Romantic Ireland. Volume 2/2

Milburg Mansfield

Blanche Blanche

M.F and B. McM. Mansfield

Romantic Ireland; volume 2/2

CHAPTER I

QUEENSTOWN, CORK, AND BLARNEY

QUEENSTOWN has been called a mere appendage to its harbour, and, truly, it is a case of the tail wagging the dog, though the residents of Cork will tell you it is Cork Harbour, anyway, and Queenstown is nothing but a town that was made by the American War of Independence, and by the emigration rush that, during the past sixty years, has deprived Ireland of more than half her population.

Be this as it may, the harbour dwarfs everything else about the town. Above the enormous expanse of sheltered water, the little town piles itself up on the overhanging cliffs, pink houses, yellow houses, white houses, like a veritable piece of Italy. It is always warm here, or almost always. In the winter time, the temperature is seldom severe, and, in the summer, it is one of the finest yachting centres in the United Kingdom.

The “Beach” of Queenstown is truly Irish, since it is not a beach at all, but a fenced street full of shops, occupying the place where a narrow strand once ran.

Time was when Galway was a rival to Queenstown for the honour of being the link which was, by the emigrant chain, to bind the Old World to the New; but now the honour is Queenstown’s alone.

If tears, – the bitterest ever shed on earth, the hopeless tears of lonely aged parents parting from their cherished offspring; of man’s love leaving woman’s love thousands of miles behind across the seas; of friend clasping the hand of friend perhaps for the last time; of brothers and sisters parting from brothers and sisters, and all from the land that the Irishman loves as he loves his own life, – if such tears as these could quench the myriad of fairy lights that sparkle on the great harbour at dusk.

Queenstown would doubtless be the darkest city in all the world.

Queenstown is drenched in tears; the air still quivers inaudibly with the wailings that have filled it through day after day of half a century or more of bitter partings. Thousands have left Ireland every year from these quays, “the torn artery through which the country’s best blood drains away year by year.” To see an emigrant-ship cast loose from the quay and steam out of the harbour is a sight, once witnessed, that will never be forgotten; that will haunt one’s very dreams in years to come.

Until 1849 Cove was the name of the city, but during a visit of Queen Victoria here at that time, her first visit to Irish soil, the name was changed, in her honour, to that which it now bears.

Cork Harbour, to most travellers, is little more than a memory; but, in reality, it is one of those beautiful landlocked waterways which, for sheer beauty and grandeur, is, in company with Bantry Bay and Dingle Bay, which are less known, only comparable to the fiords of Norway. They have not the majesty or expansiveness of many of the latter; but they have most of their attributes more subtly expressed. Indeed, Cork Harbour and the river Lee, whose waters are in part enfolded by “the third city of Ireland,” Cork (Corcaig, “a marshy place”), are unapproachable in all the world for a certain subtle charm which is perhaps inexpressible in words.

As the Lee divides and encircles the city, it well illustrates Spenser’s lines:

“The spreading Lee that like an Island Fayre,

Encloseth Cork with his divided flood.”

Even the present-day aspect of Cork Harbour and the estuary of the river Lee from the heights of Queenstown is one of the fairest blendings of sea and shore anywhere to be seen.

Spike Island, with its convict establishment; Haulbowline, with its naval establishment; Rocky Island, with its powder magazine; Crosshaven Ring; and Rostellan Castle at once attract notice; and the eye roams with pleasure over a charming scene, enlivened with shipping of all kinds and from all ports, from the humble lugger to the steam-collier, and, finally, the ocean leviathans, which, in our strenuous times, have become known as “reco