It was not new even then, for King Donagh made his new church
out of an old palace of his.
I followed that old man while he pointed out the relics of the old and
the glories of the new, the magnificent painted windows, the velvet of
the costliest that covered the altar, the carvings of price, the
cushions and the carpets, and, a few steps away, the fluttering rags,
the horrible poverty, the hopeless lives of the English quarter. Truly
the fat and the wool are in one place, and the flock on the dark
mountains in another. Outside are various stone cupboards, called
vaults, where highbred dust moulders in state free from any beggarly
admixture.
That old man wished to delude me up unknown steps to the battlements and
up to other battlements on the top of the church tower - it was raining
heavily, and the gray clouds lying on the house tops, you could hardly
have seen across two streets - to see the view forsooth; then he
volunteered to set the bells ringing in my honor, but I declined. He
then told me of the bells - it was new to me; it may not be new to
others. They were - well - taken without leave from Italy. The Italian
who cast them pilgrimed over the world in search of them. Sailing up the
Shannon he heard his long-lost bells, and it killed him, the joy did.
The puritan soldiers destroyed the profusion of statues that decorated
this church. Noticed one simple monument to one Dan Hayes, an honest man
and a lover of his country. Near this cathedral is the house where
Ireton died, tall and smoky, battered and fallen into age, but very
high. Its broken windows showed several poverty-stricken faces looking
down on the cathedral grounds, which, of course, are kept locked. King
John's castle, very strong, very tall, very grim, seems mostly composed
of three great towers, but there are really seven. Inside the walls is a
barrack that could lodge 400 men. Limerick is full of old memorials of
present magnificence and of past and present need. The inhabitants
proudly tell you that it never was conquered, not considering
capitulation conquest. The city raised the first monument to O'Connell.
Of course I saw it, and thought it a good likeness. There is a square of
grass and trees near it, where is a monument of Spring Rice, he who,
when O'Connell was sick once, a political sickness, was said to be in
despair:
"Poor Spring Rice, with his phiz all gloom,
Kept noiselessly creeping about the room;
His innocent nose in anguish blowing,
Murmuring forth, 'He's going, going.'"
I did not hear the sweet bells that charmed the life out of the poor
wandering Italian, still I think I have perhaps told enough about the
ancient city of Limerick on the Shannon.
From Limerick up through Clare, the railway passes along by the river
Fergus, a big tributary of the Shannon. A Clare man informed me that
Clare returned Dan O'Connell to Parliament. He sank his voice into an
emphatic whisper to inform us that Dan was the first Catholic who ever
got into Parliament.
I have been taken for this one and that one since I came to Ireland, and
have been amused or annoyed, as the case may be, but I am totally at a
loss to know whom I resembled or was taken for in the County Clare. A
decent-looking countrywoman shook hands with me, telling me she had seen
me in some part of Clare a month ago, and I had never set foot into the
county until to-day. "You remember me, my lady, I saw you when you
stopped at - - " some whispered name with an O to it. The woman's face
was strangely familiar, but I was on entirely new ground.
There is enchantment in this western country. I was completely
bewildered when a frieze-coated farmer told me, "That was a grand speech
you made at Tuam, and true every word of it." It was a little confusing,
seeing that I have never been in Tuam, or very near it at all. This old
gentleman enquired coaxingly if I were going to speak at Ennis, and
assured me of a grand welcome to be got up in a hurry. Then he and the
farmer's wife exchanged thoughts - that "I did not want anybody to know I
was in it" - in aggravating whispers as I looked steadily out of the
windows to assure myself that I was I. My friend in frieze then began to
draw my attention to certain landmarks, the ruins of this abbey and that
castle, and the other graveyard as points of interest with which I was
supposed to be familiar.
Truly this part of Clare seemed to have any amount of square castles in
ruined grandeur scattered along the line of rail. We stopped at a
station and saw Ennis lying below us, and O'Connell's statue rising up
between us and the sky. My two friends parted from me here to my immense
relief. I felt as if I were obtaining admiration on false pretences. The
woman took my hand, and, with a long fond look, began to bless me in
English, but her feelings compelled her to slide off into fervent Irish.
The frieze-coated gentleman stood, hat in hand, and bowed and bowed, and
"his life was at my service, and if I wished to pass unnoticed sure he
could whisht, and good-by and God bless you." and away they went. For
whom did they take me?
Clare is pretty stony. Again I saw fields from which stones had been
gathered to form fences like ramparts. Again I saw fields crusted with
stone like the fields of Cong, with the same waterworn appearance, but
not so extensive.
