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WANDERINGS IN IRELAND

CHAPTER I

Welcome to Ireland—Quaint People of Dublin—Packing the Motor and Departure—Tara Hill; its History and Legends—Ruins at Trim—Tombs of the Druids—Battle-field of the Boyne.

"Glory be to God, but yer honour is welcome to Ireland."

An old traveller understands that it is the unexpected which makes the joy of his days. I had come to Europe with the intention of spending some conventional weeks in London, followed by an auto tour with the family through the fair land of France. Fate brings me, upon my first day in town, to Prince's Restaurant, when out of the chaos of faces before me rises one whose owner, a son of Erin whom I had last seen under the cherry blossoms of Japan, advances upon me. Then the conventional promptly drops off and away, and it is but a short while before a motor tour is arranged in the Emerald Isle, a month to be passed amidst its beauties and miseries, its mirth and its sadness, for all go in one grand company in the land of St. Patrick.

With Boyse of Bannow I shall follow the fancy of the moment, which to my thinking is the only true mode of travel.

"Du Cros" has agreed to furnish a perfectly new Panhard for and upon the same terms which I received in France last year, viz., thirty pounds sterling per week, and everything found except the board and lodging of the chauffeur. These very necessary details arranged we are impatient to be off and leave London on a hot day in June. The smells, dirt, and dust of her wooden streets, driven in clouds over all the grand old city, follow us far out into the green meadows of England until we ask whether the hawthorn blossoms have ever held any fragrance, and have we not been mistaken as to roses. But London is not all of England, and we are finally well beyond her influence and wondering why we remained within her limits with the beautiful country so near at hand. The meadows of England giving way to the mountains of Wales, one catches a glimpse of the stately towers of Conway Castle, and then sails outward and westward upon a level sea, which, on its farther side, holds the haven of desire, Dublin, on the broad waters of the Liffey.

Ireland welcomes us, weeping softly the while, though smiling ever and anon as the sunlight rifts downward from the west. The gang-plank is slippery and the pavements mucky, but our welcome is a warm one, at least one fat, comfortable looking old woman with a shawl over her head, a gown whose colour I cannot attempt to give, and shoes which have evidently been discarded by her "auld man," greets me with a "Glory be to God, but yer honour is welcome to Ireland!" and then catching sight of my Jap servant, she gives utterance to a very audible aside, "Be the powers of the divil, phat's that he has wid him!" crossing herself vehemently the while, firmly convinced, I doubt not, that she has seen a limb of Satan, which I think he strongly resembles.

The Shelburn Hotel receives us within its walls, unchanged in the thirty years which have elapsed since I last crossed the threshold, a comfortable inn, pleasantly situated upon College Green, where a