The Irish standard., 1915-09-25

through the rush of the motor-going |
at dare say not so many miles an
hour-one heard the singing of innu-
merable larks. The children were on
their way to school, comfortable, we'll
fed, well-clad children. If some were
barefoot it was because they liked that
way best, for the new prosperity had
not yet quite broken with the old easy
customs.
There is no excuse in this new, we'll
populated Mayo for emigrating to
America. In other parts of Ireland
one wonders why they should stay for
such loneliness. Yet Mayo emigrates.
Even in this year of the great war the
spring emigration is in full tide, not
by reason of the war, which reaches
these parts as far-reaching rumor.
So many of their friends have gone
already that America is homelike. 1t
seems shame that they should go,
the outstanding, clean boys Of CLASH
cal dignity and beauty and the girls
to match them. But there it is: Amer
lea is the curse of Ireland. "The best
bones and the best sap of the stock of
Ireland lie in America" said Mayo
car-driver to me. And it is true.
That Mayo is not a better recruit
ing ground is to some considerable ex-
tent due to the policy which removed
the Connaught Rangers from Castle
bar, where their barracks are rotting
to ruins and the grass is growing in
the barrack yard. The cavalry and in
fantry barracks at Ballinrobe are in
equal case. When was going to Cas-
tlebar, some one said to me, Every
man, woman and child you meet will
have father, a brother or two, or a
couple of sons in the Connaught
Rangers. But that belonged to the
old days. In my part of Mayo, khaki
is as rare as white blackbird. And
with the absence of khaki goes the
whole fabric of comradeship, of emula-
ton, Of excitement and enthusiasm,
which go to make up the passion for
soldering.
Mayo is beautiful from end to end;
the wide skies, the color of the boys,
as you see them in the pictures of "a.
E." the brooding, majestic noun
tains, holding their mystery from you
till you come near, and then softly re-
vealing it; the silver inlets of the sea,
as you go further towards the Allan
tic, the skies, blue as Italy's, when
they are blue; the rivers tinged with
the brown of the bog, all seen through
the medium of translucent air, air
clearer than air, clear as water or
crystal.
AS you go on you are speeding into
the heart of the mountains. Some of
the mountains, Croagh Patrick, the
Holy Mountain, worn by the knees of
countless pilgrims, goes with you all
the way. Indeed. it is very seldom
out of range of your vision in Mayo;
and the same is true of the Nephin.
Beauty is everywhere abundant in
Mayo, but as you come near the coast
1t is very wonderland of beauty;
such great, glowing dark hills-can
not dark beauty glow?-so tender,
yet so majestic, the Nephin Beg, and
| the Cunaun ranges, and behind them
SlievemOre and the mountains of
Achill, all brooding and quiet, and then
Clew Bay and Glare Island and the
lakes. For a wild beauty without
| desolation, give me these.
Achill itself is surrounded with these
hills OF purple blackness. 1t was
great April day when saw it.
Doubtless the colors would change
with the weather, for Irish beauty has
an infinite variety. l shall see it next
on a day of sun, and the sun in Mayo
can be very splendid after the great
winter storms that roll out of the At
lantic.
All this great beauty of nature is in
harmony with the people we see
working in the fields, women as we'll
as men, of that dark strange dignity
of beauty which makes them like a
bronze.
Ours is a great wild country" and
in this year of the great work people
needing change might do worse than
Mayo. There is bridge now between
Achill and the mainland, crossing the
narrow sound where the people used
to drown. There is a pleasant little
modest inn at Achill Sound where, on
Friday, lunch was cut of delicious
RT CAMP