by J. M. Synge
I told him.
‘There are two branches of the Synges in the County Wicklow,’ he said, and then he went on to tell me fragments of folk-lore connected with my forefathers. How a lady used to ride through Roundwood ‘on a curious beast’ to visit an uncle of hers in Roundwood Park, and how she married one of the Synges and got her weight in gold — eight stone of gold — as her dowry stories that referred to events which took place more than a hundred years ago.
When he had finished I told him how much I wondered at his knowledge of the country.
‘There’s not a family I don’t know,’ he said, ‘from Baltinglass to the sea, and what they’ve done, and who they’ve married. You don’t know me yet, but if you were a while in this place talking to myself, it’s more pleasure and gratitude you’d have from my company than you’d have maybe from many a gentleman you’d meet riding or driving a car.’
By this time we had reached a wayside public-house, where he was evidently going with his can, so, as I did not wish to part with him so soon, I asked him to come in and take something with me. When we went into the little bar-room, which was beautifully clean, I asked him what he would have. He turned to the publican:
‘Have you any good whisky at the present time?’ he said.
‘Not now, nor at any time,’ said the publican, ‘we only keep bad; but isn’t it all the same for the likes of you that wouldn’t know the difference?’
After prolonged barging he got a glass of whisky, took off his hat before he tasted it, to say a prayer for my future, and then sat down with it on a bench in the corner.
I was served in turn, and we began to talk about horses and racing, as there had been races in Arklow a day or two before. I alluded to some races I had seen in France, and immediately the publican’s wife, a young woman who had just come in, spoke of a visit she had made to the Grand Prix a few years before.
‘Then you have been in France?’ I asked her.
‘For eleven years,’ she replied.
‘Alors vous parlez Francais, Madame?’
‘Mais oui, Monsieur,’ she answered with pure intonation.
We had a little talk in French, and then the old man got his can filled with porter — the evening drink for a party of reapers who were working on the hill — bought a pennyworth of sweets, and went back down the road.
‘That’s the greatest old rogue in the village,’ said the publican, as soon as he was out of hearing; ‘he’s always making up to all who pass through the place, and trying what he can get out of them. The other day a party told me to give him a bottle of XXX porter he was after asking for. I just gave him the dregs of an old barrel we had finished, and there he was, sucking in his lips, and saying it was the finest drink ever he tasted, and that it was rising to his head already, though he’d hardly a drop of it swallowed. Faith, in the end I had to laugh to hear the talk he was making.’
A little later I wished them good evening and started again on my walk, as I had two mountains to cross.
At a Wicklow Fair
The Place and the People
A YEAR OR two ago I wished to visit a fair in County Wicklow, and as the buying and selling in these fairs are got through very early in the morning I started soon after dawn to walk the ten or twelve miles that led to Aughrim, where the fair was to be held. When I came out into the air the cold was intense, though it was a morning of August, and the dew was so heavy that bushes and meadows of mountain grass seemed to have lost their greenness in silvery grey. In the glens I went through white mists were twisting and feathering themselves into extraordinary shapes, and showing blue hills behind them that looked singularly desolate and far away. At every turn I came on multitudes of rabbits feeding on the roadside, or on even shyer creatures — corncrakes, squirrels and snipe — close to villages where no one was awake.
Then the sun rose, and I could see lines of smoke beginning to go up from farm-houses under the hills, and sometimes a sleepy, half-dressed girl looked out of the door of a cottage when my feet echoed on the road. About six miles from Aughrim I began to fall in with droves of bullocks and sheep, in charge of two or three dogs and a herd, or with whole families of mountain people, driving nothing but a single donkey or kid. These people seemed to feel already the animation of the fair, and were talking eagerly and gaily among themselves. I did not hurry, and it was about nine o’clock when I made my way into the village, which was now thronged with cattle and sheep. On every side the usual half-humorous bargaining could be heard above the noise of the pigs and donkeys and lambs. One man would say:
‘Are you going to not divide a shilling with me? Are you going to not do it? You’re the biggest schemer ever walked down into Aughrim.’
