Omaha daily bee., 1888-10-07
BenniS0n Bros

that matter, I stepped "high and early'
with a fine sense of citation, rs | set out
long before sunrise of a recent morning.
Round the old walls of Derry | went
nobody calls the city anything else in
Ireland), where 1.-THE devil and Mr..
Walker were suppositiously holly en-
gagged just 200 years ago, for which Mr..
Walker got a costly monument; down
the crumbling stone steps and through
the grim archways Of Ship Quay Gate
with a clank and clatter that disturbed
the naughty polls" in their holdings;
across the echoing spaces of Waterside
Place; into the Strand past the wharves
and ship-yards, with a glimpse at the
purple-black waters of Tough Foyle
under the shadows of the for
est-crowned hills of county
Londonderry, with the weird,
sharply etched ridges of Antrlm be-
You'd; on beyond the sycamore-hooded
villas of the Derry butchers and bakers
who, with their crests of sheep's-heads
rampant and fiour-sacks couchant, have
taken possession of the great halls Of
milords Knockemdown and K~illcmearly;
with n lively pace along the ancient
Bucrana road; and then past Sheritf's
Mountain, out and on further and faster,
with a thrill for the hour and my quest;
into the limped gray and silent, ghostly,
though %palpable presences Of al Irish
country morning. How old is this Irish
road, blanched as the walls of the cabins
beside it, blanchcd as the skinny faces
of the white slaves within them, whose
unshod feet have never touched ten
derer sandals than its pitiless stones?
Ask Of the wraiths OF st. Columbkill, of
st. Mura and of st. Patrick. They trod
it on missions of peace far more than a
thousand years ago. Ask OF the wrath
of Eochy Moyvain, father of Mall of
the Nine Hostages, who assembled
the throne of Ireland in 35S; Of
Eochy Ollahir, the Dagda, who com
menced his reign in the year of the
world, 2,S04. Then ask of the wraiths
of the Observation-Disclosures, the Fir
Bolgs, the Fomorians, in the night of
the vastly centuries beyond them. II
you do, somehow here, alone, in the
gray and shadows of wild Donegal's
hills, you will receive answer to the
whole 'Irish question" like a blade of
] binding light from heaven cutting to
the hearts core, from these hosts of
wraiths in the silences: Are these, be-
meath the matched roofs beside the
road on which you stand, less serfs and
helots in christian Britain's mighty
jubilee years, than when our beacon
lights flashed from an hundred circling
hills and called them from their herds
to defend the shining Grianan?
AS the first winds of the morning from
loughs soughed and sighed family
through the valleys, over the hedges,
among the furze, and in the mountain
heather, Preached the foot of Aileach;
and, committing my initial agraian
crime in Ireland, wantonly ~trespassed
upon old Johnny Porter's holding, by
leaping his sod walls and taking to the
fields. The lower air was still full o.
cleaning, and beginning my solitary
ascent from the west, and darker APP
proach, | made as fine a mess OF it a.
did ever any laundering gossoon fresh
to the acquaintance of mountain-sid(
Irish bog. l c~ndeayored to pick my
way by springirg lightly from crest tC
crest of %crumbling stone with which the
place abounds; but the grass-tufts or the
heather plumes, half covering then
with deceptive curve or fullness o.
green or purple, gave me many a slil
into the Shiny pockets, into which my
leap and weight would sometimes
force my legs to my middle. But
was in for it; and there was neither
honor nor advantage in tarnins back