
hushed, so self-conscious, so eminent in all those
qualities with which they are endued by the artist
who " does " the hotel interiors for the guide-books.
It is almost possible to believe that they are engaged
for the season to impart tone, and to show how agree
able a lounge life can be when spent in the elegant
leisure that is the atmosphere of hotel drawing-
rooms. We crossed Cork on an outside-car ; and here, no
doubt, we should enter on a description of its perils

IN A GOVERNESS-CART n
which would convulse and alarm English readers in
the old, old way ; but we may as well own at once
that we know all about outside-cars ; we believe we
went to be christened on an outside-car, and we did
not hold on even then — we certainly have not done so
since. Let us rather embark on a topic in which all,
saving a besotted few, will sympathise. The nursery
en voyage — the nurse, the nursemaid, the child, the
feeding-bottle. These beset every traveller's path,
and we had considerably more than our fair share of
them between Cork and Limerick. At Cork they
descended upon the train, as it lay replete and help
less, a moment before starting, and before we had
well understood the extent of the calamity, a nurse
was glaring defiance at us over the white bonnet of a
bellowing baby, and a nursemaid was already opening
her basket of food for the benefit of two children of
the dread ages of three and five respectively. Some
rash glance on the part of my second cousin must
have betrayed our sentiments to the nurse, and it is

12 THROUGH CONNEMARA
hard to say which was worse, her exaggerated anxiety
to snatch the children from all contact with us, or the
imbecile belief of the nursemaid that we wanted to
play with them, and, of the two, enjoyed their wiping
their hands on our rug in the intervals between the
oranges. They never ceased eating oranges, those
children. Oranges, seed cake, milk ; these succeeded
one another in a sort of vicious circle. An enterprising
advertiser asks, " What is more terrible than war ? "
We answer unhesitatingly, oranges in the hands of
young children.
However, everything, even the waits at the sta
tions between Limerick and Athenry, comes to an
end if you can live it out, and at about nine o'clock
at night we were in Galway. Scarcely by our own
volition, we found ourselves in an hotel 'bus, and we
were too tired to do more than notice the familiar
Galway smell of turf smoke as we bucketted through
Eyre Square to our hostelry. It may be as well at
this point to seriously assure English readers that the
word " peat " is not used in Ireland in reference to

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 13
fuel by anyone except possibly the Saxon tourist.
Let it therefore be accepted that when we say " turf"
we mean peat, and when, if ever, we say Pete, we
mean the diminutive of Peter, no matter what the
spelling. We breakfasted leisurely and late next morning,
serenaded by the screams of pigs, for it was fair day,
and the market square was blocked with carts tightly
packed with pigs, or bearing tall obelisks of sods
of turf, built with Egyptian precision. We cast our
eye abroad upon a drove of Connemara ponies, driven
in for sale like so many sheep, and my second
cousin immediately formed the romantic project of
hiring one of these and a small trap for our Conne
mara expedition.
"They are such hardy little things," she said,
enthusiastically, " we had two of them once, and
they always lived on grass. Of course they never did
any work really, and I remember they used to bite
anyone who tried to catch them — but still I think one
of them would be just the thing."

14 THROUGH CONNEMARA
". I beg your pardon, Miss," said the waiter, who
was taking away our breakfast things,, " but thim
ponies is very arch for the likes of you to drive.
One o' thim'd be apt to lie down in the road with
yerself and the thrap, and maybe it'd be dark night
before he'd rise up for ye. Faith, there was one o'
them was near atin' the face off a cousin o' me own
that was enticin' him to stand up out o' the way o' the
mail-car." My second cousin looked furtively at me, and rose
from her seat in some confusion.
" Oh, I think we should be able to manage a pony,"
she said, with a sudden resumption of the dignity that
I had noticed she had laid aside since her arrival in
Galway. " Is there— er — -any two-wheeled — er — trap
to be had ? "
" Sure there is, Miss, and a nate little yoke it'd be
for the two of ye, though the last time it was out one
of the shafts  "
" Is it in the yard ? "'interrupted my second cousin,
severely.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 15
" It is, Miss, but the step took the ground — — "
My cousin here left the room, and I followed her.
A few moments later the trap was wheeled into the
yard for our inspection. It was apparently a seg
ment of an antediluvian brougham, with a slight
flavour about it of a hansom turned the wrong way,
though its great-grandfather had probably been a
highly-connected sedan-chair. The door was at the
back, as in an omnibus, the floor was about six
inches above the ground, and the two people whom it
with difficulty contained had to sit with their backs
to the horse, rocking and swinging between the two
immense wheels, of which they had a dizzy prospect
through the little side windows.
" There it is for ye, now ! " said the waiter,
triumphantly. He had followed us downstairs and
was negligently polishing a tablespoon with his
napkin. " And Jimmy," indicating the ostler, " '11
know of the very horse that'll be fit to put under it."
" No," we said faintly, " that would never do ; we
want to drive ourselves."

16 THROUGH CONNEMARA
The ostler fell into an attitude of dramatic medita
tion. " Would you be agin dhrivin' a side-car ? "
We said " No."
Equally dramatic ecstasy on the part of both
ostler and waiter. The former, strange to say,
had a friend who was the one person in Galway
who had the very thing we wanted. '' Letyees be
gettin' ready now," said Jimmy, " for I'll go fetch
it this minute."
About half an hour later we were standing at the
hotel doorsteps, prepared for our trial trip. On the
pavement were clustered about us the beggarwomen
of Galway — an awesome crew, from whose mouths
proceeded an uninterrupted flow of blessings and
cursings, the former levelled at us, the latter at each
other and the children who hung about their skirts.
We pushed our way through them, and getting up on
the car announced that we were ready to start, but
some delay in obtaining a piece of cord to tie up the
breeching gave the beggars a precious opportunity.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 17
My second cousin was recognised, and greeted by
name with every endearment.
" Aha ! didn't I tell ye 'twas her ? " " Arrah, shut
yer mouth, Nellie Morris. I knew the fine full eyes
of her since she was a baby." " Don't mind them,
darlin'," said a deep voice on a level with the step of
the car ; " sure ye'll give to yer own little Judy from
Menlo ? "
This was my cousin's own little Judy from Menlo,
and at her invocation we both snatched from our
purses the necessary blackmail and dispensed it with
furious haste. Most people would pay largely to
escape from the appalling presence of this seventy-
year-old nightmare of two foot nothing, and she is
well aware of its compelling power.
The car started with a jerk, the driver boy running
by the horse's side till he had goaded it into a trot,
and then jumping on the driving-seat he lashed it into
a gallop, and we swung out of Eyre Square followed
by the admiring screams of the beggars. The pace
was kept up, and we were well out of Galway before
c

1 8 THROUGH CONNEMARA.
a slightly perceptible hill suddenly changed it to a
funeral crawl — the animal's head disappearing be
tween its forelegs.
" Give me the reins," said my second cousin.
' These country boys never know how to drive," she
added in an undertone as she took them from the
boy. The horse, a pale yellow creature, with a rusty
black mane and tail, turned his head, and fixing a
penetrating eye upon her, slightly slackened his pace.
My cousin administered a professional flick of the
whip, whereon he shrank to the other side of the
road, jamming the step of the car against a telegraph
post and compelling me to hurriedly whirl my legs up
on to the seat. We slurred over the incident, how
ever, and proceeded at the same pace to the top ofthe
hill. A judicious kick from the boy urged the horse
into an amble, and things were going on beautifully
when we drew near a pool of water by the road
side. " You see he goes very well when he is properly
driven," my second cousin began, leaning noncha-

"IF YE BATE HIM ANY MORE HE'LL LIE DOWN."

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 21
lantly across the car towards me. As she spoke, the
car gave a lurch and came to a standstill at the edge
of the pool. Apparently the yellow horse was
thirsty. He was with difficulty dragged into the
middle of the road again, but beyond the pool he
refused to go. The boy got down with the air of one
used to these things.
" If ye bate him any more he'll lie down," he said
to my cousin. " I'll go to the house beyond and
gether a couple o' the neighbours."
The neighbours — that is to say, the whole of
the inhabitants of the house — turned out with en
thusiasm, and, having put stones behind the wheels,
addressed themselves to the yellow horse with strange
oaths and with many varieties of sticks.
" ' Tis little he cares for yer bating," screamed the
mother after several minutes of struggle. " Let him
dhrink his fill o' the pool and he'll go to America for
ye." We thought that on the whole we should prefer
to return to Galway, and though assured by the boy

22 THROUGH CONNEMARA
of ultimate victory, we turned and made for the town
on foot.
" I scarcely think that horse will do," said my
second cousin, after we had walked about half a
mile, turning on me a face still purple from her exer
tions with the whip. " We want a freer animal than
that." She had scarcely finished when there was a thun
dering on the road behind us, a sound of furious
galloping and shouting, and the car appeared in
sight, packed with men, and swinging from side to
side as the yellow horse came along with a racing
stride. " Ye can sit up on the car now ! " called out the
boy as they neared us, " he'll go aisy from this out."
The car pulled up, and the volunteers got off it with
loud and even devotional assurances of the yellow
horse's perfections.
But we walked back to Galway.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART, 23

CHAPTER II.
(7* HALL we admit that, after all, the first stage
^ of our journey was accomplished by means of
the mail-car? We had been assured, on reliable
authority, that Oughterard, fourteen Irish miles from
Galway, was the place where we should find what we
wanted, and with a dubious faith we climbed the steep
side of the mail car, and wedged ourselves between a
stout priest and an English tourist. Above us towered
the mail baskets, and a miscellaneous pile of luggage,
roped together with that ingenuity that necessity has
developed in the Irish carman, and crowning all, the
patriarchal countenance of a goat looked down upon
us in severe amazement from over the rim of an im
mense hamper.
We have said in our haste that we never hold on on

24 THROUGH CONNEMARA
jaunting-cars, but as the dromedary to the park hack,
so is the mail-car to the ordinary " outside " of its
species. It is large enough to hold six people on
each side, and is dragged by three horses at a speed
that takes no account of ruts and patches of stones
and sharp corners, or of the fact that the unstable
passenger has nothing to grasp at in time of need,
except his equally unstable fellow-traveller. We held
on to the priest and the tourist with all the power of
our elbows, and derived at least some moral support
from the certainty that when we fell off the car we
should, like Samson, carry widespread disaster with
us. But somehow people d-o not fall off these cars ;
and even the most unschooled of Saxons sits and
swings and bows on the narrow seat with a security
that must surprise himself.
An Irish mile is, roughly speaking, a mile and a
quarter English, so we leave to the accomplished
reader the computation of the distance from Galway
to Oughterard according to the rightful standard. It
is not in the ordinary sense a very interesting drive ;

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 25
the guide-books pass it over in a breath in their haste
to blossom out into the hotels and fisheries of Conne
mara ; but to the eye that comes fresh to it from the
offensively sleek and primly-partitioned pastures of
England this first impression of Galway and its un
trammelled bogs and rocks will be as lasting a.s any
that come after. We ourselves might have framed
many moving sentences about the desolate houses
standing amongst the neglected timber within their
broken demesne walls, but " all our mind was clouded
with a doubt," and from the peculiar protrusion of my
cousin's nether lip, I could gather that her moodiness
was the outward token of an agitated mental parade
of all the Oughterard horseflesh with which she was
acquainted. We spent that night at Oughterard in Miss Murphy's
comfortable little hotel, and the next morning found
us embarked once more in search of a means of travel.
The trap had been unearthed — the trap of our bright
est dreams — a governess-cart that would just hold two
people and a reasonable amount of luggage ; but the

26 THROUGH CONNEMARA
horse was the trouble. Various suggestions had been
made : some had been feasible, and the one thing on
which we were firmly decided, viz., the governess-cart,
seemed an impossibility.
" Well, Miss, ye see, she's only just in off grass ;
sure she'll rejoice greatly in the coorse of the next
few days, and she'd fit the shafts well enough so."
Thus spoke the proprietor of many flocks and herds
to whom we had addressed ourselves. " It's a pity
there's nothing would suit ye only the little thrap, but
surely ye might thry her whatever."
" She " was a farm mare of mountainous propor
tions, who after violent exertions had been squeezed
between the shafts of the governess-cart, and she now
stood gazing plaintively at us, and switching her
flowing tail, while the shafts made grooves for them
selves in her fat sides.
" Sit in now, Miss, and dhrive her out o' the yard."
My second cousin got in with ease, the step of the
trap being almost on the ground, owing to the un
natural elevation of its shafts, and the mare strode

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 27
heavily forward. My cousin clutched the front rail
convulsively " I am slipping out ! " she said with a sudden ten
sion in her voice. Had she thought of it she might
have held on by the tail, which hung down like a
massive bell-rope above her, but as it was, after a
moment or two of painful indecision, she made a hur
ried but safe exit over the door of the trap. The fate
of the expedition trembled in the balance, and the
group of spectators who had formed round us began
to look concerned. The mare was extracted with
some difficulty from the pinioning shafts, and all
things were as they were, the governess-cart with its
shafts on the ground, and my cousin and I with our
hearts in our boots, when a voice came to us from the
crowd —
" Johnny Flaherty have a nice jinnet."
" A betther never shtud in Galway ! " said another
voice. " She's able to kill anny horse on the road."
An excited discussion followed, in the course of
which it was brought forward as the jennet's strongest

28 THROUGH CONNEMARA
recommendation that she was the daughter of the
lady whose majestic build had lost to us the enjoy-

/ i+:ir^u\i :\a:

"SHE'S A LITTLE GIDDY ABOUT THE HEAD, MISS."
ment of her admirable moral qualities. Finally a por
tion of the crowd detached itself and ran up the street,
returning in a few minutes with Johnny Flaherty and

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 29
a long-legged, long-eared brown animal, which, as it
approached, cast an eye of sour suspicion upon us and
its mother. There was no doubt but that this crea
ture would fit the trap, but with haunting memories
of the iniquities of mules and their like we asked if it
was gentle.
" She's a little giddy about the head, Miss," said the
owner diffidently ; " but if ye'll not touch the ears
she's the quitest little thing at all. Back in, Sibbie ! "
Sibbie backed in with an almost unwholesome
docility, and was harnessed in the twinkling of an eye,
the lookers-on assisting enthusiastically. She was led
out of the yard. We got in with Mr. Flaherty, and
before the crowd had time to cross themselves we were
out of sight.
" Perfection ! " I gasped, with the wind whistling in
my teeth as Sibbie sped like a rat between the shafts
that had given her good mother her first insight into
tight lacing. " She goes splendidly — the very thing !
but now isn't it time to go back and get in our
things ? "

30 THROUGH CONNEMARA
My cousin did not answer ; she was driving, and
something told me that the same idea had occurred to
her. She was leaning rigidly back, and one of her
gloves had burst at the knuckles. Johnny Flaherty
extended a large hand and laid it on the reins.
" She's over-anxious for the road," he said apolo
getically, as he brought the jennet to a standstill ;
" but I'll put a curb-chain on her for ye."
We turned and wheeled back into Oughterard, a
positive adoration for Sibbie, with her discreet brown
quarters and slender, rapier-like legs, welling up in us.
Now, thinking over these things, it seems possible
that her week's hire approached her net value, but at
the time of bargaining we felt that her price was far
above rubies.
As this is the record of a genuine expedition, it is
perhaps advisable to say that our luggage consisted of
a portmanteau, a dressing bag, a well-supplied lun
cheon basket, and a large and reliable gingham um
brella, purchased for the sum of three shillings in
Oughterard. We viewed the elaborate stowing of

• -sT

"WE VIEWED THE STOWING OF THE GOVERNESS-CART."

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 33
these in the governess cart, and then went to Mr.
Flaherty for his final sailing orders.
" Ye'll mind her passing Flanigan's ; she have a
fashion of running in there ; and as for passing our
own place, I have a boy standin' there now in the
archway with a stick, the way he'd turn her back out
of it if she'd make a dart for the stable, and I'll put a
rope in the thrap for fear anything might break on ye."
Mr, Flaherty looked a little anxious as he gave us
these directions, and when he had gone for the rope,
an old woman, who had been regarding us with a sym
pathetic solicitude, came up to my cousin and took
her by the arm.
" That the Lord may save yees ! that's all I'll say,"
she groaned ; " if 'twas a horse itself, I'd say nothin',
but thim mules is nayther here nor there. Sure
asthore, ye couldn't tell the minnit he'd turn into a
boghole, when he doesn't know ye, and thim Cunne-
marra roads has nothin' before him to shtop him only
the grace of God ! and the wather up aich side of the
road by yees as deep as a well ! "

34 THROUGH CONNEMARA
It was painful to find that Oughterard credited the
jennet with the sole conduct of the expedition, and
regarded us as helpless dependents on her will and
pleasure. But the old woman's agitation was quite
unaffected, and the last thing we heard, as we flour
ished down the main street, was her voice uplifted in
prayerful lamentation.
Owing possibly to the fact that Mr. Flaherty's boy
was demonstrating with the pitch-fork in the arch-way
leading to the stable, Sibbie made no attempt to
" dart " into it as her owner had anticipated, and
nothing marred the dignity of our departure. We
turned cautiously over the crooked bridge, and drove
along beside the river, running black under tall trees,
with patches of foam sailing fast on it. Villas with
trimly clipped ivy and flower-beds all ablaze were on
our other hand, surburban in self-respecting neatness,
romantic by force of surroundings and of something
old-fashioned and solid in their build.
" This is the best village for its size this side of
Galway," said my cousin, with a languid indifference

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 35
that, as I well knew, masked the seething self-satis
faction of the resident in the neighbourhood. " And
the place has improved so wonderfully. For instance,
there's the Widow's Almshouse. It isn't so very long
ago since an old woman
said to my grandmother,
' That's the Widdies' Aim-
house, and sorra widdy in
it but one little owld man,'
and now it'ssimply bursting
with widows — at least, I
mean  "
This remarkable illus
tration of the prosperity of
Oughterard was suddenly
interrupted. We had for
gotten that the residence of the too fascinating Mr.
Flanigan was at hand, but not so Sibbie. With the
subtlety of her race, she cloaked her design in a ful
some submissiveness, as the deadly spirit is sheathed
in the syrup of the liqueur, and turning in full career,
D 2

' MR. FLAHERTY'S BOY WAS DE
MONSTRATING WITH A PITCH
FORK."

