We are off for the Emerald Isle. There was much of interest in the three days between London and Dublin, but I will not follow our journey here; in a later chapter I will endeavor to gather some of the scattered threads. We reach Ludlow the first night, one hundred and forty-eight miles in six hours—very speedy going for us—but a day from Ludlow to Barmouth and another to Holyhead is more in keeping with our usual leisurely progress.

One can never truly feel the plaintive sweetness of Lady Dufferin’s song until with his own eyes he beholds the melancholy beauty of the “Sweet Bay of Dublin.” We enter its gates in the opalescent light of a perfect morning. The purple mists hanging over the headlands are glowing with the first rays of the sun and the pale emerald waters flash into burnished gold as the low beams strike along their surface.

The voyage has been an easy one; our tickets were purchased, our cabin reserved, and provision made for the transport of the motor, all in a few minutes at the office of the Royal Automobile Club in London, and the genial touring-secretary, Mr. Maroney, has supplied us with necessary maps and information. We have not long to wait at the pier; a swinging crane picks up the car from the boat and carefully deposits it on the pavement. A railway employee is at hand with a supply of petrol and we are soon ready for the road. The night voyage has been a comfortable one; we were able to go aboard at nine o’clock and take possession of our cabin, quite as large and well-appointed as those of the best ocean-going steamers, and breakfast was served on the ship. Altogether, nothing is easier than a trip to Ireland with a motor car if one only goes about it rightly.

An unknown land lies before us. Much has been written of Ireland—books of travel, history, and fiction—and poets have sung her beauties and sorrows; we have read much of the Island, but nothing that has given us more than a hint of what we are about to see. To know Ireland, one must take a pilgrim’s staff, as it were; he must study her ruins and ancient monuments, see her cities and her towns, her half-deserted villages, her wretched hovels and her lonely places, and above all, must meet and know her people; then, after all, he can only say to others, “If you wish to know the reality, go and do likewise.”

Dublin is a handsomely built modern city of three hundred thousand inhabitants and has an air of general prosperity. It has much of interest, but it does not rightly belong in this chronicle. The low hum of our motor calls us to the open road, the green fields, and the unfrequented villages. We are soon away on the Carlow road with Cork as our objective.

The road out of Dublin is distressingly rough as compared with English highways, though it improves before we reach Naas. Our first impressions are distinctly melancholy; a “deserted village”—a row of stone cottages, roofless, windowless, and with crumbling or fallen walls—speaks of Ireland’s sorrows more plainly than any words. And such sad reminders are not uncommon; wholly or partly ruined villages greet us every little while on the way.

Naas, the first town of any size, is dirty and unattractive, but its historic importance ill accords with its present meanness. Its traditions are not antedated by any town in the Island; it was once the capital of the Leinster kings—half-clad savages, no doubt, but kings none the less. Cromwell thought it important enough to visit, and incidentally wiped its strong castle out of existence. Rory O’More a century later burned it to the ground, destroying some eight hundred houses—it has not so many now. Adjoining the town is the ruin of Jigginstown House, an unfinished palace begun on a vast scale by the Earl of Strafford, who expected to entertain Charles I. here; but Charles failed to arrive and the Earl had other matters—among them the loss of his head—to engage his attention.

The road to the south of Naas lies in broad, straight stretches and the surface is better, but we found it almost deserted. This impressed us not a little. We ran many miles, meeting no one; there were few houses—only wide reaches of meadowland with but few trees—and altogether the country seemed quite uninhabited.

Carlow, scarce thirty miles from Naas, is rather above the average, though it has the bare appearance characteristic of the Irish town. We had been rather dreading the country-town hotels and here we had our first experience. The Club House—why so called we did not learn—is a building not unsightly inside, but on entering it is with difficulty we could find anyone to minister to our wants. Finally an untidy old man with bushy whiskers appeared and officiated as porter, chambermaid, and waiter. He was slow in performing his duties, but the luncheon was better than we had hoped for. He took our money when we left, but whether he was boots or proprietor, we never learned.

Cromwell and Rory O’More paid their compliments to Carlow in the same emphatic manner as at Naas. There remains but little of the castle excepting the huge round towers that flanked the entrance. Just out of the town is the largest of Ireland’s cromlechs, a mighty rock weighing one hundred tons, supported on massive upright granite blocks.

