A man, a bike, a diatribe!

**Chapter XVII

**Through Dublin and Wicklow - A ride to Luggala - Killiney - The Vale of Shanganagh - The self-glorification of John Maupas, deceased - The Scalp - Enniskerry - Glencree - A Mountain Herdsman - A large inheritance - Lough Bray - The sources of the Liffey - The Sally Gap - The Glens - Wild Luggala - Back through the night.

On a lovely Sunday morning in the early autumn two of us pulled out along the road to Bray for a day’s cycling in Dublin and Wicklow. We intended riding to Glendalough and back, but we were obliged to modify this programme before we reached Dalkey, owing to a certain pleasant circumstance which may be termed a morning call. As we were leaving the suburbs behind us my comrade, who knows many different types of Irish people, said casually that there were two men living in a tower down somewhere to the left who were creating a sensation in the neighbourhood. They had, he said, assumed a hostile attitude towards the conventions of denationalisation, and were, thereby, outraging the feelings of the *seoinini. *He, therefore, suggested that we should pay them a flying visit. There was no necessity to repeat the suggestion, so we turned off to the left at the next crossroads, and were soon climbing a steep ladder which led to the door of the tower. We entered, and found some men of Ireland in possession, with whom we tarried until far on in the morning. One of them had lately returned from a canoeing tour of hundreds of miles through the lakes, rivers, and canals of Ireland, another was reading for a Trinity College degree, and assiduously wooing the muses, and another was a singer of songs which spring from the deepest currents of life. The returned marine of the canoe was an Oxford student, whose button-hole was adorned by the badge of the Gaelic League - a most strenuous Nationalist he was, with a patriotism, stronger than circumstances, which moved him to pour forth fluent Irish upon every Gael he encountered, in accents blent from the characteristic speech of his *alma mater *and the rolling *blas *of Connacht. The poet was a wayward kind of genius, who talked in a captivating manner, with a keen, grim humour, which cut and pierced through a topic in bright, strong flashes worthy of the rapier of Swift. The other poet listened in silence, and when we went on the roof he disposed himself restfully to drink in the glory of the morning. It was very pleasant up there in the glad sunshine and the sweet breath of the sea. We looked out across the bay to Ben Edair of the heroic legends, now called Howth, and wondered how many of the dwellers in the “Sunnyview Lodges” and “Elmgrove Villas,” and other respect’ able homes along the hillside knew aught of Finn and Oisin and Oscar. We looked northward to where the lazy smoke lay on the Liffey’s banks, and southward, over the roofs and gardens and parks to the grey peak of Killiney, and then westward and inland to the blue mountains. We stayed far longer than we had intended and talked of many things, regardless of the hour, until it was too late to think of going to Glendalough. One of the chief difficulties about cycling in Ireland is the start. When the morning is bright, and the roads dry, and a light wind straying idly over the fields, you prepare for a long ride with the pleasantest anticipations; but when you are ready to set out some inducement to delay your departure will present itself, and time will steal away from you until nearly halt the day is gone. The shadows were shortening for noonday, when at last we got away from the tower, so we decided to go no further than Luggala. It is some miles nearer to Dublin than Glendalough, and, like the storied glen of St Kevin, is one of the treasures guarded by the Wicklow mountains.

“By Bray, through the Scalp, to Enniskerry,” said my friend, mapping out the road, “and from Enniskerry to Glencree. From Glencree, by Lough Bray, to the Sally Gap, and on to Luggala. Then back by Sliabh Cualann to Bray, and home by Dunleary to Dublin.”

