Part 45 (1/2)
I was travelling third that day, as always when alone, and the compartment had four or five people in it; and I had noticed that one of them, a man poorly clad and with a kit of tools in a little bag, had been looking anxiously from the window for some time. Finally he leaned over and touched me on the knee.
”Can you tell me, sir, if this is the train to Derry?” he asked.
”No; it's going to Dublin,” I said; and just then it rumbled to a stop, and he opened the door and slipped hastily out.
What happened to him I don't know, but he was in no way to blame for the mistake, which was due to the abominable custom they have in Ireland of starting trains for different places from the same platform, within a minute or two of each other. That morning, at Belfast, there had been a long line of coaches beside one of the platforms; no engines were as yet attached to them, but the front part of the line was destined for Dublin, and the rear portion for Derry, but there was no way to tell where one train ended and the other began, and no examination was made of the pa.s.sengers' tickets before the trains started.
I was wary, for I had been caught in exactly the same way once before, at Claremorris Junction, and had escaped being carried back to Westport only by stopping the train, amid great excitement, after it had started.
So, that morning at Belfast, I had a.s.sured myself by repeated inquiry of various officials that the carriage I was in was going the way I wanted to go; but any traveller unwary or unaccustomed to the vagaries of Irish roads, such as this poor fellow, might easily have been caught napping.
Where it is necessary to start two trains close together from the same platform, it would seem to be only ordinary precaution to examine the pa.s.sengers' tickets before locking the doors.
From Portadown, the road runs along the valley of the Bann, past the ruins of the old fortress of Redmond O'Hanlon, an outlaw almost as famous in Irish history as Robin Hood is in English; and then it pa.s.ses Scarva, with a mighty cairn marking the grave of Fergus Fogha, who fell in battle here sixteen centuries ago. Here, too, are the ruins of one of General Monk's old castles, and on a neighbouring slope the gra.s.s-green walls of a great rath, the stronghold of some more ancient chieftain.
Indeed, there are raths and cashels and ivy-draped ruins all about, the work of Irish and Dane and Norman and later English, for here was a pa.s.s across the bog from Down into Armagh, and so a chosen spot for defence and the exacting of tribute.
Then the train is carried by a viaduct half a mile long over the deep and wild ravine of Craigmore, leaves Newry on the left and climbs steadily, with beautiful views of the Mourne mountains to the right, plunges at last through a deep cutting, and comes out under the shadow of the Forkhill mountains, with the mighty ma.s.s of Slieve Gullion overtopping them. Just beyond is Mowry Pa.s.s, the only pa.s.s between north and south, except round by the coast, and so, of course, the scene of many a desperate conflict.
From this point on, for many miles, the scenery is very wild and beautiful, and every foot of it has been a battle-ground. Just before the train reaches Dundalk, it pa.s.ses close to the hill of Faughart, topped by a great earthwork, and it was here that Edward Bruce was slain in battle a year after he had been crowned king of Ireland; and farther on is another rath, the Dun of Dealgan, where dwelt Cuchulain, chief of the Red Branch Knights, and one of the great heroes of Irish legend. It was from Dun Dealgan that Dundalk took its name, and Dundalk was for centuries the key to the road to Ulster and the northern limit of the English pale, which had Dublin for its centre. Merely to enumerate the battles which have been fought here would fill a page; but the train rumbles on, past a little church which uses the fragment of a round tower for a belfry, past the modern castle of the Bellinghams, built from the proceeds of a famous brewery, past a wayside Calvary, and so at last into Drogheda. And when I arrived there, I had completed the circuit of Ireland.
The car which was to make the round of the Boyne valley was waiting outside the station, at the top of that long, ugly street which looked so familiar now that I saw it again; and after waiting awhile for other pa.s.sengers and finding there was none, we drove down into the town, where another pa.s.senger was waiting--a clergyman with grey hair and blue eyes and white refined face, Church of England by his garb, and, as I found out afterwards, Oxford by residence.
And here again it looked for a moment as though I was to be balked a second time of seeing Mellifont and Monasterboice, for it was Tuesday, and on Tuesday, it seemed, the round was by way of Slane; but the driver left the choice of routes to his pa.s.sengers, and the clergyman said he didn't care where we went so we saw the Boyne battlefield; and with that we set off westward along the pleasant road, and soon, far ahead, we saw the top of the great obelisk opposite the place where Schomberg fell.
The road dips steeply into King William's Glen, along which the centre of the Protestant army advanced to the river, and then we were on the spot where the cause of Protestant ascendency in Ireland triumphed finally and irrevocably and where the Cromwellian settlements were sealed past overthrow.
William, with his English and his Dutch, had marched down from Dundalk, and James, with his Irish and his French, had marched up from Dublin, and here on either side of this placid little river, where the hills slope down to the Oldbridge ford, the armies took their station; and here, a little after ten o'clock in the morning, brave old Schomberg, whose tomb, you will remember, we saw in St. Patrick's at Dublin (how long ago that seems!), led his Dutch guards and his regiment of Huguenots into the water, across the ford, and up the bank on the other side. There, for a moment, his troops fell into disorder before the fierce attack of the Irish, and as he tried to rally them, a band of Irish horse rushed upon him, circled round him and left him dead upon the ground. Almost at the same moment, the white-haired Walker, who had exhorted the defenders of Derry never to surrender, was shot dead while urging on the men of Ulster. But though the Irish were able to hold their ground at first, and even to drive their a.s.sailants back into the river, a long flanking movement which William had set on foot earlier in the day, caught them unprepared, and they gave way, at last, before superior numbers and superior discipline.
