Irish News.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 46, 15 November 1900, Page 9

Irish News.

OUR IRISH LETTER.

(From our own correspondent.)

Dublin, September 15

Death has carried off two distinguished Irishmen— Sir William Rtokea surgeon in ordinary to the Queen in Ireland, and Lord Russell ot Killowen, Loni Lfciet Jusiieeof England. Lord Hu.ecll was th« son of a gentleman in business in Newry, and spent most of his early youth in the village ot KiUowen, on Carlin K ford Lough, whence he took his title when he was made a Law Lord some few years since. As he practised altoget her at the English Bar, Lord Russell was scarcely known outside his family circle in Ireland. Much better known and sircerely loved is his warm-hearted and gifted brother, the Rev Matthew Russell, S.J., who for 26 years has been editor of the Irish Monthly, a magazine in which from time to time many writers who h,ive since made a mark in literature published perhaps the very best of their pr d notions, notably Lectures of a Crrtoin. Profrxsor, by the late Hrv. Joseph O'Farrell, and Cromwell in Inland, by the Rt v. D*iiih Murphy, S.J. Sir William Stokes died of a chill contracted in a hospital in South Africa, whither he went as a specalist Sir William Stokes" s fame as a sunreon vsas purely local, but his name is curiously connected with a strange incident in latter-day Irish history. At the time of the Fenian outbreak, a spy of the name of Talbot was in the pay of the British Government A part of the work of this notorious man was to pretend to be a Fenian, to go amongst the young men of the people to urge them to become Fenians, and actually to swear them m as members of that secret society, then betray hi-* unfortunate dupes to the authorities. The better to accomplish his ends, Talbot, who was a Protestant, pretended to be a most pious Catholic, went to Mass, acted the devout Christian most successfully, and went so far, it is said, as to receive the Holy Communion on more than one occasion, thus throwing the simple-minded people off their guard.

Of course Talbot a real character and mission as spy and informer became known. lie was shot, died of hU wound, and the man who fired the shot was, tried for his life, but was acquitted on that count upon a curious technical quibble. The iate Isaac Batt was the counsel for the defence, but pot a hint upon which he founded his whole case. He set to work to ' grind ' under a Dublin surgeon, fetudied night and day, had even a skeleton brought to his chambers, worked for a fortnight as no medical student was ever known before or since to work, and at the end of the fortnight he was ready with his plea. Stokes was the surgeon who lhad been employed to extract the bullet. Butt had the surgeon upon the witness table, put him through such a searching surgical examination as could not have heen surpassed by thy whole College of Surgeons puttogettur. and finally and triumphantly established his point: that Talbot hail died, not from the actual wound linflicted. but from Surgeon Ntukts'.s careless handling of the wound in extracting the bullet, f have h.'trd the story troin a person who well remembers the occurrence ana the-ensatiou createdatthetimeby Isaac Butt's brilliant exploit in thus qualifying in one fortnight t<> beoome as clever an examiner in f-urgery as men who had spent years in the necessary studies. HOI.YWOOh. A lovely spot is Holywood. \she-e 1 am spending the autumn holidays, just five mile* from busy Belfast, and bo called from the Baints of old who once dwelt by the shores of what is now called Belfast Lough, where they h id a church as early as the hrth century, exactly where the remains ot an old l'rutestant Episcopalian church stand at the very eastern end <,l the long High street of Holywood town, at tho hih.iii entrance to which now rises a beautiful Catholic clnmli in the midst of b.-autiful grounds, its gracelul spire overtopping ev< ry oth< r spire around. May 1 try to pawn the M;ene I locked upon on Sunday afternoon — a genuine Sund ly such us that holy day should be . sunny, genial, the air hilmy. the sky blue, the bea unruffled, the boats asleep and nodding up and dou n on the waters, the pound of sweet bells ooming now and again up from tho valley or across the water; fathers, mothers, children, rich and poor, scattered over hilla and hollows, the children blackherrying in and out the trees, their elders stopping here and there t > reot on the greensward and enjoy the weather and the exquwte view ; birds circling overhead, dogs frisking around and playing with the children : Sunday .everywhere, Sunday such as I always fancy does not exist anywhere out of Ireland. We strolled up the Dovvnshire road (you see I am talking over it with some of those old natives of Holywood) : it is all built along now, down from Moffat Terrace and Sunriyside, and brand-new villas, with gables and red-tiled roofs, stud the fields on every side ; but still the Ards are there as of old, with their woods and quarries and little dells, and in that beautiful green valley in behind the old Newtownards road are the town waterworks, laid out in beds, like an old-fashioned English garden, only th..t where flowers are in the garden water fills the grais-bordered squares here. Well, having strolled to the head of the Downshire road, we wandered up the hill and on to a part of its crest where it is bare of wood and the sod is short and velvety— just a spot for sitting down where the prospect is wide, the views glorious ; on suoh a day Killartiey itselr might almost feel a generous rivalship with ' the Black North.' Down b dow, for about a quarter of a mile, Holywood town spreads along the very shore, backed by thick groves of trees, from out which peep innumerable gables and tall chimneys, showing where villas on thu ' Croft ' (farm) road and many other branohing roadß are nestling in shade. To the left lies Belfast, near enough to let %v tee the glimmer of sunlight in glass roofe and window* and the

