THE ISLE OF THE SHAMROCK
Author's Introductory Note
IN one of his earlier volumes John Burroughs tells of a Frenchman who visited England with the intention of writing a book about that country. For a long period he continued to observe and collect material. During the first weeks his enthusiasm over his project was unbounded; a year passed and he still thought of writing a book, but was not so sure about it; and after a residence of ten years his doubts as to his ability of adequately handling the subject had so grown that he abandoned the scheme altogether. Mr. Burroughs’s comment is that, “instead of furnishing an argument against writing out one’s first impressions of a country, the experience of the Frenchman shows the importance of doing it at once. The sensations of the first day are what we want, — the first flush of the traveller’s thought and feeling before his perceptions and sensibilities become cloyed or blunted, or before he in any way becomes a part of that which he would describe.”
This defines very forcibly, I think, the source of whatever merit may have been attained by the present volume, or by its predecessors on England and France. The view is from the outside, and has both the faults and virtues of such a view. It is a record of first impressions and of the pleasure in things novel and unexpected which never comes but once. As such I finish it, trusting that I may have succeeded in conveying to others something of the charm and interest that these scenes and incidents had for me.
***
An excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter:
THE CASTLE OF ELOQUENCE
IT was the first gray of a May morning, and the coasting steamer on which I had taken passage the day before at Plymouth, in southern England, was sliding along up the quiet of the river Lee toward Cork. The air was chilly, and the night mists still lingered in the hollows of the green landscape and floated in filmy wraiths over the surface of the water. All the little steamer’s passengers were astir and were watching the scene from the upper deck. The most interested spectators among us were a score of Irish boys from her Majesty’s ship Renown, going home for a month’s leave of absence after a two years’ cruise in the West Indies. They wore loose, blue uniforms, and flat caps with their ship’s name on the bands, and they carried their belongings tied up in colored handkerchiefs or squares of calico. To them the low-lying shores between which our boat was moving were superlatively beautiful. They eagerly picked out familiar points as we passed them, and declared that altogether this was the finest sight they had seen in their lives. When we at length approached the dock, their impatience to land was such that as soon as we came within jumping distance they tossed their little bundles ashore and made flying leaps after them. The officers of the steamer declared the man-of-war lads were as bad as a menagerie of wild animals. Attempts to restrain them were wholly futile, and by the time the gang-plank was in position they had helter-skeltered off up the neighboring streets and alleys and were lost to view.
I followed more leisurely and prosaically, and, after breakfasting, looked about the town. That I was in Ireland was plain from the start, for the brogue and the peculiar piquancy of the faces were unmistakable. Then there were the women with shawls drawn over their heads, and the numerous beggars, and the barefoot newsboys selling green-tinted papers, and there was the omnipresent donkey-cart, and, scarcely less conspicuous, that other distinctively Irish vehicle, the jaunting-car, with the seats hung above the wheels.
Some of the natives were no better than walking scarecrows, so dilapidated was their attire; yet, as a whole, Cork is a city that shows evidence of a good deal of business prosperity. A rich farming region lies round about which reminds one of England. I saw something of this on a trip I made to Blarney Castle, eight miles distant, and would have seen more had I walked as I at first planned. But the day was too bright and warm for comfortable tramping, and I went instead by a convenient steam tram.
Blarney town is a small manufacturing place. The castle, however, is well outside the village, in surroundings wholly rural, and the way thither is by a footpath and across a slight wooden bridge, spanning a swift, clean little river. The old fortress stands on a low hill, whence it looks down on a broad field from amid a grove of trees. This field is used as a public pleasure-ground, and rustic seats engird the bases of its noble oaks and elms, and a number of framework swings have been erected in the opens.
The castle makes an imposing ruin, for the main structure has suffered little from the ravages of time except that the roof and the wooden floors have fallen....
1030999232
IN one of his earlier volumes John Burroughs tells of a Frenchman who visited England with the intention of writing a book about that country. For a long period he continued to observe and collect material. During the first weeks his enthusiasm over his project was unbounded; a year passed and he still thought of writing a book, but was not so sure about it; and after a residence of ten years his doubts as to his ability of adequately handling the subject had so grown that he abandoned the scheme altogether. Mr. Burroughs’s comment is that, “instead of furnishing an argument against writing out one’s first impressions of a country, the experience of the Frenchman shows the importance of doing it at once. The sensations of the first day are what we want, — the first flush of the traveller’s thought and feeling before his perceptions and sensibilities become cloyed or blunted, or before he in any way becomes a part of that which he would describe.”
This defines very forcibly, I think, the source of whatever merit may have been attained by the present volume, or by its predecessors on England and France. The view is from the outside, and has both the faults and virtues of such a view. It is a record of first impressions and of the pleasure in things novel and unexpected which never comes but once. As such I finish it, trusting that I may have succeeded in conveying to others something of the charm and interest that these scenes and incidents had for me.
