Michael Myers Shoemaker

Departure from Fethard—The Dead Horse and a Lawsuit—Approach to Dublin—Estate of Kilruddery—The Swan as a Fighter—Glendalough, its Ruins and History—Tom Moore and his Tree in Avoca—Advantages of Motor Travel—Superstition of the Magpie—A Boy, a Cart, and a Black Sheep—The Goose and the Motor.

The next day opens nasty and wet. Leaving our benediction and thanks with Mr. and Mrs. P. we roll off through the drops of rain over the muddy roadways. It is not especially pleasant and conversation lags, but it must be a bad day indeed to suppress all chances for excitement in Ireland, as we shortly discover.

Turning a bend of the road we see, coming towards us, a jaunting-car, hauled by a bay horse and driven by an old man. The nag gives evidence of fright and our motor is stopped instantly at some three hundred feet from her. The old man succeeds in turning her around and at our suggestion unwinds himself from his lap-robe and gets down to hold her. All the time our car is at a standstill and making no sound. Whether the old chap got tangled in the reins or stumbles, I know not, but the nag plunges, knocking him down, then plunges again and falls against a stone wall, breaking a shaft. B. gets out of our car and suggests that I go back to the town just behind and bring a policeman as there will surely be claims for damages. I cannot see how, as we have not been in motion for the past fifteen minutes and certainly have an equal right upon the highroads. However, I roll away, and en route I notice a travelling circus with a nigger in charge who grins at me. The policeman secured and brought back in the car, we find to our amazement that the horse is dead, and the nigger and owner are already haggling over the sale of its carcass. The latter wants a sovereign and the former offers half a crown.

What killed the beast is unknown to us to this day; it certainly did not break its neck as it kicked and plunged a lot after it was down. However, it is dead, and there is trouble in consequence. Of course we are "entirely to blame" though the accident did not occur until we had been stationary for some fifteen minutes, and until the old man had had ample time to argue with the horse and then to turn her around and move away from us before he got down, at which time she was perfectly quiet. It's my opinion that he became tangled in the reins and fell against her. Fact remains that she neither scared nor plunged until he got down from the car and made for her head, and as I have stated before, I have often noticed that horses are more frightened by their owner's sudden grabs at the bridle than by the motor car.

I had once a saddle horse which could never be induced to pass a piece of paper be it ever so small without violent shying, and I could at any instant, by pressing my knee suddenly into the saddle, cause him to look round for such objects and shy violently in advance.

So it is with most car horses,—let alone they would stand quietly; grabbed at by the driver they plunge and shy. As far as our car is concerned it always comes at once to a dead halt if there is the smallest evidence of trouble. We did so, as I have stated, in this case, yet I have no doubt damage or blackmail will have to be paid. If this were not done and B. ever wanted to hunt over this country he would come to dire disaster, as our names and addresses were taken down by the policeman, and will never be forgotten but stored away to be remembered either in blessing or malediction according as we pay or not.

This being a rented car the owners assume all such risks, and on reaching Dublin we learn that a claim for twenty-five pounds has already been presented, the value of the beast having increased by leaps and bounds, and I doubt not before the year is out will have passed that of the winner of the Derby.

I should like to have been at the trial if it came to that, if only to count the witnesses that would have sprung up by the dozens, undoubtedly proving in the end that the old man was driving two horses to that jaunting-car and that our appearance killed them both.

The day after that occurrence the driver of a cow deliberately placed her in our pathway in hopes that we would kill her, but he reckoned without our brakes, which stopped the car not a foot from the cow. Her owner laughed in a stupid, leering fashion as we rolled away.

After the death of the poor old horse, which no one could have regretted more than we did, nothing occurred during the ride to Dublin.

As we approach the city, the highways are of greater width and in better condition, though most of the Irish roads are good. There are motor-cars flying in all directions now and ours catching the disease skims along like a bird, and quite as noiselessly, until the pavements and narrower streets of the city force a reduction of speed, and even then the rate is more rapid than I like.

