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I stood upon the Giant's Causeway, one of the grand masterpieces of the Almighty; I visited the historic parks and deserted legislative halls of venerated Dublin; threaded the streets and byways of the quaint old city of Cork; listened the bells of Shandon; sailed over the beautiful lakes of Killarney, and gazed upon the old castles of Muckross and of Blarney, whose ivy-covered ruins tell of the far-away centuries.
Herbert's to receive a shilling for each passenger before they could pass to the boats. "He makes a good thing out of it," remarked the boatmen. I do not know how many more fees are to be paid for a look about the lakes of Killarney, but this gate, Torc Cascade and Muckross Abbey cost each tourist two shillings and sixpence to look at them.
One is about a holy man of Muckross, who fell into some great sin, and repenting of it, waded into the lake, and stuck a holly-stick into the bottom, and said he would not leave the spot till it should throw out leaves and branches. So he did penance for seven years, and then the stick suddenly leaved out and blossomed, and became a great tree, by which the good man knew that he was pardoned.
The Duke of Marlborough settled down well to his work. He was frankly the friend of the landlords, and did his best for them. But he brought no English politicians in his train; he never thought he could settle every Irish question after he had smoked a pipe over it; and he was never inaccessible. He came on a visit to Muckross when Sir Ivor Guest had the shooting, and I dined there to meet him.
As for Raspe, he betook himself to a remote part of the United Kingdom, and had commenced some mining operations in country Donegal, when he was carried off by scarlet fever at Muckross in 1794. Such in brief outline was the career of Rudolph Erich Raspe, scholar, swindler, and undoubted creator of Baron Munchausen.
Nos. 2 and 3 are taken from gravestones in the old churchyard near Queenstown, and the other appears in duplicate on one stone at Muckross Abbey by the Lakes of Killarney.
A dangerous place for any one to pass unless he had his eyes and his wits well about him; but Mike Sheehan was such a one, for he had the eye of the eagle over Muckross, he could climb like the mountain goat, and could carry his drink so well that no man ever saw him less than clear-headed. Mike, with his six-feet-six of manhood, was well in request at the country gatherings.
The ruined abbey of Muckross is another of the sights of Killarney. Every visitor pays a shilling to Mr. Herbert for permission to enter here. I did not go to see it, but some of the party at the hotel did. They described the cloisters as being in a good state of preservation cloisters are a kind of arched piazza running round a court yard, in this case having in its centre a magnificent yew tree.
The stately wreck of Muckross Abbey has in its decay enclosed within its walls the tombs of knights and heroes whose monuments stand in gorgeous contrast to the desolation which is mouldering around them; while on the south side of the ancient edifice is the graveyard in which the peasant-fathers of the hamlet sleep, the green mounds which cover them in some instances marked by carved stones taken from the adjacent ruins.
We took dinner on shore, seated on the soft, cool grass, under the shade of arbutus-trees, and after a little stroll, returned over the water to our hotel, but a very little wearied by our day of pleasure. Our first excursion the next morning was to the ruins of Muckross Abbey, on a peninsula which divides the Lower Lake from Torc Lake.
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