APHSource: Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine for 1843, Volume 10
Excursions in the West of Ireland, Ballinasloe-Athenry-Oranmore-
Courtesy of Frank Coyne, Park
There are two routes to Galway from Ballinasloe. The one through Aughrim and Loughrea, being more level, is taken by the mail-coach, and other public conveyances; the other, more picturesque, lies through Kilconnell and Athenry. The distance is about the same both ways; and the traveller who takes an interest in tracing the vestiges of Old Ireland and her past glories, will be well repaid for a few ups and downs de plus, by striking into the latter path for once in a way. The ivy-mantled ruins of an abbey at Kilconnel are extremely beautiful; and Athenry, once the capital of this province, contains many remnants of the olden time. Seen from a distance it has an imposing effect, from the extent of the old city wall, which, with its flanking towers and moat, is wonderfully perfect. The high road to Tuam passes under an archway, surmounted by a tower, which is called the Northgate; but of a real gate, there is no more remaining than there was of Sandalwood left at Cabool. Near this is an ancient fortress, which bears the name of King John’s Castle; because, as the local antiquaries insist, it was built by the Lackland lord of Ireland himself, when he came into Connaught; an event, good reader, which, betwixt you and me, is rather apocryphal.
There is, besides, a venerable abbey, of which the pictorial effect has been grestly marred by the barbarous piety of some of the Burkes or Brownes, whose family vaults are within the chancel, and who, to protect the gilded frippery inlaid upon their tombs, have blooked up all the fine pointed arches of the windows with solid masonry. Still it is a fine massive building; and, viewed in combination with the castle and the parish church, the latter a handsome modern structare which springs most artistically out of the gray ruins of its Catholic predecessor, contributes materially to the solemn effect of the distant view. For distant your view of Athenry must be, to impress your imagination with those deep and reverential feelings which its historical recollections call up. Within the walls all is misery and meanness, squalor and penury. This Place of a King for such is its etymological designation- is a heap of wretched cabins, where Supreme Dirt holds its court, and the King of the Beggars might most appropriately keep his royal state amongst those numerous princes and princesses of The Blood who paddle in the streets.
The ownership of this place is divided among so many proprietors, that it is nobody’s interest to concern himself about its prosperity or take measures for its improvement.
The child whom many fathers share,
But seldom knows a father’s care.
And so it fares with this Place of a King, the lordly Athunree, where the Berminghams used to hold their feasts of fat things, and draw together all the spoil of the surrounding country. A leg of a poor old ewe, nailed up to a dirty door-post, after serving her generation through many a year, represented the whole outward and visible sign of carnal comforts available for a population of thirteen hundred persons; souls I might say, for this seems but a lenten provision for so many bodies.
The employment of the inhabitants seems to be on a par with their victualling department. There was a carpenter at work, in the middle of the street, making a coffin, a sort of manufactare which must always go on, even in the dead time of the year; and although there was nothing novel either in the shape or in the materiel of his work, a round dozen of full-grown spectators were gathered about, some with pipes in their mouths, and all with hands in their pockets, to observe and scan its progress.
Hard by the town is a holy well, sacred to the Virgin Mary, the water of which, according to the most true legends, no fire can warm, and which is consequently endued with powers and virtaes of an extraordinary kind. On the 15th of August, being the day of The Assumption, pilgrims resort to this Bethesda from various parts of the country, to perform penances and other religious exercises around it, and to fasten votive rags upon a bush that overhangs it. The cures performed at these holy wells have been well described by a wag of a French tourist-” L’aveugle s’en retourne en marchant, le boiteux en parlant et le sourd en cots r. Si vous avez quelques infirmités, faites seulement sept fois le tour, et vous verrez ce qui en arrivera.”
As for the anticaloric properties of the water, they have been tested, meo periculo; and a bowl of punch, screeching hot, was the result.
