South of Dublin, along the coast, is a string of summer resorts and bathing places which are attractive in their way, but ought to be very much more so. They are very different from what we are accustomed to. They look more like factory towns than summer resorts. Although land is cheap and there is plenty of it, the hotels and houses are built in solid blocks usually facing upon a highway that runs along the shore. There is no shade, no glorious groves like those which surround the country houses half a mile away; no lawns, no cozy green nooks; only masses of brick and mortar divided into tenements twenty-five feet wide, in the presence of the majesty of the sea. Across the roadway, on the beach, are rows of little frame houses painted dove color, that are called “bathing machines.” Each is independent of the other and is about four feet square, with a narrow door and, inside, a seat made of board resting on cleats nailed to the side, and hooks fastened above it on which the bather hangs his or her garments. When the bather is properly clad in the bathing suit, the “machine” is picked up by two stalwart attendants, who run poles through the sides of the house and carry it down to the edge of the water, where my lady may step into the surf.

Back from the seashore all the way down to Waterford on the coast of St. George’s Channel is a succession of beautiful villas and mansions and farms, each surrounded by lawns and groves and, in some cases, primeval forests. It is the “Garden of Ireland” and there is no sign of poverty or oppression or unhappiness visible to the human eye. There is no lovelier land on earth. “The Fair Hills of Holy Ireland” are unsurpassed in gentle natural beauty, and about forty miles south of Dublin, in the Wicklow hills, is a little patch of Switzerland surrounded by mountains that rise as high as three thousand feet. You can go there by train from Dublin three or four times a day, taking a jaunting car at Rathdrum or Rathnew station. In the tourist season coaches await the arrival of every train and carry “trippers” through on excursion tickets and at very low rates.

The more enjoyable way, however, is to hire an automobile at Dublin (five guineas or $26.25 a day) and run down to Glendalough by one route, stay over night at the hotel on the lake and return the next day by another. In the meantime circle around through the country and catch its beauties as you go. The only drawback, as I have said before, is the high walls that hide the beautiful estates. These were erected, generations ago, I suppose, because the proprietors were afraid of losing their property. But notwithstanding these massive protections many an Irish estate has slipped out of the hands of its owner. It is a habit they formed about the time of the conquest and the invasion of the Normans.

Some of the most beautiful and valuable property in Ireland has been lost at the gambling table or at the race course; more has been sacrificed for political partisanship and more for religious causes. In the early days kings used to have a funny way of taking a man’s property from him because he didn’t go to the same church and confess the same creed. Half the land in Ireland has changed owners for this reason, and some of it several times. Henry VIII., as the newspapers might say, was a prominent real estate dealer along about 1540, and Queen Elizabeth did a large business about 1584, at the time of the “flight of the earls,” and nearly half the island changed hands by her majesty’s grace without the payment of a dollar. When the earls who had resisted her authority ran away to France, she calmly wiped their noble names off the books of the recorder of deeds and transferred their property to English “undertakers,” as they were called, because they “undertook” to drive off the rebellious Irish occupants and repopulate the land with loyal English colonists. Many of the great landlords of Ireland of to-day obtained their property and their titles at this time.

And then a gentleman named Oliver Cromwell went into the real estate business over in Ireland about the middle of the seventeenth century. He drove the inhabitants of a vast area from their farms and the towns in which they lived and compelled them to take refuge in other parts of the country, while he issued scrip that could be located upon the farms they left and paid his soldiers with it because he was short of cash. Many of his soldiers remained here and married and were the ancestors of the present population. Others sold their scrip to speculators who located upon large tracts and eventually disposed of them to men who had the money.

These real estate transactions of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and Cromwell have been severely criticised, but they must have been right because we did very much the same thing with our Indians, the original owners of the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.” Whenever an Indian tribe has rebelled about something, just as the Irish have rebelled from time to time since the conquest of Henry II., we have driven them from the homes of their forefathers; have penned them up in reservations, and have sold their lands to immigrants from Ireland, Sweden, and other European countries, precisely as the English sovereigns disposed of the homes and the farms of the Irish. We did it in the name of civilization; they did it, very often, because they could not worship the same God in the same way.

