William
Bulfin, in his 1908 travelogue Rambles in Eireann,
gives the following account of a visit he made to
the tower at Sandycove in September 1904:
On
a lovely Sunday morning in the early autumn two of
us pulled out along the road to Bray for a day's cycling
in Dublin and Wicklow. We intended riding to Glendalough
and back, but we were obliged to modify this programme
before we reached Dalkey, owing to a certain pleasant
circumstance which may be termed a morning call. As
we were leaving the suburbs behind us my comrade,
who knows many different types of Irish people, said
casually that there were two men living in a tower
down somewhere to the left who were creating a sensation
in the neighbourhood. They had, he said, assumed a
hostile attitude towards the conventions of denationalisation,
and were, thereby, outraging the feeling of the seoinini.One
of them had lately returned from a canoeing tour of
hundreds of miles through the lakes, rivers, and canals
of Ireland, another was reading for a Trinity degree,
and assiduously wooing the muses, and another was
a singer of songs which spring from the deepest currents
of life. The returned marine of the canoe was an Oxford
student, whose button-hole was adorned with the badge
of the Gaelic League-a most strenuous Nationalist
he was, with a patriotism, stronger than circumstances,
which moved him to pour forth fluent Irish upon every
Gael he encountered, in accents blent from the characteristic
speech of his alma mater and the rolling blas of Connacht.
The poet was a wayward kind of genius, who talked
with a captivating manner, with a keen, grim humour,
which cut and pierced through a topic in bright, strong
flashes worthy of the rapier of Swift. The other poet
listened in silence, and when we went on the roof
he disposed himself restlessly to drink in the glory
of the morning. It was very pleasant up there in the
glad sunshine and the sweet breath of the sea. We
looked out across to Ben Edair of the heroic legends,
now called Howth, and wondered how many of the dwellers
in the "Sunnyville Lodges" and "Elmgrove Villas" and
other respectable homes along the hillside knew aught
of Finn and Oisín and Oscar. We looked northwards
to where the lazy smoke lay on the Liffey's bank,
and southwards, over the roofs and gardens and parks
to the grey peak of Killiney, and then westwards and
inland to the blue mountains.
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