Morning journal and courier., 1888-12-22
AFOOT HIN IRELAND.
Chris.mas-Time 1n Irelaad-Xnteresl
 Ing Scenes and Customs.

hris.maS-E1me 1n ArcIaA0-1ntereBt-
 Ing Scenes and Customs.
 To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 Ireland in the Christmas holiday time is
 scenioally perhaps in it's least pleasing
 peet The straits and privations of fully four million of her remaining four million five hundred thousand inhabitants are also in their direst tense and mood. But natures hand is loving one even in the Irish win ter: and the blessed hold that Christmas time has taken upon the universal Christian world-heart, blended with that marvellous compensative power of utilizing the most trihing possibilities for human joy which the Irish nature possesses, permits and pro- vides a quality of Christmas-tims cheer wkioh is often surprising to those whose lives are measurably filled with bounteous- ness and content.
 Of the out door life of the Irish winter, where 1t can be separated from the unfortu- ! nate condition of those to whose eyes win. ter can be only an added danger and terror, \ Borroughs or Thoreau might furnish 8 ! winsomesvolume. The Irish roads, though ! humid with wet from frequent rains, dusty ! from weeks occasional cold and bracing weather, or whitened from center to wall ! with the frost of early morning, are ever a | source of collaboration and delight. Here one will sweep up and on and over jncreas- ing swells of upland, to the eye the brown walls of it's side climbing like delicate rus set spires to where the way is lost in the hazy edge of a brown-gray sky. Millet, with his magical power of rude still life suggestiveness, should have put this scenic reach on canvass. Here an Irish winter road swails along and through an avenue of beech, yew and sycamore, where twi- light always lies, where now the brown leaves eddy and swirl, and spring witch ingly from dark corners upon passing carts or humans, and the bare old limbs above cry out in their wild keens for the dead year. There they creep down together, crossing as they pass huddled mass of wall and thstch. Over yonder you chalky way winding and gleaming through dreary wastes of beggy peat. Be- yond another threads mountain-side, loos- ing itself in witching de6les, or suddenly reaching the edge of precipices, and then winding gracefully around lower steeps, if to reach the warmest valleys. And what entrancing scenes are ready for him who will walk these grand old roads! For nature lover or artist within one short half day's tramp you may feast on gray, drear crags around which the heather never fades; river of murmurous, sinuous sweetness and beau ty; cabins innumerable, with their ragged, hopeless, but eYer-hospitable inmates; hsm- lets with wonderful old trees, shops, homes and old, old folk and ways; manor-house with mournfal tokens of the rare and roar ing mirth that once held sway, but still standing sturdy and gaunt within neglected
  mansion of the rich and feared, or fearing { and rich, where noble forests hide approach es of beauty and splendor; castles of that age when Irish baronies were parceled out to crown adventurous, men made serfs and mighty structures reared by these new-made slaves to perpetuate their own servitude; ! castles of a later day raised as exquisite | architectural monuments to enlightened | greed and tyranny; and both set deep or ! high in dmesnes of as magnificent natural ! and cultivated beauty as can be found by ! man; moors of dark, dreadful blackness and | sterility; bogs, vast, gurgling, seething, rot ! ting, but hiding Irelsnd's sole fuel and her ! prehistoric forests which stand upright and \ perfect beneath the mire; bridge of greatest \ age and quaintest arch; lonesome, pallid cross, cut clear and sharp against the hazy | brown of mountain side; deserted shrine hiding in wretched solitude and decay; ruin | of splendid proportions and antiquity screamed over by daws and half shrouded in \ ivy; and here and there and ail about, in ! brightest or savagest midwinter days, | glimpses of Irelands matchless green. ! When one experiences it all and endeavors to hold it in single thought, the certain rehec- \ ton comes that in no land where one may | wander at Christmas time can there be found
 such surpassing blending of, and such strik- ing contrast in, the grandly desolate in I scenes of wonder and marvellous sweetness, and in scenes of winsome delight. But your | heart WOukO LaSL60 to GQ6 IOWlY tQlQgS OI Ire | land, instead of that which is impressive and great. It would find charm In the little ! places; the tiny burns and dingles; the little struggling hamlets, where all who give them
 life must know of you as you pass or finger
 the quaint little chapels; the low roofed
 road, field and sky, the Irish birds of ar
 Irish mid winter.
 Starlings are seen in myriads. They are
 ! everywhere, reminding of Stearne's starline
 | with its ceaseless vail of, ''I can't get outr
 'I can't get outi" It is only within hal1
 l dozen years that they have remained all the
 ! year. They formerly only came when the
 ] sparrow departed, and the nature wise Irist
 peasant cycling their rushing ingatherins
 ! about the fields, cabins and old ruins, would
 ! savagely mutter ssThe divil take the same
 for it's winter that's wid em!" Beneath tht ! l cottage thatch, in lonely round towers anG
 ! even in caves, their winter numbers seen
 l greater than those of summer, as they con gregate within easy observation by homesid'
 and roadside fields. Full of life the winte
 long, gay and bright, even almost tiresom 7 with their thrush like calls and impish mim , | icry, they serve not only for the cheeries mid winter enlivening, but many brace O
 these brave birds are found within the peas ants Christmas pot. That sweetest of al
 birds to poet or dreamer, the song thrush, i also here at Christmas time. Emerging iron hidden retreats along with the life and shin !, of sunny day, it comes to hedge, fir twiI or leahess branch of sycamore, and ever nea ! l to human habitation as if to help and cheer pouring upon the erispy air it's olden note
 and awakening, like some sudden sense o absent love, the heaven of rarest summe 1 days. On every hand, and strangely enoug t only on winter days in Ireland, the beauti i, fully plumaged field fares gather in meado' and field, timid, hesitant wary, with aleI 3 sentinels posted to give instant warning ( Q danger, and one longs to know the secret C 2 their pensive, low toned tales. The lustroui