Elizabeth Butler - From sketch-book and diary

I HAVE an idea of writing to you, most sympathetic Reader, of certain days and nights of my travels that have impressed themselves with peculiar force upon my memory, and that have mostly rolled by since you and I set out, at the Parting of the Ways, from the paternal roof-tree, within three months of each other.

First, I want to take you to the Wild West Land of Ireland, to a glen in Kerry, where, so far, the tourist does not come, and then on to remote Clew Bay, in the County Mayo.

After that, come with me up the Nile in the time that saw the close of the Gordon Relief Expedition, when the sailing “Dahabieh,” most fascinating of house-boats, was still the vogue for those who were not in a hurry, and when again the tourist (of that particular year) was away seeking safer picnic grounds elsewhere.

Then to the Cape and the voyage thither, which may not sound alluring, but where you may find something to smile at.

I claim your indulgence, wherever I ask you to accompany me, for my painter’s literary crudities; but nowhere do I need it more than in Italy, for you have trodden that field with me almost foot by foot. The veil to which I trust for softening those asperities elsewhere must fall asunder there.

I have made my Diary, and in the case of the Egyptian chapters, my letters to our mother, the mainsprings from which to draw these reminiscences.

BANSHA CASTLE, July 1909.

MY diary must introduce you to Glenaragh, where I saw a land whose beauty was a revelation to me; a new delight unlike anything I had seen in my experiences of the world’s loveliness. To one familiarized from childhood with Italy’s peculiar charm, a sudden vision of the Wild West of Ireland produces a sensation of freshness and surprise difficult adequately to describe.

“ – June ‘77. – At Killarney we left the train and set off on one of the most enchanting carriage journeys I have ever made, passing by the lovely Lough Leane by a road hedged in on both sides with masses of the richest May blossom. For some distance the scenery was wooded and soft, almost too perfect in composition of wood, lake, river, and mountain; but by degrees we left behind us those scenes of finished beauty, and entered upon tracts of glorious bog-land which, in the advancing evening, impressed me beyond even my heart’s desire by their breadth of colour and solemn tones. I was beginning to taste the salt of the Wilds.

“The scenery grew more rugged still, and against ranges of distant mountains jutted out the strong grey and brown rocks, the stone cairns and cabins of the Wild West land.

“To be a figure-painter and full of interest in mankind does not mean that one cannot enjoy, from the depths of one’s heart, such scenes as these, where what human habitations there are, are so like the stone heaps that lie over the face of the land that they are scarcely distinguishable from them. When observed they only convey to the mind the sense of the feebleness of man, overpowered as he is here by the might of the primeval landscape. This human atom stands timidly at his black cabin door to see the stranger pass, often half-witted through privation; or he silently tills the little patch of land he has borrowed from the strong and barbarous earth that yields him so little.

“The mighty ‘Carran Thual,’ one of the mountain group which rises out of Glenaragh and dominates the whole land of Kerry, was ablaze with burning heather, its peak sending up a glorious column of smoke which spread out at the top for miles and miles and changed its exquisite smoke tints every minute as the sun sank lower. As we reached the rocky pass that took us by the wild and remote Lough Acoose that sun had gone down behind an opposite mountain, and the blazing heather glowed brighter as the twilight deepened, and circles of fire played fiercely and weirdly on the mountain-side. Our Glen gave the ‘Saxon lady’ its grandest illumination on her arrival.

“Wild strange birds rose from the bracken as we passed, and flew strongly away over lake and mountain torrent, and the little black Kerry cows all watched us go by with ears pricked and heads inquiringly raised. The last stage of the journey had a brilliant finale . A herd of young horses was in our way in the narrow road, and the creatures careered before us, unable or too stupid to turn aside into the ditches by the roadside to let us through. We could not head them, and for fully a mile did those shaggy wild things caper and jump ahead, their manes flying out wildly with the glow from the west shining through them. Some imbecile cows soon joined them in the stampede, for no imaginable reason, unless they enjoyed the fright of being pursued, and the ungainly progress of those recruits was a sight to behold, – tails in the air and horns in the dust. The troop led the way right into the eye of the sunset. With this escort we entered Glenaragh.

“ – June 1877. – We rode in to-night after a long excursion amidst the mountains of this wild land of Kerry, rode down into the glen where our little inn stands in a clump of birch and arbutus trees. That northern light which in these high latitudes and at this season carries the after-light of the sunset on into the dawn, lighted our path for the last hour with surprising power. Were we sufficiently far north, of course, the sun itself would not dip below the horizon at all, but here we have only the upper portion of his aureole from his setting to his rising. Oh! the wild freedom of these mountain paths, the scent of the cabin turf fires, the round west wind rolling through the heather; what cool wells of memories they fill up for the thirsty traveller in desert places far away. That west wind! This is the first land it has swept with its wings since it left the coasts of Labrador. For purity, for freshness, for generosity, give me the Wild West wind of Ireland.

“‘Carran Thual’ is still on fire; it signals each night back to the northern light across the glen in a red glare of burning heather. The moon, now in her first quarter, looks green-gold by contrast with all this red of sky and flame, and altogether our glen gives us, these nights, such a display of earthly and heavenly splendour that it seems one should be a spectator all night of so much beauty. And to this concert of colour runs the subtle accompaniment of rushing water, for all these mountains are laced with silvery torrents leaping down to the lakes and rivers that reflect the glory of the sky. Glenaragh! loveliest of wild valleys, where is the poet that should make thee the theme of his songs?

“Coming through ‘Windy Gap’ in this illuminated gloaming we met a lonely horseman riding fast, a rope for his bridle, his pony very shaggy. He passed us over the rocks and rolling stones, and, looking back, we saw his bent figure jet black against the west for a moment, ere he dipped down through the ‘Gap’ out of sight. We knew who he was. Some peasant was dying on the mountain-side beyond, and the priest was anxious to be in time with the Viaticum.

“A strange little creature came out of the kitchen of the inn to see us after supper, and I made the acquaintance of a Leprechaun. Tiny, grey, bald little manikin; a ‘fairy,’ the people call him. I do not want to know why they are like that. I would rather leave them mysterious and unexplained.

“The people speak Gaelic here, amongst themselves, and the priest preaches in it in the little chapel with the mud floor up on the hill over the torrent. The language and the torrent seem to speak alike, hurrying headlong.