36 ' THROUGH CONNEMARA.
without so much as an indication from her long ex
pressive ears, she made for the gate of which we had
been warned. By a special interposition of Provi
dence it was closed, but we were both jerked forward
in a very humiliating way, and there was much un
seemly hectoring and lashing before we could drag
her from the haven where she would be. The seeds
of distrust were from that moment sown in our hearts,
and we proceeded with a want of confidence that we
had never afterwards reason to regret.
A few moments of steep ascent brought us out on
to the moor that is the entrance to Connemara ; a
wide brown place of heather and bog, with the sinuous
shining of the Oughterard river saving it from the
suspicion of monotony. The level road ran out in
front of us till it dwindled into a white thread, the
distant hills were no more than confidential blue hints
of what we were to see, the sun shone, the strong west
wind made us rejoice that we had stitched elastic into
our hats, and the exhilaration of our feelings found
vent in one passion-fraught word — luncheon.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 37
A great many people have asked us why we did
not make our journey through Connemara on tricycles :
the roads are so good, the mail-cars offer such facili
ties for the transport of baggage, the speed and sim
plicity are so great. To this we have our reply —
what then of the luncheon hamper ? These ob
jectors have not taken into account the comfortable
wayside halt by the picturesque and convenient lake ;
the unpacking of the spirit lamp, and its glittering
bride the tin kettle, the dinner knives at sixpence
apiece, the spoons at two-pence-halfpenny ; the pot
ted meats, the Bath Olivers, the Bovril and the Bur
gundy. In the abstract we are not fond of picnics,
and agree with the Bard of " Ballads from Punch " in
thinking that —
They who in contempt, the Dryad's haunts
Profane with empty bottles and loose papers,
Find tongues in tarts, ants running on their boots,
Wasps in the wine, and salt in everything !
But a long road and an early breakfast create an
earnestness and sincerity in the matter of luncheon

38 THROUGH CONNEMARA
that were lacking in the artificial junketings of the
Bard. Certainly, our stopping-places were not such
as a Dryad could haunt with, any degree of comfort.
On this first day we pulled up under the lee of a low
bank, one of the few roadside fences we had come to
in that waste of heather and grey-blue lakes, and
spread out our eatables on the seats of the cart with a
kind of bashfulness of the possible passer-by ; a bash
fulness soon to be hardened by custom into a brazen
contempt for even the passing mail-car and the
fraternal backward grin of its driver. Most people
who have wolfed the furtive sandwich in a crowded
railway carriage have felt all of a sudden how gross
and animal was the action, but how, if persevered in,
a callous indifference may be attained ; this was the
case with us.
After that first lunch the complexion of things
changed. The wind sharpened into a wet whip, the
clouds swooped down on the hilltops, the lakes turned
a ruffled black, like a Spanish hen with its plumage
blown the wrong way, and the first mishap to the ex-

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 39
pedition occurred. I turned my head to look with
mild surprise at the end of an iron bedstead with which
an ingenious farmer had closed an opening in his stone
wall, and as I did so my hat soared upwards from

'WE PURSUED OUR WAY TO RECESS.'

my head, and flew like a live thing towards the lake
by which we were driving. I followed with as much
speed as I possess, while my cousin lay in idiot
laughter in the cart, and had the pleasure of seeing

40 THROUGH CONNEMARA
my hat plunge with the elan of a Marcus Curtius into
a bed of waterlilies by the bank. From this I drew
it, pale, half-drowned, but sane and submissive ; and
placing it in solitary confinement at the bottom of the
trap, I donned a chilly knitted Tam o'Shanter, and we
pursued our way to Recess.

HV A GOVERNESS-CART 41

CHAPTER III.
IAECOROUS black posts, with white tops, on
^ either side of a little avenue, a five-pound
trout laid out on the hall door-steps, with some
smaller specimens of its kind, a group of anglers
admiring these, and a fine, unostentatious rain that
nobody paid any attention to — these were our first
impressions of the Royal Hotel, Recess. With many
injunctions as to her " giddiness " about the head,
Sibbie was commended to the care of a stable-boy,
and we marched over the corpses of the trout into a
little hall in which the smell of wet waterproofs and
fishing tackle reigned supreme.
Our only information as to the hotels of Conne
mara had been gathered from a gentleman whose
experience dated some thirty years back. He told
us that on arriving at the hotel to which fate had

42 THROUGH CONNEMARA
consigned him, his modest request for something
more substantial than bread and whisky had been
received with ill-concealed consternation. A forlorn
hope of children was sent forth to find and hunt in a
chicken for his dinner ; he had watched the search,
the chase, the out-manoeuvring of the wily victim ;
he had heard, tempered by a single plank door, its
death screech in the kitchen, and he had even gone
the length of eating it, when it was at last served up
on a kitchen plate, brown and shrivelled as " She " in
her last moments, and boiled with a little hot water
as its only sauce. As to the bedrooms, our friend
had been almost more discouraging. He said that
while he was dining he heard a trampling of feet and
the moving of some heavy body in the passage. The
door opened, and a feather bed bulged through the
narrow doorway into the room, and was spread on the
floor by the table. It was then explained that, as he
had asked for dinner and a bed, sure there they were
for him, and they were elegant clean feathers, and he
should have them for eightpence a pound. With

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 43
some difficulty the traveller made them understand
that, though he meant to carry the dinner away with
him, he had no such intentions with regard to the
bed ; and after a more lucid setting forth of his
requirements, his host and hostess grasped the
position. He was taken into a
room which was quite filled by
two immense four-post beds, and
having been given to under
stand that one was reserved
for domestic requirements, he
was offered the other. He was
on the point of accepting this
couch when a snore arose from
its depths,
" Ah, sure, that's only the
priest," said the lady of the
house ; " and he's the qui'test man ever ye seen.
God bless him ! He'll not disturb ye at all." This
was our friend's experience, and though possibly it
had gained flavour and bod}- with age, it had, at all

A FISHERMAN AT RECESS.

44 THROUGH CONNEMARA
events, made us look forward with a fearful interest
to what might be our lot in Connemara.
But the first vision of the long Recess dinner-table
dissipated all our hopes of the comic squalor that is
endured gladly for the sake of its literary value, and
I may admit that the regret with which my cousin
and I affected to eat our soup and pursue our dinner
through its orderly five or six courses was not
altogether sincere. From one point of view it might
have been called a fish dinner, as from clear soup, to
raspberries one topic alone filled the mouths of the
diners — the outwitting of the wiles of trout and
. . salmon. There was a reading-party of Oxford men,
their blazers glowing rainbow-hued among the murky
shooting coats of the other diners ; there were young
curates, and middle-aged majors, and elderly gentle
men — to be an elderly gentleman amounts to a pro
fession in itself— and all, without exception or inter
mission, talked of fish and fishing. Not to talk to the
comrade of your travels at a table d'hdte is an
admission of failure and incapacity, so much so that

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 45
rather than sit silent, I would if need were, repeat
portions of the Church Catechism to my friend in a
low conversational voice. My cousin and I have
seldom been forced to this extreme, and on this
occasion we kept up the semblance of a cultured
agreeability to one another in a manner that surprised
ourselves. But the volume of discussion raging round
us overwhelmed us in the end. We felt the Academy
and the jennet to be alike an impertinence ; we
faltered and became silent.
Opposite to us sat one of the most whole-souled of
the elderly gentlemen, with a face of the colour and
glossy texture of Aspinall's Royal Mail red enamel,
in vigorous conversation with a callow youth in a
pink blazer, one of whose eyes was closed by midge-
bites ; and, though the general chorus might rise and
wane in the long intervals between the courses, their
su-K?c.it bass and piping tenor sustained an unflag
ging duet. ~ .„.
" I assure you, my dear sir," protested the elderly
gentleman, earnestly, with an almost pathetic oblivion

46 THROUGH CONNEMARA
of the difference in age between him and his neigh
bour, " it is not a matter of a fly with these Glenda-
lough trout. I have seen a man fail repeatedly with
a certain butcher, and immediately afterwards the
same butcher, -pyxX. pleasantly to a fish, you understand,
rose him at once."
" H'm," returned the Pink Blazer, gloomily, re
ceiving this, to us, suprising statement, with perfect
calm, " my experience — and I've fished these lakes
for years — is that a full-bodied Jock Scott" — but we
will not betray our ignorance by trying to expound
second-hand the profundities of the Pink Blazer.
When they had been given to the world, he hid his
little midge-bitten face in a tumblerof shandygaff, while
his aged companion gravely continued the argument.
There were only two or three other ladies at the
table, and they evidently had, by long residence in
the hotel, been reduced to assuming an interest in
the prevailing topic, which ,ve found hard to believe
was pp^v.iiie'. "" They may, of course, have been en
thusiasts, but their looks belied them.

JS.4M3—

IN A GOVERNhzj-^-^... 7/
Next morning we were awakened by the babble of
fishermen in the hall, then the rattle of cars on the
gravel told that they had started on their daily
business, and when at a subsequent period we came
down to breakfast, we found ourselves alone, and the
hotel generally in a state of peaceful lethargy. It
was, so we had heard excited voices in the hall
proclaiming, a splendid day for fishing. This meant
that when we looked out of the window we saw two
blurred shadows that we believed to be mountains,
and heard the rushings of over-fed streams, which,
thanks to the mist, were quite invisible. But the
hotel weather-glass stood high, and at ten o'clock we
were hopeful ; at eleven we were despairing ; at
twelve we were reckless, and^ we went to our room to
get ready for a walk. We have hitherto omitted all
reference to one important item of our equipment,
and even now, remembering that we were travelling
in a proclaimed district, I mention with bated breath
the fact that my second cousin insisted on taking an
ancient and rusty revolver with her. She had secretly

CONNEMARA.
purchased a box of cartridges, weighing several
pounds, and at the last moment she had requested me
to stow this armoury in the travelling-bag — " In case
of mad dogs and things on the road," she said. The
pistol, in its leather case, I consented to, but the tin
box of ammunition was intolerable, and we com
promised by putting six cartridges into an "Easy
Hair Curler" box, which really might have been
made for them. So far there had been no occasion
to use it, but now, as my cousin struggled into her
mackintosh, she remarked tentatively, " Don't you
think this would be a good day for the revolver ? "
I said I was not much of a judge, but she might
bring it if she liked ; and having secreted it and a few
" easy hair curlers " in her mackintosh pocket, she was
ready for the road.
We paused in the hall for a last vengeful look at
the barometer, which still stood cheerfully at Set Fair
(we believe its constructor to have been a confirmed
fisherman), and at the door we encountered the two
hotel dogs — a large silky black creature of the breed

IN A GOVERNESS-CART

49

that is generally selected to adorn penwipers, and a
smirking fox-terrier, with polite, and even brilliant
manners of a certain flashy hotel sort.
" Would they come for a walk with the ladies ? "

THE TWO HOTEL DOGS.
said I, my voice assuming the peculiar drivelling tone
supposed to be attractive to dogs.
The penwiper regarded me with cold amber eyes,
and composed itself for slumber.
" Come along, then ! " I said, still more persuasively
adding, as I stepped out into the thick fine mist,
" Cats ! "

50 THROUGH CONNEMARA
The amber eyes closed, and their owner curled into
an inky heap with a slumbrous growl ; while the fox-
terrier, having struck a dashing attitude, to keep up
his character as a sportsman, affected to believe that
the cats I referred to were in the kitchen, and hurried
off in that direction. We were snubbed ; and we
went forth reflecting on the demoralising effect of
hotel life. Its ever-changing society and friendships
of an hour had turned the penwiper into -an ill-man
nered cynic, and the fox-terrier into an effete and
blase loafer. Thus moralising, we splashed along the
road, past the little post and telegraph office, where
you write your telegrams in an arbour of roses, and
post your letters between the sprays of clematis, and
struck gallantly forward, with the telegraph posts,
along the Clifden road. Glendalough lake lay on our
left hand, and the bare mountains towered up on our
right — at least, we were given to understand by the
guide-books and the waiter that they towered, the
mist allowing us no opportunity of judging for our
selves. Across the lake we saw the Glendalough

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 51
hotel among the woods that came down to the water's
edge, and on it — we allude to the lake — were the
boats of some of the maniacs who had left their
comfortable asylum in the grey of the morning. We
did not see them catching any fish ; in fact, we have
been forced to the conclusion that we had some
malign influence on the anglers of Connemara, for,
though we have watched them long and often, we have
never seen so much as a rise.
We left the main road at the end of the lake, and
turned into one running in another direction. It was,
like every Connemara road, good and level, and in
perfect order. Like all the others, too, it disdained
fence or protection of any kind, unless an occasional
deep ditch or lake on each side can be called a re
assurance to the driver. Here and there on the road
the little black demon cattle were standing disgustedly
about, declining to eat the wet grass among the
wetter heather, and concentrating all their attention
on us in a manner that, taken in connection with the
most villainous expression of countenance, and horns
e 2

52 THROUGH CONNEMARA.
like Malay Krisses, made it advisable to throw stones
at them while there was yet time. They at once
withdrew, recognising the fact that is early implanted
in the mind of every known Irish animal, that sermons
in stones are unanswerable. We had got on to a long
stretch of bog road, bounded only by the vaguely
suggestive mist, and we were beginning to feel the
ardour for a long walk awakening in us, when we
heard a strange yelping on the road behind us, and
looking back, saw a large brindled bulldog advancing
out of the mist at a lumbering trot. No one was with
him ; a short piece of rope hung round his collar, and
his aspect altogether was so terrific that my cousin
and I again provided ourselves with the national
weapon, and stood discreetly aside to let him pass.
He instantly stopped and stared at us in what seemed
a very threatening manner.
" Perhaps he's mad ! " I suggested. " Where's the
gun ? "
" In my pocket," returned my cousin in a low voice
" and I can't get it out. It's stuck."

, .,.,"*

W

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 55
"Well, you'd better hurry," I said, "for he's com
ing." The bulldog was moving slowly towards us, utter
ing strange grunts, and looking excitedly round at the
cattle, who were beginning to close in on us and him.
My cousin with one strenuous effort ripped the pocket
off her mackintosh.
'' I've got it at last ! " she panted, putting in a cart
ridge with trembling fingers and cocking the pistol.
" It's awfully stiff, and I know it throws high, but
anyhow, it will frighten him — I don't really want to
hit him."
" For goodness' sake wait till I get behind you," I
replied. " Now ! "
There was a report like a cannon, and I saw my
cousin's arm jerk heavenwards, as if hailing a cab.
The next moment the cattle were flying to the four
winds of heaven, and the bulldog, far from being
alarmed or hurt, was streaking through the heather
in hot pursuit of the largest cow of the herd.
This was a more appalling result than we could

56 THROUGH CONNEMARA
possibly have anticipated. Not only had we failed
to intimidate, but we had positively instigated him to
crime. " He's used to guns," I said. " He thinks we are
cow-shooting." " He's gone to retrieve the game," replied my cousin
in a hollow voice.
In another instant the bulldog had overtaken his
prey, and the next, our knees tottering under us with
horror, we saw him swinging from her nose by his
teeth, while her bellowings rent the skies. Back she
came down the hill, flinging her head from side to
side, while the bulldog adhered with limpet tenacity
to her nose, and, jumping the bog-ditch like a hunter,
she set off down the road, followed by a trumpeting
host of friends and sympathisers who had re-gathered
from the mountain-side on hearing her cries. The
whole adventure had been forced upon us so suddenly
and unexpectedly that we had no time to argue away
the illogical feeling that we were responsible for the
bulldog's iniquities. I see now that the sensible thing

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 57
would have been to have gone and hid about among
the rocks till it was all over. But that course did not
occur to us till afterwards. As a matter of fact, my
cousin crammed the pistol into her uninjured pocket,
I. filled my hands with stones, and we pursued at our
best speed, seeing from time to time above the heav
ing backs and brandished tails of the galloping cattle
the dark body of the bulldog as he was swung into
the air over his victim's head. Suddenly the whole
cortege wheeled, and flourished up a bohireen that led
to a cottage, and in the quick turn the cow fell on her
knees, and lay there exhausted, with the bulldog prone
beside her, exhausted too, but still holding on. The
presumable owner of the cow arrived on the scene at
the same instant that we did,
" Call off yer dog ! " he roared, in a fearful voice.
" He's not ours ! " we panted ; " but come on, and
we'll beat him off ! " the bulldog's evident state of
collapse encouraging us to this gallantry.
The man's only reply was to pick up a large stone,
and heave it at the dog. It struck his brindled ribs

5» THROUGH CONNEMARA
a resounding blow, but he was too much blown to
bear malice satisfactorily; to our deep relief he
crawled to his feet, slunk away past us on to the main
road, and, setting off at a limping trot in the direction
from which he had come, presently vanished into the
mist. The man stooped down and examined the poor
cow's torn and bleeding nose, and she lay, wild-eyed,
with heaving sides, at our feet.
" That the divil may blisther the man that owns
him ! " he said ; " and if he isn't your dog, what call
have you taking him out to be running my cows ? "
" We met him on the road," we protested. " We
couldn't help his following us."
" Aha ! thin it's one of them dirty little fellows of
officers that has the fishing lodge below that he be
longs to ! " said the man. " I heard a shot awhile
ago, and ye may b'lieve me I'll have the law o'
them." We exchanged guilty glances.
"Yes; I heard a shot, too," I said nervously.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 59
" Well, I — a— I think we must be getting on now.
It's getting late, and — a — I hope the cow isn't very
bad. Anyhow " — my voice sinking into the indistinct
mumble that usually accompanies the benefaction —
" here's something to get soft food for her till her nose
gets well."
The ambition for the long walk was dead. With
more hurried good wishes and regrets we wished the
man good evening, and so home, much shattered.
P.S. — We should like to meet the owner of that
bulldog.

