IT once fell to my lot to make a hasty scamper through Donegal from end to end; that is to say, as far as possible, I made the circuit of the county, beginning with Ballyshannon, following the coast-line, with divergences, from Donegal to Gweedore, going round by Bloody Foreland, by Falcarragh and Dunfanaghy, and ending up by way of Letterkenny at Ballyshannon again. I took ten or twelve days to do it—perhaps a fortnight—staying each night at an inn. To Gweedore I devoted the best portion of a week. Now, in that scamper I had a very characteristic peep at Ireland. I missed, indeed, the wild gaiety of the South. Donegal people are somewhat sorrowful. But I found plenty of types and racy life nevertheless.

It is a good many years ago now; and travelling in Donegal has been simplified since then by the light railways with which the names of Mr. Arthur Balfour and Mr. Gerald Balfour are gratefully associated. When I was there I drove through the country, only taking the train from Letterkenny to Ballyshannon on my return journey; and it was an excellent, though somewhat expensive, way of seeing the country. However, the hospitality was so wonderful that one only slept and breakfasted in one’s hotel. For the rest, the kind priests were only too eager to give hospitality to myself and my companion.

At Ballyshannon we stayed a night in one of those enormous old hotels with a maze of winding passages, which suggest to one in the dead waste and middle of the night that in case of a fire one never could get out. The next day we came upon the first of the priests, who carried us off to see everything that could be seen of Ballyshannon, including a visit to Abbey Assaroe, which we knew already in William Allingham’s poetry. To the grief of these kind friends of ours, we insisted on going off the same afternoon to Donegal town, to which we were driven by “Wullie”—the first “Wullie”—a red-haired, taciturn youth, who suspected us of laughing at him and was closer than an oyster. Your English man or woman is the truly expansive person. When you want to get at anything from an Irishman you’ve got to sit down and wait for the charmed moment when his suspicion of you is put to sleep. Dr. Douglas Hyde got his Religious Songs and Love Songs of Connacht by sitting over the turf fire in a cabin, taking a “shaugh” of the pipe and offering a fill of it, passing round a flask of poteen, perhaps. It might be hours, and it might be days, and it might be weeks before you broke down the barrier of reserve, well worth the breaking-down if you have “worlds enough and time.” You can’t travel twenty miles in an English third-class carriage before you have the intimate confidence of your fellow-passengers. You are told which relative died of cancer, with harrowing details, which is in a madhouse, and which in gaol; for the plain English people are the most unreserved in the world, while the Irish are the most reticent. And if you win a flow of talk from the Irish peasants, be sure they are talking round what they have to tell by way of leading you away from it; for an Irishman uses language to conceal his thoughts.

We hadn’t “worlds enough and time” for “Wullie.” His lips were tight-locked from Ballyshannon to Donegal.

The next day we saw what was to be seen of the Castle, under the guidance of the parish priest, whom we met walking in the Diamond. We introduced ourselves to him. He was a delightful, humorous, stately, kindly old man, and he looked at us when he met us with an eye that asked: “Who are you and what is your business in Donegal?” It is a way the priests have in the remote parts of Ireland, where they are everything to their flocks. Being reassured, he gave his day to our entertainment, taking us to see some of his parishioners when he had shown us all the town contained of interest.

Killybegs I remember as a beautiful bay, big enough to take in the whole English fleet. The next day we went on to Kilcar, where we found our third priest, who lived in a delightfully clean little cabin with a clay floor. His housekeeper was barefooted, but he had dainty table appointments. I remember that he had very good china, and he explained that his mother had given it to him. He was the son of rather wealthy people. We had a meal of fish, with a little fruit to follow; and while we ate it a messenger was out prospecting for the loan of an outside car for the priest. Sure enough, by the time we had finished the meal the car was at the door, and our host carried us off to see the Caves of Muckross, some six miles away. Incidentally, we saw Bunglass, that magnificent cliff-face where Slieve League drops into the sea. I remember a visit we paid to a cottage where a father sat at the loom weaving, the mother was carding wool, and a black-haired daughter was sprigging muslin by the little narrow square window. A scarlet geranium in the window seemed to be in her night-black hair, and her tears flowed when our little priest spoke to her. He told us that her lover had married a richer girl and gone to America. I can remember quite well walking up a mountain road where the friendly little lambs came and trotted a bit of the way with us, and the voice of the young priest as he told us of the innocence of the people—“not a sin in it from year’s end to year’s end,” for they were too poor to drink—and how his ambition was to get away to the East End of London, where there was something to do for a born fighter.