About an hour by automobile from Dublin, beyond Bray and Greystone and other summer resorts, is a lovely place that you will be pleased to hear about because there is a pretty story attached to it. It is an old Tudor mansion of the seventeenth century, covered with luxuriant ivy and half concealed by ilex, arbutus, hawthorn, and rhododendron bushes that are all in bloom in May. They call it “Hollybrook” and it is the seat of Sir Robert Adair Hodson, whose great-grandfather, Sir Robert Adair, a dashing soldier, was knighted by his king on the field of battle for the handy way he had of amputating the heads of his majesty’s enemies. He afterward became a lieutenant-general and one of the most famous soldiers in the United Kingdom. But what interests us more is that he was the young gentleman for whom the song “Robin Adair” was written by Lady Katherine Keppel. She loved him very much, they say, and broke her heart for him.

Just beyond the railway station of Rathdrum is the Avondale estate, the seat of the family of the late Charles S. Parnell, the Irish political leader, which has recently been purchased by the new Irish department of agriculture, as a school for the training of foresters. Here we enter that romantic region known as the Vale of Avoca, which has been described in a pretty ballad by Tom Moore, called “The Meeting of the Waters”—the rivers Avonbeg and Avonmore. Here was a meeting place of the Druids in ancient times. Their altars and seats of judgment remain, and you can see the hurling stone of the great Finn McCool, which is fourteen feet long, ten feet wide, and seven feet thick, but he was so strong that he had no trouble in tossing it about like a football.

Beyond “The Meeting of the Waters,” seven or eight miles over a very attractive road, are the Woods of Shillelagh, which gave their name to the traditional weapon of offense and defense, formerly carried by every Irishman, but long ago obsolete. You can buy genuine shillalahs at the curio stores, those that have been in actual use and “have cracked many a head,” as the dealer will tell you. You will find them also put away in the cabins with other heirlooms, with the christening clothes of the gossoons and the confirmation dresses of the colleens, but that interesting and typical weapon of the Irish peasant has entirely disappeared. It was a blackthorn stick, about eighteen inches long, from an inch to an inch and a half thick and a knot at one end of it. The best material in Ireland was found in the woods that surround the ancient little village of Shillelagh—hence the name.

Wicklow is especially fascinating to the artist and the antiquarian. The scenery is not so wild nor on so large a scale as that of the Alps, but bits of Switzerland in miniature are scattered about among the Wicklow hills and, indeed, several other very respectable mountains. Douce is 2,384 feet high, Duffhill 2,364, Gravale, 2,352, and Kippure 2,473 feet, and they rise immediately from the level of tide water within a few miles of the sea, so that they seem much higher. There are twenty-one mountains more than two thousand feet high, three more than two thousand five hundred, and one more than three thousand (Lugnaynilla) in this immediate neighborhood and within twenty miles of the coast. Concealed among them are several charming little lakes and rugged canyons and glens and dense forests. Nearly all of these are associated with religious history, with the lives of several saints who went there in retreat for meditation or lived like hermits in the caves and dells and prayed for the salvation of the world.

This was the home of Laurence Sterne, author of “Uncle Toby” and “Corporal Trim.” The record of his baptism is inscribed upon the registry of a quaint old church, and in 1720, according to the local traditions, he accidentally fell into a mill race and narrowly escaped being crushed to death by the water wheel which was working at the time. This was the land of the O’Tooles. The ruins of Castle Keven, the stronghold of the clan, are visited daily in the summer by hundreds of people.