The Petty Sessions Court was sitting, and besides the usual average amount of trespass cases, arising from the tumble down fences of the country, and of pigs straying upon the highway, the public interest was excited by an investigation of an asssult at a neighbouring fair, which had led to a fatal encounter between the police and the country people. Two or three attorneys were employed, one of whom introduced himself as the advocate of no individual, but of the people at large, in whose name he exerted himself to cut short all inquiry, and prevent the magistrates and the public from obtaining the slightest information as to the real facts of the case. The affair had begun in an unprovoked attack upon a young man, who appeared in the court, a forced and reluctant witness against his assailants, because, as he alleged, the whole parish had threatened him with its displeasure, should he turn traitor to the people. The said ” people” being, from the days of Sir John Davies, a most justice-loving nation, had a vehement desire to see justice administered agginst certain policemen who stood charged, by the verdict of a coroner’s inquest, with the crime of murder; and the treason would be to weaken the chances of such a consummation, by damaging the credit of a fellow who was the cause of all the mischief-fons et origio malorem and from whose assumed innocence the guilt of the police would derive a deeper and deadlier hue. This was the business of the learned gentleman who officiated as Attorney General for the people.
It is not a pleasant sign of the times, that such a feeling should spring up anew, and display itself against a force organized and employed to guard the peace of society, and who have now, for some years, stood on a friendly footing with all ranks and conditions of men. The Irish police were at one time extremely unpopular; but under the excellent regulations of Lord Normanby, the dislike with which the common people looked upon them had worn away. Of late, however, under new masters, the old jealousy seems to be reviving; nor is it very strange that it should be so, if many such things happen as come out upon this inquiry.
One of the persons charged with rioting stated to the court-and his assertion was not denied-that he had been arrested on a Wednesday, conveyed to a distant station, and confined there until Friday, when he was brought up for examination before a bench of magistrates; and that his wrists were confined by double handcuffs all the time. Such torture is enough to bring odium upon any institution. If it were used in Russia, our political optimists would make a fine talk about it, and thank God that we are not as other men are. But being in Ireland, it did not provoke a single inquiry or observation. It seemed as if it were the usual course to secure accused persons, and keep them in attendance upon the convenience of magistrates, under this gentle coercion.
There is a snug little hostelrie in Athenry, where better things than tough ewe-mutton are served up; and the traveller is pretty sure of a pair of tolerable horses to take him out of the place; which-after a sejour of a day or so is about the most agreeable accommodation that heart of man can desire. A musical student, who lives over the way, and seems to have no other earthly occupation from morn to night than to extract broken sounds out of of an asthmatic fife, does not diminish the love of locomotion in the tourist; albeit, John the waiter protests that the artist is one of the most admired performers of the “Timperance Band.”
Temperance in Ireland, at this present writing, means an abstinence from whisky, rum, brandy, and gin; and, by way of compensation for the sacrifice, an unlimited indulgence in party-spirit-the most noxious and maddening devil of all. Old Sir John Harrington said of « the Irishry” in his day, that they were ” drunk before wine, and mad after.” They seem to be now both mad and drunk (lymphatic, at least) upon the thinnest of all potations.
Upon some estates in this county, a sort of feudal system is kept up, of which the people loudly complain; although, for their own sake, they submit to it. It is a very common condition annexed to the tenure of small farms, that the tenant shall leave his own business, at any time that he may be called upon, to plough, cart, cut turf, reap, mow, or dig, for the landlord; and the hire which he receives for these services is considerably below the ordinary rate of wages. Thus, a shilling is the payment allowed by such contracts for a horse with a man to lead it; and they must both “find themselves.” That is to say, the horse must be fed, and the man too, and their labour repaid, out of that one splendid shilling. Refusal, or neglect to comply with such requisitions, is punished by a heary fine, which is rigidly exacted. The labour of a man without a horse is supposed to be sufficiently requited with sixpence; and I saw a number of men saving the harvest of a noble lord, who were to receive that mighty sum, without the addition (as they expressed it) of ” bite or sup.”
Besides these stipulated ” duties,” as they are called, the some generous peer annexes penalties to certain acts, which the inhabitants of a free country generally hold themselves at liberty to do or not to do, at their own discretion. Being an anti-Malthusian, he discountenances matrimony within his dominions, and visits the perpetration of it, if the offender be a male tenant, with a fine of five pounds, payable to the landlord’s exchequer. The introduction of a foreign son-in-law to any farmstead, is followed by expulsion of the bride, unless the intruder bring a specified sum to be added to the floating capital of the estate. That naturalizes him, and gives the lady a plenary license to ” be fruitful and multiply.”