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Photo by W. Leonard

Tintern Abbey

Dublin is in the throes of an exposition, and there is "no room in the inn." Not to be forced to sleep in a manger we direct our course to Bray Head, and in her very comfortable hotel of that name are at rest for a few days. While there are no real mountains in this section of Ireland the hills and headlands are very bold and beautifully outlined. The roads are fine and there are many points of interest hereabouts. To-day we have been rambling over Kilruddery, the fine estate of the Earl of Meath. The house, while modern, has not that appearance, and at first I thought it must date at least from the days of the good Queen Bess during whose reign the property passed into the hands of this family. It is of that period in its architecture, but the great glory lies all around it. These grounds are justly famous. I have never seen more beautiful, stately hedges even at Versailles, and one rather feels that one should be dressed in the fashion of the Grand Monarque to pace these grassy lanes. At one point the hedges, thirty feet high, spread off like the spokes of a wheel, and the legend runs that in ancient days the abbot had his cell in that centre from where the brethren living down the aisles could be easily watched, and being human, even if saintly, I doubt not that they needed watching now and then.

In front of the mansion two oblong lakes nestle in the velvety grass like great mirrors and on their waters numerous swans are floating. One old general mounts the bank and with arched neck and spreading wings advances to attack us, but we do not risk the battle. Those male birds can strike hard, and while it might be possible to seize and stretch their necks, the Lord of the Manor does not like that to be done. So we take refuge in the flower garden, a perfect glory of bloom and colour.

Later on, as we are at tea in the "long drawing-room before my lady's picture," the old swan raises his head just outside in watchful ward lest we dare to come out.

I think Dickens must have visited Kilruddery about the time he wrote Bleak House, though he placed the scene of his great work in Lincolnshire. Here are the long drawing-rooms with my lady's picture over the mantle before which Sir Leicester sat in such grandeur; yonder is the window through which the moonlight streamed upon my lady seated at the open casement, and just here between my lord and my lady Mr. Tulkinghorn must have paced as he "told my story to so many people." Just outside runs the Ghost Walk where upon that fatal night the step grew louder and louder, and above one can doubtless find Mr. Tulkinghorn's chamber opening out upon the leads, and where he met and cowed my lady. This may not be the place which the great writer had in mind, but it might well have been.

I confess to an intense envy when I visit these superb estates, not so much as to the houses, unless they are very ancient, but certainly as to the parks. It is perhaps well that our country cannot know such,—it certainly never will unless the law of primogeniture is established, which God forbid. And yet here the younger members of a family seem to think it but right and just that everything should pass to but one of them, that they, who may love and appreciate their lifelong home as perhaps the heir never will, should be turned out, often with nothing, while, as often, he proceeds to pile debt on debt until the old home goes by the board and passes to strangers or the great trees are cut down to pay gambling debts. All this may be gall and wormwood to some of them but if so they are loyal to the rules of their order and murmur not at all.

It is necessary for B. to return to Bannow for a day as he is a magistrate there and has some business in consequence. So we are off in the forenoon and shall run the hundred miles by tea-time with several stops thrown in. We enter amongst the hills on starting and are amongst them all day save for sudden dips into some valley or down to the sea.

As we speed up the mountains the prospects behind are enchanting. The valleys are deep and very green while on the other side of one amphitheatre the vast mansion of "Powers Court House," where we shall spend the week-end, stands half way up the hillside in a most beautiful location. From here it appears to be a stone structure of several stories, with long wings on either hand, and even at this distance one can see that the garden and park are very extensive.

Our route southward to Bannow lies through the mountains of Wicklow, which here resemble Arthur's Seat and other hills around Edinburgh. Fortunately the day is fine and the roads dry without dust, but one never suffers from the dust of one's own car and we do not meet any others, hence the ride is exhilarating and beautiful, especially as we approach Glendalough, where the scenery is almost Alpine.

That ancient place lies in a deep valley with mountains towering all around it. Its ruined churches are presided over by one of the tallest and most perfect round towers in Ireland.

