Old Travel Books and Ireland
This is
obviously a far from comprehensive list of old travel books dealing with
Ireland. It is just a mention for a
couple that I have read, and since they are available free on line, I thought a
plug for the sites that host them would be worthwhile.
I love
travel books, particularly old ones.
While a modern travel book can show the reader what they are likely to
encounter after jumping aboard a flight for a couple of hours, reading some of
the great travel classics transports the reader to worlds long gone, and to
which only the hardy could make their way.
They have nothing to do with Ireland, but do yourself a favour and find
a copy of books like “Two Years Before the Mast”, or ‘Sailing Alone Around the
World’. The first of these is a tale of
travel from Boston to California, when Cali was only a series of trading posts.
The second title is more self-explanatory, but still a great tale of adventure
and resilience. Both are available as
free downloads in a number of formats at Project Guttenberg, (https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page), a worthy site in its own right
which is full of out of copyright literature.
I will mention it again, probably frequently! One word of caution is necessary when dealing
with books written long ago. They are
written in the context of their times, and the writers attitudes may not be
particularly acceptable to modern conventions.
You don’t have to agree with the author’s mindset to enjoy the books,
and often reading these attitudes in the context of the times will expose the
reasons why we have moved so far from them.
Meanwhile
back to something more relevant to our island. J
‘A Vagabond Journey Around the World’, by Harry
A. Franck
In my
misspent youth I did a bit of hitch-hiking, including one memorable trip over
many, many months when I made it as far as Israel, but that story is far beyond
the remit of this site. An Ebay search
some years ago for old travel books led me to buy this book, and there is a
very short piece in it on a visit to Ireland, the full text on Ireland is
below. There is however an interesting
picture from Belfast (see below), probably dating from 1904? Franck seems to have made a career of his
travels, publishing many books from many continents. He redeemed himself by
returning to Britain and Ireland in the 30’s, and there are hundreds of pages
on Ireland in this book. I have it, but
haven’t read it yet so will report back or scan the whole Ireland content at
some stage if time permits. Don’t hold
your breath! If you would like to read A
Vagabond Journey, it is on Guttenberg along with a few of his others (but not
the Britain and Ireland one).
The whole
book is 502 pages, and Ireland gets this!
“Tucking my
Kodak into my coat pocket, I sold my bag for the price of a ticket on the night
steamer to Belfast. A two days’ tramp
along the highways of the Emerald Isle was a pleasant “limbering up” for more
extended journeys to come. It might have
been longer but for an incessant rain that drove me back to Scotland.”
MOTORCYCLE
ADVENTURER: Carl Stearns Clancy: First Motorcyclist To Ride Around the World
1912 – 1913.
By Dr. Gregory W. Frazier
This one
links so many of my interests; old
bikes, travel, Ireland, etc. etc. It may also have been the very first round the world trip by motorcycle. Clancy
had Irish ancestry, so he and a colleague started their trip by shipping their
two bikes to Dublin, and heading for Donegal.
They descriptions of the roads, the real difficulties of even finding
petrol to run their bikes, and their security worries that made them travel
with a loaded gun to hand are all a real snapshot of Ireland at the time. His partner dropped out fairly quickly in
their travels, but Clancy was made of sterner stuff. It is a great book, compiled from magazine
articles serializing the trip. It is
free to read on Google books too.
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