A little further on a man said to a seller: ‘You’re asking too much for them lambs.’ The seller answered: ‘If I didn’t ask it how would I ever get it? The lambs is good lambs, and if you buy them now you’ll get home nice and easy in time to have your dinner in comfort, and if you don’t buy them you’ll be here the whole day sweating in the heat and dust, and maybe not please yourself in the end of all.’
Then they began looking at the lambs again, talking of the cleanness of their skin and the quality of the wool, and making many extravagant remarks in their praise or against them. As I turned away I heard the loud clap of one hand into another, which always marks the conclusion of a bargain.
A little further on I found a farmer I knew standing before a public-house, looking radiant with delight. ‘It’s a fine fair, Mister,’ he said, ‘and I’m after selling the lambs I had here a month ago and no one would look at them. Then I took them to Rathdrum and Wicklow, getting up at three in the morning, and driving them in the creel, and it all for nothing. But I’m shut of them now, and it’s not too bad a price I’ve got either. I’m after driving the lambs outside the customs (the boundary where the fair tolls are paid), and I’m waiting now for my money.’ While we were talking, a cry of warning was raised: ‘Mind yourselves below there’s a drift of sheep coming down the road.’ Then a couple of men and dogs appeared, trying to drive a score of sheep that some one had purchased, out of the village, between the countless flocks that were standing already on either side of the way. This task is peculiarly difficult. Boys and men collect round the flock that is to be driven out, and try to force the animals down the narrow passage that is left in the middle of the road. It hardly ever happens, however, that they get through without carrying off a few of some one else’s sheep, or losing some of their own, which have to be restored, or looked for afterwards.
The flock was driven by as well as could be managed, and a moment later an old man came up to us, and asked if we had seen a ewe passing from the west. ‘A sheep is after passing,’ said the farmer I was talking to, ‘but it was not one of yours, for it was too wilful; it was a mountain sheep.’ Sometimes animals are astray in this way for a considerable time — it is not unusual to meet a man the day after a fair wandering through the country, asking after a lost heifer, or ewe — but they are always well marked and are found in the end.
When I reached the green above the village I found the curious throng one always meets in these fairs, made up of wild mountain squatters, gentlemen farmers, jobbers and herds. At one corner of the green there was the usual camp of tinkers, where a swarm of children had been left to play among the carts while the men and women wandered through the fair selling cans or donkeys. Many odd types of tramps and beggars had come together also, and were loitering about in the hope of getting some chance job, or of finding some one who would stand them a drink. Once or twice a stir was made by some unruly ram or bull, but in these smaller fairs there seldom is much real excitement till the evening, when the bad whisky that is too freely drunk begins to be felt.
When I had spoken to one or two men that I wished to see, I sat down near a bridge at the end of the green, between a tinker who was mending a can and a herd who was minding some sheep that had not been sold. The herd spoke to me with some pride of h
is skill in dipping sheep to keep them from the fly, and other matters connected with his work. ‘Let you not be talking,’ said the tinker, when he paused for a moment. ‘You’ve been after sheep since you were that height’ (holding his hand a little over the ground), ‘and yet you’re nowhere in the world beside the herds that do be reared beyond on the mountains. Those men are a wonder, for I’m told they can tell a lamb from their own ewes before it is marked; and that when they have five hundred sheep on the hills — five hundred is a big number — they don’t need to count them or reckon them at all, but they just walk here and there where they are, and if one is gone away they’ll miss it from the rest.’