Wherever one sees those strange structures they are objects of interest and this one, rising in stately watch and ward over the dead who sleep all around it, is unusually so. It stands in an enclosure so choked with graves that one must walk over the dead to reach it. Two, lately buried I should say, seem to have used the old tower as their especial monument, so closely are their heads placed against its ancient base. A little wooden cross between the graves protests that those who sleep beneath are of the faith of the Nazarene and not of that of the long-dead heathens who, some claim, erected this and all other similar towers in this land, a false idea of course.

Glendalough is very ancient, and dates its foundation back in 618 A.D. St. Kevin of the royal house of Leinster died here at a great age, having lived for years in a hollow tree near the lake and in a cave, to which there was no access save by a boat. His memory has been honored for centuries, and in the peculiar manner of much drinking and many free fights here on the spot where he died, a custom stopped by the parish priest who emptied the whiskey into the stream and burned the shillalahs, after which he forced these people who had been enemies for centuries to embrace over Kevin's grave. He lived to the age of one hundred and twenty years, founding here what became a crowded city, with schools, colleges, sanctuaries for the saintly, and asylums for the poor and sick.

Glendalough began to decline more than six centuries ago, and to-day holds nothing save a few ruined churches, the stately round tower, and many graves deep down in its vale, guarded by the brooding mountains. Its silence is rarely broken except when one more is added to the quiet company which lies around, or when some wanderer from the outer world remembers that Glendalough has been and pauses a moment to offer devotions at her crumbling shrines.

How completely one's thoughts shift from the ancient heathen history of this island to gentler times and songs, waving trees, sunlight, and the music of waters as the car rolls through the Vale of Ovoca, where gentle Tom Moore's spirit still seems to be singing of its bubbling streams.

Stop at the old stone bridge and lean a while upon its parapets and you will be just over the tree, now a gaunt dead skeleton with all its glory gone, where he wrote the poems so dear to all of us. Beneath you murmurs one of the streams, and, just beyond, it rushes joyously to its meeting with the other, and the old tree stands on a point at the meeting place. The waters plash and sing and dance away and away, the years have rolled by, and the poet is gone, but his verses live on for ever, and pilgrims from all over the world come to this spot which he found beautiful.

To-day as we roll up there are a party of women all from my own land, I should judge, and each takes her seat for a moment under the great skeleton where Moore sat and wrote his songs for mankind.

The east and west sides of Ireland are very different. On the latter lies all the grandeur and ruggedness, as though nature had been carved and hewn by the tremendous blows of the North Atlantic's winds and waves, and all the music is wild and weird; while on the eastern side all is like a beautiful park, pastoral and full of sunshine and flowers. Moore's melodies sound all around one and if a lad or lassie sings in passing it will be of Robin Adair or Aileen Aroon. The former lived just back there in Hollybrook House and the latter dwells all over the mountains and down in every vale.

The entire ride from Bray to Bannow is over fine roads and affords constant panoramas of sunlight, seas, and stretches of woodlands and grass-lands, with here and there a stately mansion keeping ward over a beautiful park and with many gushing, bubbling rivers and brooks. The air is laden with the perfume of the sweet grasses, and the way is bordered by blossoming hawthorns and wild roses. Quaint villages and ancient cities nestle by the sea, whose waters murmur peacefully, forgetful that storms have ever been.

With the rapid flight of the motor, new life rushes through one's veins, and surely some years must drop away.

It is an error to imagine that an automobile tour means merely a rapid flight through the country. It may be made just that, and no doubt often is, but on the other hand it will be found that those who love to travel, love antiquities, are students of history, will see far more by the use of a car than would have been possible with stage-coach or by rail. By the former, progress was slow, and so tedious often that many points of great interest were given up because of the bodily weariness necessary in reaching them. With rail I know, from personal experience, that I allowed years to pass without visiting points which I greatly longed to see, because it necessitated change of trains and weary waiting in dirty stations. With a motor one is possessed almost of Aladdin's lamp. Make your wish, turn a crank, glide over the earth almost as rapidly as the owner of the lamp did through the air, and behold you have your heart's desire, and so you have many desires of the heart and spy out the land as you never would have done in days gone by,—days which seem so long gone by, though but a few years have passed since those old modes of transit were the only ones known. You may go as slowly as you desire in a motor, you cannot in a train. You are able also to glide rapidly over long, tedious roads of no interest, where with horses hours of wearisome journey would be necessary.