A night at the excellent hotel at Carrick and the next day we were at Glencolumkille, that wild and lonely glen between the mountains and the sea, with the majestic Glen Head standing out into the Atlantic. In the Glen are twelve crosses of stone, where pilgrims make the stations in honour of St. Columba or Columkille, the Dove of the Churches. Above Lough Gartan, on Eithne’s Bed, he was born, and any who lie there shall not have the pangs of home-sickness; wherefore many emigrants stretch themselves upon that rocky couch before they cross “the Green Fields to America.” The Glen is full of the noise and thunder of the waves, and Slieve League lies superbly up in the sky, reminding one of Browning—

At Glencolumkille we met the fourth of our priests—a tall, thin, Spanish-looking youth, who came to meet us with a collie at his heels. Glencolumkille is very lonesome. There is only an Irish-speaking peasant population of the very poorest, and the nearest one with whom our priest could exchange a word on his own level was some seven Irish miles away. He gave us an impression of immense loneliness, although his joy at having someone to entertain irradiated his melancholy, handsome face with cheerfulness. He was rejoiced that by the greatest of good luck he had a bit of meat for dinner, for fish is the staple food of the Glen. He was very much interested in news from the great world, and produced with some pride a copy of the Daily Telegraph, several days old, to prove that he kept in touch with the world. He told us that he was the youngest of a large family, and his home was as far away as Dublin. Over nearly a score of years I have the most vivid impression of the lonely figure, the dog at his heels, as we left Glencolumkille behind us. He had made us free of his house and hospitality, and parted from us with the utmost unwillingness.

Ardara, Glenties, Dungloe—I think of them, little villages lying amongst gorgeous mountains, and remember that in those gloomy and frowning fastnesses the Irish were safe against Cromwell’s planters, since what man who could choose, not being Irish, would desire to live in such a place? A Donegal farm is something to remember. The one crop the ground grows freely is stones—stones in millions, boulders as great sometimes as a small house. There are glens that are nothing but stones from end to end, about as promising ground as the Giant’s Causeway for a farmer. In such places you may see a little field, the size of a tablecloth, snatched from the aridity of Nature by the incredible industry of man. Everywhere in Donegal man asks Nature for bread and she gives him a stone, unless it be the harvest of the sea, which he snatches from her at the price of his life, it may be.

I saw Donegal in April, softened as much as might be by the wild April showers and the bursts of April sunshine. The clouds and the mountains, the cliffs and the sea—Slieve League, Errigal, Muckish, Bunglass, Horn Head, the Glen Head, Tory Island—were all beautiful beyond telling, with a wild and stormy magnificence of beauty. I try to imagine their desolation in winter and fail to realize it.

Ardara I remember by the beauty of Glengesh on an April day, with a hundred streams running down its sides; and at Ardara we halted on Sunday, and knelt in the gallery of the church, looking down at the peasants kneeling in rows on the stone floor before the altar. The doors were wide open, and birds wheeled in from the sunlight and out again with flashing wings; and the air was exquisite, fresh and wild and sweet.

At Gweedore, as I have said, we tarried nearly a week, held there by the hospitality of the parish priest, who would have us see everything thoroughly. We stayed at an idyllic little inn, and were fed on the best and simplest fare: stirabout, made as only the Irish can make it; home-made bread; delicious butter, new-laid eggs; little delicate chickens, with green parsley sauce and boiled bacon, potatoes, and cabbage, cooked as only the Irish can cook them; for in certain simple dishes of their own the Irish cannot be beaten.

There was a most picturesque waiting-maid, a shy little girl, as pretty as a picture, who wore a pink cotton frock, and had pink bare feet showing under it, who had the softest, most appealing of voices.

At the inn our priest found us, sallying in with his great blackthorn in his hand to see who were the strange visitors to the Glen. He was a redoubtable priest—the Law of Gweedore, they called him—and he sheltered his people as the hen sheltereth her chickens. The Glen was exquisitely clean from end to end, though starveling poor. But the priest saw to it that they did not starve.

For four or five days, perhaps, we abode in this little inn, where the Glen opens out to the sea. We visited the people in their cottages, under the guidance of our redoubtable padre, and saw all there was to be seen. His hospitality was unbounded, although at the time there was a wide and bitter division in politics between us.

I shall not soon forget the manner of our going. We had come now almost to the end of our journey, and it was desirable that we should return to Dublin as quickly as possible. He wanted us to make the journey round by Bloody Foreland, and we wanted to do it as shortly as possible, striking inland to meet the mail-car for Letterkenny at, I think, Gortahork. But we knew better than to say “No” to the Law of Gweedore; so we thought to slip away early in the morning, and made our arrangements the last thing at night, after leaving his hospitable roof.

But the Law of Gweedore knew all that happened in Gweedore. A full hour before we had appointed for being called we were called. His Reverence had arranged our conveyance, and paid for it—paid also, I think, for a luncheon-basket. Willy-nilly, we went round by Bloody Foreland and visited the evicted tenants, crouching under scraws and twigs, in shelters which suggested the caves of the earth-dwellers rather than anything fit for man.

Gortahork I remember as a place where we had a good meal of tea and hot cakes and eggs, and other things thrown in, for a shilling. And I remember also the long, long drive to Letterkenny—some forty miles it was, I seem to remember, but shall not pledge myself to it lest I be confuted—and how we dashed along the sides of precipices, we on one side of the car, with our feet almost touching earth, the other side high in air, being weighted only with empty parcel-post hampers, of which Donegal needs no great supply; below us—far, far below—a valley filled in with mighty stones and rocks. The pace was so fast that we could hardly keep our seats, though well accustomed to that car which the unlettered English tripper is apt to call “a jolting car”; and the driver was quite unaware of our discomfort, assuring us with as much jocularity as a Donegal man permits himself that the horses never were known to stumble, and that, although an occasional English tourist did fall off, he or she always “fell soft.”

After all, when I look back to that scamper through Donegal sixteen years ago, I remember the mountains and the priests. Monuments of a beautiful hospitality, the priests for me mark the wild ways up and down Donegal.