60 THROUGH CONNEMARA

CHAPTER IV.
PIBBIE looked as suspicious and unamiable as ever
^ when she came to the door next morning ; her
long day in the stable had evidently not pro
pitiated her in the least, but to her subtle mind had
only augured a journey of unprecedented length on
the following day. We started, however, with great
brilliancy, and with a vulgar semi-circular sweep, like
a shop-boy making a capital letter, that Sibbie con
sidered very telling when in society. It took altogether
by surprise the penwiper dog, who, with a little more
than his usual elaborate ill-breeding, was standing
with his back to us, looking chillingly unconcerned,
and compelled him to show the most humiliating
adroitness in order to escape from Sibbie's venomous
fore-feet. The incident rounded off pleasingly our
last impressions of Recess, and we whirled out on to

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 61
the main road in a manner that nearly took our
breath away, and probably left the gate-post in a
state of hysterical gratitude at its escape.
It was not raining, but the day had got itself up to
look as like rain as possible, and was having a great
success in the part. A rough wind was blowing the
clouds down about us, and, as on the day before, the
hills hid their heads and shoulders in the odious mist,
leaving only their steep sides visible, with the wrath
ful white watercourses scarring them, like perpendicu
lar scratches on a slate. It was on one of these hills
that a tourist missed his footing last year in trying to
get to the bottom faster than someone else ; the
heather clump broke from the edge of the ravine, and
the young fellow went with it. They searched for
him all the summer night, and next morning a shep
herd found him, dead and mutilated, at the foot of
the cliff. We drove on steadily by bare bog and
rocky spur for three or four miles, with the wind hard
in our faces, till we came to a cross road, where a
double line of telegraph wires branched from the

62 THROUGH CONNEMARA
single one, and following, according to directions
the double one, we left the mail-car road behind.
The wind now screamed into our right ears, and
Sibbie's long tasselled tail, which before had streamed
back out of sight under the cart, turned like a weather
cock and swept out in front of the left wheel. It was
not a pleasant day for seeing one of the show places
of Connemara, but it was the best and only one we
could afford ; besides, from what we had heard of
Ballinahinch, it seemed as if it would be able to
bear an unbecoming atmosphere better than most
places. It need scarcely be said that the new road ran by
a lake, or lakes ; every road we have seen in Conne
mara makes for water like an otter, and finds it with
seeming ease, sometimes even succeeding in getting
into it. In a forlorn hollow by one of these lakes, we
came on a little Roman Catholic chapel, with its
broken windows boarded up, and its graveyard hud
dled under a few wind-worn trees on the hill behind.
Crooked wooden crosses, or even a single upright

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 63
stake, were the landmarks of the dead ; perhaps in a
country where trees take more trouble to preserve
than game, and are far more rare, a piece of timber is
felt to be more honourable than the stone that lies
profusely read}' to the hand. The graveyard trees
quivered rheumatically in the wind, long bending
before it in one direction having stiffened them past
waving ; the pale water chafed and sighed in a rushy
creek below ; even Sibbie chafed and sighed as
we stood still to look back, and she took at least
ten yards of the hill at full gallop when we started
her again.
As we drove along the high ground beyond, Bal-
linahinch came slowly into sight ; a long lake in a
valley, a long line of wood skirting it, and finally, on a
wooded height, the Castle, as it is called, a large
modern house with a battlemented top, very gentle
manlike, and even handsome, but in no other way
remarkable. It was not the sort of thing we had expected. We
had heard a great deal about Mary Martin, who was

64 THROUGH CONNEMARA
called the Princess of Connemara forty years ago ;
we had read up a certain amount of Lever's " Martins
of Cro' Martin," of which she was the heroine, and
knew from other sources something of her gigantic
estate, of the ruin of it during the famine, of the way
in which she and her father completed that ruin by
borrowing money to help their starving tenants, and
of her tragic death, when she had lost everything, and
had left Ireland for ever. We were prepared for any
thing, from an acre of gables and thatch to a twelfth
century tower with a dozen rooms one on top of the
other, and a kerne or a gallowglass looking out of every
window, but this admirable mansion with plate-glass
windows, and doubtless hot water to the very garrets,
shook down our sentimentalities like apples in autumn.
We drove on in silence. I knew that my cousin felt
apologetic. " I believe I had forgotten," she said, " that it
was Mary Martin's father who built this, sixty or
seventy years ago. Of course you couldn't expect it
to look old."

.§S3r '¦-

'BALLINAHINCH CAME SLOWLY INTO SIGHT.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 67
" No, of course not," I replied, " and even if I
did I don't think it would be much use. That house
is too conscientious to look a day older than its
age." We arrived at the gate while I spoke, a modest
entrance to what seemed a back road to the house,
and Sibbie turned in at it with her usual alacrity in
the matter of visiting. She would visit at a public-
house, at a pigstye, at a roofless ruin, anywhere rather
than go along the road. The picnic was beginning ;
certainly the view was. We looked along the lake
and saw how it coiled and spread among its wooded
islands ; the shrouded hill behind it gave for the
moment some indication of its greatness ; there was
no doubt that even at its worst, as it undoubtedly
was, Ballinahinch was worth seeing.
The wind fought with us along the first stretch of
the drive, dragging at our hat pins, lifting the rug off
our knees ; blowing our hair in our eyes ; but at the
first turning a great and sudden calm fell about us.
For the first time in our travels we were in a large
f 2

68 THROUGH CONNEMARA
plantation. Some local genius once said that " Conne
mara got a very wooded look since them telegraph
posts was put up in it," and after many a drive in
which the line of black posts dwindling to the horizon
was the only break in the barrenness we began to
understand this. Here at all events the civilising
hand had done its work, and we slackened pace in the
greenness and shelter, and, fortified by the know
ledge that the present owner of the place was far away,
we began to think of luncheon. My cousin pacified
the fly-tormented Sibbie with a few handfuls of fresh
grass, and got out our pewter spoons and other ele
gances of the luncheon table, while I, grovelling on
the floor of the cart, nurtured there the spirit-lamp
through one" of its most implacable moods. There
was a charming stillness, broken only at first by the
occasional heavy splash of a leaping salmon in the
lake below, and by Sibbie's leisurely mastications,
then the first sulky sigh came from the tin kettle, and
a long beckoning finger of blue flame darted from
beneath it, That was a weird habit of the spirit-lamp,

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 69
to beckon to us when the kettle began to boil, and on
this occasion it did not play us false. We made our
homely cup of Bovril, we devoured our cheese, we
crunched our Bath olivers, and it was just then, when
the seats of the trap were covered with cups and
crumbs, and we were altogether at our grimiest, that
we heard wheels close at hand.
My cousin at once showed a tendency to get over
the wall and hide, leaving undivided degradation to
me, but the descent to the lake on the other side was
too steep. As she turned back discomforted I was
quite glad to see how dishevelled she looked, and how
crooked her hat was, and before any remedial steps
could be taken the Philistines were upon us. They
consisted of four young men, crowded on a car with
their fishing-rods and baskets, and, to do them justice,
they, after a first stare of astonishment, considerately
averted their eyes from the picnic. The narrowness
of the road made it necessary that they should pass
at a walk, and it was at that moment, while we were
affecting unconsciousness of all things in heaven and

7o THROUGH CONNEMARA
earth, that the nightmare of yesterday rose up before
us— the bulldog. He was close behind the axle of
the car, fastened to it, thank heaven, with a glittering
chain, but between the spokes of the wheel we saw
his eyes rolling at us with a bloodshot amiability or
even recognition, while his crooked tail wagged stiffly,
and his terrible nose twitched amorously towards the
Bath Oliver I held in my hand. The car quickened
up again, and he dragged at his chain as he was
forced into a shuffling trot along with it. "Come in,
Stripes," shouted one of the youths, and the party
passed out of sight,
" Did you see him ? " I said excitedly. " I believe
he knew us ! "
" Of course he did," returned my cousin, with an
offensive coolness that was intended to carry off any
recollections of her dastardly moment of panic, " but
he won't tell. He knows if he gives us away about
the revolver we will inform about the cow. For my
part I'm rather sorry he isn't here now," she went on,
as she wiped a knife in the grass, and then stabbed it

" WE HEARD WHEELS CLOSE AT HAND.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 73
into the earth to give it a polish ; "no picnic should
be without a dog. When I was a child we used
always to wipe the knives on the dogs' backs between
the courses at a picnic, and then the dogs used to try
and lick that spot on their backs  "
I am not squeamish, but I checked my cousin's
recital at this point, and we pursued our way to the
house. Tall sliding doors, in perfect order, admitted
us to a large quiet yard, so orderly that, as we looked
round it, we felt, like Hans Andersen's black beetle,
quite faint at the sight of so much cleanliness, and
would have been revived by the only familiar whiff of
the cow-shed and pigstye. We gave Sibbie and her lun
cheon bag to a man who was hanging about, and were
proceeding to ask whether we might walk about the
grounds, when a door into the house opened, and there
issued from it a young woman of such colossal height
and figure that we stared at her awe-struck. She
smiled at us with all the benevolence ofthe giantess,
and advancing, offered to be our guide. We thanked
her like Sunday School children and followed her

74 THROUGH CONNEMARA.
meekly towards the hall door, feeling as we looked at
her that it would have been simpler to have climbed
on to her tremendous shoulders and got at once a
bird's-eye view of the demesne. It was apparently.
part of the programme that we should see the inside
of the house, and she led us through the rooms in the
lower story, billiard-room, dining-room, drawing-room,
library ; all comfortable, and in their way imposing,
but unfortunately devoid of special objects to com
ment on, while the giantess stood and held the door
of each open, with, as it seemed to us, an ogress-like
avidity for approbation. But she proved to be a
kindly giantess, and when we looked, in spite of our
selves, a little unenthusiastic at the prospect of view
ing the upper part of the house she relented and said
we might go out into the. grounds.
The hill sloped steeply from the dining-room win
dows, to the lake in front, and to a wood at the side,
and going down some steps we found ourselves in a
shady walk by the water.
" This is Miss Martin's seat," said the giantess, stop-

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 75
ping in front of a curiously-shaped and comfortless-
looking stone block, " ye can sit in it if ye like."
We did so, gently.
" How very nice," said my cousin, getting up again,
and removing an earwig and some dead leaves of last
year from her skirt, " but I should have thought she
would have liked more of a view. Those laurels two
yards off are very pretty of course, but one can't see
anything else."
I saw an antagonistic gleam in the giantess's eye
and hastened to suggest that the laurels might have
grown up since the days of Mary Martin.
" Whether or no, it's in it she used to sit," she said,
as if that settled the question of the view. " Maybe
ye'd like now to walk a piece in the woods to see
them ? "
" I suppose it would take us a long time to walk
through such large woods as these ? " I said lusciouslyj
seeing that I was regarded with more favour than my
cousin. " Is it walk thim woods ? Ye'd sleep, before ye'd

76 THROUGH CONNEMARA
have them walked. But there's a nice road round to
the boathouse ye can go."
" Perhaps you could tell me how many acres there
are in this estate ? " said my cousin, trying to make
hay in my private streak of sunshine.
" I declare I'm not rightly sure."
" I suppose they're past counting ? " continued my
cousin, with the fascinating smile of one who is sus
taining a conversation brilliantly.
" About that," responded the giantess lucidly, de
termined at all hazards to keep pace with outside
opinion. " Here now is the little road I was tellin' ye
of. Would ye know the way in it ? "
We assured her we could find the boathouse with
out her help, and " so in all love, we parted."
As we walked on in the solitude the lake narrowed
beside us to a river, a connecting channel between it
and the larger lake beyond, and the water ran strong
and quiet under the meeting branches that leaned
above it from both sides. The dark mirror reflected
every twig ; brown stems, green canopy, and opening

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 77
of grey sky arched away beneath our feet as well as
above our heads ; we became at last giddy with the
double world, and felt our eyes cling instinctively to
the silver smear on the glassy surface or the golden
gleam in the shallow that, testified to where illusion
began. Once or twice there was a splash that sounded,
in that silence, as if a large stone had been thrown in ;
we were, of course, looking the wrong way each time,
and instead of seeing the flash of a ten or twenty
pound fish we saw only the rift in the crystal, and the
big ripples following each other to the shore. Once
only in Galway did we see live fish without stint or
hindrance, when, afterwards, we leaned over the
bridge in Galway town itself, and could have counted
by the hundred the dark backs of the salmon that lie
all day still and shadowy in the clear water below the
weir. We were soon out again by the upper lake, and,
much beset by flies and midges, walked along the
edge of the wood till we came to the boathouse. On
its broad steps we sat thankfully down to rest, and

78 THROUGH CONNEMARA
commented at our leisure on the atrocities of the grey
weather, and of the cloud that was cloaking the peak
of the mountain opposite. We happened, to know
that there ought to be a mountain there, one of the
Twelve Pins, in fact, but for all we could see, it might
have flown into the Atlantic Ocean, in search of
something less watery than Connemara. As we sat
there, and saw the invariable fisherman catching the
inevitable nothing, and looked at the dark sheet of
water in its beautiful setting of trees, my cousin told
me drowsily several things about Mary Martin. I
cannot now recall the recital very clearly, but I re
member hearing how Miss Martin had taken a guest
up the mountain that should have been soaring into
the heavens before us, and, making him look round
the tremendous horizon, had told him how everything
he could see belonged to her. If the weather had
been like ours, it would not have been a very over
powering statement, limited, in fact, to the cloud of
mist and Miss Martin's umbrella ; but as it was, with
the inland mountains and moors clear to the bluest

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 79
distance, and the far Atlantic rounding her fifty miles
of sea-coast, it was a boast worth making. Perhaps
it was the vision that was clearest to her failing sense
when she lay dying on the other side of that Atlantic
without an acre and without an income, a refugee from
the country where her forefathers had prospered during
seven hundred years.
The retrospect became melancholy, and we began
to be extremely chilly ; sitting out of doors was too
severe a test for this July day, and we made towards
the house again. When we were nearing Mary
Martin's seat we saw through the trees a brilliant
spot of colour, which gradually developed into a
scarlet petticoat, worn shawl-wise about the head of
an old woman who had sat down in a tattered heap
to rest on the stone bench. She put away something
like a black pipe as we came up, and began the usual
beggar's groaning, and when, after some fumbling,
my cousin produced a modest coin, the ready bless
ings were followed by the ready tears, that welled
from hideously inflamed eyes, and trickled over the

80 THROUGH CONNEMARA
wrinkles in her yellow cheeks. It occurred to us to
ask whether she remembered Mary Martin, and in a
moment the tears stopped.
" Is it remember her ? " she said, wiping her eyes
with some skill on a frayed corner of the red petti
coat. " I remember her as well as yerself that I'm
looking at ! "
" What was she like in the face ? " said my cousin
in her richest brogue.
" Oh musha ? Ye couldn't rightly say what was
she like, she was that grand ! She was beautiful and
white and charitable, only she had one snaggledy
tooth in the front of her mouth. But what signifies
that ? Faith, whin she was in it the ladies of Conne
mara might go undher the sod. 'Twas as good for
thim. And afther all they say she died as silly as ye
plase down in the County Mee-yo (Mayo), but there's
more tells me she died back in Ameriky. Oh, glory
be to God, thim was the times ! "
The tears began again, and she relapsed into the
red petticoat. We left her there, huddled on the seat

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 81
moaning and talking to herself. We could do no
more for her than hope, as we looked back at her for
the last time, that the pipe in her pocket had gone
out. The day was slipping by ; a twelve mile drive
to Letterfrack was before us. Taking all things into
consideration, especially Sibbie's powers as a roadster,
we hardened our hearts to starting at once, without
taking the half-mile walk to see the wonderful stables
that cost Colonel Martin .£15,000 to build, and are
paved with blocks of the green and white Connemara
marble. Let us trust that our intended admiration
was conveyed in some form to that costly marble
flooring, in spite of an unpleasant saying about good
intentions and a certain pavement that is their
destination.