So, my dear critic, don't condemn a book of notes written from a motor until you have tried that method of locomotion and found it wanting, which, to my thinking, will never occur. This journey to Bannow, but better still my inspection of the island of Achill is a case in point. Not satisfied with my first visit, I determined to return. I was then in Wexford, quite on the other side of the island, but that was, with a motor, no barrier. I simply crossed the island in a day's run, spent another day in Achill, and returned to Wexford.

Had the time been twenty years or ten years ago, the trouble of a second visit would have destroyed all chances of making it.

It is very dreamy and poetic to sigh over the old dead days, but it's all bosh. The modern appliances of the twentieth century enable the traveller to see more and at his leisure in one summer than he would ever have dreamed of seeing in those "dear old dead days."

The time will come when these machines will be made for the people and general utility. I venture to quote here an article from Harper's Weekly as to the future of this great invention.

"When a man takes hold of the knob of his office door he knows that, year in and year out, the knob will perform its proper function. When the housewife sits down to her sewing-machine she knows that hardly once in a thousand times will it fail to do its work, and do it well. Unreliable is an indictment to which our cars must too often plead guilty. In America we have done a lot of foolish things in motor-car building, but we are approaching saner methods and more correct lines. The car of the future, either for business or pleasure, has not yet been laid down. He would be a bold, perhaps a rash, prophet who would undertake any detailed description of this car. Nevertheless, reasoning a priori, there are some features we may prognosticate. In the first place, it will be built of better steel than we have been accustomed to use. In the next place, the cars will become standardized, and when standardized they will be built by machinery in enormous quantities at an exceedingly low cost. The wheels will be large, built of wood and of the artillery type. Hard rubber or some enduring substance will take the place of the present high-priced unsatisfactory pneumatic tires. The car will be light, simple, strong, and easily kept in repair. Mr. Edison once said the automobile will never be wholly practical until it is fool-proof and the ordinary repairs can be made on the highway by a darky with a monkey-wrench. The present highly unsatisfactory system of change-speed gears will be supplanted by a variable speed device. There are not wanting good judges who believe that the problem will be solved by a system of hydraulic transmission. The fuel of the future will be kerosene or grain alcohol. Thirty-five per cent, of the population of America are farmers. The farmer will be the chief automobile owner and user. The maximum speed of his car may be only twenty miles per hour, but that is twice as fast as his present mode of travel. The car will be an invaluable adjunct to his work on the farm. The adjustment of a belt, the turn of a crank, and the automobile engine furnishes power to thresh his grain, cut his wood, chop his feed, and pump his water. After being in constant use all the day, the car is ready to take the entire family to the social gathering in the village at night, or to church services on Sunday morning. The farmer will use the automobile as will the butcher, the baker, and the storekeeper—when he can in no other way get the same amount of work done at so low a cost; and when the business man can deliver his goods more quickly and more economically than he can by using the horse he will do so.

"There will always be motor-cars de luxe for the rich, but they will be merely the fringe of the garment of a great industry. The countless millions of tons of freight now slowly and painfully drawn over country roads and through city streets by poor dumb brutes will go spinning along, the motors of the heavily laden trucks humming a tune of rich content, and all the thousand tongues of commerce will sing the praises of the motor-car.

"Let me suggest a few practical things that the tireless horse of the future will accomplish:

"1. It will solve the problem of the over congestion of traffic in our city streets.

"2. It will free the horse from his burdens. A few years ago, in the city of New Orleans, an old darky came in from the country and for the first time saw the electric street cars, which had taken the place of the mule-drawn car. The old darky threw up his hands, and looking up to heaven said, 'Bless de Lord, de white man freed de nigger, now he done freed the mule.'

