The Irish Echosphere in 2003

Searching the London Library for old books that might throw light on the history of Connemara, I came across The Saxon in Ireland, or, the rambles of an Englishman in search of a settlement in the west of Ireland, published by John Murray in 1851; anonymous, but with the name John Henry Ashworth written into the title page by a librarian's careful pencil.¹ Its professed intention was "to direct the attention of persons looking out either for investments or for new settlements, to the vast capabilities of the Sister Island," and it goes into great detail on the manuring of land, the Encumbered Estates Act, and other practicalities; I suspect it was also intended to boost the author's own courage and that of his family in facing emigration to the Ireland of that still famine-stricken date, for it is remarkably positive in outlook, and one has to read the small print of quoted matter in the appendices to find even a mention of potato blight. I did glean a few grains of information on Connemara, but it was an incident from his travels in Mayo that has lodged in my mind. In Ballycroy, a remote glen of Erris, the author calls upon another Englishman, Mr. S, who tells him about the strange meeting which led to his own settling there and the creation of a valuable property out of a wilderness. This episode, quite out of keeping with the rest of the book, is entitled "The Echo Hunter." I have trimmed it a little. Mr. S says:

I was at Ballina, sitting at the open window of the inn, when the melodious sounds of a bugle, playing a beautiful Irish air, attracted my attention. No long time had elapsed when a little dapper-looking gentleman, of middle age, entered the room, with a bugle in his hand. "I have to thank you, sir, I presume," said I, rising and bowing, "for the great treat I have just enjoyed?" "You have to thank me for very little, sir," replied he, carelessly; "This instrument is all very well, but I seldom use it except to rouse Dame Nature, whom you will find sleeping among the crags and cliffs. The moment I sound my bugle, an answer comes from the mountains, no less singular than beautiful, leaping from rock to rock, now loud, now murmuring, but always sweet."

"Excuse my dullness," said I, smiling; "I understand you now; you mean the echo." "Why yes," he replied, "echoes according to the common language of the world; I call them the voice of awakened Nature. There is nothing in the theory of sound that can satisfactorily account to me for the wonderful voices my bugle has awakened in certain spots which I have discovered; but I do not make them generally known, for—laugh if you will—I have a notion, which I like to encourage, that Nature loves solitude, and would ill brook the being disturbed by every common idler. I have travelled through and through Ireland, meeting with such echoes in many a sequestered nook, unnoticed by any one before me, but Ballycroy, yes, sir, not twelve miles from hence—Ballycroy exceeds them all. But," said he, lowering his voice, "it were vain for you or any other mortal to attempt to find out these peculiar spots. I alone discovered them, and with me the knowledge of their existence will die."

Ere we parted for the night, he invited me to accompany him on the following morning on an excursion into the Ballycroy mountains. He placed me on a certain spot; and exacting a promise that I would not follow him, he retired, and in about a quarter of an hour gave me such a treat in his peculiar art as I can never forget. The rocks and mountains seemed alive with harmony; the softest and wildest notes floated in the air, now close, now distant; now dying away in some distant recess of the...