Yet Limerick Laces
Might Tempt Any Fine Lady, As Well As Antrim Linens And Down Damasks.
There Is Also Blarney Tweed Of Great Cheapness And Excellence, Balina
Blankets, And The Excellent Claddagh Flannel.
If there were enterprise as well, and a desire to patronize home
industries, I think the chimneys of factories now silent and idle might
smoke again.
I particularly noticed in every corner of Ireland where I
have been that where I saw the tall chimneys of factories in operation I
did not see barefoot women with barefoot asses selling ass loads of turf
for threepence.
I left Dublin - really, I may say, an almost unseen Dublin - behind me and
turned my face Belfastwards.
Drogheda is the last place of which I have taken any notes. I was a day
or two there. In fact I was more than a few days, but was confined to my
room by a severe neuralgia most of the time. There is a fine railway
bridge here, lofty enough for schooners to sail under. The land on both
sides of the river is like a garden, and is devoted to pleasure grounds
in the usual proportion. I was wishful to see the very spot on the banks
of the Boyne where James and William fought for a kingdom long ago. As I
looked at the fair country checked off into large fields by green
hedges, at the waving trees of enclosed pleasure-grounds, I recalled
King William's words about Ireland, "This land is worth fighting for,"
and I thought he was right.
The Boyne is but a small river, no wider than the Muskrat at Pembroke,
but deep enough to carry schooners a little way up. There is a canal
beside it, and it was full of barges carrying coal and other things.
Near to Drogheda town, in the suburbs, is a bridge over the Boyne. I
crossed it looking for the locality of the battle. Meeting a clerical-
looking gentleman, I enquired if he could point out to me where the
battle of the Boyne was fought. This gentleman, who was a Franciscan
friar, directed me to keep along the road by the river bank, when I
would come to another bridge and the monument beside it. "It stands
there a disgrace to Drogheda and a disgrace to all Ireland," he said. He
showed me the new Franciscan church, a very grand cut stone building.
There is also a Dominican church, and an Augustinian, besides two
others, and there was the foundation stone of still another to the
memory of that Oliver Plunket, Catholic archbishop and primate of
Ireland, put to death in the time of Titus Oates. I was informed that
the proportion of Catholics to Protestants in Drogheda is six to one.
Walking through Drogheda on market day I did not see one barefoot woman
in the crowd; all were pretty well dressed and well shod. The asses were
sleek and fat, shod and attached to carts. How different from Ramelton,
Donegal, Manor Hamilton, Leitrim, Castlebar or Mayo, where straw
harness, lean asses and hungry, barefoot women abound.
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