Glendalough is known as “the ancient City of Refuge,” and the weird, mysterious, somber scenery is associated with one of the strangest manifestations of human piety that may be seen anywhere. For there, within the shadow of gaunt and gloomy mountains, St. Kevin, “The Fair Born,” a prince of the House of Leinster, which produced five saints in a single generation, three brothers and two sisters, built seven tiny churches in a group. It is known as the Valley of the Seven Churches. Each of them has its own individuality. Each of them is dedicated to a different saint, and all have been the homes and the places of worship and the object of pilgrimage for holy men and devout Christians for thirteen hundred years. As Sir Walter Scott says, they are probably the oldest buildings now surviving in any country in which the Christian religion was taught, and naturally have a corresponding interest and sanctity to all who love their Lord.

St. Kevin died in 618 after a remarkable experience. The date of his birth is unknown. He stands in fame and sanctity among the Irish saints after St. Patrick, St. Bridget, and St. Columba only. His uncle, the Bishop of Ardstrad, was his preceptor, and, having renounced his claims to the throne of Leinster, and to all the pomps and vanities of the world, he retired to this retreat and here spent the rest of his life. His biography has been written several times, and as far back as the ninth century. It has recently been rewritten and published at the expense of the Marquis of Bute. One of the early writers calls him “A soldier of Christ in the land of Eire, a high name over sea and wave, chaste and fair, living in the glen of the broad line, in the valley of the two lakes.”

St. Kevin lived in a hollow tree for seven years and afterward in a narrow cave in a precipice of great height overhanging the lake, to which there is no access but by a boat. According to tradition he came here to escape from “Eyes of Most Unholy Blue,” worn by a maid named Kathleen with whom he fell in love in spite of his monastic vows. The legend says that she traced him out, and when St. Kevin woke from his sleep one morning he found her sitting beside his bed. He rose and hurled her into the lake, afterwards whipping himself with nettles as penance. There are many other legends concerning him, but most of them are romance. There is no doubt, however, of his piety, and that he founded the Seven Churches. His feast is celebrated on June 3, the day on which he died, with great ceremony.

The Seven Churches are all small and stand in a group around a cathedral, within sight of each other, except for the foliage. They are roofless and partially ruined, but of late years the board of public works has taken possession of them, repaired them, and is keeping them in order. Several monasteries have been maintained there from time to time, and a thousand years ago Glendalough was one of the most famous seats of learning in the world. Scholars and students went there from all parts of Europe to study.

The cathedral, which is the center of interest, is probably the smallest sanctuary of that dignity in existence. The nave is only 48 feet long by 30 feet wide, and the chancel is 25 by 22 feet, but the masonry is massive. The Church of the Trinity has a chancel only 13 feet 6 inches long by 9 feet wide and a nave 29 by 17 feet. It contains the tomb of Mochuarog, son of Brachan, King of Britain, who was a disciple of St. Kevin and administered the last rites to him when he died. The Church of St. Savior is 45 by 19 feet; the Church of Our Lady has a nave 32 by 20 and a chancel 21 by 19; St. Chalaran’s has a nave 18 by 15 feet and a chancel 8 feet 8 inches by 8 feet 4 inches; Reefert Church has a nave 29 by 18 feet and a chancel 14 by 9 feet. This was the burial place of the O’Tooles and contains several tombs dating as far back as 1010. What is called “Kevin’s Kitchen” is an oblong oratory, 23 by 15 feet in size. There is a tower of imposing dimensions, 110 feet high and 52 feet in circumference, standing in the center of an ancient cemetery and surrounded by tombstones. There are several fine Celtic crosses of great age and sanctity before which pilgrims are constantly kneeling, and many other objects of great interest.

What was once a beautiful interlaced cross has been half carried away by vandals in chips as “mementos” from the grave of a “rale oulde Irish king.” One of the tombs has an inscription in Celtic, reading, “The body of King Mac Thuill, in Jesus Christ, 1010”; another is inscribed, “Pray for Carbre ma Cahail,” but most of the inscriptions are obscure.