Then a woman came up and spoke to the tinker, and they went down the road together into the village. ‘That man is a great villain,’ said the herd, when he was out of hearing. ‘One time he and his woman went up to a priest in the hills and asked him would he wed them for half a sovereign, I think it was. The priest said it was a poor price, but he’d wed them surely if they’d make him a tin can along with it. “I will, faith,” said the tinker, “and I’ll come back when it’s done.” They went off then, and in three weeks they came back, and they asked the priest a second time would he wed them. “Have you the tin can?” said the priest. “We have not,” said the tinker; “we had it made at the fall of night, but the ass gave it a kick this morning the way it isn’t fit for you at all.” “Go on now,” says the priest. “It’s a pair of rogues and schemers you are, and I won’t wed you at all.” They went off then, and they were never married to this day.’
As I went up again through the village a great sale of old clothing was going on from booths at each side of the road, and further on boots were set out for sale on boards laid across the tops of barrels, a very usual counter. In another place old women were selling quantities of damaged fruit, kippered herrings, and an extraordinary collection of old ropes and iron. In front of a public-house a ballad-singer was singing a song in the middle of a crowd of people. As far as I could hear it, the words ran like this:
As we came down from Wicklow
With our bundle of switches
As we came down from Wicklow,
Oh! what did we see?
As we came to the city
We saw maidens pretty,
And we called out to ask them to buy our heath-broom.
Heath-broom, freestone, black turf, gather them up.
Oh! gradh machree, Mavourneen,
Won’t you buy our heath-broom?
When the season is over
Won’t we be in clover,
With the gold in our pockets
We got from heath-broom.
It’s home we will toddle,
And we’ll get a naggin,
And we’ll drink to the maidens that bought our heath-broom.
Heath-broom, freestone, black turf, gather them up.
Oh! gradh machree, Mavourneen,
Won’t you buy our heath-broom?
Before he had finished a tinker arrived, too drunk to stand or walk, but leading a tall horse with his left hand, and inviting anyone who would deny that he was the best horseman in Wicklow to fight with him on the spot. Soon afterwards I started on my way home, driving most of the way with a farmer from the same neighbourhood.
A Landlord’s Garden in County Wicklow
A STONE’S THROW from an old house where I spent several summers in County Wicklow, there was a garden that had been left to itself for fifteen or twenty years. Just inside the gate, as one entered, two paths led up through a couple of strawberry beds, half choked with leaves, where a few white and narrow strawberries were still hidden away. Further on was nearly half an acre of tall raspberry canes and thistles five feet high, growing together in a dense mass, where one could still pick raspberries enough to last a household for the season. Then, in a waste of hemlock, there were some half-dozen apple trees covered with lichen and moss, and against the northern walls a few dying plum trees hanging from their nails. Beyond them there was a dead pear tree, and just inside the gate, as one came back to it, a large fuchsia filled with empty nests. A few lines of box here and there showed where the flower-beds had been laid out, and when anyone who had the knowledge looked carefully among them many remnants could be found of beautiful and rare plants.
All round this garden there was a wall seven or eight feet high, in which one could see three or four tracks with well-worn holes — like the paths down a cliff in Kerry — where boys and tramps came over to steal and take away any apples or other fruits that were in season. Above the wall on the three windy sides there were rows of finely-grown lime trees, the place of meeting in the summer for ten thousand bees. Under the east wall there was the roof of a green-house, where one could sit, when it was wet or dry, and watch the birds and butterflies, many of which were not common. The seasons were always late in this place — it was high above the sea — and redpoles often used to nest not far off late in the summer; siskins did the same once or twice, and greenfinches, till the beginning of August, used to cackle endlessly in the lime trees.
