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For those who have never spent a summer in Ireland there remains a delightful experience, for no country is more attractive, unless it be Japan, and no people are more genial or charming or courteous in their reception of a stranger, or more cordial in their hospitality. The American tourist usually lands at Queenstown, runs up to Cork, rides out to Blarney Castle in a jaunting car, and across to Killarney with a crowd of other tourists on the top of a big coach, then rushes up to Dublin, spends a lot of money at the poplin and lace stores, takes a train for Belfast, glances at the Giant’s Causeway, and then hurries across St. George’s Channel for London and the Continent. Hundreds of Americans do this each year, and write home rhapsodies about the beauty of Ireland. But they have not seen Ireland. No one can see Ireland in less than three months, for some of the counties are as different as Massachusetts and Alabama. Six weeks is scarcely long enough to visit the most interesting places.

The railway accommodations, the coaches, the steamers, and other facilities for travel are as perfect as those of Switzerland. The hotels are not so good, and there will be a few discomforts here and there to those who are accustomed to the luxuries of London and Paris, but they can be endured without ruffling the temper, simply by thinking of the manifold enjoyments that no other country can produce.

And Ireland is particularly interesting just now because of the mighty forces that are engaged in the redemption of the people from the poverty and the wretchedness in which a large proportion of them have been submerged for generations. No government ever did so much for the material welfare of its subjects as Great Britain is now doing for Ireland, and the improvement in the condition of affairs during the last few years has been extraordinary.

In order to observe and describe this economic evolution, the author spent the summer of 1908 visiting various parts of the island and has endeavored to narrate truthfully what he saw and heard. This volume contains the greater part of a series of letters written for The Chicago Record-Herald and also published in The Evening Star of Washington, The Times of St. Louis, and other American papers. By permission of Mr. Frank B. Noyes, editor and publisher of The Chicago Record-Herald, and to gratify many readers who have asked for them, they are herewith presented in permanent form.

About three hundred passengers landed with us at Queenstown. Most of them were young men and young women of Irish birth, returning after a few years’ experience in the United States. Several had come home to be married, but most of them were on a visit to their parents and other relatives. Among those who disembarked were several older men and women who were born in Ireland, but had been taken to America in infancy or in childhood and were now looking upon the fair face of Erin for the first time.

There is an astonishing difference in the appearance and behavior of the steerage passengers who are sailing east from those who are sailing west. A few years, or even a few months, in America causes an extraordinary change in the dress and the manners of a European peasant. You can see it in the passengers that land at Genoa and Naples, and those that land at Hamburg and Trieste. But it is even more noticeable in the Americanized Irish who land at Queenstown by the thousand every summer from New York. The Italian, the Hungarian, or the Pole who goes aboard a steamer to America with his humble belongings and his quaint looking garments is a very different person from the man who sails from New York back to the fatherland a few years later. And the Irish boys and girls who went ashore with us just as the sun was waking up Ireland were as hearty, well dressed, and prosperous looking as you would wish to see. And every young woman had a big “Saratoga” in place of the “cotton trunk with the pin lock” that she carried away with her when she left the old country for America the first time. I don’t know what was in those big trunks, although one can get a glimpse of their contents if he stands by while the customs officers are inspecting them, but you can see the names “Delia O’Connell, New York,” “Katherine Burke, Chicago,” and “Mary Murphy, Baltimore,” marked in big black letters at either end. And what is most noticeable, the trunks are all new. They have never crossed the ocean before, but will be going back again to America in a few months. Their owners will not be contented with the discomforts they will find at their old homes. Ireland is more prosperous today than for generations, but conditions among the poorer classes are very different from those that exist in the new world.

The purser told me that he changed nearly $4,000 of American into English money the day before we landed, for third-class passengers alone. One man had $400; that was the maximum, but the rest of those who disembarked at Queenstown had from $50 up to $250 and thereabouts in cash, with their return tickets.