A few miles down to the south of Glendalough, on the other side of the divide, is the village of Ennisworthy, where the great Grattan lived between the sessions of the Irish parliament, and where many scenes are associated with his memory. It was near Ennisworthy or Vinegar Hall that one of the fiercest battles was fought between the British troops and the Irish rebels on the 21st of June, 1798. The rebels threw up hurried earthworks around a ruined windmill and defended them with pikes, scythes, and other agricultural implements, for those were all the arms they had. The British assaulted the hill and massacred or captured the entire force. Five hundred are said to have been killed in the engagement.

The little place is called Ferns, is a favorite resort of rich Dublin people, and has many interesting historical associations. It was the seat of government of Leinster in early times, and the home of Dermot MacMurrough, who betrayed Ireland to the Normans. His castle, which stood upon an eminence overlooking the town, is believed to date back to the sixth century and was besieged and burned and partially destroyed several times. Near by is the ruin of an Augustinian monastery, with a tower seventy-five feet high, which was founded by MacMurrough in 1160, and in which he is buried. The Protestant Church of Ireland has a cathedral here and an Episcopal palace built in 1630 by Bishop Ram, then in charge of the ecclesiastical affairs of this diocese. Being of very advanced age when he built the house, he placed the following inscription over the entrance:

We walked from the station at Wexford along a very narrow street to a deceptive hotel called the White’s. It has a dark, narrow, uninviting entrance, but extends back into the middle of the block like the roots of a tree, and contains comfortable beds, neat sitting-rooms, and a dining-room, wherein toothsome, orange-colored salmon just from the river and most excellent gooseberry tarts are served.

Wexford is very different from Dublin and every other place in Ireland that we saw, because of its narrow streets, which are more like those of a Spanish or oriental town, some of them so narrow that you can almost shake hands through the windows with your neighbor across the way. And it is a very clean town. And furthermore, all the children we met looked as if they were just from a bath. We saw troops of them in the street on their way to school with “shining morning faces” and neat jackets and frocks and wearing shoes and stockings, which is a rare sight in Ireland, therefore a welcome one to see. The contrast in the dress and general appearance of the people of Wexford and those of Dublin is so striking as to cause comment.

In a large plaza in front of the railway station is a monument in honor of John Edward Redmond, uncle of John and William Redmond, the present leaders of the Irish party in the British parliament. He represented this district in the House of Commons for many years and did a great deal for the town and the neighborhood. He got a breakwater, which makes the harbor safe, a bridge across the River Slaney, and an appropriation to construct a macadamized road along its banks. The Redmond family have lived here for generations and have been prominent in local affairs. Most of them have been engaged in the leather business and have had large tanneries. The inscription upon the monument to John Edward Redmond reads:

A deputation of farmers which appeared before Mr. Russell, the secretary of agriculture, at Dublin, asserted that Wexford is “the most agricultural county in Ireland.”

There is every appearance of prosperity about Wexford. The people are well dressed, the cattle are sleek, the horses are the best we have seen, and we are quite prepared to believe the assertion that this is the “Garden of Ireland.” There is a good deal of commerce at Wexford also, going out as well as coming in from a fine harbor which is formed by an estuary from the sea at the entrance to the Irish Channel. There is a long breakwater to protect the ships against storms; and quays, three thousand feet long, with double lines of railway track, and modern machinery for loading and unloading vessels. There are steamship lines to Liverpool, Bristol, and other markets in that hated and despised territory called England. Several sailing ships are now tied up at the dock which bring over coal and take back barley to make the British beer, for this is the headquarters of the barley trade in Ireland.

Wexford has been the scene of much political disturbance. The people are intense in their hatred of England, and every baby in the cradle is a violent home ruler. Perhaps this unanimous sentiment is in a measure due to the influence of the Redmond family, which belongs here.

On the site of an ancient bull ring is a bronze figure of a young man in a belligerent attitude with a long pike. He is called “The Insurgent” and the figures “1798” are on the pedestal—nothing more.