Kilkenny is twenty miles farther south. Its castle, the home of the Duke of Ormonde, is perhaps the most notable private residence in Ireland. It is of ancient origin, but its present state is due to modern restoration; no longer is it a fortress, but a castellated mansion of great extent. It is situated on rising ground lying directly on the river. The front facade, flanked by two great circular towers, heavily mantled with ivy, presents a highly-imposing appearance. The most notable feature of the interior is the art gallery, which is declared to be one of the most important in the Kingdom.

Kilkenny Cathedral is of great antiquity, having been begun early in the eleventh century. Close to it stands one of the round towers so characteristic of early Irish architecture. The town has a population of about ten thousand, and though apparently prosperous, there was everywhere evident the untidiness that was more or less typical of the southern Irish towns.

Clonmel, however, easily ranked first in neatness and general up-to-date appearance among the towns we passed on our run to Cork. Here we came late in the evening, for we had missed our road and gone some miles out of the way. After leaving the vicinity of Dublin, signboards were not to be seen and it was easy to go astray. Houses were not frequent and often the natives could hardly give directions to the nearest town. Before we knew it we were entering Carrick-on-Suir, which we took for Clonmel. Something aroused our suspicions and we hailed a red-faced priest driving in a cart. The good father was much befuddled and his honest efforts afforded us little enlightenment, but we finally learned to our chagrin that Clonmel was about twenty miles to the west.

Night was falling rapidly and the car leaped onward over a narrow, grass-grown byroad, passing here and there a farm cottage from which the inmates rushed in open-mouthed surprise. We soon came into the main road and reached the town just at dark. The hotel proved quite comfortable, though distinctly Irish in many particulars; but perhaps our judgment as to what constitutes comfort in an inn was somewhat modified by the day’s experiences; we were hardly so critical as we should have been across the channel.

We had come to Clonmel solely to pass the night, since it was the only place where we might count on fair accommodations. We had gone somewhat out of our way, for we must turn northward for Cashel, whose cathedral is perhaps the most remarkable ruin in the Kingdom. It is nearly twenty miles from Clonmel, and the road is surprisingly good.

We soon came in sight of the mighty rock which legend—ever busy in Ireland—declares was torn from the distant hills by the enraged devil and flung far out into the plain of Tipperary. When the fiend performed this wonderful feat, it perhaps did not occur to him that he was supplying a site for a church; but had he exercised moderate foresight he would have known that no such opportunity would be neglected by the cathedral builders. And so it chanced that more than a thousand years ago the fortified church that rears its vast granite bulk upon the rock was begun. It grew by various accretions until it stood complete in the twelfth century. It has passed through fire and siege, but the massy walls are still as solid as the granite on which they stand. The roadway winds up the side of the rock and we are able to drive to the very entrance. A group of youngsters is awaiting us, and one unspeakably dirty and ragged little fellow volunteers to “watch the car.”

The custodian greets us at the gate, a keen old fellow, well posted in the history and tradition of his native land and speaking with little trace of brogue. He learns that we are from America; his brother is over there and doing well, as he reckons it, in that Eldorado of every Irishman forced to remain at home.

“O, yes! it is a great country, and how closely the old sod is bound to it; there is no house that you will pass in all your journeys that has not someone there. It has been the one hope of my life to go to America, but it has slipped away from me. I am too old now and must die and be buried in Cashel.”

He said this with a look of sadness, which suddenly forsook his face as he noted our interest in the ruin. It was the joy of his life to tell the story of its every nook and corner.

We found a strange mixture of art and crudity; the square, unadorned lines of the walls and towers would not lead one to expect the exquisite artistic touches that are seen here and there. The great structure once served the purpose of a royal residence as well as a cathedral. The date of the stone-roofed chapel is placed at 1127; that of the perfect round tower is unknown, though doubtless much earlier. The active history of the cathedral-fortress closed with its surrender to the forces of Cromwell, which was followed by the massacre of the garrison and dismantling of the buildings.

