The Vale of the Liffey

...They will have to be surgical knives," I told them, "long in the blade...

...Patrick Sars- field, the last military leader of the Irish, could have had little connection with it although his family had owned the land...

...Your camp is broken up, your work is marred for years...

...there can be no fine bridges across the Liffey...

...He played a double tin whistle, putting two instruments into his mouth...

...Meanwhile, the most rousing sight on the way is that of the horses--Clydes- dales-that draw the long brewery drays (but they are being displaced by motor trucks...

...This crime was not long before my own time, .but it had seemed to me legendary...

...Beside the bridge is a public house, and outside is a man playing a tin whistle...

...The Liffey is domestic here...

...We went down to the immense kitchen that the cicerone's family inhabited, and ate cakes and drank buttermilk...

...In the old days when one went through this part of the park there were always strollers around who were ready to show one where the "Phoenix Park Murders" had been committed~ the murder of a Chief Secretary for Ireland and his assistant by a terrorist gang...

...In the entrance hall is the portrait of te viceroy wose design left Dublin so grandiose a park, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield, with his livid face and lively eyes...

...Between Philadelphia and Baltimore he told me about the crime and how it had been prepared for, and between Balti- more and Washington he talked to me about Hebrew grammar and literature...

...Assuming that Patrick Sarsfield had been about the place on the days when he was not in camp or not being besieged, they felt his spirit close to them...

...I come to a bridge at the railway depot: here up-to- date taxies wait near old-time jaunting cars on which jarveys sit and wait for the fare that seldom comes to them now...

...He spoke very finely, I remember, about some passages in the Book of Job before I got off the train the next day, and he said "God bless you" as we parted...

...They were murdered by knives, and the crime really shocked the country...

...THE VALE OF THE LIFFEY By PADRAIC COLUM THERE is nothing like a river to give dignity to a town-- a river with fine bridges across it: men as they pass over bridges have a dignity that does not inhere in any of their other peregrinations and they are conscious of it, too...

...I parted from my friend here...

...The sweetest ground in Ireland is here," says a man who has cattle grazing between the house and the river, "not a beast that ever tasted a bit of the grass here but would stray back to it...

...It is an empty house but not a neglected one...

...We shared a bedroom in a Washington hotel and he stayed awake quite a long time giving out musty jokes about bedrooms and other men's wives...

...We walked out of the kitchen, and walking along the river bank we turned up to the demesne...

...But as I looked upon this classical emblem I thought of how wide was the gap that separated such leaders as Sarsfield from the Irish people...

...He had bought it in Henry Street, Dublin, at the shop of Mr...

...But I said noth- ing about this to the instrumentalist...

...Some day, I imagine, they will be demolished to leave space for boulevards leading to the park...

...I see the Liffey looking like its natural self as it skirts this pastoral scene---a stream that should never have been asked to go through a city...

...For all this was Versailles, the Europe of the seventeenth century, and the Ireland of the time was in the Europe of the Gothic age...

...He took snuff and he read Hebrew~the Book of .lob was the text he had in his hands...

...In this drawing-room his epigrams would surely be retailed--perhaps the one upon the lovely papist lady who attended his court wearing orange lilies instead of the white roses of her own cause: "Ah, pretty Tory, why this zest To wear the Orange at your breast, When that same beauteous breast discloses The whiteness of the rebel roses...

...The Dublin jarvey's day is over, and well he knows it and bitterly he resents it...

...He gave a speech that was oratorical, but also witty and sensible...

...I came to another mansion, empty, too, a house that was surely the replica of a French house—a charming house...

...think of the way men and women cross bridges over the Seine...

...We went into the demesne that the Liffey flows by and came before the house...

...But I am very glad that no one now seems to have an interest in keeping the memory of it alive...

...The houses on each side of the unfull river are as listless as any I ever saw...

...He showed us a room in which the decora- tions were by Angelica Kauffmann...

...His residence was near by...

...The brasses sparkle and shine as the immense horses go on, and, big and grave, the men look as if they belonged to a high caste of horse-teamers and barrel trans- porters...

...I thought her classical figures had a kind of serious charm...

...But you go to kindle into flame the king of France his wrath, Though you leave sick Eire in tears—Och, ochone...