“It’s one of the patriots of ’98,” said the jaunting car driver. “They are putting up statues like that everywhere in Ireland now, to keep the events of the past in the memory of the people.”

There is a great deal of significance in that statue, and even more in the photographs and post cards of it which are hung for sale in the windows of every stationer and news stand and cigar-shop. Under the picture is printed in plain letters the words, “Who fears to speak of ’98?”

What are called “the twin churches” are two fine Roman Catholic houses of worship, exact duplicates of each other, within two or three blocks, with beautiful spires two hundred and thirty feet high. They cost $250,000 each and were paid for by the congregations of this city and neighborhood. It is astonishing how much money the people of Ireland spend upon their religion, and the twin churches of Wexford are illustrations of the display that is found in every part of the country. It is a common subject of comment and criticism that the bishops should permit such extravagance, but they reply that no man is ever poorer because of what he gives for his religion. It may be said, also, that all of the Roman Catholic churches are crowded on Sunday, early and late.

St. Sellskar’s Church is built upon the foundation of the Abbey of the Holy Sepulchre, which was established here a thousand years ago, and within it was signed the first treaty ever made between the English and Irish races. This was signed in 1169 by Dermot McMurrough, King of Leinster, and Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, better known by the name of Strongbow. And it was in this abbey that Strongbow resided, and in this church his sister, Bassilia de Clare, was married to Raymond le Gros in 1174. The Princess Eva, daughter of Dermot McMurrough, King of Leinster, who married Strongbow on the field of battle, is buried in a stone coffin at Bannow, in the suburbs of Wexford, down on the coast. It was formerly a populous and prosperous city, of which no traces can now be seen except the ruins of the church that contains her tomb. The rest of the town has been buried under the encroachments of the sea, and sand now lies ten and twenty feet deep upon the tops of the houses. Until a few years ago Bannow returned two members of parliament, although for many generations there was nothing for them to represent except the ruins of this church and a solitary chimney. However, for the loss of this franchise the British government paid £15,000 to the late Earl of Ely, whose seat is in the neighborhood. His ancestor, Rev. Adam Loftus, was lord high chancellor of Ireland during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was one of the founders of Trinity College and the first provost. The romantic story of this extinct city is related in a novel entitled, “Eva, or the Buried City of Bannow,” and contains a good deal of interesting history mixed up with the fiction.

I suppose that sooner or later the energetic Normans would have found their way across the St. George’s Channel, but their invasion was invited in 1169 by Dermot McMurrough, King of Leinster, who is thus responsible for the loss of his country’s freedom, and subsequent centuries of bloodshed and distress. He was a good soldier, but the Christian influence under which he was educated did not remove all the savage traits from his system and he was guilty of many wicked, brutal, treacherous acts of tyranny and violence against his neighbors and his subjects. He kidnapped the wife of Ternan O’Rourke, King of Leitrim, and the latter persuaded the other kings in southern Ireland to join with him to punish the insult. McMurrough was driven from pillar to post and finally fled to the court of Henry II. in London, where he offered to betray Ireland to the English monarch.

The latter declined to give Dermot any personal assistance, but permitted his vassals to do what they liked, and a number of British and Welsh barons of broken fortunes, under the leadership of Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, organized an invasion. In May, 1169, they landed at Wexford with a force of two thousand well armed Normans, Englishmen, Welshmen, and renegade Irishmen. Strongbow was given the leadership of the expedition with a promise of the hand of Dermot’s daughter in marriage and the succession to the throne of Leinster. Before the invaders landed Dermot returned quietly to his castle at Ferns, and during the winter of 1168-69 pretended to do penance for his sins in the Augustinian monastery he had founded there, in order to throw his Irish enemies off their guard.