We skirted Dalkey and ran up against a formidable hill which bulged skyward so aggressively that the road had to stand on its hind legs, so to speak, in order to look over the top. We humbly dismounted and commenced to laboriously negotiate it, and as we pushed our wheels upward, my comrade encouragingly informed me that it was merely as the moon to the sun compared with the mountains and peaks with which he promised to make me acquainted during the day. When we reached the bottom of the opposite slope we found ourselves on the shore of the Bay, near Killiney, and the road led us under the plantations that clothe the lower slopes of the Peak. This is an earthly paradise superimposed on a foundation of magnificent granite. Killiney Hill is an immense heap of this valuable rock. The road is repaired from granite quarries. Every stone that peeps out of the clay is granite. There must be enough granite there to build a wall round Europe, yet it appears that some of the granite recently used in Dublin architecture was imported by certain outland builders. If you loosened the boulders from the side of the Peak they would scarcely stop rolling until they reached O’Connell Bridge. But even if they rolled to the very scaffolding, dressed and ready for the masons, there are anti-Irish foreigners in Dublin who would scruple to use them. We left the high road and took a winding footpath through the trees. After a steep walk of nearly half-a-mile we reached the summit of the Peak overlooking Dublin City and Bay and the lovely Vale of Shanganagh. It will always be a glad memory to me that I saw Shanganagh at its best At least I fancy it was at its best that morning, for I cannot fancy it looking more beautiful. There were thin transparent screens of haze floating in mid-air, and through them, as if seen at the bottom of a vast lake of the clearest water, smooth lawns and pastures and meadows showed along the valley in 50 different shades of softened emerald, until the grass melted into the heather on the engirdling hills. And out to the rim of the eastern sky lay the sparkling sea, laughing into the cloudless blue from a million flaming wavelets, and with a faintly marked bordering of foam along the shelving strand.

But all is not lovely on Killiney Hill. A monument stands there which is an architectural monstrosity and a vainglorious abomination. It bears an inscription which I copied as a curiosity, but, unfortunately, I have lost it. This inscription states that in a certain year, far back in the eighteenth century, one John Maupas, seeing that there was a famine in the country, and that it would be “hard with the poor,” gave employment by having built at his own expense the walls enclosing the hill, ” and this, etc.” It will be noticed that the guileless John makes a little joke of an unconscious kind at the end of his pharisaical self-glorification. He calls his monument “this etc.” He can find no word to describe the hideous thing he has built, so he calls it - “this etc.” It is a very suggestive name. The etcetera stands for any qualifying term which posterity may wish to apply to the stony gift presented by John to a starving people. You change “this etc.” to “this freak,” or “this nightmare,” or “this horror,” or” this phenomenal heap of ugliness.” The model chosen by the designer seems to have been the sawed-off stump of a candlestick surmounted by an extinguisher. Its ugliness is outlandish as well as intense, and it seems to have inflected the nomenclature of the beautiful residences all around Killiney. There is nothing Irish in the names which you read on the gate piers of the stylish villas on every road leading to or from the Peak. Nor is there any truth or appropriateness in them either. You meet a “Hollybrook” where there is neither a brook nor holly, and a “Mossfield” where there is neither a field nor moss, and an “Elmgrove” where no grove ever grew and where no elm has been known to lift its head in all the ages of recorded time.

A false social standard is a great affliction to a country. It makes people grow ashamed of everything they should proudly cherish. It is a false social standard which we may debit with our Sackville Streets and our “Devonside villas,” and our Algernons, our Lydias and our Stellas, and all the other fancy but unchristian and un-Irish names which doting *seoinini *have culled for their offspring from the serial stories in the pages of the *Young Ladies’ Journal *and *Bow Bells. *Thank God that an Irish social standard is again set up in our social life! It came none too soon.

We went southward from Killiney across the mouth of Shanganagh Valley toward Bray along a perfect road. We did not pass through Bray, but turned to our right some distance from the town, and laid our course for The Scalp. When the world was young some growing pain convulsed one of the Dublin hills and burst it in twain from base to summit The cleft thus made is called “The Scalp.” It is V-shaped, just wide enough to leave ample room for a road at the bottom. The slope facing the south is wooded in places, but the rocks on the other side are bare. It is one of the portals of Wicklow, and probably there has been a road through it from the time when men first trod Irish soil.

The beetling crags which frown hundreds of feet above the road on either hand must have witnessed many strange sights in the forgotten mutations of the earlier races of Erin. The defile leads from one land of song and glory to another, and has seen much history made from the days when the Druidic fires blazed on the Dublin mountains to the days when the Wicklow glens re-echoed to the cheers and musketry of Michael Dwyer and his guerilleros.