82 THROUGH CONNEMARA

CHAPTER V.
T T was nearly four o'clock before we got out of the
A Ballinahinch avenue on to the Clifden road. A
young horse had got loose in the yard just as
Sibbie was having her toilet made for the start, and
the clattering of hoofs and cracking of whips that
ensued had so upset her old-maidish sensibilities, that
she refused to leave the stable, till finally, by a noble
inspiration on our part, she was backed put of it.
She had started from the yard in a state of mingled
resentment and terror ; even still her ears were
fluttering like the wings of a butterfly, and she
showed a desire to canter that seemed to us unhealthy.
The shrunken oat bag lay at our feet ; decidedly she
had had more luncheon than was good for her while
we were walking ourselves off our legs in the woods of
Ballinahinch. The broad lake lay on our left, show-

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 83
ing coldly and mysteriously through the changing
swathes of mist, and above us, on our left, the long
slopes of bog and heather stretched upwards till they
steepened into the dignity of actual mountains.
" If I thought the weather could not hear me,"
observed my second cousin, " I should say it was
going to clear up. It looks almost as if there were
sunlight on those children's petticoats ahead of us."
An enchanting group was advancing to meet us ;
half-a-dozen or so of children, boys and girls petti-
coated alike in mellow varieties of the dull red or
creamy white Galway flannel, a few cattle wandered
in front of them, and in their midst a long-suffering
donkey was being ridden by three of them and
beaten by the remainder. We were so absorbed in
sitting with our heads on one side to better appreciate
the artistic unity of the picture that we took no heed
of the dangerous forward slant of Sibbie's ears. No
one could have supposed that in her short intimacy
with " the quality " she could have already developed
a fine-ladyish affectation of horror at the sight of an
g 2

84 'THROUGH CONNEMARA
estimable poor relation ; yet so it was. Casting one
wild look at the appalling spectacle, she sprang side
ways across the road, whirled the trap round, only
avoiding the black bog-ditch by a hair's breadth, and
fled at full speed in the direction from which she had
just come.
My cousin and I were for the moment paralysed by
surprise, and by the sudden horrid proximity of the
bog-ditch, which was hospitably prepared to take us
all in and do for us, and think nothing of it. Sibbie's
strong little brown back was hooped with venomous
speed, and her head was out of sight between her
forelegs. The telegraph posts were blended into a
black streak, the lakes swam past us like thoughts in
a dream, it seemed useless to get out to go to her
head; obviously, Sibbie was running away. The
governess cart quite entered into the spirit of the
thing, and leaped and bounded along in a way that
—considering its age and profession— we thought
very unbecoming. It is perhaps zfacon de parler to
say that I was driving. To put it more accurately, I

¦HANGING ON. EACH TO OUR REIN.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 87
had been driving, and now I was trying very hard to
do the opposite. However, after laying the seeds of
two blisters in vain, I was ignominiously compelled
to hand one rein to my cousin. Hanging on each to
our rein, we lay back in the trap, getting a good lever
age for our pull over the ridge of the luncheon
basket. I shudder to think of the result had those
reins broken. Two human Catherine wheels would
have been seen revolving rapidly over the stern of the
governess-cart, and as for Sibbie  But the reins
were staunch, and though at first a want of unanimity
caused us to swing from side to side of the road in a
series of Vandykes, the combined weight of the
expedition slowly told, and Sibbie's ears were hauled
into sight. Back and up they came till they were
laid along her back, and her long nose pointed sky
wards in a fury of helpless protest, while her gallop
grudgingly slackened.
Of course my hat had blown off early in the pro
ceedings, but nothing else had happened. I handed
my rein to my cousin without a word, and got out of

88 THROUGH CONNEMARA
" No doubt this had been extremely amusing,"
I said, " but I am going to buckle the reins as low
down on this bit as they will go."
And I did so. I hate people who do nothing but
laugh on an emergency, simply because they think it
looks brave.
As I turned Sibbie round I saw, nearly a quarter of
a mile away, a child standing by a telegraph post,
holding in its hand a white disc that I knew must be
my hat, and I also saw with much pleasure that the
other children, with the cows and the donkey, had left
the road, and were climbing up the hillside. So, with
hearts overflowing with a great thanksgiving that
" Earl Percy," i.e., the mail-car and its English
tourists, had not " seen our fall," we drove back again
at a cautious jog, Sibbie obviously as much on the
look-out as we were for anything that she could
reasonably shy at. The girl with the hat was
regarded by her with an anguish of suspicion, only
allayed by my getting out of the cart while the hat
was smuggled in, and leading her — a process which

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 89
always suggests taking a child by the hand to give it
confidence. It was a long way, about six Irish miles, back to the
turn that we had been instructed would take us to
Letterfrack, and the invalid sunshine had already
swaddled itself again in cotton wool and retired for
the night. If my second cousin has a failing, it is
that she believes herself to possess " an eye for
country," a gift fraught with peril to its possessor.
Unfortunately, she had, before starting, studied on a
map the relative positions of Ballinahinch, Recess,
and Letterfrack, and now that she was face to face
with the situation her eye for country flashed fire at
the idea of having to traverse two sides of a triangle
instead of one, which was pretty much what we were
called upon to do.
" It is absurd," she said, hotly, " to go back almost to
Recess to go by that ' new line ' to Letterfrack, when
I am almost sure I remember seeing on the Ordnance
Map a dear little roadeen that would take us through
the mountains somehow on to the Kylemore road."

90 THROUGH CONNEMARA
From the use of the affectionate diminutive
"roadeen," I knew that my cousin was trying to
engage my sympathies, and though I tried to steel
my heart against the suggestion, there certainly was
something attractive in the thought of a short cut.
" It ought to be a little further on," she continued,
" by a little lake ; and you know it's getting pretty
late now."
I now recognise that this was the moment at which
to have stamped upon the scheme, and to have made
the time-honoured remark that we had no time for
short cuts. But I let it slide by me, and when we
reached a narrow, but to all appearance sufficient
mountain road, bending plausibly away to the left, we
mutually succumbed to its fascinations. For a mile
or so it was really very fair. It certainly did occur
to me that it might be awkward if we met anything
larger than a wheelbarrow, as the governess-cart easily
monopolised the space between the usual bog-ditches,
but as, so far, the district seemed quite uninhabited,
we did not trouble ourselves on that account. The

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 91
road became steeper and stonier as we advanced, but
Sibbie toiled on gallantly, the pride of having run
away clearly still working in her and encouraging her
in a way no mere whip could have done. The cotton
wool into which the sun had retreated had now
covered all the sky, and was wrapping up the
mountain tops as if they were jewellery, which, as
they were armoured from head to foot in sheets of
grey rock, seemed to us unnecessary care. We were
getting deeper and deeper into the hills, and the
higher we got the heavier the rain became. It felt as
though some important heavenly pipe had burst, and
we were getting near the scene of the explosion. The
three shilling umbrella did its best ; it humped its
back against the torrent like an old cab-horse, and
really kept my second cousin fairly dry. But things
were going very badly with the luncheon basket, and,
though we did not mention it to each other, the belief
in the short cut was dying in us.
The road ahead was narrowing in a way not to be
accounted for by the laws of perspective ; it was

92 THROUGH CONNEMARA.
becoming suspiciously grassy, and rocks of a size
usually met with only in the highest Druidical circles
lay about so near to the track that steering was
becoming a difficulty. A wild-looking women, wear
ing a coarse white flannel petticoat over her red hair
instead of a cloak, came paddling along with bare
footed indifference to the wet, and stopped to stare at
us with a frank and open-mouthed amazement which
was not reassuring.
" Shall we ask her the way ? " I suggested.
" It's no good," replied my cousin, sombrely ;
" we must go on now. It's too narrow to turn
round. Let's get on to those cottages and ask some
one there."
(The belief in the short cut here heaved its final
groan and expired.)
We had climbed to a kind of small plateau in the
heart of the hills, and on the farther side of the little
indigo lake round which the track wound were a
couple of cottages. We beat Sibbie into a trot, and
made for the nearer of the two, and the barking of the

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 93
usual cur having brought a young man out of the
house, my cousin proceeded to discourse him.
" Are we going right for Kylemore ? "
" Yo're not."
" Where does this road lead to ? "
"To the Widda Joyce's beyant."
" And is that the end of it ? Can't we get on any
farther ? "
The young man looked at us much as an early
Roman might have regarded the Great Twin
Brethren. " Bedad I dunno what yerselves is able to do ; but
there's no answerable road for a cart whatever "
Our eyes met in dumb despair, but my second
cousin still rose above the waves. (This metaphor is
most appropriate, as we could not have been much
wetter if we had been drowned.)
" Where is the nearest hotel ? " she asked, with all
the severity of an examining Q.C.
" Back in Recess. Ye'd be hard set to get there to
night."

94 THROUGH CONNEMARA
" Think now, like a good Boy, is there no sort of a
place hereabouts where they'd put us up for the one
night ? "
The despairing relapse into the vernacular had its
effect. " Well, faith, I wouldn't say but the Widda Joyce
'd be apt to be able to do it. There was an English
gintleman, a Major, that she had there for the fish-
in'  "
In what capacity the English Major was used in the
fishing we did not stop to inquire ; he might have
been employed as a float for all we cared ; it was
about all we felt ourselves fit for.
We did not ask the Widow Joyce if she could take
us in. We simply walked into her house and stayed
there. We had heard a good deal of the Spanish type
of beauty that is said to abound in Connemara, but
the Widow Joyce was the first specimen of it that we
had seen. A small, pale, refined woman, with large
brown eyes, and dark hair tucked shiningly away
under a snowy white frilled cap, she heard our story

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 95
with flattering interest and compassion, and we had
hardly finished it before most of her eleven children
were started in different directions to prepare things
for us and " the pony." By-the-bye, we noticed that
during our travels Sibbie was always given brevet
rank, the delicate inference being that we were far too
refined and aristocratic to be associated with anything
so vulgar as a jennet.
A lovely clear fire of turf was burning on the hearth,
and Mrs. Joyce hospitably insisted on our each sitting
on little stools inside the big fireplace, and roasting
there, till the steam of our sacrifice showed how neces
sary a proceeding it was. In the meantime that
sacred place known as " Back-in-the-room " was being
prepared for our reception ; as far though we should
have preferred the kitchen with its clean earth floor
and blazing fire, Mrs. Joyce would not hear of our
having our dinner there.
" Sure the Meejer always ate his vittles back in the
room," she said ; and to this supreme precedent we
found it necessary to conform.

96 THROUGH CONNEMARA
We certainly owed a great deal to the Meejer. It
was the Meejer, we discovered, who had broken an
air-hole in the hermetically-sealed window. " An'
faith, though he give us the money to put in the glass
agin, we never got it done afther. It's a very back
wards place here." The Meejer's sense of decorum
had prescribed the muslin certains that shielded the
interior from the rude gazer's eye. The Meejer had
compelled the purchase of a jug and basin; and " a
beautiful clane pair o' sheets, that not a one ever slep
in but himself." In fact, what of civilisation there was, .
was due to his beneficent influence, and we rose up
and said that the' Meejer was blessed. Our dinner
was an admirable meal ; a blend of the resources of
the luncheon-basket and of Mrs. Joyce ; its only draw
back being that, forgetful, as she herself admitted, of
the precepts of the Meejer, she had put the teapot
down " on the coals to dhraw," and the result was a
liquid that would have instantly made me sick, and
would have kept my second cousin awake in agony
till she died next morning. So we avoided the tea.

'SITTING on little stools inside the big fireplace.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 99
" Back in the room " was a small whitewashed place
with an earthern floor as clean, though not quite as
dry, as the one in the kitchen. A big four-poster bed
filled one end of it, and a red painted press, a square
table, a huge American chest with the washing appa
ratus on it, and two or three chairs, were the rest of
the furnishing. But though the upholstery was of a
simple character, it was evident that the decorative
sense was not lacking. The walls were lavishly hung
with fervidly coloured religious prints ; two or three
sheets of an illustrated fishing fly-list had a place of
honour near the widow's patron saint over the fire
place, the gorgeous salmon flies being probably re
garded by the younger Joyces as portraits of some
new kind of angel ; and drapery's adventitious aid was
lent by the suspended wardrobe of the family, both
male and female, which relieved the severities of the
bedposts, and gave a little air of interesting mystery
to the corners of the room. Rather more than half
the room had a rough ceiling of boards, and near the
door we noticed a ladder leading up to the loft thus
h 2

i°o THROUGH CONNEMARA
made. We had felt anxious about the bestowal of the
widow and her family, not knowing what duties the
four-poster might not be called upon to perform, and
as the witching hour of ten o'clock drew nigh, and the
low murmur of Joyce discourse still continued, we
had made up our minds to ask what the arrangements
might be, when there came a tap at the door.
" I beg yer honour's pardon, Miss," said our hostess'
soft, polite voice, " but would there be any harm in
meself and the children goin' above up to the loft ? "
We said no, quite the contrary, and after some whis
pering and giggling outside the door, a procession of
Joyces slowly filed up the ladder,headed by the younger
sons of the house, and followed by the widow and the
daughters. The last pair of stout red legs was hoisted
off the ladder, the rustling and pounding overhead
gradually subsided, and my second cousin and I found
ourselves face to face with the most serious situation
 not excepting either the bulldog or the runaway —
of the expedition. The fear of interruption had
hitherto prevented us from making as thorough inves-

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 101
tigation as we might have wished, and now we " stared
at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a peak
in Darien." Then she said —
" I'll look."
She turned down the bedclothes with a stiff, nervous
hand. " They seem pretty clean," she said at last ;
" they mayn't perhaps have been washed very lately,
but I think they must have dusted them. I can only
see one crumb and a used wax match."
The account was not encouraging, but it might
have been worse. Of the sufferings of that night,
however, as much cannot be said. After our occu
pancy of that bed, not one used match, but twenty,
might have been collected. In explanation of this
circumstance, I will merely quote one line from the
charming duet for bass and tenor in The Lily of Kil-
larney — To light the way, to flea my love.

