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Penelope's Irish Experiences-Part8_Kate Douglas Wiggin(1856-1923)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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it from the Canary Islands to the Isle of Weeping.

Looking back just below here, we saw the tower and cloisters of



Mount Melleray, the Trappist monastery. Very beautiful and very

lonely looked 'the little town of God,' in the shadows of the gloomy



hills. We wished we had known the day before how near we were to

it, for we could have claimed a night's lodging at the ladies'



guest-house, where all creeds, classes, and nationalities are

received with a cead-mile-failte,* and where any offering for food



or shelter is given only at the visitors pleasure. The Celtic

proverb, 'Melodious is the closed mouth,' might be written over the



cloisters; for it is a village of silence, and only the monks who

teach in the schools or who attend visitors are absolved from the



vow.

*A hundred thousand welcomes.



Next came Dromana Castle, where the extraordinary old Countess of

Desmond was born,--the wonderful old lady whose supposed one hundred



and forty years so astonished posterity. She must have married

Thomas, twelfth Earl of Desmond, after 1505, as his first wife is



known to have been alive in that year. Raleigh saw her in 1589, and

she died in 1604: so it would seem that she must have been at least



one hundred and ten or one hundred and twelve when she met her

untimely death,--a death brought about entirely by her own youthful



impetuosity and her fondness for athletic sports. Robert Sydney,

second Earl of Leicester, makes the following reference to her in



his Table-Book, written when he was ambassador at Paris, about

1640:-



'The old Countess of Desmond was a marryed woman in Edward IV. time

in England, and lived till towards the end of Queen Elizabeth, so



she must needes be neare one hundred and forty yeares old. She had

a new sett of teeth not long afore her death, and might have lived



much longer had she not mett with a kinde of violent death; for she

would needes climbe a nut-tree to gather nuts; so falling down she



hurt her thigh, which brought a fever, and that fever brought death.

This my cousin Walter Fitzwilliam told me.'



It is true that the aforesaid cousin Walter may have been a better

raconteur than historian; still, local traditionvigorously opposes



any lessening of the number of the countess's years, pinning its

faith rather on one Hayman, who says that she presented herself at



the English court at the age of one hundred and forty years, to

petition for her jointure, which she lost by the attainder of the



last earl; and it also prefers to have her fall from the historic

cherry-tree that Sir Walter planted, rather than from a casual nut-



tree.

Down the lovely river we went, lazily lying back in the sun, almost



the only passengers on the little craft, as it was still far too

early for tourists; down past Villierstown, Cooneen Ferry,



Strancally Castle, with its 'Murdering Hole' made famous by the

Lords of Desmond, through the Broads of Clashmore; then past Temple



Michael, an old castle of the Geraldines, which Cromwell battered

down for 'dire insolence,' until we steamed slowly into the harbour



of Youghal--and, to use our driver's expression, there is no more

'onderhanded manin'' in Youghal than the town of the Yew Wood, which



is much prettier to the eye and sweeter to the ear.

Here we found a letter from Salemina, and expended another



eighteenpence in telegraphing to her:-

PEABODY, Coolkilla House, near Mardyke Walk, Cork.



We are under Yew Tree at Myrtle Grove where Raleigh and Spenser

smoked, read manuscript Faerie Queene, and planted first potato.



Delighted Benella better. Join you to-morrow. Don't encourage

archaeologist.



PENESCA.

We had a charming hour at Myrtle Grove House, an unpretentious,



gabled dwelling, for a time the residence of the ill-fated soldier

captain, Sir Walter Raleigh. You remember, perhaps, that he was



mayor of Youghal in 1588. After the suppression of the Geraldine




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