Our guide urges us to ascend the tower—it is the day of all days to see the golden vale of Tipperary from such a viewpoint—and indeed the prospect proves an enchanting one. It is a perfect day and the emerald-green valley lies shimmering under the expanse of pale-blue sky. In the far distance on every hand are the purple outlines of the hills—they call them mountains in Ireland—and stretching away toward them the pleasant fields intersected by sinuous threads of country roads. The landscape is cut up into little patches by the stone fences and gleams with tiny whitewashed cottages. Flashing streams course through the valley and herds of cattle graze upon the luxuriant grasses. It is a scene of perfect peace, and though the lot of the people may be one of poverty, it is doubtless one of contentment. Right at the foot of the ruin-crowned rock lies the wretched little town, and on leaving the cathedral we stop in the market place. A busy scene greets our eyes; it is market day and the people of the surrounding country are thronging the streets. The market place is full of donkey carts and our car seems in strange company. Old crones with shawls thrown over their heads, barefooted and brown as Indians, are selling gooseberries and cabbages. There appears to be little else in the market and business is far from brisk. There are many husky farmers from the country and bright-looking young maidens that seem of a different race from the old market women. We see and hear much to interest us during our hour’s stop in Cashel.

To one other Tipperary shrine we must make a pilgrimage—Holy Cross Abbey, which is only a few miles away. We see its low square tower just above the trees as we approach the town which bears the same name as the abbey, and we find the caretaker living in wretchedly dirty quarters in a part of the ruin. A genuine surprise awaits the visitor to Holy Cross Abbey. Like Cashel, its outlines give no hint of the superb and even delicate touches of art one will find about the ruin. Nothing of the kind could be more perfect than the east window, in which the stone tracery and slender mullions are quite intact, and there are other windows, doors and arches of artistic design and execution. The abbey stands on the banks of the Suir, and it is just across the shallow river that one gets the finest viewpoint. It took its name from the tradition that it once possessed a portion of the true cross which had been given it by Queen Eleanor of England, one of whose six sons was buried here. And thus it chances that a brother of Richard the Lion-Hearted sleeps amid the mouldering fragments of Holy Cross. The footprints of history cross and recross one another in these ancient shrines, and how often they bring remote sections of the Kingdom to common ground!

Leaving Cashel on the main highway to Cork, we begin to verify the stories we have heard of the dreadful condition of much of the Irish roads. We have so far found them stony, rough and ill-kept in places, but on the whole fair to one who has had much experience with very bad roads. But we now come into a broad stone road that has been neglected for years, and words are quite inadequate to characterize it. It is a series of bumps and depressions over which the car bounces and jumps along, seemingly testing every bolt and rivet to the utmost. Any speed except one so slow as to be out of the question results in the most distressful jolting, to which there is not a moment’s respite. A fine gray dust covers the road to a depth of two or three inches and rolls away from the wheels in dense clouds. There is considerable traffic and for several miles along one section are military barracks; the soldiers are maneuvering on the road with cavalry and artillery. Some of the horses go wild at the car and it is only by great effort that the soldiers bring them under control. But the dust they kick up! It hangs over the road like a fog and makes the sky seem a dull gray. It settles thickly over the car, almost stifling its occupants, for it is really warm. On we go—bounce, bump, half blinded and nearly choked. Why did we ever come to Erin, anyway?—we could have gotten this experience at less cost nearer home. There are few towns on the road; Caher, Mitchelstown and Fermoy, all bald and untidy, are the only places of any size. We pass through the “mountains” for a considerable distance, but the wretched road and blinding dust distracts attention from the country, which in places is rather pretty. Our route is well away from the railroad and we see much of retired rural sections which would not be easily accessible by other means of travel. The infrequent cottages are mean and dirty, but those we saw later were so much worse that the recollection of the first is nearly effaced.

Never did a hotel seem more inviting to us than did the Imperial at Cork. The car and everything about it is a dirty gray; one tire is flat, and has been—we don’t know how long. But we are fortunate in our hotel and our troubles are soon forgotten. Our room is an immense high-ceilinged apartment with massive furniture and a vast deal of bric-a-brac, including a plaster bust of Washington. There are plenty of settees and easy chairs—things uncommon enough in hotels to merit special mention. We have an excellent dinner served just to suit, and the experiences of the day soon begin to appear in a different light than they did when we were undergoing them. We are soon in the ample tall-posted beds, clean and unspeakably comfortable, and our sleep is too deep to even dream of Irish roads and motor cars.