102 THROUGH CONNEMARA

CHAPTER VI.
r*R0M the indications given in the last chapter, the
intelligent reader will probably have gathered
the fact that we did not sleep well.
" It isn't the little bit they ates I begridges them,"
quoted my cousin, as in one of the long watches of the
night she wearily lit her candle for the nineteenth
time, " but 'tis the continial thramplin' they keeps up."
Even when the greater part of these foes was either
gorged or slain, the sleep that hummed its mellow
harmonies in the loft over our heads held far from us,
tossing and stifling among feathers and flock pillows.
It must have been about two a.m., and I had just, by
various strategies, induced myself to go to sleep, when
I was once more awakened, this time by a convulsive
clutch of my arm.
"Don't stir!" whispered my second cousin, in a

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 103
voice so low that it felt like one of my own dreams,
" but listen ! "
A stealthy sound, as of a slow, barefooted advance,
crept to us, buried though we were in the perfumed
depths of the flock pillows.
" Whatever it is, it came out from under the bed,"
breathed my cousin, "and it has gone twice round the
room — looking for our money, I expect ! "
The steps ceased for a moment, then there came a
sound as of a little rush towards the bed, and in an
instant something with loud flappings and rustlings
had descended upon us, and rested heavily, with hollow
cacklings of contentment, upon our buried forms (for
I suppose I need hardly state that we had both bolted
under the bedclothes).
" I believe it's only the goose after all ! " I said, as
soon as I was sufficiently recovered to speak.
" Only the goose ! " returned my second cousin, with
concentrated fury ; " I don't see much to be grateful
for in that. And how do you know it isn't the gan
der ? I'm simply stifling here, but I know the brute

io4 THROUGH CONNEMARA
would peck me if I went out from under the clothes.
I wish to goodness it had been a burglar. Anyhow,
they don't peck."
This was indisputable ; as was also the fact that the
bird had to be dislodged. She had worked herself
into a position that was probably more satisfactory to
her than it was to me, and judging, as I was well able
to do, by her weight, she must have been a remarkably
strong and vigorous bird.
" Get the matches ready," I said, gathering myself
for an effort. Then, curving myself till the goose
must have thought she was sitting on a camel, I gave
a heaving plunge. There was a croak, a flop, and a
minute afterwards the light of a match revealed a
monstrous grey goose standing in pained astonishment
on the floor near the bed.
Fortunately the profundities of Joyce repose knew
no disturbance, and, still more providentially, the three
shilling umbrella was within reach of the bed. Open
ing this as a safeguard against an attack, which in our
then thin costume we should be ill-fitted to with-

'0^

• REVEALED A MONSTROUS GREY GOOSE7

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 107
stand, we gently but firmly ushered the majestic
goose-lady into the kitchen, and, getting back to bed.
slept in peace till the usual hideous farmhouse clamour
began. We need not dilate upon it here. The war-
whoopings ofthe cocks, the exhausting self-satisfaction
of the hens over a feat which, however praiseworthy
in itself, lacks originality ; the yells of the pigs, and
their impatient snuffings and hangings against the
kitchen door ; all, all, were alike detestable, and we
welcomed almost with ecstasy the lowering of the first
pair of Joyce legs, which told us that the family, like
a certain distinguished cricketer, were going out " leg-
before." My cousin and I are old travellers, and we have
two properties, a spirit lamp and a folding india-
rubber bath, without which we never take the road.
It is my belief that if my second cousin were told
that a chariot of fire was at the door, waiting to waft
her to the skies, she would rush upstairs for the india-
rubber bath and the spirit lamp. After this I sup
pose I need hardly say that they had accompanied

108 THROUGH CONNEMARA
us to Connemara. We do not for an instant wish to
insinuate that the bath, as an institution, does not ob
tain in those parts. We have every reason to believe
that it flourishes there ; but a melancholy experience
has taught us that the age of chivalry is dead, so far
as hotels are concerned, and if there is a scarcity or
competition in any department, whether of news
papers, or green peas, or baths, the most recent paper,
and the first helping, and the last available bath is re
served by the truckling domestics for the largely-
eating, heavily-tipping male traveller. We have had
moments of fury, when violent death has stalked be
hind the chambermaid who has just informed us that
" the last bat' in the house is afther goin' in to the
gentleman in No. ii."
But at such times the remembrance of the india-
rubber bath floats sweetly into our minds ; and we
reflect that its tin rival would have cost sixpence or a
shilling. Its gentle influence, combined with a dash
of chill penury, represses our noble rage, and we en
dure the favouritism of the hotel emlpoyes with calm ;

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 109
knowing also that retribution is coming for her whose
duty it will be to deal with the weird and wobbling
thing that will, on the smallest provocation from the
unskilled in its ways, become a mere mass of gaping
mouths, pouring forth accusation of her and her treat
ment of the slightest visitor.
At the Widow Joyce's hot water was unexpectedly
abundant, and the spirit lamp was not called into
requisition. We were given to understand that the
Meejer was loud and instant in his demands for
" plenty of biled water," but how he performed his
ablutions with it it is not for us to say. Except they
lent him a churn, there was, so far as we could see,
no vessels competent to undertake the duties of a
bath, and a churn in such a capacity would, we should
think, leave a good deal to be desired. We were,
however, independent of such makeshifts. The chief
drawback to an indiarubber bath is its propensity to
slop ; but on an earthen floor slop is little accounted,
and all would have been well if my second cousin had
not persisted in trying to empty it through the air-

no THROUGH CONNEMARA
hole broken by the Meejer in the window. She did
this nominally out of kindness to the Widow Joyce,
but really because she thought she could pour its
contents on the widow's cat, who was sunning herself
on the window-sill. As a matter of fact, I think our
luncheon-basket suffered more than the cat — but we
will not pursue the subject. My cousin now recog
nises that it requires an exceptionally high and hardy
intellect to control an indiarubber bath, even in
repose, and few, very few, are able to direct it in
action. When we went out that morning, we found it was
that " gift of God, a perfect day." Everything looked
washed and brilliant after the rain ; the little lake was
twinkling all over in sharp points of light till it looked
as if it were bristling with new pins, and the moun
tains had left off their half-mourning costumes of
black and grey, and wore charming confections of
softest green and lavender. We stood out in the
sunshine, on the narrow strip that ran between the
cottage and the lake, and threw some languid stones

IN A GOVERNESS-CART in
at the widow's geese, who were bobbing along before
the wind, led on their voyage by the stout disturber
of our slumbers. The air was singing with the noise
of streams ; each pale blue ravine had a white line
dividing it ; at the back of the cottage a little overfed
river came foaming into the lake at a pace that ought
to have given it indigestion after all it had swallowed
the night before, and the plash of the contents of the
indiarubber bath, as the widow emptied it on the step
of the front door, gave the last note in the chord of
water-music. We had had an excellent breakfast, founded on fresh
eggs and hot griddle cake, with a light top dressing of
potted meat ; we had paid our modest reckoning, and
Pat James, the eldest hope of the house of Joyce, was
harnessing " the pony." That " the pony " was giving
Pat James a time, not to say seven times and a half
time, was obvious from the shouts that came to us
through the stable-door, but finally, round the corner
of the cow-house, Sibbie's cross, prim face appeared
with Pat James leading her, and the governess-

ii2 THROUGH CONNEMARA
cart reeling over the big ruts in the lane behind
her. " He's very crabbed, Miss," said Pat James, in tones
of soft reproach, " he's afther hittin' me the divil's own
puck inside in the stable."
There was a spiteful gleam in Sybylla's bright eye
that spoke to the truth of his statement, and we felt
sorry for Pat James.
We took a mutually affectionate farewell of the
Widow Joyce, promising to convey her respects to
the Meejer if we met him in England, as she seemed
to think probable, and we set forth to make our way
back to " the big road below," accompanied by Pat
James, whose mother had charged him to see us safe
over the first bad bit of the road.
He was an idyllically picturesque creature of seven
teen or eighteen, with large, gentle grey eyes, set in a
golden-brown face several shades darker in value than
they were, and the most charming voice and manner
imaginable. The cat, on whom my cousin had basely
tried to empty the bath, came with him ; sometimes

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 113
strolling behind with a set face of unconsciousness,
but with a tail that twitched with inward plottings,
and sometimes making possessed scuttles on ahead,
with a sort of squirrel's tail held high, and a little
dreadful air of being moved by some unseen power.
Pat James was evidently rather ashamed of it, and at
such moments would throw stones at it to cover his
confusion. " We have it for a dog, Miss," he said in answer
to our enquiries, " and it have the way now to be run
ning with us when we'd be going out."
Here he threw another stone at the cat who had
usurped the position of household dog, which had the
effect of wafting it across the road under Sibbie's
nose, and thereby alarming her seriously. He left us
after about half a mile, and when we saw him last he
was sitting on a big rock, his slouched felt hat and
creamy flannel " bawneen " looking all that could be
desired against their backgroundof clear blue sky,
whilst the cat performed unearthly gambols in the
heather at his bare feet.

114 THROUGH CONNEMARA
" After all," we said to each other, as we turned
into the main road, and set Sibbie's long nose for
Recess, " it was just as well we missed our way, for if
we hadn't we should have missed Pat James."
The road that was to be our portion was the one
known as the New Line, leading out of the Recess
and Clifden road into another road that leads through
the Pass of Kylemore, and on into Letterfrack, where
we meant to spend the night Sibbie was fresh and
full of going, and the long level road, following the
curves of Lough Inagh and Lough Derryclare, in
spired her with a fine and unusual zeal. The
accustomed boats, each with its little patient whip
ping figure, were paddling about the lakes, and,
according to our custom, we reined in the fiery Sibbie
to watch them. They were a depressing spectacle,
and, as usual, our cold, though anything but fishy,
eye blighted all their chances of a rise. We left them
all flogging away like Dublin cabdrivers, and made
up our minds that if we wanted to spend thirty
shillings a day on fish, we would do it at the Stores.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 115
Our way lay through a long up-sloping tract of
heathery, boggy valley, with the splendid towers and
pinnacles of the Twelve Pins hanging high over the
lakes on our left, and on our right the last outworks
of the Maam Ture ranges rising almost from the road.
It was an utterly lonely place. The small black-faced
sheep pervaded the landscape, speckling the moun
tains like grains of rice, and we could see them filing
along the ledges over purple depths where more than
one climber has been killed. The little black and
brindled cattle stared at us defiantly as we drove
along, and the only human creature we met on the
road was a grey old bagpiper, who looked as though
he might have lost his way among the hills some time
in the last century, and had only just found the New
Line when we met him.
It certainly was a perfect day and a perfect drive.
The delicious mountain wind, which was charged with
all the subtle perfumes drawn from bog and heather ;
the marvellous cloud effects on the great crags of the
Twelve Pins ; the sparkle and rush of the brown
1 2

n6 THROUGH CONNEMARA
streams under the innumerable hog-backed bridges ;
the intense blue of the lakes, even the yellow white
ness of the slow-climbing road, all combined to fill us
with that vague delightful yearning which can only
be satisfied by lunch half an hour earlier than usual.
One only sign of civilisation did we see between
Recess and Kylemore, and it was of a wholly unex
pected type. A middle-sized house, bow-windowed,
gabled, stucco-covered, hideous beyond compare,
standing in the middle of a grass plot at the foot of
one of the hills, and looking as if some vulgar-minded
fairy had transported it bodily from Brixton or
Clapham Rise. It had at first the effect of being
deserted, but, as we got nearer, a melancholy old
horse strayed out of a sort of dilapidated shed and
stared at us, and an outside car propped against an
elaborately gabled end showed that he was not a
mere derelict. As we drove by, a cat climbed out of
one broken pane of glass, and a cock crept in by
another, and then suddenly at three of the upstair
windows there appeared the faces of three dirty little

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 117
girls. The hall door was shut, and the thin wiry
grass round the house was untrampled. No other
living thing appeared, and we can only conclude that
we stumbled in upon the middle of a fairy tale. The
house, of course, was the work of enchantment, and
the three princesses, who were held there in durance
vile, were about to be rescued by the princely cock
whom we had seen forcing an entrance, while the bad
fairy — the cat, naturally — had to creep out and throw
up the sponge (of which, by-the-bye, the princesses
might with advantage have made practical use).
We left the New Line just as we came in sight ol
the Pass of Kylemore, and the road on which we now
found ourselves wound along the shore of the lake,
according to the custom in Connemara, where, unlike
the rest of Ireland, the roads are not planted along
the backs of the highest hills procurable. We pulled
up on one of the bends of the road to look at the view
and make a sketch. That is the supremest of the
advantages of driving your own donkey-cart, you can
generally stop when and wherever you like. The

118 THROUGH CONNEMARA.
only exception to this rule is when, as happened at
Ballinahinch, your donkey has had too many oats,
On this occasion the donkey was quite ready to
stop, and she surveyed, with a connoisseur's cold eye,
the unsurpassable view, while the evening clouds
thronged the gap between the steep tree-covered sides
of Kylemore on one side, and the stony severities of
the Diamond Mountain on the other, and sent chang
ing lights and shadows hurrying over the wide lake,
and drove the labouring sketcher of these things
almost to madness.
Mr. Mitchell Henry's place, Kylemore Castle,
stands close in among the woods under the side of
Kylemore Mountain, with a small lake shutting it off
from the road. It is a great, imposing grey mass of
turrets and towers, and, close by, the white spire of a
charming little limestone church is reflected among
the trees in the lake, and gives an amazing finish of
civilisation to the whole view — in fact, civilisation and
fuchsia hedges are the leading notes from Kylemore
to Letterfrack, wide crimson banks of fuchsia lining

MR. MITCHELL HENRYS PLACE, KYLEMORE CASTLE.

' IN A GOVERNESS-CART 121
the road, and prosperous farm buildings presiding
over fat turnip fields, until the road lifts again into
the barer uplands whereon is situated the village of
Letterfrack. No map we have as yet encountered pays Letter
frack the compliment of marking it, but it is never
theless a very fine place, with a post and telegraph
office, an industrial school, and a tolerably regular
double row of houses of all sorts. Our various delays
of luncheon and sketching, &c, along the road had
made us later than usual, and we were only just in
time for the table d'hote at Mr. O'Grady's fuchsia-
covered hotel. There was a wonderful sunset that
evening, and after dinner we wandered out to see
as much as we could before bedtime. It was the
strangest country we had yet seen. A long down-
sloping tract of semi-cultivated land, and, starting up
round its outskirts, tall, crudely conical mountains,
" such a landscape as a child would draw," my second
cousin said. There was something volcanic and
threatening about these great dark tents, showing

122 THROUGH CONNEMARA
awfully against the red background of the sunset.
We were almost glad when everything melted into a
grey sea-fog — for the sea, though out of sight, was
very near — and we had to walk back the hotel ; while
from a shadowy cottage back of the road the piercing
screams of a concertina rendered in maddening iter
ation the first theme of the " Sweethearts " waltz.
Only one incident did we meet with on our way back.
Quite suddenly, out of the greyness, three men
appeared, and as they passed us, one of them turned
and said, " Genoong i dhieri," which, being translated,
is " God speed you."
We said- feebly " Good evening," and it was not till
we were nearing the hotel that my second cousin re
membered that she should have answered, " Ge moch
hay ritth," which is the Irish method of saying, " The
same to you."

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 123

CHAPTER VII.
H^HERE is reason in the roasting of eggs, and
-*~ presumably in their poaching, but we are be
ginning to think we shall never fathom the
principle which ordains that the hotel poached egg
shall invariably be underdone. Charmed we never so
wisely, commanded we never so timely, the same
pinkish blobs were placed fluent and quaking before
us, the same lavish gush answered the diffident knife
puncture, and in a moment our plates became like
sunrise painted by an impressionist, with red bacon
streaks weltering in the widespread orange glories,
and the golden mustard blob surmounting all as
serenely as Phoebus Apollo.
This phenomenon was at all events our only speci
men of a Letterfrack sunrise. As we sat at breakfast
in the coffee-room the mist blew softly against the

124 THROUGH CONNEMARA
French windows, and swept past on the road like a
procession of ghostly ball dresses ; the furniture
seemed clammy to the touch, and the paper decora
tions in the grate mocked the eye with their futile
elegance and affectation of summer heat. Our fellow
guests, evidently habitue's of the place, took only the
most casual notice of the weather, and talked of local
matters with the zest which so surprises the new
comer ; of their single or conglomerated prowess in
scrambling up the Diamond mountain, of their tumb
ling down it, of their tea, their sandwiches, and their
wet boots ; while we moodily ate our breakfasts,
without even self-respect enough to make conversa
tion for one another. Our depression was deepened
soon afterwards, on hearing that an ancient raw on
Sibbie's shoulder had been touched by the collar in
the drive of the day before, and that unless a person
described as "Jack's father " could put some additional
padding into the collar we could not get on to Renvyle
that day, though it was only a four mile journey.
The prospect of a day spent in the coffee-room

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 125
and the little ladies' drawing-room goaded us to
energy. We determined to see the damage for our
selves, and putting on our waterproofs, we paddled
out into the yard, and picked our way across it to the
stable by some convenient and apparently recognised

JACK S FATHER.
stepping-stones. The invalid Sibbie was in the dar
kest stall of the stable, standing in severe pre
occupation, with her back to the outer world, and as
we delicately approached her we became aware of an
eye like that of a murderess rolling at us with a white

126 THROUGH CONNEMARA
gleam in the obscurity, and saw that her long, bell-
rope tail was drawn tightly in. We hastily agreed
that we would take Jack's word for the rubbed
shoulder, and retired into the yard again. At the
door of another stable we found the person whose
only identity, or indeed profession, seemed to consist
in being Jack's father, sitting on an upturned bucket,
with Sibbie's collar in his lap and a monstrous needle
in his hand. He explained that he was putting in a
pad at each side, stuffed with cotton wool that he had
got "from Herself, within in the house, because
'twould be kindher than the hay." He had a serious
face, with a frill of grey beard, like a Presbyterian
minister of the most amiable type, aud he looked up
as he spoke with an expression that we felt to be
kinder even than the cotton wool. " If that collar
puts a hurt on the pony agin as long as yee'll be
thravellin' Connemara, ye may — ye may call me
blackbird ! "
This handsome permission, emphasised by the tug
with which the big needle was dragged through the

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 127
leather, was evidently the highest reassurance known
to the speaker, but, notwithstanding, we felt that even
to apply the opprobrious name of blackbird to Jack's
father would be an indifferent consolation if in the
midst of a wilderness of moor and mountain we
found the red spot appearing on Sibbie's shoulder.
We looked, however, as properly impressed as we
were able, and returned to the house in better spirits.
It was not till the afternoon that the weather gave
us a chance of starting, and even then it required
courage of a high order to turn out of our comfortable
quarters into the thick, damp air. The volcanic
mountain spikes, that last night had notched the
sullen fire of the evening sky, had with one accord
taken the veil, and retired from public observation,
and the sloping pastures and turnip fields looked as
nearly repulsive as was possible for them. Under
these circumstances we left Letterfrack without
emotion, and proceeded northward towards Renvyle.
After we had gone a little way we began to specu
late as to whether the road had been made with an

128 THROUGH CONNEMARA
eye to the possibility of a future switchback railway.
It seemed to us that at every hundred yards or so we
had to get out and trudge up a hill through the mud,
our consciences approving our consideration for Sibbie,
and our every other feeling bewailing it ; then came
the scrambling into the trap again at the top, the
tucking in of wet rugs, the difficult closing of the
door, and having driven down the far side, the next
hill rose immediately before us in the mist. The
next thing we began to notice was that on every hill
we met a donkey-cart and some young cattle, evi
dently coming from some fair or market. There
were two courses of procedure on these occasions.
The calves turned and fled before us at full gallop
along the way they had come, until retrieved with
huge expense of shouting and bad language, or they
at once jumped the fence by the roadside and stam
peded at large through the fields. The donkey-cart,
which generally contained a pig, and an old woman
screaming in Irish, had but one method, which was to
cross to the wrong side of the road r at the critica

AT TULLY FAIR.

