Beauty of this kind stretches away from Dublin north and west over the broad fertile plain of Fingal, the territory of the “White Strangers”, the fair-haired Norsemen. You can find such beauty, with scenic accessories, in the famous Phoenix Park—so called by corruption of the Gaelic name given to a well there, Fionn Uisge, the Bright Water. The wide expanse of the park has lovely glades, deer-haunted like the one which Mr. Williams has pictured; it has backgrounds of mountain, the Dublin hills looming up to the south; it has foregrounds of cricket matches, or, better still, of hurling. Hurley is the most picturesque game I have ever seen played, except polo; and polo, too, in the summer, you can watch in the Phoenix at its very best, though the splendid ground is less beautiful than it was before the great “February storm” of 1903 swept down the long line of elms which bordered it. Still, in “horseshow week”, when the cup matches are on, all the world can go and see, “free, gracious, and for nothing”, one of the finest spectacles that modern civilization can afford. Skirting the park to the south, and trending westward, is the valley of the Liffey, and no one looking at the unsightly, sometimes unsavoury, stream which divides Dublin would guess at the beautiful water which He was not the first rebel in the famous Geraldine family. Carton gates open from the little town of Maynooth, where, outside the famous ecclesiastical college, stands the ruin of that strong castle which was the seat of the Geraldine power when all Ireland could not rule the Earl of Kildare and therefore it was settled that the Earl of Kildare should rule all Ireland. And over against the castle is a yew of portentous size and age, which bears the name of Silken Thomas’s tree. In 1534 the Earl of Kildare, Lord Deputy of Ireland, had been summoned to Henry VIII and detained in the Tower; his son Thomas remained in Ireland with power as Vice-Deputy. After a few months the rumour came that Kildare had been put to death—a rumour no way incredible. His son, in natural indignation, determined to owe Henry no more allegiance, and on St. Barnabas’ Day rode into Dublin with one hundred and forty followers wearing silken fringes to their helmets. The council was fixed to be held in St. Mary’s Abbey, and the Geraldine troop rode splashing through the ford of the Liffey to the north bank. In the council chamber sat the Chancellor, Archbishop Cromer, and Silken Thomas, with his armed followers tramping in at his heels, renounced his allegiance, and called on all who hated cruelty and tyranny to join him in war upon the English. His speech ending, he proffered his sword Yet his attempt came to nothing. As always, the other great Anglo-Norman family, the Butlers, sided against the Geraldine, and from their stronghold in Kilkenny harassed him while he endeavoured fruitlessly to reduce Dublin Castle. Months went by, and Silken Thomas was little more than the head of a roving guerrilla force; but he roved at large. At last, in March, 1535, Skeffington, the Lord Deputy, moved out to the capture of Maynooth. His batteries made a practicable breach within five days, and then the commander, Christopher Paris, foster-brother to Silken Thomas, thought it was time to make terms for himself. The plan was ingenious. By concert with Skeffington the garrison of a hundred men were allowed to make a successful sortie and capture a small cannon. Paris filled them with praise, and with drink. At dawn of the next morning the walls were stormed by a surprise, and so the castle fell. Out of forty prisoners taken, twenty-four were hanged. Paris received his stated price from Skeffington, but with the money in his hand was marched straight to the gallows, and from that day the “pardon of Maynooth” became a byword. Silken Thomas surrendered in July, lay destitute in the Tower for sixteen months, and was then hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn with his five uncles, of whom two had always been strong supporters of the English power. One male scion of the Geraldines was left, Silken Thomas’s half-brother Gerald, and the hunt was hot after him. His southern kinsmen, the Geraldines of Desmond, refused him shelter, but he got it from the O’Briens of Thomond, still independent rulers, and after long months escaped to Italy, where he lived till Edward VI restored him. And from that day to this, the line has lasted in Kildare, and the Duke of Leinster holds foremost place among Irish nobles. Yet Leinster House, the great building which the National Gallery adjoins, is now only the home of the Royal Dublin Society; and though the Geraldines still own Carton, they are landlords no longer, having sold all they owned, under the Act of 1903, passed by one himself in part a Geraldine—Mr. George Wyndham, son of Lord Edward’s granddaughter. Not far from Maynooth, in the wide grounds of Clongowes Wood College, you can see a section of But for the beauty of all beauties neighbouring Dublin, give me Howth, the mountainous peninsula, almost an island, all but a mountain, which makes the northern limit of Dublin Bay. In all that long low eastern shore it is the only piece of cliff scenery (for Bray Head can scarcely deserve the title) and it commands an amazing prospect. On the north of Often on a clear day of sun and driving cloud I have been tempted to prefer the northward view, from the haven or above it; for even from the sea’s level you can see far away past all that long, plain and low coast to the Carlingford Hills, purple and solid in their serrated ridge; and beyond, higher, fainter, and more delicate, Slieve Donard, and all the goodly company of Mourne Mountains show themselves against the sky. Nor is the foreground less lovely: the quaint old port, and, opposite it, the purple and brown ruggedness of Ireland’s Eye, which is divided by Beauty is all about you too; for the hill from midsummer on is purple with heath, and the purple is set off by gold of the autumn-flowering furze which grows in little round trim bushes. Lord Howth’s demesne is one of the oldest and most charming A beauty of more modern date is to be seen by those wise and fortunate folk who visit Ireland in May or June: the rocky glen overgrown with choice rhododendrons and azaleas, which the Howth family have gathered and cherished. Imagine a steep cliff, a hundred feet almost sheer, but piled with tumbled boulders, and through them, up to the very top, bush after bush of these gorgeous blossoms—crimson, scarlet, mauve, buff, yellow, and exquisite diaphanous white. I never saw rhododendrons anywhere to touch these. And while we talk of flowers, another sight you can see from Dublin in May, the like of which takes visitors to Holland—the great daffodil and tulip fields at Rush, some fifteen miles north along the coast. There, growing in among the pale sandhills and grey bent, you shall see these huge patches of trumpeting colour—acres of tulips, close ranged like soldiers on parade, all of one type, uniform in their perfection. And with that you can inspect an industry employing many workmen and workwomen throughout the year in a country where work is none too plenty. One more word about Howth. When you look from the hill towards Dublin, you look across one of Just near Clontarf parish church, in the grounds of a private house is a yew tree under which, they say, men laid down the slain king, nine hundred years ago. Whether that be historically true or no we cannot say; but, I am told, experts agree that no other yew tree in these islands has an appearance of antiquity at all comparable to this giant, which, still lusty, covers fully a rood of ground. Try and see it on your way from Howth: much can be got (in Ireland) by civil asking. |