Everyone is used in Ireland to the tragedy that is bound up with the lives of farmers and fishing people; but in this garden one seemed to feel the tragedy of the landlord class also, and of the innumerable old families that are quickly dwindling away. These owners of the land are not much pitied at the present day, or much deserving of pity; and yet one cannot quite forget that they are the descendants of what was at one time, in the eighteenth century, a high-spirited and highly-cultivated aristocracy. The broken greenhouses and mouse-eaten libraries, that were designed and collected by men who voted with Grattan, are perhaps as mournful in the end as the four mud walls that are so often left in Wicklow as the only remnants of a farmhouse. The desolation of this life is often of a peculiarly local kind, and if a playwright chose to go through the Irish country houses he would find material, it is likely, for many gloomy plays that would turn on the dying away of these old families, and on the lives of the one or two delicate girls that are left so often to represent a dozen hearty men who were alive a generation or two ago. Many of the descendants of these people have, of course, drifted into professional life in Dublin, or have gone abroad; yet, wherever they are, they do not equal their forefathers, and where men used to collect fine editions of Don Quixote and Moliere, in Spanish and French, and luxuriantly bound copies of Juvenal and Persius and Cicero, nothing is read now but Longfellow and Hall Caine and Miss Corelli. Where good and roomy houses were built a hundred years ago, poor and tawdry houses are built now; and bad bookbinding, bad pictures, and bad decorations are thought well of, where rich bindings, beautiful miniatures, and finely-carved chimney-pieces were once prized by the old Irish landlords.
To return to our garden. One year the apple crop was unusually plentiful, and every Sunday inroads were made upon it by some unknown persons. At last I decided to lie in wait at the dangerous hour — about twelve o’clock — when the boys of the neighbourhood were on their way home from Mass, and we were supposed to be busy with our devotions three miles away. A little before eleven I slipped out, accordingly, with a book, locked the door behind me, put the key in my pocket, and lay down under a bush. When I had been reading for some time, and had quite forgotten the thieves, I looked up at some little stir and saw a young man, in his Sunday clothes, walking up the path towards me. He stopped when he saw me, and for a moment we gazed at each other with astonishment. At last, to make a move, I said it was a fine day. ‘It is indeed, sir,’ he answered with a smile, and then he turned round and ran for his life. I realized that he was a thief and jumped up and ran after him, seeing, as I did so, a flock of small boys swarming up the walls of the garden. Meanwhile the young man ran round and round through the raspberry canes, over the strawberry beds, and in and out among the apple trees. He knew that if he tried to get over the wall I should catch him, and that there was no other way out, as I had locked the gate. It was heavy running, and we both began to get weary. Then I caught my f
oot in a briar and fell. Immediately the young man rushed to the wall and began scrambling up it, but just as he was drawing his leg over the top I caught him by the heel. For a moment he struggled and kicked, then by sheer weight I brought him down at my feet, and an armful of masonry along with him. I caught him by the neck and tried to ask his name, but found we were too breathless to speak.
For I do not know how long we sat glaring at each other, and gasping painfully. Then by degrees I began to upbraid him in a whisper for coming over a person’s wall to steal his apples, when he was such a fine, well-dressed, grownup young man. I could see that he was in mortal dread that I might have him up in the police courts, which I had no intention of doing, and when I finally asked him his name and address he invented a long story of how he lived six miles away, and had come over to this neighbourhood for Mass and to see a friend, and then how he had got a drought upon him, and thought an apple would put him in spirits for his walk home. Then he swore he would never come over the wall again if I would let him off, and that he would pray God to have mercy on me when my last hour was come. I felt sure his whole story was a tissue of lies, and I did not want him to have the crow of having taken me in. ‘There is a woman belonging to the place,’ I said, ‘inside in the house helping the girl to cook the dinner. Walk in now with me, and we’ll see if you’re such a stranger as you’d have me think.’ He looked infinitely troubled, but I took him by the neck and wrist and we set off for the gate. When we had gone a pace or two he stopped. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, ‘my cap’s after falling down on the over side of the wall. May I cross over and get it?’ That was too much for me. ‘Well, go on,’ I said, ‘and if ever I catch you again woe betide you.’ I let him go then, and he rushed madly over the wall and disappeared. A few days later I discovered, not at all to my surprise, that he lived half a mile away, and was intimately related to a small boy who came to the house every morning to run messages and clean the boots. Yet it must not be thought that this young man was dishonest; I would have been quite ready the next day to trust him with a ten-pound note.