haze of amoke that is never quite lifted, but is gilded and softened by such a glorious Bun an shines to-day over Cane Hill. All along the opposite shore of the Lough run the Antrim hills, with villa* and factories and little towns studding their baee : White Abbey, where a white npire now marks ' The Star of the >ea '; old Carriokfer^us, its srrey castle walls standing out clear on the brink of the water, a monument of various age«, each age from its very foundation marking some sad epoch in the history of the great chieftains of the Irish clan O'Neil. A silvery line of nmoke marks* train oreeping along under the hills until it rounds Blackhead and is lost in the sudden turn into one of the many bays of the Antrim coast. But look well. There, where there is sea space at the extreme end of the Lough, a dim, solitary mound, like ILe top of a volcano risei sheer out of the water ; that is Ailsa Craig, one of the flanking towers of the Scottish coast whioh is so near the Irish coast iunt here that, of a very clear day, we can distinguish the oorn fields and cliffs of Scotland quite plainly. Then our eyes come home to the County Down, and rove hither and thither from hill to hill. At the first point, a few miles east, is Bangor, now merely a seaside resort for Belfast folk, once, in Ireland's golden age, one of those great seats of learning for which this country was so famous. Wno has not heard of that Monastery of Bangor, founded in 532 by Saint Comgall, where there were as many as 3000 learned and h .ly inonka, and whence zealous missionaries went forth bearing the glad tidings of Chrintianity to al parrs of Europe 'This saintly place,' says Jocelin, • 8 '» fruitful of saints, even as a vine increasing the sweetness of its odour, extended its roots into the pea and its branches beyond the sea, for it filled with monasteries and pious monks Hibernia, Scotia, and many islands, and even foreign regions ' Amongst those missionaries we may mention two who are world-renowned— Columbanup, the apostle of the Franks the Lombards of Switzerland, the founder of Bobbio; St. Gall, from whom a canton and a town in S^ itzerland are named. Not very far from Bangor we have the woods and fields, the glens and height* of Clanneboy, on.-c owned by the kinsmen of 'Owm Roe, 1 now the property of the Marquis of Dufferin, who is great-grandf-on of Richard Brinsley Sherinan and very proud of his mother's descent from Sheridan. The late Lady Dufferin was the sutroreHß of that plaintive ballad 'I'm sitting on the stile Mary ' that has brought tears to many an Irish emigrant* eye in' far away lands. From this Lady Dufferin is named ' Helen's Bay • and a tower on a hill behind, ' Helen's Tower,' is also named after her and is said to stand on the spot— commanding an exquisite view — where her famous somr was written. In the centre of Clannebny is Crawford's Burn, a deep ravine, made beautiful by its wealth of pine*, it? three cascades, its flowers and ferns, its many winding paths and the graceful viaduct that si.ans the valley and the .stream at one extremity. Here lives the descendant of that Sharman Crawford of Crawford's Burn who was one of the very first advocates of Tenant Ri^ht for the farmers of Ireland. The present Colonel Crawford, ia junt now canvassing his County in preparation for the coming Gen. ral Election, and offers himself as .111 advocate for Tenant Right and Land Purchase. Between Crawfoi.l s Burn and Hnlywool are Craipabad.Cultra, Marino n^t village, but little settlements of sea-side villa* bordered by the blue Lough and surround, d by a sweet rural country, rich in wood and pasture and mellow corn-fields, all interspersed with green lanes where it is so pleasant to wander up the hill sides to Cairngaver, and many another hill top, or down shady glades to where the tide softly laps the shore in its gentle, summer Sunday way. * Do any of your readers in far-away Dunedin remember the scene ' Do they ri'-all the long-forgotten neighbors ? The old ways of the place ' The Maypole in the village street, still there, at the head of Shore street, and now serving a-* a lamp post for four gas jets, right over which still hangs the big wooden ring tor May Day garlands. Do they recollect the old Unitarian Pastor, who «pent :>7 years teaching and preuching to hin flock, having a kind word and a merry joke for his friends of all denominations? He only died a few years since, but his good friend, the Catholic Parish Priest, whiteheade.i now. but hale, hearty, loved by his own, respected by all, is to the fore and will celebrate his golden jubilee next year. A great scholar, antiquarian and historian, a great worker for his Church, few priests in Ireland have done more for their parishes, none have seen gtranger changes than the good old Parish Priest of Holywood, the historian of Down and Connor the Rev. Father O'Laverty, M.R.1. A., who tells us, in hit history of the place, that in 1741 there was only one Catholic, a serving man, in the whole town, and he was each a curiosity that people ran to their doors to see him pass. Is there any such sunshine in Dunedin aa ia at this moment lighting up this charming bit of Ireland, once the chosen dwelling place of saintly men from whose presence it received its name of ' the Holy Wood, 1 then and now as sweet and homelike a spot aa any exile of Erin could wish to keep framed within his heart aa ' home.' M.B.