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"Where's Fanny Fitz?" said Captain Spicer to his wife. They were leaning over the sea-wall in front of a little fishing hotel in Connemara, idling away the interval usually vouchsafed by the Irish car-driver between the hour at which he is ordered to be ready and that at which he appears. It was a misty morning in early June, the time of all times for Connemara, did the tourist only know it.
'In a few years more, a Celtic Irishman will be as rare in Connemara as is the Red Indian on the shores of Manhattan. That is to say, English capital was at last to flow into Ireland for the purchase of encumbered estates, but the anticipation of course was erroneous. English capital was placed for preference in Turkish and in Egyptian bonds, to the great loss of all concerned.
Mr. Lister, in the letter just cited, encloses to Sir R. Routh, in a tabular form, an account of the mill-power in Westport, Newport, and along the coast of Mayo and Connemara. He informs his Chief that there were, in the extent of country named, ten ordinary mills and twenty "gig" mills in all, capable of grinding one hundred and seventy tons of oatmeal per day.
Stories are told of how he has been taken off by the quality in their carriages through the hills of Connemara, to treat their sons and daughters, and come home with his pockets full of money. Another old man, the oldest on the island, is fond of telling me anecdotes not folktales of things that have happened here in his lifetime.
I should not have taken further notice, had not the name of T. Iving, in the corner of the side on which was the direction, attracted my attention. It was the name of Melchior's London correspondent, who had attempted to bribe Timothy. This induced me to look down and read the direction of the packet, and I clearly deciphered, Sir Henry De Clare, Bart., Mount Castle, Connemara.
This created a good deal of noisy merriment as we sat round the mess- table near the entry-port, causing the sharp-eared, lynx-eyed `Jaunty' to spot the offender from his convenient post of observation hard by. "Be quiet there, Paddy!" he sang out, poking his head above the window- sill. "Do you think you're in your own mud cabin in the wilds of Connemara?
You must deny your country, must ye? ye dingy renegade! the black North, but old Ireland still. But here's Connemara for ye take this and this Och, murther! What have we got here . . .?" "Who and what is this O'Donahue?" said I to Frank Ardry after we had descended into the street. "An ill-tempered Irishman," said Frank, "the most disagreeable animal alive, once a rare bird on the earth.
Infant and nurse, and lady's-maid, and gentleman's gentleman, and Sir Culling and the fair Isabella all came over to Ireland last September, just as Fanny had left us, and she meeting them in Dublin, and conceiving that nurse and baby would not do for Connemara, wrote confidentially to beg us to invite them to stay at Edgeworthstown, while father and mother, and maid, and man, were to proceed on their travels.
The words were used by Miles Calhoun, Dyck's father, as a greeting to him on his return from the day's sport. Now, if there was a man in Ireland who had a narrow view and kept his toes pointed to the front, it was Miles Calhoun. His people had lived in Connemara for hundreds of years; and he himself had only one passion in life, which was the Protestant passion of prejudice.
For the first half of the nineteenth century a series of dissolute Hewishes they never bred in great numbers lived wildly upon the edge of Connemara, drinking and fighting and gaming and wenching while the roof of Roscarna grew leaky and the long stables were turned into pigsties, and soft mud silted over the marble bottom below the Palladian bridge.
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