The roads
winds along Clew Bay, that bay of many islands, for quite a distance.
Clew Bay was resting, calm as a mirror, blue and bright, not a lap of
the wave washed up on the shore of Green island or Rocky Point the day
we drove past. No fisher's boat divided the water with hopeful keel. The
intense solitude of bays and inlets as well as the loughs looks like
enchantment. It reminds one of the drowsy do-nothingness of "Thompson's
Castle of Indolence," only here the indolence is not the indolence of
luxurious ease but of hunger and rags. If the knight of arts and
industry will ever destroy monopoly, and these silent waters will be
alive with enterprise:
"When many fishing barks put out to fish along the coast."
there will be a happy change in the comfortless cabins that dot the
shores of Clew Bay.
The islands of Clew Bay, being treeless and green, have a new look, as
if they had just heaved up their backs above the waters and were waiting
for the fiat that shall pronounce them good. I looked with longing eyes
in the direction of Clare Island, that has one side to the bay and one
side to the broad Atlantic which lies between me and home. On Clare
Island is the remains of Doona Castle, the principal stronghold, of the
heroic Grace, where she held the heir of Howth captive till ransomed,
and till his father learned to understand what _Cead mille failte_
means at dinner time.
