Chambers's journal of popular literature, science, and art, fifth series, no. 119, vol. III, April 4, 1886

Having paddled down to their respective positions, the boats are
turned, and preparations are made for the race. A line attached to
the bank is held by the cockswain, and this, with the assistance of
a waterman with a long pole, helps to keep the boat in position and
prevents it drifting out of its place. Meanwhile, the first signal-gun
has been fired, and the crews are divesting themselves of jackets and
mufflers. Soon the second gun is heard, and there is now one minute
before the signal to start is given. What an anxious minute that is,
so much depends upon getting off well, especially with a crew in which
many of the men are rowing in one of these bumping races for the first
time. A bad start causes flurry and unsteadiness in the boat, and
then there is sometimes a risk of being bumped before the men settle
down together to a long and even stroke. Bang! The starting gun has
fired, and off go the dozen or more boats in a long line; the towpath
is crowded with men, running with their respective college crews,
shouting, blowing horns, and making use of every conceivable instrument
of noise to urge on and encourage their representatives. By the time
the barges, which are crowded with spectators, are reached, great
gaps will have appeared in the line, as most of the bumps take place
below; though here too, sometimes, a most exciting race is witnessed,
when some boat, almost overlapped by its rival, is seen struggling to
reach the winning-post without being bumped. Nor is this bumping so
easy as it might at first seem; but a good deal of skill is required
on the part of the cockswain to effect it. In the first place, there
is always the danger of making the shot too soon, in which case the
boat, missing the stern of the one in front, shoots half-way across the
river, and thereby loses a good deal of ground. Again, when one boat is
overlapping another, the cockswain of the first, by pulling his rudder
towards the bow of his rival, can cause such a wave of water to wash
against the latter as to ward off for a time the actual bump; then, by
a judicious spurt on the part of his ‘stroke,’ when the rudder is again
straightened, he may be enabled to draw away and steer his boat in
safety past the winning-post.

These races conclude the rowing for this term, though sometimes the
last few days are spent in coaching the best men from the Torpid on
‘sliding seats,’ by way of preparation for the next term’s practice for
the ‘eight.’

We now come to the summer or May term, the pleasantest term of all, as
far as boating is concerned. The most important races during this term
are those in which the college eights compete. They are carried out
in exactly the same manner as the Torpids described above, the only
difference being in the kind of boat used. The Torpids row in what are
called clinker-built or gig-boats, which have a small keel, and of
which the seats are fixed; whereas the ‘eights’ are rowed in smooth,
keelless boats—the bottom somewhat resembling that of a small canoe—and
fitted with sliding seats, by which the stroke can be lengthened and
more use made of the legs. The extremities of the boat are covered with
canvas, to prevent the water washing in over the side. The crew of a
college eight is composed of the best men the college can muster, all
of course being members of the college.

The races, as we mentioned before, are arranged in the same way as
those in which the Torpids compete, though perhaps more interest is
shown in the eights; and as they come off at a pleasanter time of the
year, and are undoubtedly one of the sights of the university, the
spectators include many more strangers. The ’varsity ‘sculls’ and
the ’varsity ‘pairs’—the former open to any member, and the latter
to any two members of the ’varsity boat-club—conclude the rowing at
Oxford for this term; though it should here be mentioned that two or
three of the boats that have shown themselves above the average in the
eight-oared races, often keep in practice for Henley regatta, which
takes place soon after the close of this term.

We have now given a brief description of a year’s college rowing at
Oxford, that is, rowing in which a college crew competes with members
of its own or other colleges. Starting again with the October term,
we propose saying something about rowing for the ’varsity, the chief
event in which is the annual race with Cambridge. There is, however,
one college race not yet mentioned, which takes place in the October
term—namely, the ’varsity ‘Fours,’ open to all the colleges. For
this event there are not generally more than from six to eight boats
entered, as considerably more skill and watermanship are required
than for the college eight. The boats used, though of much the same
construction as the latter, are of course smaller, and therefore
more difficult to sit; moreover, they do not carry a cockswain, the
steering being done by one of the crew with his feet, by means of
wires connecting the rudder with a lever attached to his stretcher,
so that, by moving this lever with his foot to one side or the other,
a corresponding motion is given to the rudder. This race takes place
in the first half of the term, and immediately afterwards the work of
selecting a crew for the inter-university boatrace is commenced.

