Of
course the majority of the women were barefoot, but they were used to
it.
At Molraney we stopped to deliver mails. In these cases the passengers
sit on the car in the street, while the driver hands in the mail,
gossips awhile, goes into the convenient "licensed to sell" for a taste
of something, and the police saunter down for the mail and look you
over, judiciously but not offensively, and at last you make another
start.
Arrived at the Sound, you find a nice-looking hotel for such a remote
place. There is any amount of liquor to be got: you can also get the
never-varying chop or steak served up with another variety of miserable
cooking, but you cannot get a bit of fish any more than if the sea were
five hundred miles off instead of lapping on the rocks less than a perch
away. Was pulled across the Sound by two young girls, who handled the
big oars as if they were used to them, and urged the boat with its load
of men across the green waters very swiftly with their strong white
arms. As we neared the island of Achill trees were conspicuous by their
absence, and purple heather was plentiful.
Achill island is a treeless place. There are mountains beyond mountains
lying against the sky, heather clad or mossgrown; there are small lakes
lying at the foot of mountains or between mountains; there are dreary
expanses of bog stretching for miles on each side of the road between us
and the mountains, and rising out of the bog are wee bits of fields and
most horrible habitations. We passed the plantation, noticeable because
there is not another, that Mr. Pike has coaled to flourish round his
fine house. There are dark green firs, feathery light green larches,
birches, and other trees that dress in green only when summer comes;
great clumps of laurel and rhododendron, the latter one mass of blossoms
that almost hide the leaves beneath their rosy purple. Mr. Pike has
already made for himself a delicious looking home amid this barren
waste. It enriched our eyes to look at it.
Mr. Pike and Mr. Stoney, of the castellated new building down at the
edge of Clew Bay, have the distinction of being the most unpopular
landlords in this part of the country. After we passed Mr. Pike's place
there were no more trees. The houses are very bad indeed; the cattle in
the pasture are of the small native breed, and have little appearance of
milk; the sheep are very miserable and scraggy. I have often heard of
Cook's recipes saying, "Take the scrag end of a piece of mutton." These
recipes must have emanated from Achill Island, where the mutton must be
pretty much all scrag.
After we drove a long way - what appeared a long way - I do not believe
they measure all the crooks and turns this most serpentine of roads into
the miles - we passed establishment of lay brothers called the Monastery.
There is quite a block of white buildings, and a good many reclaimed
fields, green with the young crops, lie in the valley below them. There
is a bell in a cupola that will call to work and worship, and a chapel
where they meet to pray. The valley where their fields lie stretches to
the sea, and in the bay lay a smack of some kind by which they trade to
Westport. They labor with their own hands, so have not the name of
employing any laborers, but have the name of dispensing charity. I
should have liked to see the buildings and the brethren, but did not
make the attempt.
At length we came to Dugart, the Missionary settlement. A little row of
white-washed houses on one side of a street that ran up hill, another
row of whitewashed houses that ran along the brow of the hill at a right
angle. Slieve Mor behind towering up between the village and the sea;
below the hill at the foot of another mountain is the rectory, beside it
the church, both having a trimming of young trees; some good fields, the
best I have seen in Achill, and a pretty garden lie round both rectory
and church. This is the mission village of Dugart.
At the corner where the two rows of whitewashed houses meet is the Post
Office. As we drove up there was a gentleman with a northern kindliness
in his face, a long brown beard, an unmistakable air of authority, whom
we found out was the rector of Achill. After introduction and some
conversation, he kindly invited me to the rectory after I had brushed
off some of the dust of travel.
The Dugart hotel possesses a large collection of stuffed sea birds, the
proprietor having taste and skill in that direction, and I was enabled
to take a nearer view of specimens of the birds that sail and scream
round the Achill mountains, eagles and gulls, puffins and cormorants,
than I would otherwise have done. After a little rest and refreshment I
walked down the hill to the lonely, lovely rectory in the valley below.
There is a solidity about a stone house, stone porch and stone wall in
every part of Ireland; a strength that makes one think how easily a
house could be turned into a fortalice at a short notice.
I confess I liked this rector, so tall and stately, with his long beard,
grave, kindly face, northern speech, penetrating look, with a certain
air of authority as became a pastor in charge. When he asked me
pleasantly if I had come as a friend, I thought at once of the Bethlehem
elders to Samuel, "Comest thou peaceably?" I think I almost envied this
man his position, the power which he holds as a leader to be a patriot
worker for the good of his countrymen and countrywomen on the barren
isle of Achill.