K

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 131
moment, and then, abandoning itself to panic, en
deavour to retrace its steps. During. three or four
miles these recontres became more and more frequent,
till at length, when the mist lifted at the top of a hill,
we found that we had reached their source. In the
hollow between the two hills was a village, its single
street black with people, and the roads leading to it
full of cattle and pigs. In other words, we had hit
off the fair of Tully.
My cousin and I began to wonder how we were to
get to the other side of it. We drove down into the
town with dignity and circumspection, hoping that
our aristocratic appearance might clear the way for
us ; but after a minute or two we were forced to the
conclusion that the peasantry were not impressed.
Not till Sibbie's aggrieved visage was thrust into their
midst did the groups separate, and even then they
could scarcely spare time from the ardours of debate
to give us more than a passing stare of bewilderment.
An obstacle that seemed for a time likely to prevent
our ever getting to Renvyle was a donkey-cart, with
K 2

132 THROUGH CONNEMARA
its shafts propped on a barrel so as to make a stall
for the sale of sugar-stick, gooseberries, and piles of
the massive biscuits known as " crackers." The press
of customers and their friends round this brought us
to a standstill, and my cousin, in a politely dignified
voice, asked those nearest us to move aside. There
was a movement and a turning to stare.
" Holy Biddy j What's thim ? " exclaimed a girl,
pushing back against the donkey-cart, and in so
doing sending some of the " crackers " sliding down
into the mud.
The proprietress, an old woman with protruding
teeth and generally terrific aspect, made a futile
attempt to avert the catastrophe, and then whirled
round upon us with a ferocity whetted by this disaster
and matured by long combat with small boys.
" That the divil may blisther yerself and thim ! "
she screamed. " What call have thim dirty thravellers
here throwin' down all before thim ? Aha ! I knew
ye," she said, addressing herself to my second cousin
in tones of thunder, " and yer owld mother before ye,

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 133
the time ye were thravelling the counthry in a pack
on her back, puckin' at every hall-doore in the coun
thry beggin' spuds ! For so grand as ye are, with
yer specs on yer nose and yer fine sailor hat on the
back of yer head ! "
My cousin and I should, of course, have passed on
with a pale hauteur, as if we had not heard this
amazing effort of biographical romance, but we are,
unfortunately, not of the complexion that turns pale
with ease ; on the contrary, we became a violent turkey-
cock scarlet, and ended by a collapse into unsuppres-
sible laughter, in which the crowd joined with unfeigned
delight, as they at length made a way for us to pass.
" Don't mind her at all, Miss," said a cattle drover,
encouragingly, as he dragged a calf from before the
wheel ; " that one'd bother a rookery with her tongue ;
there isn't a fair in the counthry but she'll be bawling
and fighting in it this way, so it's little regard the
people pays to her and her chat. Sure, as Shakspeare
says, " ye'll always know a rale lady wherever ye see
her ! "

134 THROUGH CONNEMARA
This gallantry was so refreshing, that we did not
stop to inquire more closely into the whereabouts of
the quotation, and we slowly made our way out of
the fair, past the bulging, grimy tents where porter
and whisky were sold, and the screaming crowd of
children in front of a showman's booth, till the last
knot of blue-cloaked women was circumnavigated,
and the last incensed pig was dragged from between
¦ Sibbie's forelegs.
We looked back as we crawled up the hill outside
the village, and wondered what the pleasure could be
of standing all day long in the drizzle, in mud ankle-
deep, as many do who have nothing either to buy or
sell. But a fair is not to them merely a place of
business, it is a conversazione, extending from sunrise
to sunset, at which the keen spectacular enjoyment of
bargaining is blended with the purely personal plea
sure of getting drunk.
Another mile or two of switchbacking brought us
in sight of trees, which, in Connemara, answers to
coming in sight of land, as far as civilisation is con-

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 135
cerned ; before long we were driving underneath
them, and pulling up at the entrance gate of a
demesne. We drove down a long avenue (when we
say " avenue " in Ireland, we mean it according to the
true sense of the word, and do not necessarily imply
that it is over-arched with trees), with the sound of
the sea in our ears, and became aware that we were
on a strip of land like the battlefield of Lyonesse.
" On one side lay the ocean, and on one lay a great
water." We wound by the edge of the lake, and might
easily have mistaken the frothy ripple along its shore
for the salt lip of the tide, but for the tall band of
reeds that shook stiffly in the mist-laden wind. But
we were nearing the sea every moment. We emerged
from a plantation, and came in sight of it at last, and
at the same time came to our destination, a long,
grey, two-storey house, with low Elizabethan windows,
and pale weather-slated walls, wholly unexpected, and
altogether unique, as far, at all events, as this part of
Ireland is concerned.

136 THROUGH CONNEMARA
Anyone who knows Galway at all, knows the name
of Blake ; and anyone who read the reports of the
Parnell Commission will remember the Mrs. Blake
whose evidence there was thought by both sides to
be of so remarkable a kind. Renvyle House, at
whose oaken, iron-studded door Sibbie was now joy
fully coming to a standstill, has been the home of the
Blakes for several centuries ; now, in its old age, it is
the home of any tourist who chooses to go there.
The bad times and the agitation hit Renvyle very
hard ; so hard that when the fight with the Land
League was over, Mrs. Blake was not able to sit down
and tranquilly enjoy her victory. She had, on the
contrary, to rise up and give all her energies to
repairing the ruin that such a victory meant. Her
plan was a daring one for a boycotted woman to un
dertake ; but it was carried out to its fullest intention.
Before long, advertisements - appeared in the news
papers and the guide books "to the effect that Renvyle
House had been added to the list of Connemara
hotels, and the sound of traffic, "the coorsing and

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 137
recoorsing " of cars began to be heard on the long
avenue by the lake, as in the old times, when " ex
clusive dealing" and decrees of isolation were un
known. We cannot here say much about the difficulties she
had to contend with. Whatever they were they were
overcome. It is both easier and pleasanter to speak
of the advantages at her command. The charming,
rambling old house, with its innumerable panelled
bedrooms, the lakes, "shtiff" with brown trout, the
woods and rocks in which hide all manner of strange
beasts — from otters and seals downwards — the un
tainted Atlantic for the tourist to disport himself in
or upon, as seems good to him, and the tallest moun
tains of Connemara to stare at across the bay, while
sprawling at ease on such a level, creamy stretch of
sand as is seldom found except in those places where
it is the sole and much-bragged-of attraction. We
had heard of all these things in advance ; we were
accustomed to thinking of Renvyle as an hotel ; and
yet, when we knocked at the door, and a grave and

138 THROUGH CONNEMARA .
decorous man-servant appeared, the look of every
thing conspired to make us forget that we were
tourists, prepared to exercise our lawful right of " bed
and board," and we came very near stammering out
an inquiry if Mrs. Blake was at home.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART.

139

CHAPTER VIII.

HEN the iron-studded hall-door
of Renvyle House Hotel had
closed behind us, we
, found ourselves in a
low-panelled hall,
with oaken props
for guns and fish
ing rods, and long
black oaken chests along
its walls. Everything was
old-fashioned, even mediaeval
dark, and comfortable. Nothing was in the least sug
gestive of a hotel, unless it might have been a row of
letters and telegrams on the chimney-piece, and I
was beginning seriously to fear that we had made a
mistake, when I noticed my second cousin's eye-

140 THROUGH CONNEMARA
glasses were at full cock, and following their direction,
I saw the"Innkeepers' Regulation "Act hanging framed
on the wall. It was both a shock and a relief.
Our various belongings — somewhat disreputable
and travel-stained by this time — having been con
veyed from the trap, we were told that tea was ready
in the drawing-room, and followed the servant through
two deep doorways into another room, also mediaeval
and panelled. " What is so rare as a day in June ? "
asks Mr. Lowell. Nothing, we can confidently reply,
except a fire in July, and there on the brick hearth.
we saw with gloating, incredulous eyes a heap of
burning turf sending a warm, dry glow into the room,
and making red reflections in the antique silver tea-
service that was placed on a table near it. For ever
quelled were our vague anticipations of the hotel
drawing-room and its fetishes, the ornate mirrors, the
glass-shaded clocks, and the alabaster chimney orna
ments ; and as we extended our muddy boots to the
blaze, and sipped hot tea through a heavy coating
of cream, we felt reconciled to the loss of an ideal.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART

14'

After the clank of our tea-cups had continued for a
few minutes, there was a stir under the frilled petti
coat of the sofa, and a small black-and-tan head was
put forth with an expression of modest but anxious

RENVYLE HOUSE HOTEL.

inquiry, the raised flounces making a poke bonnet
round the face, and giving it an old-ladyish absurdity,
of which its owner was happily unaware. We laughed
— -an unkindness which was followed by an expres
sion of deep but amiable embarrassment, and a

142 THROUGH CONNEMARA
tapping on the floor that told of deprecatory tail
waggings. We simultaneously extended a piece of
bread-and-butter, and an animal, allied apparently to
the houses of black-and-tan terrier and dachshund,
at once came forward with its best manner and took
our offerings with suave good breeding and friend
liness. A trick of sitting up and waving the fore-
paws as a request for food was exhibited to us with
out delay, and further researches discovered a pro
ficiency in that accomplishment of " trust " and " paid
for," which must be the bitterest problem in dog-
education, and perhaps gives in later dog-life some
free-thinking ideas about the unpractical nature of
the exercise, and the flippancy of supreme beings
generally. We said all this to each other, luxuriously
and at great length, and had some pleasure in con
trasting the refined behaviour of the Renvyle dog
with the brutal cynicism of the Recess penwiper and
the blase effeteness of its fox-terrier. Under the
influences of dark mahogany panelling and a low
Queen Anne window we became mellow and thought-

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 143
ful, and sank into soothing reflection on our natural
affinity to what is cultured and artistic. I am sure,
at least, that my second cousin felt like that ; she
always has since the disastrous day on which a chiro
mantist looked at her hand and told her that it was
essential to her to have nice surroundings.
I was beginning to feel a little acrid at this recollec
tion when the door-handle turned in its place high
up in the panels, and Mrs. Blake came in to see her
visitors. That my cousin belonged to her county
seemed to her a full and sufficient reason that she
should welcome us as friends, and perhaps it gave us
throughout our stay an advantage over the ordinary
tourist in the more intimate kindnesses and oppor
tunities for conversation that fell to our lot.
We looked as hard at Mrs. Blake as politeness
would permit, while the broad columns of the Times
seemed to rise before our mind's eye, with the story
sprinkled down it through examination and cross-
examination of what she had gone through in the
first years of the agitation. It required an effort to

•i44 THROUGH CONNEMARA
imagine her, with her refined, intellectual face and
delicate physique, taking a stick in her hand and
going out day after day to drive off her land the
trespassing cattle, sheep, and horses that were as
regularly driven on to it again as soon as her back
was turned. We did not say these things to Mrs.
Blake, but we thought about them a good deal while
we sat and talked to her, and noticed the worn look
of her face and the anxious furrows above her bene
volent brows.
It was some time before we went up to see the two
rooms of which we had been offered a choice. Both
were low and panelled, both had low, long windows ;
in fact it will save trouble if we say at once that
everything at Renvyle was long and low and panelled.
The first room looked to the front of the house, and
out over the Atlantic towards the muffled ghosts of
Innis Boffin and Achill Islands ; a fine view on a
fine day, and impressive even at its worst ; but to us,
the room's chiefest attraction was the four-poster
bed, a magnificent kind of upper chamber, like a

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 145
sumptuous private box, with gilded pillars, and carved
work, and stretched canopy ; something to admire
with the help of a catalogue at South Kensington.
We felt, as we were taken down two long passages
to view the other room, that it was a mere matter of
form, and that the golden bed was too regal a circum
stance to be abandoned. But before my cousin's
eye-glasses were fairly adjusted for the inspection, we
had begun to waver. The other bed was brass in
stead of gold, there was no denying that ; but these
windows looked out to a great ridge of mountains,
crowded about the head of the bay, roses climbed to
the sill, and the grassy stretch below was cut out in
gaudy flower-beds. A peacock screamed just under
the windows, and we saw him with his meek spouse
trailing his tail about the grass among the flower
beds that were wired in from his ravaging beak, I
think it was the broad window seat in conjunction
with the mountains that turned the scale — (the pea
cock also turned the scale, but in a different way,
generally turning it at C in alt ; but, as Mr. Rudyard I,

146 THROUGH CONNEMARA
Kipling says, that is another story"). We forewent
the golden glories of the new Jerusalem bed, and re
mained where we were.
There was unconfessed peace in the certainty that
it was not an afternoon for sight-seeing ; rather for
fervent shin-roasting at the drawing-room fire, blended
with leisurely, unsystematic assimilation of the Times
for the last four days. Fishermen, apparently, take a
holiday from newspapers, along with their other
duties when they go a-fishing, and expose themselves
to nothing more severe in the way of literature than
the Field or Land and Water ; at all events, these
and a pre-historic Illustrated London News had been
our only opportunities for keeping ourselves in touch
with the outer world since we had left it. Boa-
constrictor-like, we slowly gorged ourselves with solid
facts, and then subsided into a ruminative torpor,
misanthropically delighted at the fact that we had
chanced upon an intermediate period as to tourists,
and that the owners of the letters and telegrams
that we had seen in the hall had not arrived to claim

IT WAS THE BROAD WINDOW SEAT, IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE
MOUNTAINS, THAT TURNED THE SCALE."

L 2

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 149
them and their lawful share of the fire and the news
papers. Our most salient recollections of the rest of the
evening are connected with the velvet delicacy of the
lobster soup at dinner, and the tortured bashfulness
of the English youth, who crept, mouse-like, into the
room after the rest of the
small party were seated,
and raised neither his eyes
nor his voice till the meal
was ended. Directly he
had finished, he hurried
from the room and was
seen no more. A lady
who sat next us volun
teered the information
that he always acted just so, and that he spent his
days, so far as anyone could guess, in slinking around
the mountains. " He's so shy," she concluded, " that
he'll scrape a hole in his plate trying to get the last
mite of butter off it rather than ask me to pass

SHE WAS AN AMERICAN LADY. '

150 THROUGH CONNEMARA
the cooler." It appeared that she was an American
lady who had come to Renvyle to inquire into the
advantages of the Land League and other kindred
institutions, which was perhaps why she was in
the habit of noticing little things. She certainly
seemed to have noticed the Englishman a good deal.
Given a sloping, sunshiny bank of shingle, a mass
of yellow lichen-covered rocks between it and a
purple-and-emerald streaked sea, a large empty morn
ing, and a cock-shot, there is no reason why one
should ever stop throwing stones. That is how my
second cousin and I occupied ourselves the morning
after our arrival at Renvyle. We had started early,
with sketching materials and luncheon, full of a high
resolve to explore several miles of coastline, beginning
with the famous Grace O'Malley's Castle, and ending
with afternoon tea and well-earned repose.
No one can accuse these papers of a superfluity of
local information. We have exercised a noble reti
cence in this respect, owing partly to a sympathetic
dislike of being instructive, and partly also to the cir-

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 151
curnstance that we never seemed able to collect any
facts. We have questioned waiters, and found that
they came from Dublin, and bothered oldest inhabi
tants only to find that they were either deaf or " had
no English." But Grace O'Malley is a lady of too
pronounced a type to be ignored, and even our very
superficial acquaintance with her history compels us
at least to express our regret that such a female
suffragist as she would have made has been lost to
our century. If she had lived now she would have
stormed her way into the London County Council;
and sat upon that body in every sense of the word ;
and had the University of Oxford refused to allow
her to graduate as whatever she wished, she would
indubitably have sacked the town, and borne into
captivity all the flower of the Dons. In the reign of
Elizabeth, however, her energies were confined to the
more remunerative pursuit of piracy. She is known
to have had a husband, but he does not seem to
have occupied public attention to any extent, except
secondarily, as when it is recorded that " the Lady

152 THROUGH CONNEMARA
Grace O'Malley went to England to make a treaty
with the Queen, and took her husband with her."
One of her strongholds was this square tower, that
looks down with such amiable picturesqueness on the
waters of Renvyle Bay, and we were told that on
those rare occasions when she condescended to sleep
ashore instead of afloat, a hawser leading from her
ship was fastened to her bedpost, and the skipper
had orders to haul on it if anything piratically promi
sing should turn up.
I think we had begun to discuss this energetic
Grace and her probable action in modern politics as
we strolled across the fields between Renvyle and the
sea. At all events, something beguiled us to sit down
upon that slope of small round stones, when we were
as yet but a quarter of a mile from the hotel, and then
a flaunting tuft of white bladder campion on a point
of yellow rock offered itself irresistibly as an object for
stone-throwing. As we write this we are sensible of
its disappointing vulgarity. The word " sketch," if not,
indeed, " sonnet," should have closed the sentence ;

