autumn they are purple with heather; | and light up the landscape by their and among the rocks swampy bogs uniform whitewash.

are formed by the thick matted turf A great harvest is reaped yearly also and moss. The large blue pinguicula in the sea; and it is indeed on the fisheries rather than on the fields that the people depend. The coasts swarm with all manner of fish · mackerel and herring, pollock and bass, salmon and seatrout, turbot, brill, soles, plaice, bream, gurnet, mullet, and whiting. In fair weather you, may see noble salmon leaping in the bays where the porpoises are rolling or grunting under the boat. The bottle-nosed whale comes in schools to hunt the herring, and after him the swordfish and the terrible thresher, who leaps from the sea and brings his flail-like tail with heavy blows on the whale's back. The shores are black with myriads of sprats, and after these the mackerel rush into the shallows, churning all the water as though a squall were passing. After these fierce and vigorous hunters the hungry gulls are chasing, and behind them comes the fisher with his red nets, soon filled with the frantic, struggling mass of opalescent fish.

flowers on the bogs, and the osmunda hangs over the brooks. Hungry Hill, the Sugar-Loaf, and other names, are suggestive of the character of these dark mountains, whose heads are so often hidden in the mists, and rise straight from the sea more than two thousand feet, recalling the finest scenery of Snowdon. In parts they are disforested, and men can still remember the copses of yew, holly, and arbutus which were cut down for charcoal burning; but where, as at Glengarrif ("the rough glen ") and Dunboy, the trees have been preserved, the scenery in the lower ground is as beautiful as that of Windermere. The cedar, larch, and fir, find footing on the shallow soil; the oak, aslı, elm, beech, lime, and ilex, growing unthinned, resist the fury of the winter gales. So warm is the air that even the date-palm will grow in Valencia; and in the plantations we find not only the azalea and the rhododendron, the camellia and magnolia, but even trop-haunts of many wild beasts and birds, ical and American plants not found elsewhere in Britain, while the fuchsias and hydrangeas grow as trees. The orchids of the bogs are mingled with wild-roses and foxgloves.

The mountains and shores are the

some of which have become almost extinct elsewhere, in our islands. Martens and hares are among these, and the sea-otter whose fur is soft as the beaver's. White seals are found on Small fields, with banks of turf and the rocks; and from the caverns come stone, climb up, the lower slopes, or forth flocks of green cormorants who cover the valleys. Little is grown in dive at once, while the blue rockthem save patches of potato and oats; pigeons follow them, and rise high as but the hay harvest is rich, and they they issue. In the mountains you find pasture mountain sheep, from whose the heron flapping beside the boggy wool the peasant dress is spun, and stream, and wild ducks, sea snipe, small black Kerry cows, and sturdy curlew, cranes, waterhens, grebes, and horses and asses. Comfortable-looking loons haunt the shores. The beautifarmhouses shine white with lime-wash ful gannet-strongest of gulls-with among groups of trees, and suggest a white wings tipped with black, and cleanliness which, alas! is betrayed by yellow beak, falls like a thunderbolt their slovenly interiors, and by the from a height of a hundred feet into slush in which many pink pigs are de- the sea, upon the mackerel, or perhaps lighting. The cottars' dry-stone cabins on a conger which will twist round its are miserable enough, but they have, neck, and choke the enemy which it at least generally, glass windows and drags beneath the water. Over the chimneys. Viewed from a little dis- waves you see the "sea-parrots" or tance, the hamlets and farmsteads puffins scudding, with petrels, razorseem as comfortable as in England, bills, and the showy oyster-catcher with

