Penelope's Irish ExperiencesWiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
General
Penelope's Irish Experiences
Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
Ireland -- Fiction
Can't you see the O'Sullivan, famous for fleetness of foot and prowess
in the chase, starting forth in the cool o' the morn to hunt the red
deer? His dogs sniff the heather; a splendid stag bounds across the
path; swift as lightning the dogs follow the scent across moors and
glens. Throughout the long day the chieftain chases the stag, until at
nightfall, weary and thirsty, he loses the scent, and blows a blast on
his horn to call the dogs homeward.
And then he hears a voice: “O'Sullivan, turn back!”
He looks over his shoulder to behold the great Finn McCool, central
figure in centuries of romance.
“Why do you dare chase my stag?” he asks.
“Because it is the finest man ever saw,” answers the chieftain
composedly.
“You are a valiant man,” says the hero, pleased with the reply; “and
as you thirst from the long chase, I will give you to drink.” So he
crunches his giant heel into the rock, and forth burst the waters,
seething and roaring as they do to this day; “and may the divil fly away
wid me if I've spoke an unthrue word, ma'am!”
Come to Lough Lein as did we, too early for the crowd of sightseers; but
when the 'long light shakes across the lakes,' the blackest arts of the
tourist (and they are as black as they are many) cannot break the spell.
Sitting on one of these hillsides, we heard a bugle-call taken up and
repeated in delicate, ethereal echoes,--sweet enough, indeed, to be
worthy of the fairy buglers who are supposed to pass the sound along
their lines from crag to crag, until it faints and dies in silence. And
then came the 'Lament for Owen Roe O'Neil.' We were thrilled to the
very heart with the sorrowful strains; and when we issued from our leafy
covert, and rounded the point of rocks from which the sound came,
we found a fat man in uniform playing the bugle. 'Blank's Tours' was
embroidered on his cap, and I have no doubt that he is a good husband
and father, even a good citizen, but he is a blight upon the landscape,
and fancy cannot breathe in his presence. The typical tourist should be
encouraged within bounds, both because he is of some benefit to Ireland,
and because Ireland is of inestimable benefit to him; but he should
not be allowed to jeer and laugh at the legends (the gentle smile of
sophisticated unbelief, with its twinkle of amusement, is unknown to and
for ever beyond him); and above all, he should never be allowed to carry
or to play on a concertina, for this is the unpardonable sin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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