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 153
but the humiliating fact remains that we simply lay
there and pelted it till we had used up all the avail
able pebbles, and stiffened our shoulders for the next
three days, and still the bladder campion flaunted in
our despite. We crawled from that too fascinating
shingle beach to the grass above it, and stretched our
selves there in heated fractiousness. How hot the sun
was ! How blue and green the sea ! And how enchant-
ingly the purple gloom of the mountains showed be
tween the grey hairy legs of the thistles ! And after
an interval of healing torpor, how admirable was
luncheon !
But after luncheon Grace O'Malley's tower seemed
farther off than ever, and relinquishing the vigorous
projects of our morning start, we began to drift along
the shore towards the pale stretches of the sands. We
dawdled luxuriously across a low headland, where the
mouths of the rabbit-burrows made yellow sandy
patches in the coarse grass, and we slid down the
crumbling slope on to the hard, perfect surface of the
sand. Its creamy smoothness had something of the

154 THROUGH CONNEMARA
romance of new-fallen snow, and none of its horrors.
An insane and infantine ardour possessed us — to run,
to build castles, to paddle ! We came very near
paddling, forgetful of our age, our petticoats, and the
fact that no one ever yet was able to paddle as deep
as they wanted to. In fact, we resolved that we
would paddle, and we set off down the slanting
glistening plane towards the far-off line of foam.
Here and there the blue sky lay reflected in the wet
patches of sand, Achill Island was a cloudy possibility
of the horizon, Croagh Patrick and Mweelrea, im
mense certainties of the north-eastern middle distance,
and at our feet were laid lovely realities of long lace
like scarves of red seaweed, flattened out with such
prim precision that we expected to find their Latin
and English names written beneath them on the
sand. Another fifty yards would have brought us to the
water's verge, when suddenly crossing our path at
right angles, we came upon a long line of footmarks,
masculine in size, pointed in shape, fraught with

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 155
sinister suggestion of spying eyes. A group of im
mense rocks, the leaders of a procession of boulders
trailing glacier-wise from the mountains to the sea,
easily suggested an ambush, and the footmarks, as far
as we could see, led in their direction. The same
thought of the hidden watcher struck us both, and in
stantly and for ever abandoning the paddling scheme,
we resolved to follow up the track of the footprints
until we had routed the unworthy foot-printer from
his lair. Little prods, as of a stick in the sand, ac
companied the boot-marks, and at one spot certain
rudimentary efforts in both art and literature made me
think that the wearer of the boots was guiltless of
object in his retreat upon the rocks. Suddenly, how
ever, the marks lost their almost complacent evenness,
and became extended and irregular, as if their owner
had given himself over to ungoverned flight.
" What did I tell you ? " remarked my cousin ; " he
was rushing off to hide before we should see him ! "
We reached the rocks, and, with eyes that must
have imparted to her pince-nez the destructive quality

156 THROUGH CONNEMARA
of burning glasses, my cousin swept their weedy
crevices to discover some indication of the spy.
"He must be at the other side," she began, when
our eyes simultaneously fell upon a small white ob
ject. It was a sandwich.
It lay between two big rocks that leaned to each
other, leaving just room for a slim person to squeeze
through ; and looking through the aperture, we saw
a long narrow vista of the sands, and on them a soli
tary flying speck — the Englishman.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 157

CHAPTER IX.
THE sound of the mowing-machine awakened us
early on the morning that we were to leave
Renvyle House Hotel. To and fro the rattle
came, with a measured crescendo and diminuendo
that slowly aroused our sleepy minds to the conscious
ness that the tennis ground was being mown, and that
it was Monday, and that — this finally, after sluggish
eyes had become aware of pink roses swaying in sun
shine in and out of the open window — another fine
day had been bestowed upon us whereon to make our
journey. The clatter of the mowing-machine grew
louder, and the smell of the cut grass came in at the
window, blending sweetly with the strong language
of the gardener to his underling, as the machine was
seered in its difficult course among the flower beds.

158 THROUGH CONNEMARA
When we leaned out across the broad window sill, the
business was almost finished, and the panniers of a
donkey, who was standing on the gravel walk with his
head drooped between his forelegs, in a half-doze

^*s*'

THE RENVYLE DONKEY.

were spilling over with the short green grass, and .the
chopped-off heads of the daisies. We stared at the
donkey in a kind of bewilderment. The top of his
head was tufted like a Houdan hen's, but stare as we
might we could not see his ears, and it was so aston-

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 159
ishing a phenomenon that we went • downstairs to
investigate it.
It was a genuine summer morning at last ; the sun
shone hotly down on our bare heads as we passed the
smooth lawn-tennis ground, with the long alternate
grey and green lines ruled on it by the machine, and
we stood for a moment or two in the shade of the
thick fuchsia arch that led to the old-fashioned
garden plot, and listened to the bees fussing in and out
of the masses of blood-red blossom over our heads.
The donkey was still dozing under his panniers as we
came up to him, and we saw beyond any manner of
doubting that the only ears he possessed were little
circles no higher than napkin-rings, out of which
sprouted thick tufts of wool and coarse brown hair.
Just then the men neared us with the machine, and
we asked them for an explanation.
" His ears was cut off in the time of th' agitation,"
the gardener replied, in a voice that showed that the
fact had long ago ceased to have any interest for him,
as he emptied the last boxful of grass into the panniers.

160 THROUGH CONNEMARA
" He was a rale good little ass thim times, faith he
was." Probably our faces conveyed our feelings, for the
gardener went on : " Indeed, it was a quare thing to
do to him ; but, whatever, they got him one morning
in the field with the two ears cut off him as even with
his head as if ye thrimmed them with that mow-
sheen." We passed our hands over the mutilated stumps
with a horror that evidently gratified the gardener.
" There was one of the ears left hanging down when
we got him," he proceeded. " I suppose they thought
it was the most way they could vex us. They grewn
what ye see since then, and no more, and the flies has
him mad sometimes."
We went into breakfast with what appetite we
might, and felt what terrible facts had conduced to the
circumstance that we, tourists and strangers, were able
to take our places in the old Renvyle dining-room,
and partake of hot breakfast-cakes and coffee — coffee
whose excellence alone was enough to make us forget

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 161
we were in an hotel — as if we, and not the Blakes,
had been its proprietors for centuries.
We spent the morning in making a final tour of the
house, up and down the long passages, and in and out
of the innumerable charming panelled rooms. We
have left the library to the last, and now that we are
face to face with the serious business of description,
our consciences tell us that we are not competent to
pronounce on ancient editions and choice bindings.
It seemed to us that every book in the tall mahogany
cases that stood like screens about the room was old
and respectable enough to have been our great grand
father ; we certainly had in our hands a contemporary
edition of Sir Walter Raleigh's " History of the
World," not to mention an awful sixteenth century
treatise on tortures, with illustrations that are still
good, handy, reliable nightmares when the ordinary
stock runs short. My second cousin has, I fancy,
privately set up a reputation as a book-fancier, among
people who do not know her well, on the strength of
her graphic descriptions of one massive tome, a
M

162 THROUGH CONNEMARA
treatise on Spain, written in Latin, with gorgeous
golden hieroglyphics stamped on its white vellum
cover, and a date far back in 1500 on its yellow title-
page. I am sure that Sibbie felt small gratitude to the
sulphate of zinc that brought about the complete
healing of her sore shoulder, which took place during
her visit at Renvyle. Probably never before since
her entrance into society had she spent three whole
days in a stable on terms of delightful equality with
real horses, and with at least two feeds a day of real
oats. " Beggars can't bear heat," is a tried and trusted
saying in Ireland, and it soon became apparent that
the moral and physical temperature in which Sibbie
had been living had been too high for her. When
we went to the hall-door to superintend the stowage
of our effects in the governess-cart, we found her on her
hind legs, with a stable-boy dangling from her bit,
and flat on his back in front of her lay the respect
able butler, overwhelmed in the rugs which he had
brought out on his arm. We hastened to the rescue ;

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 163
the butler got up, Sibbie got down, and we proffered
apologies for her misconduct.
" Oh, thin that one's the divil painted ! " said the
stable-boy, speaking, probably, on the principle of
" Penny plain, tuppence coloured." " He went to ate
the face off me to-day, an' I claning out his stall !
Faith, 'twas hardly I had time to climb out over the
side of the stall before he'd have me disthroyed."
The miscreant's appearance was that of a swollen
sausage propped on hairpins, and, as having regret
fully bade farewell to the hospitable house of Ren
vyle, we set off down the avenue at a showy canter,
we promised ourselves that we would not strain the
tender quality of mercy by any philanthropic non
sense of walking up hills.
Our route lay along our old acquaintance the
switchback road for two or three miles, and then we
said farewell to it, and turned to our left to follow the
easterly line of the coast. It was not a bad little road
in its way, but it was sufficient to chasten the exuber
ance of Sibbie's gaiety before we had travelled very
M 2

1 64 THROUGH CONNEMARA
far along it ; in fact, as a midshipman observed of
Madeira, " The scenery was lovely, but very steep."
The coast thrust long rocky fingers into the sea, and
we drove across the highly-developed knuckles ; that
is, if notpicturesque, the most practical description
that we can give of this stage of our journey. To try
to convey the blueness of the sea, the variety and
colour of the innumerable bays and creeks, the solemn
hugeness of Lettergash mountain that towered on our
right, is futility, and a weariness of the flesh. Rather
let us speak of such things as we are able, of the dogs
whose onslaught from each successive cabin made it
advisable to keep a pile of stones in the trap, and
justified the time spent in practice at the bladder
campion ; of the London Pride and the great bell-
heather that ably decorated the rocks ; and, lastly,
the amenities of these are past. This tract of coun
try had a baneful practice of tempting us to pass by
a deferential retreat into the ditch, and of then in
stantly starting in emulous pursuit. On one of these
occasions, after a stern-chase of half a mile, in despair

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 165
of otherwise putting an end to it, my cousin and I
pulled up at a moderate hill, and got out and walked,
hoping that the cart that had been clattering hard on
our heels would now pass us by. Far otherwise ; it
also pulled up, and one of its many occupants called
out in tones of genial politeness : " Ah ! don't be
sparin' him that way, ladies. He's well able to pull
the pair of ye ; nourish him wid the whip ! "
Our destination was Leenane (pronounced Lee-
nahn), but we had been advised to turn off the main
road in order to see the Pass of Salruck. Slowly
rounding the flank of Lettergash, we turned our backs
to the sea and struck inland again into the now fami
liar country of lake and heather. We had been told
that a fishing-lodge by a lake would be a sign unto
us that we had arrived at the by-road to Salruck.
Here was the lake, and here the fishing-lodge ; but
could this be the by-road ? If so, it certainly was
not promising ; in fact, before we committed our
selves to its stony ferocities, my cousin alighted in
order to collect information from the peasantry, a task

1 66 THROUGH CONNEMARA
in which she believed herself to excel. In this in
stance the peasantry consisted of an elderly man,
breaking stones by the side of the road, and the per
spiring stare with which he received my cousin's
question was not encouraging. She repeated it. He.
stared up at the sun, wrinkled his face till it looked
like a brown paper parcel too tightly tied with string,
and replied, " I'd say it'd be somewhere about a
quarther behind three — or thereabouts."
" No," said my cousin in her shrillest tones, " I
asked you whether that is the road to Salruck ? "
" Oh, it will — the day'll be fine, thank God," wiping
his forehead with his sleeve, " but we'll have rain on
it soon — to-morrow, or afther to-morrow. Ye couldn't
put yer thumb bechuxt the shtarr and the moon lash'
night, an' they'd reckon that a bad sign."
" Stone deaf," remarked my cousin to me in .a
" Just-Heaven-grant-me-patience" sort cf voice; then,
pointing towards the hill, " Is — Salruck — over —
there ? " she slowly screamed.
The echoes squealed the inquiry from rock to rock.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 167
Even Sibbie looked round with a cold surprise ; but
the stonebreaker had not heard.
" Oh, is it throut ? " in a tone of complete compre
hension ; " Divil sich throuts in all Connemara as
what's in that lake ! Ye'd shtand in shnow to be
looking at Capt'in Thompson whippin' them out of
it!" " Thank you," said my second cousin very politely ;
" Good morning ! "
We thought it better to chance the by-road than to
try conversation. It was the first really bad road we
had come upon in Connemara ; but, though there was
only a mile of it, it was enough to throw discredit on
the whole district. Half a mile of walking and of
pushing the trap from behind brought us to the top
of the hill, and when there an equally steep descent
was in front of us .before we could get down to the
level of the little arrow-head shaped bay that thrust
its long glittering spike between the mountains of
Salruck. To hang on to the back of a trap as a kind
of improvised drag is both exhausting and undigni-

1 68 THROUGH CONNEMARA
fied, so much so that we did not drive quite down to
the bottom of the valley, but paused on a perch of
level ground outside the gates of a shooting-lodge,
and asked a woman what the further road was like.
" Indeed, thin, God knows, it's a conthrairy road,"
she said, with a sympathetic glance at our heated
faces, " but whether or no ye can go in it."
We thanked her, but made up our minds to throw
ourselves on the kindness of the shooting-lodge, at
whose gates we were standing ; and the trap and
Sibbie having been hospitably given house room
there, we were free to explore Salruck. We went
down through a tunnel composed of about equal parts
of trees and midges, and, following the conthrairy road
over a bridge that crossed a little river, we sat our
selves down by the sea-shore and looked about us.
It may be said at once that Salruck is a place
which would almost infallibly be described as " spot."
A spot should be wooded, sheltered, sunk between
mountains if possible, and, failing a river, a brook of
respectable size should purl or babble into a piece of

'fife 1 WM

"DOWN THE HILL OF SALRUCK."

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 171
water large enough to mirror the trees. A church is
not an absolute necessity, but is generally included in
the suite, and even down to this refinement Salruck was
thoroughly equipped. Having formulated this theory
to our satisfaction, we addressed ourselves to our.
duties as tourists. We climbed the heathery Pass of
Salruck, a stiff windy climb ; we viewed from the top
of it the lovely harbour of the Killaries, and moun
tains and islands innumerable and unpronounceable ;
we came down again by a short cut suggested by my
cousin, of a nature that necessitated our advancing in
a sitting posture and with inconvenient rapidity down
a species of glacier. The pass happily accomplished,
we knew there was but one thing more to be done —
the graveyard. Our benefactors at the shooting-lodge
had told us how to find our way to it, and without
such help we certainly should not have discovered it.
It was hidden in the side of a wooded hill, a grassy
cart-track was its sole approach, a pile of branches in
a broken wall was its gate, and, instead of funereal
cypresses, tall ash trees and sycamores stood thickly

172 THROUGH CONNEMARA
among the loose heaps of stones that marked the
graves. At a first glance we might even have thought
we had taken a wrong turn and strayed into a stony
wood, but the kneeling figure of a woman told us that
we had made no mistake. She got up as we came
along the winding, trodden path among the trees, and
we recognised her as the woman whom we had met on
the hill an hour before.
" This is a quare place, ladies," she said in a loud,
cheerful voice. " There's manny a one comes here
from all sides of the world to see it."
We agreed that it was a queer place, and proceeded
without delay into a long conversation. We found
out that the high square mound of stones, about the
height and length of a billiard-table, was an altar, in
which only priests were buried ; and she pointed out
to us under one of its stones some clay pipes and
even a small heap of tobacco, which she told us had
been left there by the last funeral for the use of "any
one that comes to say a prayer, like meself." In fact,
all the graves were littered with broken pipes and

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 173
empty boxes for holding the tobacco — grocery boxes
most of them labelled with glowing announcements
of Colman's Mustard and Reckitt's Blue, lying abou
in all directions, and almost dreadful in their sordid
garish poverty.
" There isn't one that dies from all round the coun
thry but they'll bury him here," said our friend, " and
with all that's buried in it there's not a worrum, nor
the likes of a worrum in it."
A little below where we were standing a circle of
stones, like a rudimentary wall, stood round some
specially sacred spot, and we stumbled over the
ghastly inequalities of the ground towards it. Inside
the stones the ground was bare and hard, like an
earthern floor, and in the centre there was a small,
round hole, with the gleam of water in it.
"That's the Holy Well of Salruck," said the woman,
leaning comfortably against a great ash tree, one of
whose largest limbs had been half torn from its trunk
by lightning, and hung, white and stricken, above the
little enclosure. " There'll be upwards of thirty sit-

174 THROUGH CONNEMARA
ting round it some nights prayin' till morning. It's
reckoned a great cure for sore eyes." This with a
compassionate glance towards my second cousin's
pince-nez. " But what signifies this well towards the
well that's out on the island beyond ! " went on the
country woman, hitching her shoulders into her cloak,
and preparing to lead the way out of the graveyard ;
" sure the way, it is with that well, if anny woman
takes so much as a dhrop out of it the wather'll soak
away out of it, ever, ever, till it's dhry as yer hand !
Yes faith, that's as thrue as that God made little
apples. Shure there was one time the priest's sisther
wouldn't put as much delay on herself as while she'd
be goin' over to the other spring that's in the island,
and she dhrew as much wather from the holy well
as'd wet her tay. I declare to ye, she wasn't back in
the house before the well was dhry ! "
She paused dramatically, and we supplied the neces
sary notes of admiration.
" Well, when the priest seen that," she went on, "he
comminced to pray, and bit nor sup never crossed

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 177
his mouth for a night and a day but prayin' ; there
wasn't a saint in Heaven, big nor little, he didn't
dhraw down on the head o' the same well. Afther
that thin ag'in, he got his books, and he wint back in
the room, and he was readin' within there till he was
in a paspiration. Oh, faith ! it's not known what he
suffered first and last ; but before night the wather
was runnin' into the well the same as if ye'd be fillin'
it out of a kettle, and it's in it ever and always since
that time. The priest put a great pinance on the
sisther, I'm told, but, in spite of all, he was bet by the
fairies afther that till he was near killed, they were
that jealous for the way he put the wather back. The
curse o' the crows on thim midges ! " she continued,
with sudden fury, striking at the halo of gnats that
surrounded her head as well as ours, "thedivil sich an
atin' ever I got."
We had been slaughtering them with unavailing
frenzy for some time, and at the end of her story we
fled from the graveyard, and made for the high
road. N

178 THROUGH CONNEMARA
The hospitalities of the shooting-lodge did not end
with Sibbie. Its hostess was waiting to meet the two
strangers as they toiled, dishevelled and midge-bitten,
to its gate, and with a most confiding kindness,
brought them in and gave them the afternoon tea for
which their souls yearned.