***
An excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter:
THE CASTLE OF ELOQUENCE
IT was the first gray of a May morning, and the coasting steamer on which I had taken passage the day before at Plymouth, in southern England, was sliding along up the quiet of the river Lee toward Cork. The air was chilly, and the night mists still lingered in the hollows of the green landscape and floated in filmy wraiths over the surface of the water. All the little steamer’s passengers were astir and were watching the scene from the upper deck. The most interested spectators among us were a score of Irish boys from her Majesty’s ship Renown, going home for a month’s leave of absence after a two years’ cruise in the West Indies. They wore loose, blue uniforms, and flat caps with their ship’s name on the bands, and they carried their belongings tied up in colored handkerchiefs or squares of calico. To them the low-lying shores between which our boat was moving were superlatively beautiful. They eagerly picked out familiar points as we passed them, and declared that altogether this was the finest sight they had seen in their lives. When we at length approached the dock, their impatience to land was such that as soon as we came within jumping distance they tossed their little bundles ashore and made flying leaps after them. The officers of the steamer declared the man-of-war lads were as bad as a menagerie of wild animals. Attempts to restrain them were wholly futile, and by the time the gang-plank was in position they had helter-skeltered off up the neighboring streets and alleys and were lost to view.
I followed more leisurely and prosaically, and, after breakfasting, looked about the town. That I was in Ireland was plain from the start, for the brogue and the peculiar piquancy of the faces were unmistakable. Then there were the women with shawls drawn over their heads, and the numerous beggars, and the barefoot newsboys selling green-tinted papers, and there was the omnipresent donkey-cart, and, scarcely less conspicuous, that other distinctively Irish vehicle, the jaunting-car, with the seats hung above the wheels.
Some of the natives were no better than walking scarecrows, so dilapidated was their attire; yet, as a whole, Cork is a city that shows evidence of a good deal of business prosperity. A rich farming region lies round about which reminds one of England. I saw something of this on a trip I made to Blarney Castle, eight miles distant, and would have seen more had I walked as I at first planned. But the day was too bright and warm for comfortable tramping, and I went instead by a convenient steam tram.
Blarney town is a small manufacturing place. The castle, however, is well outside the village, in surroundings wholly rural, and the way thither is by a footpath and across a slight wooden bridge, spanning a swift, clean little river. The old fortress stands on a low hill, whence it looks down on a broad field from amid a grove of trees. This field is used as a public pleasure-ground, and rustic seats engird the bases of its noble oaks and elms, and a number of framework swings have been erected in the opens.
The castle makes an imposing ruin, for the main structure has suffered little from the ravages of time except that the roof and the wooden floors have fallen....
THE ISLE OF THE SHAMROCK
Author's Introductory Note
IN one of his earlier volumes John Burroughs tells of a Frenchman who visited England with the intention of writing a book about that country. For a long period he continued to observe and collect material. During the first weeks his enthusiasm over his project was unbounded; a year passed and he still thought of writing a book, but was not so sure about it; and after a residence of ten years his doubts as to his ability of adequately handling the subject had so grown that he abandoned the scheme altogether. Mr. Burroughs’s comment is that, “instead of furnishing an argument against writing out one’s first impressions of a country, the experience of the Frenchman shows the importance of doing it at once. The sensations of the first day are what we want, — the first flush of the traveller’s thought and feeling before his perceptions and sensibilities become cloyed or blunted, or before he in any way becomes a part of that which he would describe.”
This defines very forcibly, I think, the source of whatever merit may have been attained by the present volume, or by its predecessors on England and France. The view is from the outside, and has both the faults and virtues of such a view. It is a record of first impressions and of the pleasure in things novel and unexpected which never comes but once. As such I finish it, trusting that I may have succeeded in conveying to others something of the charm and interest that these scenes and incidents had for me.
***
An excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter:
THE CASTLE OF ELOQUENCE
IT was the first gray of a May morning, and the coasting steamer on which I had taken passage the day before at Plymouth, in southern England, was sliding along up the quiet of the river Lee toward Cork. The air was chilly, and the night mists still lingered in the hollows of the green landscape and floated in filmy wraiths over the surface of the water. All the little steamer’s passengers were astir and were watching the scene from the upper deck. The most interested spectators among us were a score of Irish boys from her Majesty’s ship Renown, going home for a month’s leave of absence after a two years’ cruise in the West Indies. They wore loose, blue uniforms, and flat caps with their ship’s name on the bands, and they carried their belongings tied up in colored handkerchiefs or squares of calico. To them the low-lying shores between which our boat was moving were superlatively beautiful. They eagerly picked out familiar points as we passed them, and declared that altogether this was the finest sight they had seen in their lives. When we at length approached the dock, their impatience to land was such that as soon as we came within jumping distance they tossed their little bundles ashore and made flying leaps after them. The officers of the steamer declared the man-of-war lads were as bad as a menagerie of wild animals. Attempts to restrain them were wholly futile, and by the time the gang-plank was in position they had helter-skeltered off up the neighboring streets and alleys and were lost to view.
