When the carriage moved off, the cry "O Lord!" with which the passengers
started to their feet and the relatives outside flung up their hands,
was the most affecting sound I ever heard. It was a wail as if every
heart-string was torn. A countryman explained to me that the Irish were
a people that wept tears out of their hearts till they wept their hearts
away. By the conversation of the emigrants, I found that one girl had
turned back. "She failed on us, my lady," said her comrade. "Her heart
gave up when she saw the mother of her in a dead faint and she turned
back. One has but the one mother and it is hard to kill her with the
bitter grief of parting before the time."
People who have travelled much, and are loosely tied to any spot on
earth, ridicule the affection of these mountain people for their cabin
among the hills, but love of home is a glorious instinct, and if the
country of these people could afford them a little bit of the soil for a
home--liberty to live and toil--they would be both loving and loyal. All
the poor want is permission to live in a corner of their own country.
Castlebar is reached by rail.
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