...Here is the Viceregal Lodge, and perhaps Her Excellency will ask us to tea...

...Smith who had made so perfect an instrument...

...I come on the river again...

...The instrumentalist was impressed with this tale of devotion to craftsmanship...

...I thought it was stirring...

...I approach herds of deer...

...They were inlaid by an Italian who was in Dublin at the period~Bossi...

...Then they stepped out to the ladies, fingering a snut~-box, I daresay...

...He had the instrumentalist with him when he showed us the mantelpieces in the house...

...Then he said some prayers fervently and went to sleep...

...From what distance comes the burst of native lament: "Farewell, Patrick Sarsfield, may luck be on your path...

...rough grass is before the house and steps go up to it...

...He showed me his instrument with great pride...

...He was so pleased with my patronage that he stepped outside the public house and played for my especial benefit...

...here the river is nothing in comparison with the Seine or the Thames...

...From its mouth to its source is a distance of only thirty-five miles, I believe...

...Every night he said a prayer for Mr...

...There are curiosity shops of the kind that seldom see a customer...

...She had a pleasant place, not so far from Dublin but that Swift could ride to it...

...But the Liffey makes a loop (that is, if a loop can be made with a line that is all loops) and so manages to get into three counties--Wicklow, Kildare and Dublin...

...Smith mtenpence was the price...

...We stand on the lawn and look toward the misty Dublin hills along a line of statuesque Irish yews...

...They have polished the brasses of the harnesses as sailors polish the fittings of a ship...

...There are second-hand bookstalls...

...And he played a tune of his own composition...

...No gardens are before it, no peacocks display themselves in front of it...

...if Mr...

...When he was dying, after making this piece, his son, wanting the secret from him, went to where he was lying...

...I liked the drawing-room that had powder closets in it...

...Big men are with these big horses...

...The Dubliners who were here were getting real enjoyment out of walking through this demesne...

...And he came with me to the place I was bound form"Sars- field's Demesne" the local guide-book called it...

...The gentlemen stalked into them, and, putting their heads through an opening, had a valet in an anteroom powder their wigs...

...Smith of Henry Street was getting the benefit of the nightly prayer he was getting more than was his due...

...I am glad that Vanessa's place keeps such attraction...

...I think of him now as I approach the scene of the murder...

...But the old man would not tell how work the like of this was done...

...I come out of the park and walk along where the country goes into little green rises...

...The Birds that Left the Cage was the title he gave it...

...There are no such appearances in Dublin...

...I looked at it and found that it had been made in Germany...

...Well, this old gentleman was the person who had procured the knives for the Phoenix Park murders...

...There is only one God and one Bossi,' he said, and he died then, and the secret of putting colors and figures the like of these into the marble died with him...

...I walk along the river toward the park...

...Here that "ripe-witted young gentlewoman," Esther Vanhomrigh, lived for years after she had followed Doctor Swift to Ireland...

...But the instrumentalist was dubious about them...

...The site is a delightful one...

...Chesterfield's idea of governing Ireland by epigram and public works was better than the ideas other viceroys had—of governing it by hunting, dancing and bribery...

...How dreary it must have been for her to look along the Dublin road while she waited for a letter from Cadenus, a letter which, when it came, recommended Vanessa to take exercise and devote more time to her reading, or made covert allusion to coffee-drinking intimacies...

...Urns, the emblems of the Sarsfield family, were along every walk...

...A friend of mine says that the favorite outdoor sport of the Irish people is walking through demesnes...

...The circerone had been a groom...

...I go through the park gate, and when I pass the gardens I am in an expanse of country that makes a park that is vast in comparison with Dublin's size--the Phoenix Park...

...I come to a bridge...

...Although he was vigorous and very intelligent, he seemed a survival in some waymper- haps because he had been in service in some out-of-the-way island...

...One day I found myself sharing a compartment in a train from New York to Washington with a rather noble-looking old gentleman...

...He knew someone who was an army bandmaster, he told me, and he had offered to record the tune...

...The cicerone did not let himself be disturbed by head-shakings: he visualized, as it were, every objection, rode up to it and went right over and left it sur- mounted...

...Likely enough Lord Chesterfield would be present...

...I went along the river bank into the county Kildare...

...There is no shipping except the steam-driven barges that are laden with barrels from the brewery...