With this object in view, the names of two or three of the best men
from each college are received by the President; and the remaining
weeks of this term are spent in testing on the river these fifty or
sixty men and selecting from them the best sixteen; these, again, are
divided into two regular crews, which are known by the name of the
‘Trial Eights.’ A race takes place at the end of the term between these
crews; they are coached by the President, and their rowing is carefully
watched by him and his advisers. Those who have displayed the greatest
‘staying-powers’ and the most perfect style, or are likely to develop
into the best ‘oars,’ are picked out, and, along with any members of
the last year’s crew that may be available, form the material out of
which the ‘’Varsity eight’ is composed.

The process of selecting the actual crew out of these men that have
been chosen from the ‘Trial Eights,’ and arranging them in the places
they are best fitted to occupy, takes up the first few weeks of the
next or Lent term. Their strength and ‘staying-powers’ are tested by
long rows to Abingdon and back, and at the same time they are coached
by the President, or by some ‘old-blue’ who has come up to help him.

By the middle of the term, the crew is generally settled upon, and
on Ash-Wednesday they go into strict training. The old theories of
training on raw meat, &c., have quite died out; a plentiful supply of
plain, well-cooked food is allowed, but only a very moderate amount
of liquor, and smoking must be entirely knocked off. For breakfast
and dinner the crew meet together in each other’s rooms, each man
entertaining the rest for one day in turn while they are still at
Oxford. Lunch is only a light meal. The rowing is almost entirely done
during the afternoon. Ten days or a fortnight before the time fixed
for the race, the crew go up to Putney to complete their practice on
the tidal water and the course over which the race is to be rowed.
Their doings here and the race itself need no description in this
paper. Their daily practice on the London water, the time they occupy
in rowing over the course, even their very movements are watched and
recorded by the daily press. Suffice it to say that this notoriety is
not at all desired by the members of the crews, and that, owing to the
inconvenience and obstruction it sometimes causes to their practice,
the proposal to hold the race on other and quieter waters has been more
than once discussed.




A HOLIDAY IN COUNTY CORK.


Leap is not a name suggestive of things Irish, yet the place so called
is as pure a specimen of the primitive Irish village as one might wish
to find. There it was our happiness to spend a holiday in the summer of
1885. During our few weeks’ stay we made the acquaintance of a people
whose character and modes of life have the flavour of an age innocent
of the civilities of the nineteenth century. The village of Leap is
in County Cork, at the extreme south-west corner of Ireland, about
eighteen miles to the east of Cape Clear, and about forty to the west
of the city of Cork. It stands at the head of Glandore Bay, one of the
numberless inlets that are so striking a feature of this part of the
Irish coast.

Glandore Bay is itself worth a lengthened pilgrimage. In Scotland or
England it would have been famous, and would long since have been a
fashionable seaside resort. The transatlantic steamers cross its mouth
at no great distance; and it is an impressive spectacle to see them
flash across in the darkness, with all their portholes lit, and at what
appears to be something like railway speed. The village of Leap is cut
in two by a streamlet, over which a bridge has now been thrown. Across
this stream, we are told, a deer, hard pressed by the hunters, once
took a desperate leap; hence the name of the village. In former times,
this same stream was the limit of English law in Ireland. ‘Beyond the
Leap,’ it used to be said, ‘beyond the law.’ And indeed, the country
beyond the Leap is a perfect paradise for outlaws. The very sight of
it is sufficient to deter the further progress of the most hot-headed
officer of justice. This corner of County Cork, therefore, was the
haunt of pirates, smugglers, and various outlawed persons. There is no
part of the British isles richer in tales of blood and adventure. The
district retained its lawless character down to comparatively recent
times; but in modern days, the private manufacture of a little poteen
is the extent of its misdemeanours.

