ULSTER

Described by Stephen Gwynn
Pictured by Alexander Williams

BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY
1911

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

AT THE GAP OF THE NORTH

Ulster is a province much talked of and little understood—a name about which controversy rages. But to those who know it and who love it, one thing is clear—Ulster is no less Ireland than Connaught itself. No better song has been written in our days than that which tells of an Irishman's longing in London to be back "where the mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea"; nor indeed is the whole frame of mind which that song dramatises, with so pleasant a blending of humour and pathos, better expressed in any single way than in the phrase "thinking long"—an idiom common to all Ulster talk, whether in Down or Donegal. And when I who write these lines "think long" for Ireland, it is to Ulster that my thought goes back, back to the homely ways and the quaint speech of northern folk, hard yet kindly, with the genial welcome readier even in their rough accent than in smoothest Munster: for these things there rises in my mind the vague aching, half-remembrance, half-desire, which we call "thinking long". It is a far cry from Belfast, with its clang of riveters, to the vast loneliness of Slieve League or Dunlewy; and yet the great captain of industry, nurtured and proven in the keenest commerce, has upon his tongue, in his features, in the whole cast of his nature, these very traits which endear themselves to me in some Irish-speaking schoolmaster of western Donegal. Soil, climate, and common memories—these are what identify and what bind. No man gets his living too easily in Ulster, and need makes neighbourly. Protestant and Catholic have to fight the same battle with hard weather—of which perhaps even the summer traveller may form some judgment; they are rewarded by the same loveliness which makes a fine day in Ulster the most enchanting upon earth; and they fend