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I verily think that if mortification of the body, without conversion of the life or heart if penance and not repentance could save the soul, no wretch who performed a pilgrimage here could with a good grace be damned. Out of hell the place is matchless, and if there be a purgatory in the other world, it may very well be said there is a fair rehearsal of it in the county of Donegal in Ireland.
When the native population was driven off the good valley lands to the hills of Donegal during the confiscation times, they built their cabins in groups, like the Scotch clachans, for company, perhaps even for protection. Each man broke up, clearing off stones and rooting up whins, the best patch within his reach.
MacManus has retold them in the language of the roads, and this pageant of tinkers and kings, fairies and scholars, lords and fishermen march by to the sound of the pipes and the ribald comments of little boys along the road. The quality of this volume is as fresh as that of those first Donegal fairy stories which Mr. McClure discovered twenty-five years ago.
Some days after this, they came in sight of the coast of the county of Limerick, and then they sailed towards Sligo; but they overshot the mark, and arrived off the coast of Donegal. They then turned back, and arrived at Sligo Bay on the 20th of May.
Nature has sketched the scenery of this part of Ireland with a free, bold hand. It is not so grand or so wild as the scenery of Western Donegal, but it has both a wildness and a grandeur of its own. Sir Henry Burke's seat of Marble Hill, as seen in the distance from the road, stands superbly, high up on a lofty range of wooded hills, from which it commands the country for miles.
The only alternative is the spread of education, and that goes on very slowly in Ireland. We are very, very backward in Donegal, but not nearly so bad as in the south and west. We have a bad name for poverty and ignorance, but we do not deserve it in the same degree as the Munster and Connaught folks. We dislike the Connaught people just as much as you do in England.
At the detective's request the matter was dropped as one that did him harm; but he complimented Arthur on the shrewdness of his suggestions, which indeed had given him new views without changing his former opinions. One lovely morning the good ship sailed into the harbor of Foreskillen, an obscure fishing port on the lonely coast of Donegal. The Arrow had been in sight of land all the day before.
In an affair at Stradbally Bridge, O'Moore obtained a considerable victory, leaving among the slain Alexander and Francis Cosby, grandsons of the commander in the massacre at Mullaghmast. The arrival of three Spanish frigates with arms and ammunition in Donegal Bay was welcome news to the Northern Catholics.
"We'll meet again, Shon," said Sir Duke, "and you'll remember your promise to write to me." "I'll keep my promise, and I hope the news that'll please you best is what you'll send us first from England. And if you should go to ould Donegal I've no words for me thoughts at all!" "I know them. Don't try to say them. We've not had the luck together, all kinds and all weathers, for nothing."
If we land to-day on Iona, or stand in any of the little chapels in Donegal which bear his name, his presence seems as real and tangible to us as that of Tasso at Ferrara or Petrarch at Avignon.
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