I seem to have known all these people before, and indeed I have met
them between the covers of a book; for Connemara has one prophet,
and her name is Jane Barlow. In how many of these wild bog-lands of
Connaught have we seen a huddle of desolate cabins on a rocky
hillside, turf stacks looking darkly at the doors, and empty black
pots sitting on the thresholds, and fancied we have found Lisconnel!
I should recognise Ody Rafferty, the widow M'Gurk, Mad Bell, old
Mrs. Kilfoyle, or Stacey Doyne, if I met them face to face, just as
I should know other real human creatures of a higher type,--Beatrix
Esmond, Becky Sharp, Meg Merrilies, or Di Vernon.
Chapter XXIII. Beams and motes.
'Mud cabins swarm in
This place so charming,
With sailor garments
Hung out to dry;
And each abode is
Snug and commodious,
With pigs melodious
In their straw-built sty.'
Father Prout.
'"Did the Irish elves ever explain themselves to you, Red Rose?"
'"I can't say that they did," said the English Elf. "You can't call
it an explanation to say that a thing has always been that way,
just: or that a thing would be a heap more bother any other way."'
The west of Ireland is depressing, but it is very beautiful; at
least if your taste includes an appreciation of what is wild,
magnificent, and sombre. Oppressed you must be, even if you are an
artist, by its bleakness and its dreariness, its lonely lakes
reflecting a dull, grey sky, its desolate boglands, its solitary
chapels, its wretched cabins perched on hillsides that are very
wildernesses of rocks.
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