The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1891-02-01
ROBIN HOODS LAND.
The Charm Growing Out of Lit
erary Identification.
Genial and Entertaining Paper on the
olden Haunts of Robin Hood and
Friar Tuck Replete With Some Very
Pleasing Legends. Poetry and REM
iniscences.
Regular Correspondence of the SUNDAY
UNION. Copyright, 1911

Regular Correspondence of the SUNDAY
UNION. Copyright, 1911
NOTTINGHAM, England, Jan. IA, 1891.
The longer one wanders in England,
Scotland and Ireland, the more encom-
passing and impressive becomes that
charm growing out of what may be
termed literary Identification.
Over there in Ireland what can be more
fascinating than a silent ramble about
slumberous old Youghal and up drowsy
Kilcolman way? There Raleigh and
Spenser lived, loved and wrought.
Tramping from Killarney to Cahersiveen,
one fingers lovingly at Carhan bridge;
for beside it the great O'Connell was
born. Who but a bigot can climb the
Rock of Cashel without subdued and
reverential feeling from the historic and
sacred surroundings; or who but an in
sensate shudders not at Boyne or Augh-
rim where the life of nation broke in its
last wild throb upon river and morass?
1hen, at Slane, who can fail of awe in the
presence ofprehistoric monuments rival
Ing the pyramids themselves? To stand
on Tara's Hill, in Meath. and in fancy
see st. Patrick, unmindful of the treach-
cry planning his death, with his eight
deVoted followers, coming up the royal
hill, chanting his prayer, May the
word of God render me eloquent!'' to
forever dim the fires OF Belltaine with the
sacred flame OF Christianity through the
conversion of King Laeghaire, and the
overthrow OF paganism in Ireland, is TO
come with startling tenderness close to
an inspired career OF one who lived but
TO bless nearly 800 years ago. Vague
ana Tar 1t was to you before. But you
feel and know the story now.
SO, too, how illimitable seem human
cycles, yet how compact and little, when
you are stumbling among the remains OF
That tremendous pagan stronghold, Dun
1EnguS, on the remoieSt precipice of
Aranmore, the most desolate Of all Ire
land sislands. The great arch3ologist, DIR.
Petrie, termed it ''the most magnificent
barbaric monument in Europe" The
legend is that Dun 1Sngus and the five
other great forts, or dltltS, of the Aran
Islands were built from 1000 to 500 years
before the Christian era by the flying and
fated Firbolgs. No matter about the
legend. There they stand to-day, more
weird, suggestive and awe-inspiring in
their dread secrets of the people that were.
than ever could lie in the silence of the
Lybian SPHINX. And then, away in the
North, over beyond old Derry, what a
thrill flashes through one when standing
alone upon the walls of the mighty
Grianan Of Aileach, whose existence can
be definitely traced to the period 1853 be-
fore Christ Grianan, the mighty Dun.
Of which we read in the DinRsenchas:
Aileach-F'irin, plat OF the king-rath royal of
the world;
Dun, to which led horseroads, through five
mighty rampartS
So they did. You can trace them to
this day as clearly as the paths in your
own garden. On the creStS of those cir
cling mountains burned the Signatures
IN the dim days, a tiara of flame, to wake
the helotS ana their herds. Thither to
the Grlanan they streamed, those skin
clad hordes. Within those very ram
parts huddled the affrighted women and
the fiocks. Within those very walls
Kings watched over battles. There We're
the feasts OF victory; the wailings and
lamentations; the weird, Wild rights; all
d thousand years before barbarous man
looked beyond the god of day to the one
infinite God. But you did not sense this
until your own feet had pressed the same
earth theirs had trod, and your eyes had
looked upon lone Errigal, like cone Of
steel in the West, and through the GRIM
dark passes, to the purple mists above
Armagh and Tyrone.
In all that can be read of the LAND o.
Cakes how the true feeling is lacking,
until one weds presence and actualityWith
the tonelesS tales of words. To know the
3
breathe their air, drink in their wild and
gorgeous colorings, TO listen to the roar Of
their gorgeous waterfalls, to sail over
their silent lochs, to tremble in their
mighty storms, is to come very close in
thought and sympathy to that grand and
noble race which all OF the Roman le-
gionS could not conquer. Its desperate,
tateful loyalty to the House of Stuart can
never be fully understood until you have
tramped from the Western Ocean to the
German, and wandered on Culloden
Moor. Macbeth, King Duncan and NAL
colin Canmore are mere creatures of
Shakespeare's fancy until YOU find in
they once walked its streets with all of
your own passions, hope, ambition and
until you have stood on Tomnahaurich.
by the \ ess-side, you have never really
known Hugh Miller, stonemason, great
heart and sage. Despite DR.. Johnson's
matchless apostrophe to Iona, the story
OF Columb's sanity isle, of the Christ
ian enlightenment emanating from it to
the British Isles and the greater part of
Europe, when nearly all the scenes
lighted by the first fires of apostolic
sacrifice had partially relapsed into
superstitious barbarism, is as dream
ful as the legends of the
Holy Grail, until you have stood among
the majestic ruins of Iona and wandered
along its ''Straid-na-M arbh," where lie
countless chiefs, friarS, abbotS and kings.
After you have passed an hour in the an
cient churchyard of Greyfriars, in Edin-
burgh, you viii begin TO realize who were
the Covenanters of Scotland, and what
they endured fer their consciences' sake.
When you have come TO the ruins of
Lochmaben, Robert the Bruce, patriot
king and warrior, first leaves the msts of
legend and traditions, and welcomes you
as man of flesh and blood to his old
home by the sedgy lake. Melrose, Dry
burgh and all the grand monastic struc-
lures of the sunny, murmurous Tweed are
poets phantasms until you wander among
their ruined cloisters and touch with your
own hands the brave old stones of their
majestic arches. Scott, the '.Ettrick
Shepherd" Carlyle, even Burns himself.
are half ideal, until you have stood by the
Ettrick and 9arrow, sadly left the prince
ly Abbotsford, shuddered at the doIorous
dearth and meanness of Carlyle's boy
hood home at Ecclefechan, and heard
with your own hearing the melodious
songs of the NTH and the Doom.
If this is true of Ireland and Scotland,
how infinitely more impressive is this
identification to the average American
pilgrim in England, the mother-land of
our own race and tongue. A mighty
volume, and a sweet and tender one,
withal, could be made relegating appar-
ent realities to their home in myth-land.
and reckoning from the realms of legend
and tradition the actual beings whose
imagery first swept from reality, and
whom successive centuries of poetic
fancy, shared alike by us from childhood
TO manhood, have placed further and fur
Their behind the ever-loved yeilings of
mystery and song. No two characters
in the semi-nythology of Britain are
better illustrations than those of King
I