The King of Connaught, Roderick O’Conor, who was the acknowledged suzerain of all Ireland at that time, collected a large army and marched against the invaders, and he might easily have crushed them, but he was a weak and credulous man, without the ability or vigor of Brian Boru, and Dermot fooled him completely, promising to expel the foreigners provided he was restored to his kingdom. As soon as Roderick had marched away, however, and Dermot felt himself strong enough to break his promises, he led his allies with fire and sword into the city of Dublin and the English have occupied it ever since.Strongbow’s wedding with Eva took place Aug. 25, 1170, upon the battle field near Waterford, among the corpses of the slain. There is a striking picture of the scene in the National Gallery at Dublin. And the bridegroom continued his career of massacre and devastation until he “had made a tremblin’ sod of all Ireland.”

Henry II., having heard of the conquest of Strongbow, became nervous for fear he might become too powerful, and prepared an expedition with which he landed at the little town of Crook, or at the still smaller town of Hook, near the mouth of the River Suir. Some said that he landed by Hook and some said he landed by Crook, and that was the origin of the saying that is heard to this day, “either by hook or crook.” Henry II. had about ten thousand fighting men and they were so well organized and armed that resistance was impossible. Almost all the Irish kings and chieftains came promptly to make submission, and the Irish bishops, presided over by Lawrence O’Toole, met in synod and acknowledged him as their sovereign. Their action was based upon a bull issued by Pope Adrian IV., authorizing Henry II. to take possession of Ireland. Adrian IV. was an English monk named Brakespear, and he was influenced by an unfair and exaggerated account of the influence of the Church in England and by misrepresentations of the state of religion in Ireland. Some historians have questioned the genuineness of this edict; others have declared that it was a myth, but there seems to be no reason to doubt that Adrian IV. did authorize Henry II. to invade Ireland, believing that a strong centralized government there would be for the advancement of religion and for the good of the people.

Troubles with the Holy See resulting from the assassination of Thomas À Becket called the king back to England before he had completed his plans of settlement, and he left Ireland in April, 1172, after remaining there less than six months. He had intended to erect a string of Norman castles at frequent intervals throughout the island and garrison them with English troops in order to overawe the native kings and chieftains, and so that his own earls might watch and check each other. But he left that work to his subordinates and rewarded them with grants of enormous area without regard to the rights of the native owners. Leinster was given to Strongbow with the exception of Dublin and two or three other towns on the coast; the province of Meath was given to Hugh de Lacy, and the province of Ulster to John de Courcy, and other tracts to the ancestors of many of the noble families of Ireland to-day.

Under Strongbow, after Henry II. left, Ireland fell into a state of anarchy and confusion. He was tyrannical and unreasonable. The native princes rebelled and almost overcame him. They drove him to Waterford and besieged him there, where he was rescued by Raymond le Gros, who demanded the hand of his sister Bassilia as his reward. They were married here, as I have told you, in the Abbey of the Holy Sepulchre.

Strongbow took up his headquarters at Dublin. He built Christ Church Cathedral and other churches and endowed several large religious establishments, although he had shown very little veneration for the relics of St. Patrick and other Irish saints. In 1176 he died of a malignant ulcer in his foot, which his enemies ascribed to a miracle of the Irish saints whose shrines he had desecrated. His sister Bassilia, who was a woman of strong character, concealed the fact of his death until she could communicate with her husband, Raymond le Gros, who was besieging an Irish king at Limerick, and prepare him to take advantage of the situation. As a letter might be captured and read, she sent him a courier with the message:

“The Great Jaw Tooth, which used to trouble us so much, has fallen out—wherefore return with all speed.”

Raymond understood the meaning and returned to Dublin, took charge of the government and buried Strongbow with great pomp in Christ Church Cathedral, which he had founded, the famous Lawrence O’Toole, Archbishop of Ireland, conducting the ceremonies. But King Henry had had enough of the Strongbow family, and when he heard of the great earl’s death appointed William de Burgo, founder of the Burke family, as viceroy.

Raymond le Gros, with Bassilia, retired to their castle in Wexford, where he resided quietly until his death in 1182.

And that is the way the English obtained possession of Ireland.