With this we concluded our sigh about Dunluce, as we sat by the Bay of Sighs. In the mean time it had become perfectly dark, and with some trouble and difficulty I found my way to my car, and returned, late in the evening, to Ballycastle, and found, alas! that the Misses Mac Donnell had also sunk, if not into the lowest rank of their clan, at least into the pillow of their soft couch.
On the following day (the 25th Oct.) I hoped at last for a change of weather; and so, in fact, it happened. The storm, which the day before had been dry, had during the night laden itself with snow, and was busily engaged in powdering the rocks, as I set out in the morning on my return to Belfast. This return journey I had intended to make by Coleraine and Antrim; but
It is generally said that the coast of Antrim is so mild, that the snow never remains on the ground, even when, some miles inland, the hills are deeply covered with it. This may be the case; but I have the evidence of my own eyes that it falls at least as early as October on this mild coast. The blooming roses, that showed themselves in great abundance on some farms, glowed like fire from beneath the snow-flakes that hung on them. Yet mild as the climate is, it is in many respects extremely disagreeable to man. How well some plants bear it, is shown by the myrtles of Glenarm, which I visited once more. Those myrtles, like the arbutus of Mount Kennedy, are the most famous and largest of their kind in Ireland. I was informed that a gardener from the Royal Gardens at Kew, once made a pilgrimage in person to see these myrtles, and to examine closely their situation, and the nature of the country around them.
Among other remarkable things in the Castle of Glenarm, besides a model of the Giant's Causeway, I saw also a large piece of Irish rock-crystal, which is found here in the basaltic caves. It was from four and a half to five inches long, and is said to be the largest ever found here. I was also told that the people of the north of Ireland every where call the basalt, ‘Whinstone.’ I had, indeed, often before heard this word; but I did not know that it was a peculiar North-Irish and Scotch provincialism. ‘Whin’ is the shrub called furze, so common in Ireland, and which grows in abundance on the basalt rocks. The fair lady who told me this, also informed me, that here, in the north of Ireland, what the English call family names, are often called clans-names by the common people; and that if I wished to get a clear conception of the meaning of the word clan, I had only to think of what is called in the Bible the ‘Children of Israel.’ For the Irish and Scotch used the word precisely in the same sense, as is proved by their translating the ‘Children of Israel,’ always by ‘Clan Israel.’ It is remarkable that every thing here, both in customs and
The storm had thrown up an unusual quantity of seaweed at Glenarm, and different other places along the coast. Half the population were next morning, when the wind had somewhat abated, busy gathering it, and taking it away on little cars. All the wet basalt and limestone rocks, which rolled about on the seashore, were covered with men, women, and children, who, as at a joyful harvest-home, gathered the long snake-like slimy weeds, and collected them all carefully into little heaps. The Irish turn these plants to many uses: in the first place, they eat them, and, indeed, in no small quantities. Several of my twenty guides at the Giant's Causeway amused themselves on the way with chewing different marine plants, just as they picked them out of the surf. I saw the people in Ballycastle, too, putting seaweed on their bread and butter, and eating it as we do watercresses. In Belfast, I saw the peasants bring sea-plants to market as a common vegetable, just as they do peas or beans in our country. Some seaweed they salt and boil, and then it has exactly the same appearance as our German plum jam. One may call those boiled seaweeds, Irish jam. Besides, as I have already said, they make kelp from the ashes of the burnt sea-plants, both in Ireland and Scotland; and those which they neither eat nor burn for kelp, they use as manure. Yet I believe they are not here so often used for the latter purpose as on our Baltic coasts, the sandy shores of which gain more benefit from this kind of manure than the wet morass lands of Ireland, which would be more benefitted by lime, sea-sand, and shells, which latter are here and there on the coast of Ireland, at Lough Foyle, for instance, piled up in large heaps, even in entire hills.
All the coasts of Ireland are very rich in various kinds of sea-plants, and accordingly it seems that the green vegetation of the Emerald Isle is continued even beneath the sea. The coasts of Antrim are said to be the richest of all the coasts of Ireland, in those plants, which grow and spread more quickly on limestone
For manure, a kind which is distinguished by the name of ‘sea-wrack,’ is principally used. This is the Laminaria digitata, which is so good a manure, especially for potatoes, that it is proverbially said here, on the coast of Antrim, ‘a sack of sea-wrack will produce a sack of potatoes.’ It is, however, in quantity rather than in quality that the potatoes are improved by it. After every storm, the coast of Antrim is crowded like a fair, and all the people come down from their hills to gather sea-wrack for their potatoes. When the sea is perfectly calm, they wade as far into the water as they can, and cut away the weeds under the water with sickles. What does not the poor Irishman do to get a few ‘'tatoes!’ They take with them their little mountain horses, and load the manure on their backs; or, if the ground is too rocky for horses, they load their own backs with the briny, dripping manure.
From the difficulty of observing them beneath the water, where alone they unfold all their splendour, very few know the delicacy, and uncommon beauty and elegance of form, assumed by these products of marine vegetation, which are scarcely inferior in any respect to those of our gardens. When
It is inexplicable that the importance of this art is not more perceived, and that all museums do not contain herbaries of these wonderful little plants which the sea conceals. If museums are intended for the use of the lover of nature, and in particular to furnish him with knowledge and instruction in matters which would be otherwise inaccessible, then a herbary of sea-plants is infinitely more pressingly necessary in every museum than a herbary of land-plants. The latter, showing but imperfectly the forms of nature, can add but little to her glory; but a herbarium of marine plants is absolutely an elevating and beautifying of the works of creation, and adds to the glory of the Creator. Dr. Drummond also remarks, in the treatise I have mentioned, that one description of seaweed (Polysiphonia violacea), which has very long black stalks, when it is driven about by the waves in a storm in great quantities on the coast of Antrim, entangles and felts itself with its long branches so as to accumulate in large lumps, which roll about on the shore, and often form knots so firm that it is almost impossible to unloose them.
I drank another glass of whisky in Glenarm—the mild climate of Ireland soon teaches one whisky drinking—for my car-driver told me it was the last good whisky we could procure on the coast,—the Larne whisky was no good, and the Carrickfergus whisky was still worse. We then proceeded towards Belfast. I felt myself exceedingly comfortable on one side of my body, which, in one corner of my car, was sheltered from the attack of the snow and wind, and I did all in my power to concentrate all my sense of feeling and my whole soul into this comfortable corner, and to let all my other limbs freeze and shiver in the wet and cold as much as they pleased. Most people say that if one part of the body, the feet, for instance, or the head, is cold, one feels uncomfortable all over, however warm the rest of him may be; but I think my theory is better, and that one may bring himself, with some persuasion and management, to feel contented and warm if
And when I had effected this, I took my leave of Erin, and embarked for Caledonia.
End of Travels in Ireland