his black and white plumage and long is filled with a guat-like swarm of red bill. The grouse have for the most puffins-called locally sea-parrots or part been killed off by ravens, hawks, Welsh parrots which fly heavily and weasels; but partridges are found round the crags; while in the caves in the fields; and when the snow lies lower down the beautiful kittiwake, on the mountains the woodcock come with white and dove-colored plumage, down into the coverts. The country is utters its warning cry, "kitty week, kitfull of interest for the fisherman and tyweek." The Skellig, or "Penance " 1 sportsman; for huge purple lobsters island, takes its name from the group with gold-fringed tails and great red of huts built by the monks near its crawfish are caught by the fishers, who summit — half-a-dozen dry-stone cells will sometimes coast for a month living with two small chapels on the edge of in their boats, and sheltering in the the precipice, reached by a long flight caves till the steamers come for their of seven hundred slate steps, laboricatch. Fleets of fishing-boats from ously placed by the hermits. Half-way France, and from the Isle of Man, also up a weather-worn Irish cross hangs visit the bays, and these indeed are over the cliff, and the rude outline the principal fishers. The nautical of the stone now resembles a monk character of the peasantry is however beckoning towards the sea. The graves shown by their frequent allusions to of the brethren are within the surpoints of the compass. An amusing in- rounding wall, with one larger cross stance of this was the advice to a man for some abbot who died among them who could not mount a horse. Put and outside the enclosure is a single your north leg on the south side of hut-perhaps the dead-house or cell him " - which would of course have for the sick. Tradition would assign seated him with his face to the tail. this hermitage to the eighth century, though the appearance of the masonry makes it more probable that it belonged to the Abbey of Ballinskellig on the mainland, and to the grey friars of the fourteenth century. It is hard to understand how the monks can have existed even on flour and pulse-in so utterly desolate an island, often not approachable by boats. The name seems to suggest that it was a place of temporary penance, or of refuge from persecution, and of retreat in Lent. The ceremony of "Skellig Night" till recently still preceded Lent, when men with horns and tin pots went round the villages, inviting young men and girls to be off to the Skelligs for their weddings.

But perhaps the wildest scene in all the districts is presented by the Skellig rocks off Dingle Bay. They rise in pinnacles of slate, utterly barren and wind-swept. The lesser Skellig, nearer land, is remarkable for its notched outlines, and for the great flying buttress formed by the undermining waves. As you approach it you seem to see it painted cream-color in bands, but these are the numberless gannets who sit in their nests on the ledges-nests rudely made of seaweed which they have dried for days before using it. If you land they will not rise, but sit pecking at your legs; and so fierce are these gulls that they drive all other birds from the rock. When the nesting is over they break up, and in winter A region so wild has naturally bred shelter in the caves of the west coast. a wild and hardy race; and it furThe greater Skellig rises in a pinnaclenishes yearly many valuable recruits seven hundred feet above the sea, and to our navy, and many successful colopresents tilted cliffs of slate and shale,nists to America. It cannot support blue, grey, and russet-colored, on which more than a scanty population; and its nothing grows but the moss-like sea-boglands where the wild Tories used pink. From a little distance, in sum-to hide from their Whig enemies mer, the cliffs seem to be strewn with cannot yield more than turf. It can large hailstones or eggs, but at the 1 Other authorities say that the word only means sound of the steamer's whistle the air" rocks."

never be a rich agricultural country, | to officers and men, bore the legend, such as is found between Cork and "Afflavit Deus et dissipantur."

Dublin; and it is impossible to expect The Irish believe that a Spanish elehigh rents from any but the best lands ment exists in the south and west, in the valleys. But there is no doubt and is marked by such names as Iago that the people might be better off - also found in Cornwall; but this is than they are, if they did not stand in denied by others. The custom of their own light; aud that they are sleeping in the middle of the day, already much more comfortable and which is still found in the west, is said even more prosperous than is generally to be derived from the Spanish siesta. thought. The intention of the present But it may be the natural consequence account is not to discuss the proceed- of having little to do. Whatever be ings of Irish politicians, who so often when they have climbed the steep hill of ambition find as in their own mountains-only a bog on the summit; but rather to consider what are the silent influences at work on the people of these remote districts, and how far they tend to good or to evil. Before describing the peasantry as they now are, we may, however, with advantage glance at their past history, and try to understand what elements make up the population, and how they came to be found in the land.

the truth as to the existence of such foreign strains in the native blood, it is certain that the men of Cork and of Kerry are not pure Celts; and a strong infusion of Danish nationality is found in the east of Ireland, according to the most recent ethnographical maps.

