Morning journal and courier., 1888-10-06

Relic-An Early Morning Tramp
 Past and Present-Dr. Walter Her.
 nard's Work.
 LONDONDERRY, Ireland, Sept. 26. To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 To be exact about the matter from an Irish standpoint, my first journey afoot in Ireland was upon the proud and dizzy heights of an Irish jauntingcar to my an- eient inn, where I was awakened repeatedly during the livelong night by the soft cud- ding murmurs of the ducks and geese in the stable yard below my window, to find my self clutehing the Eosts and bars of the iron bedstead, as if again fighting for occupancy of my state room berth. at sea-. The next was great sail altogether up the river Foyle,
 Where the sum- OCT the mountains,
 Does nothing but smile!-
 with that greatest waterside liar and black guard of the world, John Donohue, who will blarney ten shillings out of your pocket for a abob's" service in the wink of an eye. The next was a genuine tramp of fully fifty miles (and there's nothing longer than an Irish mile save true list Of the Irish saints, more power to themD among the wild noun tains of Inishowen, where the proper Irish poteen, sweet as the dews from heaven, is distilled wholly outside the unpleasant geog- raphy of the law. And the next was glo- rious tramp to, and day at, that most unique and wonderful of all Irish Pagan an- tiquities, the Grianan of Aileach.
 The Grianan is quite unknown to Ameri- cans and Englishmen, who usually deem 8 drive about Dublin town,
 | A shy at Killarney,
 An the Stone of the Blarney,
 a sufficient insight into Irish scene, history and character for drawing room, literary and political prattle. Even the Irish themselves, save their few students of their own sntiqui- ties, comprehend little of it's surpassing i'm portance as an indubitable monument to the truth of their own claims of kingly ances- | try extending for thousands of years behind the advent of the Christian era. And 1t was but few weeks since that the Royal Histori- | cal and Archaeological society of Ireland whose patient and sacri6cial researches in the rich though neglected fields of Irish an- tiquities, during the past quarter of centu- ". have done more than all influences and factors of all the ages towards clearing Irish history of rubbish, and stemming forever the flood of a worlds ridioule against Irish claims of heroic, if Pagan, past-journey- ing hither, set their final seal of authsntici- ty upon the grand relic, now restored, whose existence was known to Prolemy in the sec- ond century, and whose age cannot be less than two thousand five hundred, and which may exceed three thousand years. And so, as nobody with staff and pen in his hand was at the Griansn since, and scarcely before for that matter, I stepped "high and early'' I with fine sense of elation, as set out long | before sunrise of recent morning, Round 1 the old walls of Derry went (nobody calls the city anything else in Ireland), where | .tthe devil and MT. Walker" were supposi- l tiously hotly engaged just two hundred years ago. for which Mir. Walker got a costly mon- ument; down the crumbling stone steps and | through the grim archways of Ship Quay 1 Gate with a clank and chatter that disturbed | the naughty ''polis" in their holdings; across l the echoing spaces of Waterside Place; into | the Strand past the wharves and ship yards, l with glimpse at the purple black waters of l Lough Foyle under the shadows of the for | est crowned hills of county Londonderry l with the weird, sharply etched ridges of An trim beyond; on beyond the sycamore hood | ed villas of the Derry butchers and bakers, | l pant and four sacks couohant, have taken | possession of the great halls of milords | Knockemdown and Killemearly; with a live | ly pace along the ancient Bucrana road; and | then past Sheriff's Mountain, out and on fur | ther and faster, with thrill for the hour anc
 my quest;-into the limPed gray and silent | ghostly though palpable presences of ar | Irish country morning. How old is thi Irish road, blanched as the walls of the cab ins beside it, blanched as the skinny faces O
 the white slaves within them whose unshot feet have never touched tenderer sandal
 than it's pitiless stones? Ask of the wraith of St. Columbkill, of St. Mura and of St
 Patrick. They trod it on missions of peae far more than thousand years ago. Ask o
 the wrath of Eochy Moyvain, father of Nisl
 of the Nine Hostages, who assembled th
 throne of Ireland in 358; of Eochy Ollahir
 the Dagda, who commenced his reign in tn
 year of the world 2904. Then ask of tn
 wraiths of the Tuatha De Danans, the Eli
 Bolgs, the Fomorians, in the night of th
 vasty centuries beyond them. If you dc
 somehow here alone in the gray and shadow l of wild Donegal's hills, you will receive au
 swer to the whole Irish question" like
 blade of blinding light from heaven cuttin
 to the hearts core from these hosts Q l wraiths in the silences: Are these, beneatl
 the matched roofs beside the road on whic
 you stand, less serfs and helots in Christis Britain's mighty jubilee years, than whe
 our beacon lights flashed from an hundre
 circling hills and called them from thei
 herds to defend the shining Griananl
 As the first winds of the morning fror
 loughs soughed and sighed faintly throug
 the valleys, over the hedges, among tn
 furze and in the mountain heather, reache the foot of Aileach; and committing my ini
 tial agrarian crime in Ireland, wantonly tres pessed upon old Johnny Porter's holding b
 leaping his sod walls and taking to the fields
 The lower air was still full of gloaming, an beginning my solitary ascent from the wef of it as ever did any blundering gossoo
 fresh to the acquaintance of mountain-sid Irish bog. I sndasvored to pick my way b | HnrinninQ HQhkIY fynn craah 10 nrasA nf nrH rr