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 179

CHAPTER X.
TT 7 E have never met Julius Csesar, or the Duke of
' Wellington, or General Booth, but we are
convinced that not one of the three could boast
a manner as martial or a soul as dauntless as the
sporting curate on a holiday. We came to this
conclusion slowly at the Leenane table d'hdte,
and there also the companion idea occurred to us
that in biting ferocity and headlong violence of
behaviour the extra ginger-ale of temperance far
exceeds the brandy-and-soda. Opposite to us sat
three of them — not brandies-and-sodas — curates ;
and our glasses were filled with - two of them —
not curates — bottles of ginger-ale ; and so the
manners and customs of both classes were, as it
N 3

180 THROUGH CONNEMARA
were, forced upon us conjointly. If our reflections
appear unreliable we are not prepared to defend
them ; they were formed through the blinding mist of
tears that followed each fiery sip of the ginger-ale.
The curates, as we have said, were three in number ;
and comprised three of the leading types of their class
— the dark and heavily moustached, the red-whiskered
and pasty, the clean-shaven and athletic. The two
former sat together and roystered on a pint of claret,
which they warmed in the palms of their hands, and
smacked their lips over with a reckless jollity and
dark allusions to swashbuckling days at Cambridge.
The third sat apart from his cloth, among a group of
Oxford undergraduates, with whom he interchanged
reminiscences, and from the elevation of his three
terms seniority regaled them with tales of hair-breadth
escapes from proctors and bulldogs, and, in especial,
of the enormities of one Greene, of Pembroke, in con
nection with a breakfast given by a man who had
been sent " a big cake from home." The story was
long, and profusely decked with terms of the most

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 181
esoteric undergraduate slang, but we gathered that
Greene, having become what the curate leniently
termed "a little on," had cast the still uncut cake out
of the window at a policeman, upon the spike of
whose helmet it became impaled. We have since
heard with real regret that the Oxford police do
not wear spikes on their helmets ; but we adhere to
the main facts of the story, and when we tell it our
selves we call the policeman a volunteer. The robust
voice of the narrator clove its way into the loud cur
rent of the fishing talk, the table paused over its
gooseberry pie and custard to laugh, and even the
Cambridge curates were compelled to a compassionate
smile. They were a good deal older than any of the
Oxford clan, and it seemed to us that the superior
modernity and fla\our of the Oxford stories had a
depressing effect upon them. They finished their
claret unostentatiously, and talked to each other in
lowered tones about pocket cameras and safety
bicycles. It was strange to feel at this hotel — as, indeed, at all

1 82 THROUGH CONNEMARA
the others we stayed at — that we were almost the only
representative of our country, and, casting our minds
back through the maze of English faces and the
Babel of English voices that had been the accom
paniment of our meals for the last fortnight, two pain
ful conclusions were forced on us — first, that the Irish
people have no money to tour with ; second, that it was
Saxon influence and support alone that evoluted the
Connemara hotels from a primitive feather-bed and
chicken status alluded to in an earlier article. Not,
indeed, that chickens are things of the past. Daily
through Connemara rises the cry of myriad hens,
bereft of their infant broods, and in every hotel larder
" wretches hang that fishermen may dine." Chickens
and small brown mutton, mutton and small brown
chickens — these, with salmon and trout of a curdy
freshness that London wats not of, were the leit-motif
of every hotel table d'hdte, and so uniformly excellent
were they that we asked for nothing more.
The whole of the next day was wet, utterly and
solidly wet. The great mountains of Mayo on the

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 183
other side of the bay looked like elephants swathed
in white muslin, and the sea that came lashing up the
embankment in front of the hotel was thick and
muddy, and altogether ugly to look at. We sat dis
mally in the ladies' drawing-room, with one resentful
eye on the rain, and the other fixed in still deeper
resentment on the wholly intolerable man who had
taken up his position in front of the fire with a book
the night before, and had, apparently, never stirred
since. From the smoking-room on the other side of
the hall came drearily at intervals the twanglings of a
banjo ; my second cousin read a hotel copy of " The
Pilgrim's Progress '' ; the general misery was complete,
and I found myself almost mechanically working a
heavy shower into a sketch that had been made on a
fine day.
Towards evening we began to feel homicidal and
dangerous, and putting on our mackintoshes started
for a walk with a determination that found a savage
delight in getting its feet wet. No incident marked
that walk, unless the varying depths of puddles and

184 THROUGH CONNEMARA
the strenuous clinging to an umbrella are incidents,
but for all that we returned tranquillised and self-
satisfied, and were further soothed by a cloudy vision
caught, through the French window of the smoking-
room, of blazers and white flannelled legs bestowed
about the room in various attitudes of supine discon
tent. Before we sighted the window we had heard the
melancholy metallic hiccupping of the banjo, but just
as we passed by it ceased, and a furtive glance revealed
the athletic curate, prone on a sofa, with his banjo
propped upon the brilliant striped scarf that inter
vened between the clerical black serge coat and the
uncanonical flannels.
"Now the hand trails upon the viol string
That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing,
Sad with the whole of pleasure. Whither stray
Their eyes now, from whose lips the slim pipes creep
And leave them pouting  "
misquoted my cousin, who has a slipshod acquaint
ance with Rossetti.
" I should think they strayed towards the Oughte-

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 185
rard umbrella," I suggested, as we furled the tent of
evil-smelling gingham in the hall. " Since the stuff
has come away from two of the spikes it has got the
dissipated charwoman look that is so attractive."
When we went to bed that night the rain was still
dropping heavily from the eave-shoots, and, in the
depressingly early waking that follows an early going
to bed, it was the first sound that I recognised. The
hotel was silent when we came down, and the coffee-
room redolent of vanished breakfasts ; the fishermen
had evidently betaken themselves to their trade in an
access of despair. The waiter was reserved on the
subject of the weather ; he neither blessed nor cursed,
but hoped, with offensive cheerfulness, that it would
improve, and we knew in our hearts that he was cer
tain it would not. We watched him enviously as
he came in and out with plates, and arranged long
battalions of forks on a side table. What was the
weather to him, with his house-shoes and evening
clothes and absolute certainty of what he had to do
next from now till bed-time ? We would thankfully

1 86 THROUGH CONNEMARA
have gone into the kitchen and proffered our services
to the cook, or even to the boots, but instead of that
we had to . wander to the abhorred ladies' drawing-
room, and there to mourn the fallacy of the state
ment that Satan finds some mischief still for idle
hands to do.
It did clear up in the afternoon, grudgingly and
gloomily, but still conscientiously, and we ordered
out Sibbie, with a view to seeing how much of the
country was left above water. We drove along the
Westport road till we had passed the last long bend
of the Killaries, and looking across a wooded valley
saw the rush of water and jumble of foam above the
mouth of the Erriff river that marked the chosen
resort of the fishermen. We got a man to hold Sibbie
for a few minutes while we went down and stood on
the slender fishing bridge, and looked at a solitary
angler throwing his fly with the usual scientific grace,
and with the usual total absence of result, till we felt
it would be kinder to go away. The midges were not
perhaps as giant or as insatiable as the Salruck variety,

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 187
but we heard that night at dinner that they had been
enough to drive the whole body of' the hotel fisher
men back from the river in the morning ; and as we
looked down the double row of faces, all apparently in
the first stage of convalescence after small-pox, we
gathered some idea of what their sufferings must have
been. One youth, whose midge-bites had reached the
point at which they might almost be termed confluent,
told us that he had lain down on the ground in a kind
of frenzy and covered himself with his mackintosh, and
. that the midges" had crawled in through the button
holes and devoured him as he lay.
We continued our drive towards Westport, with the
river on one side, and on the other great green moun
tains speckled with thousands of sheep ; the road was
steep, but we persevered up its long shining grey
slope, without any definite intention except that of see
ing what was on the other side. We found out rather
sooner than we had expected. There appeared sud
denly over the top of the hill, where the road bent its
back against the sky, the capering figures of three

1 88 THROUGH CONNEMARA
young horses, and at that sight we turned Sibbie
sharp round and fled down the hill. The young
horses came galloping down after us with manes
and tails flying, and visions of another runaway, with
the final trampling of our fallen bodies by our pur
suers, made us " nourish " Sibbie with the whip in a
way that was scarcely necessary. She extended her
long legs at a gallop ; the trap swung from side to
side ; it seemed as if the horses gained nothing on
us ; and as the trees of Astleagh Lodge came nearer
and nearer there flashed upon us in an instant the
spectacle of a close finish at the hotel door, and the
thought of the godsend that it would be to the
smoking-room. But the smoking-room was fated not
to behold it. As suddenly as the pursuit had begun
so did it end. The three colts whirled up a bohireen
towards a farmhouse, and we then became aware of a
small girl running after them down the road with a
stick in her hand. It was only the Connemara version
of Mary calling the cattle home, written in rather
faster time than is usual, and with a running accom-

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 189
paniment in two flats, supplied by ourselves. Sibbie
was not thoroughly reassured even when we reached
the hotel, and we drove past it along the road seaward
till we reached a point from which we saw the whole
of the long exquisite fiord of the Killaries, and
beyond the furthest of its dark, over-lapping points
the thin silver line of the open sea.
" Eight o'clock breakfast, please, and call us sharp
at seven," were our last words on our last night at
Leenane. The final day of our tour had come, and
two things remained imperatively for us to do. We
had to see Delphi, and we had to accomplish the
twenty Irish miles that lay between Sibbie and her
home in Oughterard. Energy and an early start were
necessary, and eight o'clock struck as we walked
into the breakfast-room, expecting to find our twin
breakfast-cups and plates stationed in lonely fellow
ship at one end of a long desert of tablecloth. What
we did find was a gobbling, haranguing crowd of
fishermen, full of a daily, accustomed energy that
made ours seem a very forced and exotic growth.

1 90 THROUGH CONNEMARA
The waiter, who at 9.30 yesterday morning had been
servilely attentive, now regarded us with a coldly dis
traught eye. Clearly he was of the opinion of the
indignant housemaid who declared that " there never
was a rale lady that was out of her bed before nine
in the morning." Breakfast after breakfast came
in, but not for us. We saw with anguish the athletic
curate make a clean sweep of the gooseberry jam,
and the last of the hot cakes had disappeared
before our coffee and chops were vouchsafed to us.
Consequently it was a good deal later than we
wanted it to be when we went down to the pier
and got into the boat that was to take us across to
Delphi. The weather was grey and rough, and we asked the
boatmen their opinion of it as we crep't along in the
shelter of the western shore of the bay, as close as
possible to the seaweedy points of rock, the chosen
playgrounds of the seals
" There's not much wind, but what there is is very
high," said the stroke. " Faith, it's hardly we'll get

EIGHT OCLOCK BREAKFAST, PLEASE, AND
CALL US SHARP AT SEVEN."

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 193
over to Delphi with the surges that'll be in it when
we'll be out in the big wather."
" Ah, na boclish ! " struck in the bow, who, judging
by his glowing complexion, was of the sanguine tem
perament. " I'd say it'll turn up a grand day yet.
What signifies the surges that'll be in it ? "
We began to think it signified a good deal when,
after a pull of nearly two miles, we forsook the shore,
and, turning out into the open water, met the full and
allied strength of the wind and tide. The " surges "
were quite as" large as any that we want to see, and
the progress of the boat was like a succession of
knight's moves at chess, two strokes towards the
Delphi shore, and one stroke to bring her head to the
advancing " surge." Naturally, we took a long time
to get across, and when we got there we had still a
walk of two miles before us ; only that it really did
" turn up a grand day " our hearts would have failed
us, as we felt the hours slipping from us, and remem
bered the journey that was before us in the afternoon.
Delphi was called so by some genius who saw in its
o

194 THROUGH CONNEMARA
lake and overhanging mountains a resemblance to the
home of the oracle. The boatmen were not able to
remember when the little lake had been converted
and rebaptized, or who the missionary had been, but
rumour pointed to a Bishop and a Dean of the Irish
Church, who, within the recollection of old inhabitants,
had been the first to impart civilisation to the Kil
laries ; who had built the charming fishing-lodge at
the head of the lake, and had fished its waters, attired
in poke bonnets and bottle-green veils. We had not
been more than five minutes there before we under
stood the rationale of the bonnets and veils, and
wished that we had been similarly protected from
the blood-thirsty midges, that made our wanderings
by the lake and our lunch by the river a time of
torture. But the stings of the midges have died away, and
the recollection of the glassy curve of the river, the
mirrored wild flowers at its brim, the classical grove
of pines and slender white birches, and the luminous
purple reflection of the mountain lying deep in the

IN A GOVERNESS-CART. 195
stream beneath them are the things that come into
our minds when we think of our last day in Conne
mara. As a companion picture, belonging, too, to
that day, I seem still to see my cousin's sailor hat
flying from her head like a rocketing pheasant, in a
gust that caught us as we crossed the Killaries on our
return journey. It crested the " surges " gallantly for
a few minutes, but finally filled and sank with all
hands, that is to say, two most cherished hatpins,
before we could reach it.
That moment was the beginning of the end. One
of the most important members of the expedition
had left it, and the general dissolution was^at hand.
The regret with which we paid our hotel bill was not
wholly mercenary, but was blended with the finer
pathos of farewell. The cup of bovril of which we
partook when the first five miles of our journey had
been accomplished was " strong as first love, and wild
with all regret " ; it was the last of a staunch and
long-enduring little pot, and economy required that
no scraping of it should remain at the final unpacking

196 THROUGH CONNEMARA
of the hamper. Gingerbread biscuits that had been
hoarded like gold pieces were flung en masse to a
passing tramp before even the preliminary blessing
had flowed from her lips ; and the last of the seed
cake was forced into Sibbie's reluctant mouth. The
frugalities of a fortnight were dissipated in one hour
of joyless, obligatory debauch.
It was eight o'clock that evening when, after five or
six hours' driving, we came down the long slope of
the moor outside Oughterard. The mountains of
Connemara were all behind us, in the pale distant
guise in which we had first known them, and the only
things that remained to us of our wanderings in their
valleys were the governess-cart and the tired, but still
dauntless, Sibbie. Even these would not be ours much
longer ; the door of Murphy's hotel would soon witness
our final separation, and to-morrow we should be, like
any other tourists, swinging into Galway on the
mail-car. " Well, at all events," said my cousin, as we said
these things to each other, " we have converted Sibbie.

:A

Jill

THE REGRET WITH WHICH WE PAID OUR HOTEL BILL WAS NOT
WHOLLY MERCENARY, BUT WAS BLENDED WITH THE FINER
PATHOS OF FAREWELL."

IN A GOVERNESS-CART 199
I have noticed several little things about her lately
that make me sure she regards us with a stern
affection. I daresay," she went on, " that she
will detest going back to her old life and sur
roundings." My second cousin looked pensively at Sibbie as
she said this, and whipped up through the streets of
Oughterard with a kind of melancholy flourish.
Nothing was further from her expectations or from
mine than the eel-like dive which, just as the sympa
thetic reflection was uttered, Sibbie made into the
archway leading to Mr. Johnny Flanigan's stable ;
and we have ever since regretted that, owing to our
both having fallen on to the floor of the gover
ness-cart, Mr. Flanigan could hot have credited
the brilliant curve with which we entered his
yard to our coachmanship. In fact, what he said
was :
" Well, now, I'm afther waiting these two hours out
in the sthreet the way I'd be before her to ketch her
when she'd do that, and, may the divil admire me,

200 THROUGH CONNEMARA.
but she picked the minnit I was back in the house for
a coal to light me pipe, and she have me bet afther
all. But ye needn't say a word, when she hasn't the
two o' ye desthroyed ! "

FINIS.

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