Queenstown makes a brave appearance from the deck of a ship in the bay, even before sunrise. It lies along a steep slope, with green fields and forests on either side, and the most conspicuous building is a beautiful gothic cathedral, with an unfinished tower, that was commenced in 1868 and has cost nearly a million dollars already. The hill is so steep that a heavy retaining wall has been built as a buttress to make the cathedral foundations secure, and the worshipers must climb a winding road or a sharp stairway to reach it. A little farther along the hillside is an imposing marine hospital and group of barracks, from which we could hear the bugles sounding “reveille” as we landed. There are compensations to those who are marooned at Queenstown before daylight, and one of them is the picturesque surroundings of the ancient homes of the O’Mahony’s, who ruled this part of Ireland for many generations long ago.

The harbor is like an amphitheatre, entirely inclosed by hills, three hundred or four hundred feet high, that are covered with frowning battlements. Every hilltop is strongly fortified. The bay, which is four miles long and about two miles wide, contains several islands, upon which the government has built warehouses, repair shops, shipyards, and the other appurtenances of a naval station, guarded by Fort Carlisle, Fort Camden, and other modern fortresses. Upon Haulbowline Island is a depot for ammunition and other ordnance stores, and the pilot told me that on Rocky Island near by were two magazines—great chambers chiseled out of the living rock by Irish convicts who were formerly confined there—and that each of them contained twenty-five thousand barrels of powder belonging to the British navy.

Queenstown has many handsome estates overlooking the sea and the bay from the hills that inclose the harbor. There is an old ruined castle at Monkstown that was built in 1636 by Anastasia Gould, wife of John Archdecken, while her husband was at sea. She determined that she would surprise him when he returned home. So she hired a lot of men to build a castle with only the material they found on the estate, and made an agreement with them that they should buy the food and clothing necessary for their families from herself alone. It is the first record of a “company store” that I know of. When the castle was finished and the accounts were balanced it was found that the cost of the labor had been entirely paid for by the profits of this thrifty woman’s mercantile transactions, with the sum of four pence as a balance to her credit. Her husband returned in due time and was so delighted with his new home that he never went to sea again. His estimable wife died in 1689, and was buried in the churchyard of Team-*pulloen-Bryn, where this story is inscribed with her epitaph.

On Wood’s Hill, overlooking the bay, is a handsome estate that once belonged to Curran, the famous lawyer and orator, whose daughter was the sweetheart of Robert Emmet, the Irish martyr. Her melancholy romance is related in Washington Irving’s story called “The Broken Heart” and in one of Tom Moore’s ballads.

Queenstown

It is 165 miles from Queenstown to Dublin, and the railroad passes through several of the counties whose names are most familiar to Americans, for they have furnished the greater portion of our Irish immigrants—Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Queens, and Kildare. Most of the passengers who landed with us took the same train, and they were so many that they crowded the little railway station to overflowing and created a scene of lively confusion. Some of them had been met by brothers, fathers, sweethearts, and friends, who were waiting two hours before daylight, and the hearty greetings and enthusiasm they showed were contagious. The sweethearts were easy to identify. The demonstrations of affection left no doubt, but all the world loves a lover, and we rejoiced with them. In the long line that stood before the ticket seller’s window at the railway station they chattered unconsciously like so many sparrows, their arms around each other, with an occasional embrace, a sly kiss and a slap to pay for it, tender caresses upon the shoulder or the head, and other expressions of a happiness that could not have been concealed. The home-bred young men gazed with wonder and admiration at the finery worn by their sweethearts from America, who, by the way, although they came third class, and were undoubtedly chambermaids or shop girls in our cities, were the best-looking and the best-dressed women we saw in Ireland. The pride of the parents at the appearance and the manners of their sons or daughters showed that they appreciated the accomplishments that American experience acquires.

One of the younger passengers, a boy of twenty years, perhaps, told me that he had come from Ohio to persuade his father to send his two younger brothers back with him. They live in Tipperary, where “there is no show for a young man now.” Another young man had a tiny American flag pinned to the lapel of his coat, and when I said, “You show your colors,” the lassie who clung to his arm turned at me with a determined expression on her face and remarked:

“I’ll be takin’ that off and pinnin’ a piece of green in its place vera soon.”

“No, you don’t, darlin’; none o’ that,” he replied. “I’m an American citizen, and I don’t care who knows it. If you don’t want to be one yourself, I know another girl who does.”

