Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travelLocke, David Ross
Philosophy
Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel
Locke, David Ross
Europe -- Description and travel
But just take a boat at Glengariff, leave the splendid hotel, and be
rowed two miles across the bay, and you begin to see Ireland, the real
Ireland. You then know why Ireland is agitated; you then see the real
reason why an Englishman is hated with an intensity that would find
expression in a rifle shot, if rifles were permitted to be owned and
used.
We took a train for Fermoy, a distance of perhaps fifty miles from Cork.
In Fermoy, a tolerably prosperous village for Ireland, the women did not
only have no shoes or stockings, but they had scarcely anything else to
wear.
"This is nothing," said the wise Mr. Redpath, who was with us; "these
people are fairly prosperous--for Ireland. I shall show you something
worth while before night."
It puzzled me somewhat to understand how anybody could be worse off than
to be walking in cold mud without any protection whatever for the feet,
but I found it at Mitchellstown, at the foot of the Galtee mountains.
[Sidenote: THE JAUNTING CAR.]
The Irish jaunting-car, being the most inconvenient and detestable
vehicle on earth, deserves a description. It should be known in order to
be avoided. A jaunting-car is simply a two-wheeled vehicle with the body
that supports the seat reversed. Instead of sitting so as to look
forward, you are on the side; the seat runs the wrong way--which is
characteristic of almost everything in Ireland. The driver sits looking
toward the horse, the passengers sit backing each other, and the concern
is so balanced that you must hold on a rail with a death-grip, or be
flung off upon the road by every jolt. As detestable as it is, it is the
national Irish vehicle, and you ride on the car, or go afoot.
[Illustration: AN IRISH WOMAN AND HER DAUGHTER ON THE ROAD TO CHURCH.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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