Enniskerry is a near little town wedged into a hollow. You almost tumble head over heels into it before you see it, and it has the name of being quite Swiss in its appearance. It is overshadowed by high hills and by Lord Powerscourt. The hills rise outside its backyards, and Lord Powerscourt rises from his demesne, which lies along the hills. Pictures of the Dargle and of Lord Powerscourt are plentiful in Enniskerry. The Powerscourt Waterfall is also a great inspiration to local art. The Dargle is famous for its beauty, arid the Powerscourt demesne is a show place; and, furthermore, Enniskerry is on the road to Glendalough. Consequently the town is a tourist resort

We turned to the right outside of Enniskerry, and, crossing the Dargle River, went off westward through a maze of woods, climbing long slants of forest road, which made heavy demands on lungs and sinews. It was strenuous work, but the enjoyment it brought was worth it all. The woods were just turning with the first mellow hues of the autumn, and the air was laden with the bracing fragrance of the pines. A ride of about half an hour brought us out on a mountain side, from which we looked across a deep valley into a series of hills darkened with spruce and larch or with tangled heather.

We met the mountain breezes now, and they challenged us to a tussle with them, which we accepted with a will. Conversation dropped suddenly, for there is no breath to spend in words when a Wicklow road takes you on a long excursion cloudward against the wind which whimpers down the hills. The woods fell away from us now, and soon there was not even a sheltering hedge by the wayside. We wore up among the rocks and the fading bracken and the spongy beds of moss. Upward still through the wide miles of heather, with an occasional rest which we took by walking. We had a deep cool drink from one of the many streams which trickle down the slopes to feed the rivers in the valleys far below, and then another long climb, until on looking backward the faint blue of the ocean showed over the distant peaks.

We met a few score of mountain sheep browsing among the green tufts of shrub, and farther on we came upon the shepherd sitting chin deep in the scented heather smoking a new clay pipe and looking dreamily into the wild waste of peaks which overlook the valley of Glencree. We hailed him as we passed, and he greeted us right cheerily in reply. What a large inheritance he was enjoying there! If he had only the gift of articulation, which would enable him to share his untroubled reverie with the world, what freshness he would bring to the jaded and aching souls whose emotions are dried and withered by the red flame of fevered life!

We left him near the head of Glencree, in the solitary enjoyment of one of the fairest scenes in Ireland. For although the Vale of Glencree is unknown to the professional photographers, and although you seldom, if ever, see it mentioned in guide books, it is of a wondrous beauty. It begins under some of the highest of the Dublin Mountains and slopes down towards the coast between two lofty ranges. A river winds through it which flashes here and there as it catches a sunbeam, and finally melts into the deepening shadows. The sharp peak of the Sugarloaf sentinels it far to the southward, and over the purple gloom of the woods near Enniskerry shines a bright streak of Irish Sea, filling the space between the jagged crestline of the hills and the blurred horizon. From the base of the Sugarloaf to the base of the Glendoo is eight good miles, and that is the length of Glencree. It is about two miles wide. In some place the beauty is quietly pastoral, where green stretches of sheep-runs slope gently to the heather on either side of the valley, dotted by occasional clumps of trees. In other places it takes its beauty from the thick mantle of woods which cover the mountain sides and which spread across the valley until their shadows mingle in the river. Then again, it is beautiful higher up, with a wild rugged beauty of grayish peaks and heathery slopes. It is beautiful from end to end, and it has not yet been profaned and vulgarized by cheap trippers. None but the toughest cyclists penetrate its recesses, and only to them and to the tireless pedestrian tourist will it show the wonders of its loveliness.