The country through which the railway to Dublin runs affords a beautiful example of Irish scenery. As far as Cork the track follows the bank of the River Lee, which is inclosed on either side by a high ridge crowned with stately mansions, glorious trees, and handsome gardens. Several of the places are historic, and the scenery has been frequently described in verse by the Irish poets.

Father Prout, a celebrated rhymemaker of Cork, has described one of the villages as follows:

“The town of Passage is both large and spacious,

And situated upon the say;

’Tis nate and dacent and quite adjacent

To Cork on a summer’s day.

There you may slip in and take a dippin’

Foreninst the shippin’ that at anchor ride,

Or in a wherry you can cross the ferry

To Carrigaloe on the other side.”

We could not see much from the car window, but we saw enough on the journey to understand why it is called “The Emerald Isle” and why the Irish people are so enthusiastic over its landscapes. The river is walled in nearly all the distance to Cork, and there are many factories, storehouses, and docks on both sides. Quite a fleet of steamers ply between Queenstown and Cork, and trains on the railroad are running every hour. Small seagoing vessels can go up as far as Cork, but the larger ones discharge and receive their cargoes at Queenstown. We couldn’t see much of the towns because the railway tracks are either elevated so that only the roofs and chimney pots are visible, or else they are buried between impenetrable walls or pass through tunnels on either side of the station. But when the train passed out into the open a succession of most attractive landscapes was spread before us as far as the horizon on either side, and the fields were alive with bushes of brilliant orange-colored gorse, or furze, as it is sometimes called. They lit up the atmosphere as the burning bush of Moses might have done. Very little of the ground is cultivated. Only here and there is a field of potatoes and cabbages, but the pastures are filled with fine looking cattle and sheep, for this is the grazing district of Ireland, from whence her famous dairy products and the best beef and mutton come.

Beyond Portarlington we got our first glimpses of the bogs, with which we are told one-sixth of the surface of Ireland is covered, an area of not less than 2,800,000 acres. Bogs were formerly supposed to be due to the depravity of the natives, who are too lazy to drain them and have allowed good land to run to waste and become covered with water and rotten vegetation, but this theory has been effectively disposed of by science. Everybody should know that the bogs of Ireland are not only due to the natural growth of a spongy moss called sphagnum, but furnish an inexhaustible fuel supply to the people and have a value much greater than that of the drier and higher land. The report of a “bogs commission” describes them as “the true gold mines of Ireland,” and estimates them as “infinitely more valuable than an inexhaustible supply of the precious metal.” The average Irish bog will produce 18,231 tons of peat per acre, which is equivalent to 1,823 tons of coal, thus making the total supply of peat equivalent to 5,104,000 tons of coal, capable of producing 300,000 horse power of energy daily for manufacturing purposes for a period of about four hundred and fifty years. With coal selling at $2 a ton in Ireland to-day, this makes the bogs of Ireland worth $10,000,000,000. The “bog trotter” is an individual to be cultivated, for when our coal deposits in the United States are exhausted we may have to send over and buy some of his peat for fuel. It is proposed to utilize these deposits and save transportation charges by erecting power-houses at the peat beds and furnish electricity over wires to the neighboring towns and cities for lighting, power, and other purposes, “for anybody having work to do from curling a lady’s hair to running tramways and driving machinery.” The writer refers to recent installations of electric works in Mysore, India, for working gold fields ninety miles distant, and quotes the late Lord Kelvin’s opinion that the city of New York will soon be getting its power from Niagara, four hundred miles away. We saw them digging peat in the fields and piling it up like damp bricks to dry in the sun. Freshly dug peat contains about seventy per cent of moisture, but when cured the ratio is reduced to fifteen or twenty per cent.

A peat bog is not always in a hollow, but often on a hillside, and sometimes at considerable height, which contradicts the theory that bogs are due to defective drainage. Science long ago determined that Irish peat was the accumulation of a peculiar kind of moss which grows like a coral bank in the damp soil, and continues to pile up in layers year after year, century after century, until it forms a solid mass, several feet thick, seventy per cent moisture and thirty per cent fibre, which burns slowly and furnishes a high degree of heat. We see bogs on all sides of us where the peat is three and four feet thick, and with a long straight spade that is as sharp as a knife, it is cut into blocks about eight or ten inches long and about four inches square. A sharp spade will slice it just as a knife would cut cheese or butter, and after the blocks have lain on the ground a while they are stacked up on end in little piles to dry. Then, when they have been exposed to the weather for three or four weeks, they are stacked in larger piles, from which they are carted away and sold or used as they are needed.

