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Show I flwfteel Tn Ireland j Ey iOKN a. BLACK (Copyright. 1903, by John A. Black.) Maynooth fc. known for its great Catholic col-'lege col-'lege which stands high among modern institutions of learning. ', It was visited by King Edward in July last, who made a special; journey from Dublin for that purpose. There are picturesque ruins of an old castle of the Fitzgeralds, covered with ivy to the very top. This castle has the honorable dis- ' tinction of being the first in Ireland to be taken by artillery; this was during the rebellion of "Silken "Sil-ken Thomas" Fitzgerald in 153.. It is a very poor street with houses on one side along which I came into the town from the south and I repented having chosen so unpromising a place to spend the night, till I turned on to the wide main street with the college and castle at one end and the Demesne gate at the other, which had a better bet-ter look. I shall never forget how the big-roomed hotel in Maynooth depressed my spirits. I entered a great circular, stone-floored hall; ascended a wide stair; sat down alone in an immense dining room at one end of a banquet table without the banquet; and slept in a room which the feeble light of my tallow candle exaggerated to enormous proportions. Small rooms are friendlier than large ones.. In these hotels ho-tels in the smaller Irish towns you don't' press a button to light, your room; but you pick out from the row set in the hall a candle to suit your fancy, and light it, which will bum. a hole in the darkness big enough for you to sit in; and I have discovered that you'ean even read a little .with two candles. I always choose, the candle with the most matches on the fray; and I prefer those which do not lean to one side, but they are very rare. On my way to Duuboyne out of Maynooth I failed to make the proper turn and again the straight and narrow road led mo astray, and into Clonee; but if I am never led into a worse place I shall do well, for it is a "nate and dacent" village. Near Black Bull a ferocious name for so tame a place chance led me into a little home which I cannot forgpt. The floor was hard earth; the walls rough stone; the ceiling smoked rafters and thatch. A little bed of coals under the open-mouthed chimney chim-ney gave out some heat and a good deal of stray smoke which the simmering pot turned out of its upward course, and which the weak-lunged chimney chim-ney was not able to draw back in again. Through the open upper half of the doorway light came in and smoke went out. At the fire sat an old woman, careworn and feeble, who rose and welcomed me; in the corner of the inner room, half sitting up on a bed was an old man; for eight months he had been there "with the sickness on him." In that dark, cave-like cottage he had fought with grim death for months, his faithful "woman" by his side: and now he was resting after the battle, but only a word at a time could I get out of either of them about their long wrestle with Death, so thankful were they for .the victory, so hopeful for the future, now that it was over. "Pray for the soul of Thomas Ward"' is requested request-ed of those, who go this way, by a tombstone-tike tablet set in the wall by the roadside near Dun-shaughlin. Dun-shaughlin. This is a one-street town which stretches stretch-es along the road for a half mile with many a gap between the houses, and seemingly few people to the half mile I saw less than a dozen, with one or two carts. A narrow, winding side road, up hill, between high, thick hedges, takes me into the "Hill of Tara." "This was an ould ancient place once," said Pat of another spot, which is a good desscription of Tara. It is so completely leveled to earth, and so destitute of marks of its former greatness that it is hard for one to realize that he treads on the dust of kings and kings' courts, and banqueting halls once filled with Ireland's "chiefs and ladies bright." when he walks over these fields. For centuries this was the "hub" of Ireland. But imagination falters and fails, with nothing but a few mounds to assist it, when I try to rebuild the halls and fill them with noisy banqueters and the strains of 'The harp that once through Tara's hall The soul of music shed." Sitting here on this desolate hill I do faintly hear the roar and confusion of the hall of assembly: "Along each side of which were double rows of seats and tables, while in the middle stood vats of liquor XXX, I suppose lamp, and huge fires at which were numerous attendants cooking. At the southern and highest end sat the king and chiefs. Lower down sat the other courtiers, bards, doctors, historians, druids and augurs, down to the rabble of 150 waiters, jugglers, jesters and doorkeepers." The banquet is over, the banqueters have. risen and gone some 1,500 years ago, and over the fragments Father Time has spread the greeen cover. There is no monument of any king here onlfl the statue of St. Patrick, who, in the name of the King of Kings, took Tara that Easter morning when with mitre and crozier for arms, and spotless robes of white for armor, chanting a hymn for a war song, with his few followers, in white also, he boldly faced the pagan king whose anger they had kindled with their pascal fire on the hill- of Slane the night before. A quite modern church stauds on the slope of the hill just above tho village, surrounded sur-rounded by a grove and graveyard. The village if village it may be called is a row of poor houses on the uppepr side of the road one a public house. Tn the sixth century the kings and nobles of Ireland deserted Tara, leaving old Leary the king whom St. Patrick met that Easter day who stand.? in his mound where he was buried "upright in ar- i mor looking towards his foes," to guard the place ! j alone ; and he has done it right well, for some cows ! on the hill, a goat grazing in the village street, and a woman hanging over the half-doof of her cottage, were all the intruders I saw about Tara.. After crossing Kilcarn bridge, the road keeps alongside the Boyne to Xavan. This town stands on a hill around which sweeps the Boyne aud the Blaekfrater, to their marriage below the bridge, where Blackwater becomes Boyne, for better or for i worse, till the sea do them part. At the foot of j Watergate street Pool boy bridge carries me over the BJaekwatcr into a rather dilapidated outskirt of Xavan, which lies along the river and stretches up the hill. If Ratholdron castle to the left of the Toad, hid in trees, is as pretty as the long avenue of great trees that leads down to it, it ought to be visited; but one never knows how many keepers and other watchful animals arc lying in wait to pounce upon you, in these private demesne, so I did not enter the open gate, for fear it might prove a trap. To the left of the road in a pretty wooded spot, surrounded by the usual graveyard, stands Donagh-partick Donagh-partick church on the site of the first church built by St. Patrick, if the tradition be true. The tower is old, but the body of the church has recently been rebuilt. The wire fence is 'very modern and disenchants disen-chants the picture. Xear Kells I came on Lord Headfort's little farms which I was the better part of a day in crossing. cross-ing. The country about Kells is rolling and well wooded. This ancient and interesting town spreads itself over the side and top of a low hill in a careless, care-less, lounging way, which is excusable on account of age. At the top of the town is the church which is seemingly divided against itself, for the tower - and steeple which is supposed not only to indicate the direction to heaven, but also the proper point of departure, stands not on the church, but apart on an independent foundation dissension petrified, as Coleridge would say. In the churchyard which surrounds the church are some very old crosses and sculptured slabs, and a tall rouud tower. An old man who saw mo photographing photo-graphing the round tower took me through his house into a back yard and showed me the base of another, some twenty feet high, standing in a field and covered with ivy. Outside the churchyard is Sti Columba's house, a high-walled house with steep stone roof. The ceiling is arched and between it and the roof are rooms, in one of which is St. Columba's Co-lumba's stone bed. The Cross of Kells stands in the market place. It is a hoary old wayside cross and has lifted up martyrs on its arms, for it was used as a gallows in 1798, so they say. About it today are gathered the carts of traffickers in Kail, and squealing pigs and other market day produce,' while seller and buyer haggle over ha'pennies and "bobs" to their hearts' content. Kells is altogether a most interesting place, and it would require a book instead of a paragraph to set forth its ancient importance. Here, in what is today only a quiet market town, once lived scholars and artists competent to produce such a wonderful work as the Book of Kells; here lived celebrated saints "St. Columba and another great man St. Kieran used to play tricks on one another here," so said my old guide, telling me of St. Columba'3 house. (Continued next week.). |