Oh, won't you come up, come up, come up, Oh, won't you come up to Limerick? Oh, won't you come up, come all the way up, Come all the way up to Limerick?
At least, that is the way I heard the chorus sung once, many years ago, without understanding in the least what it meant. The invitation, of course, is for the passing ship to enter the wide estuary of the Shannon and sail up to Limerick's waiting quays. If the first limerick was composed at Limerick, it must have been a long time ago, and I doubt if any are produced there nowadays.
We took a last stroll about the town, after we had seen the butter-making, and looked at the great artillery barracks, and the big market, and the mammoth jail and the still more mammoth lunatic asylum, where the inmates are decked out in bright red bonnets, which I should think would make them madder still. And then we walked through an open space called the People's Park, whose principal ornament is a tall column surmounted by the statue of a man named Spring Rice. Betty remarked that she had heard of spring wheat, but never of Spring Rice, and asked who he was; but I didn't know; and then we came to the Carnegie Library, and went inside to see what it was like.
I have seldom seen a drearier place. In the reading-room a few shabby men were looking over some newspapers, but the rest of the building was deserted, except for one old man, who may have been the librarian. There were few books, and the names of those the library had were arranged in a remarkable mechanism which resembled a lot of miniature post-office boxes; and when the book was in, the name was turned out toward you, and when it was out, the card was turned blank-side out. It was the most complicated thing I ever saw in a public library. I suppose after a while, when the library gets more books, this bulletin will be used only for the newer ones; but I don't imagine there is a great demand for books in Limerick. At least mighty few seemed to be in circulation. Where life's realities are so bitter, where want is always at one's heels, there is little time for intellectual recreation.
How bitter those realities are we realised, as we had never done before, on our way back to the station; for, on the doorstep of a low, little house, sat a ragged girl of six or eight, cuddling her doll against her breast and crooning to it softly. And the doll was just a block of turf, with a scrap of dirty rag for a dress.