The Earl's promise

Kingslough at high noon was ordinarily the stupidest, dullest, dirtiest little town that could have been found in the Province of Ulster. On market and fair, and party-procession days, the inhabitants seemed to expend the whole of their strength. An almost unbroken calm ensued after wild excitement, a death-like stillness followed the shouts and cries of faction, the shrieks of drunken merriment, the shrill piping of fifes, the braying of trumpets, and the bang-banging of drums.

Excepting on such and such-like festive occasions as those above enumerated, the town, figuratively speaking, looked as though it had gone to bed to sleep off the effects of its last excitement or debauch.

In the bright sunlight it appeared like a place deserted by its population—a place rich in every natural beauty, which there was neither man nor woman to admire.

So far as position was concerned, Kingslough had nothing left to desire. Situated on an arm of the sea, the town, well sheltered from the wild north winds by hills and far-spreading plantations, nestled its houses snugly along the shore, while the blue waves rippled gently in over the red sandstone beach.

Nature had indeed done everything for the little watering-place, and man had, as is usually the case, done his best to spoil Nature’s handiwork.

Seen from the sea Kingslough lay tranquil under its hills, the perfection of an artist’s ideal; but a nearer view dispelled this allusion, and it appeared to eyes from which the glamour was removed, just what it has already been described, the stupidest, dullest, dirtiest little town in Ulster.

Here was no dark Moorish architecture, lighted up by the bright costumes and brighter eyes of the Galway women. Here were no fantastic houses, no picturesque surprises, no archways lying in deep shadow, no recessed and highly ornamented doorways, no rich carvings, no evidences of a wonderful and romantic past. Everything was straight, strictly utilitarian, mean. The best houses presented outwardly no sign of the amount of actual accommodation they contained.

They were old, but they had not grown grey and softened with the lapse of years. The prevailing “finish” amongst the better class of residences was paint or rough-cast, whilst the dwellings inhabited by the trading and working members of the community were periodically covered with lime-white, which the rain as regularly washed off.

The side-paths were uneven, the streets unlighted, every sanitary regulation either unborn or in the earliest and weakest stage of infancy. From a picturesque point of view the fishing-boats drawn up on the beach formed a pleasing foreground to a charming landscape, acceptable to the eye; but the neighbourhood of these boats was disagreeable to the nose by reason of cods’ heads, and other fishy matters, that lay decomposing in the sun.

Time had been when Kingslough was known by a more distinctively Irish name, that of Ballylough, the A being pronounced very broad indeed, while a fine guttural sound was imparted to the “ough,”—as indeed is still the case with the terminal letters in Kingslough.

At that period, Ballylough was a very modest Bally indeed, and the lodgings it let in the boating season to strangers from Glenwellan were of the most primitive description.

The villa residences, the rows of terraces, the sea-wall, the grand promenade overlooking the bay, all of which now delight the eyes of tourists and others, had not yet emerged from the then future that has long since become the past.