towns, waiting for employment. The usual price for a jaunt is eight shillings, or about $2.00 of American money. The one selected, whose driver was over anxious to carry the two Amirikins, as he called us, offered to do the job for 7s. 6d. Yankee-like, having made a good bargain—and the driver, unyankee-like, having as at an auction bid against himself—we mounted, and were soon on our way to the place so renowned in history. First, we will consider the roads.
The ride is exceedingly pleasant, and over one of the smooth and hard roads which are everywhere to be found in Ireland. We go out of Cork southwardly, and pass through a small and not over-nice settlement called Black Pool, by no means inaptly named. The scenery is very pleasing, and so is the road we travel. The view on the north side of the river, though not wild or romantic, has beautiful landscapes, made up of fine hills and valleys, streams and groves, with, now and then, unlooked-for ruins of a monastery or small castle, or of distant round-towers.
There are no long straight roads, but there is an ever varying aspect, and the ways are clean to a fault. It is a characteristic of Ireland, England, and nearly all European countries, to have well-built faced-stone walls along the roadside, and an entire absence of the random weeds and bushes which so commonly grow along the walls and sides of the roads in America. It is a disgrace to our Young American civilization that it should be an exception, where the sides of our roads, and especially in the vicinity of farmhouses, are clean, and in lawn-like condition, as is always the case abroad. We have much to learn from Ireland—a deal of our practice to unlearn, and considerable to do—before we can compare favorably with Europe in this respect. A waste of acres exists in consequence of this neglect on nearly all New England farms. In the aggregate there are hundreds of thousands of acres which, if kept clean and cultivated for grass, would be profitable. Even if done at the town's expense, the income would go far towards paying the cost of keeping in repair the adjoining highway. The State should pass a law making this neglect a finable offence; and the sooner all States do this the better our civilization will be.
We continue on our way enjoying inexpressibly the exhilarating air and sunny, May-like day, and entertained somewhat by the clack of the driver, who, as best he can, tries to make his old story appear to us as new as possible, but, in spite of our or his efforts, we get the impression that he has told that story before.
We next get a good but distant view of Carrigrohan Castle, belonging to one Mr. McSwiney—the name of both castle and owner Irish enough. It is situated on a precipitous limestone-rock formation on the opposite bank of the river. At length—one hour passed, and about four miles traversed—we arrive at the old, dirty, low, dilapidated, Irish town of Blarney, which, for situation and surroundings, is as beautiful as every place in Ireland can't help being. Blarney has been immortalized in song by Millikin, Croker, and old, peculiar Father Prout.
A ride of two miles, and we are at the grounds of the castle itself. It was built in the fifteenth century by Cormac McCarthy, or possibly by the Countess of Desmond, and became the home of the famous family of McCarthys. It is now a magnificent old ruin, well situated near a little lake, and surrounded by grand old trees. Admission to the premises is readily gained, as the grounds are open to the public free, such small, optional fee being given to the guide as the tourist may incline to present.
The castle consists mainly of the massive Donjon Tower, about forty feet square, and one hundred and ten feet high, and some ruined walls of less height, once part of adjoining apartments. Much of the tower and lower walls is completely covered with ivy, and most of the foliage is from twelve to sixteen inches thick. There is a picturesqueness about such a place that is indescribable. The grand and colossal scale on which it is constructed; the rich greenness of the lawns; the shade of portions of the immediately adjoining groves; the sombre hue of the stonework, and the dark green of the mantling ivy; the gleam of the little lake as discovered through the vistas; the age of the edifice, so apparent; the consciousness that this is a veritable ruin, and what is left of an unparalleled splendor of other days, now calm as if resting fixed in its immortality—these combine to resolve imagination into reality, and produce sensations that are felt, but never transferred from one mortal to another. Perhaps there enters into emotion a suggestion of decline and decay still operating. "The vulgar crowd," as old English expression would put it, are possessed not by the finer æsthetic conditions, but by those more tangible and material.
The famed Blarney Stone is one of the coping-stones of the outside projecting cornice, near the top of the tower, and resting on large, but plain, stone corbels, or brackets. In appearance from the ground, it is six feet long and eighteen inches thick, and projects two feet or so. Many years ago it appeared to be insecure, and two iron bars were put on the outside, securing it in its position. There are courses of stone upon it, falling back from the front surface, and making a parapet to the tower. It was over this parapet that persons, head downwards, held and aided by others, performed the task of kissing the stone. A stairway on the inside leads nearly to the top of the tower; but now, for a more convenient and safe way of performing the operation, another stone, bearing date 1703, is kept within the tower. Its magic is as effectual, while it is reached with comparative safety.
It is indeed marvellous that a few lines of worse than doggerel poetry have materially aided in giving this stone a notoriety that is world-wide, and which, but for this aid, would hardly have been heard of outside of its neighborhood. It was long a superstitious belief that whoever kissed it would ever after be in possession of such sweet, persuasive, and convincing eloquence as to put the listener entirely under the control of the speaker. Rev. Father Prout's allusion to the stone is in part as follows:—
There is a stone there that whoever kisses,
Oh! he never misses to grow eloquent;
'Tis he may clamber to a lady's chamber,
Or become a member of Parliament.
A clever spouter he'll sure turn out, or
An out and outer, to be let alone!
Don't hope to hinder him or to bewilder him,
Sure he's a pilgrim from the Blarney Stone.
The grounds by which the castle are surrounded were once adorned with statues, bridges, grottos, but all are now gone, and Father Prout deplores the condition as follows:—
The muses shed a tear,
When the cruel auctioneer,
With his hammer in his hand to sweet Blarney came.
Blarney Lake is a beautiful piece of water, set in a charming framework of trees and natural shrubbery, and is about five minutes' walk from the castle. Tradition, handed down through many generations, has it that at certain seasons a herd of white cows come up from the centre of the lake, look admiringly but with a melancholy pleasure on the ruined castle, for a few moments' graze on the lawns near it, and then with a soldierly march retire to their oblivion-like resting-place, there to remain till the time comes next year for their weird and fairy-like visit. Another legend is—and this country abounds with them—that the Earl of Chantry having forfeited the castle, and having had it confiscated and ruined at the Revolution, carried his plate and deposited it in a particular part of the lake, and that three McCarthys, and they only, are in possession of the secret of the place where it was cast in. When either of the three dies, he communicates the intelligence to some other member of the family, and thus the secret is kept, never to be publicly revealed till a McCarthy is again Lord of Blarney.
Within the castle grounds runs the small River Coman, and on its banks is an old Cromlech, or druidical altar; and there are also a number of pillar-stones, similar to those at Stonehenge, on which are worn inscriptions of ancient Ogham characters.
Differing as the place did from anything yet seen by us, and our anticipations more than fulfilled, we, after a two hours' sojourn, reluctantly mounted the jaunting-car and took our way back to Cork. After dining at the Victoria, at half-past three of this same day, we took steam-cars for the town of Killarney; and here we must speak of the railroads.
As this was our first experience in travelling on one of them, we may with propriety say something of them once for all; for one statement applies to railroads, not only in Ireland, England, and