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28
MUNSTER
The shadow of those days has not yet entirely
passed: but the stranger will see little of it, following
the famous route which leads up the Lee valley to
Macroom (where the rail ends), and so past Inchi-
geela and Ballingarry, past Gouganebarra by Keima-
neigh, through the mountains to Bantry and Glengariff.
And here confession must be made. I have never
seen these famous beauties. I have followed the Lee
only to Inchigeela
where it breaks into a score of
channels between little islands covered with scrub
oak and birch and hazel, a piece of river scenery
whose like I never saw. And I have driven along
the road from Macroom to Killarney, along the Sullane
River to Ballyvourney, which tens of thousands
know as "the metropolis of Irish-speaking Ireland".
For, as it chances, Cork alone, of the more pros-
perous counties, has kept the Irish speech, and kept
it in a form the least modified by modern simplifi-
cations. Irish is still to-day the language of well-
to-do and well-educated men and women. My host
at Ballyvourney had received his education in Paris,
more than that, had been through
all the Franco-
Prussian war, and had seen more of the world than
is given to most men; but for many years he has
been back, a kind of king among his own people,
and a real repository of the ancient scholarship and
traditions of the Gael. At Ballingeary, a few miles