Part 36 (2/2)

He was an Ulster man, and had been running the mill for three years, but he said it was a hard struggle to make both ends meet. If it was not that his power cost him nothing, he would have had to give it up long ago. Power apart, I could imagine no poorer place for a mill, for it was at least two miles from the railway, and the road into the hollow was so steep that it must be a terrific struggle to get a loaded wagon into or out of it. There had been a number of mills in the neighbourhood at one time, but they had all given up the struggle long ago, except one flour mill, which had somehow managed to survive.

We told him that we had seen the ruins of some of them as we went to the abbey.

”Have you been to the abbey?” he asked. ”Did you see the underground pa.s.sages?”

”Are there really some?”

”Come along, and I'll show you.”

We protested that we didn't want him to leave his work, but he said the mill could take care of itself for awhile; and we started off together up the hill, through a gate to the right, and then knee-deep through the gra.s.s to the brook which ran at the bottom of the ravine, under the walls of the monastery. And there, sure enough, was the mouth of a pa.s.sage cut in the solid rock of the bank. It was about six feet high by three wide, and ran in about a hundred feet, for all the world like the entrance to a mine. How much farther it extended I don't know, for an iron gate had been put across it to keep out explorers; but there can be no doubt that, at one time, it connected with the abbey itself, and formed a secret means of ingress and egress, which was no doubt often very convenient.

And then our guide showed us something else, which was far more interesting. In the penal days, Catholic priests were forbidden to celebrate Ma.s.s under the severest penalties; but nevertheless they managed to hold a service now and then in some out of the way place, carefully concealed, with sentries posted all about to guard against surprise. A short distance down stream from the entrance to the secret pa.s.sage was a shallow cave in the cliff, so overhung with ivy that it could scarcely be seen, and here, many times, the Catholics of the neighbourhood had gathered at word that a priest would celebrate Ma.s.s.

On the heights all about lookouts would be placed, and then the men and women would kneel before the mouth of the little cave and take part in the sacrament.

At the back of the cave, the shelf of rock which served as the altar still remains, and at one side of it is a rude piscina--a basin hollowed in the rock, with a small hole in the bottom to drain it; and it was here the vessels used in the celebration of the Ma.s.s were washed, after the service was over. I wanted mightily to get a picture of this cave, but it had started to shower, and though I got under the umbrella and made an exposure, the picture was a failure.

We bade our guide good-bye, with many thanks for his kindness, and went slowly back along the highroad toward Ballyshannon; and presently from a tiny cottage beside the road two old women issued and greeted us with great cordiality. They were clean and neatly dressed, and the younger one, who did most of the talking, seemed to be quite unusually interested in our private history and solicitous for our welfare, and the blarney with which her tongue plastered us was the most finished I have ever listened to. We thanked her for her good wishes, and were about to go on, much pleased at this new demonstration of Irish cordiality, when we had a rude awakening.

”Ah, your honour,” she said, ”would you not be giving me something for my poor sister here? You see she is all twisted with rheumatism, and can scarcely walk, and the medicine do be costing so much that she often must go without it. Just a small coin, G.o.d bless ye.”

I didn't want to give her anything, for I suspected that she made a practice of waylaying pa.s.sers-by and begging from them; and then I looked at the older woman, who was standing by with her hands crossed before her, and I saw how the fingers were twisted and withered and how the face was drawn with pain--so I compromised by dropping sixpence into the outstretched hand.

”If your honour would only be makin' it eightpence now,” the woman said quickly; ”we can get three bottles of castor-oil for eightpence--”

But the other woman stopped her.

”No, no,” she protested; ”take shame to yourself for askin' the kind gentleman for more. We thank your honour, and G.o.d bless ye, and may He bring ye safe home.”

And the other woman joined in the blessings too, and they continued to bless us, considerably to our embarra.s.sment, until we were out of ear-shot.

Betty had had enough of Ballyshannon; besides, the showers were coming with increasing force and frequency; so she elected to go back to the railway station and rest, while I wandered about for a last look at the town. And now, I suppose, I shall have to say a word about its history.

All this country to the north of Lough Erne is Tyrone--Tir Owen, the Province of Owen--and was once a great princ.i.p.ality, which stretched eastward clear to the sh.o.r.e of the Channel about Belfast. Northwest of it, answering roughly to the present county of Donegal, was Tyrconnell--Tir Connell, the Province of Connell; and Connell and Owen were brothers, sons of Nial of the Nine Hostages, who was King of Ireland from 379 to 405, and whose eight sons cut Ireland up between them into the princ.i.p.alities which were, in time, by their own internecine warfare, to make Ireland incapable of defending herself against the invader. Saint Patrick, about 450, found Connell in his castle on Lough Erne and baptised him; and then he journeyed north to Owen's great fortress, which we shall see before long on a hill overlooking Lough Sw.i.l.l.y, and baptised him.

Five centuries later, when Brian Boru had brought all Ireland to acknowledge his kings.h.i.+p, he decreed that every family should take a surname from some distinguished ancestor, and so began the era of the O's and the Macs. The two great clans of Tyrone and Tyrconnell chose the names of O'Neill and O'Donnell, and the river Erne was the frontier of the O'Donnell domain. There was a ford here at Ballyshannon, and so, of course, a castle to guard it, and many were the herds of lifted cattle which the O'Donnells, sallying south into Sligo, drove back before them into Donegal. Cattle was the princ.i.p.al form of property in those old days--about the only kind, at least, that could be stolen--and so it was always cattle that the raiders went after.

The English brought a great force against the place in 1597, and for three days besieged the castle and tried unavailingly to carry it by a.s.sault; and then the O'Donnell clans poured down from the hills, and the English, seeing themselves trapped, tried to cross the river at the ford just above the falls; and the strongest managed to get across, but the women and the wounded and the weak were swept away.

There is no trace remaining of the castle, but just below the graceful bridge of stone which crosses the river is the ford over which the English poured that day, and an ugly ford it is, for the water runs deep and strong, quickening at its lower edge into the rapids above the falls. From the centre of this bridge, some twenty-five years ago, the ashes of one of Ireland's truest poets were scattered on the swift, smooth-running water and carried down to the sea, and a tablet marks the spot:

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM A Native of This Town Born 1824; died 1889.

Here once he roved, a happy boy, Along the winding banks of Erne, And now, please G.o.d, with finer joy, A fairer world his eyes discern.

It is certainly a halting quatrain, quite unworthy the immortality of marble. A couplet from Allingham's own poem in praise of his birthplace would have been far more fitting; but I suppose that the lines on the tablet were composed by some local dignitary, and that n.o.body dared tell him how bad they were. I know of no more graceful tribute to any town than Allingham paid to Ballyshannon in his ”Winding Banks of Erne.” The first stanza gives a savour of its quality:

Adieu to Ballyshanny, where I was bred and born; Go where I may, I'll think of you, as sure as night and morn: The kindly spot, the friendly town, where everyone is known, And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own; There's not a house or window, there's not a field or hill, But east or west, in foreign lands, I'll recollect them still; I leave my warm heart with you, though my back I'm forced to turn-- Adieu to Ballyshanny, and the winding banks of Erne.

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