"3. The automobile will furnish relief to the tenement house districts.

"4. It will stimulate the good roads movement throughout the United States.

"5. It will save time and space and become invaluable to many classes of citizens.

"6. It will tend to break down class distinction, because one touch of automobilism makes the whole world kin."

The motor has come to stay-rest assured of that. It has an equal right upon the highway under the law of the land, with all other vehicles or animals, so spare yourselves your curses and your ill temper, which only injure yourselves.—A stoppage for luncheon allowed me time to bring in all that, but we are miles onward by now.

In addition to song and story, superstition, perhaps of a harmless sort, certainly reigns in Ireland, at least in the southern parts. Even B. never sees a magpie that he does not cast his eyes and hands aloft in supplication, to exorcise the evil results of the encounter. I have always understood that the legends of that famous bird ran "one for luck, two for joy, three for a wedding, and four for a boy." But B. insists that the appearance of one means misfortune; however "maggies" are eminently domestic and travel in pairs. Marriage is not a failure with them.

While B. is stoutly maintaining his belief in the ill luck sure to follow the appearance of a bird just now flirting his tail at us from a tree near-by, the car comes to a sudden halt and Robert's face plainly indicates something wrong. With an "I told you so" B. gets out to inspect. Knowing nothing and caring less about machinery I stay where I am; the seat is comfortable and paid for, whether in motion or not; if they want to get down on their backs in that mud they can do so, I won't. While the work is in progress I question B. on the matter of superstition and am told that no real Irishman would, in case of death in his house, go after the coffin alone,—that "must never be done." Many even in these days will place a lighted candle in the hands of the dying to light them to Heaven, and at a wake there is always a plate of snuff on the corpse.

Not long since, a stranger desiring to attend one of these weird affairs was conducted to the house of a man who—it was stated—had just died. The deceased was laid out in the little cabin with candles at his head and feet, and the usual number of mourners around him. Now every one smokes at a wake, and the visitor, lighted cigar in his mouth, stood solemnly regarding the placid dead, when some motion caused his cigar ash to fall upon the placid face, whereupon the dead sneezed and the wake broke up in "Konfusion." So at least runs the tale.

An incident of the later afternoon is also attributed to "a beast of a bird" which flew over our heads shortly before its occurrence. It certainly was a most amazing escape from a serious smash-up, and only the steering ability of the chauffeur saved us and the car. About to take a side road running at right angles to the one we were on, and hidden by a tall hedge, we came suddenly upon a boy asleep in a cart drawn by an old white horse, also apparently asleep. They were not twenty feet off; to pass was impossible, and our man shot his car forward, turned it almost on its axis and under the nose of the old horse so closely that I thought the shaft would strike me and dodged down into the car; then another sharp turn down into a ditch, fortunately grassy and not dangerously deep, and up on to the road, and away as though nothing had happened and all so quickly done that the horse and boy stood stock still in dumb amazement. It was a very close shave, and proved that these cars can be turned completely around in a much smaller space than one would believe possible. We are not courting such experiences, especially as news of the dreadful deaths of the Trevor brothers in Cincinnati has just been published. Our man is a superb driver and thoroughly understands his machine; also he does not lose his head for an instant, or on this occasion it would have meant destruction all round.

Shortly afterwards a black sheep—"horror of horrors," I heard B. exclaim—crossed our pathway at tremendous speed, and having great faith in the strength of its skull and in its butting powers tried conclusions with a closed iron gateway,—the result being intense astonishment and dire destruction to itself, the gate holding fast. Earlier in the day we ran over for the first time a goose, apparently without injury thereto, as the last I saw it was chasing us down the road with outstretched neck squawking loudly.

Our orders are strict as to avoiding all living things if by so doing we do not endanger our own safety and several times we have done so by sudden swerves to save an old hen or chicken.

Taking it all together to-day's ride has not been without excitement, and we almost decline to get out when the car stops at Bannow House; but I think the driver has had his fill of work for one day, so it is ended, fortunately with no injury to any one.