United States or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
George's Channel spanned then straight as the crow flies over Wicklow, Queen's County, King's County, taking Galway at the acute angle of the wild mallard's flight; and there would be the chained lakes and winding silver rivers, the grey-green mountains and the beetling cliffs, the dreamy valleys and wild glens of Connemara, with the ancient towers of Castleclare rising from its mossed lawns studded with immemorial oaks.
We walked on, and Ulick, who was a professional wit as well as a giant, told us the long-ago tale of Lord Anglesea's visit to Connemara, and how as he walked beside his horse this gentleman-lord, as he was, had axed him which of his legs he liked best.
Yet it is only in the intonation of a few sentences or some old fragment of melody that I catch the real spirit of the island, for in general the men sit together and talk with endless iteration of the tides and fish, and of the price of kelp in Connemara. After Mass this morning an old woman was buried.
So saying, and without any further provocation, he upset the croupier, chair and all, with one sudden jerk upon the floor, and giving a tremendous kick to the casette, sent all the five-franc pieces flying over him; he then jumped upon the table, and brandishing his black-thorn through the ormolu lustre, scattered the wax-lights on all sides, accompanying the exploit by a yell that would have called up all Connemara at midnight, if it had only been heard there; in an instant, the gens d'armes, always sufficiently near to be called in if required, came pouring into the room, and supposing the whole affair had been a preconcerted thing to obtain possession of the money in the bank, commenced capturing different members of the company who appeared, by enjoying the confusion, to be favouring and assisting it.
His untidy black hair and dark eyes contrasted strangely with the fair and delicate beauty of his sister Thora. A stranger might have taken Thora to be of pure Norse family, and her adventurous spirit would have justified the belief. But Tom took after his father, whose type was that of a race not uncommon in the north of Scotland, and called for I know not what reason "The dark men of Connemara."
We see their remains still so tiny, yet so enduring in the Isles of Arran; upon a dozen rocky points all round the bleak edges of Connemara; in the wild mountain glens of the Burren set often with an admirable selection of site, in some sloping dell with, perhaps, a stream slipping lightly by and hurrying to lose itself in the ground, always with a well or spring brimming freshly over an object still of reverence to the neighbouring peasants.
Their blood is not stirred by the memories of Kossovo, and they have no burning desire to die for Serbia. They would much prefer to be allowed to till their own potato gardens in peace in Connemara.
My curiosity had been raised even when I first came to Ireland fifty years ago, by hearing my father talk of the King of Connemara, and his immense territory, and his ways of ruling over his people with almost absolute power, with laws of his own, and setting all other laws at defiance.
Pearse was concerned with Ireland's yesterday; he desired to bring the present and the future into organic rotation with the past. But his yesterday was not Miss Somerville's nor mine. The son of an English mechanic and a Galway woman, he was brought up in Connemara after the landlord power had ceased to exist.
The Cabinet ministers might be as silent as they chose, the indignant duke might confine his denunciations to the attentive and sympathetic ear of his friend Lord Connemara; but nothing on earth could prevent Ernest Le Breton's fiery and scathing diatribe from immediately enthralling the public attention.
Word Of The Day