From sketch-book and diary. Elizabeth Butler
of the sky. Glenaragh! loveliest of wild valleys, where is the poet that should make thee the theme of his songs?
“Coming through ‘Windy Gap’ in this illuminated gloaming we met a lonely horseman riding fast, a rope for his bridle, his pony very shaggy. He passed us over the rocks and rolling stones, and, looking back, we saw his bent figure jet black against the west for a moment, ere he dipped down through the ‘Gap’ out of sight. We knew who he was. Some peasant was dying on the mountain-side beyond, and the priest was anxious to be in time with the Viaticum.
“A strange little creature came out of the kitchen of the inn to see us after supper, and I made the acquaintance of a Leprechaun. Tiny, grey, bald little manikin; a ‘fairy,’ the people call him. I do not want to know why they are like that. I would rather leave them mysterious and unexplained.
… … … … … … … … … … . … .
“The people speak Gaelic here, amongst themselves, and the priest preaches in it in the little chapel with the mud floor up on the hill over the torrent. The language and the torrent seem to speak alike, hurrying headlong.
“But the chapel! Shall I ever forget the tub of holy water, on my first Sunday, placed before the rickety little altar on the mud floor, where the people, on coming in, splashed the water up into their faces? The old women had all brought big bottles from their homes in far-away glens to fill at the tub, and nothing could surpass the comicality of their attitudes as they stooped over their pious business, all wearing the hooded cloak that made them look as broad as they were long. One old lady, in her nice white cap, monopolized the tub an unconscionably long time, for, catching sight of her wind-tossed tresses in that looking-glass, she finished her devout ablutions by smoothing her few grey hairs with her moistened fingers into tidy bands, with alternate signs of the cross. The windows were all broken, and the men and boys stuffed the holes with their hats and caps to keep out the mountain blast.
“Last Sunday, a very hot day, the tub happened to be placed outside the door, and it was well my horse was not tied up within reach, or a former catastrophe might have been repeated, and a ‘blessed baist’ have carried me home. The heat in the rickety little gallery, where the ‘quality’ have their seats, was such that I went out into the open air and followed the rest of the service with a rock for my hassock, and two rosy pigs toddling about me in that friendly way I notice as characteristic of all the animals in these parts. They seem to feel they are members of the family, and you see calves, goats, pigs, and donkeys sauntering in and out of the cabin doors in a free-and-easy harmony with the human beings which takes my fancy greatly. But the beasts are by far the happiest; their lives seem passed in perfect contentment and satisfaction, whereas the poor human animals have a hard struggle for existence in this stony and difficult land of Kerry.
“The other day when W. and I dismounted at a cabin door on a wild mountain that holds, still higher up, a little dark lake which the people declare has no bottom to it, and on the shores of which ‘worms as big as a horse’ come out and bellow in the evenings, the gaunt pig that seemed to act watch-dog charged at me like a wild boar and sent me home in ‘looped and windowed raggedness.’ I never thought to find excess of zeal in a pig! The inmates of the cabin could not do enough for us to make up for such want of reticence.
“On one occasion at church in Tipperary, I noticed a rather satanic goat come pattering up the church and occupy an empty pew, where he lay down with perfect self-complacency and remained quiescent, chewing the cud, while we knelt; but each time the congregation stood up, up jumped the goat, his pale eyes and enormous horns just appearing over the high front of the pew. Then as we knelt again he would subside also, till he was startled to his feet once more by the rustle of the people rising, and then his wild head was again visible over the top of the pew, staring about him. Not a single person took any notice of the weird creature or seemed to think him out of place or at all funny. And so he continued to rise and fall with the rest to the end.
“Our chapel here is too small for the congregation that streams in from places as far as fifteen miles away among the mountains, and on one pouring wet Sunday I saw the strangest rendering of what is called ‘a chapel-of-ease.’ Not much ‘ease’ there, for some dozen men and youths who could find no place inside were kneeling about the door in running water, with a stone placed under each knee. Every day I see some incident or episode which has for me a surprise and all the charm of a new and striking experience. I feel more ‘abroad’ in this country than I do on the Continent.
“See, again, this little scene. A friend journeying to our inn and missing the road got belated in the defiles of the ‘Reeks.’ Dismounting at one of those mud cabins, which, at a little distance, are indistinguishable from their rocky surroundings, to ask the way, he was invited inside and offered a meal. The light was waning, so two little girls stood on either side of the stranger, each holding a bit of lighted candle as he sat at table. These wild-eyed and ragged little creatures made a pretty pair of dining-table candlesticks! I wish I could have seen them in the dim twilight of the black, smoke-dimmed cabin interior, their faces lighted by the candle flame.
“The beauty of the children here is a constant pleasure to me. We are here in the land of blue eyes and black lashes, or golden ones, when the hair, as it so frequently is, is ruddy. The young women are quite beautiful. I wish a painter of female beauty could have seen the girl we passed to-day who was minding some calves in a bit of bog-land bordered with birch-trees. It was a symphony of green; her head shawl was green plaid, her petticoat another tone of green, the background and all her surroundings gave every cool and delicious variation of green, and her ruddy limbs and red-gold hair, tossed by the breeze and shone through by the sun, looked richer in colour by the contrast. Her great blue eyes looked shyly at us and the shawl soon covered her laughing face. What a sweet picture, ‘In the Green Isle’!
“Every day I am more and more struck with the light-heartedness and gaiety of the animals. Whether it is emphasized by the poverty-stricken and quiet, saddened, demeanour of the human beings in these parts I cannot tell, but certainly the beasts seem to have the best of it. As to the dogs that belong to the mud cabins, never have I seen such jolly dogs, full of comic ways, especially when in puppy-hood, and all so valiant in confronting us as we near their strongholds. But on our near approach that puppy who looks mighty fierce afar off usually bolts under some door and sticks there. Then the pigs, who generally are less valiant than our wild boar of Lough Cluen, seized with apparent panic, rush round and round in the yard, and the flurried ducks that scuttle from under our horses’ hoofs end by falling on their sides in the ditches—surely all in fun? And invariably the cows and calves by the way-side prefer to be pursued along the roads, and keep up a splendid burst of galloping with tails in the air for miles before a tumble happening to one of them suggests a movement to the rear. All the lower creatures are ‘jolly dogs’ here, and only man is care-worn.”
In the autumn we came back to our well-loved glen, and I gathered materials there for my first married Academy picture—the ‘Recruits for the Connaught Rangers.’ W. found me two splendid ‘bog-trotters’ for models. The elder of the two had the finer physique, and it was explained to me that this was owing to his having been reared on herrings as well as potatoes, whereas the other, who lived up in the mountains, away from the sea, had not known the luxury of the herring. I wish we could get more of these men into our army. W. at that time was developing suggestions for forming a Regiment of Irish Guards, and I was enthusiastic in my adhesion to such a project and filling the imaginary ranks with big men like my two models. However, he was some twenty-three years too soon, and the honour had to be won for Ireland through yet another big war.
CHAPTER II
COUNTY MAYO IN 1905