I followed more leisurely and prosaically, and, after breakfasting, looked about the town. That I was in Ireland was plain from the start, for the brogue and the peculiar piquancy of the faces were unmistakable. Then there were the women with shawls drawn over their heads, and the numerous beggars, and the barefoot newsboys selling green-tinted papers, and there was the omnipresent donkey-cart, and, scarcely less conspicuous, that other distinctively Irish vehicle, the jaunting-car, with the seats hung above the wheels.
Some of the natives were no better than walking scarecrows, so dilapidated was their attire; yet, as a whole, Cork is a city that shows evidence of a good deal of business prosperity. A rich farming region lies round about which reminds one of England. I saw something of this on a trip I made to Blarney Castle, eight miles distant, and would have seen more had I walked as I at first planned. But the day was too bright and warm for comfortable tramping, and I went instead by a convenient steam tram.
Blarney town is a small manufacturing place. The castle, however, is well outside the village, in surroundings wholly rural, and the way thither is by a footpath and across a slight wooden bridge, spanning a swift, clean little river. The old fortress stands on a low hill, whence it looks down on a broad field from amid a grove of trees. This field is used as a public pleasure-ground, and rustic seats engird the bases of its noble oaks and elms, and a number of framework swings have been erected in the opens.
The castle makes an imposing ruin, for the main structure has suffered little from the ravages of time except that the roof and the wooden floors have fallen....
IN one of his earlier volumes John Burroughs tells of a Frenchman who visited England with the intention of writing a book about that country. For a long period he continued to observe and collect material. During the first weeks his enthusiasm over his project was unbounded; a year passed and he still thought of writing a book, but was not so sure about it; and after a residence of ten years his doubts as to his ability of adequately handling the subject had so grown that he abandoned the scheme altogether. Mr. Burroughs’s comment is that, “instead of furnishing an argument against writing out one’s first impressions of a country, the experience of the Frenchman shows the importance of doing it at once. The sensations of the first day are what we want, — the first flush of the traveller’s thought and feeling before his perceptions and sensibilities become cloyed or blunted, or before he in any way becomes a part of that which he would describe.”
This defines very forcibly, I think, the source of whatever merit may have been attained by the present volume, or by its predecessors on England and France. The view is from the outside, and has both the faults and virtues of such a view. It is a record of first impressions and of the pleasure in things novel and unexpected which never comes but once. As such I finish it, trusting that I may have succeeded in conveying to others something of the charm and interest that these scenes and incidents had for me.
***
An excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter:
THE CASTLE OF ELOQUENCE
IT was the first gray of a May morning, and the coasting steamer on which I had taken passage the day before at Plymouth, in southern England, was sliding along up the quiet of the river Lee toward Cork. The air was chilly, and the night mists still lingered in the hollows of the green landscape and floated in filmy wraiths over the surface of the water. All the little steamer’s passengers were astir and were watching the scene from the upper deck. The most interested spectators among us were a score of Irish boys from her Majesty’s ship Renown, going home for a month’s leave of absence after a two years’ cruise in the West Indies. They wore loose, blue uniforms, and flat caps with their ship’s name on the bands, and they carried their belongings tied up in colored handkerchiefs or squares of calico. To them the low-lying shores between which our boat was moving were superlatively beautiful. They eagerly picked out familiar points as we passed them, and declared that altogether this was the finest sight they had seen in their lives. When we at length approached the dock, their impatience to land was such that as soon as we came within jumping distance they tossed their little bundles ashore and made flying leaps after them. The officers of the steamer declared the man-of-war lads were as bad as a menagerie of wild animals. Attempts to restrain them were wholly futile, and by the time the gang-plank was in position they had helter-skeltered off up the neighboring streets and alleys and were lost to view.
I followed more leisurely and prosaically, and, after breakfasting, looked about the town. That I was in Ireland was plain from the start, for the brogue and the peculiar piquancy of the faces were unmistakable. Then there were the women with shawls drawn over their heads, and the numerous beggars, and the barefoot newsboys selling green-tinted papers, and there was the omnipresent donkey-cart, and, scarcely less conspicuous, that other distinctively Irish vehicle, the jaunting-car, with the seats hung above the wheels.
Some of the natives were no better than walking scarecrows, so dilapidated was their attire; yet, as a whole, Cork is a city that shows evidence of a good deal of business prosperity. A rich farming region lies round about which reminds one of England. I saw something of this on a trip I made to Blarney Castle, eight miles distant, and would have seen more had I walked as I at first planned. But the day was too bright and warm for comfortable tramping, and I went instead by a convenient steam tram.
Blarney town is a small manufacturing place. The castle, however, is well outside the village, in surroundings wholly rural, and the way thither is by a footpath and across a slight wooden bridge, spanning a swift, clean little river. The old fortress stands on a low hill, whence it looks down on a broad field from amid a grove of trees. This field is used as a public pleasure-ground, and rustic seats engird the bases of its noble oaks and elms, and a number of framework swings have been erected in the opens.
The castle makes an imposing ruin, for the main structure has suffered little from the ravages of time except that the roof and the wooden floors have fallen....
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THE ISLE OF THE SHAMROCK
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940012428318 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | OGB |
| Publication date: | 04/28/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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