The Rock of Cashel, County Tipperary

Four tons of peat are equal in caloric energy to one ton of coal. I noticed in the papers that a bill is pending before the House of Commons to grant a charter to a company to erect a station in a bog near Robertson, Kings County, twenty-five miles from Dublin, for generating electricity from peat, the power to be transmitted to Dublin and the suburban towns for lighting, transportation, and manufacturing purposes. Several other projects of a similar sort have been suggested for utilizing the peat at the bog instead of carting it into town.

Beyond the peat beds rises a chain of low mountains with a curious profile that runs west of the town of Templemore. Like every other freak of nature in Ireland, they are the scenes of many interesting legends. The highest peak is called “The Devil’s Bit,” and the queer shape is accounted for by the fact that the Prince of Darkness in a fit of hunger and fatigue once took a bite out of the mountain, and, not finding it to his taste, spat it out again some miles to the eastward, where it is now famous as the Rock of Cashel.

Cashel, at present a miserable, deserted village, was once the rich and proud capital of Munster. Adjoining the ruins of the cathedral is the ancient and weather-worn “Cross of Cashel,” which was raised upon a rude pedestal, where the kings of Munster were formerly crowned. The ruins are more extensive than anywhere else in Ireland, for Cashel at one time was the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland and its greatest educational centre. Here the Pope’s legates resided and here Henry II., in 1172, received the homage of the Irish kings. But what gives the place its greatest sanctity is the fact that St. Patrick spent much time there and held there the first synod that ever assembled in Ireland, about the middle of the fifth century. That is supposed to have been the reason for the erection of so many sacred edifices and monasteries in early days. St. Declan lived there, too, and commemorated his conversion to Christianity by the erection of one of the churches. Donald O’Brien, King of Limerick, erected another, and his son Donough founded an abbey in 1182. Holy Cross, beautifully situated in a thick grove on the banks of the River Suir, was built in 1182 for the Cistercian order of monks. It derived its name because a piece of the true cross, set with precious stones and presented to a grandson of Brian Boru by Pope Pascal II., was kept there for centuries, and made the abbey the object of pilgrimages of the faithful from all parts of Ireland. This precious relic is now in the Ursuline convent at Cork.

Cashel was destroyed during the civil wars. The famous Gerald Fitzgerald, the great Earl of Kildare, had a grudge against Archbishop Cragh and burned the cathedral and the bishop’s palace. He excused the act before the king on the ground that he “believed the archbishop was in it.”

A little beyond Templemore, at Ballybrophy Junction, a branch of the main line of the railway leads to the town of Birr, which is famous as the seat of the late Earl of Rosse, whose father erected an observatory there many years ago, with one of the largest and finest telescopes in the world. It is twenty-seven feet long, with a lens three feet in diameter. Some of the most important discoveries of modern astronomy have been made there, and Birr has been the object of pilgrimages for scientific men for more than half a century. The old Birr castle has been much enlarged and modernized by the late earl, who died in September, 1908, and is surrounded by an estate of thirty-six thousand acres, upon which is one of the best built and well kept towns in Ireland. He was a scholar and scientist of reputation, president of the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Dublin Society, and interested in important manufactories and enterprises. He was especially active in developing the steam turbine.

All of that section of Ireland covered by the journey between Dublin and Cork is associated with heroic struggles. It has been fought over time and again by the clans and the factions that have struggled to rule the state. Every town and every castle has its tragic and romantic history. Almost every valley is associated with a legend or an important event. The woods and the hills are still peopled with fairies, and local traditions among the humble folks are the themes of fascinating tales and songs. But the natives one sees at the railway stations do not look at all romantic. A sentimental person is compelled to endure many severe shocks when he comes in contact with the present generation of Irish peasants.