The country surrounding Leap consists of a hopeless confusion of hills,
none of which, however, have either the shape or the size to give them
any dignity. These hills are in their turn covered with excrescences
in the shape of huge knolls of all possible contours and sizes. As the
natural vegetation is of a rankness quite unknown on the other side of
the Channel, it will be imagined that the general aspect of the country
is singularly harsh and wild. Yet this unpromising region is made to
yield surprising crops of potatoes, and even of grain. From base to
summit, every hill that the spade can scratch is cultivated. In many
cases, indeed, it is but picking the bones of nature. It is pathetic
to watch the desperate struggles of some poor soul to ‘bring in’ a
piece of new ground. To see him with his spade and pickaxe, a stranger
might fancy he was rather about to open a quarry than lay out a field,
where he proposes to rear crops of turnips or potatoes. The crofts
are also of miserable dimensions. Three or four acres must in the
majority of cases suffice to maintain an entire family. Where, however,
there is any depth of soil, we were told on the best authority, it
has a productiveness unsurpassed by the best land across the Channel.
But the whole district is vastly over-populated; and it is extremely
difficult to see how any possible legislation could make the land yield
a comfortable subsistence to the present numbers of its people. Some
years since, an active emigration went on from the neighbourhood; but
it has now almost ceased. As illustrative of the tenacity with which
the Irishman clings to his wretched allotment, a land-steward told us
an experience of his employer. This gentleman was desirous of acquiring
a small croft adjoining his own estate. The rental may have been equal
to about thirty shillings; and fifty pounds were offered as a liberal
price for the land. The owner thereupon declared that to no other
person would he part with his ground but to this particular gentleman,
and that to him he would give it for five hundred pounds! The croft is
still in the possession of its hereditary owner.

It does not seem that the formidable distance of America keeps them at
home, since, judging by their way of talking, one is led to believe
that they think of New York as nearer than London or Liverpool. They
also more readily think of strangers as Americans than Britons. It may
be mentioned in this connection that the most earnest counsel given
to young Irishmen who do emigrate from this part of the country is to
give O’Donovan Rossa and his associates as wide a berth as possible.
That redoubtable personage was born in Rosscarberry, a village some
five miles to the south-east of Leap. It was in Skibbereen, a place
also in the immediate neighbourhood, that he attracted the attention
of Head-centre Stephens by his outspoken and bitter hostility to all
things English. We met several persons who knew Rossa well in his young
manhood, and it is but just to say that they all spoke of him as an
upright and generous fellow. His subsequent career, however, is spoken
of in the neighbourhood in language anything but complimentary.

At first sight, one would be inclined to say that the district should
at least be well stocked with game; but the truth is that game of all
kinds is exceedingly scarce. During our stay, we did not see a single
‘head.’ The extinction of hares, indeed, can be traced to a very
recent date and a very efficient cause. When the Land League agitation
was at its height a few years ago, bands of the people, often three
or four hundred strong, mustered every Sunday after second mass, and
scouring the country with dog and gun, made indiscriminate butchery of
everything in the shape of game that came in their way. Gamekeeper and
policeman, as may be imagined, kept well out of sight while they did
their work. Next morning, the booty was on its way to the suspects in
Kilmainham jail, who, during the whole term of their detention, were
regularly catered for.

The cabins of these Cork crofters present externally a more respectable
appearance than the cabins of the same class in many parts of the
Highlands and islands of Scotland. These Irish cabins are mostly built
of stone, which in this part of the country is easily obtainable. Their
interior, however, would scarcely satisfy an exacting sanitary officer.
It consists of two apartments, the upper and the lower. The upper is
the sleeping apartment of the family, and the lower is the common room
of the household and all the live-stock. There is usually, indeed, a
shed adjoining the house for the special accommodation of the latter;
but there is a constant intercourse between the two domiciles, and
donkeys, pigs, geese, cocks and hens, sheep, and goats enjoy quite
undefined household privileges. Passing a cabin one day shortly after
our arrival in the place, we heard an appalling sound, and immediately
afterwards a voice exclaiming: ‘Be quoite, sir!’ It was a donkey
sharing the hearthstone with his master. The donkey, in truth, though
his master’s dearest possession, would also seem to be his peculiar
torment.