Long before that, King James had fled the field, and, without stopping, spurred on to Dublin, thirty miles away. He reached that city at ten o'clock that night, tired, hungry, and complaining bitterly to Lady Tyrconnell that the Irish had run faster than he had ever seen men do before. Lady Tyrconnell was an Irishwoman, and her eyes blazed. ”In that, as in all other things,” she said, ”it is evident that Your Majesty surpa.s.ses them”; and Patrick Sarsfield, who had been placed that day in command of the king's bodyguard, and so had got nowhere near the fighting, sent back to the Protestants his famous challenge, ”Change kings, and we will fight it over again!”
Well, all that was more than two centuries ago; there is no more placidly beautiful spot in Ireland than this green valley, with the silver stream rippling past; but the staunch Protestants of the north still baptise their babies with water dipped from the river below the obelisk. And they are not altogether wrong, for that river is the river of their deliverance; and perhaps, in some distant day, when new justice has wiped out the memory of ancient wrong, Irish Catholics will agree with Irish Protestants that it was better William should have won that day than James.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ENTRANCE TO DOWTH TUMULUS]
My clerical companion, guide-book in hand, had carefully noted every detail of the field, and it was evident from his s.h.i.+ning eyes how his soul was stirred by the thought of that old victory. But our driver sat humped on his box, smoking silently, his face very grim. This job of driving Protestant clergymen to Boyne battlefield must be a trying one for the followers of Brigid and Patrick! But at last my companion had seen enough, and closed his book with a little sigh of happiness and satisfaction; and our driver whistled to his horse, and we climbed slowly out of the valley.
We had about a mile of hedge-lined road, after that, and, looking down from it, we caught glimpses of wooded demesnes across the river, with the chimneys of handsome houses showing above the trees--and they, too, are the symbols of William's victory, for they are the homes of the conquerors, the visible signs of that social order which Boyne battle established, and which still endures.
And then our driver, who had recovered his good-humour, pointed out to us a great mound in the midst of a level field--a circular mound, with steep sides and flat top, and a certain artificial appearance, though it seemed too big to be artificial. And yet it is, for it was built about two thousand years ago as a sepulchre for the mighty dead.
For all this left bank of the river was the so-called Brugh-na-Boinne, the burying-ground of the old Milesian kings of Tara; and two great tumuli are left to show that the kings of Erin, like the kings of ancient Egypt and the kings of the still more ancient Moundbuilders, were given sepulchres worthy of their greatness. Yet there is a difference. The tombs of the Moundbuilders were mere earthen tumuli heaped above the dead; the pyramids of the Egyptians were carefully wrought in stone. The tumuli of the ancient Irish stand midway between the two. First great slabs were placed on end, and other slabs laid across the uprights; and in this vaulted chamber the ashes of the dead were laid; and then loose stones were heaped above it until it was completely covered. Sometimes a pa.s.sage would be left, but that would be a secret known to few, and when the tomb was done it would seem to be nothing more than a great circular mound of stones. As the years pa.s.sed, the stones would be covered gradually with earth, and then with gra.s.s and bushes, and trees would grow upon it, until there would be nothing left to distinguish it from any other hill. Only within the last half century have the tumuli been explored, and then it was to find that the Danes had spared not even these sanctuaries, but had entered them and despoiled the inner chambers. Nevertheless, they remain among the most impressive human monuments to be found anywhere.
This first tumulus we came to is the tumulus of Dowth, and a woman met us at the gate opening into the field where it stands, gave us each a lighted candle, and led the way to the top of an iron ladder which ran straight down into the bowels of the earth. We descended some twenty feet into a cavity as cold as ice; then, following the light of the woman's candle, we squeezed along a narrow pa.s.sage made of great stones tilted together at the top, so low in places that we had to bend double, so close together in others that we had to advance sideways blessing our slimness; and finally we came to the great central chamber where the dead were placed.
It is about ten feet square, and its walls, like those of the pa.s.sage, are formed by huge blocks of stone set on end. Then other slabs were laid a-top them, and then on one another, each slab overlapping by eight or ten inches the one below, until a last great stone closed the central aperture and the roof was done. In the centre the chamber is about twelve feet high. Many of the stones are carved with spirals and concentric circles and wheel-crosses and Ogham writing--yes, and with the initials of hundreds of vandals!
In the centre of the floor is a shallow stone basin, about four feet square, used perhaps for some ceremony in connection with the burials--sacrifice naturally suggests itself, such as tradition connects with Druid wors.h.i.+p; and opening from the chamber are three recesses, about six feet deep, also constructed of gigantic stones, and in these, it is surmised, the ashes of the dead were laid. From one of these recesses a pa.s.sage, whose floor is a single cyclopean stone eight feet long, leads to another recess, smaller than the first ones. When the tomb was first entered, little heaps of burned bones were found, many of them human--for it should be remembered that the ancient Irish burned their dead before enclosing them in cists or burying them in tumuli.
There were also unburned bones of pigs and deer and birds, and gla.s.s and amber beads, and copper pins and rings; and before the Danes despoiled it, there were doubtless torques of gold, and brooches set with jewels--but the robbers left nothing of that sort behind them.