'As beautiful Kitty one morning was tripping With a pitcher of milk from the fair of Coleraine, When she saw me she stumbled, the pitcher it tumbled, And all the sweet buttermilk watered the plain.'
Anonymous.
We wanted to cross to Rathlin Island, which is 'like an Irish stockinge, the toe of which pointeth to the main lande.' That would bring Francesca six miles nearer to Scotland and her Scottish lover; and we wished to see the castle of Robert the Bruce, where, according to the legend, he learned his lesson from the 'six times baffled spider.' We delayed too long, however, and the Sea of Moyle looked as bleak and stormy as it did to the children of Lir. We had no mind to be swallowed up in Brecain's Caldron, where the grandson of Niall and the Nine Hostages sank with his fifty curraghs, so we took a day of golf at the Ballycastle links. Salemina, who is a neophyte, found a forlorn lady driving and putting about by herself, and they made a match just to increase the interest of the game.
There was but one boy in evidence, and the versatile Benella offered to caddie for them, leaving the more experienced gossoon to Francesca and me. The Irish caddie does not, on the whole, perhaps manifest so keen an interest in the fine points of the game as his Scottish brother. He is somewhat languid in his search for a ball, and will occasionally, when serving amiable ladies, sit under a tree in the sun and speculate as to its whereabouts. As for staying by you while you 'hole out' on your last green, he has no possible interest in that proceeding, and is off and away, giving his perfunctory and half-hearted polish to your clubs while you are passing through this thrilling crisis. Salemina, wishing to know what was considered a good score by local players on these links, asked our young friend 'what they got round in, here,' and was answered, 'They tries to go round in as few as possible, ma'am, but they mostly takes more!' We all came together again at luncheon, and Salemina returned flushed with victory. She had made the nine hole course in one hundred and sixty, and had beaten her adversary five up and four to play.
The next morning, bright and early, we left for Coleraine, a great Presbyterian stronghold in what is called by the Roman Catholics the 'black north.' If we liked it, and saw anything of Kitty's descendants, or any nice pitchers to break, or any reason for breaking them, we intended to stop; if not, then to push on to the walled town of Derry,--'Where Foyle his swelling waters Rolls northward to the main.'
We thought it Francesca's duty, as she was to be the wife of a Scottish minister of the Established Church, to look up Presbyterianism in Ireland whenever and wherever possible, with a view to discoursing learnedly about it in her letters,--though, as she confesses ingenuously, Ronald, in his, never so much as mentions Presbyterianism. As for ourselves, we determined to observe all theological differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics, but leave Presbyterianism to gang its ain gait. We had devoted hours--yes, days--in Edinburgh to the understanding of the subtle and technical barriers which separated the Free Kirkers and the United Presbyterians; and the first thing they did, after we had completely mastered the subject, was to unite. It is all very well for Salemina, who condenses her information and stows it away neatly; but we who have small storage room and inferior methods of packing must be as economical as possible in amassing facts.
If we had been touring properly, of course we should have been going to the Giant's Causeway and the swinging Bridge at Carrick-a-rede; but propriety is the last thing we aim at in our itineraries. We were within worshipping distance of two rather important shrines in our literary pilgrimage; for we had met a very knowledgeable traveller at the Sorley Boy, and after a little chat with him had planned a day of surprises for the academic Miss Peabody. We proposed to halt at Port Stewart, lunch at Coleraine, sleep at Limavady; and meantime Salemina was to read all the books at her command, and guess, we hoped vainly, the why and wherefore of these stops.
On the appointed day, the lady in question drove in state on a car with Benella, but Francesca and I hired a couple of very wheezy bicycles for the journey. We had a thrilling start; for it chanced to be a fair day in Ballycastle, and we wheeled through a sea of squealing, bolting pigs, stupid sheep, and unruly cows, all pursued on every side by their drivers. To alight from a bicycle in such a whirl of beasts always seems certain death; to remain seated diminishes, I believe, the number of one's days of life to an appreciable extent. Francesca chose the first course, and, standing still in the middle of the street, called upon everybody within hearing to save her, and that right speedily. A crowd of 'jibbing' heifers encircled her on all sides, while a fat porker, 'who (his driver said) might be a prize pig by his impidence,' and a donkey that was feelin' blue-mouldy for want of a batin', tried to poke their noses into the group. Salemina's only weapon was her scarlet parasol, and, standing on the step of her side-car, she brandished this with such terrible effect that the only bull in the cavalcade put up his head and roared. "Have conduct, woman dear!" cried his owner to Salemina. "Sure if you kape on moidherin' him wid that ombrelly, you'll have him ugly on me immajently, and the divil a bit o' me can stop him." "Don't be cryin' that way, asthore," he went on, going to Francesca's side, and piloting her tenderly to the hedge. "Sure I'll nourish him wid the whip whin I get him to a more remoted place."
