Tourism, Landscape, and the Irish Character: British Travel Writers in Pre-Famine Ireland

8. Discovering the Moral Landscape

8 Discovering the Moral Landscape k k k k k k Ulster: “In Ireland, but Not of It” The province of Ulster historically consists of Ireland’s nine northern counties: Down, Antrim, Armagh, Londonderry, Tyrone, Cavan, Monaghan , Fermanagh, and Donegal. The province has always been regarded as a distinct part of Ireland. For centuries it maintained close ties to Scotland, northern England, and even Scandinavia, while southern Ireland looked to Wales, the English West Country, France, and Spain.1 Even the Celts recognized Ireland as a divided island. In the ancient saga Táin Bó Cuailnge (“The Cattle Raid of Cooley”), the “men of Ireland” battled the “men of Ulster.” During the Iron Age, a series of earthen fortiQcations, the so-called Black Pig’s Dyke, was built along the southern borders of Ulster from Monaghan to Donegal to impede cattle raiding from the south. Those who built the dyke incorporated pre-existing natural barriers formed by the drumlin belt, which begins on the Ards Peninsula in the northeast near Belfast and can be traced in a rough line southwest through the southern portion of Ulster and into contiguous counties.2 The drumlin belt is characterized by the alternation of oblong domes and intervening depressions, the result of variations in glacial deposits. The domes formed around deposits of glacial till, and the water-logged land in between them sank into lakes 147 or bogs. In 1740 one visitor, fascinated by the number of little hills around Downpatrick in County Down, compared them to “wooden Bowls inverted, or Eggs set in Salt.” Eighty years latter Rev. Caesar Otway, traveling through the drumlins on a journey between Dublin and Londonderry, complained that the land was so hilly that the traveler could see only a quarter-mile in any direction.3 The quality of Ulster’s land varies considerably. In the northern half of the province, the traveler can Qnd relatively good farming country in the glens of Antrim, in parts of Down and Armagh, in the hinterland around the city of Derry, and in northeastern Donegal.4 Once the traveler crosses the River Foyle at Strabane, heading west or southwest , however, the land quickly deteriorates. Moreover, in the drumlin areas to the south, some of the low-lying land is boggy, and in the western counties even the soil on the domes themselves can be relatively poor. In general, the western drumlin areas, along with the West Donegal highlands, hold much of Ulster’s poorest land.5 During the pre-Famine period, parts of Ulster beneQted from a mixed economy of small farms and cottage industries based on growing flax and spinning and weaving linen. The cloth had to be bleached by the sun, a process that invariably caught the traveler’s eye. In 1806 Sir Richard Colt Hoare, riding south from the Antrim coast toward Belfast, saw “Qelds white with linen, the country bespread by numerous manufactories; in short, a commercial air enlivens the whole scenery.” Visiting the province in 1835, John Barrow described the visual impact of the bleaching greens: “The linen is laid out in long narrow strips, the width of the web, and, with the blades of grass standing up between them, has the effect from a little distance, which is produced just when the snow is in the act of dissolving with the warmth of the sun.”6 After 1820 the mechanization and concentration of the Ireland’s textile industries in Belfast, Ireland’s only industrializing city, weakened the farming and weaving economies of Connacht and western Ulster. Nevertheless, the cottage industries survived in other parts of the province, continuing to provide many small farmers with a relatively comfortable niche not found elsewhere. Most visitors were well aware that Ulster’s pattern of settlement Discovering the Moral Landscape 148 also helped to differentiate the province from the rest of Ireland. Much of Ulster had remained in Gaelic hands until the beginning of the seventeenth century. Around 1610 James I, anxious to establish a “loyal” population there, began a series of plantations that brought in large numbers of Protestants from England and Wales and especially from the lowlands of Scotland. Thanks to continued immigration, Ulster contained Ireland’s highest concentration of Protestants, especially Presbyterians. The newcomers often gained occupation of the best lands in the province’s eastern and northern sections, where they and their descendants pursued habits of housekeeping and husbandry that later British tourists...