The
chief trouble was that we always desired every dwelling that we saw.
I tell you this with a view of lessening the shock when I confess
that, before we came to the Old Hall where we are now settled for a
month, and which was Salemina's choice, Francesca and I took two
different houses, and lived in them for seven days, each in solitary
splendour, like the Prince of Coolavin. It was not difficult to
agree upon the district, we were of one mind there: the moment that
we passed the town and drove along the flowery way that leads to
Devorgilla, we knew that it was the road of destiny.
The whitethorn is very late this year, and we found ourselves in the
full glory of it. It is beautiful in all its stages, from the time
when it first opens its buds, to the season when 'every spray is
white with may, and blooms the eglantine.' There is no hint of
green leaf visible then, and every tree is 'as white as snow of one
night.' This is the Gaelic comparison, and the first snow seems
especially white and dazzling, I suppose, when one sees it in the
morning where were green fields the night before. The sloe, which
is the blackthorn, comes still earlier and has fewer leaves. That
is the tree of the old English song:-
'From the white-blossomed sloe
My dear Chloe requested
A sprig her fair breast to adorn.
"No, by Heav'ns!" I exclaimed, "may I perish,
If ever I plant in that bosom a thorn!"'
And it is not only trees, but hedges and bushes and groves of
hawthorn, for a white thorn bush is seldom if ever cut down here,
lest a grieved and displeased fairy look up from the cloven trunk,
and no Irishman could bear to meet the reproach of her eyes.
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