'Silent, O Moyle,* be the roar of thy water;
Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose;
While murmuring mournfully, Lir's lovely daughter Tells to the night-star her tale of woes.'
Thomas Moore.
* The sea between Erin and Alban (Ireland and Scotland) was called in the olden time the Sea of Moyle, from the Moyle, or Mull, of Cantire.
Sorley Boy Hotel, Glens of Antrim.
We are here for a week, in the neighbourhood of Cushendun, just to see a bit of the north-eastern corner of Erin, where, at the end of the nineteenth century, as at the beginning of the seventeenth, the population is almost exclusively Catholic and Celtic. The Gaelic Sorley Boy is, in Irish state papers, Carolus Flavus--yellow-haired Charles--the most famous of the Macdonnell fighters; the one who, when recognised by Elizabeth as Lord of the Route, and given a patent for his estates, burned the document before his retainers, swearing that what had been won by the sword should never be held by the sheepskin. Cushendun was one of the places in our literary pilgrimage, because of its association with that charming Irish poetess and good glenswoman who calls herself 'Moira O'Neill.'
This country of the Glens, east of the river Bann, escaped 'plantation,' and that accounts for its Celtic character. When the grand Ulster chieftains, the O'Donnells and the O'Neills of Donegal, went under, the third great house of Ulster, the 'Macdonnells of the Isles,' was more fortunate, and, thanks to its Scots blood, found favour with James I. It was a Macdonnell who was created first Earl of Antrim, and given a 'grant of the Glens and the Route, from the Curran of Larne to the Cutts of Coleraine.' Ballycastle is our nearest large town, and its great days were all under the Macdonnells, where, in the Franciscan abbey across the bay, it is said the ground 'literally heaves with Clandonnell dust.' Here are buried those of the clan who perished at the hands of Shane O'Neill--Shane the Proud, who signed himself 'Myself O'Neill,' and who has been called 'the shaker of Ulster'; here, too, are those who fell in the great fight at Slieve-an-Aura up in Glen Shesk, when the Macdonnells finally routed the older lords, the M'Quillans. A clansman once went to the Countess of Antrim to ask the lease of a farm.
"Another Macdonnell?" asked the countess. "Why, you must all be Macdonnells in the Low Glens!"
"Ay," said the man. "Too many Macdonnells now, but not one too many on the day of Aura."
From the cliffs of Antrim we can see on any clear day the Sea of Moyle and the bonnie blue hills of Scotland, divided from Ulster at this point by only twenty miles of sea path. The Irish or Gaels or Scots of 'Uladh' often crossed in their curraghs to this lovely coast of Alba, then inhabited by the Picts. Here, 'when the tide drains out wid itself beyant the rocks,' we sit for many an hour, perhaps on the very spot from which they pushed off their boats.
The Mull of Cantire runs out sharply toward you; south of it are Ailsa Craig and the soft Ayrshire coast; north of the Mull are blue, blue mountains in a semicircle, and just beyond them somewhere, Francesca knows, are the Argyleshire Highlands. And oh! the pearl and opal tints that the Irish atmosphere flings over the scene, shifting them ever at will, in misty sun or radiant shower; and how lovely are the too rare bits of woodland! The ground is sometimes white with wild garlic, sometimes blue with hyacinths; the primroses still linger in moist, hidden places, and there are violets and marsh marigolds. Everything wears the colour of Hope. If there are buds that will never bloom and birds that will never fly, the great mother-heart does not know it yet. "I wonder," said Salemina, "if that is why we think of autumn as sad--because the story of the year is known and told?"
Long, long before the Clandonnell ruled these hills and glens and cliffs they were the home of Celtic legend. Over the waters of the wee river Margy, with its half-mile course, often sailed the four white swans, those enchanted children of Lir, king of the Isle of Man, who had been transformed into this guise by their cruel stepmother, with a stroke of her druidical fairy wand. After turning them into four beautiful white swans she pronounced their doom, which was to sail three hundred years on smooth Lough Derryvara, three hundred on the Sea of Erris--sail, and sail, until the union of Largnen, the prince from the north, with Decca, the princess from the south; until the Taillkenn** should come to Erinn, bringing the light of a pure faith, and until they should hear the voice of a Christian bell. They were allowed to keep their own Gaelic speech, and to sing sweet, plaintive, fairy music, which should excel all the music of the world, and which should lull to sleep all who listened to it. We could hear it, we three, for we loved the story; and love opens the ear as well as the heart to all sorts of sounds not heard by the dull and incredulous. You may hear it, too, any fine soft day if you will sit there looking out on Fair Head and Rathlin Island, and read the old fairy tale. When you put down the book you will see Finola, Lir's lovely daughter, in any white-breasted bird; and while she covers her brothers with her wings, she will chant to you her old song in the Gaelic tongue.
** A name given by the Druids to St. Patrick.
'Ah, happy is Lir's bright home today With mirth and music and poet's lay;
But gloomy and cold his children's home, For ever tossed on the briny foam.
Our wreath-ed feathers are thin and light When the wind blows keen through the wintry night;
Yet oft we were robed, long, long ago, In purple mantles and robes of snow.
On Moyle's bleak current our food and wine Are sandy seaweed and bitter brine;
Yet oft we feasted in days of old, And hazel-mead drank from cups of gold.
Our beds are rocks in the dripping caves;
Our lullaby song the roar of the waves;
But soft, rich couches once we pressed, And harpers lulled us each night to rest.
Lonely we swim on the billowy main, Through frost and snow, through storm and rain;