We turned sharply eastward once more near the old barracks of Glencree, which is at present used as a reformatory. The wind favoured us now) and we climbed blithely through a mountain turbary district until we reached lower Lough Bray. Here we tarried for a few minutes to see the lough, which is only a few acres in extent, but of fathomless depth. The mountain hares go hither to nibble the soft grass which grows along the level shore, and from the rocky side of Kippure mountain, which towers over its gloomy waters, no echo comes save the call of the grouse on the wing. It is very lonely up there, and very wild and impressive. You might sit under Kippure and look out on brown wastes of heather and grey pinnacles of rock and fancy that all living things had left the world but yourself, and that the windy solitudes were moaning under the weight of your unwelcome presence. There is a cottage under the crags, on the eastern side of the lough, hidden by a bend of the shore and by a fir plantation. My comrade told me that a British Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was once cured of something by somebody, and that through gratitude he built the cottage and made a present of it to his healer. Some people might think that it was a peculiar way of thanking a man for a great favour to send him to live in that lonely place on the roof of the world. But tastes differ. There are people who think it a grand thing to be able to get away out of the whirlwind of human affairs now and then, and who would prize such a gift. And for my part I think they are wise.

We pursued our way further up the mountains, and soon passed Upper Lough Bray. There is only a short distance between the two loughs, yet they appear to be unconnected one with the other. The overflow of each falls by a separate stream into Glencree river, which is an affluent of the Dargle. A little beyond Upper Lough Bray we came to a bridge, and my mentor informed me that we were at the source of the Liffey. There was a thin trickle of bog-water glistening under the rank heather by the roadside, and a few paces further up there were a few scattered tufts of rushes growing out of wet moss. It was, indeed, the beginning of the Liffey. The ooze and trickle become a rivulet under the bridge, and the rivulet is swelled by many springs as it sings its way down the slopes out of Wicklow into the plains of Kildare. It enters County Dublin near Leixlip, after a wayward and joyous ramble through some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. From its source to its mouth as the bird flies is scarcely 12e miles, but the entire length of its course is, perhaps, over 70.

From the source of the Liffey to the Sally Gap is a splendid ride. You have reached the level mountain-top at last and the wild wastes of heather swell and roll away to the horizon on every side. The strain on the pedals has ceased and the slightest effort sends you skimming along the smooth road. Few carts or waggons ever pass this way, so that there are no ruts. The surface is well sanded and the thin spokes hum as the wheels fly over it with increasing speed. Faster still and faster. We have topped the last undulation of the crest line, and the pedals stop of their own accord under the sagging chains, for the free wheel has felt the downward gradient and the universe is slipping behind you so swiftly that you instinctively handle your brakes. The road is grass-grown now and the only smooth running is found where the wheels of other cyclists and of a few light vehicles, or perchance of an occasional automobile, have kept the gravel bare. The sun is low and the sky is clear, and a fresh wind laden with unpurchasable fragrance of the wilderness comes in long deep breathings out of the bosom of Wicklow. A hare springs out of the rushes and streaks along the road. He is a playful fellow, for his ears are laid back and his shoulders are hoisted in the big chuckle which he is having all to himself at our expense. We throw a few pedal strokes into the snoring speed of the tree wheel and shout as we gain upon him. He shakes some creases out of himself at this, becomes serious, erects his ears, leaps from the highway into the bog and is off to tear a hole in the horizon, leaving us the moral victory. Then we start a grouse and he is indignant. He flings himself like an arrow down the wind, shouting “Hur-r-r go back! go back! go back!” He has friends and relations all over the heather kingdom and his clatter gets upon their nerves. From far and near comes their echoing vociferation “Go back! go back! go back!” We go on and on, and presently a bend in the road shows us a change of scene. The mountain falls away to our right, and from many crests in front of us and to the southward the heather ridges dip and dip until there is a wild glen below us, gloomy with the shadows of the peaks, and winding away into weird darkness far to the southward. Down yonder behind the shadows and along the distant ridges, which the low sunbeams are flooding with golden light, were the strongholds of Fiach MacHugh and the territories of the fighting O’Byrnes. Down yonder also are Imaal of Dwyer and the wild glens where the echoes know the name of Holt, and where freedom died hard and bravely. Hosts of stirring memories crowd upon you, and as the darkening slopes shut in the lonely glens from your view there is a prayer in your heart and on your lips that the peace of God may be with the warrior souls of the men who died for Ireland’s sake.