The sanitary officer has found his way even to this corner of the
empire, and objects to the domestic privileges of donkeys. Like most
despised races, however, donkeys have ineradicable opinions, and one
of these appears to be their prescriptive right to their master’s
domicile. As the Irishman, however, would seem to incline rather to
the opinion of his donkey than to that of the sanitary officer, it
will be seen that misunderstandings are apt to arise. The donkey is a
still further source of mischief in that he utterly refuses to make
any distinction between his owner’s ground and other people’s. He
breaks in utter unconcern through neighbouring fences, and browses at
large at his own caprice. Altogether, the donkey, as he is found in
Ireland, cannot fail to excite the admiration of the stranger. On the
other side of the Channel he is abroad, and has the exile’s numbness of
feeling. But in Ireland he is at home; he has the inspiriting sense
of a numerous brotherhood, and one may easily see that he has a vivid
consciousness of his social importance.

The diet of the Irishman in this part of the country is, of course,
potatoes and milk. As he himself puts it, he has potatoes twenty-one
times a week. In the event of a blight, such as the historic one, the
result in certain parts of Ireland could scarcely be less disastrous
than at any former period. If one may judge by the physique of its
consumers, the diet requires no recommendation of the medical faculty,
for a more stalwart race it would be difficult to find. In this
corner of the country so long ‘preserved,’ we should expect to find
the natural Irishman, and we certainly found him. The native Irish is
almost universally spoken; but at the same time, the majority of the
younger generation speak English with a brogue of the most exquisite
flavour. Here, also, we have the Irishman in the typical attire to
which caricaturists have accustomed us. To the visitor from the
other island, it is a ludicrous picture to see him in tall hat, blue
tailed coat, and knee-breeches, at work in his wretched plot, like a
philosopher out for a little recreation. It is not so much the style
of his garments, however, that makes their picturesqueness; it is
their positively miraculous raggedness. We feel that this raggedness
has quite passed the stage of disreputability, and has actually become
ornamentation. But it is above all the hat that fixes the attention.
We have often closely inspected it; and our wonder never ceased how,
in the course of a single life, any hat, however weather-beaten and
however brutally used, could attain that pre-Adamite look.

It is the great charm of travel in Ireland that one can become
acquainted with its people in so short a time and on such easy terms.
The Irishman is the most approachable of human beings, and as the very
Irishman the stranger wishes to know is in most cases his own lord and
master, intercourse is thus made doubly easy. If in the course of a
solitary walk you should desire the solace of a little conversation,
you have but to take your seat on one of the turf walls that form the
fences in these parts of the country. If you are a smoker and produce
your pipe, you will present an additional inducement. Before you
are well seated, you will be saluted with: ‘A fine day, sir, God be
praised!’ and a careless figure will be seen approaching with spade
or pickaxe over his shoulder. Sharing your tobacco with him, it will
remain with yourself to conclude the interview. Before ten minutes have
passed, you will have had the outlines of his family history, and his
views on things in general, not even excepting his priest. At the end
of as many hours’ conversation as you please, he will speed you on your
way with a fervent ‘God preserve you long!’ and part with you as if you
had been his lifelong friend.

The peasant women of Cork and Kerry bear a name for good looks; but
their style of dress certainly does not display their charms to
advantage. The married women of the west of Ireland wear a long,
coarse, black cloak, descending to their feet, and furnished with
a commodious hood which partially envelops their features. A more
ungraceful garment than this cloak it would be difficult to imagine;
and in bright summer weather it strikes one as the most perversely
unreasonable of all human adornings. The unmarried women, though
disallowed the use of the cloak, yet contrive to disfigure themselves
with equal success by means of a shawl, in which they invariably
envelop their heads as well as their shoulders. But in native sweetness
and gracefulness of speech, the Irish countrywoman leaves her English
and Scottish sister far behind. It is worth the trouble of a hundred
greetings to hear her ‘It is a fine day, thank God!’ By the way, these
greetings sound very oddly at first in Scottish ears. ‘It is a fine
day, sir, thank God;’ or, ‘It is a fine day, your honour, the Lord be
praised!’ are the ordinary salutations of the Irish country-people in
this district. Their pious ejaculations occasionally go beyond this.