But even after the loss of Dunboy the last Irish stronghold taken by the English - the native chiefs continued to have much influence among their followers. Their estates were confiscated for the Desmond and Tyrone rebellions, and the theory of private It must be remembered in this con- property in land became known to the nection that the independence of the Irish; for under their own chiefs the Irish in the south-west lasted till a very tenure as among primitive peoples in recent period. In spite of Elizabeth's all parts of the world- was a tribal ban on the language, and of Crom- tenure, and the right to land was only well's conquests, the Sullivans of Dun- due to cultivation. It is not to be boy and of Bautry were powerful wondered that some confused ideas, chiefs down to the close of the six-tracing back to the seventeenth centeenth century. Sir George Carew tury, should still survive, and that the only took the Dunboy Castle-still a grass-grown ruin in the woods in 1602, after a fruitless attempt of its defenders to blow it up. A generation later Algerine rovers were still descending on the coast; and in 1698 the Dunboy has been made famous by French under Renault were foiled at Froude, in connection with the last Bantry in their attempt to aid James struggles of the Sullivans. In 1750 II. Even as late as 1796 General the lands had become the property of Hoche, with thirty-six sail, endeavored the Puxley family from Galway, and to land several thousand men at the Mr. John Puxley was in the dangerous same place ·Ban-tra, or the "White position of commanding the revenue Strand " but they were stoutly re- men. Morty Oghe ("the young able sisted by Richard White, created after-seaman ") was an exile, and his famous wards the first Lord Bantry, and escape through the Sound of the Dursuffered from the January storms, one zeys, after sailing under fire between vessel being, it is said, still left lying the Crowhead and the seething waters in the bay off Whiddy Island. The of the Cat Rock, is even now rememsilver medal granted for this defence, bered. It was said by his adherents VOL. V. 256

LIVING AGE.

right to peat on the mountains, or to game, should still be regarded as common to all. Such ideas among the peasantry certainly exist, and they are not the result of recent teaching.

hateful to the peasantry. But the bad days" have passed away twelve years ago, and a better prospect is before the country under existing conditions than it ever before could expect.

The peasantry present a stalwart, healthy appearance, and are better fed, and better clothed and shod, than many Continental peoples. Beggars are few except on the tourist route, perhaps because there are so few from whom to beg. Indeed, in the south of England there are many more to be seen than in Ireland. The health of the people has improved under the influence of sanitary laws, though these are still less rigidly enforced than they should be. The terrible typhus which used to rage in the mountains is almost stamped out, and the care of the doctor has superseded the old prescriptions of whiskey or of charms. We speak, be it noted, of the country, not of the towns; for Dublin is a hotbed of typhoid and small-pox, and the destitution of its slums is more appalling than that of London or New York. Poverty is easier to bear in the open country, where the fresh sea air is always blowing, than in the noisome city

that the revenue men, after killing and neglect alike rendered the English Denis O'Sullivan, kicked the boy's head government and the Irish Parliament as a football on the road; and whether true or not, it was in revenge for the alleged brutality of his followers that Morty Oghe shot Mr. John Puxley, riding his white horse to church with his wife on the pillion. The spot is still shown at the gate of Dunboy. Morty Oghe was not himself popular with many of the peasantry, for he had been active in the kidnapping of the "wild geese "for service in France. A car to bear his body, when he in turn was caught and killed, was denied; and, amid mingled wailing and curses, his corpse was towed behind the Speedwell to Queenstown, and his head set on the gates of Cork. Popular superstition says that the fish still refuse to cross the path of his body in the bay; but within a century and a half the owners of Dunboy have come to be regarded with pride and affection, as belonging to the country in which they once were strangers. It is not a very long time to look back to 1460, when the Vallis Juncosa was the last refuge of the original Irish, retreating before the English to the range which divides Cork and Kerry; but it is still less time since the O'Sullivans of the seventeenth century were giving asy-dens; and the dwellers in the eastlum to fugitive Tories, and since MacGeoghan tried to blow up Dunboy Castle after the stout resistance against Three types at least are observable Carew. The grey friars of the Skelligs in the south of Ireland: first, the dark have given place to the lighthouse men Italian-looking Celt, also found on that lonely crag; the brutal revenue Devon; secondly, the tall, yellowofficers have been replaced by the haired Danish type; and thirdly, the. steady and respectable coastguards, aboriginal Aryan of the Volga, with whose trim houses are an example to red or auburn hair and blue or green the cottagers. The wild Sullivans have eyes, who may also be found in Cornleft only their name behind them; and wall. The dark aquiline type of Wales their story is scarcely less a tradition differs considerably from that of the than that of Beara, the Irish princess, Irish; and the Irish language is nearer buried in the mountains near Eireez, akin to Cornish thau to Welsh. The from whom Bere Island—the protect-traditional Irishman of caricatures is ing barrier of Bantry Bay — is named. not often seen in the south, though this Such progress has this remote part of type is not unknown even among the Britain made within a century and a upper classes. The soft features and half, though still distant from cities bright eyes of the modest peasant and railways, and in spite of many bit- women present many varieties of ter memories of the seventeenth and beauty; and the mingled race of Cork eighteenth centuries, when oppression and Kerry — fairer as a rule than that