From the Sally Gap we bore to the left and met some awful hills, which we flew down at reckless speed, scattering flocks of mountain sheep to left and right, and stopping for nothing in our haste to reach Luggala before the twilight died. The sun had already sunk behind the crests, and we were flying through the afterglow at a breakneck pace. We had been obliged to lose time over a puncture, and we were straining every nerve to recover the loss. It was a very close race, but we won it. We reached Luggala just at dusk, and had one good look from the cliffs over Lough Tay, along the glen, to Lough Dan, and farther still to the peaks over Glendalough. It surpassed in wild beauty anything that we had seen during our long and beautiful ride. My friend was sorry for me. He said that if I had seen Luggala under the glory of the mid-day, I would have enjoyed its loveliness ten times more; or if we had arrived even an hour earlier to watch the radiance paling before the rising shadows, I would have seen it to far more advantage than in the gathering dusk. But I was well content to see it just as it was at that moment. There was a mystic splendour over it which the sunlight might have dispelled. No human dwelling, no trace of human life is anywhere visible. The peaks and ridges are above the grassy altitudes, and only the heather clothes the brown peat. Where the grey rocks stand out of the mountain, gaunt and bare; in the gloom, they add to the untamed ruggedness of the perspective. No plough has ever furrowed those virgin hills, no spade has ever turned a sod along them. The heather and the blue water and the moss-grown rocks looked just as they do now when a human eye first beheld them; and long before a human foot intruded on the solitude of the glen they had been the same. Far off beyond Lough Dan, where the heather meets the sky, there is a weird light caught from the west which holds the eye and fancy. It seems to lead you out of the present and take you back to the ages when the Druids wove their spells, and when the Men of Dea were mighty in the land. The wind is singing in the pines far below us on the shore of the lough and the waves are splashing softly on the strand. These are the only sounds, and they have a slowly-swinging, solemn rhythm which seems to bear some message from the elder time. How is it that so many of the high places of Erin change so greatly in their potentiality of appeal to you after the sun has set? When the twilight or the moonlight falls upon them all the resources of word-painting fail before their powers, because as you look upon them your thoughts are mostly subjective, and you are searching your inmost soul in vain for the sweet, evasive, half-sad, half-joyful emotion that has quickened it so strangely.

It was dark when we left Luggala, and we felt our way cautiously on foot down to Luggala Gate. The hills were the steepest we had yet encountered, and we agreed that the safest way to negotiate it in the darkness was on foot. This precaution is necessary at any time, for the descent is very steep and the road surface loose and dangerous. When at last we had made our way down to the main track, my comrade made scientific preparations to light his acetylene lamp. I despised the use of a headlight, and suggested that we should not trouble ourselves about such a detail. He said nothing, but went on quietly fixing his lamp, and when he had it ready he started an illumination that lit up the night like a bonfire. Down and down and down we rode on our homeward journey, until we met the hedgerows again, and the trees loomed through the darkness. We passed Sliabh Cualann, between the mountain-side and a precipice, and rode down into Bray, then through Little Bray, and on towards Shankill. There were newly-made patches of quarried stones on the road, and in riding over one of them I punctured a tyre. We found the puncture by the lamp-light, and as I patched it, the following remark fell upon me out of the darkness:

You see, after all, a lamp-light has its uses now and then.”

I received the gentle proposition in a spirit of meekness, and humbly rode behind the man who had made it, until we passed Dunleary. At times in the black darkness under the trees I thought how much like a huge fly he looked silhouetted against the blaze of lamp-light. But I kept the remark to myself. There were loose stones still on the road, and I feared another puncture. It was very late when we parted in Eccles Street, and our cyclometers marked 73 miles for the day. We had spent as much energy on some of those miles as would have taken us many leagues on the level.

But now that the ride was over, I knew I should always think of it with unclouded pleasure. We are to make a more extended raid into Wicklow some other time if all is well. That was the last thing we settled before we said beannacht leat.

General Contents. .