ends of citics deserve more compassion than the Irish peasant in the south.

in

of the far west—is as vigorous as any at injury; and the litigant is better in Scotland or in Yorkshire.

to

pleased by the sentence on his neighbor than by any compensation himself. The command to forgive an enemy, and not to let the sun go down

The dress of the people is, as already

The intelligence of the people is also remarkable, and the quickness of their comprehension is greater than that of the light-haired Saxons of Wilts or on anger, seems unknown to a people Berkshire. The courtesy of their who have no Bible to read. In every manners, and their primitive hospital- Welsh cottage you may find, among a ity to strangers, are equally notable. naturally pious people, a Bible in The desire to please is not always con- Welsh; but if the magistrate needs sistent with regard for truth. If you one in Ireland to swear a witness, he ask an Englishman whether it will be may have to send many miles to fetch a fine day he says he does not know. it, if he has none with him. A Scotsman answers, "You will be going far the day?" but an Irishman remarked, sufficient and comfortable. says, "A fine day sure, your honor," It is usually of wool spun in the couneven when the rain is falling in the try; and though the women and childistance. Go into the cottages, and, dren are barefooted at home, they are as in the Welsh mountains, you are stoutly shod in the streets. Ten years offered a glass of milk, for which the ago bare feet were commoner in Edincottar would scorn to receive payment.burgh than they are now in Kerry. To all your questions a cheerful and The old Irish dress, with long coatready if not always reliable answer tails, breeches, and brimless hat, has is returned, and the people seem anx- disappeared as completely as the Welsh ious to help you on your way. But costume. It is worn by a few old further experience will show you a less people, but is generally regarded as pleasing reverse to the picture. The ridiculous; and the men are dressed Irishman has not the sturdy and often like English peasants, with soft felt rude independence of the Scot; he hats and suits such as have become believes in diplomacy, in influence and universal in Europe. The women favor; but he has a sharp eye to his cover their heads with black or tartan own interest. The man who flatters shawls, beneath which gleams a gloyou to your face speaks ill of you be-rious head of gold or auburn hair. hind your back, and denounces his The clothing is sold at monthly fairs, neighbors with whom he has quar- where also they purchase the dry relled, when they are not by. The cod-fish which, with potatoes and milk people are extremely fond of going to and white bread, forms their food. law on the most trifling grounds. If a is remarkable that they should prefer regatta is planned in the harbor, the this somewhat greasy dish to the fresh unsuccessful threaten the victors with fish so easily procured. actions, unless they are compensated Another mark of gradual change in for failure and disappointment. Their the population is the rapid disappearminds are more occupied with the en- ance of the Irish language. The croachments of a neighbor's donkey Welsh are proud of their ancient than with any political question. They tongue, of their poets and bards; and cannot unite, because they distrust in Cambria you hear Welsh spoken all cach other. A private grudge is more round you, and many do not underto them than any advantage to be stand English. But in Ireland the gained by combined action. Once national schools teach English, and make an enemy of an Irishman and Irish is regarded with more or less conyou can never again rely on him, for tempt. The interpreter is still needed when he most flatters he is most to be in the courts, for many of the cottars feared. The spirit of revenge com- can best express themselves in Irish; mon to all wild peoples: may find but the people speak English to one satisfaction in the most futile attempts another, and their English is remark

It